The name Edward Snowden will be remembered as one of the biggest whistle-blowers in recent history, if not the most important one. People know more about Edward Snowden than they know about close relatives, but it seems that little has been revealed until now about this methods and how he managed to remain undetected. It all has to do with Linux, of course.

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BeagleBoard.org announced a slightly pricier Rev C version of the BeagleBone Black that doubles eMMC flash and switches from Angstrom to Debian Linux.

To celebrate the first birthday of the BeagleBone Black, BeagleBoard.org is shipping a new version of the open source hacker SBC called the Rev C. An update on the BeagleBone Black Wiki says the board will be slightly more expensive than the $45 Rev B, which will be phased out when the C version starts shipping May 5. The additional $10 to $15 pays for the only apparent hardware upgrade: a doubling of onboard eMMC flash to 4GB. The device will also ship with the more user-friendly Debian Linux instead of Angstrom.

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After looking at the latest edition of MakuluLinux, which comes with MATE 1.8 and looks awesome, we decided to ask Jaque Raymer, the lead developer of Makulu, a few questions regarding this new, customizable distribution which employs a new direction, making it stand out compared to other distributions.

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MakuluLinux Mate Imperium Edition has been released a few hours ago, and being based on Debian Testing, I took it for a test drive. This is a good opportunity to have a look at the latest MATE 1.8, since Ubuntu Trusty only includes the 1.6 version in the repositories, and for the Mint release we’ll probably have to wait for about another month.

But except for MATE, some very interesting choices make MakuluLinux Imperium Edition stand out: it comes by default with applications like Steam, Wine, PlayOnLinux and even the Kingsoft Office suite instead of LibreOffice. Upon installing MakuluLinux, you have the possibility to choose which components will be installed and which not.

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The Debian Project Leader election has concluded and the winner is Lucas Nussbaum. Of a total of 1003 developers, 401 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

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The MATE Live desktop is shown below, it is exactly what I expect from Makulu — beautiful wallpaper, bright colourful icons, and lots of interesting-looking additions scattered around the screen. The Installer icon and an Installation Guide are on the upper left corner of the screen.

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The SparkyLinux 3.3 “Annagerman” system is built on Debian GNU/Linux “Jessie,” just like the previous versions. The developer usually releases versions with various desktop environments, but this is just the Base, which means that it's only for command-line fans.

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GParted Live, a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86-based computers that can be used for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions with the help of tools that allow managing filesystems, is now at version 0.18.0-2.

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"The underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded. This release is based on the Debian Sid repository, as of April 7, 2014," reads the official changelog.

The Linux kernel has remained the same, 3.13.6, and this is one of the most recent ones available. It's very likely that the next development version will feature Linux kernel 3.14.

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Parsix GNU/Linux, a live and installation DVD based on Debian, aiming to provide a ready-to-use, easy-to-install desktop and laptop-optimized operating system, is now at version 6.0 Test 3 and is ready for testing.

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16 years old and still ever changing: Not even the name remains stable. What used to be called "deity" was announced as "Apt", first released as "APT" [1], shipped as "apt-get" and "apt-cache", interpreted as "A Package Tool" and "Advanced Package Tool" and is now also available as "apt" … But the initial wisdom holds: "it's still a good word in its own right". And this word has surely influenced the way we manage our software on phones, servers and space stations. It also still stirs envy among users and developers outside the Debian universe – and rightly so!

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Synaptic is a graphical package management program for apt. It provides the same features as the apt-get command-line utility with a GUI front-end based on GTK+. Most importantly, users can install, remove, upgrade and downgrade single and multiple packages.

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Grml is not a regular Linux distribution for regular users. It’s packed with a sysadmin's favorite tools and allows admins with packages for installation, deployment and system rescue. This latest version has been dubbed Ponywagon and it comes with a couple of interesting features.

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So there you have it. There is a simple summary for all of this:

Debian Stable if your first priority is a rock-solid system, and you don't necessarily need to support the very latest hardware. This is often the case if you are setting up a server of some sort, but it may also be true if you are going to use a bit older .system as a desktop workstation,

Debian Testing if you want or need to have the latest hardware support, kernel dvelopments and advanced filesystems

Derivative distributions if you want a lot of additional packages included in the base distribution, thus saving you the time and effort of installing and configuring them.

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An updated installer ISO and ZIPs[repo.steampowered.com] are also included. Major changes here include fully unattended installation (no more mucking around with steam/desktop logins and manually running scripts), multiple language support and pre-installing all the firmware packages.

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The Debian project has just released the Live CD version of the recently launched Debian 7.4 in several separate images with various flavors.

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When opening the box to the SilverStone Raven RVZ01 there is a disclaimer printed on the packaging in multiple languages about being a "unique product" and recommending users first reading the included manual. This statement isn't just some marketing verbage to build up hype or purchasing confidence in the product, but with being able to accommodate up to a 13-inch PCI Express graphics card and four drive bays within this petite mini-ITX chassis, it truly is a unique product. Today at Phoronix we're looking at SilverStone's Raven RVZ01 mini-ITX chassis, the SFX 450W ST45SF-G power supply, and SST-CP11 SATA cabling for building a great Linux HTPC or your own Steam Machine/Box Linux gaming system.

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“We need ensure that we cater to our users, and there's millions of them. From those running the latest software in unstable, to people who simply want a rock solid core release. The size of Debian is increasing, and will reach a point where we're unable to guarantee basic compatibility with other packages, or the length of time it takes to do so becomes exponentially longer, unless something changes,” said Neil McGovern.

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Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.23, is out.

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In just having very limited time yesterday before back to traveling, I fired up the Debian Jessie Alpha 1 installer on a ASUS Zenbook Prime (UX32VD) ultrabook with Intel Core i7 "Ivy Bridge" processor. With Debian 8.0 currently having the Linux 3.13 kernel, this Intel ultrabook should be in good enough shape for this in-development Debian GNU/Linux release considering it's last year's hardware. In April when I'm back in the office I will be running some fresh Debian "Jessie" benchmarks, including of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. Those after Debian benchmarks today can view the recent Debian Wheezy, Jessie, and Sid benchmarks from earlier in March.

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