VFX Reference Platform as a standards body that aims to help standardize software platforms in the realm of digital content creation (DCC) has published a detailed report for studios to consider in choosing their next Linux platform. Their new recommendations for visual effects and animation studios about moving to newer Linux distributions over the next year -- especially with many still relying on CentOS 7 -- is for moving to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 otherwise one of the downstreams like Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux. Close behind in their recommendations and as a longer-term objective is also tossing some support behind Ubuntu Linux.
16 August 2022 - VFX Linux Recommendations - 7 Comments
Ahead of the upcoming openSUSE/SUSE Adaptable Linux Platform (ALP), whether to raise the x86_64 micro-architecture feature level required by the Linux OS continues to be evaluated and what options there are for making use of newer x86_64 instruction set extensions without necessarily forcing tightened CPU requirements / eliminating old hardware support.
16 August 2022 - Newer CPU Requirements - 26 Comments
The OpenMandriva crew behind this long ago Mandriva/Mandrake-derived distribution announced their Lx ROME technical preview release as their rolling release version of the operating system.
Gentoo developer Andreas Hüttel "Dilfridge" is experimenting with binary Gentoo package hosting and finding out what improvements to Portage are needed for making it more of a reality at a larger scale.
9 July 2022 - Portage Binary Packages - 28 Comments
Linux Mint 21 is working its way toward release this summer as the latest version of this desktop OS that is being built atop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Unlike Ubuntu 22.04 upstream that is now using systemd-oomd by default on the desktop to try to improve the low memory / system memory pressure experience, Linux Mint has now decided to avoid this daemon due to user criticism.
AlmaLinux today made public ALBS, the AlmaLinux Build System used to construct the recent releases of AlmaLinux 8.6 and AlmaLinux 9.0 across all supported architectures.
20 June 2022 - AlmaLinux Build System - 12 Comments
Statistics published by Fedora for the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) usage point to a recent surge in Rocky Linux usage -- at least for those with EPEL enabled -- and at least recently appears to surpass the usage for the likes of CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux, and even the RHEL usage with EPEL enabled.
19 June 2022 - Extra Packages For Enterprise Linux - 23 Comments
The Haiku open-source operating system project building off the success of BeOS continues steadily improving its hardware support and making other improvements.
Ikey Doherty started the Solus Linux distribution then disappeared and wrote an open letter on Phoronix about his absence, also was employed by Intel for a year to work on their Clear Linux distribution, had a brief stint starting a game/software development company, and then started the Serpent OS Linux distribution. He's still been working on Serpent OS but then was working full-time elsewhere but now has decided to return full-time to working on his latest Linux distribution.
For ending out the month of May the Genode open-source operating system framework developers published a new feature release of their software as they advance both the framework itself and the Sculpt OS general purpose operating system.
A new version of Distrobox was released today, the open-source system that allows quickly and easily launching different distributions from your terminal via Podman or Docker. Distrobox has been a popular option for augmenting the package selection/versions available on your system or as well for firing up faster versions of software.
AlmaLinux has been one of the distributions born out of CentOS Linux (non-Stream) going end-of-life and has made a name for itself already in the industry with companies like AMD backing it for those looking at a no-cost/community alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Just one week after RHEL 9.0 went GA, AlmaLinux 9.0 is being officially released today.
While this week Microsoft issued a production release of CBL-Mariner 2.0 as its in-house Linux distribution, they are continuing to maintain CBL-Mariner 1.0 for the time being and have overnight issued its newest monthly release.
Those with extra time on their hands this weekend can try out the AlmaLinux 8.6 Beta as the newest version of this completely free enterprise Linux distribution built off the RHEL sources.
System76 has released a new version of the System76-Scheduler, it's Rust-written CPU scheduler designed to improve desktop responsiveness on their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.
Building off the recent release of Genode OS 22.02 as the open-source operating system framework, Sculpt OS 22.04 was released this week as the project's effort around producing a general purpose operating system.
Redox OS 0.6 released back for Christmas 2020 while it has now finally been succeeded by Redox OS 0.7 for this Rust-written open-source operating system.
The Linux Foundation based Yocto Project for making it easy to create Linux-based IoT/embedded operating system software builds is out today with Yocto 4.0.
Following the RHEL 9.0 Beta from last November and CentOS Stream 9 for the bleeding-edge RHEL9, the AlmaLinux crew today announced their 9.0 beta milestone. AlmaLinux over the past year has proven itself capable as a popular, community-based RHEL alternative that started after Red Hat announced it would discontinue the no-cost CentOS Linux downstream.
To complement their minimal install images and various stage archives produced, the Gentoo project has restarted the process to also begin producing a LiveGUI DVD/USB image as a more friendly first encounter with this Linux distribution.
ReactOS as the open-source operating system project striving for binary compatibility with Windows applications/games/drivers has made much progress over the past two decades but in some areas still lacking like still working on SMP/multi-core support and other functionality. To some surprise, some of the older Battlefield games are at least now in a playable state on ReactOS.
2 April 2022 - ReactOS + Battlefield - 18 Comments
For those still intrigued by Finnish outfit Jolla and their work on the Linux-based smartphone OS Sailfish, their v4.4 "Vanha Rauma" update is out today.
ReactOS as the open-source project striving for binary compatibility with Windows applications/drivers is still working away in 2022 on symmetric multi-processing (SMP) support.
MorphOS as the AmigaOS-like operating system now in development for more than two decades and targeting PowerPC hardware is out with version 3.16 as its first major release in over a year.
Genode OS continues to be developed as an innovative open-source operating system framework. Genode developers closed out February by issuing the Genode OS Framework 22.02 release with many new features and improvements.
Linux Mint Debian Edition "LMDE" continues to be developed in the event that Linux Mint itself which is based on Ubuntu would have to shift its base over to upstream Debian. Out today is LMDE 5 Beta.
FreeDOS 1.2 released back on Christmas 2016 and now a half-decade later has finally been succeeded by FreeDOS 1.3 for advancing this open-source alternative to MS-DOS.
With OpenBMC 2.10 never having materialized beyond a release candidate, the release of OpenBMC 2.11 today is a big one with roughly a year's worth of changes since OpenBMC 2.9. OpenBMC 2.11 brings many improvements for this Linux distribution intended for baseboard management controllers (BMCs) on servers and other management controllers.
While so many Linux distributions these days are just cosmetic changes and basic package alterations atop the likes of Ubuntu / Debian and Fedora, Chimera Linux that started last year continues to be an interesting project to watch for using the Linux kernel but with the FreeBSD user-space, making use of the LLVM Clang compiler rather than GCC, using musl as its preferred C library, and other differences.
Back in the day I enjoyed Zenwalk as a great desktop-focused, ready out-of-the-box Linux distribution built atop Slackware. After not hearing much from the project in a while, I am glad to see it's still going strong and they have today issued Zenwalk 15 that is built atop the newly-released Slackware 15.0.
Slackware 14 released back in 2012 and has finally been succeded by Slackware 15.0 as stable! Slackware remains the oldest, still-maintained Linux distribution that has been around since 1993.
One of the promising new BSD projects started over the past year was helloSystem as "the macOS of BSDs" and built atop FreeBSD but with a macOS-inspired design. A Phoronix reader has pointed out another entrant in this field with airyxOS as a FreeBSD-based operating system designed to be similar to Apple's macOS experience.
I've been writing about Genode OS for over a decade as one of the interesting original, open-source operating system frameworks that has taken novel approaches to many design elements and continues persevering with their efforts. For 2022 the project has yet more ambitious goals ahead.
Well known Solus Project core team member and Experience Lead Joshua Strobl has announced he is stepping down from the project but will be continuing his work on the Budgie desktop.
Haiku as the open-source operating system in development for two decades as the inspirational successor to BeOS is kicking off 2022 by.... beginning to be able to run Windows applications via Wine. There is great progress being made in porting Wine to running on Haiku.
ReactOS as the "open-source Windows" operating system developed by the community with an aim for binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows is out with a big update. The last release was ReactOS 0.4.13 all the way back in April 2020 while this week has been succeeded by the big ReactOS 0.4.14 update.
OpenIndiana as the open-source operating system forked from what was Sun's OpenSolaris and now based on Illumos is out with its latest half-year update.
6 December 2021 - OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.10 - 2 Comments
Genode OS as the interesting open-source operating system framework is out with its v21.11 release this week and delivers on many hardware improvements and other features.
NixOS is an original Linux distribution built atop its own unique Nix package manager that is focused on being functional, reliable, and reproducible. The Nix package manager concept is great but somewhat ironic is the new NixOS 21.11 release not even shipping with the latest Nix package manager version due to known regressions.
Last month we reported on progress for porting the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver to Haiku, the BeOS-inspired open-source operating system. Now in ending out November they not only have RADV running but also working with Gallium3D's Zink for offering OpenGL acceleration over Vulkan.
Alpine Linux 3.15 is out today as the newest feature update to this lightweight/embedded/containers focused Linux distribution known for its musl+Busybox usage along with OpenRC as the init system.
24 November 2021 - Alpine Linux 3.15 - 18 Comments
884 Operating Systems news articles published on Phoronix.
