FreeNAS 8.3.0 has been released

Josh Paetzel has announced the release of FreeNAS 8.3.0, a free and open-source Network-Attached Storage (NAS) operating system based on FreeBSD: "The FreeNAS development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of FreeNAS 8.3.0-RELEASE. FreeNAS 8.3.0 is based on FreeBSD 8.3 with version 28 of the ZFS file system. This is a major milestone in FreeNAS development, bringing in the plugin system with ZFS version 28. Development of the FreeNAS 8.2 branch has come to a halt, as both ZFS version 15 as well as FreeBSD 8.2 are no longer supported. There have been no major changes between 8.3.0-RC1 and RELEASE, mostly bug fixes and minor usability improvements to the GUI."


FreeNAS is a tiny FreeBSD-based operating system which provides free Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services (CIFS, FTP and NFS).

Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.10 has been released

Anke Boersma has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.10, an updated release of the KDE-centric desktop Linux distribution: "The Chakra project team is proud to announce the third 'Claire' release. It took a good six months of preparations to get to this point, but the full switch to systemd is here. To do so udev is merged into systemd, with systemd being updated to 194. This meant a first .so file jump for libudev, meaning many packages depending on libudev were updated and rebuilt. It also meant the removal of ConsoleKit, handled now by Polkit and logind. Among all the other updates on this release, KDE 4.9.2, Linux kernel 3.5.6, kmod 0.10, CUPS 1.6.1, D-Bus 1.6.4, Qt 4.8.3, Calligra 2.5.3 to name a few."

Chakra GNU/Linux is a user-friendly and powerful distribution and live CD originally forked from Arch Linux. It features a graphical installer, automatic hardware detection and configuration, the latest KDE desktop, and a variety of tools and extras.

Puppy Linux 5.4 "Precise" has been released

Barry Kauler has announced the release of Puppy Linux 5.4 "Precise" edition, a small Linux distribution built from Ubuntu 12.04.1 and compatible with Ubuntu 12.04 DEB packages: "This is it, the very first official release of Precise Puppy. Precise Puppy is built from Ubuntu 'Precise Pangolin' 12.04.1+ binary DEB packages, hence has binary compatibility with Ubuntu and access to the vast Ubuntu package repository. Couple that with Puppy's tiny size, speed and ease of use, and this is one incredible pup. It is assigned version 5.4 to indicate its position relative to the other puppies, such as Wary 5.3 and Slacko 5.3.3 (5.4 coming soon). A lot of work has happened at the 'Woof level' since the release of Wary 5.3 in April 2012 - of particular importance to Precise are the many enhancements to the Puppy Package Manager (PPM)."

Puppy Linux is yet another Linux distribution. What's different here is that Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full-featured. Puppy boots into a ramdisk and, unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, it loads into RAM. This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly. Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive. It can even use a multisession formatted CD-RW/DVD-RW to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all.

Ubuntu 12.10 has been released

The 12.10 release of Ubuntu has seen Canonical skew the Linux distribution toward a variety of young web technologies for developers eager to get ahead in the cloud.

Along with Juju support and the expansion of its metal-as-a-service bare metal provisioning tool to work for Calxeda servers, 12.10 also brings support for the latest 'Folsom' release of the open-source cloud platform OpenStack.

Ubuntu is a complete desktop Linux operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Slackware Linux 14.0 has been released

After more than two months of testing, Patrick Volkerding has finally announced the release of Slackware Linux 14.0: "The long wait is finally over and a new stable release of Slackware has arrived! Since our last stable release, a lot has changed in the Linux and FOSS world. The kernel has moved on to major version 3 (we're using the long-term supported 3.2.29 kernel for this release), X.Org has released X11R7.7, and Firefox has had a whopping 11 major releases to arrive at version 15.0.1! We've brought together the best of these and other modern components and worked our magic on them. You'll find new compilers (including the LLVM/Clang compiler that's becoming a popular alternative to GCC), development tools, libraries, and applications throughout, all prepared with our careful and rigourous testing. If you've used Slackware before, you'll find the system feels like home."

The Official Release of Slackware Linux by Patrick Volkerding is an advanced Linux operating system, designed with the twin goals of ease of use and stability as top priorities. Including the latest popular software while retaining a sense of tradition, providing simplicity and ease of use alongside flexibility and power, Slackware brings the best of all worlds to the table. Originally developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991, the UNIX-like Linux operating system now benefits from the contributions of millions of users and developers around the world. Slackware Linux provides new and experienced users alike with a fully-featured system, equipped to serve in any capacity from desktop workstation to machine-room server. Web, ftp, and email servers are ready to go out of the box, as are a wide selection of popular desktop environments. A full range of development tools, editors, and current libraries is included for users who wish to develop or compile additional software.

Fuduntu 2012.4 has been released

Andrew Wyatt announced the release of Fuduntu 2012.4, an updated version of the project's rolling-release distribution forked from Fedora: "The Fuduntu team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Fuduntu 2012.4. This is the fourth quarterly release for 2012. Like all previous Fuduntu releases, this release follows our tradition of making small incremental distribution improvements that don't sacrifice the stability of our Linux distribution. Existing Fuduntu users have already rolled up to 2012.4, as all of the updates available are released to our stable repository. This release comes with several changes, new features, and improvements. There have been changes to the way TMPFS works. With this update, the management of TMPFS mount points has been optimized. Several mount points have been mounted under /run to reduce disk I/O, increasing speed and battery life."

Fuduntu, originally Fedora-based, but later forked, is a Linux distribution that earns its name by its ambition to fit somewhere in-between Fedora and Ubuntu. It is designed to be aesthetically pleasing, and is optimized for netbook and other portable computers, as well as general-purpose desktop machines.