Open Recall: Knoppix, TurboLinux, WattOS and Haiku

Open Recall is a space on The H for those things that are too small to package as news but are worth the linkage. This edition is about some of the latest distribution releases and news: the latest update to Knoppix, an update for venerable TurboLinux after 5 years, a wattOS R6 release and a 64-bit port of Haiku.

• Knoppix 7.0.4 - The newest version of Klaus Knopper's popular live Linux distribution, Knoppix, uses the 3.4.9 kernel and X.org 7.7 with X Server 1.12.3. The DVD edition of the Debian-based OS also includes an optional 64-bit kernel for systems with more than 4GB of RAM, and a choice of GNOME 3.4 or KDE SC 4.7.4 in addition to LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment), which is used as its default desktop. Version 3.5.4 of the LibreOffice productivity suite, Chromium 21, the 1.5.10 development release of WINE, and Iceweasel 10.0.6 (the re-branded version of the Firefox web browser for Debian) are among the included package upgrades. Knoppix 7.0.4 can be downloaded from the project's mirrors.

• Turbolinux 12.5 - Turbolinux, one of the oldest existing Linux companies, has released a new version of its Japanese Linux distribution for desktops and embedded systems. As noted by DistroWatch, Turbolinux Client 12.5 is the first update to the OS since November 2007 and brings with it a number of upgrades. Built on the 3.1.10 Linux kernel, the 12.5 release includes version 3.5.9 of the KDE desktop environment as well as Firefox 14.0.1 and Thunderbird 14.0; other packages such as LibreOffice 3.5.5 are available from the distribution's online repository.

• WattOS R6 - With the latest update to their lightweight Linux distribution, the wattOS developers have upgraded the underlying operating system to Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS and the kernel to version 3.2.0-29. The R6 release also sees the media player changed to VLC, the addition of the Xfburn CD and DVD burning application, and changes to the theme and installer; the release announcement contains a list of the changes, including new and upgraded packages, from R5 to R6.

• Haiku - The BeOS-alike Haiku operating system has been ported to x86_64 over the summer. The 64-bit version of Haiku was created by Alex Smith as part of this year's Google Summer of Code event, in which university students receive stipends to write and develop code for various open source projects. While the Haiku port is working, some features including applications and drivers are currently unavailable. The code is available from Smith's GitHub repository. The current release of Haiku is R1/Alpha 3 from June of last year.

(crve)