openSUSE 12.1 RC1

Although available since last week, the first of the two planned openSUSE release candidates 12.1 was finally announced earlier today: "The first release candidate of openSUSE 12.1 is now floating over the web. The next release of openSUSE is expected to bring a large number of improvements and changes. Many of these are the 'usual' updates any Linux distribution offers. These include the latest Firefox, GNOME 3.2 and KDE's Plasma Workspace 4.7. Under the hood, we have Linux kernel 3.1 and we expect to be the first to ship Google's new programming language Go. We also overhauled our boot procedure introducing systemd and GRUB 2. But we also have some really unique treats. The coolest among those is Snapper, a Btrfs-based tool which allows you to view the differences between current and previous versions of files on your system and lets you roll back the changes." The release announcement. Download (mirrors): openSUSE-KDE-LiveCD-Build0379-i686.iso (664MB, MD5, torrent), openSUSE-GNOME-LiveCD-Build0379-i686.iso (666MB, MD5, torrent), openSUSE-KDE-LiveCD-Build0379-x86_64.iso (677MB, MD5, torrent), openSUSE-GNOME-LiveCD-Build0379-x86_64.iso (679MB, MD5, torrent).

Finnix 103

Ryan Finnie has announced the release of Finnix 103, a Debian-based live CD for system administrators, now also with a new "forensic mode": "Finnix 103 released. Finnix 103 includes a new forensic mode. When booted with the 'forensic' or 'forensics' boot flags, Finnix changes its behavior to minimize the chance of loading suspect code or writing to suspect media. These changes include cryptographic hash verification of discovered Finnix CD media, locking block devices, and avoiding swap, LVM, RAID, crypt and network auto-detection. Entropy generation added. Modern Linux distributions add to their random number generator (RNG) entropy pool by saving some random data before shutdown, and adding it back into the pool during start-up. A live CD cannot normally do this, so Finnix includes a new feature to generate random data to be fed into the pool...." The release announcement. Download (MD5): finnix-103.iso (113MB, torrent), finnix-ppc-103.iso (115MB, torrent).

Sabayon Linux 7

Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 7, a Gentoo-based desktop distribution with KDE 4.7, GNOME 3.2 and Xfce 4.8 desktops: "More busy than busy bees, we're once again here to announce the immediate availability of Sabayon 7. Linux kernel 3.0, GNOME 3.2, KDE 4.7, Xfce 4.8, LibreOffice 3.4 are just some of the things you will find inside the box. During this cycle, the development team spent a lot of time on integrating GNOME 3.2 the way users might actually start to love it. At the same time, Sabayon Xfce has been promoted to non-experimental release, for those missing GNOME 2." Read the release announcement for a list of features and improvements. Download: Sabayon_Linux_7_x86_K.iso (2,035MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_Linux_7_x86_G.iso (1,611MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_Linux_7_amd64_K.iso (2,257MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_Linux_7_amd64_G.iso (1,840MB, MD5, torrent).

Fedora 16 Beta

Dennis Gilmore has announced the availability of the beta release of Fedora 16: "We are proud to announce the availability of the beta release of Fedora 16. It includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Examples include: system boot - Fedora 16 introduces GRUB 2, the long-awaited next-generation boot-loader for Linux; services management - this release features better integration of Systemd via conversion to native Systemd services from legacy init scripts in many software components; desktop updates - the two major desktop environments have been updated to the latest releases." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download (torrents): Fedora-16-Beta-i686-Live-Desktop.iso (581MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-16-Beta-i686-Live-KDE.iso (670MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-16-Beta-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso (582MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-16-Beta-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso (670MB, SHA256, torrent).