Release: Gentoo Linux 12.0

David Abbott has announced the release of Gentoo Linux 12.0. The live DVD is meant to merely showcase the current cutting-edge state of Gentoo and it does not provide a hard disk installation program. From the release announcement: "Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the availability of a new live DVD to celebrate the continued collaboration between Gentoo users and developers. The live DVD features a superb list of packages, such as Linux kernel 3.1.5, X.Org Server 1.10.4, KDE 4.7.4, GNOME 3.2.1, Xfce 4.8, Fluxbox 1.3.2, Firefox 9.0, LibreOffice 3.4.99.2, GIMP 2.6.11, Blender 2.60, Amarok 2.5, VLC 1.1.13, Chromium 16.0 and much more. Special features: writable file systems using Aufs so you can emerge new packages; persistence for $HOME is available. The live DVD is available in two flavors: a hybrid x86/x86_64 edition, and an x86_64 multi-lib edition." Download: livedvd-x86-amd64-32ul-2012.iso (3,452MB, SHA512, torrent), livedvd-amd64-multilib-2012.iso (3,716MB, SHA512, torrent).

Kororaa Linux 16 Beta

Chris Smart has announced the availability of the first beta release of Kororaa Linux 16, a Fedora-based distribution with GNOME or KDE desktops and many usability enhancements: "The first beta of Kororaa 16 (code name 'Chum') has been released and is available for download, in 32-bit and 64-bit editions for KDE and GNOME. This new release includes major updates of most packages including the Linux kernel, office and desktops (KDE 4.7 and GNOME 3.2). The GNOME 3 desktop has a custom theme available, as well as several extensions to provide an enhanced user experience (and help ease the transition from GNOME 2.x). It also comes with the GNOME Tweak Tool to allow further customisation. The KDE desktop has a custom layout with specific default applications, such as Firefox for the web and VLC for media." Read the full release announcement for a full list of tweaks and enhancements. Download (MD5) links: Kororaa-16-Beta-i686-Live-KDE.iso (1,639MB), Kororaa-16-Beta-i686-Live-GNOME.iso (1,421MB), Kororaa-16-Beta-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso (1,655MB), Kororaa-16-Beta-x86_64-Live-GNOME.iso (1,445MB).

Sabayon Linux 7 "Experimental"

Fabio Erculiani has announced the availability of three experimental editions of Sabayon Linux 7, containing the LXDE desktop environment, Enlightenment 17 and the Awesome window manager: "Directly from our 'Breaking Stuff' department, three new Sabayon 7 releases have seen the light. These releases all go under the 'Experimental' umbrella: 'LXDE' is a minimal, CD-sized flavour geared towards low-end computers, shipping the LXDE desktop environment; 'E17' is a minimal, CD-sized flavour made for people wanting to showcase the magic of Enlightenment 17; 'Awesome' window manager flavour. Features: latest and greatest package updates from repositories; Linux kernel 3.1...." Here is the brief release announcement. Download links: Sabayon_7_x86_LXDE.iso (644MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_7_amd64_LXDE.iso (673MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_7_x86_E17.iso (649MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_7_amd64_E17.iso (677MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_7_x86_Awesome.iso (651MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_7_amd64_Awesome.iso (684MB, MD5, torrent).

Oracle Solaris 11

Oracle has announced the release of Oracle Solaris 11, a UNIX operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems and known for its scalability and innovative enterprise features: "Oracle today announced availability of Oracle Solaris 11, the first Cloud OS. Oracle Solaris 11 is designed to meet the security, performance and scalability requirements of cloud-based deployments allowing customers to run their most demanding enterprise applications in private, hybrid, or public clouds. As the first fully virtualized operating system (OS), Oracle Solaris 11 provides comprehensive, built-in virtualization capabilities for OS, network and storage resources. Oracle Solaris 11 offers comprehensive management across the entire infrastructure - operating system, physical hardware, networking and storage, as well as the virtualization layer." See the press release and read the detailed release notes to learn more. A variety of ISO images for x86 and SPARC architectures, including a live CD image and an image for USB drives, are available for free download from this page (after creating and signing in to an Oracle.com account).

Kwort Linux 3.2

David Cortarello has announced the release of Kwort Linux 3.2, a CRUX-based desktop distribution (with Openbox) designed for intermediate and advanced Linux users: "Almost a year has passed since Kwort's last stable release, and today I'm rolling out a new release of our system. This is a major upgrade of almost every software package included in Kwort 3.14, except the toolchain. The most noticeable changes include: move from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice; a new kernel 3 series, Firefox 7.0.1 (not installed by default but you can install it from the CD image) and the latest version of Chromium. Other than what's noticeable, there are tons of improvements under the hood, like the inclusion of LVM2 and mdadm for logical volume management and raid support, the ext4 file system supported in the installation and some nice improvements in kpkg." Visit the distribution's home page to read the release announcement. Download the installation CD image from here: kwort-3.2.iso (393MB, MD5).

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).