Ubuntu Studio 17.10

Ross Gammon has announced the release of Ubuntu Studio 17.10, the latest version of the project's official Ubuntu variant designed for audio, video and graphics professionals. This is routine release with the usual round of software updates and a new experimental feature for improved performance during recordings: "We are happy to announce the release of our latest version, Ubuntu Studio 17.10 'Artful Aardvark'. As a regular version, it will be supported for 9 months. Since it's just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. The Ubuntu Studio Controls package has been updated to provide an experimental option to set the CPU governor to performance mode. This is important for recording. At the moment, the setting is not persistent, and needs to be reset at every reboot. BIOS settings may need to be changed for this setting to take effect. Audio - removed zynjacku as this software is no longer maintained by the original developer." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Ubuntu Studion 17.10 is available for download as a 2.7GB live DVD image: ubuntustudio-17.10-dvd-amd64.iso (2,736MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

Lubuntu 17.10

Simon Quigley has announced the release of Lubuntu 17.10, a desktop distribution built from Ubuntu packages, but featuring the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE) which is suitable for older computers: "Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 17.10 has been released. With the code name 'Artful Aardvark', Lubuntu 17.10 is the 13th release of Lubuntu, with support until July of 2018. What has improved since 17.04? We now ship with Linux kernel 4.13; general bug-fix release as we prepare to switch to LXQt; LXDE components have been updated with bug fixes; the artwork has received an update; the latest release of Audacious, version 3.9, is included by default; Hardinfo has been updated to the latest upstream snapshot." Also available is the Lubuntu "Next" variant, an experimental build of Lubuntu with the LXQt desktop: "Alongside Lubuntu 17.10 featuring LXDE, the Lubuntu team is proud to announce an early adopter's release of Lubuntu Next, featuring the LXQt 0.11.1 desktop environment which is the Qt 5 port of LXDE." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download (SHA256, signature, pkglist): lubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso (921MB, torrent), lubuntu-17.10-desktop-i386.iso (929MB, torrent). Also available from OSDisc.

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Beta 1

Frederic Crozat has announced the availability of the first beta release of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15, an enterprise-class Linux distribution based on openSUSE. This will be SUSE's first major release since October 2014 when SLE 12 was made available: "We are happy to announce our first beta release for SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED), SUSE Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension (SLE-WE), SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability (SLE-HA). SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Beta will be our new major release designed for IT Transformation. SLE 15 is developed with both 'Traditional Infrastructure' and 'Software-Defined Infrastructure' in mind, thus significant and major changes from the previous SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 are made to address both worlds in a more elegant and simpler way. Five key objectives for SLE 15: address traditional and containerized infrastructure and provide a common code base for traditional and agile data center; install all SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 products starting from a single medium...." See the release announcement and release notes for detailed information about the new product, known issues and bug reporting procedures. Interested beta testers can download the product (available for aarch64, ppc64le, s390x and x86_64 architectures) from SUSE's download server (registration required, pkglist).

antiX 17

The antiX distribution is a lightweight operating system based on Debian. The project's latest release, antiX 17, is based on Debian 9.2 and removes the systemd init software in favour of SysV init. "antiX comes in four flavours for both 32- and 64-bit processors. antiX-full: 4 windows managers - IceWM (default), Fluxbox, JWM and herbstluftwm plus full LibreOffice suite. antiX-base: 4 windows managers - IceWM (default), Fluxbox, JWM and herbstluftwm. antiX-core: no X, but should support most wireless. antiX-net: no X, Just enough to get you connected (wired) and ready to build. So what is included? Lots! Explore! Based on Debian Stretch, but without systemd and libsystemd0. eudev 3.2-4 replaces udev. Customised 4.10.5 kernel with fbcondecor splash. LibreOffice 5.2.7-1. Firefox-ESR 52.4.0esr. Claws-Mail 3.14.1-3+b1. systemd-free CUPS for printing. XMMS for audio. GNOME-MPlayer for playing video..." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement. Download (pkglist): antiX-17_x64-full.iso (780MB, MD5, signature, torrent), antiX-17_x64-base.iso (616MB, MD5, signature, torrent), antiX-17_x64-core.iso (309MB, MD5, signature, torrent), antiX-17_x64-net.iso (160MB, MD5, signature, torrent). Also available from OSDisc.

CAINE 9.0

Nanni Bassetti has announced the release of CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) 9.0, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution offering a forensic environment. The project's news page lists the following tools which have been added or upgraded in the distribution along with a screen shot of the distribution's default desktop environment: "CAINE 9.0 'Quantum' 64-bit edition released. Added and changed in CAINE 9.0 - RegRipper, VolDiff, SafeCopy, PFF tools, pslistutil, mouseemu, NBTempoX, Osint: Infoga, The Harvester, Tinfoleak regfmount and libregf-utils, installed many scripts and programs. SSH server disabled by default (see manual page for enabling it). Autopsy 2.24 fixed - srch_strings changed with 'GNU strings' renamed in srch_strings. Many other fixes and software updates. Windows side with incident response and live analysis on Windows systems. Tools include Nirsoft suite with launcher, WinAudit, MWSnap, Arsenal image mounter, FTK Imager, Hex Editor...." SystemBack is used as the project's system installer. Download: caine9.0.iso (2,723MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

Korora 22

 Chris Smart has announced the release of Korora 22, a set of user-friendly, Fedora-based desktop Linux distributions with a choice of Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE 5, MATE and Xfce desktops: "It has been a long road to the Korora 22 (code name 'Selina') release and we're sorry that it has taken so long. However, it is now finally available for download. KDE 4 is no longer supported in Korora 22. If you do not wish to upgrade to KDE 5 then please stick with Korora 21. With this release we've decided to no-longer include Adobe Flash out of the box, due to the continued high number of security flaws. The repository is still enabled, however, and if you wish to use Flash you can install it using the package manager, or command line 'sudo dnf install flash-plugin' - or install and use Google Chrome which has the current up-to-date version of Flash." Continue to the release announcement for a full list of new features. Download (MD5, pkglist): korora-22-x86_64-cinnamon-live.iso (1,865MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-gnome-live.iso (2,027MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-kde-live.iso (2,589MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-mate-live.iso (1,948MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-xfce-live.iso (1,842MB, torrent).