Linux

Slashdot reports that E17 – the latest version of the Enlightenment desktop environment – has just been released. The previous release of Enlightenment took place in 2000 – 12 years ago!

The release announcement is very sparse (apart from a list of the E17 developers):

E17 has been in development for a long time, and there have been a lot of people involved over the years. At this time, the first and final official release of E17, I think it’s important to name names and thank everyone who has been involved over the years.

(The names follow here)

That’s it! Here endeth the release announcement.

I’ve occasionally used Enlightenment and found it to be a very lightweight, nifty desktop environment/window manager. It comes as the default desktop environment in Bodhi Linux, a distribution especially made for running on older hardware.

E17 is also known as Enlightenment 0.17 and the new release has also been codenamed the “Lucky Rubber Ducky” by its developers.

One of the great things about Linux is that it will run on really old hardware.

However, there are some limits to this and The H Online reports that Linus Torvalds, the keeper of the Linux kernel, has integrated various changes developed by Intel employee H. Peter Anvin into the main development branch of Linux to remove support for the 386 series of processors from the Linux kernel. As a consequence, the Nx586 from Nexgen, a company that was later taken over by AMD, will also no longer be supported; design ideas for this processor were later incorporated into AMD’s K6, which continues to be supported.

These changes will stop Linux from running on the system for which Torvalds first began to develop Linux. Linus’ response to this was: “I’m not sentimental. Good riddance.”

Intel i836 processors, otherwise known as 80386 processors, were first introduced back in 1985 and worked at a then dazzling top speed of 33 mHZ.

I’ve been running Ubuntu Linux on one of my machines for almost 3 years now and have found it to be very stable and reliable. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution with a very regular release cycle, with a new version coming out roughly every six months and every other release being offered with long term support (LTS), which has now been increased to 5 years.

Yesterday an announcement was made on the Ubuntu mailing list that the first alpha release of what is to become Ubuntu 13.04, codenamed Raring Ringtail, has been made available.

Making the announcement, Stéphane Graber wrote:

The first Alpha of the Raring Ringtail (to become 13.04) has now been released!

This alpha features images for Edubuntu and Kubuntu.

At the end of the 12.10 development cycle, the Ubuntu flavour decided that it would reduce the number of milestone images going forward and the focus would concentrate on daily quality and fortnightly testing rounds known as cadence testing. Based on that change, the Ubuntu product itself will not have an Alpha-1 release. Its first milestone release will be the Final Beta Release on the 28th of March 2013. Other Ubuntu flavours have the option to release using the usual milestone schedule.

Pre-releases of Raring Ringtail are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting and fixing bugs as we work towards getting this release ready.

Alpha 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs.

While these Alpha 1 images have been tested and work, except as noted in the release notes, Ubuntu developers are continuing to improve Raring Ringtail. In particular, once newer daily images are available, system installation bugs identified in the Alpha 1 installer should be verified against the current daily image before being reported in Launchpad. Using an obsolete image to re-report bugs that have already been fixed wastes your time and the time of developers who are busy trying to make 13.04 the best Ubuntu release yet. Always ensure your system is up to date before reporting bugs.

Edubuntu:
Edubuntu is the educational flavour of Ubuntu. Based on the standard Ubuntu desktop, it features educational tools and content for schools and at home.

The Alpha-1 images can be downloaded at:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/raring/alpha-1/

More information on Edubuntu Alpha-1 can be found here:
http://www.edubuntu.org/news/13.04-alpha1

Kubuntu:
Kubuntu is the KDE based flavour of Ubuntu. It uses the Plasma desktop and includes a wide selection of tools from the KDE project.

The Alpha-1 images can be downloaded at:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/raring/alpha-1/

More information on Kubuntu Alpha-1 can be found here:
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/RaringRingtail/Alpha1/Kubuntu

Regular daily images for Ubuntu can be found at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop Raring, we suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases and other interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

If you browse the web like I do, this means you’ll frequently have several tabs open in your web browser. Having said that, it’s really easy to close the ‘wrong’ tab – one you haven’t quite finished with – by mistake.

Now courtesy of the ITDonut’s tip of the week, comes a really useful little bit of knowledge: how to reopen a browser tab you’ve just closed.

If you’re using Firefox. Chrome or Chromium, just use the following keystroke combination: CTRL + SHIFT + T*.

This works on both Linux and Windows machines; and on the latter the same keystroke combination also works with IE.

* = On a Mac the equivalent combination is COMMAND + SHIFT + T

Debian is a great Linux distribution. Indeed, besides being a distribution in its own right, it acts as the foundation for the very popular Ubuntu distro, as well as my favourite, Mepis, and countless others.

The Debian Project is now in the final stages of preparing for its next release – codenamed Wheezy – and has just announced that Bug Squashing Parties (“BSPs”) will take place in several countries in the next few weeks. The main focus of a Bug Squashing Party is to triage and fix bugs, but it is also an opportunity for users less familiar with the Debian bug tracking system to make other contributions to the Debian project, such as translating package descriptions or improving the wiki. Debian developers will be present to help contributors understand how the project works and to help get fixes into Debian.

A list of confirmed Bug Squashing Parties follows, even though the project advises checking the events page to see if any more are being planned.

• November 10-11, Banja Luka, Republika Srpska: a BSP will be held at the University Computer Centre. More information here.
• November 14, Helsinki, Finland: a mini BSP will be held in Kamppi. See the mail announcement for information.
• November 23-25, Essen, Germany: a BSP will be held at the Linuxhotel. More information.
• November 23-25, Munich, Germany: a BSP will be held at the LiMux Office, together with the LibreOffice Hackfest. More information is available on the wiki page.
• November 24-25, Paris, France: a BSP will take place during the second Paris Mini-DebConf. More information can be found on the event page.
• November 24, Tokyo, Japan: a BSP will be held at the Plat’Home Office. Further information here.
• December 15-16, Mechelen, Belgium: a BSP will be held at the NixSys Office. More information on the event’s wiki page.

If you want to organise a BSP, potential organisers can find all the necessary information on the wiki. The Debian Project invites all users and contributors to attend these events and make Wheezy ready for release sooner.

CodeWeavers, Inc., the developers of CrossOver, which enables users to run Windows software on Linux and Mac, is having a giveaway today, 31st October 2012.

For one day only, CodeWeavers is giving away CrossOver with 12 months’ free support and product upgrades.

If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, point your browser at http://flock.codeweavers.com/, register and download!

For more details about the rationale behind this offer read the press release.

This post originally appeared on Bristol Wireless.