Operating Systems News Archives

Alpine Linux remains one of the most popular lightweight Linux distributions built atop musl libc and Busybox. Alpine Linux has found significant use within containers and the embedded space while now sadly the most prolific maintainer of packages for the Linux distribution has decided to step down from her roles.

The release candidate for Mageia 9 is now available for this Linux distribution that's an offshoot long ago from Mandrake/Mandriva lineage.

Linux Mint 21.2 has been released today as the newest update to this Ubuntu 22.04 LTS based Linux distribution known for its Cinnamon desktop environment and other Linux desktop focused refinements.

With all the news in recent weeks following Red Hat's decision to limit access to RHEL sources that in turn lead to changes for AlmaLinux, finding new ways to obtain sources at Rocky Linux, interesting statements from Oracle, and even SUSE forking RHEL. The public RHEL sources now will basically be the upstream CentOS Stream code for which future Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions are ultimately based. The CentOS Project issued a new statement on Friday.

While Solus is still working toward its new approach based on Serpent OS and other significant fundamental changes to the Linux distribution, shipping today is Solus 4.4 as the latest incremental update to this Linux distro popular with enthusiasts.

ReactOS is the open-source OS that's striving for Microsoft Windows software and driver binary compatibility that is 25 years in the making. ReactOS has been making steady progress while still considered in alpha form. Most of the ReactOS successes and user tinkering has been with the 32-bit build of the OS while they have been making steady progress recently on the x86_64 (x64) port.

AlmaLinux, the popular community-oriented distribution that was established following Red Hat's decision to discontinue development on CentOS (non-Stream) and is backed by AMD and other organizations, is trying to chart its path forward following Red Hat's latest curve ball.

Linux Mint as the popular desktop Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu LTS releases and known for their Cinnamon desktop is out today with their 21.2 "Victoria" beta release for testing.

Distrobox is the open-source project for quickly and easily firing up other Linux distributions as containers on your desktop. Distrobox is a delight to use if needing to try different Linux distributions on your system or wishing to leverage different distributions for specialized workloads.

Serpent OS started out as a new Linux distribution started by Ikey Doherty, the same developer that rose to fame for starting the Solus Linux distribution prior to a hiatus. Serpent OS was getting off the ground when the surprise full-circle announcement came in April that Solus Linux would build off Serpent OS.

Mageia 9 beta 2 has been released with this Mandriva/Mandrake-lineage Linux distribution nearing its next major release.

Earlier this month Red Hat released RHEL 9.2 and at the same time they also released RHEL 8.8 for those continuing to rely on the stable RHEL8 series. AlmaLinux managed to provide a same-day release of AlmaLinux 9.2 while now one week later they have also shipped AlmaLinux 8.8.

The OpenBMC Linux Foundation collaborative project providing an open-source operating system / firmware stack for server baseboard management controllers (BMCs) is out with version 2.14. The OpenBMC release management still seems to be in a bit of disarray with OpenBMC 2.13 also having been released yesterday, but at least the code continues moving along.

Following last week's release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and AlmaLinux 9.2, Rocky Linux 9.2 is now also available as this alternative community-supported flavor of RHEL.

AlmaLinux 9.2 is now available for this community-driven, freely-available alternative to upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2. The AlmaLinux crew managed to deliver this release just hours after Red Hat reached general availability on RHEL 9.2 and RHEL 8.8.

Alpine Linux 3.18 is out today as the newest feature release for this lightweight Linux distribution built with musl libc and Busybox while being popular for embedded and container use-cases.

Last year the Pop!_OS software developers at System76 introduced system76-scheduler as a Rust-written user-space daemon intended to auto-configure CFS and dynamically manage process priorities. They've added various features to improve the Linux desktop responsiveness and performance while today they rolled out system76-scheduler v2.0 as the latest iteration of this process scheduler.

Building off December's release of Manjaro 22.0, this Arch Linux based distribution is out now with its next iteration.

Joshua Strobl and original Solus project founder Ikey Doherty are both becoming re-involved with the Solus Linux distribution and moving ahead will be built off the SerpentOS project that Ikey has been independently working on the past few years.

The CentOS Project has sent out a reminder of end-of-life dates for CentOS Linux 7 and CentOS Stream 8.

The CentOS Hyperscale special interest group that is focused on providing new packages and features atop CentOS Stream for use by hyperscalers like Meta and Twitter have now established a "hyperscale-intel" repository for Intel-optimized packages.

OpenMandriva ROME 23.03 has been released as the "rolling release" flavor of this Linux distribution whose roots trace back to the beautiful days of Mandrake Linux.

Out today is a new version of the Proxmox Virtual Environment as the hyper-converged infrastructure software with hosted hypervisor.

Trisquel 11 is now available as the latest major release for this one of a few Free Software Foundation (FSF) approved Linux distributions that is "100% libre" and meets all of the fully free software requirements. Trisquel 11 is re-based against Ubuntu 22.04 LTS while making various other changes in the process.

Serpent OS as the new Linux distribution project by Solus Linux founder Ikey Doherty has made public its build infrastructure as it begins building more packages and opening up packaging work to outside contributors.

AWS released Amazon Linux 2023 "AL2023" as the newest version of their in-house Linux distribution that is available to Amazon EC2 customers.

One of the newer Linux distributions that has been making waves is Vanilla OS as an immutable and atomic version of Ubuntu Linux that aims to provide a pleasant Linux desktop experience, close to upstream, and is augmented by the growing selection of Flatpak packages. Now though the project has decided to move from Ubuntu Linux as its base over to Debian Sid.

Armbian as the Ubuntu and Debian based Linux distribution that is optimized for single board computers primarily in the ARM/AArch64 and RISC-V space is out with its first major update of 2023.

The Gentoo project has provided a 2022 recap that highlights all of their interesting milestones achieved over the past year for this traditionally source-based Linux distribution that has long been popular with enthusiasts and power users.

In development now for nearly two years is Chimera Linux as a "non-GNU" Linux distribution built with the LLVM Clang compiler, leveraging musl libc, and commonly relying on BSD user-space software components. After a lot of work on bringing up Chimera Linux as well as getting a Wayland-based deskttop going, the project is aiming for its alpha release within the next month.

Showcased today at the annual FOSDEM conference in Brussels was RustyHermit, a Rust-written modular unikernel intended for handling micro virtual machines.

The Genode open-source operating system framework that pursues a micro-kernel design has published their technical roadmap for the 2023 calendar year.

In addition to the CentOS Hyperscale SIG making great progress on adapting CentOS Stream for hyperscaler needs, at the opposite end of the table is the CentOS Automotive SIG with their "AutoSD" platform they continue working on adapting to make CentOS Stream suitable for use within vehicles.

OpenMandriva ROME 23.01 is now officially available as this Mandriva/Mandrake-derived Linux distribution in rolling-release form.

Linspire as the Linux distribution whose roots go back two decades ago to when it originally started out as "Lindows" is preparing a new major release. The current incarnation of Linspire though started five years ago when PC/OpenSystems acquired the Linspire and Freespire rights from Xandros. Linspire claims to be "the easiest desktop Linux" and are looking to improve things further with their v12 release.

Calculate Linux has now issued its v23 release as the project marks fifteen years of being a Gentoo Linux built distribution focused on suitable Linux deployments within organizations / corporate environments.

After two years of work, the Serpent OS Linux distribution has released its first public image for this innovative and original open-source operating system.

It was back in July 2021 that Haiku R1 Beta 3 was released for this spiritual successor to the BeOS operating system. Now before Christmas and closing out 2022, Haiku R1 Beta 4 has been released as the latest major milestone for this open-source operating system effort.

OpenBMC 2.12 has finally been tagged as the first new version since January 2021 for this open-source, Linux-powered baseboard management controller (BMC) software stack.

EndeavourOS continues to prove itself as one of the easiest-to-use, quick-to-install Arch Linux powered operating systems out there. Out today is the EndeavourOS "Cassini" update with more desktop enhancements as well as a number of Arm hardware support improvements.

The OpenMandriva Linux distribution crew that traces its roots back to the days of Mandrake Linux is out with a "platinum" release candidate of their upcoming OpenMandriva ROME 22.12 release, which is their rolling release flavor.

Microsoft has released CBL-Mariner 2.0.20221203, a new version of its in-house Linux distribution fulfilling a variety of internal needs.

Armbian 22.11 is now available as the Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux distribution popular with ARM development boards and supporting a wide range of hardware from different vendors.

There isn't too much interest in Solaris these days and the once vibrant open-source (Open)Solaris community is a small fraction of its past, but OpenIndiana Hipster continues pushing forward as the operating system forked from OpenSolaris and now serves as a distribution derived from the Illumos code-base.

NixOS as the Linux distribution built atop the purely-functional and declarative Nix package manager is out with a new release to kickoff December.

Developers behind the Genode open-source operating system framework that uses a micro-kernel design have released their v22.11 update.

After more than a half-year of development work, Redox OS 0.8 released today as the newest version of this from-scratch, Rust-written open-source operating system.

Alpine Linux as the distro that is focused on being lightweight, simple, and secure with its use of OpenRC, BusyBox, musl libc, and other components is out with a big update.

Back during the summer was news that Ikey Doherty was going to work full-time on Serpent OS, a new Linux distribution he started. Ikey Doherty as a reminder previously created the Solus Linux distribution, worked for Intel on Clear Linux, and has other software accomplishments to his name. It's been a quiet few months for Serpent OS but it turns out they've been busy establishing their build infrastructure and tooling.

It's been a year and a half already since the release of Mageia 8 for this Linux distribution whose roots trace back to Mandriva and before that the legendary Mandrake. Mageia 9 will be out as the next iteration of this desktop Linux distro in the months ahead while this weekend there is the release of Mageia 9 Alpha 1.