5 Popular Rolling Linux Distributions

Yes. You know what a Rolling Distribution is. Otherwise, you won’t be interested in this article. A Rolling Distributions is one which provide continuous updates without need for re installing system. Actually this is a very large topic. And if you are interested to know a lot about Rolling Linux distributions, there is a page in wikipedia which you may refer.

In this post, I would like to have a short description about 5 popular rolling GNU/Linux distributions. I’m listing those distributions based on descending order of their popularity in distrowatch.

1. Arch Linux

Arch Linux is an independently developed GNU/Linux operating system that focus on simplicity, minimalism and code elegance. Simplicity means, arch provide a minimal base system for installation and it is up to user to configure the system and install their desired software. Since Arch involve a lot of manual configuration, it is not a distribution recommended for newbies.

Arch provide bleeding edge software for it’s users. And they try to make all latest stable versions of software available as soon as possible. Arch has it’s own main repository and an AUR(Arch User Repository). Arch Linux uses pacman as it’s package manager.

There are several distributions based on Arch Linux which provide user friendly interface for installation and configuration. Following are some examples.
Manjaro
Archbang
Antergos
NetRunner

2. PCLinux OS

PC-Linux OS is a user friendly operating system initially forked from mandriva, that provide a lot of software and drivers with it’s primary installation itself. It provide support for a wide variety of software and plugins without any discrimination likeopen source or proprietary. PCLinuxOS make use of Advanced Packaging Tool(APT)and also provides synaptic as a front end of APT. PCLinuxOS provide more than 12000 rpm software packages in their official software repository. And also they have different spins which are listed below. 

KDE Desktop
Mate Desktop
LXDE Desktop
FullMonty Desktop

3. KaOS

KaOS is an independently developed GNU/Linux operating system that features latest version of KDE desktop environment along with, the Calligra office suite and other day to day use applications. 

It is specifically designed for 64-bit computer systems. It was inspired by Arch Linux, but KaOS developers build their own packages. KaOS uses a rolling-release development model. Pacman is default package manager employed in KaOS. KaOS has three stable repositories and one testing repository. Stable repositories are named Core, Main and Apps. All testing goes on Build repository. Once a package in Build repository become stable, it will be moved to corresponding repository.

4. Chakra GNU/Linux

Chakra is a user friendly operating system featuring KDE desktop and Qt and it was initially forked from Arch Linux. Similar to Arch Linux they also offers simplicity.Chakra Project employs a half-rolling release model. They provide a thoroughly tested core layer of software such linux kernel, GNU coreutils and common libraries to ensure better stability. On the other hand, the software in application layer is updated more frequently.

5. Gentoo

Gentoo a code based Linux/BSD distribution. It can be customized and optimized for any purpose. Extreme configurability, performance and a top-notch user and developer community are features of Gentoo. In Gentoo, everything is build from source code in target system. Since source code of each package is built in target system it is very fast. And this distribution is geared towards developers and network professional who have more knowledge about development and compilation process. Gentoo uses an advaned package management system called Portage.

(+) Opensuse Tumbleweed

When I wrote this post, I was thinking that Tumbleweed is development branch ofOpenSuse similar to rawhide of Fedora. Later I came to know that, Tumbleweed is a rolling release approach of OpenSuse.

The Tumbleweed project provides a rolling updates version of openSUSE containing the latest stable versions of all software instead of relying on rigid periodic release cycles. The project does this for users that want the newest, but stable software[OpenSuse Tumbleweed].

Popular Open Source Office Suites

Do you know what is an Office Suite? In wikipedia article regarding office suites, it is defined as

“In computing an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite, is a collection of productivity programs intended to be used by knowledge workers. The components are generally distributed together, have a consistent user interface and usually can interact with each other, sometimes in ways that the operating system would not normally allow”.

In this article, I would like to list  5 most widely used open source office suites. Here I will briefly describe about following office suites.

1. Libreoffice
2. Apache OpenOffice
3. Calligra Suite
4. NeoOffice
5. Feng Office Community Edition

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a powerful, free and open source office suite, developed by TheDocument Foundation. Initially, it was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, which was an open-sourced version of  StarOffice. LibreOffice is default office suite in popular GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse..etc

LibreOffice has a good collection of essential office software such as word processor, spread sheet, presentation software, drawing software and more. Following section is dedicated for a brief description on different components of LibreOffice.

• Writer : Writer is word processing tool in LibreOffice suite. It has all the features that we expect from a modern desktop publishing tool. It is simple but is also powerful.
• Calc : Calc is spread sheet tool in LibreOffice suite. It is easy to use and learn. Even newbies can find their way on go. It can also be used for complex tasks like data mining, data analysis..etc
• Impress : Impress is a tool in LibreOffce for creating effective presentations.
• Draw : Vector drawing tool
• Base : A powerful database managing tool
• Math : A tool that can used independently or with other tools for creating complex mathematical and scientific formula.
• Chart : A tool used with other tools for creating useful charts using given information.

LibreOffice also a provide a large number of templates, from which we can choose to match with our requirements.

LibreOffice support different platforms like Window, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X.

Apache OpenOffice

Apache OpenOffice is an open-source office productivity suite. It was derived from the project openoffice.org which was an open sourced version of StarOffice. It is similar to other popular open source office projects like LibreOffice and NeoOffice. Following are different tools included in Apache OpenOffice.

• Writer : a word processor with flexible functionality ranging from quick letter writing to producing an entire book.
• Calc : a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools to calculate, analyze, and present data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.
• Impress : the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
• Draw : lets us to produce vector diagrams ranging from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.
• Base : let us to manage databases. It provides functions like Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within Apache OpenOffice.
• Math : let us to create complex mathematical and scientific formula using graphical user interface.

Apache OpenOffice has support for different platforms like windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux.

Calligra Office

Calligra suite is more than a traditional office suite. In additions to common office tools it also provides graphics tools and project management tools. Initially it was forked from KOffice in 2010. Calligra is the default office suite used with KDE environment. Following tools are available in Calligra suite.

• Words : A multipurpose word processor aimed at academic, business and personal use.
• Stage : A powerful and easy to use multimedia presentation that will let us to create attractive and professional presentations easily.
• Sheets : A fully featured spread sheet application which can be used to quickly create spreadsheets with formulas and charts, to calculate and organize data in neat manner.
• Flow : A tool used to make diagrams and flow charts. It can be used to make network diagrams, organization charts, flowcharts and much more.
• Kexi : A visual database creator. It can be used for designing database applications, inserting and editing data, performing queries, and processing data.
• Krita : A sketching and painting program which offers an end to end solutions for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters.
• Plan : A project management program which is geared towards projects with multiple resources. Plan offers different types of task dependencies and timing constraints.
• Braindump : A tool to dump and organize the content in our brain like ideas, drawing, images, texts .. etc
• Karbon : A vector drawing application with an user interface that is easy to use, highly customizable and extensible.

Calligra Suite also supports different platforms like Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X.

NeoOffice

NeoOffice is a Mac OS X fork of openoffice.org . It was implemented when there was no OpenOffice support for Mac OS X. It implements almost all functions of OpenOffice using Cocoa frame work. It is using aqua theme of Mac OS X and is closely integrated with Mac OS X.

Feng Office Community Edition

All 4 office suites that I have listed so far was Desktop suites. Feng Office is a web based office suite. Feng Office Community Edition which was earlier known as OpenGoo is an open source collaboration platform developed and supported by Feng Office and OpenGoo community. It is fully featured online office suite. It can be either used as a paid service on official service or can be installed on our server.

References

1. Wikipedia article on office suite
2. Wikipedia article on LibreOffice
3. LibreOffice Website
4. Wikepedia article on Apache Open Office
5. Apache Open Office Website
6. Calligra Office Website
7. NeoOffice Website
8. Wikipedia Article on Feng Office

GhostBSD 4.0 is Available Now for Download..

The GhostBSD, a BSD distribution based on FreeBSD has announced availability of first version in GhostBSD 4.0 Karine series. This release is based on FreeBSD 10 and it introduces some more features than previous versions.

Following are some features listed in release announcement.

• Default C compiler is now Clang, instead of GCC. Still users may install GCC their own.
• make command has bee replaced with bmake, a tool obtained from NetBSD Project. FreeBSD 10.0 and later versions are also using bmake
• Default package management is now pkg
• Default network manager is Networkmgr
• Mate is the default Desktop while users have absolute freedom to install any popular desktop environments.
• There are 3 workstations to choose, namely classic work station, purity work station and element work station. All of them give different visual appearance.

GhostBSD classic workstation [source : GhostBSD release notes]

GhostBSD purity workstation [source : GhostBSD release notes]

GhostBSD element workstation [source : GhostBSD release notes]

Installation media availabilityGhostBSD release is now available for both amd64 and i386 architectures. It can be downloaded either in ISO/IMG format from sourceforge or via torrents from torrentFTP.

Download GhostBSD 4.0 amd64

Download GhostBSD 4.0 i386

Download Ghost BSD via torrent

Downloaded ISO files can be burned into a DVD, or IMG files can be written into a pendrive for making a bootable media. This can be used for installing GhostBSD.

IMG files are written into USB pendrive using dd command.

ie,

$ sudo dd if=GhostBSD4.0-RELEASE-amd64.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1m conv=sync
[password]

Where sdX denotes the location where USB pendrive appears. It usually sdb in GNU/Linux systems.

Something important to note

You may have heard about a notorious BASH bug recently. This bug fix is not included in installation media. So it is recommended to update your system bash after your installation. It can be done in command-line using following commands.

sudo pkg update -f
[password]
sudo pkg upgrade pkg
sudo pkg update -f
sudo pkg upgrade bash

Updating software using “pkg upgrade” alone will corrupt xorg and might corrupt GDM too. That is why we are using “pkg upgrade” along with specific packages. Please take care to note update xorg-server, xorg-drivers, and any xf86 with pkg. These packages can be updated using “portupgrade” command.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Installation Instruction

INSTRUCTIONS

1.Start the system from the bootable disk and select "Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0."

2.Customize installation options:

• Adjust Date & Time, Keyboard, and Language Support preferences under Localization.
• Modify Installation Source, Software Selection, and Network Configuration options under Software.
• Configure any additional options for Storage.

3.Set a root password.

4.Select Begin Installation and reboot when complete.

Take a break. Installing the operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux could take the majority of the estimated 30-45 minutes.

5. Extend your installation by subscribing via Red Hat Subscription Management to receive updates and install additional products.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Installation Guide

RHEL 6.6 is Available for Download Now..

The RHEL(Red Hat Enterprise Linux) team announced availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6, the Pre- latest version of RHEL 6 platform. As usual motive behind this release is to refine stable and secure RHEL 6 platform which provides a reliable foundation for mission-critical systems across industries and regions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers a variety of improvements which will provide increased system performance across physical, virtual and cloud environments. Following are some improvements made in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6

Kernel locking improvements to allow for more efficient CPU utilization on largeNUMA systems.

Out-of-the-box support for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) overConverged Ethernet (RoCE) to deliver low-latency, high bandwidth network connectivity; functionality that was previously delivered through the High performance Networking Add-on.

A new optional socket polling implementation (“busy-poll”) that reduces network latency and jitter

Support for additional 40GbE network adapters (i.e. Solarflare, Intel, Emulex, Mellanox, and Chelsio)

Organizations that build large, complex environments will benefit from enhancements that provide a better system administration experience. These enhancements include

The addition of Performance Co-Pilot(PCP), a framework and set of services supporting system-level performance monitoring and management in distributed environments.

Improved manageability of resource lists in large, high availability configurations.

Full support for load balancing technology like HAProxy and keepalived

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 also provides enhancement for running as a virtual guest, upholding Red Hat’s commitment to refining the overall virtualization experience.

Virtualization updates made in RHEL 6.6 include: 

• Support for a host to feed randomness (entropy) to a virtual machine
• Increased security for cryptographic applications.
• Multi-queue performance improvements for guest network and storage throughput when running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 on a RHEL 7 rage host.

Availability of RHEL 6.6

Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a paid GNU/Linux distribution, installation media can not be downloaded for free (Those who want a free distribution may tryFedora, a distribution sponsored by Red Hat).

Download Link for Fedora Archives

Customers with an existing subscription may download RHEL 6.6 from Red Hat Customer portal. Those who have already installed RHEL 6 series version, may upgrade directly into RHEL 6.6 using regular channels.

Sources:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 release mail

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 now available for download

There's no question that Linux is a popular operating system, although it's far more popular on servers than it is on the desktop. If you're a fan of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you're in for a treat: The company announced the availability of RHEL 7 on 10 th-June-14, available for immediate download. The latest release includes a lot of changes to the core OS, many of which may force a learning curve for sysadmins. 

The most sizable change is that new filesystems will be XFS, instead of ext4, primarily because it can support up to 500TB filesystems, whereas ext4 is capped at 50TB. There's some question on whether the performance of XFS will be hampered on filesystems with lots of small files, and admins will need to learn how to manage the new filesystem, but ext4 is still available if required. 

The latest release also focuses on virtualization, supporting Docker containers that promise to run at near bare-metal speed, while implementing the security controls of SELinux. It remains to be seen whether these containers will become extremely popular in the world, but it's a similar technology to Solaris Zones, which are extremely useful, so we suspect they will get some traction in the enterprise. 

RHEL 7 also promises better Active Directory integration, a must-have for most organizations. 

Have you tried the latest release, and if so, what are your thoughts on it? As a reminder, Neowin also has a vibrant user community with forums to match everyone's passions so if you want to continue the Linux discussion, head on over to the dedicated Linux/Unix Discussion and Support forum. 

30 Days Evaluation Download Link

May be user required Redhat Login with your proffessional or Enterprise mail id for download evaluation edition