Finnix 107

Ryan Finnie has announced the release of Finnix 107, a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian's testing branch: "Today I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 107, only two months from the previous release, but packed with new functionality and bug fixes. Finnix 107 includes Linux kernel 3.6, and includes a fix for the (overhyped, it seems) ext4 corruption bug. Average Finnix startup times have been reduced even further by the cleanup of legacy code. In addition, the shutdown procedure, which largely has not changed in years, got a revamp and is now noticeably quicker. The x86 ISO is now being built with the isohybrid method, meaning you can now write the ISO directly to a USB flash drive at the block level to boot it.

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NetBSD 6.0.1

Jeff Rizzo has announced the release of NetBSD 6.0.1, the first security and bug-fix update of the project's 6.0 branch: "The NetBSD project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.0.1, the first security and bug-fix update of the NetBSD 6.0 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons. Please note that all fixes in security and bug-fix updates (i.e., NetBSD 6.0.1, 6.0.2, etc.) are cumulative, so the latest update contains all such fixes from the corresponding minor release (in this case, 6.0). Major changes: posix_spawn() - fix processes with attributes; resolve races between vget() and vrele() resulting in vget() returning dead vnodes.

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Calculate Linux 13

Alexander Tratsevskiy has announced the release of Calculate Linux 13, a Gentoo-based distribution for desktops and servers: "We are proud to announce the final release of Calculate Linux 13. Main changes and fixes: meta-packages are no longer used to manage default dependencies; Portage files will be unpacked when booting for the first time; better identification of NTFS partitions; fixed the user profile configuration for VMware; Composite enabled by default for VMware; should you want to replace main applications, their launch icons will be created correctly; in case the user modified the local Portage overlay repositories, those can now be restored; Calculate Utilities were updated to 3.1; full French translation now available.

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Which distribution should I install?

Prior to installation, the most important factor is your hardware. Since every Linux distribution contains the basic packages and can be built to meet almost any requirement (because they all use the Linux kernel), you only need to consider if the distribution will run on your hardware. LinuxPPC for example has been made to run on Apple and other PowerPCs and does not run on an ordinary x86 based PC. LinuxPPC does run on the new Macs, but you can't use it for some of the older ones with ancient bus technology. Another tricky case is Sun hardware, which could be an old SPARC CPU or a newer UltraSparc, both requiring different versions of Linux.

Some Linux distributions are optimized for certain processors, such as Athlon CPUs, while they will at the same time run decent enough on the standard 486, 586 and 686 Intel processors. Sometimes distributions for special CPUs are not as reliable, since they are tested by fewer people.

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