Manjaro 21.3.0 'Ruah' released. Since we released 'Qonos' at the end of last year, our developer team worked hard to get the next release of Manjaro out there. We call it 'Ruah'. This release features the final release of Calamares 3.2. Partition module gained more support for LUKS partitions. Users module now has lists of forbidden login names and host names, to avoid settings that will mess up the install. The GNOME edition has received a major update to GNOME 42. A new global dark user interface style preference has arrived. This can be used to request that apps use a dark user interface style instead of light. The new setting can be found in the new Appearance panel in the Settings app, and is followed by most GNOME apps.
Some of the improvements are automation on the livecd to install the proper Nvidia driver, and when a package fails to upgrade, Update Station will reinstall it and resume the update. I have added the BWN_GPL_PHY option in our default GENERIC kernel to compile drivers that include GPLv2 code. Now, most Broadcom devices are detected, including my iMac. In most cases bwn_v4_ucode_load="YES" or bwn_v4_lp_ucode_load="YES" need to be added in /boot/loader.conf. In addition, GhostBSD was upgraded to 13.1-STABLE from 22/05/31. Features added: Do not show updates available when packages are syncing. Add a file called syncing when new packages are syncing and remove it when completed. Add code to update-station read if syncing is in the repository and do not prompt users for upgrades. Add code to software-station to not allow software installation with software-station during a packages sync.
ZSH is no longer the default terminal for Kaisen Linux! It was since the first release of Kaisen Linux the default terminal, but the majority of users asked for the return of Bash by default, which has been done on this release. Several polls on the different social network pages have been done for this. However, it is still installed as it was before (with oh-my-zsh), and it is possible to reset it to the default. The documentation is here: ZSH on Kaisen Linux. The Conky theme is no longer installed by default with the GUIs, but is a separate package named kaisen-conky, which is no longer installed by default. The reason for this is that user feedback was not unanimous about the default presence of Conky on Kaisen Linux and therefore it is now considered a 'goodie' and can be installed optionally.
We released version 9.0 of the EuroLinux operating system. It is compatible with the latest upstream release. This release focuses on providing improved default cryptographic policies, a 5.14 kernel, a graphical management interface via a web panel, and improvements related to cloud, virtualization and containerization. "Nine" also introduces a major update in the form of the GNOME 40 desktop environment (with modern GTK 4). An important change for those who want to use EuroLinux on x86_64 architecture, is the need to have a processor supporting x86_64-v2 microarchitecture (also on virtual machines). Since version 8.3, the EuroLinux operating system is offered in an Open Core model - both as a paid subscription and free of charge. Customers and the community get access to the software at the same time, in the same version and in the same repositories. The paid subscription additionally provides: manufacturer's technical support, access to errata files, access to additional intermediate packages, the possibility to influence product development.
Stefan contributed a patch series for notably improving the IPS, particularly when it comes to handling of ruleset providers. While many of the changes are done under the hood, the following are visible to the web interface: Monitoring mode can now be enabled for each ruleset provider individually. This makes baselining and testing much less of a hassle, since newly introduced IPS ruleset providers can now first be used for logging only, without risking disruptions or unintended side-effects. Parsing and restructuring changed or updated rulesets has been improved and is now faster by orders of magnitude. The downloader will now automatically check whether a ruleset has been updated on its providers' server by checking the ETag HTTP header. This allows us to drop the update interval selection; every IPS ruleset will now updated automatically on the appropriate interval.
v22.06, like previous releases, is geared mainly towards Linux enthusiasts; it may be a bit rough around the edges so expect some bugs. Help identifying and resolving issues is always greatly appreciated.
The Software Center in Makulu Shift fully supports both Flathub and Snaps, Users can install from a selection of thousands & thousands of great software and games with a few easy clicks. Shift sports a Huge selection of preinstalled drivers, from GPUs to USB devices to Printers. Most, if not all your plug and play devices should work out of the box on Shift without much fuss. Various extensions have been included, some used by various layouts and a few additional that users may want to enable, Because Shift is designed on the GNOME framework, it supports the use of GNOME extensions, either make use of the current extensions or install your own, there is a huge selection available at the GNOME extension web hub.
I am happy to announce the availability of MidnightBSD 2.2 for amd64 and i386 architectures. This release focused on updating third party software in the base system and some smaller enhancements. Bug fixes and new features: use md library sha256 implementation for lzma; /bin/sh updated based on FreeBSD 12-stable sources; root shell changed to tcsh from csh - this adds history to the root user's interactive shell; introduce a patch to dummynet from pfsense to increase max value to 4Gb/s instead of 2Gb/s; mport 2.2.0; fixed issues with desktop startup and created an initial .xinitrc file for GUI installs; a Hyper-V vPCI emulation change can cause SR-IOV (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) and DDA (Discrete Device Assignment) devices to fail to operate correctly under Hyper-V; Netcat - add sctp support from FreeBSD; add ptsname_r to libc....
Significant structural changes since then have warranted a major-version number bump, now 4.0. Not a complete list, nor detailed, just some brief highlights of new features since 3.4.7, in no particular order: The download file is 'easy-4.0-amd64.img' - no longer compressed, which simplifies writing the image to a drive. During normal usage, everything happens in RAM and there are no writes to the drive. This potentially means that a cheap flash stick (likely without wear-leveling) will last 'forever'. Squashfs files, including 'easy.sfs', are now lz4-hc compressed. This, in combination with running totally in RAM, results in noticeable speed improvements. App startup and container startup now very fast. There is now a 'save' icon on the desktop. You choose when to flush your work from RAM to drive, or not, or let it happen at shutdown. Note, it is possible to flip back to the old mode, direct writes to the drive, without a 'save' icon. An old problem of unclean filesystem shutdown, due to the layered filesystem on '/', has been solved.
This version of Leap simplifies multimedia codec installation. Progress has been made to bring Cisco's openh264 video codecs to users via a repository present by default on the system, which will come in a maintenance update. The release not only gains muiltimedia improvements; it gains open-source driver support. Besides AMD's and Intel's continual open-source Linux graphics drivers commitment, users of modern NVIDIA GPUs will benefit from it signing firmware images for the latest-generation GeForce 30 series GPUs.