Project Ends

After monitoring project activity and traffic and also reviewing all of the feedback from the community concerning our EOL I have decided to end the project effective today.  This means that beginning with our last merge from testing to stable which should happen today or tomorrow, there will be no additional updates to Fuduntu.

The majority of our user base has already moved on to other distributions, and the majority of Fuduntu team members have already moved to begin developing FuSE.  By my calculations we have less than 2,500 users left, with those numbers continuing to drop by the day.

As the project ends, you will receive an update that disables the Fuduntu stable repository.  This will allow those of you who have chosen to remain with the project after EOL to continue to do so without receiving error messages.

Thank you all for supporting our project over the years, may you all find a replacement distribution that you enjoy as much as you enjoyed Fuduntu.

Meeting held April 21

On April 21, members of the Fuduntu team that are involved with the creation of the new post-Fuduntu distro met in #fuduntu on IRC to discuss some key aspects of the new distro. This was a public meeting and members of the community were invited to join in the discussion.

Prior to the meeting, the team had decided that openSUSE would provide the best base for the new distro. The openSUSE board was contacted so that the plans could be conveyed to the board members. The team’s intentions were warmly received and there was even an openSUSE board member present at the meeting.

openSUSE was chosen because of its stable base, openness to derivatives and due to the tools available to both encourage and assist teams creating new distros. Several of the team members have been working on the openSUSE base and tools to see just how the new distro will develop.

One of the first things discussed was the default desktop environment that would be used on the new distro.  After discussing many different DE’s, including KDE, xfce, razor-qt, klyde, and Consort, it was put up to a vote. The majority ruled in favor of Consort which is currently being developed by Ikey Doherty, the founder of SolusOS. It is based off of GTK3 but designed to look, and act, like GNOME2. The team, however, still has plans to evaluate it to ensure integration and stability before officially declaring it as the default DE. KDE, however, will also be available as well as other DE’s by way of the openSUSE repos.

Team structure was also discussed. The team is looking at a council composed of four team members and one community member, elected by the community. In this way, the team hopes to be able to also have a community voice in important matters involved with the distro. Just as Fuduntu was dedicated to doing as much as it could for the community, the new distro will also be community-centric.

Any good product needs a good name. The name chosen was FuSE Linux. We hope that FuSE Linux will be able to live up to the standard that Fuduntu held for so long. The team is currently discussing the name with SUSE to ensure that there is no legal issues to using that name. Pending confirmation that the name is in the green, it will be officially declared.The final thing discussed had to do with funding/organization. After discussion, it was decided to set up FuSE Linux as a 501c3 non-profit entity. This will allow people to make tax-deductible donations to the project. In addition, it will provide legal coverage for the project.

This was only the first of several meetings that the team plans to hold as it moves forward with Fuduntu’s successor. As a reminder, even though there will be no new features, bug and security fixes will continue until September 30, 2013. At that point, the team is hoping to have FuSE Linux ready for release so that there is no interruption for Fuduntu users.

Fuduntu Team meeting held on April 14, 2013

On Sunday, April 14, the Fuduntu team held a public meeting on IRC. Many things were discussed, including some issues that have major implications for both the team and community. Among the things discussed were introduction of team members, status of various teams, and the future of Fuduntu.

The biggest topic discussed was the future of Fuduntu. The team has been striving to bring a stable system to the community and we believe we’ve been able to do that. One of the key aspects of that was using GNOME 2. However, as time has gone by, support for GTK2 has decreased dramatically. With this, apps using GTK2 have been moved to GTK3 and old versions are no longer being maintained for either bugs or security flaws.

In addition to this, the move of the Linux world to systemd has caused a problem for Fuduntu as it has become a required thing for many programs, but we do not use it. Together with the GTK issue, Fuduntu has reached an impasse. To move forward would take quite a bit of time and manpower, neither of which can be supported.

The team discussed several options and, ultimately, voted to end-of-life Fuduntu Linux. This decision was not made lightly but, ultimately, it is was the best option. In its current state, Fuduntu would be broken when we tried to move forward.

Beginning today, no new features will be implemented. The only exception are those features which are already being worked on. We will continue to provide bug and security fixes until the last day of support, however. 2013.3 will be the last release and September 30 will be the last official day of Fuduntu Linux.

Following that decision, however, most of the team members then discussed the idea of creating a “new” Fuduntu. Andrew Wyatt, however will not be a part of the new distro in an official capacity. After the decision to EOL, Andrew, the founder and lead developer of Fuduntu, announced his plans to retire after the final Fuduntu release. Andrew will be missed and his hard work and dedication is appreciated by all. While he will not be serving in an official capacity, Andrew will be serving as an advisor to the leadership and team of the new distro.

The plan for the new distro is to rebase it against another well-established distro. At this time, the team is discussing the plans with that and the community will be notified when a decision has been made. We realize that this will be a tough time for many and we hope to make it as smooth as possible.

We know that this may come across as a very disappointing announcement. However, we also feel this is the most responsible course of action. The Fuduntu team is committed to bring the best desktop experience and the only way to do that is to EOL Fuduntu and, for those continuing, start from scratch and allow a phoenix to rise from the ashes.

Next week, there will be another meeting in #fuduntu on Freenode. This will be a public meeting to discuss the future distro that will be started after Fuduntu’s EOL. We invite the entire community there and hope to get input from all those who wish to contribute.

The IRC log for the meeting can be downloaded at http://fuduntu.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5106

Edit: Fuduntu 2013.2 will be the last ISO release, as there will be no need to generate new ISOs.  The distribution updates will continue until the end of September as planned.

Fuduntu 2013.2 Released!

The Fuduntu team is proud to announce the second quarterly release of 2013, Fuduntu 2013.2. This release comes with many improvements, including many bug fixes, new features/apps, and other news items. As usual, existing Fuduntu users have already rolled into 2013.2.

New Features

As Fuduntu has grown, so has the default install. To help those who may want a lighter install, especially for netbooks, we now include a light version. Users of the Fuduntu Lite will notice several programs that are normally installed by default, including LibreOffice, GIMP, and Thunderbird, are not installed. Fuduntu Lite scales down Fuduntu to a base install, allowing for more customization. The light version uses about 3-4 GB less hard drive space, depending on architecture.

This last quarter saw a rise in the amount of user-requested programs that have been packaged and placed in the repositories. Significantly, XBMC, the popular media center developed by the XBMC Foundation is now available.  In addition, LibreOffice has now been updated to LibreOffice 4.

Gaming on Fuduntu continues to get better. As many may have seen, the number of games available on Steam has increased. In addition, the updated Mesa library allows for users to play more games (including games such as Half-Life and Counter-Source) without having to install proprietary drivers. We are currently setting up a new YouTube channel to showcase Fuduntu gaming videos.

Also included in 2013.2:
Kernel 3.8.3-3
Gimp 2.8.4
Thunderbird 17.0.4
Firefox 19.0.2
Chromium 25.0.1364.172
LibreOffice: 4.0.1.2

Team/Community

Fuduntu has welcomed several new team members which has greatly helped the project to grow faster. With the help of these new team members, we have packaged 75 new user-requested applications, including Octave, Clementine and Musescore.

The team welcomes Shawn Dunn, Mark van Tinteren, and Andrew Pyle. Shawn has been working on bringing KDE to Fuduntu and will be working with the devs and packagers to provide a Fuduntu KDE spin. Mark has worked with Copy.com and has obtained permission to package and distribute the Copy.com client. In addition, he has been working very close with Andrew Wyatt, as well as the rest of the team, on bug fixes this cycle.

Andrew Pyle has been working with Pedro Mateus on Fuduntu gaming and has begun making videos showcasing gaming on Fuduntu. Together, they have started a new Youtube channel, FuduntuArcade. Also busy was Sean Thames who has been busy redesigning the site over spring break.

Also helping with those packages is our new build farm. The new servers have allowed for more packages to be built at one time. In addition, the new servers have i5-3470 processors and 16GB of RAM, allowing virtualized servers to get builds done much quicker. The new build farm, along with the new packagers, have really helped the team get more programs out there in a much quicker way.

Fuduntu continues to see more attention from the media and 2013.1, especially, highlighted how the distro is coming along and was covered by many new people and outlets. Overall, reviewers have spoken well of Fuduntu and helped to get the name out there to the Linux world. The Fuduntu Team strives to keep delivering the most stable Linux distro there is. We are also committed to listening to the community and doing what we can to take care of Fuduntu users everywhere.

As with any piece of software, there are some known issues, which are highlighted here:

http://fuduntu.org/wiki/index.php/Known_Issues:_Fuduntu_2013.2

Get your copy today. Full or light, 32-bit or 64-bit. We hope you’ll enjoy Fuduntu, no matter which version, and we hope you continue to use Fuduntu or, if you’re a new user, we hope that you’ll enjoy it and decide to make it your distro of choice.

Fuduntu Website – Fuduntu.org
Fuduntu Community – Fuduntu Forum
Distrowatch – Fuduntu
IRC: #fuduntu @ Freenode

Download: 2013.2 – Full 32Bit: [Download|Torrent] 64Bit: [Download|Torrent]
Download: 2013.2 – Lite 32Bit: [Download|Torrent] 64Bit: [Download|Torrent]

SHA1 Sums:
Full 32-bit: 0cbb69d8d498bb4eb67a2c8d7cfec65bfd3973b3
Full 64-bit: 429e3f72f96a9c3886faa55a62cca53865178f33
Lite 32-bit: 17ace92c1e4349327614000473982f21d1f77360
Lite 64-bit: fccf13d4597bbd8c53ccaa4e493311ab6fdde1bd

Desktop

Experienced Developers and Packagers Needed

As Fuduntu grows, so does the need for experienced volunteers. In our last request from the community for volunteers, several people reached out and helped us and, thanks to them, more has gotten done in the last few months than we could have done without them.

However, we are still in need of more volunteers. Specifically, we are looking for experienced developers and packagers. On the packaging side, those with experience with RPM’s would be greatly appreciated. For developers, the Fuduntu team would be very grateful to have PHP developers with experience in SQL. In addition, Python developers, especially those with experience with yum databases, are in need.

As the distribution grows, the team is trying to keep up with the needs of those who visit the site. Therefore, the team is also seeking out experienced web designers who have skills in both HTML and CSS.

Finally, developers with GTK experience are also needed.

So, this is another call to arms. Fuduntu is growing at a good rate but the team is small and we can only do so much. Having more volunteers, especially those with experience would help to balance out the responsibilities and jobs and the more people we have, the more that can get done.

So, if have experience development, web, or packaging experience and are looking to be part of a fast-growing distribution and also want to be part of a small, fun, and close-knit team, look no further. We’re looking for you! Contact leadership [at] fuduntu [dot] org for more information.

Netflix on Fuduntu!

Netflix on Linux! It’s no longer just a dream. You, too, can now watch Netflix without booting a virtual machine or rebooting into Windows. It’s as easy as installing Netflix Desktop from the repositories, running it, and logging into Netflix.

While it isn’t native support (Netflix is still using Silverlight), it is doable and many people have been able to watch Netflix without any problems. It’s all thanks to the Silverlight compatibility patches developed by Erich Hoover and upgrading to the unstable WINE branch, we’re able to present our community with Netflix on Fuduntu. In addition to the Silverlight patches, we have also ported Erich’s Netflix Desktop tool. The tool works by preparing a custom WINE directory, installing Microsoft’s core fonts, the Windows version of Firefox and Silverlight. It then presents itself as an embedded application under Applications > Sound & Video.

By having the Netflix Desktop tool available, installing is a breeze. Just search for netflix-desktop in Add/Remove software or run ‘beesu yum install netflix-desktop‘ in the CLI. Once you have that, just navigate over to Applications > Sound & Video and run ‘Netflix Desktop’ which will open up the Windows version of Firefox and take you straight to Netflix’s website. Log in, pick a movie, get some popcorn and enjoy.

While this has been working for most people, please remember that, like anything with computers, your mileage may vary. Hopefully, however, this will work well for you and you’ll get to finally watch movies without jumping through hoops such as rebooting (and, if it doesn’t, don’t forget that you can come get help on the forums or in IRC anytime). This could not have happened without a lot of hard work on the part of the developers. Getting something like this to the users takes a lot of work and dedication. Maybe, one day, we won’t need workarounds like this, but, until that day comes, it’s great to know that there are those who are dedicated to trying to make Linux a better operating system for the users.

So, enjoy! And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to watch Serenity again.