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.

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.

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.

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

Ohai there Fuduntu, it’s been awhile since we’ve had one of these, hasn’t it? Much like last time good things come for those who wait!

This time around, and with Steam officially out of beta, I come bearing news that will let many of you better enjoy the stream of games coming down Valve’s chute. If you don’t follow us on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter (shame on you), you probably don’t know that our MESA drivers have been updated to version 9.0.2. “Tell us… oh callipygian guru of the Tux Gaming scene, why is a MESA update of such relevance that it deserves a blog of its own?” Well my flattering uninformed friends, our mostly benevolent overlord Fewt has once again stepped in to help us slackers get our game on and patched the MESA backend to allow for S3 texture compression out of the box. Stay with me here, it’s not as complicated as it sounds.

You see, S3TC (or DXTn/DXTC) has been a standard for 3D accelerated graphics since the days of OpenGL 1.3 (or DirectX 6, for you Windows fiends) and in so being it became the norm for 90% of all 3D video games, with its fixed-rate data compression coupled with the single memory access this TC algorithm is ideal for rendering the graphics at the Hardware level thus streamlining the process, which in turn results in a much better performance.

It was this particular algorithm that was disabled by default in the Open Source drivers that most GNU/Linux distributions ship with, much like it was in Fuduntu. The good news is that if you’ve kept your system up-to-date you’re already running this version of MESA and you can now play a lot of 3D games without the need for proprietary drivers (It’s RMS’s wet dream). Tasteless FOSS joke notwithstanding, this update makes gaming on Fuduntu even less of a hassle, which with Steam constantly pumping out new games for Linux, there is barely any need for those 2-3 hour long forays into the terminal just to get a game running.

Don’t believe me? Here’s Trine 2 running with the FOSS drivers:

“But that’s a native game. I still won’t be able to play WINE without the prop drivers!” – Well my skeptic friend, you are wrong! And to you I say feh… as in Fehllout 3 (ok… that was terrible):

What’s your excuse now?

But that’s not all, the Intel XOrg driver has also been updated to better reflect this update to MESA, meaning if you have an Ivy Bridge CPU the integrated Intel graphics adapter should now outperform many of the discrete graphics adapters out there. Intel GMA users not on Ivy Bridge will also see some performance increase, just not as much. Speaking of discrete graphics drivers, if you have one of those discrete NVidia graphics adapters you’ll be pleased to know that with Nouveau’s 1.0.6  update you now have 3D acceleration without the need for proprietary drivers.

As always, this was Pedro Mateus aka M4t3us aka Unaccounted4 fighting the urge for another tasteless FOSS joke at Mr. Stallman’s expense with a high dose of FOSS enabled gaming.

P.S.: Happy Birthday Richard, I may not agree or even stand by those FOSS convictions as much as you do, but none of this would be possible without you. Thank you.

Okay, so the team has actually been working on this release for some time now, and quite a few things have happened since 2012.4. As always, existing Fuduntu users will have already rolled up to 2013.1 by this time, as all of the updates have been released to the stable repository. Now, let’s get started on the news!

New Features

For those with hardware that use proprietary drivers, one of the first things that will be noticed after install is Jockey, the program that checks hardware and presents the user with the proprietary driver(s) needed. An example of this would be graphics drivers for nVidia and AMD cards.

Since we’re on the topic of installation, we would like to point out that, by default, sudo is now enabled for all new installs.

Another noticeable thing will be the new dock. Unfortunately, AWN is no longer being maintained upstream and there are several bugs that have been left open. In addition, AWN will no longer build against the latest glib. After much discussion, the team decided to migrate to the Cairo dock. This is now installed by default.

For those that are upgrading from current installs, the new dock will install from normal updates but will not be enabled. To use the new dock after receiving fuduntu-cairo-dock in your updates, just go to System > Preferences > Bottom Panel Chooser and select Dock. To configure the Cairo dock, just right-click the dock, go to Cairo-Dock and choose Configure and have fun. For those that do move to Cairo, please remove avant-window-navigator and awn-extras-applets manually. The easiest way is with sudo rpm -e avant-window-navigator awn-extras-applets.

As many may have already seen, Jupiter development has been halted. Over the last two years, Jupiter has become redundant with upstream fixes. The last few things that remain have been forked, packaged as ktune, and will be installed by default.

Netflix! Netflix is now on Fuduntu. As stated in an earlier announcement, using the development tree of WINE and a new patch that allows for Silverlight to work in WINE, Netflix is now available on Fuduntu by simply installing netflix-desktop and then running it from Applications > Sound & Video > Netflix Desktop.

Steam recently announced that Steam for Linux is now in public beta. In addition to that, Valve has authorized us to distribute the Steam Linux package to our users and host it in our repositories. Our own m4t3us has posted about his experience in using Steam on Linux. After several years of the “Is Steam coming to Linux” questions, we can say “yes!” and our community can now install it themselves by installing the “steam” package.

As many people have seen, Enlightenment 17 has finally been released. While it will not be installed by default, it is available for install from the repositories by installing the fuduntu-enlightenment metapackage.

WINE has been upgraded to the 1.5 release, specifically 1.5.18. WINE 1.5.18 includes various fixes including, but not limited to: various Windows Codecs improvements, fixes for OLE database support, improvements to system parameters management, fixes to the built-in web browser, fixes for XML support and many various bug fixes. More about 1.5.18 can be read on the WINE website.

QEMU 1.0.1 is now available in the stable repository! So, for all of you out there that prefer QEMU for your virtualization goodness, it is now ready for install.

We are also happy to announce that we now have support for nVidia Optimus. This is done with the Bumblebee project which is now available in the stable repositories.

For a list of our featured packages, go to: http://fuduntu.org/featured.php

Also included in 2013.1:
Kernel 3.6.9
Gimp 2.8.2
Thunderbird 17.0
Firefox 17.0
Chromium 23.0.1271.97
VLC 2.0.5
Xorg 1.12

Team/Community

The Fuduntu Team has been working hard as they continue to do what they can to make the desktop experience better for the community. As stated above, the team did survive December 21. Turns out, there are not ancient Mayans working for the team. Some of us still stand by the idea that December 21 should have been a holiday, but fewt disagreed. We hope that December 21 was uneventful for you all, too.

In addition, we would like to extend a Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays to the entire Fuduntu community! Without you all, we would just be a bunch of nerds playing on computers!

Speaking of the community, we are proud to announce that Fuduntu has its first local community, based in Turkey. They currently have a site at http://www.fuduntu.org.tr and is managed by Baki Alpertürk (Project Leader), Onur Karataş (Jr. Project Leader), Behzat Abi (Project Coordinator), and Eren Kovanci (Technical Web Support) . They currently are working to translate the Fuduntu Wiki into Turkish, have their own forum and maintain an IRC channel on freenode. We welcome the Turkish local community and hope that they are the first of many.

Wiki: http://wiki.fuduntu.org.tr
Forum: http://forum.fuduntu.org.tr
IRC: freenode/#fuduntu.tr

Another major announcement is the partnership between Fuduntu and DuckDuckGo.com. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that values privacy and does not use filter bubbles, which are used to target people based on their search history. Like Fuduntu, DuckDuckGo cares about your privacy and does not track, identify, or log information of people who use the site. DuckDuckGo assisted Fuduntu with the integration of their search by working with us to develop patches for Chromium and Firefox that allows it to be the default search engine. However, changing your default to another search engine is still as easy as ever. Existing users will not see a default engine change to DuckDuckGo.

Fuduntu is starting to be picked up by various journalist and online magazines. In November, Fuduntu was highlighted on the Australian website, Techworld and was recently mentioned in an article on PCWorld’s website. Finally, for those that do not know yet, Fuduntu now has a Google+ community. You can join by going to https://plus.google.com/communities/109324348881008502486.

Known Issues:

Try as we might, no piece of software is perfect. Due to that unfortunate fact, we have a wiki page dedicated to known issues in 2013.1 which can be accessed here.

Get your copy now!

The Fuduntu team has been busy. We’re working to bring the most stable, most user-friendly Linux desktop to our community every day and we’ll continue to do so. We are very proud of 2013.1 and all that we were able to get accomplished in the last few months to get it out to the users. Download your copy today, install it, and enjoy. And, now, you can add Netflix and Steam Beta to the things to enjoy doing with Fuduntu. We hope you’ll like it as much as we do!

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

Download: 2013.1 – 32Bit: [Download|Torrent] 64Bit: [Download|Torrent]
SHA1 Sums:
32-bit: c2453c2bad9ada86859ef393d56afdde06837371
64-bit: 20eb89bc61830a21e8827f5e63179cbb7f44560c

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.

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.

It’s certainly been awhile, hasn’t it?! No matter, good things come to those who wait and since you’ve all been the nicest bunch of boys and girls this side of the Milky Way, Santa’s come early this year. Alright, alright… Maybe I’m not here to give you anything still I come bearing gifts, the gift of awareness that Steam is officially working for Fuduntu! Yep, you read it right the first time.

You see, being the incorrigible gamer in the team I’ve been nagging our mostly benevolent lord and master fewt to support Valve’s latest flirt with the FOSS community. Somehow and against all odds (glibc updates, libX11 updates, etc.) Mr. Wyatt stepped up and ironed out a few more wrinkles in our quest to make Fuduntu the one true, fun, GNU/Linux distribution and it is with great satisfaction (and a few more grey hairs on my head) that I come before you today to recount my tale and how I got it to work.

It started a few weeks back when Venn Stone shared on Google+ the news that Steam had a few unofficial Linux repos, and I thought I might finally catch a break and it would work right out of the box, close but no cigar. It wasn’t until last night, when fewt himself noticed said repo that things really started moving along for Steam on Fuduntu and it went from 0 to 60 in no time. Shortly thereafter the updated and previously-missing packages found themselves in our Unstable repo.

It sounded too good to be true, which is precisely why it didn’t work right away. Turns out, in their baby steps into the GNUorld, Valve decided to use Ubuntu for their testing ground (something I may have not been particularly appreciative of, but still I was glad it happened) and in so doing they made it so it would work with Ubuntu and didn’t really care for anything else. Turns out we were missing yet another dependency which our fellows over at Canonical include by default, gksudo, which fewt also packaged and uploaded straight away. “Finally, Steam on Fuduntu! Woooooot!” thought I in my ignorance, t’wasn’t to be so for me. As I mulled it around and around in my head, and after fewt himself helped me trim down the list of possible reasons why it wasn’t working on my end, I decided once again to follow Venn’s advice: If you’re setting up a Linux gaming environment, use 32bit. Grab the PAE kernel if you must, but use 32bit. i686 it is then… And it’s been barely an hour or two (at the time of writing) since I first saw Steam running on my soon to be “Fuduntu exclusive” laptop… and all it took were a couple of long nights, 2 packs of cigarettes and a fresh install…

Now I’m just nitpicking, to be honest I’m delighted to finally have Steam for Linux. I’m still pissed Bethesda will not start porting their games to Linux, at least not for the time being, but if I can have all those games I purchased in the Humble Bundles, Valve’s very own titles and a few more Indies, I’m a happy camper!

I haven’t tested all those games you see in the screenshot above, but so far Amnesia: Dark Descent (launching from Steam itself causes a bug with the launcher, launching it from the ~/Steam/SteamApps/common/Amnesia The Dark Descent/run_steam.sh works) and World of Goo both work.

All of this just to say: Steam is now available through our Testing repo, if you’d like to take a whack at it go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources and tick the Testing repo, then open up a terminal and run ‘beesu yum update’ followed by ‘beesu yum install steam‘ (this goes without saying but…) without the ticks.

How about you? Have you guys tried it? How did it go?

Let us know in the comments.

This was M4t3us straddling in for yet another long, long night for a much, much better reason this time.

In our second year Fuduntu has undergone many exciting changes in key areas designed to improve platform supportability and growth. Over the course of the year our user base has expanded to exceed 50,000 active users, and our team has groomed many new volunteers who are now working in our support, design, packaging, and development teams.

A significant change for Fuduntu this year was the introduction of a new leadership team, and segregation of roles within different areas of the platform. This allows us to keep focus in all of the respective areas, while not overburdening any one team member. It also eliminates any single point of failure within the project leadership. Currently, our organization consists of 6 individual areas with 7 leaders.

• Project Leader, Andrew Wyatt
• Support, Randy Adams
• Development, Noah Hall
• Packaging, Nick Bryda
• Infrastructure, David Holden
• Communications, Lee Ward
• Marketing, Blair Zimmerman

Each leader is responsible for ensuring the smooth function of each respective area, and also for grooming and on-boarding new volunteers.

Even in our second year, our philosophy of making small incremental improvements hasn’t changed. While we have made major progress in many areas of the desktop experience we have continued to keep our foundation stable while shipping the latest applications and the latest kernel.

Our base platform has seen a vast number of improvements this past year including many that seem small, but play an important role to the stability of our system.

• Quarterly release strategy starting with 2012.1
• Introduction of a mirror network
• Hosting migrations
• Latest stable kernel, currently 3.4 series
• Platform improvements
  • GRUB2
  • Improved TMPFS
  • Bug fixing core packages

Our support team does a fantastic job of helping our userbase. They are friendly, approachable, and professional. I personally can’t thank them enough for the work that they do to help our users.

Layered on top of our base platform, is our beautiful core desktop featuring GNOME 2. Yes, we still ship and support GNOME 2!

Our base desktop couldn’t be more beautiful either! Over the course of the year we have made vast improvements to the default desktop shipped with Fuduntu.

• Design and integration of a new base theme based on Equinox
• Improvements to our icon pack based on Faenza
• Integration of Google’s Droid fonts
• Plus we are shipping some of the most beautiful creative commons licensed wallpapers available

In addition to beautification of our distribution, we have continued working on the GNOME 2 product fixing bugs and making other improvements as necessary. We have also created Elmer, a simple tool that provides quick access to support, documentation, and the community.

Our development team has done an exceptional job this year fixing bugs and developing new software for our distribution. One thing that sets us apart at Fuduntu is that our developers are very close to our end users, often interacting with them directly.

On top of our stable base platform and beautiful desktop are our apps. This year we have improved our defaults, eliminating some of the web focused applications from the base installation while keeping them available in our repository for those users that prefer them.

Our philosophy dictates that we ship the latest stable applications whenever possible. Our packaging team has done an admirable job of keeping up with the latest application releases often releasing them to testing within 48 hours of release upstream.

We are currently shipping the latest stable versions of many applications including but not limited to LibreOffice, Chromium, Firefox, and Thunderbird.

A big challenge this year has been keeping up with growth. Based on our relatively slow growth pattern over our first year, we weren’t prepared for the explosive growth that came with the release of 2012.1. In order to support this unplanned growth we quickly improved our project hosting and created a simple method to grow and support a mirror network.

We have been very fortunate to have been able to establish mirrors with providers all over the globe. I would like to personally thank the following providers for donating hosting to Fuduntu:

• AARNet, Australia
• LayerJet, Germany
• HEAnet, Ireland
• ASAHI Net, Japan
• Swedish FOSS online, Sweden
• Tamkang University, Taiwan
• GigeNET, USA
• Indiana University, USA
• SourceForge, USA
• pair Networks, USA

Overall, this has been our best year yet in terms of platform growth and community. As we look forward to 2013, I believe we have a strong future ahead.

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

Download: 2012.4 – 32Bit: [ Download | Torrent ] 64Bit: [ Download | Torrent ]

SHA1 Sums:

32 bit: a1a611daebf36cb80b2aa009b4db9756da787ea1
64 bit: 70cae992945b005faef0b1dc5ba770b4a2dadd1d