GoboLinux 016 - Release Notes

Introduction

We are pleased to present release 016 of GoboLinux, the Linux distribution featuring a rethought file system structure. GoboLinux was created out of a desire to try new approaches in the Linux distribution design space. GoboLinux 016 continues this journey, with a focus on the exploration of novel ideas aiming to make the system simpler yet functional.

Availability

GoboLinux is available as an ISO download which you can download from this site.

Overview of this release

Here is a presentation of the new features in GoboLinux 016.

Live Environment

The GoboLinux ISO image serves both as an installation disc and a Live environment, with a graphical desktop featuring Awesome WM. In fact, due to the modular nature of the GoboLinux filesystem, every program available in the image can be used directly from the Live environment -- the work of the installer is to simply copy the user's selection to the destination partition (respecting dependency chains).

Unlike previous releases, our focus in this release was not to add many applications to the base system, but rather the core desktop, common libraries (such as GTK+ and Qt) and a complete development system, so that other applications can be compiled from source using Compile, our build tool.

Graphical installer

Since version 010, GoboLinux features an installer that works on both text and graphical mode. The feature set of both modes is identical, thanks to the innovative AbsTK (Abstract Toolkit), created by the GoboLinux team especially for this installer: a unified widget toolkit for Python which detects and adapts itself for different environments. It currently supports two backends: ncurses/console and Qt/X11.

Hardware detection

GoboLinux features a Udev-based hardware detection system. A large number of devices are detected, loading the appropriate kernel modules. Video detection is performed separately, by Xorg's own autodetection mechanism.

Hardware requirements

Processor

GoboLinux is compiled to run on x86-64-class systems. You shouldn't have problems to run it on any modern x86 machine, including Macs. This release contains 64-bit binaries.

Memory

To load the Live CD environment, 128 MB of RAM is the recommended minimum for a text-mode system, 512 MB is the recommended minimum to load the graphic Awesome desktop; 1 GB is recommended for a comfortable Live-boot experience.

Once the system is installed in the hard disk, memory requirements vary greatly depending on the kind of applications executed, but the values stated above related to the Live CD experience serve as a good guideline.

Video and peripherals

Video cards are supported through the Xorg X11 server, with the fallback "vesa" driver covering the vast majority of current cards. For running under VirtualBox, check the wiki for instructions on how to enable the VirtualBox guest additions. A large number of sound cards are supported through ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). Other peripherals are supported through additional packages available in the GoboLinux recipe store.

Package-specific notes

This section contains some general comments about the package set included in GoboLinux. The complete list of packages included in the CD follows in the next section.

Internationalization

GoboLinux ships whenever possible all packages distributed in their original state, as intended by the authors of the various free software projects that compose the distribution. This also applies to the distribution of the locale files. Therefore, support for internationalization varies according to the translation status of each project for each language.

List of packages

Here is the complete list of programs you will find included in the GoboLinux 016 ISO image:

AbsTK 016 GTK+ 2.24.30 NSPR 4.12 ACL 2.2.52 GTK+ 3.21.4 NSS 3.26 Acpid 2.0.27 GTKMM 2.24.4 OpenEXR 2.2.0 Adwaita-Icon-Theme 3.20 Gutenprint 5.2.11 OpenLDAP 2.4.38 ALSA-Lib 1.1.2 Gzip 1.8 OpenSSH 7.3p1 ALSA-Utils 1.1.2 HarfBuzz 1.3.0 OpenSSL 1.0.2h APR 1.5.2 Hdparm 9.48 ORC 0.4.25 APR-Util 1.5.4 Help2Man 1.47.3 OS-Prober 20161128-GIT AsciiDoc 8.6.9 HiColor-Icons 0.15 P11-Kit 0.23.2 ATK 2.21.90 Hplip 3.16.7 Pango 1.40.1 ATKMM 2.24.2 Htop 2.0.2 PangoMM 2.40.1 Atool 0.39.0 IANA-etc 2.30 Parted 3.2 At-Spi2-ATK 2.21.4 IJS 0.35 Patch 2.7.5 At-Spi2-Core 2.21.4 ILMBase 2.2.0 PCIUtils 3.5.2 ATTR 2.4.47 ImageMagick 7.0.3_0 PCRE 8.38 Autoconf 2.69 InetUtils 1.9.4 PCSC-Lite 1.8.18 Automake 1.15 Installer 016 Perl 5.24.0 Avahi 0.6.32 Intltool 0.51.0 Perl-XML-Parser 2.44 Awesome 20160926-GIT IPRoute2 4.7.0 Pinentry 0.9.7 Babl 0.1.18 Iptables 1.4.21 Pinfo 0.6.10 Bash 4.4 Iptables Variable PIP 9.0.1 BC 1.06.95 KBD 2.0.3 Pixman 0.34.0 BinUtils 2.27 Kerberos 1.14.4 Pkgconfig 0.29.1 Bison 3.0.4 Kmod 23 Poppler 0.47.0 Boost 1.61.0 Lame 3.99.5 Popt 1.16 BootScripts 016 LCMS 2.25 Portmap 5beta Bzip2 1.0.6 Less 481 PowerTOP 2.5 CAcerts 20120211 Lesstif 0.95.2 PPP 2.4.7 Cairo 1.14.6 LibAssuan 2.4.3 Procps-NG 3.3.12 Cairomm 1.12.0 LibCap 2.25 Psmisc 22.21 CMake 3.6.2 LibCroco 0.6.11 PyCairo 1.10.0 Compile 016 LibDaemon 0.14 PyGObject 2.28.6 Compton 20160926-GIT LibDRM 2.4.70 PyGTK 2.24.0 ConfigTools 016 LibEpoxy 1.3.1 PyQt 4.11.4 CoreUtils 8.25 LibEvdev 1.2.99.902 Python 2.7.12 CUPS 2.2.0 LibExif 0.6.21 Python 3.5.2 CUPS-Filters 1.11.3 LibFFI 3.2.1 Qpdf 6.0.0 Curl 7.50.0 LibGCrypt 1.7.3 Qt 4.8.7 Cyrus-SASL 2.1.26 LibGPG-Error 1.24 Readline 7.0 DB 6.2.23 LibICU4C 57.1 ReiserFSProgs 3.6.25 DBus 1.10.8 LibIDN 1.33 RFKill 0.5 DBus-GLib 0.106 LibJPEG-Turbo 1.5.1 RXVT-Unicode 9.22 DejaVu-Fonts-TTF 2.37 LibMNG 2.0.3 Schroedinger 1.0.11 DHCPCD 6.11.5 LibNL 3.2.28 SCons 2.5.0 Dialog 1.3 LibOGG 1.3.2 Scripts 016 DiffUtils 3.5 LibOpenRAW 0.0.9 SDL 1.2.15 Dit 0.4 LibPaper 1.1.24_nmu4 Sed 4.2.2 Dmidecode 3.0 LibPipeline 1.4.1 Serf 1.3.9 DocBook-XML-DTD 4.5 LibPNG 1.4.4 SetupTools 3.4.4 DocBook-XSL-Stylesheets 1.79.1 LibPNG 1.6.24 SGML-Common 0.6.3.tgz DosFSTools 4.0 LibPthread-Stubs 0.3 Shadow 4.2.1 E2FSProgs 1.43.3 LibRSVG 2.40.16 SIP 4.18.1 EFIBootMgr 14 LibSigc++ 2.9.3 SPICE-Protocol 0.12.12 EFIVar 30 LibSpiro 20150702 SQLite 3140200 ELFUtils 0.167 LibTasn1 4.9 Startup-Notification 0.12 EnhancedSkel 016 LibTheora 1.1.1 Strace 4.8 Eudev 3.2 LibTIRPC 1.0.1 Subversion 1.9.4 Exempi 2.3.0 LibTool 2.4.6 Sudo 1.8.18p1 Expat 2.2.0 LibUSB 1.0.20 Sysklogd 1.5.1 FAAD2 2.7 LibVA 1.7.1 SYSLINUX 6.02 FAM 2.7.0 LibVDPAU 1.1.1 Sysvinit 2.88dsf FFmpeg 3.1.3 LibVorbis 1.3.5 Tabbedex-URxvt 20161124-GIT File 5.28 LibXDG-BaseDir 1.2.0 Tar 1.29 FindUtils 4.6.0 LibXML2 2.9.4 Tcl 8.6.6 Firefox Stable LibXSLT 1.1.29 TCPWrappers 7.6 Flex 2.6.1 Linux 4.8.2 Texinfo 6.3 Fontconfig 2.11.0 Linux-Firmware 20161008-GIT TIFF 4.0.6 FreeType 2.6 Linux-Headers 4.7.4 TZData 2016f Fuse 2.9.7 Linux-PAM 1.3.0 UnionFS-Fuse 1.0 Gawk 4.1.4 LiveCD 016 Unzip 6.0 GCC 6.2.0 Lode-Fonts 2.0beta1 Util-Linux 2.28.2 GDBM 1.12 Lsof 4.83 Util-macros 1.19.0 GDK-Pixbuf 2.35.3 Lua 5.3.3 Vim 8.0 Gegl 0.2.0 LuaRocks 2.4.0 Wget 1.18 Gettext 0.19.8.1 LVM2 2.02.155 Wireless-Tools 29 Ghostscript 9.19 M4 1.4.17 WPA_Supplicant 2.5 Giflib 5.1.4 Make 4.2.1 X264 20160927_2245 Gimp 2.8.18 Makedepend 1.0.5 XCB-Util-Cursor 0.1.3 Git 2.9.2 Man-DB 2.7.5 XKBcommon 0.6.1 GLib 2.49.5 Man-Pages 4.07 XMLTO 0.0.28 Glibc 2.24 Mdadm 3.4 Xorg 7.7 GLibmm 2.49 Mesa 12.0.1 Xorg-App 7.7 GMP 6.1.1 MPC 1.0.3 Xorg-Driver 7.7 GnuTLS 3.5.4 MPFR 3.1.4 Xorg-Font 7.7 GObject-Introspection 1.49.1 Mtail 1.1.1 Xorg-Lib 7.7 GoboHide 1.3 MtDev 1.1.5 Xorg-Proto 7.7 GoboNet 0.6 Nano 2.7.0 Xorg-Server 1.18.4 GParted 0.26.1 Nasm 2.12.02 XTerm 300 Gperf 3.0.4 NCSA-Mosaic 20160925-GIT Xvidcore 1.3.4 GPM 1.20.7 Ncurses 6.0 XZ-Utils 5.2.2 Grep 2.25 NcursesW 6.0 Yasm 1.3.0 Groff 1.22.3 Nettle 3.2 ZLib 1.2.8 GRUB 2.02_beta3 Net-Tools 1.60 ZSH 5.2.0 GRUB-EFI 2.02_beta3 NPth 1.2

About GoboLinux

GoboLinux is a Linux distribution created in 2002 which implements an innovative approach in terms of system administration. It defines a new directory hierarchy which allows the coherent management of the installed base of programs from a system. This is done exclusively through the filesystem layout, without relying on databases or package managers.

In GoboLinux, each program resides in its own directory, such as /Programs/Xorg-Lib/7.7 and /Programs/Htop/2.0.2. Each file category (executables, libraries, headers) can also be accessed through unified symlink views, such as /System/Index/lib and /System/Index/include. These views match the legacy directories (/bin, /usr/include, /usr/local/share, and so on), achieving total Unix compatibility while keeping program directories completely self-contained.

http://www.gobolinux.org