GoboLinux 015 - Release Notes

Introduction

We are pleased to introduce GoboLinux 015, the new major release of GoboLinux, the Linux distribution featuring a rethought file system structure. This is the first full-system image release in a number of years, after a long period in which we kept only updating compilation recipes. Packages were built using both ALFS (Automated Linux from Scratch) and our custom dynamically-generated sandboxed environment which insulates the source code and its dependencies during compilation. Major upgrades include the Enlightenment 18 desktop and kernel version 3.14.2, as well as new versions of the GoboLinux management tools.

Availability

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

Overview of this release

Live CD

The GoboLinux CD serves both as an installation disc and a Live CD, with a complete graphical desktop featuring Enlightenment 18, LibreOffice 4.2.3.3 and a host of applications. In fact, due to the modular nature of the GoboLinux filesystem, every program available in the CD 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).

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 i686-class systems, which means a Pentium IV or higher. You shouldn't have problems to run it on any modern x86 machine. This release contains 32-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 Enlightenment 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. A large number of sound cards are supported through ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) and OSS (Open Sound System). Other peripherals are supported through additional packages (SANE, GPhoto, etc.) 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.

Absence of proprietary packages

This release does not include any proprietary packages. It is worth to point out that programs such as Sun JDK and Adobe Flash do work under GoboLinux with no limitations -- they are not included for legal reasons only. As alternatives to Acrobat Reader, we recommend Epdfview and Xpdf.

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 015 ISO image:

AbsTK 015 GST-Plugins-Good 1.2.3 NTFS-3G 2014.2.15 ACL 2.2.52 GST-Plugins-Ugly 1.2.3 OpenLDAP 2.4.38 Acpid 2.0.20 GStreamer 1.2.3 OpenSSH 6.4p1 ALSA-Lib 1.0.27.2 GTK+ 2.24.22 OpenSSL 1.0.1g APR 1.5.0 GTK+ 3.10.6 ORC 0.4.18 APR-Util 1.5.3 GTKMM 2.24.4 Oxygen-Icons 4.12.0 AsciiDoc 8.6.9 Gutenprint 5.2.9 P11-Kit 0.20.2 ATK 2.10.0 Gzip 1.6 Pango 1.36.1 ATKMM 2.22.7 HarfBuzz 0.9.27 PangoMM 2.34.0 Atomic_ops 7.2alpha4 Hdparm 9.43 Parted 3.1 Atool 0.38.0 Help2Man 1.40.6 Patch 2.7.1 At-Spi2-ATK 2.10.2 Hplip 3.14.3 PCIUtils 3.2.1 At-Spi2-Core 2.10.2 HTML-Tidy 20101110 PCRE 8.34 ATTR 2.4.47 Htop 1.0.3 PCSC-Lite 1.8.10 Audacious 3.5 IANA-etc 2.30 Perl 5.18.1 Audiofile 0.3.6 Icon-Naming-Utils 0.8.90 Pidgin 2.10.9 Autoconf 2.69 IJS 0.35 Pinentry 0.8.3 Automake 1.14 ImageMagick 6.8.9_0 Pixman 0.32.4 Avahi 0.6.31 Imake 1.0.6 Pkgconfig 0.28 Babl 0.1.10 InetUtils 1.9.1 Polkit 0.112 Bash 4.3 Installer 015 Polkit-GNOME 0.105 BC 1.06.95 Intltool 0.50.2 Polkit-Qt-1 0.103.0 BinUtils 2.24 IPRoute2 3.12.0 Poppler 0.24.5 Bison 3.0.2 Iptables 1.4.21 Popt 1.16 Boost 1.55.0 ISO-Codes 3.51 Portmap 5beta BootScripts 015 JPEG 9 PowerTOP 2.5 Bullet 2.82r2704 Json-C 0.11 PPP 2.4.6 Bzip2 1.0.6 KBD 2.0.1 Procps-NG 3.3.9 Cairo 1.12.16 Kerberos 1.12 Psmisc 22.20 CairoMM 1.10.0 Kmod 15 PTH 2.0.7 Cdparanoia-III 10.2 Lame 3.99.4 PulseAudio 5.0 CLucene 2.3.3.4 LCMS 2.25 PyCairo 1.10.0 CMake 2.8.11 Less 458 PyGObject 2.28.6 Compile 2.0 Lesstif 0.95.2 PyGTK 2.24.0 ConfigTools 015 LibArchive 3.2.1 PyQt 4.10.3 ConnMan 1.21 LibAssuan 2.1.1 Python 2.7.6 ConsoleKit 0.4.6 LibATASmart 0.19 Python-Distutils-EXTRA 2.38 CoreUtils 8.22 LibBSD 0.6.0 Python-Ecore 1.7.0 CUPS 1.7.0 LibCanberra 0.30 Python-E_DBus 1.7.0 CUPS-Filters 1.0.43 LibCdio 0.92 Python-Edje 1.7.0 Curl 7.34.0 LibCroco 0.6.8 Python-Elementary 1.7.0 Cyrus-SASL 2.1.26 LibDaemon 0.14 Python-Evas 1.7.0 Cython 0.20.1 LibDRM 2.4.50 QJSON 0.8.1 DB 6.0.20 LibExif 0.6.21 Qpdf 5.1.0 DBus 1.7.10 LibFFI 3.0.13 Qt 4.8.5 DBus-GLib 0.100.2 LibGCrypt 1.6.0 RagePlayer 20140414-GIT DBusMenu-Qt 0.9.2 LibGlade 2.6.4 Readline 6.3 DBus-Python 1.2.0 LibGPG-Error 1.12 ReiserFSProgs 3.6.24 DejaVu-Fonts-TTF 2.34 LibICU4C 52.1 RFKill 0.5 DevelScripts 20110830-SVN LibIDN 1.28 Rlog 1.4 DHCPCD 6.1.0 LibIODBC 3.52.8 Rsync 3.1.0 Dialog 1.2 LibKSBA 1.3.0 Schroedinger 1.0.11 DiffUtils 3.3 LibMad 0.15.1b SCons 2.3.0 DocBook-XML-DTD 4.5 LibMCS 0.7.2 Scripts 3.0 DocBook-XSL 1.78.1 LibMNG 2.0.2 SDL 1.2.15 DocBook-XSL-Stylesheets 1.78.1 LibMowgli 1.0.0 Sed 4.2.2 E17gtk 20140216 LibNL 3.2.23 Serf 1.3.2 E2FSProgs 1.42.8 LibNotify 0.7.6 SetupTools 3.4.4 Econnman 1.1 LibOGG 1.3.1 Shadow 4.1.5.1 E_DBus 1.7.10 LibPaper 1.1.24 Shared-MIME-info 1.2 EFL 1.9.3 LibPipeline 1.2.6 SIP 4.15.4 Elementary 1.9.3 LibPNG 1.6.8 SPICE-Protocol 0.12.6 EmotionGenericPlayers 1.9.0 LibPthread-Stubs 0.3 SQLite 3.8.2 EncFS 1.7.4 LibreOffice 4.2.3.3 Startup-Notification 0.12 EnhancedSkel 015 LibRSVG 2.40.1 Strace 4.8 Enlightenment 0.18.7 LibSamplerate 0.1.8 Subversion 1.8.5 Enlightenment-Share 20140505-GIT LibSecret 0.18 Sudo 1.8.8 EPDFView 0.1.8 LibSigc++ 2.3.1 Sysklogd 1.5 Epour 0.5.2.0 LibSndfile 1.0.25 SYSLINUX 6.02 EvasGenericLoaders 1.9.0 LibTasn1 3.3 Sysvinit 2.88dsf ExFAT 0.9.8 LibTheora 1.1.1 T1Lib 5.1.2 Exiv2 0.24 LibTIRPC 0.2.4 TagLib 1.9.1 Expat 2.1.0 LibTool 2.4.2 Tar 1.27.1 FAM 2.7.0 LibTorrent-Rasterbar 0.16.16 Tcl 8.6.1 FFmpeg 2.1.1 LibUSB 1.0.17 TCPWrappers 7.6 File 5.16 LibVA 1.2.1 Terminology 0.5.0 FindUtils 4.4.2 LibVDPAU 0.7 Texinfo 5.2 Firefox 28.0 LibVisual 0.4.0 TIFF 4.0.3 Flac 1.3.0 LibVorbis 1.3.3 Udev 208 Flex 2.5.37 LibWebP 0.4.0 UDisks 2.1.2 Fontconfig 2.11.0 LibXML2 2.9.1 UnionFS-Fuse 0.25 FreeType 2.5.2 LibXSLT 1.1.28 Unzip 6.0 Freshen 3.1.0 LightMediaScanner 20140414-GIT UPower 0.9.23 Fribidi 0.19.6 Links 2.3 Util-Linux 2.24 Fuse 2.9.3 Linux 3.14.2 Util-macros 1.18.0 Gawk 4.1.0 Linux-Firmware 20140120-GIT Valgrind 3.9.0 GCC 4.8.2 Linux-Firmware 20140504-GIT Vim 7.4 Gccmakedep 1.0.2 Linux-Headers 3.12.6 Virtuoso 6.1.7 Gcr 3.12.0 Linux-PAM 1.1.8 VLC 2.1.2 GDB 7.7 LiveCD 015 Wget 1.14 GDBM 1.10 Lode-Fonts 1.0 Wireless-Tools 29 GDK-Pixbuf 2.30.2 Lsof 4.83 WPA_Supplicant 2.0 Gegl 0.2.0 LuaJIT 2.0.3 XCB-Util 0.3.9 Gettext 0.18.3.1 M4 1.4.17 XCB-Util-Image 0.3.9 Ghostscript 9.10 Make 4.0 XCB-Util-Keysyms 0.3.9 Giflib 4.2.3 Makedepend 1.0.5 XCB-Util-Renderutil 0.3.8 Gimp 2.8.10 Man-DB 2.6.5 XCB-Util-WM 0.3.9 Git 1.8.4.2 Man-Pages 3.55 XDG-Utils 1.1.0_rc1 GLib 2.38.2 Mdadm 3.3 XMLTO 0.0.25 Glibc 2.18 Meanwhile 1.0.2 Xorg 7.7 GLibmm 2.38.1 Mesa 10.0.1 Xorg-App 7.7 GMP 5.1.3 Mirage 0.9.5.2 Xorg-cf-files 1.0.5 Gnome-Keyring 3.12.0 MozJS 17.0.0 Xorg-Driver 7.7 GnuPG 2.0.22 MPC 1.0.1 Xorg-Font 7.7 GnuTLS 3.2.8 MPFR 3.1.2 Xorg-Lib 7.7 GObject-Introspection 1.38.0 Mtail 1.1.1 Xorg-Proto 7.7 GoboHide 0.14 MtDev 1.1.2 Xorg-Server 1.15.0 GParted 0.18.0 Nasm 2.08.02 Xpdf 3.03 Gperf 3.0.4 Ncurses 5.9 XTerm 300 GPGME 1.4.3 NcursesW 5.9 Xvidcore 1.3.2 GPM 1.20.7 Nettle 2.7.1 XZ-Utils 5.0.5 Grep 2.14 Net-Tools 1.60 Yasm 1.2.0 Groff 1.22.2 NetworkManager 0.9.8.8 Zip 3.0 GRUB 2.00 Network-Manager-Applet 0.9.8.8 ZLib 1.2.8 GST-Libav 1.2.3 Notification-Daemon 0.7.6 ZSH 5.0.4 GST-Plugins-Bad 1.2.3 NSPR 4.10.2 GST-Plugins-Base 1.2.3 NSS 3.13.3

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/7.7 and /Programs/Htop/1.0.3. 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