News & Announcements

Wolvix Cub 2.0.0 beta1

(Posted: 2009-05-25) ^

The first beta version of Wolvix Cub 2.0.0 is ready for testing.

Grab the ISO here:

Wolvix Cub is a smaller edition of Wolvix featuring Fluxbox as it's default window manager and a moderate selection of lightweight applications. The Fluxbox desktop can be optionally enhanced with an application launcher bar (wbar) and a system monitor (Conky) from launchers in the menu. It also features LXDE, a lightweight desktop environment.

Netbook compatibility has been improved for Asus Eee PC models 901 and up with the inclusion of the Ralink rt2860 driver. And for all Eee PCs with the addition of the ACPI scripts which controls the hotkeys.

Some screenshots taken on my Asus Eee 1000H:

Known issues: The bug with gksu still unresolved so Cub is also affected by this. And there's an issue with SLiM which seems to be related to the Intel graphics drivers where an image of the login screen appears in a window. It's an annoying, but harmless bug. Just close the window and you'll get the desktop.

Give Wolvix Cub a spin and let me know what you think of it.

-Wolven

Wolvix GNU/Linux 2.0.0 beta2 is ready

(Posted: 2009-04-17) ^

It's time for another beta release, Wolvix 2.0.0 beta2 is now ready for download. The changes are mostly minor, but we've managed to weed out a few annoying bugs and quite a few packages has been updated and a few new applications has been added. If you have a HDD install of beta1 and you've keep it up-to-date via the package repository there's no real reason to get beta2. Doing a full upgrade from the repo on beta1 will get you up to par with beta2. (slapt-get --update && slapt-get --upgrade)

Download Wolvix 2.0.0 beta2: (Md5: 7bea8514062835621ce64a14e8f46f58)

Some of the changes from beta1 includes:

New cheat codes:

There are still two rather annoying bug still lingering which I've been unable to solve so far. First the problem with gksu which sometimes won't exit properly, which prevents it from working the next time it's called. The second bug is the missing window decorations when compiz is launched. Any help and/or insight to resolve these issues are greatly appreciated.

The response on beta1 has been overall very positive and it has had less problems than anticipated. Most of the problems we've seen are due to corrupt downloads, faulty burns or user errors, but this doesn't mean there aren't room for improvements. Hardware detection (auto configuration of xorg) is still hit and miss for some users. Oithona is working on some changes to the HDD installer which will prompt the user for the creation of a non root account. And we're also very keen on improving the hardware support for popular netbooks, such as the Asus Eee. We do not have the means to get hands-on experience with the Eee yet, so if you have one, please help us in our quest to support it better. Feedback on other netbooks are of course also very welcome.

This will (most likely) be the last beta release for Wolvix 2.0.0, next up will be the first release candidate, so if you haven't already done so, grab a copy of the beta and tell us what you think. Even though it's a beta release most users who's tested beta1 tout it as very stable and polished, so you should have little to fear. ;-)

-Wolven

Heads up wolves!

(Posted: 2009-04-02) ^

With April fools day safely behind us I thought I'd give you all a heads up. The response on the beta has been great, I'm very happy too see so many of you enjoying the release with out too many serious problems. The forums has gotten a breath of fresh air with new users joining up and old users coming out of their hives. It gives me a lot of inspiration to see the community alive and kicking.

Speaking of the forums. I'm having a hard time keeping track of all the activity there now, in particular with remembering which bugs to fix and what features to add. So I want you all to start using the bug tracker at launchpad.net. We'll continue to discuss and fix problems in the forums, but once a bug has been verified, (we've concluded that it's a bug and not a faulty burn, flaky hardware, user problem, etc) please add it to the tracker, so I don't have to hunt around the forums to find what I need to fix. You'll need to register at launchpad to be able to post, but it's quick and painless, I promise. ;-)

As you might have gathered by now, I'm not the fastest developer in this world. I work in waves, some days I do nothing but sit around staring at the screen. Other days I work non-stop for hours. Right now I'm working on Wolvix Cub. I'm still playing around with what apps to include and checking out LXDE, which most likely will be the default DE in Cub. I'm also adding and updating packages in the package repository. When a new ISO (beta2) will be out I'm not sure yet, but I'm hoping it won't be too long.

You might have noticed the new 'Shop' link in the navigation above, and as speculated in the newsletter, Oithona and I plan to start selling our own CD's and USB keys preinstalled with Wolvix in order to cover some of the expenses, and hopefully to be able to get some needed hardware. There's nothing in the shop right now, and probably won't be for some time to come, but I'll let you all now when we open the doors. I'd also like to hear your suggestions to what else we could sell there.

That's all for now, keep posting in the forums and come hang with us in the IRC channel!

-Wolven

New direction for Wolvix

(Posted: 2009-04-01) ^

After a lengthy discussion between Oithona and me, we've come to the conclusion that Wolvix is simply too small, fast and stable to be able to compete with the latest installment of Microsoft Windows®. So the decision has been made to move Wolvix over from Slackware to a Ubuntu base using KDE 4.0 as the default desktop environment.

During our internal testing we found that the new Ubuntu based Wolvix was still to fast to mimic the speed of the latest Windows version. As a response to this Oithona has developed a Python script that will consume about 85% of all the CPU resources, and fill up all available RAM in order to get the OS to constantly use the swap partition. Work is in progress to create a program that will pop up and ask for confirmation (Cancel/Allow) for 1 out of 3 tasks the user performs - We're also looking into forcing all applications to run as root. Modifications has been done to the installer ensuring that the new Wolvix will not use any less than 20GB of hard drive space. The install process will take about 2 - 3 hours depending on your hardware. (A quad core 3.5GHz CPU and 4GB RAM is recommended)

We've spent hours discussing what the new Wolvix version should be named. Oithona wanted to follow in the tradition of other Ubuntu derivatives and call it Wolfbuntu, while I had my mind set Wolvix Wista. As a compromise we've agreed that the new name will be Wolfbuntu Wista. We expect to have the first alpha version of Wolfbuntu Wista ready in 5 to 6 years, so stay tuned.

-Wolven

[First Page] [Prev]

[Next] [Last Page]

Page 2 / 4