Annvix Development Blog

I have been running annvix as server, (e.g. email, DNS, web, source control…etc) since 1.0. Recently, I have been using it as development machines for my RD Department.

My group is focusing to embedded Linux development, which means we need to have a perfectly working (and standard compliance) machine to install tons of cross compilers and tools for each different Hardware/solution providers. The previous group was using mostly Fedora, Ubuntu based distributions, although they look ok at first glance, it fails in a lot of areas since Fedora and Ubuntu is trying to be too user friendly. This is especially true for Ubuntu, the shell script inside the Makefile doesn’t even work as ‘expected’ without some tuning. (trust me, I have used more than 5 well known distributions, ubuntu was very troublesome for embedded development environment)

Of course, my post is not about how bad other ones are, and how good annvix are. Different distribution serves for different purposes.

I just want to express my success with annvix distribution and proud to be one of the developer .

My RD department currently have one source control server and four development server (aka, build machines) and engineers are really happy with the stability and performance of the system.

This is great work!

The February 2008 issue of Linux+ Magazine has a feature article on installing Annvix. The magazine isn’t listed on their site yet, but I got my copy of it in the mail today (probably a pre-release copy since I wrote the article). I suspect it should be coming out and being generally available soon, but this is a bit of a milestone for Annvix as this is the first time (that I’m aware of) that Annvix has been noted in print, as opposed to on the web.

I believe you can pick up Linux+ Magazine at Barnes & Nobles in the USA, and probably a few other outfits. Doesn’t seem to be carried at Chapters here in Canada, however. The magazine is out of Poland.

The following testimonial was sent on the users@ mailing list on Feb 14th by David:

Well, I’ve had fun getting Annvix set up. Using a PIII-750MHz, and base install was barely over 300 MB. After installing apache + php, and my folding program, I am now using annvix as experimental web server at admiral.ath.cx and also for folding client - see http://fortressdataprotection.com/folding

I formerly used Trustix Secure Linux, but development was stopped this year, so I was looking for a seceure server distro that would run on older hardware. Annvix is it! Thanks for a great distro! And for great support. I love it, and plan to experiment with its capabilities for use as web server and for running other select apps. THANKS FOR ANNVIX.

Thanks for the kind words, David!

I’ve just branched 3.1-CURRENT and updated the mirrors, so the apt metadata for ‘current’ now points to 3.1-CURRENT. 2.0-RELEASE is still on the mirrors for the time being but for all intents and purposes it is dead and no longer supported. In other words, please upgrade if you haven’t already.

I’m hoping to accelerate things a bit and have a year between releases, even if they are smaller releases. I.e. 2.1-CURRENT really should have been 2.1-RELEASE, but due to the high number of changes, it was a much more significant release (thus being called 3.0). 3.1 should be a much more minor “point” release. The things I’d like to concentrate on here are newer versions of stuff, provided they are relatively compatible with what’s currently in 3.0-RELEASE, and improving documentation.

As always, if you would like to help out (even with documentation, there’s plenty to do there!) please stop by in IRC (#annvix on freenode) or drop a note in the developer’s mailing list. The more the merrier!