Annvix Development Blog

Annvix 3.0-RELEASE (Freya) is now available!

Today marks the fifth public release of the Annvix Linux distribution. February 4th, 2007 marked the release of 2.0-RELEASE; this version is the fruit of almost a year’s worth of hard work. We believe that 3.0-RELEASE is the best version of Annvix available. It is recommended that everyone using 2.0-RELEASE upgrade, as it is no longer supported.

Some of the new features you can find in 3.0-RELEASE include:

- 2.6.22.15 kernel with AppArmor support (RSBAC is no longer supported)
- updated services including PHP 5.2.5, MySQL 5.0.51, PostgreSQL 8.2.5, Apache 2.2.6, and Samba 3.0.28
- many other upgraded system packages, including Glibc 2.6.1

Version 3.0-RELEASE can be downloaded from the mirror sites listed at:

http://annvix.org/Download

Read the full release notes for 3.0-RELEASE as well, especially if you are upgrading from 2.0-RELEASE:

http://annvix.org/Release_Notes/3.0

If you use and like Annvix, please consider making a donation to the project.

Annvix 2.0-RELEASE (Surtr) is now available!

Today marks the fourth public release of the Annvix Linux distribution. It was exactly 50 weeks ago when 1.2-RELEASE was made available; this version is the fruit of almost a year’s worth of hard work. We believe that 2.0-RELEASE is the best version of Annvix available. It is recommended that everyone using 1.2-RELEASE upgrade, as it is no longer supported.

Some of the new features you can find in 2.0-RELEASE include:

- 2.6.16.39 kernel with RSBAC and AppArmor support
- updated services including PHP 5.2.0, MySQL 5.0.27, PostgreSQL 8.2.1, and Apache 2..2.4
- a greatly enhanced installer; it’s still the same great text-based installer, but with many new features and enhancements to make installation even easier
- a completely overhauled init system; the traditional SysV init system is no longer used — the new system is very similar to Gentoo’s approach
- the use of the tcb suite for authentication; by default passwords are stored using tcb rather than shadow, and encrypted with blowfish rather than md5
- the use of apt-rpm as the default package manager

Version 2.0-RELEASE can be downloaded from the mirror sites listed at:

http://annvix.org/Download

Read the full release notes for 2.0-RELEASE as well, especially if you are upgrading from 1.2-RELEASE:

http://annvix.org/Release_Notes/2.0

If you use and like Annvix, please consider making a donation to the project.

Been a while since I blogged… been far too busy so here’s a few entries. The first thing of note is that Annvix 1.2-RELEASE came out last week. 1.2-RELEASE is the last version in the 1.x series, and 2.0-CURRENT will get branched in the next few days or week or so. I’m not in a rush for it… =) 2.0 will have a lot of new stuff like RSBAC configuration tools (from Adamantix most likely), probably a 2.6 kernel, and I hope to write a PHP-based control panel of some sort. 1.2-RELEASE was more a maintenance release than anything although there is a few new things to it (AIDE replacing tripwire and socklog being the default system logger come to mind). Oh, and RSBAC was re-introduced. More information is on the Annvix wiki (which, BTW, will soon replace the main Annvix site once I get around to moving all the docs over).

Feel free to check Annvix out, download it, use the resulting CD as a coffee coaster, whatever. I think this is a pretty good release and I’m quite please with it.

Sheesh. Releasing a distro sucks. All the announcement writing, doc updating, last minute fixes, etc. Good thing I’m drinking already… I might be driven to drink from all of this. Let me tell you, I’ll sleep well tonight.

So, Annvix 1.1-RELEASE is done. Well, as done as it’s going to get. There is a point in time when you have to say enough is enough and put it out even if it isn’t perfect. Thankfully my audience is so small (3 people) that if something breaks I can fix it later and no one would be the wiser. =) One good thing about doing a distro for yourself is that there’s few people to get ticked off if you break something. I’m pretty sure I caught all the major stuff tho…

It’s a little anti-climactic. Here I’ve been working feverishly for 2mos to get this release done (well, except for the last week or two… dang security advisories). But it’s a done deal. I feel sorry for people like Warly and Fred who had to deal with Mandriva releases every 6mos (and on a much larger scale than I have to deal with)… what a PITA. They must be happy it’s only once a year now (well, not including the Corp products… I guess it’s still twice a year as opposed to three times a year).

Well, I raise my glass (which I’ve raised and emptied twice already… I think) to a job well done. Now I get to make the mirrors mad by moving stuff around (good thing Annvix is relatively small and that I can move things on the master server without rsyncing everything over again). But, by tomorrow, everything should be dealt with and life can go on.

I think tomorrow I will sit back, relax, and play World of Warcraft all day.

Oh wait… I have that website to work on. It never ends. What is that they say? No rest for the wicked?

Ain’t that the truth.