I’m happy to announce that Kwort 2.4.1.1 final is here!

This version took a year to develop and provides a lot of changes from 2.4 release, including a new, more cleaned up than usual, base system, whole new tool chain, new configuration tools and lots of new things.

Good things in this new version:

• Kwort’s init system: From 2.4, the init system has evolved keeping its simplicity but providing some new features.
• Linux 2.6.28.7: A lot of hardware support was included since the kernel included in Kwort 2.4.
• Kpkg: The new version of kpkg include several new features as the adoption of multi-mirror support.
• Kwort User Manager: Re-written from scratch it Provides a simple way to create and remove users with a new interface.
• Kwort Network Manager: Also re-written from scratch, allows you to configure your network (wired and wireless), as manage your dns and hostname system. It also allows you to switch wireless drivers.
• Xfce: This new version brings a lot of changes under the hood making the desktop more extensible.
• Audacious: This is the default music player since Kwort 2.4.1.1 allowing you to play your music in a very simple way.
• Our new Google group (http://groups.google.com/group/kwort-linux): Ok, this has nothing to do with something included in the release, but it allows the developers behind Kwort to communicate between them and also with the users (who are what Kwort is all about).

As in every old version now comes the things that I look forward to improving:

• Thunderbird: It’s kind of sad, but thunderbird isn’t yet full “xulrunnized”, so starting firefox+thundebird brings two copies of xulrunner up to memory, which as we all know, is kinda in the chubby side.
• Audacious: Although audacious is pretty good doing its job, I think a jukebox is more needed these days, as people needs more information while playing their music. It is known that using gstreamer would take out some of the features audacious brings, but we have a full-featured media-handling components and using those frameworks would allow the Linux desktop to improve, communicate between applications and to remain simple.

People who I would like to thank:
Andreas Schipplock as always for making and maintaining the website, mirroring the Kwort iso image, and kind of playing a role of resources manager that allows me to develop easily Kwort.
Sebastian Reisse for writing the kpkg manpage, and for taking a lot of his time testing every release candidate, if it wasn’t for him, this release would come with several bugs.
The Aircable people for their donations as they helped me to buy some hardware I was needing for develop Kwort.
The mirror providers as usual, the people from PGHosting and Ricardo Brisighelli for the package mirror in the UNR.
Finally, but not less important a very big THANKS to Patrick Volkerding for Slackware Linux, the system Kwort is based on.
The Xfce developers (core and goodies) who made 4.6 a lot more simple to configure for distributions and provided help when needed.
The people who develop every project Kwort includes. I hope I didn’t forget anyone.

As usual, if you need support, help, or you just feel like talking about Kwort (or anything else), or you just want to meet the people who is behind Kwort, you can join us on IRC or our Google group:

• IRC: irc://irc.oftc.net/Kwort
• Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/kwort-linux

–
David B. Cortarello

I’m proud to announce that Kwort 2.4 final version has been released after a very long time (more than a year). The system is very stable and very usable.

The core system is based on Slackware and provides a rock solid system, and it’s also a great place to start making a full featured and usable desktop environment using Xfce.
This version includes several changes from 2.2 from a new toolchain to a completely new base system. The inclusion of hal provides a great way to communicate the hardware with the desktop making the system a lot more user friendly.

Good things in this new version:

• Hal: As I said before provides a lot of new features giving the desktop some kind of control of the hardware
• New init system: Kwort 2.4 includes a new init system written mostly from scratch. Also it puts all the work together with the new service command
• Linux 2.6.24.3: The latest stable version of the linux kernel
• Kpkg: The new version of kpkg was re-written from scratch
• Kwort User Manager: Provides a simple way to create and remove users with default Kwort templates
• Xfce: This new version integrate great with hal
• Ristretto: The image viewer of the Xfce project
• Mplayer: The most famous video player on Linux is now included in the iso
• Pidgin: The latest version of the best multiprotocol IM
• Mpd+Gmpc: This is the new combo to play media files in Kwort. Just put your media files in ~/Music, go to gmpc, give update and play

As in every old version now comes the things that I look forward to improving:

• Better support for wireless devices: This is not part of Kwort itself, but the kernel, but finally affects Kwort users
• Amule: Once again amule is giving the hebbe-jeebes. There is no stable version of amule that works well enough with Kwort. The latest version is dated from middle of 2006 wich is very old and buggy with newer versions of wxGTK

People who I would like to thank:
Andreas Schipplock for making and maintaining the website, mirroring the iso, working in Kwort core (he made most part of the job with Core) and bring lzma support to Kwort.
Stijn Seger for working in some packages like openntpd and the pm support. And writing the Kwort user manager.
I would like to give a special thanks to the users who ran tests specially to David Luskovec and Juan Martin Villanueva, if it wasn’t for you guys, this iso would take even longer to come out.
Manuel Naranjo for reporting bugs, submiting patches for the new init system, hosting the iso and run test all along Kwort core.
Also, I would like to thank all the mirror providers: Ricardo Brisighelli for the development mirror in the UNR, Alberto Ferrer for the mirror in Emanon Linux and the AIRcable people for the mirror at aircable.net.
Finally, but not less important a very big THANKS to Patrick Volkerding for Slackware Linux, the system kwort is based on. I hope I didn’t forget anyone.

As usual, if you need support, help, or you just feel like talking about Kwort (or anything else), or you just want to meet the people who is behind Kwort, you can join us on IRC: irc://irc.oftc.net/Kwort

David B. Cortarello

Only small fixes and additions in this last release candidate:

• jre (added java runtime environment for those java freaks :-P)
• flash (added flash player in the iso since now the license allows it)
• xfce (removed the tips and tricks first dialog since it depends on fortune which are no tips or tricks)
• linux (updated to 2.6.24.3 and added support for scsi drives in the initrd)

I’m releasing this as a release candidate just to be sure that everything is ok. I’ve just added some small fixes to improve stability and to be more consistent.

A list of the changes follow:

• kwort-init-scripts (fixed service)
• etc (fixed default root groups)
• cups (fixed linking)
• kwort-user-manager (fixed userdel path)
• openldap-client (added for gimp-print)
• xfce (fixed default mixer settings)
• initrd (scan for sd* devices as scsi when detecting installer media)

Let’s see how we go from here, and maybe we can have a final release by the end of the week if you guys test it and confirm that everything is fine.

So, some small fixes to improve stability has been done:

• Shadow (adduser has default additional groups now)
• Linux kernel (firmwares added)
• Kwort init scripts (fixed rc.2345 since adding $SERVICE to boot twice was bad,also fixed service)
• Alsa-utils (added rc.alsa to restore and store volumes when shutdown and boot respectively)
• Firefox (changed default behavior)
• Xfce (fixed Kwort desktop package installer)
• Kwort network manager (fixed bug with wireless network when ESSID spaces)
• Initrd (Small fixes and auto-register alsa)

Hopefully if everything works as expected this will be the final release candidate before 2.4 final gets released.

So, I though that rc2 would be the last one before final. But I guess I was wrong. This rc3 provide several fixes:

• Pidgin (New version included, please test it)
• Mplayer (Fixed wrong mplayer.desktop file)
• Xchat (Recompiled, so the lack of the taskbar/systray icon is fixed)
• Gimp (2.4.4 version was very buggy, so moved to 2.4.5 as it is very stable)
• Xfce (Fixed fonts issue because of no default DPI set)
• Xorg (Moved xextproto and fixesproto to xorg serie)
• Shadow (Now adduser generate the initial directories and config for the user)
• Alsa-utils (rc.alsa now store the sound volume when shutdown and restore on start)
• Kwort-init-scripts (If the machine goes in a bad shutdown a ’service zap’ before load the service is a good idea)
• Installation initrd (Fixed the post install setup and added alsa to it)