Fedora11
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Fedora 11 packs a next-gen file system, faster boot times, all the joys and pitfalls of Linux
Linux just gets sexier and sexier, and Fedora 11 just joined Ubuntu 9.04 in the ranks of super modern Linux distros released this year. Fedora doesn't have all the desktop refinements of Ubuntu, or the wild popularity, but it does act as the underpinnings of Intel's Moblin, and the Sugar OS, and doesn't shy away from the future. Fedora 11 makes the bleeding edge ext4 filesystem the default for installs, which speeds performance and improves data integrity -- Ubuntu offers ext4 as an option, but some application incompatibilities have caused data loss problems, so hopefully Fedora has overcome that. Fedora 11 also has boot times in its sights, with a goal to be at the login screen in 20 seconds, new versions of GNOME and KDE desktop environments (GNOME is default, but KDE 4.2 is looking great) and plenty of other minor and major tweaks. Sure, it's still Linux: most folks who expect to just swap out their Windows environment wholesale are sure to be sorely disappointed, but it's clear the steady march of progress continues unabated -- and hey, it's good enough for Intel and the children.
Sugar Labs debuts "Sugar on a Stick" beta, for LiveUSB-derived diabetes
After offering Sugar for the past while as an interface to run on top of your Linux distro of choice, Sugar Labs is prepping "Sugar on a Stick," a Fedora 11-based LiveUSB distro that boots most any PC from a 1GB+ USB stick and lets a user carry their Sugar environment, files and settings wherever they roam. While the beta is currently up for download, there seem to be plenty of kinks to work out, but as the team expands and refines hardware support, we could see this potentially being more of a boon for education than the XO-1 itself; turning any PC into a Sugar PC, not just the dramatically green ones. It's also nice to see how speedy Sugar can be free from the bonds of AMD Geode -- even Atom provides quite a bit of relative pep. Check out a quick (and slightly hyperactive) hands-on video from OLPC News after the break.
