What is FreeBSD?

FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium® and Athlon™), amd64 compatible (including Opteron™, Athlon™64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC® architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development.

IPCop Mission Statement

Below, you will find a copy of our Mission Statement. All members of the IPCop Firewall Team strive to meet these goals. By achieving these goals, the IPCop Firewall will be one of the major Linux Firewall distributions
in the world.

• Provide a stable Linux Firewall Distribution.
• Provide a secure Linux Firewall Distribution.
• Provide an opensourced Linux Firewall Distribution.
• Provide a highly configurable Linux Firewall Distribution.
• Provide an easily maintained Linux Firewall Distribution.
• Provide an easily configured Linux Firewall Distribution.
• Provide reliable Support to the IPCop Linux user base.
• Provide an enjoyable environment for the Public to discuss and request assistance.
• Provide stable, secure, and easy to implement upgrades/patches for IPCop Linux.
• Develop an appreciation for both the Linux and Opensource movements in our user base.
• Develop a long lasting relationship with our userbase.
• Strive to adapt IPCop to meet the needs of the Internet of Tomorrow.
• Further develop the Linux Knowledge base of all Project Members and Users.

After seeing the direction certain Linux Distributions were heading in, a group of dissatisfied users/developers decided that there was little reason for the idea of a GPL Linux Firewall Distribution of such potential to be, simply, extinguished.

IPCop Linux is a complete Linux Distribution whose sole purpose is to protect the networks it is installed on. By implementing existing technology, outstanding new technology and secure programming practices IPCop is the Linux Distribution for those wanting to keep their computers/networks safe.

The IPCop Linux Team is dedicated to doing the very best job possible to keep your systems safe, as you can see on our site.

"The Bad Packets Stop Here!"

Welcome to FreeNAS

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.
The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

What is KNOPPIX®?

KNOPPIX is a bootable CD or DVD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it. (over 8 GB on the DVD "Maxi" edition).

History

The SUSE Linux distribution was originally a German translation of Slackware Linux. The Slackware distribution (maintained by Patrick Volkerding) was initially based largely on SLS. In mid-1992, Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was founded by Peter MacDonald, and was the first comprehensive distribution to contain elements such as X and TCP/IP.

S.u.S.E was founded in late 1992 as a UNIX consulting group, which among other things regularly released software packages that included SLS and Slackware, and printed UNIX/Linux manuals. S.u.S.E is an acronym for the German phrase "Software- und System-Entwicklung" ("Software and system development"). There is a rumour that the name is a tribute to the German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse. They released the first CD version of SLS/Slackware in 1994, under the name S.u.S.E Linux 1.0. It later integrated with the Jurix distribution by Florian La Roche, to release the first really unique S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 in 1996. Over time, SuSE Linux incorporated many aspects of Red Hat Linux (e.g., using RPMs and /etc/sysconfig). In a move to more effectively reach its business audience, SuSE introduced the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server in 2001, and consecutively changed the company name to SUSE Linux in September 2003 as a part of its overall new branding strategy, as announced by SUSE's marketing VP Uwe Schmid.^[3]

On November 4, 2003, Novell announced it would acquire SuSE.^[4] The acquisition was finalized in January 2004.^[5] J. Philips (Novell's corporate technology strategist for the Asia Pacific region) stated that Novell would not "in the medium term" alter the way in which SUSE continues to be developed.^[6] At Novell's annual BrainShare gathering in 2004, all computers ran SUSE Linux for the first time. At this gathering it was also announced that the proprietary SUSE administration program YaST2 would be released into the public under the GPL license.

On August 4, 2005, Novell spokesman and director of public relations Bruce Lowry announced that the development of the SUSE Professional series will become more open and within the community project openSUSE try to reach a wider audience of users and developers. The software, by definition of open source, already had their coding "open," but now the development process will be more "open" than before, allowing developers and users to test the product and help develop it. Previously all development work was done in-house by SUSE, and version 10.0 was the first version that had public beta testing. As part of the change, YaST Online Update server access will be complimentary for SUSE Linux users, and along the lines of most open source distributions, there will both be a free download available on the web and a boxed edition. This change in philosophy led to the release of the SUSE Linux 10.0 release on October 6, 2005 in "OSS" (completely open source), "eval" (has both open source and proprietary applications and is actually a fully featured version) and retail boxed-set editions.

The current mascot of SUSE is a gecko called Geeko, also known as the "SUSE Lizard"

About Mandriva

Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, is the publisher of Mandriva Linux, an easy-to-use and innovative operating system. It is one of the most popular Linux editions in the world. Dedicated to making open source technologies accessible to all users, the company offers a full range of products and services to individuals, enterprises and government organizations. Mandriva products are available online in 80 languages and in more than 140 countries through dedicated channels. Headquartered in Paris, France, the company is publicly traded on the Euronext Marche Libre.

news from Open SUSE

We are happy to announce our new news.opensuse.org website. This news portal will provide the latest openSUSE news. We will continue to send important announcements to the opensuse-announce mailing list, but they should also be added to this site as well.

Comments on the news articles is open for everybody, just for contributing new stories, you need to have an account. If you like to contribute, contact admin@opensuse.org - and if you like to submit a story without an account mail to news-submit@opensuse.org.

We also have a calendar (with .ical) for events and other important openSUSE events.

In general, for blogs of openSUSE folks, I’d like to point to the Planet SUSE agregator and say a big thank you to James Ogley for running this service for several years now!