A new month and a new set of Linux distribution releases. Check out what’s new and where to get it!

Also, in an effort to reduce the number of listings every week, we have decided to leave off alpha releases from now on. If your life depends on knowing every alpha release, drop us a line in the comments and we will look into bringing them back.

March 31

• Fedora 11 Beta Armed with a feature list that includes further improvements to the boot process that include NVidia, ATI, and Intel video adapters, using the revolutionary kernel mode setting feature in an effort to cut boot time and provide pleasing visuals; additional enhancements to the PackageKit cross-distribution package manager that support on-demand font and file support, extending the free desktop into a level of support that compares favorably to any proprietary systems; new virtualization features such as a new management console with enhanced mouse support on the display and larger screen real estate, integration of SELinux for guest virtual machines, access to PCI bus devices from guests, and authentication for VNC remote access; and support for cross-compiling Windows applications directly on Fedora using the MinGW environment, Fedora 11 looks to be an exciting new release in May 2009. Until then, check out the new beta here.

April 1

• CentOS 5.3 Rebuilt from publicly available source RPMS from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS offers free enterprise class computing platform for the masses. Their latest 5.3 release features new packages for all variants, including server and client; an all new artwork stack; and the return of the contribs repository for contributed packages. Check the link for the release announcement, click here for the release notes, or just go straight to the downloads.
• Nexenta Core Platform 2.0 RC1 Nexenta is a base operating system that meshes together the OpenSolaris kernel with utilities from Debian and Ubuntu software repositories. The latest 2.0 release candidate is based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS repos and OpenSolaris 104+ with critical patches. There is even experimental 128-bit processor support. Check the release notes for more information and download links.

April 2

• AsteriskNOW 1.5.0 Speaking of CentOS – AsteriskNOW, a CentOS based distro that includes the popular open source PBX software Asterisk, announced the release of their latest version 1.5.0. This version is based on CentOS 5.3 and features lots of updated packages. Download a copy here.
• VectorLinux 6.0 Light Based on VectorLinux 6.0 Standard, VectorLinux 6.0 Light is aimed at users with more Linux experience and is geared towards more technical simplicity and high performance. To achieve this, the light version has had resource hungry applications removed and running services have been trimmed to a minimum. The default UI is IceWM combined with Pcmanfm for desktop and file management. The distro also includes lots of other lightweight applications and and a dev package for a full development environment. The release notes as well as download links can be found here.

April 3

• FreeBSD 7.2-BETA1 The first test build for FreeBSD’s newest release is now available. Check out the release notes and downloads here.

April 4

• Parted Magic 4.0 A live-CD for hard disk recovery and management, Parted Magic 4.0 brings lots of new features: full support for partitioning Device Mapper RAID partitions; initrd has been replaced by initramfs for booting; now runs very well on a computer with 64MB of RAM; you can now “Save Session” with the CD version (CD-RW required); the PXE version can merge initramfs for module installation; loading debs (without dependency checking and resolving) at boot time like tgz packages. You can find more information at Parted Magic’s website.

April 5

• xPUD 0.8.9 Designed to boot in less than 10 seconds, xPUD is a live-CD distro that consists mainly of a web browser and a media player and is aimed at the netbook market. The latest release adds Linux Kernel 2.6.28 with the fast boot patch from Moblin, an entirely new UI, Firefox 3.6a1Pre, mplayer and more. Check the changelog or xPUD’s website for more information.
• SystemRescueCd 1.1.7 A Gentoo-based live-cd, SystemRescueCd is another distro full of hard disk management and recovery utilities. New for 1.1.7 are: kernel 2.6.27.2; sys-fs/ntfs3g 2009.3.8 (ntfs-3g advanced release); sys-fs/fsarchiver 0.4.7 (filesystems backup/deployment tool); added gpxe-0.9.6 (Etherboot images boot from network using an image on the cdrom); fixed boot on dmraid and lsi devices; fixed a problem related to the bootdisk images in sysresccd-custom; updated sys-block/gparted to 0.4.4. Visit their download page to pick it up for yourself.

That’s it for this week. Check back next week for another roundup!