[Dragora-users] Dragora 3.0-alpha2 released

[Matias Fonzo]

I am pleased to announce the release of Dragora 3.0 Alpha 2.

Dragora is a complete and reliable distribution of the GNU/Linux
operating system that is entirely free software.  Dragora is founded on
the concepts of simplicity and elegance, it can be run for almost any
purpose (desktop, workstation, server, development, etc.).
The intended audience are people interested in learning more about a
GNU/Linux distribution, or simply people who are looking for quality.

The beginning of the development of the series 3.0 represents the
migration towards a new C library, Musl.  The continuation of
supervision capabilities (introduced for the services in 2012).
The restructuring of the hierarchy of directories, the improvement of
the tools provided by the distribution, a new automatic method to build
the distribution, the prebuilt cross-compiler set, and much more!

The homepage is at http://www.dragora.org

Current development pages are located at
http://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/dragora.git/ and
http://notabug.org/dragora/

Changes in this version (Alpha 2):

  * The previous init system used for the Alpha 1 was changed in favor
    of the (revived) Sysvinit project, which provides a complete
    implementation of the shutdown, killall5 commands, plus
    manual pages.

  * All the boot scripts has been enhanced.  The parser for the config
    file can now accept values from the command-line (/proc/cmdline) as
    boot parameters.  Defined values in this way have priority over
    those defined on the config file "/etc/rc.conf", this is valid for
    the current session.

  * The initial screen (LiveCD) has been improved, includes a new menu
    and tips for helping you to edit, pass command-line parameters.

  * Support for the eSpeakup software synthesizer has been added.

  * The main toolchain has been upgraded.  This alpha have Binutils
    2.31.1, The GNU C Compiler 8, Musl 1.1.20+.

  * For debugging purposes, the distribution provides the following
    software: Valgrind 3.13.0, The GNU Debugger (GDB) 8.2, strace 4.24.

  * The build systems ninja and meson has been introduced into Dragora.

  * The security has been incremented overall the system.  Dragora
    makes use of Position Independent Executables (PIE) compiler
    feature, and Stack Smashing Protector (SSP) for the hardened
    package build process; both, by default.

  * LibreSSL has been upgraded to version 2.8.0.

  * GnuPG (version 2) has been included.

  * Since its full adoption in 2008, the used kernel for this Alpha is:
    Linux-libre 4.18.9.  Note the incorporation of the
    linux-libre-firmware package.
    Thanks to Alexandre Oliva and Jason Self.

  * In 2009, Dragora migrated the format of the produced binary
    packages to the lzip format, becoming in the first distribution in
    make use of a high-quality LZMA implementation.  This time the
    support of lzip has been expanded for manual pages, kernel modules
    (currently uncompressed), kernel initramfs, the embedded compressor
    for busybox.

    Dragora invites you to try lzip through the LiveCD (hybrid squashfs
    image compressed with lzip).  Thanks to Antonio Diaz Diaz for his
    work on the patchset.

  * All the official X.Org components has been updated (drivers, server,
    applications, etc.).

  * Initial support for graphical libraries, toolkit (GTK+ version
    2 and 3) has been added.

  * DWM (a dynamic window manager for X) is available.

  * New ported tool (from Dragora v2.2) called `dragora-mouse'.
    (useful to configure a mouse for the console).

  * Build recipes for new packages have been built.

    Please, traverse the /usr/pkg hierarchy for a full view of
    installed packages.

  * Many general fixes, improvements, and clean ups have been performed.

The ISO images may be fetched at:

- http://sourceforge.net/projects/dragora/files/alpha/
- http://mirror.fsf.org/dragora/ISO/

The sha256sums are:

f2117107c91bc8fc5ef88241e659a9d5a4d5275e52d6f8f1c094f99809c8d019
dragora-3.0-i586-alpha2.iso

55d0fe44684d9d86844e3413a784afae995e54c37049c86108938788be898690
dragora-3.0-x86_64-alpha2.iso

Additionally, this release provides Root FS images, from where you
can chroot, copy, study, ...

The sha256sums are:

19004ffb00ff94cec40eacf86a2603aaf4e6ee338eab779f23e1c6a7db59fcfb
dragora-3.0-rootfs-i586-alpha2.tar.lz

80018c14200fb08cd4628f6e6b5fa2189bf7dc69a1b217584e4dd480c1a58f52
dragora-3.0-rootfs-x86_64-alpha2.tar.lz

Note: the password for "root" in this release is: dragora

We welcome feedback at our Freenode IRC channel, #dragora, and on our
mailing list.  We are looking for help with documentation, website
migration, bug reports, patches...

Thank you to all of you who support this humble project made with great
sacrifice.  And thank you especially for supporting the philosophy and
spirit of software freedom that Dragora aims to promote.

Best regards,
Matias Fonzo, Dragora author and maintainer.