Kongoni 2011 (Firefly) beta1 finally here…

Published: March 16, 2011Posted in: News

Yes, I know, it’s been a while, but the time now has come for the first release of Kongoni 2011. Usually first release should be an alpha, but I was thinking it would be just simpler to use beta or multiple betas until RC or the stable release. The new release code name is Firefly, has nothing really to do with anything, I just like the name :) .

This release brings almost everything new, start-up scripts were clean-up or somewhat rewritten, themes/wallpapers were updated, new applications were added (over 300 new applications in the repository), fully removed Hal and added udisks and upower, KDE has been migrated to the Kongoni repository and yes, has been building for Kongoni (we wont use anymore the Slackware packages for KDE), kernel setup and configuration totally change and now most parts of the kernel are build as modules, added dracut as a initramfs image creator/updater and much much more.

Now I guess everybody got the idea, a lot of updates, but I will like to get deeper into some of this updates. First of all, the kernel was updated to version 2.6.37.3-libre, like I said before, it was build differently then the previous release, most parts of it are build as modules, so the kernel it’s smaller and in terms should be a bit faster, but of course there was also some patching applied to the kernel to boost a bit the speed, but has nothing like BFS patch or the 200 line patch for scheduling. I’ve been testing the kernel with BFS (Brain Fuck Scheduler) patch, but I haven’t got what I wanted from it, I haven’t found it as useful or stable as I would wish. Also maybe some of you know the 200 linux kernel patch which suppose to boost the system or desktop speed, but again got kind of the same results, not as stable or good to be included. Besides the kernel been updated, now Kongoni also ships with Dracut for creating/updating and managing initramfs image need it by the kernel to boot.

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Kongoni 1.12.3 (Cicero) released!

Published: September 11, 2010Posted in: News

This is the final and stable release of Kongoni 1.12.3 (Cicero). With this release most issues and problems should be solved, also most packages where cleaned-up, updated to the latest version. Kernel upgraded to version 2.6.35.4-libre, improved the stability and speed, re-build with support for more hardware devices, cleaned-up the kernel configuration, set Rekonq browser as the default web browser, Gnash upgraded to verison 0.8.8, KDE upgraded to version 4.5.1, removed Ktorrent and replaced it with qBittorrent, which should be much more faster and lightweight.

Besides the obvious updates for some of the applications, also a lot of work was done to KSI (Kongoni System Installer), most bugs where fixed, improved the installation method and made it a bit more easy. In the past some parts of the installation could be ignored, resulting in errors or failed installations. This parts where fixed, plus now Grub will install automatically on the MBR if the installer will find only one disk (example: /dev/sda). This way the users don’t have to worry about how to install Grub or if Grub was installed in the right place. Also you can install Kongoni without any issue even if you do have some other OSes installed, because Grub will try to detect them and set them up, giving the possibility of dual-boot or multi-boot. Additionally, now you can format the disk using reiser4 and btrfs, unfortunately you wont be able to use them as booting devices for Grub. At the moment Grub doesn’t support btrfs and reiser4, so if you do format you’re root partition as reiser4 or btrfs, you wont be able to boot it. The best idea is to use this type of file system for /home, /usr, /var and so on, but not for / or /boot.

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kongoni.org is now kongoni.org

Published: September 8, 2010Posted in: News

I’ve been thinking for a while now if it wouldn’t be better for Kongoni to have a normal domain, like ‘.org’. Most projects out there have and most projects are for everyone, not just for a certain country, so I think it’s better for Kongoni to have also a normal domain name too. The truth is that it doesn’t make much of a difference, but kongoni.org it’s not owned by me, but by the previous developer of Kongoni, A.J. Venter, and any changes to the domain, setup, new sub-domain is almost impossible.

This way, kongoni.org is under my “jurisdiction” :) so I can change anything, fast and easy. The previous domain will work also and you will be redirected in the right place, so nobody needs to do anything in plus. Also when it comes to the packages, I already updated the homepage for the packages that need it.

To not forget, as the new domain, there is also a new server on which kongoni.org is running. This should be more stable then the previous server which was in Canada, the new server is in Germany.

Well that’s about it for the moment, but stay tuned for the release of the stable version of Kongoni 1.12.3 (Cicero), should be out in the next couple of days/weeks. :)

Kongoni 1.12.3-rc2 (Cicero) it’s out in the wild

Published: August 3, 2010Posted in: News

It’s been a while, but it’s here. I know that the last time I said the next release most probably will be the stable one, but because again there are some major changes to Kongoni, I would prefer to call this one also an Release Candidate and in this case RC2.

To start with the main changes in Kongoni, the top of the list has to be taken by GRUB2 replacing Lilo. Yes, Kongoni now uses GRUB2 as the default boot loader and also has a very good OS detection setup. The setup it’s similar to Debian and Ubuntu, because seems Debian developed os-prober and the guys from GRUB included os-prober into grub scripts, to be more precise in /etc/grub.d/. This also means that the installer had to be modified to use GRUB2 not Lilo, when installing the system, which of course was done and is working very well.

This new setup, will enable dual and multi boot, also because I added GRUB2, KSI (Kongoni System Installer) had to be modified, so now when the system installs, it will try to detect all OSes installed and set them up in grub. Now you can have dual or multi boot using Kongoni, very similar to how it works in Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora.

Another major modification done to Kongoni, is moving from the classic kernel, found at kernel.org to the FSF kernel, which has removed all of the non-free firmware. Also removed from git repository any trace of non-free software and firmware. This means that there will be no Adobe Flash, no radeon non-free firmware, no non-free codecs and so on. Everything is now open source or free.

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