Foresight Linux 0.9.8.3 review

Foresight Linux OS is a Distribution which showcases some of the latest and greatest from GNOME

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: The Foresight Linux Project

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Foresight Linux OS is a Distribution which showcases some of the latest and greatest from GNOME. Some of the things that may not be mature enough for some of the other distros.

Some of the more innovative things are included, like beagle, f-spot, howl, and the latest hal. All of this plus some nice, clean default themes and artwork.

Foresight Linux is built using the conary package management system. Conary is a way of managing software using a loosely knit group of network repositories. There are tools included to make it very simple to install and update packages.

There are four basic operations involved in package management; querying, installing, upgrading, removing.

Here are some key features of "Foresight Linux":
Beagle :: Search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you're looking for.
f-spot :: Personal photo management.
Howl :: Cross-platform implementation of Zeroconf networking
Hal :: Hardware abstraction layer that makes hardware just work.
Conary :: A new way of looking at package management.
Oversite :: Web based systems management.
GNOME-Office :: Suite of Productivity Applications
Mono :: .NET implementation for Linux

Querying

There are two type of searches you can do, local and remote. A local search queries localling installed software. A remote search queries network repositories for available software. Here are some examples:

To see what version of firefox you have installed, you run the conary command with the "q" argument as well as the package name "firefox"

foresight$ conary q firefox
firefox 1.0-2-1


This shows that firefox 1.0 build 3 is installed.

To see what versions of firefox are available, you run the conary command with the "rq" argument as well as the package name "firefox"

foresight$ conary rq firefox
firefox 1.0-3-1


This shows that firefox 1.0 build 3 is available. In this example, there is a newer version, so it can be upgraded

Installing/Upgrading

Installing and upgrading is basically the same operation, conary with the argument "update". To upgrade or install firefox:

foresight$ conary update firefox
foresight$

Note: There will be no feedback on success, so if you just get returned to a prompt without an error it was successful. Some of these operations could take a while, so be assured if you don't see an error that things are working. Remember, these packages are being downloaded over the internet prior to installation.

Removing

To remove a package, conary with the argument "erase". To remove firefox:

foresight$ conary erase firefox
foresight$

Note: As with update, there will be no feedback on success.

For more information of how conary works, see the Conary Wiki. This is more of a developer reference, but has lots of good information.
Checking for out of date packages

There is a handy utility called "yuck" which compares your versions of packages to those available from the repository." Yuck can also update those packages (requires root), the default behavior is to simply display.

foresight$ yuck

This will display a list of available updates.

foresight# yuck --update --except kernel

This will update everything that is out of date with the exception of the kernel. You can specifiy a comma separated list of exceptions (no spaces). I would recommend always excluding the kernel and update that individually with "conary update --keep-existing kernel".

This will also make it install a new kernel and leave the old one... so you system is still bootable if things aren't right. From time to time you can remove the unused kernel with "conary erase kernel=[version]".

What's New in This Release:
Announcing Foresight Linux 0.9.8.3. This release includes a bunch of version bumps and bug fixes. Most significant updates are Firefox 2.0 and Flash 9. Also sporting Conary 1.1.10 and rAA 1.0.7 which we have started to re-brand for Foresight. It still has the rPath look, but is now labelled 'Foresight System Manager' and will soon have a full Foresight look and feel. Mono, F-Spot, Banshee and Beagle have all been updated. Our installer has seen some major changes. The most noticeable change is the updated artwork, however behind the scenes there are some significant improvements.