History of the release

After the 18C3 (18th Chaos Comunication Congress) the ROCK Linux developers agreed on a major redesign of many parts of the ROCK Linux build system. With this changes modifing many aspects of the build process is possible for a target compilation.

Uniting the ROCK Linux and Desktop ROCK Linux package database has the advantages of: eliminating waste of developer time due to package and security updates needed to be performed in both trees, eliminating waste of developer time due to creating the same basic technology for new gcc/glibc environments, keeping the architecture-ports in sync and fixing more bugs because more eyes read the source. In one sentence: We will be able to achieve more in shorter time ;-)

Most of the enhanced dRock packages got merged into ROCK Linux 1.7 - and the Desktop target configuration got started.

The dRock (2.0.0) release is a special ROCK Linux configuration (sure under the terms of the GPL) - where pre-build binaries (at least x86, SPARC-v9 and PowerPC) and commercial support will be available from the author.

There are many new packages (i.e. the high quality font Bitstream Vera, DVD tools, the 3D modeller Blender, the SCM Subversion, and may more ...) and huge package version updates (i.e. KDE-3.1, GNOME-2.0, Apache-2.0, ...). At least GCC-3.2.2, GlibC-2.3.1 will be used, in combination with prelink support to reduce C++ applications startup time.

How do I install dRock?

Generic dRock installation instructions
You need a 2.4.x kernel (with devfs enabled). The gcc and glibc shouldn't matter that much - since the new auto-build system builds an pseudo cross compiler to bootrap the packages.

The errata of 2.0.0 (final)

- Not yet released

2.0.0-beta6 release

- none yet

2.0.0-beta5 release

- none yet

2.0.0-beta3 release

- the official binary ISO has some unresolved symbols in the default kernel

2.0.0-beta4 release

- since the nss_db is linked against bdb33 all applications linked against another version crash on startup when nss_db is installed and used

2.0.0-beta3 release

- the official binary ISO has some unresolved symbols in the default kernel

2.0.0-beta2 release

- all the bugs also present in the beta3 release ...

2.0.0-beta release

- in the binary release some filse are missing due to the various rebuilds
- all the bugs also present in the beta2 release ...

2.0.0-alpha release

- the installer gets crazy if no /dev/discs is present
- no keyboard repeat rate/delay configuration
- no gdm group/user and the gdm state is not owned by those missing users
- not all ACPI support is turned on - so no ACPI power-off is available
- the xfree86 stone module has some typos
- the kde i18n packages have all the content also copied into the ROCK Linux packages doc dir due to the "createdocs" automation
- the network config produces an error for gateway less configs
- usbfs support not included in default kernel
- the several window-managers do not show up in gdm
- alsa installs a not ROCK-like init file
- powerpc configs and tools missing / unfunctional
- hardware auto detection cleanups e.g. ALSA
- mac daemons .init files
- the installer doesn't show the mountpoints (was broken gawk)
- PnP ISA hwscan support
- the ghostscipt package misses the fonts
- grub stone config does not work when /boot is an own partition
- gphoto2 is missing
- the ide-scsi was not enabled - native IDE cd writing still blurry
- gasgui needs some stabilization, e.g. missing files should warned instead of end-less loop, possibilty for the user to cancel extraction, network ready, cache-file instead of the many (50 MB) files on the disk (speedup less space waste) ...
- all the bugs also present in the beta release ...

2.0.0 Technology Preview2 (aka Night Vision)

- possibly many incl. broken packages due to unfinished package configurations
- font problems
- versioned kernel symbols problems
- all the bugs also present in the alpha release ...