We get a lot of requests to know what’s been going on with Unity Linux lately. We haven’t been static, so let’s talk a bit about what we’ve been up to:

Unity Linux Bug/Issue Tracker

(URL To be announced)

We’ve been configuring workflows in our bugtracker for the past few weeks. It’s important that we make sure things flow correctly before we open them up for public consumption so that a bug/issue can take the correct escalation and repair path when being fixed.

For most of us, this is a new endeavor, as our previous distros may not have used a bug tracker. Just before our first public alpha, the bug tracker will go live.  We’ll post more on this soon.

We Have an Open Developers List

http://groups.google.com/group/ul-developers

Since Unity will be the core platform on which other distributions build, it makes sense that a developers mailing list should be setup for anyone wanting to get involved with Unity or derivative distributions.

Do you have plans for releasing your own distro based on Unity? If so, this mailing list is for you. All of our Unity Core developers are members so you’ll have their ear!

Updated to RPM 5

http://rpm5.org

We’ve been considering moving away from RPM 4.x ever since the beginning of Unity. The pros and cons were weighed and many developers debated back and forth on the subject. The decision was made to go to RPM 5 (you can see how they came to this conclusion here, and voted here).

This is a fundamental shift because many of us have PCLinuxOS roots, and PCLinuxOS has been RPM 4.x for many years. RPM5 brings new dependency resolution, speed enhancements, and a myriad of other features that the developers feel will propel Unity into the future with added efficiency and vigor.

In the near future, more will be written on why we chose RPM5.

The Smart Package Manager

http://labix.org/smart

Most of you have heard that we’ve switched away from Apt4RPM in order to embrace the Smart Package Manager. We gain speed improvements with Smart over Synaptic. Smart also allows derivative distributions to use channel priorities. This means that distributions can select to have their repository packages take precedent over other repositories. That in itself isn’t news, but there are unlimited priorities they can set. This allows them to pull from many different repositories and using the priority ranking, make sure nothing important is overwritten on their Unity Core during updates.

If you’d like to see more features that Smart brings to the table, please check here: http://labix.org/smart/features

SVN Has Migrated

http://svn.unity-linux.org (RSS)

We’ve moved SVN from sourceforge to our own SVN. We had to do this because of space requirements.

You can view what we’ve been up to on SVN by visiting our WebSVN site.

MkliveCD Project

URL to be announced

We’ve taken over most of the development for the Mklivecd project. We’re making updates to it that will allow the use of Splashy and tweaking the outdated detection scripts.

We’re also working on getting MkliveCD to play nice with the 2.6.29+ kernels. If this is feasible, we’ll take over the mklivecd project and contribute our alterations. If it isn’t, we may have to look toward alternatives.