Saturday 17 March 2018

Qt 5 on 32-bit x86

To all Adélie Linux users with 32-bit x86 processors,

During testing of LXQt on a Pentium III, I noticed a repeated "Illegal instruction" error being raised by all Qt 5 applications. This is due to Qt 5's build system overriding CFLAGS and building with SSE2 by default. This meant that most 32-bit x86 processors, including all 32-bit AMD, Cyrix, and UMC processors, and all Intel processors before the Pentium 4 "Willamette", could not run any software that utilises Qt 5 or QML.

While the majority of the onus for this issue lies with Qt 5, I want to deeply apologise for the oversight that allowed these packages to ship with Adélie Linux 1.0-ALPHA5. In the future, packages will be tested on a wider variety of systems before they are shipped to the public. Rest assured that we are working diligently behind the scenes to ensure a pleasant experience for users of all supported hardware.

The affected Qt 5 packages have been rebuilt and should no longer cause issues on any supported 32-bit x86 processor. If you encounter an "Illegal instruction" error while using the Adélie Linux distribution with any software, on any architecture, please file an issue on the BTS.

Thank you for your continued support of Adélie.

Best regards,
A. Wilcox
Project Lead

Thursday 15 March 2018

Adélie Linux 1.0-ALPHA5: PCMCIA cards now supported for installation on 32-bit x86

The Adélie Linux Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce that new ISOs have been uploaded for the 32-bit x86 (pmmx) architecture containing the pcmciautils package. This allows you to use PCMCIA cards during installation; for example, network interfaces, FireWire cards, and USB cards.

This change has been tested on IBM and Compaq laptops. More testing is welcome. You may also learn more about Adélie Linux on our Web site.

Saturday 10 March 2018

Adélie Linux 1.0-ALPHA5 is now available

The Adélie Linux Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Adélie Linux 1.0-ALPHA5 for the 32-bit and 64-bit x86 and PowerPC platforms. Learn more about Adélie Linux on our Web site.

An important milestone for this release is that all architectures have the same package set. You can now run Firefox, KDE Plasma 5, LXQt, Fluxbox, NFS, and more on any computer that Adélie supports.

Please note: This is an early test release of Adélie Linux. While every care has been taken to ensure the stability of the system, features and packages may be missing or may not function correctly. You should always back up your computer's data before you install a new Linux distribution. This release is being actively tested on multiple platforms. It is highly recommended that you use a dedicated computer or virtual machine to learn the environment until you are comfortable with using the Adélie Linux system and its package manager, apk.

Release notes

All architectures

  • Easy Kernel has been updated to 4.14.19-mc4.
  • Firefox has been updated to 52.6.0.
  • KDE Applications Suite has been updated to 17.12.2, including the latest enhancements and fixes.
  • KDE Plasma has been updated to 5.12 LTS. This release includes many exciting features and improvements, including reduced memory consumption, KDE Connect phone integration, and Vaults to keep your data private and secure.
  • Qt has been updated to 5.9.3.
  • SDDM is fully supported, allowing the use a graphical login screen where desired.
  • XSANE is once again available, providing an easy-to-use, performant scanning solution for all users of Adélie.

Intel x86 (32-bit)

  • Firefox and Otter are now officially supported on the 32-bit x86 architecture.
  • KDE and LXQt are now available on the 32-bit x86 architecture.
  • The ISO images can now be written to USB media, for use on computers without functional optical drives.

Intel x86_64

  • Easy Kernel 4.14.19-mc4 includes the latest KPTI security patches for Meltdown on Intel CPUs.

PowerPC (32-bit)

  • The full set of PowerPC-supported software is now available for 32-bit computers.
  • Experimental support for Old World Apple Power Macintosh G3 (Beige, AIO) systems, using the NetBSD ofwboot to chain-load GRUB.

PowerPC (64-bit)

  • Firefox is now available.