Sidux
Encyclopedia
aptosid is a desktop-oriented operating system
based on the "unstable" branch of Debian
, which uses the codename Sid. It was known as sidux until September 2010. The distribution consists of a Live CD
(bootable CD-ROM) for the x86 architecture installable to a hard drive through a graphical installer. The goal of the distribution is to provide a stable, easy-to-use and cutting-edge free and open source
operating system.
sidux was maintained by a team of developers including former Kanotix
developer Stefan Lippers-Hollmann (slh). Initial administration was managed by The sidux Foundation, Inc. located in the United States
. The Berlin, Germany based non-profit organization sidux e.V. was administering and supporting the project.
Due to disagreement between sidux e.V. and the sidux developers, all development of sidux was halted in summer 2010 until September 2010. The project was renamed as aptosid, announced on September 11, 2010. aptosid is a direct upgrade from sidux. The first time a user runs an apt-get dist-upgrade in sidux, they are asked if they want their repositories changed to the new aptosid site and the system will be seamlessly upgraded to aptosid.
One of aptosid's and sidux's more notable features, unlike most other Linux distributions, they utilize a true 'rolling-release-cycle'
, and thus continue to remain current. Users can update all of the system's packages via the command 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. Through this model, there should not, in theory, ever be a need to overwrite a aptosid or sidux system by installing an entirely new version. Other Linux distributions that use the rolling release model include Arch Linux
and Gentoo
.
or Live DVD, booting to a graphical desktop without installation. On the Live CD a USB installer is provided to create a Live USB
system, but the Live USB
can be created easily from the Live CD
ISO file.
can be started directly from live mode, without rebooting. aptosid and sidux can be installed to USB-connected hard disks and USB flash drive
s, as well as to internal hard disks.
Warnings regarding upgrades are posted on the main website and in the Upgrade Warnings section of the forum.
To mention a few: KDE
/ Xfce
desktop, OpenOffice.org
, iceweasel
, amarok, digikam
, gparted
, gwenview
, k3b
, kaffeine
, koffice
, krita
, krusader
, sane
, vdr
, virtualbox
, wireless-tools
, xawtv
, yakuake
, ...
The complete package list is available for each release in the project download directory, named.manifest.
Since 2008-02 also an ~420 MB large Xfce variant is available.
DVD Versions at the end of a year contain more programs and preinstalled languages.
Some to be named here:
- who destructively experiments with his sister Hannah’s toys.) and the common use of -x for Unix
derivatives. The part apto of the new name aptosid derives from the latin word apto from aptus which means to fit, to adapt, to adjust or make ready. Another interpretation comes from the greek phrase απ'το sid (ap'to sid) that means (coming) from sid. The names of the releases are taken from the Greek mythology
.
When typed or written, sidux and aptosid are always presented in lower-case letters.
with the donation of US$350.
The second sidux Live CD was released on the 2007-05-28, codenamed sidux-2007-02 "Τάρταρος"(tartaros). During the linuxtag 2007 (an open source fair in Berlin) a special linuxtag-edition was distributed at the shared booth of KDE e.V. and sidux. On the 2007-05-31 sidux e.V. (foundation) has been officially registered with the German authorities. On 2007-11-15 sidux e.V. was accepted as non-profit organization
by German law, retroactively as of 2007-04-01.
as defined by the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)
. To aid proof of compliance, a monolithic tarball containing the source for all packages used in the release is provided alongside the Live CD ISOs.
Access to non-free software such as codecs, plugins and wlan firmware can be enabled by configuring contrib and non-free Debian repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list.d
In keeping with the evolutionary nature of the "unstable" Debian branch, aptosid and sidux releases do not provide an upgrade path from previous release versions. Rather, once they are installed, incremental updates are performed via regular "dist-upgrades". The idea of a "release" is instead to improve Live CD hardware support, performance, flexibility and reliability, built from the current debian unstable repository.
computer architecture
and the amd64 computer architecture
Reviews
Other
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
based on the "unstable" branch of Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
, which uses the codename Sid. It was known as sidux until September 2010. The distribution consists of a Live CD
Live CD
A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...
(bootable CD-ROM) for the x86 architecture installable to a hard drive through a graphical installer. The goal of the distribution is to provide a stable, easy-to-use and cutting-edge free and open source
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
operating system.
sidux was maintained by a team of developers including former Kanotix
Kanotix
Kanotix, also referred to as KANOTIX, is an operating system Live CD based on Debian, with advanced hardware detection. It can run from an optical disc drive or other media i.e. USB-stick without using a hard disk drive....
developer Stefan Lippers-Hollmann (slh). Initial administration was managed by The sidux Foundation, Inc. located in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The Berlin, Germany based non-profit organization sidux e.V. was administering and supporting the project.
Due to disagreement between sidux e.V. and the sidux developers, all development of sidux was halted in summer 2010 until September 2010. The project was renamed as aptosid, announced on September 11, 2010. aptosid is a direct upgrade from sidux. The first time a user runs an apt-get dist-upgrade in sidux, they are asked if they want their repositories changed to the new aptosid site and the system will be seamlessly upgraded to aptosid.
Features
aptosid and sidux are based on Debian's most modern branch, sid. They include a manual and a collection of tools and scripts to make desktop administration easier.One of aptosid's and sidux's more notable features, unlike most other Linux distributions, they utilize a true 'rolling-release-cycle'
Rolling release
In software development, a rolling release development model refers to a continuously developing software system; this is opposed to a standard release development model which uses software versions that must be reinstalled over the previous version...
, and thus continue to remain current. Users can update all of the system's packages via the command 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. Through this model, there should not, in theory, ever be a need to overwrite a aptosid or sidux system by installing an entirely new version. Other Linux distributions that use the rolling release model include Arch Linux
Arch Linux
Arch Linux is an independently developed, Linux-based operating system for i686 and x86-64 computers. It is composed predominantly of free and open source software, and supports community involvement....
and Gentoo
Gentoo Linux
Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...
.
Live media
Each release comes as a Live CDLive CD
A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...
or Live DVD, booting to a graphical desktop without installation. On the Live CD a USB installer is provided to create a Live USB
Live USB
A live USB is a USB flash drive or a USB external hard disk drive containing a full operating system that can be booted. Live USBs are closely related to live CDs, but sometimes have the ability to persistently save settings and permanently install software packages back onto the USB device...
system, but the Live USB
Live USB
A live USB is a USB flash drive or a USB external hard disk drive containing a full operating system that can be booted. Live USBs are closely related to live CDs, but sometimes have the ability to persistently save settings and permanently install software packages back onto the USB device...
can be created easily from the Live CD
Live CD
A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...
ISO file.
Installer
The graphical installationInstallation (computer programs)
Installation of a program is the act of putting the program onto a computer system so that it can be executed....
can be started directly from live mode, without rebooting. aptosid and sidux can be installed to USB-connected hard disks and USB flash drive
USB flash drive
A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...
s, as well as to internal hard disks.
Updates
Once aptosid or sidux is installed, it can be kept up-to-date with updates from the Debian Sid and aptosid repositories. Updates are typically run from command line using apt-get. Because post and pre install scripts in the Debian packages may restart your display manager during updates and cause conflicts with running userspace applications, it is recommended that users upgrade their system outside of X (i.e. while NOT running the 'GUI'). This is achieved by applying all updates at 'run-level 3'.Warnings regarding upgrades are posted on the main website and in the Upgrade Warnings section of the forum.
Support
- The IRC channel #aptosid at irc.oftc.net, port 6667 gives fastest response.
- The forum is also a good place for questions and talks, however the reaction time is longer, but it is a good source for searches.
Multilingual
The default language of aptosid releases is English, however German, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Greek, English (GB), French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (BR and PT), Romanian, Russian and Spanish localisations (i18n support) are also provided within the DVD, selectable at boot prompt.Packages
aptosid comes with a selection of programs, covering system rescue and web surfing.To mention a few: KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
/ Xfce
Xfce
Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris, and BSD – though recent compatibility issues have arisen with regard to BSD Unix platforms...
desktop, OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
, iceweasel
Iceweasel
In 2006, a branding issue developed when Mike Connor, representing the Mozilla Corporation, requested that the Debian Project comply with Mozilla standards for use of the Thunderbird trademark when redistributing the Thunderbird software...
, amarok, digikam
DigiKam
digiKam is an image organizer and editor using KDE Platform. It runs on most known desktop environments and window managers if the required libraries are installed. It supports all major image file formats, and can organize collections of photographs in directory-based albums, or dynamic albums by...
, gparted
GParted
GParted is a GTK+ front-end to GNU Parted and the official GNOME Partition Editor application.It is used for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them...
, gwenview
Gwenview
Gwenview is an image viewer for the KDE Software Compilation desktop environment. The current maintainer is Aurélien Gâteau. The word "Gwen" means "white" in the Breton language and is commonly used as a first name....
, k3b
K3b
K3b is a CD and DVD authoring application by KDE for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX...
, kaffeine
Kaffeine
Kaffeine is a media player for Unix-like operating systems running KDE.By default it uses xine-lib media framework but also supports GStreamer. It also supports the use of MPlayer project's binary codecs for proprietary formats...
, koffice
KOffice
Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones...
, krita
Krita
Krita is the digital painting and illustration software included based on the KDE Platform and Calligra Suite libraries. Designed as a digital painting and illustration suite, Krita is free software and distributed under GNU General Public License...
, krusader
Krusader
Krusader is an advanced orthodox file manager for KDE and other desktops in the *nix world, similar to GNOME Commander or Midnight Commander , or Total Commander...
, sane
Scanner Access Now Easy
Scanner Access Now Easy is an application programming interface that provides standardized access to any raster image scanner hardware ....
, vdr
Video Disk Recorder
VDR is an open source application for Linux designed to allow any computer to function as a digital video recorder, in order to record and replay TV programming using the computer's hard drive. The computer needs to be equipped with a digital TV tuner card. VDR can also operate as an mp3 player...
, virtualbox
VirtualBox
Oracle VM VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, originally created by software company Innotek GmbH, purchased by Sun Microsystems, and now developed by Oracle Corporation as part of its family of virtualization products...
, wireless-tools
Wireless tools for Linux
Wireless tools for Linux is a package of Linux commands intended to support and facilitate the configuration of wireless devices using the Linux Wireless Extension...
, xawtv
Xawtv
xawtv is a program that allows a person to watch and record television through a PC with either a TV tuner or a Satellite receiver card DVB-S. xawtv works on Unix-like operating systems, and is licensed under the GPL....
, yakuake
YaKuake
Yakuake is a KDE terminal emulator. Its design was inspired from consoles in computer games such as Quake which slide down from the top of the screen when a key is pressed, and slide back up when the key is pressed again....
, ...
The complete package list is available for each release in the project download directory, named
Releases
The releases were usually available in 4 CD versions, however since release 2007-04.5 a fully equipped DVD and two light CDs will be offered [ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/project/aptosid/release here].Since 2008-02 also an ~420 MB large Xfce variant is available.
DVD Versions at the end of a year contain more programs and preinstalled languages.
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Red | Release no longer supported |
| Green | Release still supported |
| Purple | Test release |
| Blue | Future release |
| Release | Name | Date | Release notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-01 | chaos Chaos (mythology) Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth.... "Χάος" |
2007-02-22 | sidux 2007-01 release |
| 2007-02 | tartaros Tartarus In classic mythology, below Uranus , Gaia , and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld. In the Gorgias, Plato In classic mythology, below Uranus (sky), Gaia (earth), and Pontus... "Τάρταρος" |
2007-05-28 | sidux 2007-02 |
| 2007-03 | gaia Gaia (mythology) Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus , the sea-gods from her union with Pontus , the Giants from her mating with Tartarus and mortal creatures were sprung or born... "Γαια" |
2007-08-14 | sidux 2007-03.1 hotfix |
| 2007-04 | eros "Ερως" | 2007-11-21 | sidux 2007-04 |
| 2007-04.5 | eros "Ερως" (Christmas-Special) | 2007-12-26 | sidux 2007-04.5 christmas special (archive.org copy) |
| 2007-04.5 DVD | eros "Ερως" (DVD) | 2007-12-30 | sidux DVD released (archive.org copy) |
| 2008-01 | nyx "Νυξ" | 2008-04-12 | sidux 2008-01 |
| 2008-02 | erebos Erebus In Greek mythology, Erebus , also Erebos , was often conceived as a primordial deity, representing the personification of darkness; for instance, Hesiod's Theogony places him as the first five beings to come into existence from Chaos... "Ερεβος" |
2008-06-25 | sidux 2008-02 |
| 2008-03 | ourea Ourea In Greek mythology, the ourea were progeny of Gaia, members of the Protogenoi, who were the first-born elemental gods and goddesses, children of Gaia:And she brought forth long hills, graceful haunts... "Ωυρεα" |
2008-09-22 | sidux 2008-03 |
| 2008-04 | pontos Pontus (mythology) In Greek mythology, Pontus or Pontos was an ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god, one of the protogenoi, the "first-born". Pontus was the son of Gaia and according to the Greek poet Hesiod brought forth without coupling... "Ποντος" |
2008-12-31 | sidux 2008-04 |
| 2009-01 | ouranos "Οὐρανος" | 2009-02-14 | sidux 2009-01 |
| 2009-02 | aether Aether (mythology) Aether , in Greek mythology, is one of the Protogenoi, the first-born elementals. He is the personification of the upper sky, space, and heaven, and is the elemental god of the "Bright, Glowing, Upper Air." He is the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air that mortals... "Άιθηρ" |
2009-07-15 | sidux 2009-02 |
| 2009-03 | momos Momus Momus or Momos was in Greek mythology the god of satire, mockery, censure, writers, poets; a spirit of evil-spirited blame and unfair criticism. His name is related to , meaning 'blame' or 'censure'. He is depicted in classical art as lifting a mask from his face.-In classical literature:Hesiod... "Μώμος" |
2009-11-11 | sidux 2009-03 |
| 2009-04 | moros Moros In Greek mythology, Moros is the personification of impending doom, who drives mortals to their deadly fate. He is one of the offspring of Nyx , who had conceived him without male intervention, and brother of the Moirae .... "Μόρος" |
2009-12-31 | sidux 2009-04 |
| 2010-01 | Hypnos Hypnos In Greek mythology, Hypnos was the personification of sleep; the Roman equivalent was known as Somnus. His twin was Thánatos ; their mother was the primordial goddess Nyx . His palace was a dark cave where the sun never shines. At the entrance were a number of poppies and other hypnogogic plants... "Ύπνος" |
2010-06-13 | sidux 2010-01 |
| 2010-02 | Keres Keres (mythology) In Greek mythology, the Keres were female death-spirits. The Keres were daughters of Nyx, and as such the sisters of Fate , Doom , Death and Sleep , Strife , Old Age , Divine Retribution , Charon, and other personifications... "Κῆρες" |
2010-09-14 | aptosid 2010-02 |
| 2010-03 | Apate Apate Apate was the daughter of Nyx in Greek mythology. She was the personification of deceit, and was one of the evil spirits released from Pandora's box. Her Roman equivalent was Fraus, which is where the word 'fraud' originated... "Ἀπάτη" |
2010-12-26 | aptosid 2010-03 |
| 2011-01 | Geras Geras In Greek mythology, Geras was the god of old age. It was considered a virtue whereby the more gēras a man acquired, the more kleos and arete he was considered to have. According to Hesiod, Gēras was a son of Nyx. Hyginus adds that his father was Erebus. He was depicted as a tiny shriveled-up old... "Γῆρας" |
2011-02-06 | aptosid 2011-01 |
| 2011-02 | Imera Imera I Imera is a newspaper that is based in Patras in the Achaea prefecture in Greece. Its editor in-chief is Theodoros Kamperos.-References:... "Ἡμέρα" |
2011-07-13 | aptosid 2011-02 |
Derivatives
Like many other Linux distributions, aptosid has spinoffs, mainly versions of different languages.Some to be named here:
- celtux - Irish, Irish/Gaeilge localization
- Deb-on-Air - French localization
- myrinix - Digital Home Edition
- lxde-sid-lite - resources saving graphical system, for use in netbooks, like eeepc
Name
The part sid of the distribution name is derived from Debian Sid (Named after the Sid Phillips character in Toy StoryToy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
- who destructively experiments with his sister Hannah’s toys.) and the common use of -x for Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
derivatives. The part apto of the new name aptosid derives from the latin word apto from aptus which means to fit, to adapt, to adjust or make ready. Another interpretation comes from the greek phrase απ'το sid (ap'to sid) that means (coming) from sid. The names of the releases are taken from the Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
.
When typed or written, sidux and aptosid are always presented in lower-case letters.
History
The sidux project appeared on 2006-11-24, with the goal of providing a hard disk installable Debian Sid-based Live CD distribution. The first sidux preview appeared on the 2007-01-24 with the finished release appearing on 2007-02-22, codenamed 2007-01 “Χάος"(chaos). In February 2007 sidux was awarded by DistroWatchDistroWatch
DistroWatch is a website which provides news, popularity rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems such as OpenSolaris, MINIX and BSD. It now contains information on several hundred distributions...
with the donation of US$350.
The second sidux Live CD was released on the 2007-05-28, codenamed sidux-2007-02 "Τάρταρος"(tartaros). During the linuxtag 2007 (an open source fair in Berlin) a special linuxtag-edition was distributed at the shared booth of KDE e.V. and sidux. On the 2007-05-31 sidux e.V. (foundation) has been officially registered with the German authorities. On 2007-11-15 sidux e.V. was accepted as non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
by German law, retroactively as of 2007-04-01.
Software
aptosid and sidux releases contain only free softwareFree software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
as defined by the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian...
. To aid proof of compliance, a monolithic tarball containing the source for all packages used in the release is provided alongside the Live CD ISOs.
Access to non-free software such as codecs, plugins and wlan firmware can be enabled by configuring contrib and non-free Debian repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list.d
In keeping with the evolutionary nature of the "unstable" Debian branch, aptosid and sidux releases do not provide an upgrade path from previous release versions. Rather, once they are installed, incremental updates are performed via regular "dist-upgrades". The idea of a "release" is instead to improve Live CD hardware support, performance, flexibility and reliability, built from the current debian unstable repository.
System recommendations
aptosid is officially supported for the i686P6 (microarchitecture)
The P6 microarchitecture is the sixth generation Intel x86 microarchitecture, implemented by the Pentium Pro microprocessor that was introduced in November 1995. It is sometimes referred to as i686. It was succeeded by the NetBurst microarchitecture in 2000, but eventually revived in the Pentium M...
computer architecture
Computer architecture
In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....
and the amd64 computer architecture
Computer architecture
In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....
sidux e.V.
For permanent support and financing - on April 1, 2007 the non-profit association "sidux e.V.", seated in Berlin, Germany, was founded. Its constitution and goals go beyond the aims of the support and spreading of sidux. The cooperation between sidux e.V. and the sidux developers ended in summer 2010 due to disagreement.External links
Articles- Interview with Chris Hildebrandt, the sidux project, DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 245, 24 March 2008
- Kanotix seeks stability, sidux follows unstable, Posted December 6, 2006 by ris, Article on lwn.net
Reviews
- Sidux 2009-02 (KDE) By Jim Lynch (July 16, 2009) desktoplinuxreviews.com
- Sidux grows on you, By Susan Linton, Linux.com (Oct. 8, 2008)
- Sidux, a Great Alternative to Ubuntu, Part 2, LinuxPlanet.com part 2/2 (July 10, 2008)
- Sidux, a Great Alternative to Ubuntu, By Carla Schroder LinuxPlanet.com part 1/2 (July 3, 2008)
- Sidux: A live CD for Debian unstable, By Preston St. Pierre, Linux.com (Mar. 7,2008)
- Sidux 2007-03.1 "Gaia": A closer look, by eco2geek, tuxmachines.org (Aug. 23, 2007)
Other