Piren 8.2 released!
It is time for another Piren update, trying to improve the live Media Centre distribution more and more on each release.
While the main software base seems to be the same, there are several new features that are giving this version a big step forward.
As the previous release, Piren 8.2 is based upon Debian Etch R2 and uses only Debian Etch related packages. Most of the system comes from the official Debian repositories, but there are others for some of the key packages, like Freevo or MPlayer.
However Piren core features are changed a lot, resulting in a very interesting behavior for your customized version. Here is a short list of these improvements:
- Freevo resolution is changed on startup to reflect X.Org settings.
- Freevo features and settings are updated on startup, based on installed packages found in the live media.
- Automatic Freevo startup is configured also if there are DSL packages to install, while guessed settings can still be replaced by files inside provided DSLs.
- If X.Org is not installed or cannot be automatically configured, Piren tries to start Freevo using framebuffer.
- Instead of checking specifically for "ratpoison", every Debian window-manager is supported for automatic Freevo startup.
- Added piren-remaster to the default live filesystem, without the need to install it with the (still) provided .deb package.
- The very will know Shorewall firewall is available within the default package base.
- Some other packages were added to improve user experience.
Moreover, the piren-remaster tool gained several interesting features:
- Better appliance generation, resulting in a shorter image.
- Piren installation is finally available: you can use piren-remaster to place Piren on your USB key or even to hard-disk.
- If you run another Debian distribution (or Debian based, like Ubuntu), then you can generate a deb package to install Piren from your main environment.
Documentation found on Piren web-site is already updated to let you enjoy these improvements.
This update wants to give even more freedom for Piren users while offering more features within the default software base. However, project main target are still the same as before so you can easily shrink the distribution making an appliances: doing so, without the need to remove any installed package, Piren will be ready to fit within a 128 Mb storage media.
As usual, Piren can be customized very easily using piren-remaster, a small command-line tool provided along with the distribution that lets you make personal releases with a different software collection or settings. It gives you the freedom to expand Piren capabilities or even to remove some features to generate your own appliance.
Please refer to the download page to get your copy right now!