Blog Post

Article posted on Aug 2

Finnix 88.0 Released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 2, 2006, 1:03 pm

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the release of version 88.0 for the x86, PowerPC, and UML/Xen platforms.

Finnix 88.0 features Linux 2.6.17, a faster, more complete hardware autodetection routine, DMA mode enabled by default, Broadcom 43xx support, a DOS boot profile, and NTFS write support. Linux 2.6.17's new bcm43xx driver has been tested successfully on both G4 PowerBooks and x86 laptops with Broadcom cards, even with optional wpa_supplicant. FreeDOS ODIN, a 1.44MB image containing many DOS utilities may be booted by typing "dos" at the boot menu. The NTFS FUSE package, while present in Finnix 87.0, has been heavily tested, and seems to work rather well. Instead of mounting the normal way, simply type "ntfsmount /dev/hda1 /mnt/ntfsmount" to use the FUSE functionality.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_88.0_release_notes

P.S. Many thanks to the Oregon State University Open Source Lab for providing primary Finnix release mirroring, after still-unresolved problems with SourceForge's mirroring system. Thanks OSL!

P.P.S. This announcement is being made a day early, as I'm not confident I'll have internet access tomorrow evening, and I'd rather release a day early than a day late.

3 Comments
Posted in Announcements, Finnix

3 Responses to “Finnix 88.0 Released”

Ryan Finnie says:

August 2, 2006 at 2:03 pm

FYI, "NTFS-FUSE write support" does *not* refer to the new/experimental "NTFS-3G" patch, which was released too late to be tested with Finnix. Some limitations still exist for NTFS-FUSE, but it is generally extremely stable. NTFS-3G will be examined for post-88.0.

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Jeroen says:

August 29, 2006 at 9:59 am

Hey Ryan Finnie. I've found a bug/problem and wanted to contact you but couldn't find any contact information on your wiki, so I hope you read this comment.
I've tried to install Finnix to a harddrive since version 87.0. It goes wrong when typing "apt-get install linux-image-2.6-686" after answering "yes" to updating the grub boot menu. apt-get hangs and won't continue. When i press ctrl+c to abort, the error is something with dependancy's, about linux-686 depending on linux-image-2.6.11-2-686 but that package is not yet configured or something like that. Run the tutorial yourself and you'll find out.

My hardware is an VMware virtual machine (vmware server 1.01).

I don't know whether you have already been informed about this issue, but I hope you'll be able to fix the tutorial, because I think Finnix is also great for installing on harddrives.

With Kind Regards, Jeroen

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Julian Brookes says:

October 22, 2006 at 4:39 am

Just wondering if finnix-88 x86 is supposed to include any gcc.
It's on the package list but doesn't seem to be available
on the running system.

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