Thursday, April 09, 2009

Kwort Linux 2.4.1 released

I’m happy to announce that Kwort 2.4.1 final is here!


This version took a year to develop and provides a lot of changes from 2.4 release, including a new, more cleaned up than usual, base system, whole new tool chain, new configuration tools and lots of new things.


Good things in this new version:



  • Kwort’s init system: From 2.4, the init system has evolved keeping its simplicity but providing some new features.

  • Linux 2.6.28.7: A lot of hardware support was included since the kernel included in Kwort 2.4.

  • Kpkg: The new version of kpkg include several new features as the adoption of multi-mirror support.


  • Kwort User Manager: Re-written from scratch it Provides a simple way to create and remove users with a new interface.

  • Kwort Network Manager: Also re-written from scratch, allows you to configure your network (wired and wireless), as manage your dns and hostname system. It also allows you to switch wireless drivers.

  • Xfce: This new version brings a lot of changes under the hood making the desktop more extensible.

  • Audacious: This is the default music player since Kwort 2.4.1 allowing you to play your music in a very simple way.

  • Our new Google group (http://groups.google.com/group/kwort-linux): Ok, this has nothing to do with something included in the release, but it allows the developers behind Kwort to communicate between them and also with the users (who are what Kwort is all about).


As in every old version now comes the things that I look forward to improving:




  • Thunderbird: It’s kind of sad, but thunderbird isn’t yet full “xulrunnized”, so starting firefox+thundebird brings two copies of xulrunner up to memory, which as we all know, is kinda in the chubby side.

  • Audacious: Although audacious is pretty good doing its job, I think a jukebox is more needed these days, as people needs more information while playing their music. It is known that using gstreamer would take out some of the features audacious brings, but we have a full-featured media-handling components and using those frameworks would allow the Linux desktop to improve, communicate between applications and to remain simple.


People who I would like to thank:

Andreas Schipplock as always for making and maintaining the website, mirroring the Kwort iso image, and kind of playing a role of resources manager that allows me to develop easily Kwort.

Sebastian Reisse for writing the kpkg manpage, and for taking a lot of his time testing every release candidate, if it wasn’t for him, this release would come with several bugs.

The Aircable people for their donations as they helped me to buy some hardware I was needing for develop Kwort.

The mirror providers as usual, the people from PGHosting and Ricardo Brisighelli for the package mirror in the UNR.


Finally, but not less important a very big THANKS to Patrick Volkerding for Slackware Linux, the system Kwort is based on.

The Xfce developers (core and goodies) who made 4.6 a lot more simple to configure for distributions and provided help when needed.

The people who develop every project Kwort includes. I hope I didn’t forget anyone.


As usual, if you need support, help, or you just feel like talking about Kwort (or anything else), or you just want to meet the people who is behind Kwort, you can join us on IRC or our Google group:



  • IRC: irc://irc.oftc.net/Kwort

  • Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/kwort-linux




David B. Cortarello

1 comment:

Kiko said...

Great! Interesting project!