Mandriva (formerly Mandrake Linux) is an RPM-based Linux distribution. It is one of the “founding” Linux distributions, and has some of the best administrative tools. Mandriva S.A., the company behind the distribution, is just one of a handful of publicly-traded Open Source firms. Mandriva publishes three editions for the desktop: Mandriva One – This is a Live CD edition that [...]

Linpus is a Linux distribution developed and supported by Linpus Technologies, Inc., a company based in Taipei, Taiwan. It is very popular in Asia, with a significant market share in Taiwan and China. [warning]Linpus Linux 9.x is no longer available for download. See this forum post for details.[/warning]

NuFW.Live is an authenticating firewall that is based on Knoppix. “It was developed as a means of testing NuFW. NuFW, an enterprise grade firewall that performs an authentication of every single connection passing through the IP filter.”

KDE 4 is seen by many to be the next big step on the free software desktop, while others think releasing 4.0 in its current condition was misleading and a mistake. Either way, it’s an innovative release and inline with Fedora’s goal of providing the latest and greatest free software it is set to be the default KDE environment in [...]

Android is a Linux-based operating system for mobile platforms developed and maintained principally by Google. It now powers a number of smartphones currently in the market including Google’s own Nexus One, and several handsets from Motorola, Acer and other members of the Open Handset Alliance. The platform was announced to much fanfare in late 2007. Here’s a video introducing the [...]

SystemRescueCd is a Linux distro designed for repairing your system and your data after a crash. It ships with dozens of software packages used to carry out admin tasks on PC, and it’s usable on x86, SPARC, and PowerPC (Mac) architectures.

FreeNAS is a m0n0Wall-based, Network Attached Storage (NAS) server designed mostly for embedded systems, but may be installed on generic PCs or USB key. It is developed by Olivier Cochard-Labbé and released under the BSD license.

Parted Magic is a Linux-based distro designed mainly for disk partitioning, using programs like VisParted, while featuring other useful programs (e.g. Partition Image, TestDisk, fdisk, sfdisk, dd, ddrescue, etc.) and an excellent set of documentation to benefit the user. An extensive collection of fileystem tools are also included.

BackTrack is a Slackware-based Linux live CD security distro focused on penetration testing. Designed to be run from CD, it provides ready access to a wide range of security and penetration testing tools.

“trixbox®, spelled with a lowercase ‘t’, is a line of Asterisk®-based IP-PBX products designed to meet the needs of companies from 2 to 500 employees. trixbox comes in two flavors: the open-source community edition and a hybrid-hosted, commercially-proven solution.” Like other distros in its category, trixbox is a Linux distro with Asterisk® pre-installed, and that makes it easy for anyone [...]

Vyatta is an enterprise-class, Linux-based firewall and routing solution. It is developed and maintained by a company of the same name. The company has been marketing its product as the open source answer to Cisco’s routing platform.

Gibraltar was founded as an open source project in 1999 by Dr. Rene Mayrhofer. Since that time, Gibraltar has been used by over 5.000 companies, organizations, public facilities, private users, schools and universities. Through permanent product development and significant participation of the open source community, Gibraltar has been evolved to one of the leading security products. Based on hardened Debian [...]

Lunar is a source based Linux distribution developed by a very talented team of programmers from all over the world, working together to extend the Linux technology into better-tailored and more optimized software for the end user. Lunar uses and builds upon the Linux kernel, and offers a unique package management system which builds each software package, or module, from [...]

“Devil-Linux is a distribution which boots and runs completely from CDROM. The configuration can be saved to a floppy diskette or a USB pen drive. Devil Linux was originally intended to be a dedicated firewall/router but now Devil-Linux can also be used as a server for many applications. Attaching an optional hard drive is easy, and many network services are [...]

Astaro Security Gateway Home Edition is a Linux-based distro for protecting computer networks. It is one of the very first security products based on Linux, and “integrates complete Network, Web and Mail Security through an intuitive browser-based user interface.”

IPCop is a complete Linux distribution designed for protecting home and SOHO (Small Office Home Office) networks. It is completely free and Open Source, and easily extendable with addons.