NEWS: Finnix 91.0 Released

First I will post the official release announcement, then I will introduce and explain Finnix "the LiveCD for system administrators" to those who don't know what it is, and in the end, some screenshots.

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the release of version 91.0 for the x86/AMD64, PowerPC, and UML/Xen platforms.
Finnix 91.0 includes a new Linux kernel (2.6.24), automatic 32-bit/64-bit detection on the x86 platform, stackable RAID/LUKS/LVM detection and setup, and several bug fixes.

Automatic 32-bit/64-bit detection (x86)

If you press “enter” at the boot screen of Finnix 91.0 x86, the boot loader will now detect if you have a 64-bit capable CPU, and will load the appropriate kernel. You can still force 32-bit or 64-bit by entering the “finnix” or “finnix64″ boot profiles. Note that this is for the x86 Finnix CD only; PowerPC G5 users will still have to enter the “finnix64″ boot profile manually, as the yaboot boot loader does not have this capability.

Stackable RAID/LUKS/LVM

While RAID, LUKS (encryption) and LVM detection have been in Finnix for awhile now, they were loaded in a certain order, and some configurations were not detected as a result. With Finnix 91.0, most configurations should be detected. For example, an encrypted LVM set on top of two RAID disks should be set up automatically.

Bug fixes

While not a “major new feature”, several bug fixes were made for Finnix 91.0, including LVM/LUKS fixes, and multiple-level /dev block device detection corrections.

• Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
• Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
• Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_91.0_release_notes

Finnix is based on Debian, but the name Finnix is no coincidently similar to Knoppix. Finnix has borrowed scripts from Knoppix which are after modified and are used for autodetection. It (Finnix) includes the following handy utilities LVM2, cryptsetup, cdpr, iftop, irssi, OTP calculator, VLAN tools, and robotfindskitten.

The good thing about Finnix is that can be run in only 192MB. Not all Live CD's run in 192MB. This is very good, considered that Finnix is aimed to be system rescue and administration CD.

The text editors found in Finnix are nvi as default editor, which is a small implementation of vi/vim. Also available are zile, nano, joe.

pic 1, pic 2: Finnix in VirtualBox

Finnix can be run on a Mac based on Intel processor also. This is fully supported and explained how here: Intel Macs. Also a lot of cheatcodes are available here. Cheatcodes are the startup options specified at the boot: prompt. One boot profile is selected, and after, multiple boot options can be appended by the user.

To conclude, Finnix is a nice non-general-purpose distro, aimed towards admins, which lacks bigger community and some HowTos and tricks, but for the purpouse for which is made, it does the job.