rPath Linux is a freely-available Linux operating system distribution, built with the Conary distributed software management system, supported and maintained by rPath, Inc. The rPath Linux distribution contains high-quality, up-to-date software, and is the base development platform for creating software appliances and purpose-built distributions using rBuilder Online.

Hardware Requirements

• Processor:
  • x86: i686-class processor (i586 and earlier are not supported)
  • x86_64: all AMD64 and EM64T processors are supported
• Hardware platform:
  • As supported by the Linux kernel 2.6.15.3
• Memory:
  • Installation from CD/DVD images requires 256 MB RAM.
  • The graphical installation process will run faster with 512 MB.
  • Run-time memory requirements depend entirely on the software being run.
• Disk Space
  • Installing the default choices will use approximately 4.5GB of disk space.
  • The smallest installation available from the rPath Linux CD/DVD images is available only using a text-mode installation and requires less than 300 MB of disk space.
  • A full installation of all the software included on the CD/DVD images requires approximately 6GB of disk space.

Major Contents

• Conary 1.0.1
• Linux kernel 2.6.15.3
• GCC 3.4.4
• Glibc 2.3.6
• Xorg-X11 6.8.2
• GNOME 2.12
• KDE 3.4.2

Updates

The conary updateall command will update all the software on your system managed by Conary. The conary update group-os command will update all the software on your system that is part of rPath Linux.

rPath Linux 1 updates will be publicly available until six months after rPath Linux 2 has been released. After that time, updates will be made available on a subscription basis. For more information on rPath Linux subscriptions, contact rPath at +1 919 851 3984 or email info@rpath.com

Additional Software

In order to reduce the size and download time for normal use, the rPath Linux CD/DVD images do not contain all the software contained in rPath Linux; in particular, they do not contain many of the internet server packages (such as dovecot, the IMAP server in rPath Linux), and they also do not contain some packages that are alternatives to packages contained on the CD/DVD images (such as thunderbird, an alternative to the evolution mail client included on the CD/DVD images). These packages are excluded from the CD/DVD images only because of frequency of use, and they are supported and maintained on the same basis as the packages that are included on the CD/DVD images.

All software packages in the conary.rpath.com repository on the conary.rpath.com@rpl:1 label are part of the rPath Linux operating system. The repository is the canonical definition of the operating system.

Further software is available from the rPath Linux contributed software repository. This repository is maintained and supported only on an ad-hoc basis, by a community of developers. The contributed software repository is part of the default search path for packages; if you wish to install only supported and maintained software, you should edit your /etc/conaryrc file and remove the contrib.rpath.org@rpl:1 and contrib.rpath.org@rpl:devel items from the installLabelPath line.

Contacting rPath

rPath offers software appliance versions of rBuilder that may be deployed at your site, as well as support and maintenance for rPath Linux. For more information, contact rPath at +1 919 851 3984 or email info@rpath.com.

Please visit http://bugs.rpath.com/ to report bugs and make enhancement requests.

Conary and rPath Linux developers frequent the #conary channel on the freenode IRC network.

See http://lists.rpath.com/mailman/listinfo for mailing lists where rPath Linux and Conary are discussed.

Technical information about Conary and rPath Linux is kept at http://wiki.conary.com/

Source Code

The source code for each package can be accessed via Conary's cvc command. More information on the cvc command is available in the cvc man page.

Creating Software Appliances

Visit rBuilder Online to create software appliances and purpose-built distributions based on rPath Linux. Contact rPath at +1 919 851 3984 or email info@rpath.com for information on deploying rBuilder at your site.

Known Limitations

Text-mode HTTP installs do not work, and reiserfs installation does not work correctly except when installed on LVM volumes.

Availability

CD and DVD ISO images are available for download. You can download this release from ftp://download.rpath.com/linux/1/1.0/ , from rBuilder Online's rPath Linux project page, or from FTP mirrors as they update; see http://wiki.conary.com/MirrorSites

Copyright 2006 rPath, Inc.

rPath, rPath Linux, Conary, and rBuilder are trademarks of rPath, Inc.