The first beta test snapshot toward rPath Linux 2 has been released.

rPath Linux 2 beta releases are available on the conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa label.

This release contains:

• VMware support integrated into the default kernel; open-vm-tools included in vmware group flavors.
• The group-appliance superclass is available as group-appliance=conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa to enable porting appliances from rPath Linux 1 to rPath Linux 2. (We recommend doing this in parallel testing branches until rPath Linux 2 is released.)
• SYSLINUX's EXTLINUX is the default bootloader, though grub continues to be available.
• Conary 2.0 is included, which provides several optimizations and improvements.
• Short group flavors (no more need to specify flavor elements that are really irrelevant to your appliance when you cook groups). This is enabled by the move to Conary 2.0
• Appliance Installer ISO images (fast, lower memory requirements, no package selection available) for 32-bit and 64-bit systems
• Installable ISO images (slower, larger memory requirements, package selection available) for 32-bit and 64-bit systems
• Appliance Installer ISO images for 32-bit and 64-bit Xen dom0

rPath Linux 2 will be an appliance operating system. In keeping with this focus, the installer ISO images for rPath Linux 2 Beta 1 are intended primarily for testing the installer, and secondarily as a platform for testing appliance development. This is not a general purpose operating system.

Migrating appliances from an rPath Linux 1 base to an rPath Linux 2 Beta base has been only minimally tested so far. Please test migrations, but assume that they may break in ways that make it inconvenient or even impractical to recover the test system. Most of our internal appliance testing so far has been of creating working systems based on rPath Linux 2 Beta, not of migrating.

Security update announcements will be made available for rPath Linux 2 Beta, but security updates for beta releases will be lower priority than security updates for generally available releases. Because security-announce@lists.rpath.com is intended to be very low-traffic, security update announcements will be sent only to the update-announce@lists.rpath.com mailing list. Group change summaries will be provided only on the wiki, not sent via email to the update-announce list. Note that most changes to the beta will not reference an advisory.

If you are not yet familiar with rPath Linux or the ground-breaking Conary technology, we recommend that you use our supported and maintained rPath Linux 1 product to become familiar with both technologies before experiencing this beta test snapshot.