First Look At Foresight Linux @ Mad Penguin

Today we're looking at Foresight Linux version 0.8.1 (ISO images dated 2005/06/01), which serves as their latest offering. The first thing the die hard users will realize is that this isn't necessarily the “bleeding edge” as it is. Foresight 0.8.1 runs on GNOME 2.10, and the current version is actually 2.10.2 according to the GNOME mirrors. Not a huge deal though, we'll let it slide because I get the idea that the developers of Foresight are not only trying to create a GNOME demo, but a full-fledged Linux distribution. For demoing purposes there's always the Ubuntu-based GNOME LiveCD, and Foresight was made to install to the hard drive. Much of the software packaged with this distro is up to date, but others such as gcc (currently at 4.0.1), HAL (currently at 0.5.2), and GAIM (currently at 1.4.0) are a bit behind. Is this really of any consequence? Probably not, unless you're hell bent on having the latest of everything... you masochist! For the rest of us, Foresight 0.8.1 is probably just up to date enough to keep us interested. Let's take a quick look at the highlights of this distro...

Features:
Linux kernel 2.6.11.7-3
gcc 3.3.3, glibc 2.3.2
X.org 6.8.2
GNOME 2.10 desktop
HAL 0.4.7 hardware abstraction layer
Novell Evolution 2.2.2 email client
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 email client
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4 web browser
Mozilla 1.7.8 web browser
Gaim 1.3.0 instant messenger
Gimp 2.2.7 image editor
Beagle 0.0.10 search companion
F-Spot 0.0.13 photo manager
Conary 0.60.4 package management