Guinnux, a Linux-based operating system distribution developed locally by Keystone Electronic Solutions, was launched in 2012. Since then, the Keystone team of engineers has continued development on Guinnux, and has announced Version 3.0 with a number of significant enhancements.
John Eigelaar, Keystone Director, explains: “In Guinnux 3.0 we have moved from GLibC 2.14 to 2.17. We also use the latest stable GNU compiler suite to keep the Guinnux development environment as close as possible to a Linux PC dev environment.”

According to John, the Rescue File System, which serves as both emergency failover and install / system recovery tool, has been revamped with some handy new features. It now supports SSH access to a Guinnux system over WAN, LAN and USB device port with Gadget Ether support. The Rescue File System is now a jffs2 image which resides as a complete mountable file system in flash. This makes it possible to mount the Rescue File System during run time and customise it to suit any installation environment. The Guinnux Rescue File system now includes a full suite of ext4 file utilities and the new revamped installer now comes with syslog support in order to keep track of the installation process.

The Guinux 3.0 distribution is now shipped with a full set of kernel modules which is available as an installable package. The startup procedure now also supports a custom boot config in parallel with a fall back default boot config, which allows for any combination of kernel modules and network configurations to be loaded upon startup. The structure of the Guinnux package repositories has also been simplified in order to make it easier to configure a Guinnux system for software updates.

New packages that are now available for installation with Guinnux 3.0 include:
• kmod – Linux user space module loading utilities
• tcpdump - A command-line packet analyzer
• ethtool - Utility for displaying or modifying NIC parameters
• mincom - ANSI and VT102 terminal emulator
• kexec-tools – Allows booting of a new kernel out of user space
• mtd-utils -  Utilities to manipulate flash devices
• psmisc – Set of useful tools utilising the /proc file system
• rsync - Utility that provides fast incremental file transfer
• vim - A highly configurable text editor
• gcc – Native GNU C and C++ Compiler

Several of the Keystone-developed Guinnux packages have been improved on for this release. “The Guinnux web config interface, for instance, was subjected to a substantial makeover, making it easier on the eye as well as improving the ability configure all aspects of a Guinnux system from a web browser,” says John. For more information on Guinnux, please see the newly upgraded web site at www.guinnux.org