It was just a few weeks ago that the developers of the Fuduntu Linux operating system announced plans to cease development and move on to other things by the end of the year. Now the team has moved up the schedule, and Fuduntu is effectively dead.

Much of the team behind the operating system has moved onto a new project called FuSE.

Update: The new project has been renamed. Instead of FuSE, it’ll be called Cloverleaf Linux.

But if you’re currently using Fuduntu, don’t expect any more software or security updates. If you want to continue using the operating system indefinitely, the Fuduntu team plans to offer  one last update that will let you disable access to the stable repository so that you don’t constantly get notifications letting you know that your apps are out of date.

Fuduntu

Fuduntu is based on Fedora Linux and features the GNOME 2 desktop environment. It’s gained a bit of a reputation for offering a stable, easy-to-use Linux environment for folks that aren’t enamored with more recent software such as GNOME 3 or KDE.

The developers have also done some nifty things in the past year, such as adding support for Steam gaming and Netflix video playback.

But GNOME 2 isn’t as well supported as it once was, and it’s apparently more work than it’s worth to continue trying to keep everything running smoothly on a platform that uses it.

Since announcing plans to shut down later this year, the Fuduntu team saw a mass exodus and there are now reportedly fewer than 2500 active users. So this weekend the team decided to pull the plug early.

Team member Lee Ward reports that the successor to Fuduntu will likely be called FuSE Linux. It’ll be based on OpenSUSE instead of Fedora.

The name isn’t set in stone yet (which is a good thing, since searching for “Fuse Linux” brings you to a project for the FUSE filesystem, and will probably continue to do so for a long time). But the goal is to offer a Fuduntu-like experience by developing a powerful but easy to use operating system.

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6 replies on “Fuduntu Linux is dead, bulk of team moves to Cloverleaf Linux project”

  1. I really am looking forward to this distro being released.. please let me know when its released for I love using fuduntu its awesome. and to the developers. I hope you ignore the ignorant and the jealous comments of people who just do not understand the meaning behind linux and they are just ahh.. cant say it in a public forum but im sure you get the gist.. your awesome

  2. Are they planning to pronounce it “foo’ zuh” to keep it in line with the pronunciation of openSUSE? Because that just sounds dorky….

  3. From one terrible name to the next!
    What’d be nice is a project that based of CentOS but kept desktop things slightly more up to date (and add in Mate) and increased (laptop) hardware compatibility/efficiency. Very usable, very stable.

    1. Believe it or not before Fuduntu ended I did investigate that angle. It would have been a significant undertaking to bring CentOS up to snuff.

      Definitely possible, but CentOS is far enough out of date that it would have been extremely difficult. The FuSE team is making all the right moves here so far in my opinion, and they have the support of openSUSE which is huge. This wasn’t the case with Fuduntu; instead of being supportive, Fedora told us in no uncertain terms to just go away.

  4. Sad day. Fuduntu was a good distro even if it was always confusing that they seemed to be mixing Fedora and Ubuntu in their name if not code base. That said I wasn’t one of the 2500 any more, I bailed almost 6 months ago… so yeah.

    1. yes fuduntu had an unfortunate name but its stability and functionality were often miles ahead of distros ranked above fudunut on eg distrowatch

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