 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 144, 27 March 2006 |
Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Following last week's Fedora 5 release, the next few days will be equally exciting: we are expecting KDE 3.5.2, DesktopBSD 1.0. Frugalware 0.4 and the first release candidate of SUSE Linux 10.1. Before that happens, we'll bring you news about MEPIS switching allegiance, Slackware preparing version 11.0, and Debian compiling with GCC 4.1. Also in this week's issue: Ulteo, a new distribution developed by the founder of Mandrake Linux is nearing release, while the user community of PCLinuxOS gets a new community resource. In the review section we'll take a brief look at an intriguing book entitled Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security. Happy reading!
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in ogg (5.52MB) or mp3 (6.64MB) format (courtesy of Shawn Milo).
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Content:
Miscellaneous news: MEPIS switches allegiance, Slackware 11.0 pre-orders, compiling Debian with GCC 4.1, Ulteo, My.PCLinuxOS
 As hinted previously, the developers of MEPIS Linux, an easy-to-use distribution for Linux beginners, have switched their base system from Debian to Ubuntu Linux. If the initial tests prove successful, we are likely to see all future releases of SimplyMEPIS based on the distribution which, although derived from Debian, has a more predictable release cycle and an enviable momentum that has already pushed it to the top of many popularity charts. Designed for experienced beta testers, the first experimental release of the Ubuntu-based SimplyMEPIS 6.0 is only available from the project's premium server (starting at US$14.99), although subsequent betas and the final release should be distributed publicly.
 Good news for all fans of the oldest surviving Linux distribution: Version 11.0 of Slackware Linux is now available for pre-order from the distribution's online store. Although there is no word on when the new version will be formally released, the store now offers the usual 4-CD set for US$39.95 as well as a single-DVD edition for US$59.95 and a "Slack Pack" edition containing the DVD with the Slackware Essential book (2nd edition) for US$69.95. The current Slackware development tree is based on Linux kernel 2.4.32 (with version 2.6.15.6 in the testing directory), X.Org 6.9.0, KDE 3.5.1, Apache 1.3.34, PHP 4.4.2, MySQL 5.0.18 and the usual range of popular open source software. If you enjoy Slackware, don't miss this major new update!
 Over the last two weeks, Debian developer and former Debian Project Leader Martin Michlmayr compiled the whole Debian archive on a quad-core MIPS machine donated by Broadcom using GCC 4.1. The aim was to find problems in GCC 4.1 itself and bugs in free software projects exhibited by GCC's increased standards conformance (in particular regarding C++ code). By compiling about 6200 packages, over 500 new bugs have been discovered and submitted, 280 of which are specific to the increased strictness of GCC 4.1. In a posting to the Debian development list, Martin classified the bugs he found and offered some useful links to programmers of C++ code. In a posting to the GCC list, he proposed that GCC should only produce new errors after warnings have been shown for at least one release, giving programmers more time to fix their code. This work is part of his research on quality in free software carried out at the University of Cambridge and sponsored by Google.
 Last week's news about Ulteo, a new distribution being developed by the freshly unemployed Gaël Duval, has piqued the curiosity of many Linux users. As a result of the buzz, a French web site called NetEconomie expanded on the story by interviewing Monsieur Duval (the link is in French). Although the well-known founder of Mandrake Linux does not seem quite ready to reveal the finer details of the new product just yet, he does disclose that it will focus on ease of use throughout all the facets of the distribution, not just the user interface and that it will be designed for Internet-connected computers in the home and in small offices. Despite the "dot-com" nature of the distribution's domain, Gaël Duval promises that Ulteo will remain a free project, with the business model based on selling associated services rather than the distribution itself. The first beta of Ulteo is expected to be released in May 2006.
 A new web site for the PCLinuxOS user community has been launched. Called My.PCLinuxOS, it promises to deliver an organised platform for the development of sub-projects that fall within the PCLinuxOS umbrella, and provide a unified system for creating user manuals, documentation and other relevant material: "We would like to help foster positive involvement within PCLinuxOS for users of all experience levels. We have areas for distributing user contributed software packages, submitting news and HOWTO articles, project newsletters, and areas for project development. No project is too small or large…." While still in its infancy, the new web site is already functional, with forums now ready for your input and the FAQs also starting to take shape. For more information please read the initial announcement and visit MyPCLinuxOS.com.
Following all the excitement surrounding the announcement of Fedora Core 5 last Monday, this week promises to continue the trend of new, interesting software releases. An update to the popular KDE desktop, version 3.5.2, is now available for Kubuntu (Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake), so the official release announcement can't be too far away now. A major milestone in the development of SUSE Linux 10.1 is expected on Thursday when the first release candidate should give us a good indication about the quality and stability of the new version. Looking through some of the mirror sites earlier today, we also spotted a couple of "wget-watering" and (as yet) unannounced distribution releases: after several release candidates, the CD and DVD images of DesktopBSD 1.0 are now available from a number of FTP and HTTP servers, while those of Frugalware Linux 0.4, officially scheduled for release later this week, have now also started appearing on the project's download sites. Expect the official release announcements of both later in the week.
DesktopBSD 1.0 - although not yet announced, the ISO images of the project's first stable release started appearing on mirrors on Sunday.
(full image size: 722kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Finally, a handful of links for those moments when you just want to sit back, relax, and have a good laugh. The first one is meant to dispel the myth that software bug reports provide only boring, highly technical information completely detached of any human emotions. As proven by Bug #330884, the developers and users of Firefox are far from that; in fact some of them are trying to save a 5-year old relationship wrecked by a bug in Firefox that gave away a partner's dark secret - some frequently visited password-protected sites, some of which were a little, er, embarrassing, to say the least. The Register caries a similar story. In the meanwhile, here is a hilarious email exchange between the lead developer of CentOS and the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma, USA, who mistook the default Apache welcome page for an attempt by CentOS to hack the city's web site, even threatening to hand the matter over to the FBI! Last but not least, don't miss the Guy's Guide to Geek Girls, a step-by-step HOWTO explaining the art of attracting, dating and "maintaining" geek girls. Enjoy!
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| Book review: Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security |
Book review: Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security
 I have to admit that one of my biggest Internet-related fears is that I wake up one morning to find this site's web server security mechanism cracked and its web pages defaced. This paranoia further accelerates every time I dare to open the auth.log file and start wading through the ever increasing lines indicating that someone somewhere, at this very moment, is attempting a dictionary attack on the SSH server, or when I browse through the tcpdump output providing information about the number of times somebody tried to force their way in through a presumably water-tight port. As a result of this anxiety -- and also to improve my sleep -- I decided to do something: I invested in a copy of O'Reilly's Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security by Yanek Korff, Paco Hope and Bruce Potter.
Published in March 2005, this 450-page book is divided into three main sections: Security Foundation, Deployment Situations, and Auditing and Incident Response. While some security experts would be able to use the publication as a reference book, the majority of readers targeted by the authors will be wise to read it from the beginning, at least the chapters that are devoted to general security concepts. As the early chapters explain, system security is not a goal, but a journey; it's not something that you attain and forget about - instead, it's a never-ending state of alertness that may at times require fast reaction, lateral thinking and even calculated risks. That's because every security measure implemented on a computer system brings a trade-off. Devising an air-tight security system may indeed give the administrator fewer sleepless nights, but it can also reduce productivity of those users who have legitimate reasons to access the system.
But let's get back to the book. After going through the eye-opening early chapters, it covers the basic building blocks of a BSD system, such as security aspects of sysctl, chroot and jail (the two words that have become synonyms in Linux, but which mean two very different things in FreeBSD), inherent security mechanisms, cryptography and OS tuning. Chapter 3 then goes beyond these elementary concepts by introducing hardening techniques (e.g. sudo, turning off services, and system updates). The first section of the book is then concluded by discussing secure administration techniques, such as access control, network services and system health monitoring. This I found to be perhaps the most valuable chapter of the entire book - not only it covers excellent techniques for organising users, limiting access and dealing with passwords, it also gives many useful tips and warnings over potential pitfalls of granting users seemingly innocent privileges.
The next three chapters deal with practical considerations affecting the most common servers in existence - DNS, mail and web. As anybody who has run Sendmail, Postfix or qmail knows, mail server attacks have become very common in recent years and have been used as gateways to the entire system, or as mail transfer agents for delivering spam. The chapter shows how to guard against malicious mail server attacks and how to reduce the amount of spam delivered to the system's mail boxes. It deals extensively with both Sendmail and Postfix, but qmail users will find it unfair that their mail server is given no more than two paragraphs. Web server attacks are also covered in great detail, together with some advanced prevention techniques, such as the above-mentioned jails.
Next, it's all about firewalls and intrusion detection. OpenBSD's PF (which has since been ported to FreeBSD) is covered in some detail, although a better book to learn all there is about this excellent firewall is Absolute OpenBSD by Michael W Lucas. The last two chapters of the book are devoted to managing audit trails, incident response and forensics. I decided to skip these for the time being - not only I had been overwhelmed by all the new information I had to absorb in the preceding nine chapters, I haven't had a reason (knock on the wood) to learn about recovering compromised systems. But with ever increasing levels of Internet vandalism, it's great to know that a good resource is available as part of this great book.
Anything that could have been done better? Looking through some reader comments on Amazon.com and other forums discussing the book, it was generally very well received. The only aspects that were somewhat disappointing were the above-mentioned neglect of qmail, a rather superficial discussion on firewall failover techniques with CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol) and pfsync, and the omission of OpenBSD's systrace. But since this is the book's first edition, let's hope that the authors will expand the next one by incorporating the above topics.
So, will Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security make your server impenetrable? Of course not. But if you pay attention to some of the security concepts, implement a few security ideas specific to your situation, and understand the risk versus convenience trade-off, you will definitely sleep more soundly. You will be equipped with valuable knowledge that will give you confidence in preventing and dealing with common Internet malice. A great book indeed.
* * * * *
Title: Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security
Authors: Yanek Korff, Paco Hope and Bruce Potter
Publisher: O'Reilly
Price: US$31.47
Errata: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mfreeopenbsd/errata/
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| Released Last Week |
Fedora Core 5
The eagerly anticipated Fedora Core 5, code name "Bordeaux", has been released: "The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of Fedora Core 5. New desktop applications, advances in security, better localization tools, improved software installation and management facilities and strong Java integration help to make Fedora Core 5 the most innovative Linux distribution ever." For more details please read the release announcement, release summary and release notes.
CentOS 4.3
CentOS, a community distribution built from source packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, has been updated to version 4.3: "The CentOS development team is pleased to announce the availability of CentOS 4.3. Major changes in this version of CentOS include: upgraded update system - this new system provides more that 100 total mirrors for updates and picks geographically close and non-stale mirrors based on our master server's content; Frysk, InfiniBand Architecture (IBA), and z/VM hypervisor issues are discussed in the upstream release notes; updated and added packages." Read the full release announcement for additional information.
AliXe 0.04
AliXe is a French Canadian Linux live CD based on SLAX. The new version 0.04, released yesterday, is derived from SLAX 5.0.7b with a number of newly updated packages; these include Linux kernel 2.6.15, X.Org 6.9.0, KDE 3.5.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 (replaces KOffice), GIMP 2.2.10, Firefox 1.5.0.1 and Thunderbird 1.5. Two keyboards are supported: Canadian French and Canadian multilingual. A "copy2ram" option is available on systems with the minimum of 512 MB or memory. Please refer to the release announcement and visit the project's home page (both links in French) for further details.
B2D Linux 20060321
Taiwan's B2D project has released a new KNOPPIX-based live CD that includes both KDE (3.5.1) and GNOME (2.12) on a single CD. Called "PureKGB", the new version combines the best software from the two major desktop environments, although due to space restrictions, some applications, notably OpenOffice.org, Nvu and Mozilla Thunderbird, had to be left out from the CD. These can be installed through the "Klik" infrastructure. Apart from this major change, the previously reported midi playback bug in Rosegarden has also been fixed. Please read the release announcement (in Chinese) for more information and screenshots.
SLAX 5.0.8
SLAX, a popular live CD based on Slackware Linux, has been updated to version 5.0.8: "It's my pleasure to let you know that SLAX 5.0.8 has been released. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade, because all new modules created from now are not readable in older SLAX releases. What's new? The long-awaited SLAX Server Edition is finally available; all other editions are updated too; 2.6.16 Linux kernel; fixed bug in mounting of DOS partitions (long file names work now); the 'uselivemod' and 'configsave' features work again." See the distribution's changelog for more details.
Ehad 2006
Ehad is a single-CD, Mandriva-based distribution designed for the speakers of Hebrew. A new major version was released over the weekend. What's new? "Based on Mandriva 2006.0 packages; includes all official updates released until 25-Mar-2006; OpenOffice.org 2.0 (Hebrew version from official project with hspell and Culmus); removed KOffice; the full range of desktop applications are now installed as default; Ehad desktop, boot and LILO theme; local packages: ehad-media (define software repositories with ease) , ehad-guide (a guide for Israeli Internet Connectivity), ehad-radio (Hebrew Internet Radio launcher), hocr (Hebrew OCR), hdate (Hebrew calendar), Anka (new type-1 font from 'culmus fancy' series)." Read the release announcement (in Hebrew) and release notes for more details.
Ehad 2006 - a single-CD Mandriva-based distribution with support for Hebrew
(full image size: 335kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to the waiting list
- Aegean Linux. Aegean Linux is an i686-optimised Linux distribution designed for intermediate and advanced users.
- Openfiler. Openfiler is a CentOS-based network storage software distribution. It delivers file-based Network Attached Storage and block-based Storage Area Networking in a single framework.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
That's all for today. The next issue of DistroWatch Weekly will be published on Monday, 3 April 2006. See you then :-)
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1180 (2026-07-06): FreeBSD 15.1 and rumours of its installer capabilities, tools for running admin commands, Asahi fixes boot issue, reasons to run Gentoo, Ubuntu reverts Rust-based copy command, Astral gets WINE port |
| • Issue 1179 (2026-06-29): PCLinuxOS 2026.05, tips for switching distros, COSMIC gets a new system monitor, Xfce tests new Wayland compositor, FreeBSD developers invite questions |
| • Issue 1178 (2026-06-22): TBLock reviewed, the AUR compromised, Fedora's growing community, reasons to avoid immutable desktop distributions, Ubuntu to get speech-to-text, Canonical updates its beta policy, highlights in Plasma 6.7 |
| • Issue 1177 (2026-06-15): TROMjaro 2026.05.08, Ubuntu MATE updates, Asahi fixes dual-boot issue with macOS 27, AUR infected with malware, setting variables across shells |
| • Issue 1176 (2026-06-08): Redcore Linux 2601, the problem with minimal system requirements, Red Hat account linked to compromised npm repositories, COSMIC to get frosted glass effect, openSUSE shows off system extension manager, Origami merges with RakuOS |
| • Issue 1175 (2026-06-01): PineTab2 with various distros, less common words of wisdom, Canonical shutting down Ubuntu's Pastebin, Murena nears 100k users, DistroWatch turns 25 |
| • Issue 1174 (2026-05-25): Solus 4.9, Linux tablets, Haiku boots on Apple M1 machines, Fedora drops Deepin packages, Mint improves Nemo performance |
| • Issue 1173 (2026-05-18): Sylve on FreeBSD, the benefit of BleachBit, Debian commits to reproducible builds, Debian publishes updated install media, Haiku introduces SMP support on ARM64 processors, Rocky Linux creates opt-in security repository, Fedora reconsiders AI tools, KDE receives generous donation |
| • Issue 1172 (2026-05-11): Fedora 44, dealing with extra fonts, Fedora plans to provide AI tools, problems with Ubuntu's new coreutils, TrueNAS extends its development cycle, postmarktetOS improves the boot splash screen, Redox ports tmux |
| • Issue 1171 (2026-05-04): Xubuntu 26.04, extending memory with VRAM, Ubuntu plans AI features, Devuan developer forks GTK2, Mint introduces hardware enablement builds, Linux running on a PlayStation 5, local kernel exploit found in Linux |
| • Issue 1170 (2026-04-27): ENux 5.2.1, picking a second distro, AlmaLinux expands CPU support, FreeBSD publishes Status Report, Ubuntu MATE skips 26.04 release |
| • Issue 1169 (2026-04-20): Lakka 6.1, free software and source-based distributions, FreeBSD Foundation publishes compatible laptop list, Debian holds Project Leader election, Haiku progresses ARM64 port, Mint to extend development cycle, Linux 7.0 released |
| • Issue 1168 (2026-04-13): pearOS 2026.03, EndeavourOS 2026.03.06, which distros are adopting age verification, Arch adjusts its firewall packages, Linux dropping i486 support, Red Hat extends its release cycle, Debian's APT introduces rollbacks, Redox improves its scheduler |
| • Issue 1167 (2026-04-06): Origami Linux 2026.03, answering questions for Linux newcomers, Ubuntu MATE seeking new contributors, Ubuntu software centre is expanding Deb support, FreeBSD fixes forum exploit, openSUSE 15 Leap nears its end of life |
| • Issue 1166 (2026-03-30): NetBSD jails, publishing software for Linux, Ubuntu joins Rust Foundation, Canonical plans to trim GRUB features, Peppermint works on new utilities, PINE64 shows off open hardware capabilities |
| • Issue 1165 (2026-03-23): Argent Linux 1.5.3, disk space required by Linux, Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and builds RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking |
| • Issue 1164 (2026-03-16): d77void, age verification laws and Linux, SUSE may be for sale, TrueNAS takes its build system private, Debian publishes updated Trixie media, MidnightBSD and System76 respond to age verification laws |
| • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
Impi Linux
Impi Linux was a complete desktop operating system based on the Ubuntu operating system. Impi Linux focuses on providing operating platform solutions which cater for the needs of private sector and government users of all sizes, where stability, security and scalability are of utmost importance. Impi Linux was fully compatible with Ubuntu, meaning that any one of the 14,000 software packages available in the Ubuntu "Universe" repository can be loaded onto any Impi Linux distribution at any time.
Status: Discontinued
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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