 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 202, 14 May 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The intensive development period before the upcoming release of Fedora 7 has been marked by several release updates and further complimented by news from Red Hat Summit in San Diego last week. Will this be the most impressive Fedora release ever? Chances are that it will be indeed. In other news, the openSUSE community launches a software portal, Daniel Robbins comments on the latest Gentoo Linux, Patrick Volkerding drops Pidgin (formerly GAIM) after finding an anti-Slackware comment on the project's developer page, and several distributions, including openSUSE, SabayonLinux, sidux and Skolelinux, announce updated release schedules. In the feature story of the week, your DistroWatch editor describes what can happen when the most important piece of computer hardware suddenly decides to stop working. Happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Article |
A broken motherboard
A broken motherboard, a new computer, a new operating system... these are landmark episodes in the life of any computer geek. A series of events that started with my main desktop machine failing to boot and ended with an installation of a new distribution on a new computer, dominated my life during the past week. DistroWatch suffered as I was struggling to re-establish my normal daily routine while the floor of my home office was littered with pieces of computer hardware. As a result, I decided to turn the feature story of today's DistroWatch Weekly into a blog-like narrative, describing what happened and why it happened that way.
It all started on Monday night when a rare power cut forced me to retire to bed earlier than I had planned. I woke up the next morning, half expecting trouble from the unscheduled work interruption the night before - the motherboard had been flaky for some time (refusing to let me into the BIOS on occasions) and there was this horribly disconcerting noise coming out from the second hard disk, which wasn't even a month old and which had never even been partitioned or formatted. My premonition proved correct - the computer refused to boot.
This was when I finally decided to get a new motherboard. I had meant to do it for a while, but you know how it is: while it still kind of works, you keep postponing the inevitable upgrade. This time, however, I had no choice. Therefore, on Tuesday afternoon, I took to the streets in search for new hardware.
 One of the more pleasant aspects of living in Taipei is the Guang Hua Computer Market on Hsin Hseng South Road. It is not unlike Tokyo's famous Akihabara, an area with a high concentration of computer hardware shops, only on a much smaller scale. But unlike its more famous Japanese counterpart, where the majority of shops are massive, multi-storey computer superstores, the Guang Hua Computer Market in Taipei consists of many tiny little stores, most of them not bigger than an average spare bedroom. Invariably, they are stacked to the ceiling with haphazardly placed boxes containing the latest motherboards, graphics cards, hard disks, CPUs and any other piece of computer hardware one can possibly need. These shops are very informal and staffed with highly knowledgeable sales assistants.
The way these shops work is simple: you choose your components from a list (which includes prices) and select a computer case. Then you go to get your lunch or a cup of coffee and when you come back, your brand new system is waiting for you - all neatly packed in a box with a convenient handle. The sales person boots it up for you to show that the components inside the box are indeed the ones that you chose earlier. Then you pay, cash only. These shops never give a receipt for your purchase, but the warranty is always honoured, even though you don't get anything to hold on to except a gentleman's word. That's it. Of course, there is no operating system on the computer, but that's not a bad thing, is it? ;-)
Many of the shops at the Guang Hua Computer Market also sell popular laptops and although English is not often spoken, the sales assistants will still try their best to attract any foreigner who passes by. The laptops do include the compulsory Windows license; however, some shops will refund the cost of the license if you refuse to accept the agreement (and if you really really insist). Disappointingly, finding a Linux-based (or OS-less) brand-name laptop in Taipei is still nearly impossible.
If you get tired of looking at hardware prices and checking out the latest gadgets, you can always wonder into the small side streets where incredibly beautiful, model-like girls -- wearing big smiles and tiny miniskirts -- serve refreshingly cool lemon drinks to tired geeks. Yes, the girls are there to remind you that there is much more to life than just kilobytes and megahertz....
But don't let me stray away from the topic of the broken motherboard. Initially, I arrived at the Guang Hua Computer Market with the intention of buying just a new motherboard, but after talking to a few sales persons, I soon realised that the issue of replacing a 3-year old motherboard is a lot more complex than I had thought. Firstly, it's futile to try to buy a state-of-the-art "mobo" while keeping the rest of the hardware unchanged; as was explained to me, the latest motherboards no longer support the "old" DDR RAM modules - there is now something called DDR II instead. Also, many of the latest motherboards come with just one IDE slot, so it would not be possible to use them with my three existing drives (two hard disks and one DVD burner).
My trip to the computer market thus turned into a decision making process: I had to make up my mind between getting an older motherboard for my existing hardware, or buying a whole new computer system. After a few minutes of thinking I opted for the latter. I justified it by convincing myself that as a maintainer of a popular technology web site, it's almost an obligation to stay reasonably current with my hardware. Besides, who doesn't like having the latest, greatest and fastest, especially if you spend long hours in front of your computer every day?
So this is what I bought:
This, together with a generic computer case, a power supply and labour cost, came to an equivalent of US$720.
Next choice I had to make: the operating system for the new machine. My 6-month adventure with Mandriva Linux 2007 (and 2007.1) was over and since I rotate my operating system about every six months in order to stay up-to-date with different technologies, I decided to switch to Fedora 7. I had not used any Red Hat product seriously since about Red Hat Linux 7.3 and even that was only on a mail server, so my re-visiting this distribution was long overdue. Besides, I always liked Fedora - it's one of those rare distributions where professionalism and expertise of its developers are all too apparent. Ask a good question and you'll be helped, ask a bad one and you'll be ignored - without flames or abuse. I wish all distributions had such approach to their users.
So after powering up the new box for the first time, I inserted the x86_64 edition of Fedora 7 Test 4 into the DVD drive and began installation - only to abandon it during the partitioning stage. The reason? I found the partitioning tool within the Anaconda installer rather limited and inflexible in the way it made decisions on my behalf. So I decided to reboot into a live media in order to partition the disk with a good partitioning tool, such as cfdisk or GParted. After reaching for the drawer to take out a live disk from it, I found myself holding a SabayonLinux 3.3 DVD. I inserted it into the drive and watched it booting wonderfully - it detected all there was to detect and even set up the correct screen resolution (1680x1050 pixels). In fact, my first impressions of SabayonLinux 3.3 were so good that I decided to delay my switch to Fedora 7 and install SabayonLinux 3.3 instead!
SabayonLinux 3.3
(full image size: 147kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Five days later, I am still on SabayonLinux. The good first impression was quickly followed by further appreciation of its Gentoo roots and the way SabayonLinux developers integrate all the latest technologies into a very exciting product; but also by disappointments over a number of obvious bugs. On the positive side, I found the flexibility of Portage excellent (despite coming on a 3+ GB DVD, SabayonLinux 3.3 doesn't include some vital applications that I use daily, such as gFTP or Liferea). Besides providing a way for easy installation of many software packages, it also allows for choosing which version of an application to install. Try that in a binary distro!
As for bugs, I was shocked to see that starting gnome-control-center only brought up an empty window and that GNOME's Services dialog crashed shortly after its launch. Beryl worked fine the first time I logged in, but failed to come up after my second log-in and I could never get it to work again. Not that I minded too much - I found Beryl's effect rather jittery, which was disappointing after the nice, smooth effects with Compiz/Xgl I enjoyed on Mandriva 2007 during the past six months. Metisse on KDE didn't work here either - I only got a black screen when I tried to launch it. I also found that the spellcheck function in OpenOffice.org did not work for some reason (as you've probably noticed by now).
Overall, SabayonLinux is a usable distribution, even if a few bugs have spoilt the pleasure somewhat. Compared to Mandriva Linux 2007, it has a few good points (Portage is wonderfully flexible, Liferea no longer crashes, the Tab Mix Plus extension in Firefox works again...), but also a few negatives (the default fonts aren't as nice as on Mandriva, the user community is smaller, its Wiki documentation rather sparse). Nevertheless, I decided to stick with it for a few weeks - at least until Fedora 7 final is released.
So this is the story of my past week. After struggling with hardware problems for several days, I am pleased to report that I am once again set up for the usual "distro watching", so news reporting and distribution page updates should come faster than last week. And if you ever come to Taipei, don't miss the Guang Hua Computer Market - it's a must see for any geek!
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| Miscellaneous News |
Fedora 7, Red Hat Global Desktop, Gentoo Linux 2007.0, openSUSE Software Portal, Slackware vs Pidgin, PCLinuxOS page hits
 Let's start the news section with an interesting post published on several Fedora and Red Hat mailing lists. Entitled Fedora 7 -- what, when, and why, Max Spevack has summarised the recent happenings in the Fedora Project, particularly around the upcoming Fedora 7. The author reminds us that, because of the merge of the "core" and "extras" repositories, the new release will no longer bear the word "Core" in its name. Among other interesting points of the message is the fact that the entire Fedora toolchain is now free software, which makes it possible for anybody to create highly customised editions of the distribution. Spevack also mentions the official live media, KVM virtualisation, and the usual package upgrades, as valid reasons for trying out the new release. The post is worth a read as it signals a new, more aggressive drive of the Red Hat and Fedora developer community to increase the adoption of the distribution.
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 The message mentioned in the above paragraph also touches on the ongoing Red Hat Summit in San Diego, which has been a source of many interesting news releases of the past week. One of the more exciting among them -- at least from the perspective of the future of Linux on the desktop -- was the press release about Red Hat Global Desktop, a new desktop Linux initiative designed predominantly for emerging markets. According to this report by DesktopLinux.com, "the Global Desktop is not just a consumer version of the recently released RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Desktop 5. The Global Desktop will be based on the lessons Red Hat has learned from its involvement in the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) project." Is Red Hat finally changing its long-standing conservative view of the consumer desktop Linux market? It's about time!
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 The long-delayed Gentoo Linux 2007.0 was finally released last week. Some of the early reviews signal a mixture of good and bad (see ThePCSpy and Techgage), while at the same time they agree that the new Gentoo doesn't come with many dramatic improvements or innovative features - not beyond the rewritten live CD installer and the routine package upgrades. So what's good and what could still be improved? Daniel Robbins, the original founder of Gentoo, installed the new release and commented about the experience in his blog: "Overall, the install process was significantly improved using the installer. However, there was noticeable room for improvement - general lack of refinement and questionable choices made regarding what to include on the 600MB live CD. Also, the online documentation has grown to the point where it is cumbersome to navigate and disorienting to use."
Gentoo Linux 2007.0 was finally released last week
(full image size: 268kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
What are your first impressions of Gentoo Linux 2007.0? Please comment below.
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 How would you like to manage your openSUSE applications from a web-based interface? If your answer is yes, then there is a good chance that you will be able to do so soon. As reported in this blog entry by Pascal Bleser, a community project to develop an openSUSE Software Portal, a complete web-based solution for installing and upgrading applications over the Internet, was launched last week: "We're going to have a shot at a brilliant solution for managing applications, package installations and updates (both from a technical point of view and in terms of ease of use), and that the initiative and the resources come from the community." The project has already started a new mailing list, published the first interface mockup, and has invited other developers to join in. For more information please read this blog post.
Still on openSUSE, Stephan Binner has announced a new release of KDE Four Live CD, an openSUSE-based distribution that showcases the latest development builds of KDE 4 (currently in its first alpha): "KDE 4.0 Alpha 1, code-named 'Knut', has been released. Of course it's accompanied by a new KDE Four Live release and packages for openSUSE. Just keep in mind that it's the first alpha release which is totally unusable and not representative of KDE 4[.0]." While still not very functional, those readers who are curious about the progress KDE developers are making on their long way to KDE 4 can download the new release from here: KDE-Four-Live.i686-0.1.0.iso (675MB, MD5).
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 Developers' changelogs are either overly technical to the point of being boring or overly technical, occasionally interrupted by a controversial remark. Readers following the current changelog of Slackware Linux were treated to the latter last week. The reason? It seems that Patrick Volkerding was offended by anti-Slackware sentiment expressed on the Pidgin (formerly GAIM) web site and has promptly relegated the popular instant messenger into the unsupported directory. From Pidgin.im: "We have no developers using Slack, and furthermore, several of us actively dislike that distribution for its history of broken installs, as well as for its non-existant package management. You cannot create true packages for Slack." This statement on the Pidgin developer's site has since been replaced with a less inflammatory one, but the original can still be read in the Google cache (if you hurry).
And Patrick Volkerding's reply? "Well, I'm somewhat shocked by this, having never (to my knowledge) done anything to any of the former GAIM or Pidgin developers to make them mad at me, Slackware, or anyone on the Slackware team. I guess if they feel it's not possible to make a 'true' Pidgin package for Slackware, there's no point in continuing to try. Having put out 7 security advisories on GAIM, I'm quite sure there will be less work here if Pidgin is not included. The Pidgin package has been moved to the 'unsupported' directory. For the record, I do not actively dislike Pidgin or any of their developers, but I do plan to use Kopete from now on."
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 The dramatic surge in the popularity of PCLinuxOS, as represented by our Page Hit Ranking statistics, has raised a few eyebrows among the DistroWatch readers. With emails expressing surprise and alleging data manipulations appearing in our inboxes on almost daily basis, perhaps it's a good time to comment on the subject. Yes, we did check the web logs a number of times during the past few months, but we have not found any evidence indicating that the figures have been manipulated in any way. The fact that PCLinuxOS is rising in popularity is likely a reflection of its quality and growing user base, not of a foul play.
If you are still not convinced, please see this Awstats output of DistroWatch.com's web log. With 4.7% of all Linux-using visitors, PCLinuxOS is now the fourth most-used Linux distribution for browsing the DistroWatch pages - that's right after Ubuntu (28.9%), Debian (11.7%) and openSUSE (5.6%), and well ahead of such well-established projects as Fedora (3.3%) or Mandriva (2.5%). So instead of accusing PCLinuxOS users of "fanboyism" and data manipulation, why not give the distribution a try and judge its merits for yourself? You might just be very pleasantly surprised....
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| Released Last Week |
Gentoo Linux 2007.0
Gentoo Linux 2007.0 has been released: "After several delays, the Gentoo Release Engineering team is proud to announce the release of Gentoo Linux 2007.0, code named 'Secret Sauce'. This release includes a completely rewritten version of the Gentoo Linux Installer on the AMD64 and x86 live CD and live DVD images. It also includes GNOME 2.16.2, KDE 3.5.5, Xfce 4.4, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0, and the 2.6.19 Linux kernel. Updated hardware support is among the highlights of the x86 release. Besides the many updated office and productivity packages x86 also brings an update to glibc 2.5. On amd64 you can enjoy updated 32-bit emulation libraries improving support for many closed source applications and browser plugins." Read the full press release for further information.
EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0.14
EnGarde Secure Linux has been updated to version 3.0.14: "Guardian Digital is happy to announce the release of EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.14. What's New? Major feature enhancements to Network Intrusion Detection System. The Attack Monitor now shows much greater detail on each attack (including links to packet dumps and CVE information) and refreshes automatically using AJAX. Also, the graphs are now much easier to read and are generated faster. There is now a link to the Network Attack Monitor directly from the main WebTool Auditing menu. This makes monitoring the Network IDS much easier. There were several improvements made to the hardware detection subsystem of einstall, the EnGarde Secure Linux Installer, which makes installing on newer hardware more reliable. Several new packages...." More details in the release announcement.
BLAG Linux And GNU 60001
Jeff Moe has announced the release of BLAG Linux And GNU 60001, an updated version of the Fedora-based distribution for the desktop: "The first update to the BLAG 60k series, BLAG 60001, has been released. This is just a 'roll up' of recent package updates, including an update from the 2.6.18 kernel to 2.6.20. The base package set remains the same. Over 200 updated packages are included. This release is primarily done so people who download the ISO don't have to then download a bunch of package updates. The repository now has over nine thousand packages and the developer's DVD set now takes three DVDs." Find more information in the release announcement and release notes.
Ubuntu Studio 7.04
The long-awaited Ubuntu Studio 7.04, a variant of Ubuntu aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast, has arrived: "The Ubuntu Studio team is proud to announce its first release: 7.04 for Intel i386-compatible processors. With this release, which you can download for DVD in little over 860 MB, we offer a feature that is somewhat reminiscent of Ubuntu Server: on installation, you can choose between the Audio, Graphics or Video tasks; and choose also to install a number of plugins, which for this release is mainly aimed at audio production. We have endeavoured to keep as many of our packages in the standard Ubuntu repositories as possible." Read the rest of the release announcement and visit the project's home page to learn more about Ubuntu Studio.
Kaella 3.1
Kaella is a French variant of KNOPPIX, a desktop live CD with complete support for the language of Voltaire and extra educational software and documentation for French-speaking users. Kaella 3.1, which remained unmodified from its third release candidate, was announced earlier today. Features: based on KNOPPIX 5.1.1; OpenOffice.org 2.0.4; IceWeasel 2.0.0.1 replaces Mozilla Firefox; IceDove 1.5.0.9 replaces Mozilla Thunderbird; GCompris 8.2.2 and Tuxpaint 0.9.16; addition of Kaella-specific documentation and online survival guide for Linux debutants (in French); addition of modem drivers for USB ADSL Sagem and Alcatel SpeedTouch with connection scripts; miscellaneous improvements to KDE menus and theme. Read the complete release notes (in French) for more information.
Kaella 3.1 - a new version of the French variant of KNOPPIX was released last week
(full image size: 246kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Fedora 7
Josh Boyer has announced a slight delay in the development of Fedora 7. Originally scheduled for May 24th, it will now be made available a week later, at the earliest: "We do not have a rawhide repository available as of yet, and the release and QA teams are not comfortable going into deep freeze at this point. During the Release team meeting yesterday, it was decided to slip the deep freeze date by a week at least. This will also slip the final release of Fedora 7 by at least a week." Read more in this mailing list post.
openSUSE 10.3
Andreas Jaeger has announced the final roadmap for openSUSE 10.3: "We are happy to announce the final roadmap for openSUSE 10.3. openSUSE 10.3 is the next release that incorporates new features from both the community and Novell internal development. The distribution will be build for the x86, x86-64 and Power PC platforms." The project has already released three alpha builds; these will now be followed by three more, before three beta tests and one release candidate complete the development and testing process. The final release of openSUSE 10.3 is scheduled for October 4th, 2007.
SabayonLinux 3.4
A roadmap presenting the likely milestones for the upcoming SabayonLinux 3.4 has been published on the project's news page: "While we are still working on the new Sabayon Linux Portal integration, I would like to direct your attention to our 3.4 release plan. ... After the 3.4 release, the first public server side release of Entropy will be published. At the moment, I am focussing on finalizing it and starting the client part. So, there will be a lot of exciting news on this side." The second beta (or "loop") release is scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday), while the final release of SabayonLinux 3.4 is expected on the last day of June. See here for more information.
sidux 2007
The sidux project has published an updated roadmap for its upcoming versions 2007-02, 2007-03 and 2007-04. It warns, however, that the roadmap is a "rough estimate" and may change: "Please understand that the following roadmap is a rough estimate regarding our release schedule and is affected by the status of upstream debian sid, major system components like X.org, KDE, the linux kernel and our own developments and is subject to changes." For more information please read the latest status report.
Skolelinux 3.0
The Skolelinux project (also known as "Debian-Edu") has published a release schedule for version 3.0: "This [Test 4] will be the last test release of Debian-Edu Etch. After that we will release RC1, RC2 and RC3 with shorter delays in between and then we will release. We plan to release RC1 on May 19th, RC2 on May 26th, RC3 on June 2nd and Debian-Edu etch on June 9th. We might cut RC2 and RC3, as we want to release at the end of May." See this mailing list post for more details.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Translations of the Top Ten Distributions page
Many thanks to Kamil Stachowski who has translated the Top Ten Distributions page into Polish. The article is now available in 6 languages; besides English and Polish, you can also read it in Dutch, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Translations to other languages are most welcome - if you'd like to help, please email your work to distro at distrowatch dot com (preferably in plain text format using UTF-8 encoding).
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New distributions added to database
- Ubuntu Studio. Ubuntu Studio is a variant of Ubuntu aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional. The distribution provides a collection of open-source applications available for multimedia creation.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 21 May 2007. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • Ussye 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
FreedomBox
FreedomBox is a Debian-based distribution, primarily used as a server operating system for home users. FreedomBox supports point-and-click settings up a number of services ranging from a calendar or jabber server to a wiki or VPN through a web interface. Firewall, domain names, user accounts, backups, and Btrfs snapshots can also be managed through a simple web-based control centre.
Status: Active
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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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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