 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 238, 4 February 2008 |
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Welcome to this year's 5th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It's tough to be a developer of a desktop operating system these days. Not only are we seeing increasing usability and user-friendliness from the major Linux distributions, the BSD world now also wants its share of the market, while there are those who believe that even Solaris can be a viable desktop alternative to the more established operating systems. But how far has Sun Microsystems' flagship product progressed since the opening up of the source code in the form of OpenSolaris? Our featured story looks at Nexenta, Indiana, BeleniX and other OpenSolaris-based distribution and asks whether they can compete on the desktop. In the news section, Debian edges closer to "Lenny", Slackware announces plans to move to KDE 4, François Bancilhon defends the code-sharing agreement with Turbolinux, and Ars Technica investigates the latest release of NetBSD. Finally, we are proud to announce that the recipient of the DistroWatch January 2008 donation is the VideoLAN VLC project. Enjoy the read and happy Chinese New Year to all our readers!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Story |
Solaris on the desktop
Of all the "real" UNIX operating systems ever built, Sun Microsystems' Solaris is probably the most famous. This is mostly due to its reputation as a reliable workhorse of large data centres and other mission-critical systems, but also because of its special security, file system, troubleshooting and self-healing features that the Sun developers have coded into the Solaris kernel and userland over the years. But with the rapid advances of Linux and its increasing acceptance as a more affordable alternative to UNIX, Sun's flagship operating system has lost market share - that's despite the fact that it is now available free of charge and under a license approved by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Solaris faces an uphill struggle against other free operating systems.
In recent years, Sun has been trying to revive the interest in Solaris by means of opening up its source code through the OpenSolaris project. This worked reasonably well and it didn't take long before a variety of community projects based on the OpenSolaris code sprang into life. Jörg Schilling's Schillix became the first OpenSolaris-based live CD designed primarily for developers, but it was the effort of the Sun Microsystems' development team in India and its BeleniX live CD (with hardware detection, Xfce window manager and a variety of desktop applications) that finally convinced the sceptics that the idea of Solaris running on end users' desktops is feasible.
However, the most ambitious and promising desktop Solaris project was Nexenta, first announced in November 2005. The goal of this semi-commercial distribution was to deliver a full desktop operating system by combining the OpenSolaris kernel and userland with Debian utilities and Ubuntu packages. It released seven alpha builds - all in the form of installable live CDs with the GNOME desktop, Ubuntu installer, and thousands of popular open source applications available for installation over the Internet. Disappointingly, the last of these alpha builds was pushed out in May 2007, after which the project appeared to be rethinking its strategy, with a focus on a developing a much less ambitious product called NexentaCP (Nexenta Core Platform).
Has Nexenta abandoned its plans for producing a complete desktop Solaris solution? DistroWatch has exchanged a few emails with Nexenta to find out and the answer is, unfortunately, "yes". Erast Benson, a Nexenta developer, explained the reasons: "We had to face the problem with inability to maintain various GUI applications and environments which are included by default in Ubuntu. It was very difficult to make them stable and we eventually gave up."
This seems to suggest that OpenSolaris on the desktop is a concept similar to fighting windmills - a complete waste of time. No, not quite, argues Benson: "GUI is not a strong side of OpenSolaris - server is, storage is, virtualisation is, but not desktop. Really, OpenSolaris as a server - a perfect find, while on the desktop there are different requirements which are not yet met by the OpenSolaris community. My prediction is that it will match the Linux desktop by about 2010, probably with the push of Indiana." He added another thought: "Linux also started as a server platform. User-friendly desktops appeared way later. We expect the same for OpenSolaris. Desktop OpenSolaris will happen, but it is not the time yet."
With a self-funding project like Nexenta, another problem is, of course, money: "It is very difficult to make money from a desktop solution these days. People somehow expect desktop software to be available for free in the UNIX world. However, server UNIX software is for $$$... so we have a chance to survive only if we capitalise on the right technology at the right time." So what exactly can we expect from the Nexenta project in the next few months? "There will be four distinct products," Benson continued. "Two of them already exist: NexentaCP, a stable OpenSolaris core, and NexentaStor, a commercial appliance distribution functionally similar to FreeNAS or OpenFiler, but obviously based on OpenSolaris. There are two more products in development: NexentaXfce (yes, wit GUI) and NexentaWeb, scheduled to appear this year."
Does this all mean that we are unlikely to see a Nexenta desktop in the near future? "Well, we are trying to stimulate other projects around NexentaCP to produce more desktop-oriented distributions," explained Benson. "Such distributions could be initiated by anyone who is a talented artist and a bright developer. NexentaCP should be an excellent starting point to produce such distribution as it can be redistributed with no obligations. After all, it's designed as a 'core' for other distributions to reuse for their custom projects. At the same time, we are focusing our efforts on ZFS and storage-related technologies. In my opinion, NexentaCP is a perfect solution for the servers and once the stable 1.0 is out, we should expect many support companies and individuals to offer their support services."
So there you have it. Despite its original focus, Nexenta is not going to replace your current desktop distribution any time soon - a somewhat disappointing, though understandable fact. Nevertheless, with the current effort Sun is putting into Project Indiana, it is entirely possible that many of the compatibility problems Nexenta has failed to overcome, will be resolved in the next couple of years, if not months. This could entice more Solaris fans to give a desktop OpenSolaris solution another try and possibly be drawn into the development process. The user and developer communities should grow.
As for Indiana itself, how far is Ian Murdock's brainchild at the start of 2008? It seems that the project is progressing as planned. Following the first preview released in early November 2007, the second preview is about to be announced too. In fact, a "pre-preview" was released for testing last weekend, so those interested in giving it a spin can start downloading the live CD straight away: in-test-199.iso (645MB, MD5, torrent). No release notes are available as yet, but Phoronix has published a good first-look review, noting a number of interesting improvements, including a better detection of wireless network cards and other hardware, and an improved graphical installer. But on the negative side, the article has also found a limited set of desktop applications and media codecs, and a lack of a graphical package manager.
Indiana Preview 2 - an installable live CD with GNOME and a handful of desktop applications
(full image size: 400kB, screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
So what does all this say about the prospects of a widespread deployment of Solaris on the desktop in 2008? Things certainly don't look very bright at the moment. Nexenta has changed its focus, while Indiana is nowhere near ready. BeleniX has started well and is currently ahead of all other projects in delivering a decent desktop solution based on OpenSolaris. But the problem with all these distributions is rather obvious: while all of them have got the basics right in producing usable live CDs with automatic hardware detection and a basic desktop, none of them have given us compelling enough reason to abandon our Linux (or even BSD) systems in favour of OpenSolaris. As such, desktop Solaris will continue to thrive on the workstation of some Solaris developers and perhaps make a brief stop on the hard drives of a few curious distro hoppers, but anything more that that is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
| Operating System |
% Share |
| Windows |
54.77% |
| Linux |
37.04% |
| Mac OS |
2.97% |
| BSD |
0.32% |
| Solaris |
0.06% |
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Operating systems market share, taken from the web logs at DistroWatch.com in January 2008
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| Miscellaneous News |
Debian "Lenny" plans, Slackware on KDE 4, Linux Magazine and Mandriva Powerpack, NetBSD interview
 Let's start this week's news section with a couple of interesting updates from the Debian project. First, the development of Debian's next release, code name "Lenny", is proceeding according to the plan, which is to have it finalise for release in September 2008: "As we are progressing in our release preparations, we have reviewed the original schedule for 'Lenny' to check for any imminent problems, and at the moment are quite content with the current state. We are, as always, concerned about the large number of release-critical issues still unfixed in testing, so please help do something about it." The message, published be Marc Brockschmidt on the project's devel-announce mailing list, also includes information about new release assistants, release blockers, release architecture re-qualification, bug squashing parties and other topics related to Lenny.
On a related subject, Moritz Muehlenhoff has announced that Debian's upcoming release could include a number of optional security hardening features: "The Debian archive is the biggest of all distributions and although there's security support for all security issues being found, there's still room for improvement and a need for increased resilience against flaws not yet discovered." These security improvements will focus on two main areas: tool chain features preventing the exploitation of some vulnerability classes (e.g. stack protector, fortify source, format warnings) and tool chain features enhancing the effectiveness of Address Space Layout Randomization (e.g. relro, Position Independent Executables, experimental wrapper package). If all this sounds a little too technical, don't despair; the announcement is actually very readable and further documentation and relevant links are also available in the Debian Wiki.
* * * * *
 After a brief holiday break, the Slackware changelog has once again started seeing blocks of new entries. Among them, KDE was the subject of a longer post, with hints that the upcoming release of Slackware Linux 12.1 will still ship with KDE 3.5, but once KDE 4.1 is out and most of the current bugs are squashed, it will likely make a prompt appearance in the "current" tree. Patrick Volkerding: "The next Slackware release will contain KDE 3.5.9, but we're targeting KDE 4.1.x for the one after that. The application end of things doesn't quite fully cover KDE3's functionality yet, but by then it will." The founder of Slackware Linux is clearly fond of the new KDE: "The look of the new desktop is stunning, and the use of SVG and hardware acceleration gives (IMHO) even something like Mac OS a run for its money in terms of appearance and user-friendliness. We look forward with great anticipation to merging KDE4 when it is mature enough (and it's getting there fast), and then watching it just get better and better."
* * * * *
 The recent Mandriva - Turbolinux collaboration deal has been interpreted in the media with a controversial twist due to Turbolinux's extensive patent-protection agreements with Microsoft. Linux Journal was curious about the deal so it interviewed François Bancilhon, the Mandriva CEO, about the implications of the agreement: "First of all, let me clarify that we are initially only unifying the core components of the distribution, roughly 100 RPMs. So there will still be 2 different distros: Mandriva Linux and Turbolinux. But because they have the same base components, they will run on the same hardware hardware platforms and they will support the same ISVs. This is good for customers: a stronger, sounder distribution, more hardware and software compatibility; this is good for ISVs and IHVs: they need only one certification for the 2 distros."
Mandriva Linux 2008 has received positive reviews in the media and has been well-accepted by the greater Linux community. The distribution is stable, mature and, in case of the Powerpack edition, contains all that one could possibly need for a functional desktop. But what do you do if you are a poor student or if you just don't have the €50 it takes to buy the product? Simple: get the March 2008 issue of Linux Magazine. The full Powerpack edition of Mandriva Linux 2008 is included on the cover DVD, while the printed pages are packed with interesting distro-related articles, such as the 17-page story on creating your own distribution, a comprehensive review of Puppy Linux, a 3-page article on the ASUS Eee PC, and the regular "Ask Klaus Knopper" column. The magazine currently offers a get-3-issues-for-the-price-of-one deal that allows you to receive three trial issues for as little as US$9.95, depending on your location. (And no, this paragraph is not an "advertorial"; it simply serves as an alert to the easy availability of the Mandriva 2008 Powerpack DVD and the low-cost subscription offer).
* * * * *
 NetBSD has a reputation of being the hardest of all BSDs to set up and use, perhaps finding some interest only among the users who want to run an operating system on their kitchen toasters or other exotic hardware. The project has recently released a major update, version 4.0, with a number of new features and, as usual, support for several new processor architectures. But what exactly is NetBSD and who develops it? Ars Technica has sat down with several leading developers of the project for an exhaustive 9-page interview: "The NetBSD community announced last month the official release of NetBSD 4.0, the latest version of the UNIX-like open source operating system. Version 4.0 includes significant new features like Bluetooth support, version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, new device drivers, and improvements to the Veriexec file integrity subsystem. NetBSD, which is known for its high portability, is capable of running on 54 different system architectures and is suitable for use on a wide range of hardware, including desktops, servers, mobile devices, and even kitchen toasters.".
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| Released Last Week |
Finnix 91.0
Ryan Finnie has announced the release of Finnix 91.0, a specialist, Debian-based live CD for system administrators: "Finnix 91.0 released. Finnix 91.0 includes a new Linux kernel (2.6.24), automatic 32-bit/64-bit detection on the x86 platform, stackable RAID/LUKS/LVM detection and setup, and several bug fixes. If you press 'enter' at the boot screen of Finnix 91.0 x86, the boot loader will now detect if you have a 64-bit capable CPU, and will load the appropriate kernel. You can still force 32-bit or 64-bit by entering the 'finnix' or 'finnix64' boot profiles. While RAID, LUKS (encryption) and LVM detection have been in Finnix for awhile now, they were loaded in a certain order, and some configurations were not detected as a result. With Finnix 91.0, most configurations should be detected. For example, an encrypted LVM set on top of two RAID disks should be set up automatically." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information.
UHU-Linux 2.1
UHU-Linux is an independently-developed Hungarian distribution, designed primarily for Hungarian speakers. A new release, version 2.1 and code name "Bumm", was announced earlier today. The fifth stable UHU-Linux release includes a number of new features; worth mentioning among them is the inclusion of Totem and Exaile as the default video and music players, updated system installer, read and write support for NTFS partitions, new external media automount features, and the latest versions of Pidgin, Skype and Firefox with Java and Flash plugins. UHU-Linux 2.1 is built on top of Linux kernel 2.6.23.9, uses glibc 2.6.1 and is compiled with GCC 4.2.2. The default desktop is GNOME 2.20, with KDE 3.5.8 and Xfce 4.4.2 also available. Hungarian and English are the only two supported languages. For more information please see the release announcement and technical details pages (both links in Hungarian).
UHU-Linux 2.1 - the default desktop
(full image size: 948kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
GoblinX 2.6 "Mini"
Flavio Pereira de Oliveira has announced the release of GoblinX 2.6 "Mini", a light-weight, Slackware-based live CD featuring the Xfce window manager and GTK+ applications: "GoblinX Mini 2.6 is released. Main upgrades since the release candidate 1: Added the SLAX firewall; added more options to the isolinux menu; rebuilt the Gtkdialog interfaces to prevent resize action; corrected a few errors and bugs; corrected the Kill button in media manager interfaces; added Ghdcpd, xrefresh, Gnome-utils and Bluez packages; upgraded some libraries and packages including xorg-server; changed z.Goblix for z.Mini, a different GoblinX module for the Mini edition; corrected some sudo issues; removed X.Org default resolution; removed some libraries; added more services to boot." Visit the distribution's news page to read the release announcement.
X/OS Linux 5.1
Jos Vos has announced the release of X/OS Linux 5.1, a free distribution built by recompiling the source RPM packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux: "X/OS Linux 5.1 is now available for public download. The X/OS Linux 5.1 package set is identical to the combined package sets of RHEL 5.1 Client and RHEL 5.1 Server, with the following exceptions: all Red Hat Network (RHN) related packages are not included with X/OS Linux; a few updates released for RHEL 5.1 have been included; the yum package has been updated to version 3.2.1, the version included with the RHEL 5.1 beta release. Besides these additions and name changes, the following modifications were made to the original packages: an installclass has been added to Anaconda, supporting various alternatives for installing X/OS Linux 5; Red Hat trademarks and logos have been removed..." Here are the complete release notes.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
- Frugalware Linux 0.8-rc1, the release announcement
- rPath Linux 2-beta1, the release announcement
- Musix GNU+Linux 1.0r3-test5, the release announcement
- Absolute Linux 12.1-beta2, 12.1-beta3, the changelog
- Endian Firewall 2.2-beta3, the release notes
- Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Ubuntu Studio 8.04-alpha4, the release announcement
- Myah OS 3.0-beta1, the release announcement
- NimbleX 2008-beta, the release announcement
- Damn Small Linux 4.2.5
- SchilliX 0.6.1
- trixbox 2.6-beta
- paldo 1.13
- FreeNAS 0.686.1-beta2728
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
January 2008 donation: VLC receives US$350.00
We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the January 2008 DistroWatch.com donation is VideoLAN's VLC media player project. It receives US$350.00 in cash.
VideoLAN Client (VLC) is a media player, streamer, and encoder for UNIX, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, QNX, and PocketPC. It can play most audio and video codecs (MPEG 1/2/4, DivX, WMV, Vorbis, AC3, AAC, etc.), has support for VCD, SVCD, and DVD (with menus), and can read or dump streams from a network source (HTTP, UDP, DVB, MMS, etc.). It can also act as a server and send streams through the network, with optional support for audio and video transcoding. For more information please visit the project's features page and check out the screenshots.
As always, this monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to VLC.
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a Powerpack competition), Digikam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
- 2008: VLC ($350)
Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$16,243 to various open source software projects.
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- Maryan Linux. Maryan Linux is an unofficial variant of Linux Mint, featuring the Enlightenment window manager.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 11 February 2008.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • 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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| Shells.com |
Your own personal Linux computer in the cloud, available on any device. Supported operating systems include Android, Debian, Fedora, KDE neon, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Manjaro and Ubuntu, ready in minutes.
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| Random Distribution | 
Debian
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system is called Debian. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel. Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software. Debian comes with over 50,000 packages (precompiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) - all of it free. It's a bit like a tower. At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools. Next is all the software that you run on the computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything so it all works together.
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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