 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 244, 17 March 2008 |
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Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! PC-BSD, a user-friendly variant of FreeBSD with a web-based software installation system, continues to deliver updated releases on a regular basis. We'll take a look at the just-released version 1.5. Does it support modern hardware well? And can it challenge the popular desktop Linux distributions? Read below for some answers. In the news section, Ubuntu enters a beta freeze stage, KNOPPIX gets busy with bug fixes, the Hungarian PCLinuxOS community releases PCe17OS, OpenBSD publishes the 4.3 information page, and Dru Lavigne announces the availability of an up-to-date BSDA certification DVD. Also in this issue, learn about pkg-get, a package management utility for OpenSolaris and follow an interesting analysis of the DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking logs as published by a group of data mining researchers in France. Happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Story |
First look at PC-BSD 1.5 (by Susan Linton)
Introduction
 I've followed the development of PC-BSD with enthusiasm since my first test drive three years ago of version 0.6. I was highly impressed with the developers' ability to provide a free BSD that was easy to install and even easier to use. Truthfully, I thought it was just amazing. I've tested various versions since, including 1.0 and 1.4, and was never severely disappointed. So, when 1.5 was released, I expected things to only be better. In many ways they were, but in the most significant way they weren't.
Installation
The PC-BSD installer hasn't changed much, if any, since 1.4. It's still a lovely graphical wizard that walks the user through a very friendly setup. It includes a partitioning tool for those needing that ability, but it is still limited to logical partitions. It sets up user accounts and the root password. It offers some extra packages, such as Firefox, Opera, KOffice, and OpenOffice.org (located on the second install CD). It installs a bootloader if desired. It's quick and easy, and it works well. The installer is still one of the most impressive aspects of PC-BSD.
During the first boot, one is presented with a graphical X.Org configuration. It offers a wide selection of resolutions and all the drivers available in X.Org 7.3, as well as three versions of the proprietary NVIDIA graphic drivers. This is a wonderful time-saver. The graphical setup tool offers basic configuration with no advanced settings (such as dual screen or special effects), but what it does it does well. It works good and allows the user some choice as opposed to auto-detection and setup. I didn't have any trouble using the NVIDIA drivers this release.
Desktop and software
If you ticked the auto-login checkbox during install, you will miss the tasteful login screen and will be taken straight to the KDE 3.5.8 desktop. The appearance hasn't change much since the last release, featuring the same gradient blue wallpaper. Many components have been updated for this release, but the software line-up remains mostly unchanged as well. It is comprised mainly of KDE applications, such as Konqueror, Kopete, and Kontact as well as some made-for-KDE applications, e.g. Amarok, KMPlayer, and Kaffeine.
One of the benefits of using PC-BSD is their pbiDIR. This is a web site listing lots of software for easy installation onto your PC-BSD system. It offers many popular packages, including The GIMP, Thunderbird, Kasablanca, Audacity, Microsoft TrueType Fonts, and a bunch of games, such as Alien Arena or Frozen Bubble. This makes installing software really easy. Just click through until the package downloads, then an install wizard (similar to what's seen with Windows) opens and guides you through the install. This usually includes the option to install a desktop icon and menu entry. I found this process works really well.
PC-BSD offers a simple way of managing the installed software packages.
(full image size: 200kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Add/Remove Software is still present and functional as is the Ports tree and pkg_add, but the menu Online Update Manager is now inoperative in lieu of the new PC-BSD Update Manager located in the system tray. It was said that among the improvements it now "allows override variables, so that administrators can use their own mirrors / servers to roll out updates to users."
One nice little addition this release is a battery monitor located in the system tray. There still weren't any CPUfreq or hibernation options, but the CPUfreq module can be configured to load at boot using the Services Manager found in the Settings menu. The System Manager appears to remain unchanged, still offering system tools (hardware detection output, cvsup for Ports) and enabling the boot splash. Also found in the menu is Network Settings, which allow very basic configuration, and Firewall, which provides an interface to set up a firewall.
Multimedia support in PC-BSD is good. I had no trouble with Flash video in Firefox and I could play local video files using one of the included players. Kaffeine is the default player for video and it was able to handle AVIs and MPEGs just fine. I did have trouble with encrypted DVDs in the graphical video players (Kaffeine and KMPlayer), but could play them using MPlayer at the command line. Audio CDs open and play fine in Amarok while OGGs and MP3s open and play in Kaffeine. I didn't have any trouble with DOCs or PPTs prepared in Windows or Mac OS using OpenOffice.org except perhaps with the spacing of some images. PDFs were no trouble at all as they opened in the integrated KPDF.
Compiz Fusion is included in this release and worked really well. There's a menu entry which, when clicked, asks if you'd like to enable it at boot. When clicked, Compiz Fusion is immediately enabled and special effects are available. I didn't suffer any instability or performance issues when using this application, but it did seem to require the restart of X to disable the feature.
PC-BSD 1.5 offers 3D desktop features, courtesy of Compiz Fusion.
(full image size: 297kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I didn't have any major issues with any of the applications or tools. They seemed quite stable and functional.
Hardware
I did have an interesting time with PC-BSD and my various machines. I found some bugs and inconsistencies that indicate possible regression and probably some new issues as well. I ended up testing PC-BSD 1.5 on three machines and discovered that support for NVIDIA boards was lacking.
First, I tested PC-BSD on my trusty HP Pavilion laptop. 1.4 did well on this machine, so I was surprised to discover that it wasn't quite as friendly this release. The first issue I noticed was that the built-in wired Ethernet chip that normally uses Forcedeth in Linux was inoperative in PC-BSD 1.5. It wasn't even detected. There were no hints of it in any of the logs. It was just completely unseen. Did the developers forget to build support for these chips into the kernel?
I didn't try to get the wireless chip to work in the previous release of PC-BSD, but I did this time. It's a Broadcom chip that usually causes most auto-detection to insert the bcm43xx driver. Mine won't work with bcm43xx and I must use NDISwrapper to import and use the Windows drivers in Linux. FreeBSD (the base for PC-BSD) includes the Ndis tools to do the same thing. I was able to "ndisgen" to convert the drivers and could load them. The kernel saw the chip, but was unable to communicate with it. As a result, I hit a brick wall with this laptop because I find a system practically useless without an Internet connection. Also, trying to boot with ACPI disabled resulted in a general protection fault.
But the weirdness didn't end just yet. I installed twice on this laptop, hoping that an ISO burned at a slower rate and a connected RJ45 cable might help, but they didn't. I noticed that with the first install, the Windows NTFS partition was detected and available, but was not seen the next. Given the simple installer, there isn't much way to change your install routine other than your choice of a few extra applications. In addition, this release of PC-BSD brings new sound card detection and support. With this same laptop, I noticed that just about every sound module was loaded at boot. Sound worked fine, but it was unsettling to see all those modules loaded. Lastly, when the screen would blank, X was frozen or remained blacked. The backlight came on, but I could not get back to the desktop without hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and logging back in.
Next, I tested PC-BSD 1.5 on a server machine with Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G Micro-ATX mainboard. This too is an NVIDIA board with a Forcedeth supported Ethernet chip, and, in fact, has several chips in common with or similar to the laptop from roughly the same era. Again, the NIC was not detected, so it really appears this was overlooked by the developers. In addition, system performance was markedly degraded using this machine. It uses SATA drives, but so does the laptop which displayed no performance issues. Interestingly, the server has four times the RAM as the laptop, which PC-BSD did see. Also, all the sound modules were loaded for this system just as with the laptop. I think it's safe to conclude that there is a problem with this release on NVIDIA-based systems.
Finally, I tested 1.5 on my basic desktop machine based on an MSI K8T Neo2 that uses a Via K8T800 chipset with Realtek Ethernet chips, NVIDIA graphics, and Creative sound. I didn't have any major issues with this machine at all - it worked wonderfully, except with my Epson R220 printer that could be configured, but not used. I found good hardware support with impressive performance and stability on this machine.
Conclusion
Given the issues experienced with my HP laptop and this release, I can't say this is uniformly a wonderful release. With 1.5 being based on the same FreeBSD 6.3 as 1.4, I'm left to conclude it was something native to PC-BSD. I believe it's safe to say that if you have an NVIDIA-based system, you may want to stick with 1.4. Otherwise, with well supported hardware, it worked as reliably as usual. There were no big changes to the eye, but underneath there were improvements to the PC-BSD tools and updates to the software.
The developers have stated that the next release will be based on the new FreeBSD 7.0, so perhaps I will have better luck at that time. For me, 1.5 was a bit disappointing and I hope I still have the 1.4 disks around here somewhere.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Ubuntu beta freeze, KNOPPIX release update, PCLinuxOS E17 edition, unofficial Gentoo live CD, BSD Certification update, package management in OpenSolaris
 The development of Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" continues at a neck-breaking pace. After some six alpha builds, the first and only beta release will be made available later this week, launching an intensive testing period that is expected to engage a much wider Ubuntu user community than any of the alphas. Also, the beta freeze is now in effect. Steve Langasek: "We are now one week from the beta release of 8.04 LTS and have just entered beta freeze. During the freeze, all uploads to main must be approved by a member of the release team, so if you have fixes which are important to get in, please do get in touch as soon as possible. Uploads to 'universe' require a manual push through the queue, but are not subject to release management approval. Issues which are important for the beta release will be tracked by the release team here."
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 The day of the public release of KNOPPIX 5.3 is approaching fast. According to a post from Klaus Knopper published on the project's mailing list, KNOPPIX 5.3.1 will be out this week: "To avoid speculations about too much delay again (again, I apologize for last year's unavailability), here is our to-do list between CeBIT and the KNOPPIX 5.3.1 release for which we have an internal release date of 'not later than 22.3.2008': fix speech plugin for ADRIANE - done; fix detection of VFAT file system in /etc/fstab- done; package updates in order to get Orca to speak in German, too - done; fix annoying 'out of room for mmap' apt-get update error - done; add missing firmware for ipw3x driver - done; kernel update - in progress; bug fixes and enhancements for screen reader in close cooperation with SBL author Marco Skambraks - in progress; fix KNOPPIX terminal server - in progress; KDE4 bugs - won't fix."
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 The Hungarian PCLinuxOS developer community has released an interesting variant of this popular desktop distribution. Called PCe17OS, this is a remastered edition of PCLinuxOS with Enlightenment 17 as the default desktop. The 1.1 GB live DVD contains Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, Nvu, Deluge BitTorrent client, tvtime, Mirage, GIMP, Songbird, a good number of GTK+ applications, several utilities, the Drakconf family of configuration tools and other pleasant surprises, all accessible from a beautiful desktop. The live DVD is set up to boot into Hungarian by default, but one can change the language to English via Enlightenment's configuration panel. Here is a brief release announcement (in Hungarian). Interested readers can download the live DVD from here: pce17os_hu.iso (1,089MB, MD5, torrent).
PCe17OS - a PCLinuxOS variant featuring Enlightenment 17
(full image size: 714kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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 After a recent flurry of news and public announcements, it seems that the Gentoo project is slowly sliding back to its old ways of presenting itself to the world: missed release schedules, absence of progress reports, silence on the front page... The distribution's Release Engineering page still calls for a beta release on the 10th of March (this is already a week late than the original plan), but despite missing the target, no update has been made either on the page itself or elsewhere on the project's web site. It isn't all bad news, though. Last week, the Gentoo user community stepped in to compensate for the continued failings of the main project to deliver a new version and released an unofficial Gentoo live CD: "You can download the Gentoo minimal installation CD for installing Gentoo Linux on your computer. The reason, why I have released an 'unofficial' Gentoo installation CD is that the last stable version is 2007.0, which is old (but still working well, of course), but the recent kernel supports more hardware." This unofficial Gentoo installation CD for the i686 architecture can be downloaded from here: install-i686-minimal-2008.Mar.13.iso (226MB, MD5). A current Portage and a "stage3" archive are also available from the same source.
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 Good news for those readers who are interested in getting certified in administering BSD system. As announced by Dru Lavigne, an updated version of the BSDA DVD, containing four BSD operating systems, plus courseware, is now available for purchase: "Late last night I finished up the ISO for a new version of the BSDA DVD. It's now available for order from the BSDCert web site or the BSDA registration web site. The DVD is a thank-you for those who can donate $40 USD to BSD Certification and proceeds are used to offset the costs of creating, delivering, and maintaining psychometrically valid examinations. If you would like a DVD but are unable to afford the $40 donation or if you would like to negotiate a bulk order for a conference or educational purposes, contact me and we'll see what we can do. This edition of the DVD contains the i386 versions of FreeBSD 6.3 (including packages and the ports collection), NetBSD 4.0 (including pkgsrc) OpenBSD 4.2 (including packages) and DragonFly BSD 1.12.0."
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 Solaris has long had a reputation as a highly reliable server operating system, but with projects such as Indiana or BeleniX now developing new, user-friendly features, a desktop Solaris could become a realistic concept in the not too distant future. One of these new features is pkg-get, a real package manager for OpenSolaris, similar to apt-get: "pkg-get provides much the same functionality as apt-get, except that PKGs get installed instead of RPMs. It seems to be a bit more on the verbose side, but, in terms of execution, and a large collection of open source software to choose from in its publicly available repositories, it's an excellent alternative to doing everything yourself. I'd imagine it's probably a better alternative to most other software packages that do the same thing for Unix (although I can't seem to find more than the two I mentioned above that aren't hacked-up versions of Linux utilities fudged into working on a Unix box)."
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| Released Last Week |
Frugalware Linux 0.8
Miklós Vajna has announced the final release of Frugalware Linux 0.8, code name "Kalgan": "The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware Linux 0.8, our eighth stable release. No new features have been added since 0.8rc2, but more than 300 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn't follow the changes during the candidate releases, here are the most important changes since 0.7: up-to-date base system - Linux kernel 2.6.24.3, glibc 2.7 and GCC 4.2.3; up-to-date desktop packages - KDE 3.5.9, GNOME 2.20, Xfce 4.4.2, OpenOffice.org 2.4rc2 (ooo-build 2.4.0) and Firefox 2.0.0.12; setup - WPA support, new supported language (Czech); new graphical tool - Frugalware Update Notifier; 4,068 changes, including 251 new packages, 1,729 updated packages and 416 closed tasks." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
Frugalware Linux 0.8 with the Gfpm package management front-end
(full image size: 233kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
PC-BSD 1.5
iXsystems has announced the release of PC-BSD 1.5, a user-friendly desktop operating system based on FreeBSD: "iXsystems announced today the release of PC-BSD Edison edition. PC-BSD is a fully functional open source desktop operating system based on FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE. FreeBSD is one of the most used UNIX-like operating systems in the world and is widely renowned as the most stable and secure server operating system. Highlights of the Edison edition include availability of an AMD 64-bit version for faster performance on hardware currently running 64-bit Intel or Athlon processors. Other new built-in features include X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8, a new system updater tool, improvements to the PBI Removal and WiFi tools, BSSID support and improved SSID support, a new sound detection program, and a new PBI icon preview library." Read the press release, release notes and changelog for further information.
Foresight Linux 2.0
Ken VanDine has announced the final release of Foresight Linux 2.0, an rPath-based distribution featuring the very latest GNOME 2.22: "Foresight Linux 2.0 has been released. New in version 2.0: a new tar-based installer that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive; PackageKit to help users update their system and add and remove software; Syslinux, a new bootloader to replace GRUB; GNOME-Do to quickly search for many items present in a GNOME desktop environment (applications, Evolution contacts, Firefox bookmarks, files, artists and albums in Rhythmbox, Pidgin buddies, etc.) and perform commonly used actions on those items. Users should also find it much easier to use binary video card drivers from NVIDIA and ATI than in Foresight 1.x. Transmission is also included as the default BitTorrent application." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Parsix GNU/Linux 1.0r1
Alan Baghumian has announced the release of the first revision of Parsix GNU/Linux 1.0, a desktop distribution based on Debian's testing branch: "An updated version of Parsix GNU/Linux 1.0, code name 'Ramon', is available now. Parsix Ramon r1 contains updated packages and several fixes for the reported defects. Ramon r1 also introduces Continent APT repository, along with the officially supported Parsix repository. The Continent repository consists of the whole Debian testing archive, minus the official Parsix repository packages. Other highlights are: updated and security patched 2.6.23.14 kernel, GNOME 2.20.3, lots of updated packages, including OpenOffice.org 2.3.1, GNU Iceweasel 2.0.0.12, GIMP 2.4.4, glibc 2.7, Pidgin 2.3.1, Exaile 0.2.11, xFarDic 0.10.3 and more. All packages have been synchronized with Debian's testing repository as of March 08, 2008." The release announcement, release notes.
Clonezilla Live 1.0.9-19
Clonezilla Live is a Debian-based live CD containing Clonezilla, a partition and disk cloning software similar to Norton Ghost. An updated version was released today: "Clonezilla Live 1.0.9-19 (stable) released. This release is a bug-fixed one with some minor updates: fixed - Memtest86, FreeDOS and Etherboot were not listed in syslinux boot; fixed - CCISS RAID device restoration was broken; fixed - when 'ocs-iso -s' or 'ocs-live-dev -c -s' was run, Etherboot and FreeDOS images were not copied; syslinux related files are now in /syslinux; added sdparm, zip and unzip; makeboot.exe is replaced by makeboot.sh so that USB flash drive will boot successfully with kernel under /casper; Partclone 0.0.6 is used now so clone.fat is available; more descriptions were added to the boot menu; an option for VGA mode 640x480 was added." Read the full release announcement for more details.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
OpenBSD 4.3
The OpenBSD project has announced that its upcoming stable release, version 4.3, will be officially out on May 1st, 2008. A long list of new features, including support for several new architectures and device drivers, can be found on the OpenBSD 4.3 Release page.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Mining DistroWatch.com logs
The Page Hit Ranking (PHR) statistics on DistroWatch have stirred many heated debates over the years. But aside from ranking distributions by page views, is there a more scientific way to analyse the huge number of data representing some 100,000 daily visits on this web site? Loïc Cerf, a Ph.D. student at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Lyon, France, and a long-time DistroWatch reader, has spent several months analysing the DistroWatch.com PHR figures in order to observe the browsing trends of visitors over a period of time. The result of this work will be presented at the International Conference on Data Mining in Atlanta, USA, next month. In the meantime, the author has published some interesting observations in an article entitled Mining DistroWatch.com Logs: "Mining the logs from the famous DistroWatch.com web site enables to formally assess the trends in the GNU/Linux ecosystem. In particular, this first part will analyze the popularity of Ubuntu with respect to the former predominance of Mandriva Linux."
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Eee PC column on Xandros page
Several readers have asked to include the Eee PC edition of Xandros Desktop on this site's Xandros Desktop page. Your wish has been granted and a new column, listing the version numbers of the included default applications, has been added to the table. The Eee PC edition of Xandros Desktop ships with Linux kernel 2.6.21.4, glibc 2.3.6, X.Org 7.2, IceWM 1.2.30, Firefox 2.0.0.9, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 and other popular software. Development tools are not included, but some non-free ones, such as Skype and Acrobat reader are. For more information please visit our Xandros page here.
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New distributions added to database
- Clonezilla Live. Clonezilla Live is a Debian-based live CD containing Clonezilla, a partition and disk cloning software similar to Norton Ghost. It saves and restores only used blocks in hard drive. With Clonezilla, one can clone a 5 GB system to 40 clients in about 10 minutes.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- LinuxMallorca. LinuxMallorca is a Debian-based distribution developed by the Council of Mallorca in Spain.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 24 March 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 |
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Neptune
Neptune is a GNU/Linux distribution for desktops. It is based on Debian's Stable branch, except for a newer kernel, some drivers and newer versions of popular applications, such as LibreOffice. It also ships with the latest version of the KDE desktop. The distribution's main goals are to provide a good-looking general-purpose desktop with pre-configured multimedia playback and to offer an easy-to-use USB installer with a persistence option.
Status: Active
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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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