 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 334, 21 December 2009 |
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Welcome to the final issue of DistroWatch Weekly in 2009! It is fascinating to see how Linux is used in real-world situations, where it often proves to be an outstanding solution at very little cost. This week's feature article presents SheevaPlug, a $99 mini-computer not much larger than an electric plug. Inside it, there is an ARM-based processor, some RAM, and a Flash storage device - just enough for a creative geek to set it up as a low-cost MythTV server with Debian GNU/Linux. Read on to find out more about this unusual system. In the news section, Mark Shuttleworth announces that he will step down as the CEO of Canonical early next year, Mandriva announces a new edition of its Linux operating system that boots in less than 10 seconds, Omega releases a Fedora remix that includes multimedia codecs and other conveniences not shipped in Fedora itself, and Linux Mint has good news for those who prefer the project's fast and lightweight edition with Fluxbox. Also not to be missed, a link to an interview with openSUSE community manager Joe Brockmeier and a look at the current state of Linux Standard Base. As always, happy reading and see you all in 2010!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Patrick Van Oosterwijck) |
SheevaPlug - a Debian home server in a wall-wart
 Personally I have always been interested in unusual hardware. Coming from a background in electronics, I tend to find "standard" computer hardware rather boring and always like to experiment with stuff that is off the beaten path. So I was thrilled when I found out about the Linux-powered Marvell SheevaPlug and ordered one right away from GlobalScale Technologies for only US$99. My intended project was replacing my ageing and power-hungry home server with this tiny, power-saving device.
System-level decisions
 The SheevaPlug (pictured on the left) is an ARM-based computer with a 1.2 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 512 MB of Flash memory, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a USB host connector, all rolled into the tiny form factor of a wall-wart power adapter. It is offered as a development kit in the hope that developers will find cool things to do with it and jump start a new concept called "plug computing". Since its introduction, several web sites have sprung up that provide valuable information to get it up and running for a variety of applications.
Installing Linux on a device like this is nothing like the standard pop-in-a-CD-and-go install process we are accustomed to when installing Linux on a normal PC. For one thing, there is no local user interface in the form of a monitor and keyboard. There is also no CD drive, and the device has no BIOS, instead it has a powerful open-source boot-loader called U-Boot that is quite famous in embedded systems circles.
The SheevaPlug comes with a stripped-down Ubuntu already pre-installed on the Flash drive and, for many uses as a standard file or web server, this may be just fine. But I use my home server as a MythTV backend, and I was surprised to find that the pre-installed Ubuntu does not have any kernel modules installed. This caused my USB TV tuner not to be recognized. I might have been able to hack in the right modules, but since I was going to add an external USB hard drive to store network backups and recorded TV shows anyway, I decided to leave the Ubuntu installation on the Flash drive alone and install a Debian system on the USB hard drive instead.
In case someone would like to install a fresh Ubuntu, it is worth noting that the ARM edition of Ubuntu 9.10 is not compatible with the SheevaPlug processor. Ubuntu 9.10 uses the ARMv6+VFP instruction set, while the SheevaPlug processor can only handle ARMv5 instructions. As far as I know, every other distro with an ARM branch should work though, as does Ubuntu 9.04.
A quick note on running a MythTV backend on the SheevaPlug. While the SheevaPlug has a processor that is quite capable of handling many server-related workloads, it is missing a floating point unit which causes media encoding performance to be pretty poor. In my setup, I only receive over-the-air HDTV, and the incoming MPEG2 stream can be dumped straight to the hard drive without requiring extra encoding. If you were to try to make MythTV on a SheevaPlug record analog TV though, the results would likely be very poor, since the SheevaPlug doesn't have the muscle to handle the required encoding in real time. As always, use the right tool for the task. In my case, not requiring additional encoding, the SheevaPlug handles the backend tasks for both playback of recorded shows and live TV playback with time-shifting just fine.
Installation
 After I had already started this project, I found out that there are different ways to install Debian on the SheevaPlug that are probably easier than what I did, but since I didn't use them, I can't comment on them here. Instead I followed the manual bootstrapping procedure described here which is probably harder, but worked well for me nonetheless. The initial step needs to be performed on a different machine that is already running Debian. I didn't follow the procedure to the letter but made some changes to customize my system. For one thing, instead of Debian "unstable", I decided to install Debian "testing". It has a kernel that is recent enough to support my TV tuner (an ATI TV Wonder 600 USB, well supported under Linux), and it is more stable than Debian's "unstable" branch.
I customized /etc/hostname, /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/fstab to fit my network and system. I decided to partition the USB hard drive to have an ext3 system partition, a 1 GB swap partition and use the rest of the drive as a JFS file system that would hold network storage, backups and MythTV recordings. I chose the lesser known JFS file system because it deals well with the large files generated by MythTV and it is well know to be light on CPU usage, a marked advantage for a low-end system like this one. I decided to skip some of the read-only-root recommendations listed in the procedure since I was not using a Flash storage device but a real hard drive.
With my hard drive now set up with the first stage of the bootstrap system, it was time to hook it up to the SheevaPlug and give it a spin. Since I needed to hook up both a USB hard drive and a USB tuner, I had to add an external USB hub to split the one USB connection on the SheevaPlug into four. I do wish the manufacturer would have included a USB hub in the SheevaPlug hardware so more than just one USB connector would be available, but alas, an external hub does the trick.
The SheevaPlug has no connection for a screen, instead the initial console is accessed through a separate USB device connection that provides a virtual serial port. In fact, two virtual serial ports are provided through this connection: one provides JTAG connectivity for very low-level debugging, the other one provides a serial console at 115,200 bps. On a Linux system, these virtual serial ports can be accessed as /dev/ttyUSBx devices, and the serial console ends up being the second device. An inconvenience is that these devices only appear after the SheevaPlug is powered up, so you have to be fast in making your serial terminal connection once the devices appear to be able to stop the automatic bootloader in time.
The SheevaPlug (white) on top of an external USB hard drive (black) and a TV tuner plugged into a USB hub
(full image size: 1,063kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
After changing the bootloader parameters according to the directions in the procedure, I booted and reached a Bash prompt where I could run the second stage of the bootstrap process and the remaining setup. Besides the regular Debian package sources, I also added the debian-multimedia.org repository and was pleasantly surprised how well stocked their ARM repository is. Debian proper has an excellent reputation when it comes to supporting different architectures, but I hadn't expected this to extend to third-party repositories. A MythTV package for ARM was readily available, saving me the lengthy compile-cycle I had been expecting.
Still, I wasn't able to escape compiling entirely. I ran into trouble getting the USB tuner to work, although it is supposed to work just fine under Linux. The kernel always failed to load the firmware, although I had added it according to the instructions, and the kernel could find the file just fine, but then would error out trying to add a duplicate device node. Plugging the tuner in to my netbook running sidux, it worked just fine out of the box. This had me stumped for a while, but eventually I traced the problem down to a difference in how the Debian ARM and x86 kernels are configured. The ARM kernel has an option set to have the I2C device file system compiled into the kernel, while this is a module in the x86 kernel. The USB tuner uses components that connect to each other using the I2C bus, and both the I2C device file system and the TV tuner driver were trying to create device nodes for these components. I solved the issue by having APT download the kernel sources, copying the standard kernel configuration from the /boot directory, changing this troublesome option and recompiling the kernel.
I finished my system by using apt-get to install SSH, Samba, SWAT, MySQL, MythTV, rsync and probably some other stuff I forgot. How to set all these up is beyond the scope of this article and works pretty much the same as on any other Debian system, so plenty of information is available. The only thing that is unusual and that may confuse people is how to run mythtv-setup, since this is a Qt program and the SheevaPlug has no native GUI interface. The answer is that you can use ssh -X <hostname> to log in to the SheevaPlug with port forwarding, and then when you run mythtv-setup, the user interface will be exported to the machine you're logging in from.
MythTV playing IceAge 2
(full image size: 1,046kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusion
This write-up was intended as a very high-level review of my experience setting up this unusual system, and is by no means a step-by-step walkthrough. There is plenty of detailed information available online on websites such as plugcomputer.org and computingplugs.com that can prove invaluable to get things working on the SheevaPlug. As remarked before, the system is sold as a developer's kit and setting it up is definitely not for the faint of heart or for those who avoid the terminal like the plague. In the end, I had a lot of fun getting this to work and the system is working beautifully. I learned a lot in the process and am amazed yet again at how flexible Debian is as an operating system for just about any computer, even embedded systems like this one.
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About the author. Patrick Van Oosterwijck is an embedded software developer who in his professional life spends most of his days designing embedded systems and writing software for micro-controllers, usually on bare-metal devices without operating systems. His interest in Linux started about six years ago and since then he has experimented with everything from SuSE and Ubuntu to Gentoo and Buildroot. The last couple of years he has worked on several projects that apply Linux to embedded systems running on x86, Blackfin and ARM processors.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Management changes at Canonical, Mandriva "InstantOn" and "Moblin" editions, Omega Fedora Remix with media codecs, Linux Mint "Fluxbox", interview with openSUSE's Joe Brockmeier
  Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical, has announced his resignation from the position of CEO of Canonical, effective March 2010: "From March next year, I'll focus my Canonical energy on product design, partnerships and customers. Those are the areas that I enjoy most and also the areas where I can best shape the impact we have on open source and the technology market. I'm able to do this because Jane Silber, who has been COO at Canonical virtually from the beginning, will take on the job of CEO." The new CEO, Jane Silber (pictured on the right), has been with the company for over five years. A brief interview on Canonical blogs tells us more about her background: "I am currently Chief Operating Officer and Director of Online Services. I joined Canonical in 2004, and since then have been closely involved in the establishment and management of most Canonical functions. I have a technical background and started my career as a software developer, and have since held engineering and senior management positions at companies as diverse as a health and wellness promotion start-up, a large technology and manufacturing company in Japan, and the US defence contractor General Dynamics. I am American, and came to the UK in 2002 to complete an MBA at Oxford."
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 The developers and community contributors of Mandriva seem to have been rather busy recently, with two new products announced last week. The first of them is called "Mandriva InstantOn", an operating system for netbooks and other mobile devices with boot times of "less than 10 seconds": "Mandriva is proud to announce its brand new environment for mobile devices - Mandriva InstantOn. Mandriva InstantOn comes from OEM specific developments and is available now from our online store, from only €9.90€ (US$14.90). Dump it on a CD or USB key, install in a few clicks and you are ready to use it. InstantOn ideally fits to mobile devices such as netbooks, laptops and MIDs. It can connect to Internet everywhere using a very easy and efficient network manager." Mandriva InstantOn includes the usual application for the Internet, such as Mozilla Firefox (with Flash and Java plugins), Mozilla Thunderbird, Skype and Pidgin, and it requires just 256 MB of memory and 1.4 GB of disk space. The second Mandriva product announced last week is a community initiative, an experimental Mandriva Moblin live CD, which is available for free download: "Thomas Lottmann is providing experimental Mandriva-based Moblin live CD images. Theses images are provided in order to help testing Mandriva Moblin implementation."
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 The Fedora distribution, as a proponent of free software, doesn't ship with any proprietary components or patent-encumbered media codecs. Although it isn't difficult to add these extras post-install from third-party repositories, for those who would prefer an even easier option, there is Omega Fedora Remix: "Omega is a completely free and open source Linux-based operating system and a Fedora remix suitable for desktop and laptop users. It is an installable live image (1.3 GB) for regular PC (i686 architecture) systems. It has all the features of Fedora and a number of additional software, including multimedia players and codecs enabled by default. Omega plays any multimedia content (including MP3) or commercial DVDs out of the box. Features: simple and effective GNOME desktop environment; plays MP3 and all your multimedia content; OpenOffice.org office suite; extra utilities and games; xine and MPlayer frontends; includes the latest updates. Omega is 100% compatible with Fedora, only including packages from Fedora, RPM Fusion and Livna software repositories." The live DVD image is available for download from here: Omega-12-i686-Live.iso (1,230MB, SHA256).
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 Good news for the fans of lighter variants of Linux Mint - the Fluxbox community edition has been resurrected and the first development build of the upcoming version 8 should be available shortly: "The Fluxbox community edition produced releases for Linux Mint 5 'Elyssa' and Linux Mint 6 'Felicia' and it became quite popular among Linux Mint users. But in 2009, due to personal circumstances Shane Joe Lazar, the maintainer of this edition, had to focus his attention elsewhere and so the Fluxbox CE was discontinued. During the release cycle for Linux Mint 7 'Gloria', no Fluxbox edition was released. Kendall Weaver recently stepped up from the community and worked on a new Fluxbox edition of Linux Mint. We had a conversation and I got the opportunity to test his preliminary ISOs. Today, I'm happy to welcome him within the development team as the new maintainer of the Fluxbox Community Edition. His vision of the Fluxbox edition is a bit different and he's interested in replacing some of the most popular software in order to make it even lighter. He's already started to interact with the community on the forums and he will be getting the help and support of the development team.".
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 Finally, a brief extract from an interview with Joe Brockmeier, the openSUSE community manager, as published last week at H Open: "Q: You have said that openSUSE 11.2 is not necessarily suited to new users but is more attuned to the needs of developers with a degree of experience. Why is this so and what kind of functionalities would an experienced software engineer new to SUSE recognise that would let them know they are working with a more sophisticated product? A: I would say it's not necessarily suited to all new users and is very well attuned to needs of developers. What many openSUSE users come back for again and again is the well-integrated selection of development environments and tools on openSUSE. Whether a developer is working with C/C++, Java, Mono/.NET, Python, Ruby, PHP, or whatever - openSUSE is up-to-date with a solid stack of development tools." The well-known openSUSE personality also predicts some interesting developments in the new year, especially in the mobile devices arena: "I think 2010 is going to be crucial for Linux on client devices. To be honest, I don't see it making huge inroads to the 'traditional' consumer desktop, but I do see big changes coming on the netbook, thin client and mobile devices. Linux and open platforms have an opportunity to rule the roost here."
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
LSB - does it matter?
Wondering-about-standards asks: LSB, does it matter? Does it help? Do all the major distros adhere?
DistroWatch answers: The Linux Standard Base (I'm assuming that's what you mean by LSB) is an effort by the Linux Foundation and a number of distributions. The idea behind the Linux Standard Base is that there are a lot of Linux distributions and a lot of differences between most of them. This situation makes it difficult for software developers to create applications which will run on all the various Linux systems. The Linux Standard Base (LSB) lays down some guidelines to help make distributions more compatible with each other. The hope is that a common base will make things easier for application developers and make the Linux operating system a more inviting platform.
In theory, this is a good idea. As an end-user, I often find myself frustrated because an application will run fine on my distro, version X, but not on version Y. Or, perhaps, another application will work on distro A, but not on distro B. It's also frustrating, as a developer, discovering the many incompatibilities between various distributions and all the little patches or tweaks required to get software working on multiple flavours of Linux. And those quirks don't begin to address the many different package managers and package formats. The LSB tries to smooth out those wrinkles.
But in practice, does it really make a difference? If we look at this list of compliant distributions or this list, both maintained by the Linux Standard Base, we'll see a few interesting things. Some of the big players (Mandriva, Novell, Red Hat and Ubuntu) are on the list. Other big names (Debian, Fedora and Slackware) are not. It's also obvious that either the lists are well out of date or just about all the distributions have dropped LSB in the past two years. I suspect the former. It's also curious to note that despite the lack of certain big names on the lists, the LSB web site claims, "Luckily all major distribution vendors are certified to the LSB." I suppose it depends on how you define "major" and "vendor".
Does LSB help? According to the information at the bottom of this page, a total of four companies have certified their applications through LSB in the past eight years. I'd say the answer is pretty clear: LSB is a good idea, but there doesn't seem to be an effort to engage the community. There hasn't been a strong effort to get their message out there or keep their site up to date. Sadly, this idea seems to be fading away faster than it is gaining support.
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| Released Last Week |
Untangle Gateway 7.1
Untangle Gateway 7.1 has been released. Untangle is a Debian-based network gateway with pluggable modules for network applications like spam blocking, web filtering, anti-virus, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, VPN, SSL VPN and firewall. From the release announcement: "We are pleased to announce broad availability of our latest version, Untangle 7.1, which includes a host of new features and improvements: hierarchical policy management - managing multiple policies is now much more productive, with much less task repetition; automated sessions ending - sessions are now automatically ended is the user's policy changes at a point in time; safe search - Esoft web filter can now enforce safe search for popular search engines, such as Google; password override - administrators can now allow for block pages to be bypassed using a password...."
Absolute Linux 13.0.5
Paul Sherman has released Absolute Linux 13.0.5, an updated version of the Slackware-based distribution featuring the lightweight IceWM window manager: "Absolute Linux 13.0.5 released. Monthly minor release cycle? Primarily security updates (kernel, GIMP, Firefox, BIND, etc.). Also removed Brasero (CD burning) as it is too dependent upon GNOME and switched to a simpler Xfburn. It has a few Xfce-related dependencies but these are small and they also allow easier development for users if they want to use the libraries. You may also notice that wxGTK libraries are in the base install, used by the CHM help viewer and also support Audacity, now compiled and sitting on CD2 in the multimedia folder." Visit the project's home page to read the release announcement.
kademar Linux 4.9.1
Adonay Sanz Alsina has announced the release of kademar Linux 4.9.1, a Debian-based desktop distribution and live CD/DVD with support for the Catalan language and some custom configuration tools. Some of the changes in this version include: major improvements in the PulseAudio sound server; ext4 as the default file system; NetworkManager applet replaced by wicd; new CADI module for configuring multimedia keyboards; Linux kernel 2.6.31.5 compiled for the i686 architecture and with NVIDIA proprietary kernel module version 185.18.36; system installer improvements with initial support for GRUB 2 bootloader, a console-mode installation option, various improvements in graphical interface and corrections in the Catalan-language translations. Read the full release announcement (in Spanish) for additional notes.
Tiny Core Linux 2.7
Robert Shingledecker has released of Tiny Core Linux 2.7, a minimalist Linux distribution in only 10 megabytes: "Tiny Core Linux 2.7 is now posted. The theme for 2.7 is to make Tiny Core and Micro Core easier to use by promoting a single extension installation method (mount) while still supporting copy into file system. Change log: updated appbrowser - single 'Install' button and renamed 'Download Only' to 'OnDemand'; updated appsaudit - new menu option 'Install Options' to maintain copy2fs.flg and copy2fs.lst; new ondemand - create flwm right-click menu shortcuts to load and start applications from /tce/optional - tune your system for much faster boot times; updated tce-load - dropped l, m, lm, ml testing, ldconfig always called; stripped more libraries for smaller size, now at 10.1 MB...." for additional details please see the full changelog.
Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0r1
Alan Baghumian has announced the availability of the first revision of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0, a desktop distribution and live CD based on Debian's testing branch: "The first update of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0 is available for immediate download. This version merges all security and bug-fix updates. Also, a bug in installer that prevented detection of other installed operating systems has been fixed. Parsix 3.0 brings a vast amount of new features, like GNOME 2.26.3, brand new kernel based on Linux 2.6.29.6 with extra patches and drivers, updated installer that supports separate /home partition, ext4 file system and GRUB 2. In other news, Parsix 3.5 repositories are up and running and all community users are welcome to start testing and using it. The final release is planned for March 2010." Here is the brief release announcement.
Parted Magic 4.7
Patrick Verner has released Parted Magic 4.7, a small live CD with a collection of hard disk partitioning, hardware testing and data rescue tools. What's new? "Parted Magic 4.7 adds and removes some programs and fixes a few bugs. Key changes: Partclone 0.1.9 was added again despite Clonezilla being removed, people still wanted to use it from the command line; Xfburn and libburnia are replaced by SimpleBurn and cdrtools; LXMusic 0.4.0 was added with a very limited xmms2 build; util-linux is replaced by util-linux-ng; Firefox is replaced by Google Chrome (official beta version); Linux kernel is updated to 2.6.32.2 with Squashfs and LZMA compression; a mistake in the kernel configuration was fixed and Broadcom wireless drivers work again; some major problems were fixed in the wireless scripts; lsof 4.78, workman 1.3.4, hddtemp 0.3-beta15 were added." The full release announcement can be found on the project's home page.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to database
- Jolicloud. Jolicloud is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution for netbooks. It is geared towards extreme user-friendliness so that any computer user can install it with just one click. Besides the standard ISO image, the distribution is also provided as a Windows executable file which can resize an existing Windows partition and install Jolicloud as an alternative operating system. Other Jolicloud features include heavy orientation towards web application and services, online backup option, web-based software installation interface, inclusion of proprietary hardware drivers and non-free media codecs, and extensive social networking features.
Jolicloud Pre-Beta - a user-friendly, Ubuntu-based distribution for the cloud computing era
(full image size: 62kB, screen resolution 1024x600 pixels)
- Masonux. Masonux is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the lightweight LXDE desktop environment. As such, it is suitable for computers with as little as 256 MB of memory. While in its default state it only contains a base system and a few popular applications, Masonux is fully compatible with Ubuntu and additional software can be easily installed from Ubuntu repositories using the standard package management tools.
Masonux 9.10 Beta 2 - an Ubuntu-based distribution with LXDE
(full image size: 1,055kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- NeDiO. NeDiO (NeDi on OpenBSD) is a highly optimised OpenBSD CD image providing everything to install a self-contained NeDi appliance. At mere 85 MB, it includes an SSL web server with PHP (used by the frontend), MySQL and Perl (for the backend).
- Viper OS. Viper OS is a desktop Linux distribution - a remastered build of Ubuntu with a new wallpaper and dark GNOME theme.
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DistroWatch database summary
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 This is the last issue of DistroWatch Weekly in 2009. To all our faithful readers, the DistroWatch Weekly team wishes you peaceful end-of-the-year holidays and a very happy and prosperous new year. See you again on Monday, 4 January 2010!
Ladislav Bodnar, Jesse Smith, Caitlyn Martin and Susan Linton
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Issue 984 (2022-09-05): deepin 23 Preview, watching for changing to directories, Mint team tests Steam Deck, Devuan posts fix for repository key expiry |
| • Issue 983 (2022-08-29): Qubes OS 4.1.1, Alchg Linux, immutable operating systems, Debian considers stance on non-free firmware, Arch-based projects suffer boot issue |
| • Issue 982 (2022-08-22): Peropesis 1.6.2, KaOS strips out Python 2 and PulseAudio, deepin becomes independent, getting security update notifications |
| • Issue 981 (2022-08-15): Linux Lite 6.0, defining desktop environments and window managers, Mint releases upgrade tool, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 980 (2022-08-08): Linux Mint 21, Pledge on Linux, SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan base |
| • Issue 979 (2022-08-01): KaOS 2022.06 and KDE Plasma 5.25, terminating processes after a set time, GNOME plans Secure Boot check |
| • Issue 978 (2022-07-25): EndeavourOS 22.6, Slax explores a return to Slackware, Ubuntu certified with Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 |
| • Issue 977 (2022-07-18): EasyOS 4.2, transferring desktop themes between distros, Tails publishes list of updates, Zevenet automates Let's Encrypt renewals |
| • Issue 976 (2022-07-11): NixOS 22.05, making a fake webcam, exploring the Linux scheduler, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 975 (2022-07-04): Murena One running /e/OS, where are all the openSUSE distributions, Fedora to offer unfiltered Flathub access |
| • Issue 974 (2022-06-27): AlmaLinux 9.0, the changing data of DistroWatch's database, UBports on the Pixel 3a, Tails and GhostBSD publish hot fixes |
| • Issue 973 (2022-06-20): openSUSE 15.4, collecting distro media, FreeBSD status report, Ubuntu Core with optional real-time kernel |
| • Issue 972 (2022-06-13): Rolling Rhino Remix, SambaBox 4.1, SUSE team considers future of SUSE and openSUSE Leap, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant |
| • Issue 971 (2022-06-06): ChimeraOS 2022.01.03, Lilidog 22.04, NixOS gains graphical installer, Mint replaces Bluetooth stack and adopts Timeshift, how to change a MAC address |
| • Issue 970 (2022-05-30): Tails 5.0, taking apart a Linux distro, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop |
| • Issue 969 (2022-05-23): Fedora 36, a return to Unity, Canonical seeks to improve gaming on Ubuntu, HP plans to ship laptops with Pop!_OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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