 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 366, 9 August 2010 |
|
Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Our themes for this week are Debian and communication. A freeze has been declared on the Debian Squeeze repo and we should soon see a new Stable release from the beloved GNU/Linux distribution. In honour of the upcoming release we will look at a new project which is trying to spread Debian to the world, talk about sidux and explore whether Dell is still selling machines with Ubuntu pre-installed. In our Question & Answer section we will ponder what the world might be like without Debian. In this issue we will also talk about the importance of communication in the open source community and we share some announcements with you about projects which are making an effort to exchange more information with their users. We will also look at a new project related to OpenSolaris, which has risen out of Oracle's unwillingness to communicate with the open source community. Happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Customer Service and Open Source Software
It is my opinion that customer service plays a large roll in attracting and keeping customers [1][2]. Of course there are a lot of factors consumers will be looking at when deciding on products. Price is usually a factor, location (if applicable), brand recognition and referrals will all play a role. But to me, and many other people, the communication we have with our fellow humans makes a huge difference. It makes sense, really, we're social animals and so how we interact with others is important. This is true in most walks of life, including open source.
In a way, I think the open source community is a bit of a paradox. Here we have a huge, loosely knit group of people who, for the most part, want to share their resources and help each other. Yet this community has historically been populated by people who are more introverted [3][4][5] and less likely to be social face-to-face. In the physical world this usually isn't a problem. The IT people can hide out in the back rooms, or the broom-closet offices or a cubical while HR, PR, sales staff and receptionists provide the face of an organization. But the open source world works a little differently, a little more transparently, and part of that transparency is clients and end-users usually have direct contact with developers and package maintainers. When the developer has good people skills, this can be a great experience. The client gets quick results, realistic expectations and firm technical information. However, when the developer isn't comfortable dealing with the public, we get results like these:
I think angry package managers and unhelpful programmers have almost become a cliché in the open source community and almost everyone who files regular bug reports or feature requests has encountered some hostility from the software's developer. With some projects the apathy so obvious that I sometimes consider saving the maintainer the effort and marking my own bug report "WONTFIX". Perhaps that's a bit facetious, but it does raise the question, in my mind, why bother setting up a bug reporting database if the developers are going to spend more time arguing with the users than fixing problems?
Some people may look at the situation and claim if people don't like the developers' attitudes then it's best to find a different program, or even a different operating system. Open source is about choice and options so if you don't like the service provided, you shouldn't complain. It's free after all. Which is true, a lot of the software in the open source community is free and a lot of distributions are offered free of charge. But some aren't. Some distributions charge for their products, some come with support contracts and a large number of distros accept donations. Let's not forget too that some free distributions are tied to companies which sell other products. For instance, if a person has a good experience with Fedora, they may purchase from Red Hat. The same applies to openSUSE or Mandriva. Many distributions, and open source projects in general, do stand to gain by increasing their user base and making their end-users happy. Yet communicating with users in a friendly manner (while becoming easier technologically) seems to be a low priority with a lot of projects.
We all weigh our choices differently; I think it's important to have a good rapport with the organization which provides my operating system. I don't mean developers should bend over backwards to fulfil every feature request, it's not possible to make everyone happy all of the time. Rather I am suggesting distributions should make sure bug reports are responded to in a timely manner, that the package maintainers conduct themselves in a civil manner, that an effort is made to keep mailing list content polite [6]. Developers may not think of themselves as being in the customer service business, but every time they respond to a bug report or an e-mail or respond to a user on a forum, they become the virtual face of their project. With our ability to communicate instantly with others around the world coders no longer have the privilege to simply be the people behind the scenes, hidden by a wall of customer service agents. Open source developers, whether they like it or not, now are the customer service agents. Their reactions, their words, are now made immediately public. For little hobby distros, this isn't such a concern, but bigger projects stand to gain or lose a lot of funding based on their customer service record. A quick estimate shows the average donation to Linux Mint (and there are often over one hundred donations per month) is about $25 [7]. That's pretty good incentive to make users feel at home.
I am of the opinion larger open source projects (and companies) should make an effort to recruit developers who have good people skills and, at the same time, discourage their developers who lack people skills from representing the project publicly. The end-user doesn't always have to be right, but they should always conclude an interaction with the feeling they were treated with respect. One of the best ways for the open source community to spread is by referral, word-of-mouth, and we're more likely to get positive reviews by being polite to our customers. This is an aspect of business which is taken for granted in face-to-face practises, but it's something which has yet to properly catch on in many corners of the open source world. In the bazaar of FOSS, we are all ambassadors and I feel it is important that we embrace transparency and, at the same time, realise some responsibility must go with it. Much in the same way people should choose their words carefully when granted free speech, we should make an effort to keep our communications in the community civil. Open source lives in a glass house and the world is watching.
[1] http://www.adrants.com/2010/06/brand-incivility-causes-75-to-consider.php
[2] http://www.furninfo.com/absolutenm/templates/Article_Retailing.asp?articleid=3742&zoneid=7
[3] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/01/software-developers-and-aspergers-syndrome.html
[4] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html
[5] http://www.autism.com/ind_choosing_job.asp
[6] http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2010/4/1/4554245
[7] http://www.linuxmint.com/donors_last_month.php
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
New hope for OpenSolaris, Custom FreeBSD, new PC-BSD blog and Dell's stance on selling Ubuntu
 Since Oracle took over Sun there has been talk about whether the OpenSolaris project will survive. In the past six months there have been several calls to fork OpenSolaris to keep it alive, with or without Oracle's help. One group is looking into that possibility. They have set up the Illumos project website and held a web conference on August 3. A recording of the hour long conference is available from the
Illumos website.
* * * * *
 The
FreeBSD Custom Releases project provides the BSD community with free, up-to-date spins of FreeBSD. They also offer, as the name suggests, custom spins containing packages which some users find helpful to have on the install media. Their latest offering is a
set of 32- and
64-bit Xfce spins. Manolis Kiagias of the project states, "As you may know, the official [FreeBSD] DVD only provides ready packages for Gnome and KDE (and also windowmaker and
afterstep) but is missing Xfce packages - a very nice alternative for
lightweight desktops. The custom DVD also provides up-to date packages for well known
productivity apps, like OpenOffice, abiword/gnumeric, gimp, inkscape and
others. Installation is done in the standard FreeBSD way of sysinstall,
but the package selection is the custom one."
* * * * *
 Communication between developers and users is very important. In an effort to make sure ideas flow freely between the coders and the community PC-BSD's Directory of Community Development, Dru Lavigne, has set up a blog where she plans to talk about the FreeBSD-based project and collect feedback from the readers.
* * * * *
 Though a relatively small project, DragonFly brings a lot of new and different concepts to the BSD community. The project's HAMMER file system, mail agent and thread scheduler being some of the key attractions in this project. In an effort to better showcase what the project offers, they have set up a feature page with highlights from DragonFly BSD.
* * * * *
 There have been rumours floating around that Dell is dropping their Ubuntu product line. In fact, the OEM is expanding its Ubuntu line of options in some areas, while removing Ubuntu machines from its United Kingdom website. Dell's stance appears to be a confused one, but you can untangle some of the mystery in the latest Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.
* * * * *
 There are a number of on-line stores which will send you burned copies of your favourite distribution. Recently, a new provider has stepped onto the scene. They are the Debian CD project, a non-profit organization which will send you nice-looking Debian CDs. Any additional money made above and beyond the cost of burning and shipping the discs goes to the Debian project.
In other Debian news, fans of the project will be happy to know that Debian "Squeeze" is now
frozen. This means no more features will be added to the soon-to-be stable repository. This release will not only include the regular GNU/Linux branch, but will also supply a GNU environment on top of the FreeBSD kernel. As usual, no official release date has been set for Squeeze, but we're on the final stretch.
* * * * *
 The sidux project appears to be going through a tumultuous time. According to the distribution's website, there "are ongoing problems between the developers and sidux e.V. (the German foundation) that need to be settled before we can move on." At the moment, a meeting is scheduled for August 14 to iron out these problems and the developers say they will post updates after the meeting.
* * * * *
 Fans of the Puppy distribution and people who like netbooks are in for a treat. There is a spin-off from Puppy, called
Puppeee Linux The small distro is targeting low-resource machines and aims to be both fast and easy to use. The 1.0 release includes application clean up, 3g modem updates, some bug fixes and new themes. Worth a look if you want to teach your low-resource computer new tricks.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Playing a game of What-If
From-the-basement-up asks: What happens to Ubuntu if Debian folds?
DistroWatch answers:
A lot of the ground work for a good many distributions is done by the Debian project. I think, to date, there are over one hundred distros which can trace their roots back to Debian. With all of these projects, including Ubuntu, using Debian as a base it makes sense to ask ourselves what would happen should the Debian project fold. However, it is very unlikely that Debian will disappear.
Debian is one of the oldest surviving Linux distributions and it has been stable for a long time. The Debian developers do not rely on a single sponsor in the same way Fedora, Ubuntu and openSUSE do, their funding comes from a wide range of sources. Likewise, the Debian developers themselves are not centralized. There are hundreds of Debian contributors spread out over the world and it's very unlikely anything could cause the majority of them to stop working. What it all boils down to is Debian is very likely to have a long life.
But let's play pretend for a moment and assume the Debian team suddenly decided to dissolve the project without warning. What would happen to Knoppix, Ubuntu and the rest? My best guess is that we would see a lot of developers and a few companies/sponsors step forward to make a fork of Debian's core infrastructure. There are probably enough users and developers who use Debian (or a Debian-based project) to put together a team who would re-create the main Debian repositories. I think we'd see a smaller, more focused Debian clone. With, probably, just three or four repos which would focus on GNU/Linux without the spin-offs such as GNU/Hurd or Debian/kFreeBSD. In short, I think we would see a concentrated effort to recreate Debian as a common base from which other projects could pull. For a while there would be a vacuum and some small forks, but in the end I think we'd see one large project created which would try to follow in Debian's foot steps.
There's some precedent for this. When the Fedora Core project was created and their policies prevented the distribution from shipping certain packages, we saw several community-created repositories spring up to offer additional software. Over the years the repositories started working together more and now we have the excellent unofficial Fedora repository of RPMFusion. I think a similar process would take place in the wake of the Debian project, should it disappear.
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| Released Last Week |
Karoshi 7.0
Jo Harris just announced the availability of Karoshi 7.0, now an Ubuntu-based server operating system designed for schools providing a simple graphical interface for easy installation and network maintenance: "What's New? Built on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS; 64bit and 32bit available; choice of server and domain names; wide range of modules available - Email, E-learning, website, proxy, home access, web filtering, printing, and much more; administration of the servers via web management; mobile phone web management; the system expanded with new servers with home areas auto copied; network monitoring with Email / text message alerts." The
release announcement is here.
MeeGo for IVI 1.0
MeeGo is an open-source Linux project which brings together Moblin headed up by Intel, and Maemo by Nokia, into a single open-source activity targeting netbooks and other mobile devices. MeeGo for IVI (In-Vehicle Infotainment) Version 1.0 was just announced: "We are pleased to present this 1.0 release of MeeGo for IVI. As part of this release, we are including a sample IVI home screen and taskbar, using the included Qt framework, and designed with Automotive Center Console HMI requirements in mind. We have also included some automotive specific middleware components and a few sample applications, including sample navigation program (Navit) and a sample dialer application (BT-HFP Dialer) which uses Bluetooth and a paired phone..." The rest of
the announcement is here.
The MeeGo desktop
(full image size: 251KiB, resolution: 550x413 pixels)
Parted Magic 5.2
Patrick Verner announced the immediate availability of Parted Magic 5.2, a live utility distribution designed for hard disk partitioning and data rescue tasks: "Parted Magic 5.2 updates GParted to 0.6.2, fixes some bugs, and improves international language support. The new GParted re-enables MiB partition alignment option and fixes the problem with logical partition move overwriting the EBR. A mess of bugs have been fixed with the help of Dick Burggraaff (burdi01), Jason Vasquez, and most of all, users willing to take the time to report them and help us test. Asian language support has been greatly improved with the addition of SCIM and GCIN. GCIN is automatically started when Taiwanese is selected at the boot menu and SCIM is automatically started when Japanese or Chinese is selected at the boot menu." The rest of the announcement is on the
project's home page.
Elastix
After six release candidates, Rafael Bonifaz announced the availability of Elastix 2.0, a CentOS-based Linux distribution that integrates the best tools available for Asterisk-based Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) into a single, easy-to-use interface: "Elastix 2.0 includes many suggestions received from our users as well as many new ideas around Unified Communications. The ability to extend new functionalities through add-ons will allow Elastix to adapt to the requirements of broad scenarios, while at the same time enabling the integration with third party applications. There are lots of new functionalities included in this release. We will highlight the most relevant in this article: renovated dashboard, add-ons, Elastix operator panel, Elastix conference room, mail module improvements, web-based faxing, DHCP module improvements, automatic backups, and agenda module improvements." The release announcement has more information.
Ojuba 4
Muayyad Al-Sadi has announced the availability of Ojuba 4, a Fedora-based distribution from Jordan optimised for Arabic speakers: "With God's blessing we are pleased to announce the final release of Ojuba Linux 4. This is the first release to have 64-bit support besides the 32-bit one, which we also offer for legacy PCs. Each got a LiveCD version within 700 MB and an installation media with packages within 4 GB. This release includes a pre-release version of Thawab the Arabic Islamic library (http://thawab.ojuba.org) and Ojuba-personal-lock (a GUI for folder encryption) and many more applications and enhancements. For more information please check Ojuba 4 release notes in Arabic." The release announcement can be found
here.
The Ojuba Desktop
(full image size: 362KB, resolution: 900x675 pixels)
eBox 1.5-1
eBox Platform is an Ubuntu-based Linux server for small business. While its 2.0 release will be delayed, a development update was unleashed soon after its 1.5 release: "You can now download a new installer CD for the eBox Platform 1.5 series. Please note that eBox Platform 1.5-1 is a development version based on Ubuntu 10.04 and it will become eBox Platform 2.0 (next stable release) after a stabilization period. As to the improvements, the most relevant changes on this new 1.5-1 installer are focused on improving the performance. We believe that this is an important change and we would be glad to have your feedback to check that everything is right. In addition, the 1.5-1 installer includes new versions of the following modules: Users, DHCP, Backup, Groupware, Firewall, IDS, Monitor, NTP, Software Management, HTTP Proxy and Webserver." The rest of
the announcement can be read here.
* * * * *
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 |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 16 August 2010.
Jesse Smith
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
DesktopBSD
DesktopBSD was an operating system based on FreeBSD and the FreeSBIE live CD. Its main goal was to provide a desktop operating system that was easy to use, but still has all the functionality and power of BSD. In the long term, DesktopBSD wants to build an operating system that meets most requirements desktop users have, like installing software, configuring power management or sharing an internet connection.
Status: Discontinued
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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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