 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 390, 31 January 2011 |
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Welcome to this year's fifth issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The growing popularity of Arch Linux is reflected not only by the interest the distribution generates in online blogs and forums, but also by a growing number of derivatives that build on its solid foundations. One of them is Chakra GNU/Linux, a desktop-oriented live CD with KDE as the preferred desktop environment. Jesse Smith takes a recent version for a ride and discovers that it may still need some work before Chakra can be considered stable and mature. The feature story is followed by a brief news section that covers the much-publicised meeting of Linux distribution developers about a distro-agnostic application installer, gives links to several blog posts about the ongoing FUDCon, the Fedora developer conference, and presents a talk by the current Debian project leader who answers a question about why we should care about the world's largest Linux distribution project. Also in this issue, a quick tutorial about using chroot for a common task, the introduction of Turnkey Linux, and the regular sections about upcoming releases and new distributions. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (10MB) and MP3 (27MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of Chakra GNU/Linux 0.3.1
 Despite receiving several requests for a Chakra Linux review, it took me a while to get motivated to write one, mostly due to the project's website. Oh, it's attractive enough and well laid out and there's a wiki and a forum. The site didn't appear to be missing anything, but two things raised warning flags right away. First, the website claims Chakra is alpha stage software and I usually like to wait until after a project drops the alpha/beta/rc designation before I try it. The other warning flag was raised upon reading the Frequently Asked Questions section of the site. (Or rather one of the FAQ sections, there's another in the Wiki.) There are just three questions and answers presented regarding the reason for Chakra's existence and its ease of use. Each of the answers strikes me as being unusually defensive. For instance, in response to a question about whether Chakra is user-friendly we're told that "in contrast to many other distributions, Chakra does not hide the system under some obscure 'administrative layer' (automated scripts, bloated front-ends, funky daemons etc)". The statement ends with: "However, newcomers to Chakra must expect to read and have a do-it-yourself approach to just about everything; anything less and they will be disappointed. We empower you, and you must learn to handle that :-)".
To be clear, I'm not specifically complaining about just the Chakra team, they happen to be one project in a line-up which seem to think it's a good idea to respond to their users in a passive-aggressive manner. Apparently users who don't like Chakra either don't read enough or can't handle being empowered. Really, I'd be much happier if they simply acknowledged their project is targeting more advanced users. Additionally the FAQ tells us that users of "tons of Gtk applications" won't find a good fit with Chakra because "Chakra is a GTK+-free distro", though we're not told why the project isn't GTK-friendly. There is one aspect of the project which intrigued me and that is Chakra claims to be a semi-rolling release distro. The idea seems to be the developers will provide a stable base (the kernel & X) and end-user applications will receive regular updates. This could be a good idea as it would allow users to keep peace with the latest and greatest without worrying about their underlying system breaking.
Moving on to the technology itself, Chakra is downloadable as a 686 MB ISO. We begin our experience of the live CD with a graphical boot menu where we can select our preferred language. From there we're given a variety of boot options, including booting graphically, booting graphically on older machines and booting into a terminal. Taking the default option brought me to a KDE 4.5 environment featuring a blue background and a dark panel. On the desktop is a collection of icons for viewing licenses, reading documentation, visiting the project's forum, launching the installer, seeing a list of installed packages and there's an icon labelled "passwords". I decided to start with the "passwords" icon in case I would need to perform authentication later. Upon clicking the icon my system froze. I rebooted and this time Chakra locked-up before it finished loading the desktop. Going back and trying different boot options didn't get me any further.
At this point I double-checked that my downloaded ISO and burned disc matched the checksum provided by the Chakra developers. The check confirmed my disc was good and, not willing to give up so soon, I moved from my desktop machine to my HP laptop and booted from the Chakra CD. Here things got off to a better start. Once I was back on Chakra's desktop I was able to open files to get the system's default passwords, get a list of available packages and launch the installer.
Chakra GNU/Linux 0.3.1 - the default desktop
(full image size: 678kB, resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Chakra's installer is, so far as I know, unique to the distribution and carries the name Tribe. It starts off with a welcome message and a warning that Chakra is still alpha software and that "it could eat your hamster". Such are the risks we reviewers take. We're then shown the project's release notes and we move from there to picking our time zone & language settings. Though the time zone & language screen looks much like it does in other graphical installers, with an interactive map of the world, Chakra's puts a little spin on the ball by trying to guess our preferred language based on the location we choose. From there we're invited to create user accounts on the system and it's possible to make several. Unfortunately if you accidentally hit the add button more times than necessary there doesn't seem to be any way to remove an account, nor will the installer let you proceed without filling in all the fields for all accounts. In my case this ended up providing me with an account for myself and one for Rex, my vulnerable hamster.
The partitioning section comes next and people familiar with the Ubuntu or Fedora installer will have no trouble tackling this screen. Though the layout is a bit different, Chakra's installer provides an intuitive interface for dividing up the hard disk and assigning mount points. Most popular Linux file systems are supported. From here the installer gives us a break while it performs the partitioning, formatting and installing. We next come to an unusual screen with four sections. These sections allow us to choose whether to install GRUB, customize the ramdisk, install packages and download software. I confirmed I wanted GRUB and went through the ramdisk process. The install section I thought was odd because the installer had just spent 15 minutes telling me it was installing things. But to play along I asked it to install VLC from its list of available desktop software. When it was done I noticed the installer's Next button was still greyed out, so I went to the Download section and asked it to grab Firefox. That finished and, still, the Next button was inactive.
Having gone through all the sections and unsure of how to proceed, I followed the advice on Chakra's website which tells us we should be "willing to read documentation". I went to the site's documentation section, found the part on installation and scrolled down to find there isn't anything in the documentation about this part of the installer. At the time of writing there's nothing on the ramdisk, GRUB, download or package installation; the document jumps from partitioning into first-boot. Discouraged, but not yet ready to give up, I rebooted and launched the installer again, hoping my previous dead-end had been bad luck. This time through I got passed the partitioning stage and waited while the installer carved up the disk and copied over its files. The program crashed at 81% completion, not making it to the four-in-one section I'd encountered before. At this point I gave up on installation and moved on to playing with the live disc.
Since everything included with Chakra needs to fit on a CD, a CD which features KDE, there's a fairly small supply of available software. There's a document viewer, image viewer, instant messenger client and the Kaffeine media player. There's a small backup tool for backing up your KDE configuration, an encryption tool, archive manager and text editor. There's a Chakra Bundle Manager, which on my live disc doesn't appear to do anything, and a partition manager. For web browsing we have access to Rekonq, a small KDE browser. There's no compiler, no Java and no Flash plugin.
The application menu additionally has an item called CInstall which functions as the distro's package manager. This is a separate entity from the Bundle Manager and fills the role we generally expect from graphical package managers. CInstall provides us with a window that is divided into three panes. On the left is an alphabetical list of software, in the upper-right is a description of whichever package we have highlighted. Down in the lower-right corner is a list of pending actions, such as installing, removing or upgrading. The program functions predictably allowing us to check boxes next to packages to install them and uncheck to remove the selected software. The only wrinkle in the experience was each operation required the root password. For example, let's say I try to install gnuchess, CInstall asks for the root password and then performs the installation. If I then decide to install flashplugin I'm prompted for the password again. Otherwise I found operating the package manager to be a smooth experience. Its looks are a bit crude, but the functionality is certainly there.
Chakra GNU/Linux 0.3.1 - the package manager
(full image size: 119kB, resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Though I didn't manage to get Chakra running for more than a minute on my desktop machine (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card) I had no stability problems, outside of the installer, on my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, Intel video card). Performance was acceptable considering we're looking at a heavy desktop environment running from a live disc. My screen was set to a suitable resolution, audio worked out of the box and my touchpad was handled properly. Unfortunately my laptop's Intel wireless card was not detected.
Having tried Chakra I find myself in a bit of a reviewer's dilemma. The reason I tried Chakra was I had people telling me it was stable, despite the alpha branding, and that it was a wonderful fast, reliable, usable system. My experience was quite the opposite. Chakra failed to remain stable enough to launch applications, or sometimes even to finish booting, on my desktop machine. The installer either refused to complete or would crash, the Bundle application didn't work and the project lacked documentation in a key area. I was further put off by emoticons on the website and in my status messages. I realize these are hobbyists and Chakra isn't a professional distro, but I'm wary about handing my hard drive over to a product that writes messages akin to those found in the average Twitter feed. On the other hand, any criticism I can aim at Chakra can be swept aside with the project's "alpha" designation. The project plainly warns it's still in the early development stages and one should be prepared for bugs, crashes and hasmtericide. It's probably best to wait until Chakra is pronounced stable before giving it a try.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
openSUSE initiates a cross-disro application installer, Fedora developers gather at FUDCon, Debian talk at LCA
 In the absence of any major announcements last week, perhaps the most interesting news story was about a "cross-distribution meeting on application installer", a collaborative conference that included developers from Debian GNU/Linux, Fedora, Mageia (a distribution set up by the former developers and contributors of Mandriva Linux), openSUSE and Ubuntu. Since we don't often see major distributions cooperating in this way, the conference was a fairly surprising move. Will we, one day, have a distro-agnostic website that would provide applications for easy installation? Izabel Valverde reports about the meeting: "Back in October, at the openSUSE Conference, several meetings and hallway discussions occurred on the topic of 'Installation of Applications' on openSUSE. As of today, we still have a very package-centric approach, while users usually do not think in terms of packages but in terms of applications: people want to use Firefox, LibreOffice or Frozen Bubble. We investigated the best way to approach this issue and come to a fast resolution. With several people from various distributions already working on some technologies that are related to this, we realized this could be a prime example of Collaboration Accross Borders."
* * * * *
 FUDCon 2011, a three-day Fedora Users and Developers Conference, started in Tempe, USA last weekend. The first half of the conference covered some serious topics, such as Fedora's ARM port, cloud computing, the future of Fedora spins or a "sandboxed" X server, but it also included less formal gatherings in the form of a "FUDPub". Adam Williamson reports: "So far today I've been to Mo's awesome talk on using Inkscape - I think Mo is the only person who could possibly teach me to do anything good in graphics tools. I even made up a logo which you may or may not see pop up on this site when I'm on a network where I can actually get out to my web server. Followed that up with Maria 'tatica' Leandro's talk on photo editing with GIMP and other tools - really interesting to see her workflow and compare it with Mo's similar talk, and with the infinitely worse methods I use. Spot led a session where infrastructure team members pitched their ideas for the next big Fedora project and got feedback from the audience. All the ideas were pretty good and I wound up voting for all of them but one, which probably didn't help the team much, but hey." More blog posts from the conference by Christoph Wickert, Joerg Simon (with photos), Máirín Duffy and Mel Chua.
* * * * *
 Another popular gathering of Linux developers took place last week in Brisbane, Australia. The annual Linux Conference Australia (LCA), which is often attended by well-known Linux personalities, was an occasion for current Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli to explain why people should care about Debian: "Zacchiroli outlined the uniqueness of Debian - it was a non-commercial distribution that was able to compete with other commercial distros, it was built collaboratively by experts and was the first major distribution to be developed exclusively in the spirit of the GNU project. Apart from this, Debian had two unique identifiers - its social contract (adopted in 1997) and its constitution (adopted in 1998), Zacchiroli said. 'The social contract ensures that the software is 100 percent free, that we give back every change to the upstream projects, that we don't hide problems and that our priorities are our users and free software,' he said. Debian was started in August 1993 and 17 years later it had around 30,000 packages, had done 11 releases, had 900 developers and 120 maintainers plus thousands of other contributors. "We have 12 ports and two non-Linux ports," Zacchiroli said. "And there are something like 120 derivatives based on Debian."
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Using chroot
Getting-at-the-root-of-the-problem asks: What's a chroot and how do I use it?
DistroWatch answers: According to the chroot command's manual page, chroot is used to "run command or interactive shell with special root directory," which isn't a particularly helpful description. It might help if we envision the Linux file system as one large tree. At the base of the file system we have the root directory. Every part of the file system grows from there, so we can think of the /home directory as one branch and the /usr directory as another branch. Growing off of those are other directories, such as /home/bob and /home/susan. Branching further we might find /home/susan/Documents. All of these segments are attached to the directories above them, all the way back up to the root (/) directory. As far as the file system is concerned, there is nothing "above" the root directory.
The chroot command allows us to set up an environment where we treat a given directory as if it were the root, isolating that branch from the rest of the tree. Traditionally this has been used either to lock an untrusted program into an isolated part of the file system or to test complex systems without risk of harming the rest of the operating system. In recent years chroot environments have also been used to run 32-bit programs on 64-bit operating systems, keeping the 32-bit pieces separate. The difficult aspect of using chroot comes from the isolated directory needing to contain everything a user or program might need. Being cut off from the rest of the file system means users in a chroot environment don't have access to their regular collection of programs and documents. Copies of important files need to be recreated in the branch of the file system chroot will be using. This often includes a shell, system libraries and common commands.
If you'd like to see a chroot environment in action without having to do a lot of work up front, you can generally make use of a Linux live CD. Live CDs (and their ISO images) have a working operating system on them already, making them a good starting point. In the following example I'm mounting a Ubuntu CD image and accessing its live file system. First we create some mount points:
mkdir livecd
mkdir test-chroot
Next we mount the ISO image file:
mount -o loop ubuntu-10.04.iso livecd
In this step we access the compressed file system in the ISO and mount it under the "test-chroot" directory:
mount -t squashfs -o loop livecd/casper/filesystem.squashfs test-chroot
If we now look inside the test-chroot directory we will see a complete, working Linux file system. To lock ourselves inside that file system we can run:
chroot test-chroot
We are now inside the chroot environment. Any commands we run will be trapped in the test-chroot directory. Commands such as rm, cp and apt-get are limited in their scope to our test-chroot branch and the directories below it. When we're done experimenting with our jail we can run "exit" to leave the chroot environment and return to normal. Once we're finished using chroot it would be a good idea to unmount the attached file systems:
umount test-chroot
umount livecd
As a security measure some network services will perform a chroot command on themselves, locking the program in its own safe corner of the file system. This behaviour is common in FTP servers as a way to protect the host computer in case the FTP program is somehow compromised. This self-containing action usually happens automatically and does not require assistance from the user.
Should you be interested in building your own chroot environment from scratch, I recommend reading through this document which includes tips on getting started.
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| Released Last Week |
Sabayon Linux 5.5
Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 5.5, a Gentoo-based distribution and live DVD for the desktop: "Sabayon Linux 5.5 GNOME and KDE: stable release. Features: more than 1,000 updated packages and more than 100 bugs fixed; shipped with desktop-optimized Linux kernel 2.6.37 (Group Scheduling patch, TuxOnIce, Aufs 2.1) and glibc 2.11; cutting-edge X.Org graphics stack (Mesa 7.10, X.Org Server 1.9, 2.6.37 kernel, KMS-enabled, Gallium3D, best performance with OSS drivers); providing the best AMD/ATI and NVIDIA Linux desktop out-of-the-box experience; providing extra server-optimized, OpenVZ-enabled, VServer-enabled kernels in repositories; installable in 10 minutes; containing GNOME 2.32 and KDE 4.5.5 (KDE 4.6.0 will be available through updates)...." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
TurnKey Linux 11.1
Liraz Siri has announced the release of TurnKey Linux 11.1, an Ubuntu-based set of highly specialised virtual appliances available as installation CD images or virtual images: "Part 1 of the TurnKey Linux 11 release is now officially out, including 45 new images based on Ubuntu 10.04.1. Part 1 mostly refreshes the existing roster of appliances in the library. In the upcoming part 2 we'll release the new appliances the community has been helping us develop over the last year. This will roughly double the size of the library. A handful of new appliances have also been squeezed in: Joomla 1.6, Magento, StatusNet, PrestaShop and vTiger CRM. This was mostly a side effect of the original (misguided) plan to do one big massive release with over 80 appliances." The detailed release announcement includes a list of changes since the release candidate and a few hints about future plans.
ArchBang Linux 2011.01
Willensky Aristide has announced the release of ArchBang Linux 2011.01, a lightweight distribution showcasing the Openbox window manager, based on Arch Linux. Some of the features of this release include: "Lighter than before; new look; login as root works after installation; still a text-based installer but fully functional; documentation included; source files available in the download section; coming with X.Org video drivers for maximum compatibility; we are taking advantage of Openbox's tiling window functions. Once you have installed ArchBang, if you want Thunar to detect all your partitions, install gvfs by typing in the terminal 'packer -S gvfs'." Here is the brief release announcement with a screenshot of the default desktop.
ArchBang Linux 2011.1 - a lightweight distribution with Openbox
(full image size: 1,562kB, resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Chakra GNU/Linux 0.3.2
An updated stable release of the Arch-based Chakra GNU/Linux, version 0.3.2, was released yesterday: "The Chakra development team is proud to announce our second point release of Chakra GNU/Linux 0.3 series, codenamed 'Ashoc'. This time we moved core-testing and platform-testing to our stable repositories and redesigned our testing repositories. Also X.Org got updated and fixed some known issues. Our tools got fixed and work even better than before. Due some issues with SourceForge we uploaded the images to our backup server. Feel free to mirror the images. What changed: Linux kernel 2.6.37 series; X.Org 7.6 stack with Mesa 7.10; X.Org Server 1.9.3.901; updated X.Org drivers; KDE SC 4.5.5; updated Chakra tools; known bugs fixed in Tribe." For more information please see the release announcement.
MidnightBSD 0.3
Lucas Holt has announced the release of MidnightBSD 0.3, an operating system (forked from FreeBSD 6) with a goal of creating an easy-to-use desktop environment with graphical ports management and system configuration: "I'm happy to announce the availability of MidnightBSD 0.3. i386 ISO images are available on our FTP server and amd64 should be available in the next day or so. MidnightBSD 0.3 includes exciting new features such as support for ZFS, mDNSResponder for multicast DNS, libdispatch, AMD CPU temperature monitoring, updates to the Linux emulation layer and the OpenBSD sensors framework. This release includes a large merge from FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE. Several new scripts have been added to make it easier to manage the system. One of these is netwait in rc.d. It allows you to wait for a network interface to come up while booting to ensure network activity is ready." Read the detailed release notes for more information.
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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
- Turnkey Linux. TurnKey Linux is an Ubuntu-based virtual appliance library that integrates some of the best open-source software into ready-to-use solutions. Each virtual appliance is optimised for ease of use and can be deployed in just a few minutes on bare metal, a virtual machine and in the cloud. The growing list of virtual appliances, each of which is available as a CD image or virtual machine image, include Bugzilla, Django, Drupal, File Server, Joomla, LAMP, Magento, Mantis, MediaWiki, MoinMoin, Moodle, MovableType, MySQL, Openbravo, phpBB, PostgreSQL, ProjectPier, Rails, Revision Control, StatusNet, Apache Tomcat, Torrent Server, Trac, TWiki, vtiger, WordPress, Zimra and others.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Parabola GNU/Linux. Parabola GNU/Linux is a 100%-free flavour of Arch Linux. It is built on top of Linux-libre, a kernel without proprietary blobs and non-free firmware, and includes GNU IceCat, a libre fork of Mozilla Firefox that doesn't recommend non-libre add-ons.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 7 February 2011.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Full list of all issues |
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United Linux
UnitedLinux was a standards-based, worldwide Linux solution targeted at the business user and developed by The SCO Group, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux. Designed to be an enterprise-class, industry-standard Linux operating system, UL provides a single stable, uniform platform for application development, certification, and deployment and allows Linux vendors, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) to support a single high value Linux offering rather than many different versions.
Status: Discontinued
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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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