 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 405, 16 May 2011 |
Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! A new version of Slackware Linux was released recently and Jesse Smith takes it for a spin. Unlike many other free operating systems that compete on the market today, the world's oldest surviving Linux distro continues in its fine tradition of putting simplicity and dependability before any large-scale modifications. Read our first-look review to find out more. The news section then continues with links to interviews with two well-known Slackware contributors before it goes through the usual round-up of news of the past week from the world of CentOS, Sabayon Linux and Ubuntu. It also provides links to two more interviews - one with the developer of Bodhi Linux and the other with founder of CrunchBang Linux. Also in this issue there is a quick overview of the current state of the RPM package format, and a useful how-to for those readers who use online storage services, with tips on how to keep your files safe and away from prying eyes. Happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: First impressions of Slackware Linux 13.37
- News: CentOS vs Scientific Linux, Sabayon 6 and Ubuntu 11.10 updates, interviews with Slackware, Bodhi and CrunchBang developers, who maintains RPM
- Tips and tricks: File encryption and cloud backup
- Released last week: BackTrack 5, Salix OS 13.37 "Xfce"
- Upcoming releases: Mageia 1 RC
- New additions: Fuduntu, Bardinux
- New distributions: Blackbuntu, iQunix, mabuntux, PrimeE17, Vanillux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (39MB) and MP3 (36MB) formats
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of Slackware Linux 13.37
 The Slackware Linux distribution holds a special place in my heart. The first Linux distro I installed was a minimum version of Slack, which included just the basic command-line tools. This left me without a desktop, graphical applications, compiler or package manager, but that was okay. At the time I wasn't looking for a full-sized operating system -- I wanted a bare essentials, free version of UNIX I could run at home so I could gain experience with the command line and learn awk scripting. The Slackware-boiled-down-to-the-essentials disks I got my hands on were what I needed at the time and, when I decided I liked the Linux experience, I moved on to other distributions which focused on GUIs and making things easy for people migrating from commercial software. But my early experiences with the Slackware approach, and it's clean efficiency, stayed with me as a pleasant memory.
Now let's fast-forward a bit and look at modern Slackware, a distribution which no longer comes on floppy disks, but instead is shared via CDs and DVDs. Modern slackers have access to the 2.6.37 Linux kernel, Btrfs, the KDE 4 desktop and the latest Firefox. Slackware users can enjoy official 32-bit or 64-bit builds and, for my latest trip into Slackland, I decided to make use of the 32-bit DVD, which weighs in at 4.2 GB.
Booting from the DVD shows us a text-based boot prompt, and when the system loads, we are shown some helpful instructions, letting us know that we need to prepare partitions prior to launching the installer and, that to begin installation, we should run a the command "setup". For dividing up the disk Slackware includes three partition managers -- fdisk, cfdisk and gdisk. I went with cfdisk because I find its menu system can be navigated relatively quickly and easily. With partitioning completed, I turned to the installer, which guides us through setting up Slackware via a series of text-based menus. Each screen is well thought out, giving us an explanation as to what is going on and offering reasonable defaults. First we select our keyboard layout and choose which partitions to use for swap space and which to use as our root partition. The installer gives us the option to format our root partition as any of the ext2/3/4 family, Btrfs, JFS, ReiserFS or XFS. We confirm the location of our source packages (the DVD in my case) and then we're asked which packages we wish to install. I decided to do a full install of everything, minus the KDE international items which were not selected by default.
There's a lot of software on the Slackware DVD and I found that the install took about forty-five minutes, during which time 5.4 GB of files were placed on my drive. Once that's done, the installer walks us through installing the LILO bootloader, selecting our monitor resolution, and we're given the option to set up custom kernel parameters. The installer continues by walking us through configuring the mouse, the network connection and which (if any) services we want to run. A secure shell server (SSH) is enabled by default, but otherwise Slackware generally leaves services turned off. We're not done yet; next up we're allowed to select our font, time zone and preferred window manager. The last step is to set a password on the root account (no regular user accounts are created).
With all of that done the system reboots and I was dropped at a text login prompt. From there I was able to log in as root, create a regular user account for myself and confirm that my network connection was functioning properly. Unfortunately that's when I ran into a problem. I'd started my "slacktivity" on my desktop machine (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card) and I soon found that trying to start a graphical session didn't yield the expected results. Specifically, trying to launch a desktop session would cause the screen to show the KDE loading screen, the progress icons would appear and, just as the desktop environment finished loading, X would crash, returning me to the text console. After confirming that my X configuration file was in order and doing some other trial-and-error troubleshooting I found that the issue was a result of compositing being enabled by default. Apparently (according to what I've read on the forums) compositing doesn't work with some driver/hardware combinations. The problem, I'm told, usually hits Intel video cards and I later confirmed that on my laptop machine. Disabling compositing on both machines cleared the way for me to access the desktop environment. The desktop, which in my case was KDE 4.5, has a soft, pleasant and generally clean look to it. The background resembles café au lait and the desktop is uncluttered, containing just two icons for file system navigation.
Slackware Linux 13.37 - playing around with applications on the desktop
(full image size: 634kB, screen resolution 800x600 pixels)
At this point I realize that we're over 700 words into this review and have yet to talk about what it's like to actually use Slackware and there's good reason for that. Slackware is a distribution which expects us to be hands on. It's not going to do any work for us; we have to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty. It's not a system for people who want things to work out of the box; instead it's tailored to people who like to craft their operating system, knowing it will be exactly what they want when they're done, shaping it like so much digital clay. This can be seen in the way the installer walks us through so many configuration screens and it also becomes apparent when we look at package management.
Slackware is one of the few GNU/Linux projects to not include a package manager with dependency resolution and it's only been in fairly recent history that Slackware has started including a network-aware all-in-one package manager in the main repository. Slackers generally view the lack of dependency resolution as a characteristic of Slackware's clean and simple design. While many slackers prefer not to sully their systems with modern software management tools and dependency resolution, others do crave these tools and the result has been a supply of third-party add-ons which provide additional features.
First, let's look at the official package tools that come with Slackware. If you read the Slackbook (and I suggest you do) you'll find that users have traditionally been expected to download and manually manipulate software on the command line using installpkg, removepkg and upgradepkg. However, manually finding and downloading software can be time consuming and so slackpkg has been included in recent versions of Slackware. The slackpkg program has a syntax similar to Debian's apt-get tool and can download, install, remove, upgrade and search for software. This is a handy command-line program which automates some steps in the process, but doesn't include dependency resolution.
For that feature users can turn to the third-party package manager, slapt-get. The slapt-get program is, like slackpkg, a command-line tool which has an APT-style syntax and will resolve dependencies where it's able to do so. The slapt-get page also makes available a GUI front-end, called gslapt, for the more extreme hedonists among us. Community repositories exist with extra packages not already included in the official ones. Some of these are more up to date than others and I found, during the two weeks following 13.37's release, that some repositories weren't yet offering software for this release. A helpful way to find software across repositories is Slackfind. It's an easy resource to use and great for finding anything from firmware to VirtualBox to multimedia editors.
Slackware Linux 13.37 - showing off the application menu and package manager
(full image size: 163kB, screen resolution 800x600 pixels)
Next, let's look at the software made available to us out of the box. In the "Welcome to Linux (Slackware)" message from Patrick Volkerding he writes, "Slackware is designed around the idea that the system should be a complete installation kept updated with any official patches. This avoids the mess of dependencies that some other Linux-based GNU systems face." As you might then expect, performing a full install from the DVD provides us with a large selection of software that will cover the needs of most users. Some of the highlights include Firefox 4.0, KMail, the Blogio blogging tool, KTorrent, the Konqueror web browser, the Pidgin instant messaging client, the SeaMonkey web browser, SeaMonkey Mail, the Thunderbird e-mail client, XChat and the KPPP dialing software. For multimedia we have a range of players ranging from Amarok and Audacious through to Juk and the Dragon Player. There's a CD ripper, disc burner, XMMS and Xine.
KOffice 2.3.3 is available in the menu, as are document viewers, an address book, the GIMP, KolourPaint and an array of KDE games. There are system tools for handling user accounts, setting up printers, and the KDE settings modules for handling the desktop's look and feel. We're given a handful of development applications, including a graphical CVS client, KDevelop and graphical front ends for both Emacs and vi. Slackware includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and Java. There's no Flash player, but Slackware does come with codecs for playing multimedia files, including MP3s, and popular video formats. In the background we find the 2.6.37 Linux kernel. Obviously I haven't been able to go through and make extensive use of all of this software in the course of the week, but what I have used has been functional and stable. And, because there is such a wide range, I very rarely had to install additional software. The DVD covers almost everything and the kitchen sink, so it's easy to get work done (and have some fun) with what's there initially.
On both of my test machines I found that Slackware worked well, once I got past the initial install and configuration stage. Audio worked out of the box and my screen resolution was reasonable, if a bit below what I had wanted on my desktop. My laptop's wireless card wasn't picked up, not by default, but I was able to find a firmware package for the card through Slackfind. Responsiveness was good and about in line with other Linux distributions running KDE. My only complaint in the area of performance came early on when I discovered that desktop search indexing had been enabled and would chew up CPU cycles when I first logged in. Disabling the indexing service restored smooth operation. I tried Slackware in a VirtualBox environment and found it worked well and performance remained reasonably good with 512 MB of memory available. Once it was up and running I found that Slackware generally stayed out of the way and I didn't encounter any problems.
Slackware Linux 13.37 - graphical front-ends for Emacs and vim.
(full image size: 159kB, screen resolution 800x600 pixels)
When dealing with a distribution like Slackware, where there is some expectation that users will be working with the command line and manually configuring the system, I feel that documentation is important. Slackware does have documentation and it's well laid out. I get the impression that much of it is intended to be more of quick reference, rather than detailed instructions. Compared to the handbooks provided by, for example, FreeBSD and OpenBSD, I found Slackware's documentation to be terse. In the end, documentation can only take a person so far and some issues or questions need to be handled by other people. For that reason there is a Slackware forum on LinuxQuestions.org full of friendly slackers exchanging fixes and knowledge. Further on the topic of communication, Slackware features a security mailing list. This list keeps users up to date with important updates, removing the need for update notification apps or manual checks for new software through the package manager(s).
It has been often said that if a person wants to learn about Red Hat they should install Red Hat, but if one wants to learn Linux they should install Slackware. I think there's some truth to that, partly because Slackware largely avoids distro-specific tools and configurations, but also because it forces the users to educate themselves. One certainly can learn the nuts and bolts of Linux through Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE, but where those distributions provide a lot of hand holding, Slackware patiently sits to the side with its arms folded. As a teaching aid Slackware is hard to beat as it's stable, has a clean implementation and encourages user involvement while offering sane defaults. Slackware will also be appealing to people who want their computer to do what they tell it to, no more, no less. I wouldn't recommend it to users who aren't interested in what's going on "under the hood"; it's a distro for expert users or for people who wish to become expert users. Whether you like Slackware will depend a lot on what you're looking for in an operating system, but I'm happy to report 13.37 continues the project's tradition of stable, clean computing.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
CentOS vs Scientific Linux, Sabayon 6 and Ubuntu 11.10 updates, interviews with Slackware, Bodhi and CrunchBang developers, who maintains RPM
 In this world of rapidly evolving distributions and desktop environments, one can always rely on Slackware to stay true to its roots in terms of simplicity and dependability. For those who are attracted to these principles and who enjoyed the above review, here is more on the world's oldest surviving Linux distro: two interviews with well-known Slackware contributors. In the first of them, Robby Workman answers a question concerning the "most remarkable" changes in version 13.37: "Kernel mode setting for graphics is now on by default (and required for X.Org) for both Intel and ATI chipsets, but I don't know how 'remarkable' that really is. The only other thing that 'jumps out' at me is the inclusion (by upstream) of the formerly patented BCI in FreeType, but that's not such a big deal in my opinion." In the second interview, Eric Hameleers replies to the same inquiry with a somewhat different viewpoint: "The version of KDE in Slackware 13.37 is a lot more enjoyable than that of 13.1. The new version of X.Org delivers a lot of punch, leaving HAL behind and working much better with a lot of hardware. The same is true for the new kernel. I was very pleased with the updates to the Slackware installer.".
* * * * *
 The fans and users of CentOS, the most popular among the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clones, are slowly coming to a realisation that the project is grappling with serious troubles. As six months have passed since the release of RHEL 6 without any sign of CentOS 6, some are wondering whether they might not be better off using the "other" RHEL clone - Scientific Linux. Greg Smith summarises his feelings in "The rise and fall of CentOS": "If I needed a sign that it was time for me to start installing Scientific Linux 6, this week I found it. Any long-time user of RPM-based distributions has probably used a package from a Dag Wieers repository at some point. ... Well, that party is over. Last week Dag publicly announced that he was resigning from CentOS development work, seemingly over the development team's communication issues. In the comments there, Dag specifically suggests Scientific Linux as the right distribution to move to now, saying that 'their process is more open and the people are actually friendly to feedback.' If a tight development group has enough resources to keep its users happy, so long as the end result is open-source I'm not going to knock the process that got there. But when your release is at least four months later than it was expected by most people, and you're causing major community contributors to abandon your project in a bad way, I don't have any choice but to start looking into more open projects."
* * * * *
 Here is an update on Sabayon Linux, directly from the project leader, Fabio Erculiani. According to his blog post entitled "Sabayon 6, Entropy 1, a new era is about to come", the project's major new version is likely to ship in July: "Regarding what people worry about, Sabayon 6 will be our next release version and it is scheduled for July. You may already know that we don't like fixed release dates: we prefer the 'it's done when it's done' approach. Sabayon 6 will be shipping with Entropy 1 and package updates will be delivered to you via our upcoming new build server (which is going to replace our current one), a Bi-Octa AMD Opteron 6128 system with 48 GB of RAM." There is a lot more in terms of package updates: "Entropy eventually entered the final beta phase - API documentation is complete, Entropy services infrastructure has been rewritten from scratch taking advantage from the best communication protocol ever invented - HTTP (and JSON as 'data format'), Sulfur eventually got its awaited speed boost (1.0_beta15), packages.sabayon.org has been deployed, Python 2.7 is now the default, same for GCC 4.5, and Entropy in general is as rock-solid (and fast) as ever in all its 300,000+ lines of code and millions of line changes that I've been able to work out in four years."
* * * * *
 Last week's Ubuntu Developer's Summit, which took place in Budapest, brought plenty of news as well as hints about future plans for the popular desktop distro. Here is a nice summary entitled "Expected changes in Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot'," published by Web Upd8. These include a switch to GNOME 3, a possible removal of LibreOffice from the live CD image, a replacement of GDM with LightDM as the default login manager, and improvements in Ubuntu Software Centre (USC), among many others: "In Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot', Ubuntu Software Center might get a web catalog from where you can install applications (using apturl). The web Ubuntu Software Center looks and behaves pretty much like the standalone USC but for now that's all the available info on this. One of the major issues with Ubuntu Software Center is that the application descriptions are in English, no matter what language you use so that really needs to be fixed. To solve this, the Ubuntu Software Center might even allow the users to translate the application description from within the software center."
* * * * *
 With all the recent criticism of both GNOME 3 and Ubuntu's Unity interface it's hardly surprising that some developers are looking for an alternative desktop for their distributions. Scott Lavender, the lead developer of Ubuntu Studio, has found the perfect one in Xfce: "Several desktop environments were discussed but Xfce was chosen because it offered appreciable advantages that other desktop environments could not. Some advantages would be more immediately tangible to users. For example, Xfce represents a familiar desktop metaphor for users and provides a more resource-friendly environment than GNOME, KDE, or (I would expect) Unity. Other advantages would be more tangible to the Ubuntu Studio team (and perhaps to users later on). A large potential advantage is to develop working relations with the Xubuntu team, which could reduce the workload on the limited Ubuntu Studio team but also increase the actual development yield. And ultimately, some benefits of this relationship might eventually include a graphical installer and a live image, both of which have been desired by users."
* * * * *
 For someone who prefers a flashier desktop there is always Enlightenment and Bodhi Linux. Last week Steven Rosenberg interviewed Jeff Hoogland, the founder and lead developer of this Ubuntu-based desktop distribution: "Q: What do you think of the stock Debian and Ubuntu installs of Enlightenment, and how does Bodhi improve on them? A: Well, for starters we provide an up-to-date version of Enlightenment. Enlightenment development sees about 1,000 SVN commits a month. As such any Enlightenment desktop in Debian/Ubuntu repositories is often many months old. Bodhi provides weekly updates to the desktop for our users to download. Default Enlightenment setups also are not very functional or nice-looking without a good deal of tweaking. For instance, Sabayon E17 ships with a fairly standard Enlightenment desktop, whereas Bodhi provides a number of nice-looking desktops to choose from (see the scrolling images on the main home page). For a new user setting up Enlightenment 17 as Bodhi has done can take hours or days even."
* * * * *
 While on the subject of interviews, here is another one - this time with the founder of the Debian-based CrunchBang Linux, Philip Newborough. Is a new release of CrunchBang Linux planned soon? "As you are probably aware, CrunchBang Linux 10 'Statler', the latest CrunchBang release, is based on Debian 'Squeeze', which is stable. At the moment, I am not planning on developing Statler any further, but I may push out some point releases with updated packages. The next development release of CrunchBang will be named 'Waldorf' and it will be based on Debian 'Wheezy', the current Debian testing branch. I have a few ideas I am working on for Waldorf, but nothing concrete yet. Mostly, I would like to work on improving the Xfce desktop experience, which I somewhat neglected in Statler." And what is CrunchBang developer's favourite distribution? "I like them all, but I am really fond of Puppy Linux. There is something about Puppy which really appeals to me and I think it encapsulates the Linux spirit. SliTaz and Tiny Core Linux also fall into the same category."
* * * * *
Finally, a link to an interesting update on the state of RPM by Linux Weekly News. As some readers might be aware of, there are currently two separate branches of the package manager - the commonly used RPM 4.x which is still the preferred version in Fedora and all its derived distributions, and RPM 5.x, which will make its first appearance in the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2011 and which is also employed by a handful of smaller distributions. Here is Jonathan Corbet's conclusion on the subject: "It is going to be interesting to watch what happens from here. Mandriva appears to be well committed to the RPM 5 transition at this point, and, seemingly, things are beginning to stabilize. If RPM 5 performs well in the final Mandriva 2011 release, it could motivate questions from users of some of the other distributions on why they are stuck with the 'older' version. Alternatively, users could see the pain Mandriva has been through and, if the result doesn't appear to be worth it, they may decide that they're happier with their relatively boring RPM 4. Either way, it seems that this particular drama has not played itself out yet."
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Head in the clouds
Cloud storage, the practice of saving one's files on a server controlled by someone else, has a way of polarizing people. There are those who enjoy the convenience of being able to send their data to a remote server, giving them the ability to retrieve or synchronize from another machine on another network. Some like the idea of other people managing the machines and disks, leaving us to worry about other things. And, at the other end of the scale are those who dislike having their data on a server they don't control, where scripts and prying eyes might see it. Or, for that matter, where the server might go off-line and we can't do anything to fix the situation. I think cloud storage can be quite useful, if it's used properly, but as with any tool, it needs to be used with reasonable expectations.
For instance, the ease of sending copies of files to a remote server is appealing, but whenever someone tells me they're backing up their data to a cloud, my first reaction is: "And where else?" I recommend always having two backups, regardless of what methods are being used -- one to be kept locally for easy access and one remotely in case of an on-site disaster. Remote servers can go down, companies can close their doors and network connections to the outside world can be interrupted. These potential problems lead me to suggest that cloud storage is a useful backup solution as long as it's not the only backup process in place.
The other big concern, privacy, is especially important to consider when we're dealing with confidential documents. It's one thing for your music collection or camping photos to leak out, it's quite another for your tax return or business contracts to be looked over. For this reason I recommend encrypting anything that gets sent to that big cloud in the ether. But there is a catch, how does one easily encrypt files before sending them to the cloud? Let's take a look at that. Most distributions will have a copy of OpenSSL either pre-installed or available in the repositories. What is OpenSSL? From the program's manual page, it's "a command line tool for using the various cryptography functions of OpenSSL's crypto library from the shell." Which means, among other things, that OpenSSL will allow us to encrypt and decrypt files. Make sure it's installed if you'd like to follow along.
In this first example let's assume that we have a file called to-do-list.txt and we want to encrypt it before uploading it to remote storage. We can use OpenSSL to do this with the command:
openssl enc -e -aes256 -in to-do-list.txt -out encoded-list.txt
We'll be asked to assign a password to the encrypted file and what comes out the other end is an encrypted file called encoded-list.txt. We can then send this file to the cloud. In the above example the "aes256" part is the method of encryption. A list of supported encryption options can be viewed by running "openssl help".
Of course, later we're going to want to be able to decrypt the file so it's important to use a password we will be able to remember. Speaking of that, how do we get our original file back from the encrypted version? We can use:
openssl enc -aes256 -d -in encoded-list.txt -out the-to-do-list.txt
Running the above command will prompt us for the password and then output the original contents of our file to the-to-do-list.txt. The "-d" flag tells OpenSSL to decrypt the file we give it, where in the previous example the "-e" flag indicated we wanted to encrypt a file.
Now, if you're like me and don't want to risk typing mistakes every time you want to encrypt or decrypt a file, you can use a script like the one below. This script accepts a single file and encrypts it, adding the extension .enc to avoid over-writing the original. It pauses to prompt us for a password:
#!/bin/bash
# make sure we get a file name
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
echo "Usage: $0 file-to-encrypt"
exit 1
fi
openssl enc -e -aes256 -in "$1" -out "$1".enc
To get our file back we can use the following script. It will accept the name of an encrypted file and the name of the file we wish to save the decrypted data to.
#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -lt 2 ]
then
echo "Usage: $0 file-to-decrypt new-file-name"
exit 1
fi
openssl enc -d -aes256 -in "$1" -out "$2"
To wrap this up, let's look at a script which will backup a copy of our Documents folder, automatically encrypt the archive for us, save the password and place the encrypted version in a location that will be synced up to our cloud storage. In this example I'm assuming that we're making use of Ubuntu One's cloud storage, but the script can be easily adjusted to make use of other services.
#!/bin/bash
# get current date
mydate=$(date +"%y-%m-%d")
# Archive Documents folder
tar czf documents-$mydate.tar.gz ~/Documents
# workout checksum-based password
checksum=$(md5sum documents-$mydate.tar.gz | cut -c 1-16)
# encrypt the archive and put in it our synced folder
openssl enc -e -aes256 -in documents-$mydate.tar.gz -out ~/Ubuntu\ One/documents-$mydate.tar.gz.enc -pass pass:$checksum
# save the date and password
touch ~/Passwords
echo $mydate $checksum >> ~/Passwords
# move the original archive to another disk
mv documents-$mydate.tar.gz /media/disk/
What we end up with is an encrypted archive in our synchronized folder ("Ubuntu One" in this case) and a plain (unencrypted) copy on another disk (mounted as /media/disk). The password for the encrypted archive is saved in a file called Passwords in our home folder. Each entry in the Passwords file will give the date the archive was created, followed by the 16-character password.
Some security-minded people will point out that keeping passwords in a text file and, for that matter, automating passwords in a script that can be ferreted out using commands like "ps", isn't a good idea. It's a completely valid concern, especially if we're trying to prevent our passwords from falling into the hands of people who have access to our computer. However, in this example we're not protecting ourselves from local users, but from the cloud storage servers.
It's entirely possible to make use of cloud storage while keeping data safe. As with other forms of off-site backups, this requires some redundancy and encryption, both of which are easy to set up on most Linux distributions.
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| Released Last Week |
linuX-gamers Live 0.9.7
Marko Kaiser has announced the release of linuX-gamers Live 0.9.7, an Arch-based live CD/DVD packed with a large selection of 2D and 3D games: "So Sven released a new version of the linuX-gamers.net live DVD -- the Linux Tag 2011 release. What's new in this version? Improved user experience and auto-configuration; support for chipsets of recent boards; updated games; new additional games; updated proprietary drivers; Linux kernel 2.6.38; improved network boot support; added persistent home support; added installation support; removed proprietary ATI drivers. New games: ZaZ, MegaGlest, Mars Shooter, Speed Dreams." Read the release announcement and check out the list of games included on the live CD and DVD.
linuX-gamers Live 0.9.7 - an Arch-based live DVD for gaming enthusiasts
(full image size: 191kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
BackTrack 5
Offensive Security has announced the release of BackTrack 5, an Ubuntu-based security distribution providing a collection of specialist tools for penetration testing and forensic analysis: "The BackTrack development team has worked furiously in the past months on BackTrack 5, code name 'revolution'. Today, we are proud to release our work to the public, and then rest for a couple of weeks. This new revision has been built from scratch, and boasts several major improvements over all our previous releases. Based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Linux kernel 2.6.38, patched with all relevant wireless injection patches. Fully open source and GPL compliant." Here is the brief release announcement.
BackTrack 5 - an Ubuntu-based distribution for penetration testing
(full image size: 1,245kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
SalineOS 1.4, 1.0 "Personal Server"
Anthony Nordquist has announced the release of SalineOS 1.4, a Debian-based desktop distribution with Xfce, and SalineOS 1.0 "Personal Server" edition, a Debian-based distribution for home servers: "SalineOS Personal Server edition 1.0 is now available. The Personal Server edition is designed to make setting up small personal home servers as easy as possible. It features stripped-down Xfce 4.6.2 desktop environment, FireStarter firewall utility, GNOME NetworkManager, the new SalineOS installer, ClamAV pinned to Debian 'Squeeze' updates, scripts for aiding installation of certain server services, and full user manual in English, Spanish and German." Read the brief release announcement and visit the product information page to find out more; the 1.4 announcement is here.
KANOTIX 2011-05
Maximilian Gerhard has announced the release of KANOTIX 2011-05, a Debian-based desktop distribution and live DVD featuring the KDE desktop: "LinuxTag 2011 in Berlin started today, therefore we offer an updated KANOTIX 'Hellfire' version. Kanotix 'Hellfire' 2011-05 is based on Debian 6.0. It contains the latest Debian stable branch with all the latest security updates. In addition it provides useful extras and updated packages, including: Linux kernel 2.6.38 final (Ubuntu, recompiled), KDE SC 4.4.5 with KANOTIX branding, Amarok 2.4.0, LibreOffice 3.3.2, GRUB 2 boot manager, KDE Network Manager, Iceweasel 4.0.1, Icedove 3.1.9, Pidgin 2.7.11, NTFS-3G 2011.1.15, WINE 1.3.19, Kano's scripts for installing NVIDIA or ATI graphics driver and Flash Player plugin." Here is the full release announcement.
Salix OS 13.37 "Xfce"
George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix OS 13.37 "Xfce" edition, the first of the series of Salix OS releases with various desktop environments and window managers (editions with Fluxbox, LXDE and KDE are to follow), all based on the new Slackware Linux 13.37: "Salix Xfce 13.37 is finally here. It includes numerous changes and improvements, both Salix-specific and also inherited from Slackware. This release comes with Linux kernel 2.6.37.6, the Xfce 4.6.2 desktop environment, Firefox 4.0.1 and Claws Mail 3.7.8. LibreOffice 3.3.2 is included by default in full-mode installations, replacing OpenOffice.org and localization packages for it for more than a hundred languages are available through the package management tools. Exaile 0.3.2 is the default music player and parole 0.2.0.6 is used as the default movie player." See the full release announcement for further information.
Salix OS 13.37 - a Slackware-based desktop distribution
(full image size: 726kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Pinguy OS 11.04
Pinguy OS 11.04, an Ubuntu-based distribution with many user-friendly features, has been released: "Pinguy OS 11.04 released with classic GNOME 2.32.1 desktop. Pinguy OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that comes with a lot of applications installed by default, trying to cover everyone's needs. But it's not the default application selection what makes Pinguy OS so interesting, but Pinguy's attention to detail: every single aspect of the desktop is carefully customized to provide a great out-of-the-box experience. Pinguy OS 11.04 (based on Ubuntu 11.04) was released yesterday. The new Pinguy OS comes with GNOME 2.32.1 and uses the classic GNOME desktop while Unity has been completely removed from the CD." Read the full release announcement which includes screenshots.
Pinguy OS 11.04 - an Ubuntu-based distribution with an enhanced GNOME user interface
(full image size: 405kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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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
- Fuduntu. Fuduntu is a Fedora-based Linux distribution that earns its name by its ambition to fit somewhere in-between Fedora and Ubuntu. It is designed to be aesthetically pleasing, and is optimized for netbook and other portable computers, as well as general-purpose desktop machines.
Fuduntu 14.9 - a Fedora-based distribution with GNOME and some user-friendly touches
(full image size: 444kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
- Bardinux. Bardinux, a project of the Office of Free Software at the Universidad de La Laguna, Canary Islands, Spain, is a Kubuntu-based distribution. It follows Kubuntu's long-term support release and is designed primarily for the students of the university.
Bardinux - an Ubuntu-based distribution from Canary Islands
(full image size: 255kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Blackbuntu. Blackbuntu is an Ubuntu-based distribution for penetration testing which was specially designed for security students and practitioners of information security. It uses the GNOME desktop environment.
- iQunix OS. iQunix OS, is a Linux operating system based on the popular Ubuntu distribution. Its design offers Ubuntu users and specialist a bare-bone GNOME desktop on which nothing is pre-installed.
- mabuntux. mabuntux is a Ubuntu-based live DVD featuring the Ubuntu 11.04 desktop, XAMPP and OpenSSH servers, eyeOS web desktop, web development tools, and Macbuntu theme.
- PrimeE17. PrimeE17 is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring Enlightenment 17. It includes Engage, Places, calendar modules, Remastersys, Chrome, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Skype and xine
- Vanillux. Vanillux is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the standard GNOME 3 desktop. Also includes LibreOffice, Google Chrome and VLC.
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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, 23 May 2011.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Great review (by Barnabyh on 2011-05-16 10:43:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thanks for the great review and also the interesting Q&A's with practical ready-to-go example scripts. Nice one Jesse.
Thanks for sparing us the usual waffle when it comes to Slackware, I found you had a fresh approach to it.
2 • First impressions of Slackware Linux 13.37 (by jaycee on 2011-05-16 10:45:49 GMT from Australia)
My many thanks to you Jesse for an excellent review of Slackware 13.37! You explained the design philosophy and characteristics of Slackware articulately, smartly focusing on the apparently "archaic" aspects of it (e.g. lack of official dependency resolution) in the intended perspective and elaborating on them in a most insightful manner. You exceeded my very high expectations! Bravo!
3 • Slackware review (by Wine Curmudgeon on 2011-05-16 11:09:26 GMT from United States)
Another incredibly well done effort. How I wish that all reviews of Linux OS could be as well done. The line about Slackware and arms folded is terrific.
4 • Slackwre review (by Trademark91 on 2011-05-16 11:15:44 GMT from United States)
Last week i commented on the lack of a slackware review. This week i return, commenting not only on a slackware review, but probably one of the best reviews ive ever read on slackware. Congratulations on being clear, concise, and fair to my favorite distribution, and thank you for also not just complaining that "it doesnt have a package manager" or "you have to do eveything manually". You focused not only on its simplicity, but also its completeness, and even disussed the more modern tools available to users today. This was one of the longer reviews ive read on distrowatch, and i thoroughly enjoyed every word. Bravo distrowatch!
/me tips hat
5 • fabulous review (by Mahmoud Slamah on 2011-05-16 11:16:10 GMT from Saudi Arabia)
Many thanks , appreciate your efforts about Slackware review :-)
6 • Slackware review (by TobiSGD on 2011-05-16 11:43:21 GMT from Germany)
Couldn't have said it better than Trademark91.
Thanks for that excellent review.
7 • I remember White Box Linux (by Jeff Dickey on 2011-05-16 11:58:24 GMT from Singapore)
And I remember the giant sucking sound that consumed the distro in the wake of RHEL 5. I've a few CentOS boxes and images out there and yeah, it's been a solid performer but amazingly long in the tooth now.
We should have known that CentOS was on the precipice with that "open letter to Lance Davis" on the Centos mailing lists all the way back in July, 2009. They've had almost two years to get their heads out of whatever posterior orifices they'd been inserted into, and they have singularly, spectacularly failed to do so.
I strongly suspect that the reason people don't make more comparisons to White Box and other past RHEL clone failures (LineOX or TaoLinux, anybody?), is from a sense of either visceral revulsion at the memory of leaving the distro, or a feeling of "there but for the grace of $DEITY go I." We'll be thinking of CentOS in the same way in just a few short months, I fear.
8 • Slackware Review (by Mike on 2011-05-16 12:32:59 GMT from United States)
Kudos Jesse on an excellent review! I just received my Slackware 13.37 DVD last week and I am loving this release.
9 • One request as a follow up (by Mike on 2011-05-16 12:37:35 GMT from United States)
I would love to see an interview with Pat Volkerding, Eric Hameleers, Robby Workman, and Piter Punk to talk about Slackware.
10 • CentOS (by Scott on 2011-05-16 12:42:20 GMT from United States)
So....one person has an article with an opinion that CentOS is dead.
And this person's official connection with CentOS/RH/SL is.....?
The trouble with Distrowatch linking to such an article is that people will now think it's an official type of article. This is one user.
If anyone really has an interest in seeing what is going on, and looking at both points of view, they can look through the fora and mailing lists. As for the typical distro hopping user, CentOS probably isn't the best choice anyway.
11 • Slackware; Thanks Jesse! (by Flip on 2011-05-16 12:47:31 GMT from United States)
Ya know I always have Slackware installed on one of my partitions but stay so busy installing and trying out new Distros I had forgotten just how stable Slackware is and how low resource it is. When using flashplayer on other Distos I noticed 75 to 98% CPU usage with Slackware it runs 25 to 50% makes you go Hmmm! For some stupid reason I never noticed that before.
Thanks Jesse just an absolutely great read ! Ya took me back to my roots too. I read for two days before learned to type "startx" LOL
12 • Cloud storage (by dragonmouth on 2011-05-16 13:29:26 GMT from United States)
Jesse, isn't it somewhat incongruous to be using cutting edge technology such as cloud storage and at the same time be using archaic command line to encrypt the files you want to store in the cloud? Shouldn't there be a GUI tool to do that? Many of those using cloud storage are not Linux experts but Linux beginners. They don't know, nor do they want to know CLI.
13 • Cloud storage and flash (by Barnabyh on 2011-05-16 13:47:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
@12, Are you volunteering? I have always enjoyed Jetico Bestcrypt, so something with a similar GUI for interfacing with cloud services would be nice.
@11, Exactly my observation. That is why I never understood when people were writing about 'notorious' issues with performance on Linux. What they mean is probably Ubuntu, where I could not even get Flash to play full screen without looking like a slide show, before it crashed that is.
14 • Slackware (by Jesse on 2011-05-16 13:49:29 GMT from Canada)
Hi all, thanks for the positive feedback. I had a good time writing the Slackware review and I'm happy so many of you enjoyed reading it.
RE: 12
>> "isn't it somewhat incongruous to be using cutting edge technology such as cloud storage and at the same time be using archaic command line to encrypt the files you want to store in the cloud? "
There isn't anything cutting edge about cloud technology. It's just uploading/syncing files to a remote server. People have been doing that for decades.
>> " Many of those using cloud storage are not Linux experts but Linux beginners. They don't know, nor do they want to know CLI."
Yes, some cloud users are beginners and don't want to learn command line tricks. And those people probably don't read how-to articles on distro-hopping websites about how to automate encryption. There are people who don't want to learn how to cook, but they probably don't watch a lot of Martha Stewart, if you follow my drift.
I write my how-to columns for people who want to learn how to do something.
15 • Slackware forum (by RRC on 2011-05-16 14:03:45 GMT from United States)
I just recently started using Slackware. I just want to say that their forum on freenode irc, ##slackware is one of the most friendly and helpful forums I have ever encountered.
16 • GnuPG (by Omari on 2011-05-16 14:09:00 GMT from United States)
I didn't know one could use openssl for symmetric encryption like this; my first thought would have been to turn to gnupg --symmetric (as I do when putting sensitive data on flash drives). Learned something new today.
Using GnuPG might might things a little easier if you do this a lot because then you can encrypt with your public key, no password needed.
17 • CentOS as Existential Crisis for "Institutional Linux"? (by Sam on 2011-05-16 14:17:47 GMT from United States)
Okay, call me a noob (I've been using linux since Mandrake Linux), but it seems to me the problems at CentOS pose a kind of existential crisis for organizations and institutions using any RHEL clone - development breakdown and developer conflicts scuttling the distro.
Now, I'm not jumping on the ship of this one DW article spelling the end of CentOS (as #10 notes above). But, whatever the isseus the CentOS devs are facing, the release of version 6.0 *is* running almost half a year behind the release of RHEL 6.0. In the usual Distro Jumper's scheme of time, this is a HUGE problem, but for the folks who use distros like CentOS, not so big a deal (we're talking long-term release cycles anyway). Yet, it does pose an existential threat: choosing a RHEL clone is supposed to be the cheaper option, the option that includes the stability of the parent distro with some nominal support from CentOS (I'm not sure the degree to which CentOS provides support, I confess). If the distro goes the way of the dodo, organizations relying on CentOS will, as the months pass, and more and more patches are released for RHEL 6.0, become dependent on an increasingly out-dated system. Bug fixes, no matter the length of a release cycle, can quickly age a distro.
If anything, this gives the folks at Red Hat a stronger case for organizations to pay out the $$ to buy piece of mind that at least down in North Carolina, squabbles among devs won't bring Red Hat crashing down. Certainly makes the risks of "cheaper" clones much more risky.
18 • Cloud Storage (by dragonmouth on 2011-05-16 14:40:36 GMT from United States)
Jesse said: "There isn't anything cutting edge about cloud technology. It's just uploading/syncing files to a remote server. People have been doing that for decades."
So, what was good enough for grandpa, is good enough for me? :-) I thought Linux is supposed to be becoming newbie friendly, or is that just propaganda? CLI is definitely not newbie friendly. After all these years, isn't it time a GUI was developed for OpenSSL? Or are Linux developers trying to maintain its 1337 image?
@Barnabyh: I'd love to develop something, maybe in a couple of years after I become better versed in Linux.
19 • Regarding slackware (by Flori on 2011-05-16 14:46:25 GMT from Albania)
Communication and knowledge transfer is what Slackware needs.
I think that all that Slackware needs is a very detailed book (or wiki) written for all kinds of people. Kind of Slackware for dummies. The dependency hell doesn't exist for Slackware as there are many programs already for it.
20 • Distro base on Ubuntu (by Geekboula on 2011-05-16 15:06:35 GMT from Canada)
Every week there are 3 or 4 speudo new distro based on Ubuntu! I think it would be interesting to pose the question of relevance to Distrowatch to include these pseudo Distro in database.
Soon there will be many distro based on Ubuntu that Ubuntu user!
It has become ridiculous in my opinion ...
21 • Encryption (by Jesse on 2011-05-16 15:16:18 GMT from Canada)
>> "After all these years, isn't it time a GUI was developed for OpenSSL? "
There are already graphical tools for handling encryption, in fact I believe I have talked about them before in previous articles. KGpg is an excellent tool for encrypting/decrypting. However, the script I provided in this week's how-to can fit nicely into a cron job for automated back-ups. (Something GUI tools do not lend themselves to.) In fact, you can copy/paste my last script into a GUI text editor and save it in a cron directory and never touch the command line if you don't want to.
22 • Is MEPIS alive? (by eselma on 2011-05-16 15:16:40 GMT from Spain)
Comment deleted (troll). (MEPIS was neither the first live CD nor did it exist before KNOPPIX.)
23 • Openssl for encryption of files (by Wouter on 2011-05-16 15:49:15 GMT from Finland)
Good idea to use openssl to encrypt files, I never thought about that. But of course there's gpg/pgp with both key-based as well as simple symmetric password encryption, which would be my first thought. There's also rdiff-backup's cousin duplicity which encrypts files before backing them up to a remote location.
24 • @ the Pro-CentOS lobby (by anonymous on 2011-05-16 16:58:36 GMT from United States)
Your favorite distribution may host 9.3% of the web, but that 9.3% of the web just went three months without a security update and you were vulnerable, I have to wonder in what alternate universe that can possibly considered an "Enterprise Class" solution to any issue.
Scientific Linux may not have released 5.6 yet, but 5.5 has been receiving security updates.
25 • slackware 13.37 (by Reuben on 2011-05-16 17:07:24 GMT from United States)
I say congrats to Patrick on another release of slackware. But things have gotten easier. On my computer, I simply did "startx" and got KDE. No mucking around with xorg.conf. Youtube videos encoded in WebM play right out of the box too.
I'm not sure why I need a file indexer that takes up so many resources. KDE really needs to kill strigi/nepomuk, STAT!
26 • CentOS (by Jesse on 2011-05-16 17:12:08 GMT from Canada)
>> "Your favorite distribution may host 9.3% of the web, but that 9.3% of the web just went three months without a security update and you were vulnerable, I have to wonder in what alternate universe that can possibly considered an "Enterprise Class" solution to any issue."
Where did you get the idea CentOS hasn't been releasing security updates? The issue being talked about is that they haven't put out CentOS 6, a new release yet. They're still releasing fairly regular security updates for the 4.x and 5.x series.
27 • Slackware review and things... (by davemc on 2011-05-16 17:16:42 GMT from United States)
That's a good review of Slackware. Honest and objective. Presenting the important and relevant facts of what it is and what the experience was like. That is how your Debian review should have been. True, its a well known fact that Slackware lacks dependency resolution for package management, but the more important aspect is ~why~ and I think you covered that critical point well. It is one of the last remaining Distro's that do things things the "old school" way and anyone would want to know why that is as an important element in the decision making process when choosing one over another. When comparing your review of Slackware alongside Caitlyn's, your's is by far the better read.
28 • MEPIS First Live DVD - Citation Needed.... (by DerFuzzy on 2011-05-16 17:21:28 GMT from United States)
"Despite being the first ever Live-CD (yes, before Knoppix)"
Citation needed, please..
I've followed MEPIS and Knoppix pretty closely at the time...
MEPIS has a special place in my heart... but the decisions to not include things in the distro, just won't wash with me. Same reason Knoppix is not in favor any more... you can drink the no codex, only FSF approved software Flavorade all you want... I will continue to pick distros which get it and include all the stuff needed to run.. Sun Java over non working openjava, and gjc (NO java program I use will work on on non REAL Java's), MP3 and any other media codex, etc..
I only like Debian based distros, but Debian and its DFSG just get in the way.... 99.99999999% of any audio app I need would have to be recompiled from source so it works the way its supposed to as all the DEB repo's are screwed with no MP3 support versions. No thanks... I can use a distro with repos which are have the software ready to go... Linux Mint KDE.
29 • Slackware and Mepis (by joe f. on 2011-05-16 17:44:29 GMT from United States)
I had occasion to install both Slackware and Mepis last week, and I agree with the review and with eselma (comment #22).
Slackware 13.37 is an excellent system, but I think you erred a bit making it so KDE-specific. I went for XFCE first and encountered no problems. I'm using it on a slightly older Dell as a music server for the bedroom stereo and our home network, and occasional backup for my main machine (a MacBook Pro that seems to only really take to Arch). It really is undervalued by so many people who balk at the sight of ncurses. Once it's on the machine and running, it is a rock.
I'm also slightly taken aback by the idea that it was only as responsive as other distros the author has tried. I've always found Slack quicker than all but a few out of the box, and with a recompiled kernel it's every bit as fast as Arch on both my machines.
Mepis is at the other end of the spectrum, of course, but also equally nice for what it is. I installed it on the Mac over the weekend just because it was new, and kept it on for a couple of days. I also provided a link to it to a friend suffering a second Windows catastrophe. I've found Windows refugees like the polish and all the gui utilities. I've put it on a half dozen or so machines of friends and they've always liked it. It really deserves more attention. Is it a political thing?
Excellent edition this week, btw. One of Monday's few highlights.
30 • i use only stable software not development branches or unstable linux distros (by lukove on 2011-05-16 17:58:25 GMT from Slovakia)
Slackware is the best but today people need more than 1dvd with base software and K Desktop.... there was a Sourcery (its corrent name?) source based gui app for slackware, for compile software and make slackware package from SlackBuilds..... lets see a ZENWALK or SALIX new distributions made for "modern people".. this two distros use slapt-get and Gslapt as default and suport package dependencies and relative middle large package repositories...
when i want distro with stability i choose RedHat Desktop (only 49eur) and suported for 10years,, when i want free and stable distro then i choose SLACKWARE and when i want problems.. always reinstall OS and switch from one linux to other then i use fedora, and other very nice features full distros...
31 • Mabuntux (by Robert A. Eiser on 2011-05-16 18:01:12 GMT from United States)
The DVD iso I downloaded appears to be in Swedish. Could you find out from the lead developer what cheat is needed to boot in English? Or is there an alternative iso? Bob Eiser Erie, MI USA
32 • Slack and KDE (by Jesse on 2011-05-16 18:19:19 GMT from Canada)
>> "Slackware 13.37 is an excellent system, but I think you erred a bit making it so KDE-specific."
What can I say? KDE was the default option on the installer and any time I don't use the default desktop environment for a given distro people get upset. Originally I'd thought to go with Xfce, but decided to run with the installer defaults.
>> "I'm also slightly taken aback by the idea that it was only as responsive as other distros the author has tried. "
I was surprised by this as well. In the past when I've tried Slack-based distributions the performance has been top-notch. I think the slow-down was probably a driver issue. I mentioned in the review that there were problems with my desktop resolution and X would crash with the default settings. I suspect the video drivers were giving poor performance.
33 • Slackware Review, Cloud Hosting and "Out of the Box mp3" (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-05-16 18:31:42 GMT from Spain)
I like this review because it tolds the same things I thought when I tried it.Slackware has no beautiful installer, no so many automated tasks, it requires the user to perform low level configuration and tweaking... but it works and gives good results!
I use to have two distros in my hard drive: one main OS and a secondary OS for recovering purposes (you never know when are you going to kill your primary distribution by mistake). Slackware is not going to replace Debian as my distro of choice, but it has a place in my hard drive for sure. Old distributions tend to be more serious and less error-prone than new ones.
Now... in "28 • MEPIS First Live DVD - by DerFuzzy ", it was wroten:
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I only like Debian based distros, but Debian and its DFSG just get in the way.... 99.99999999% of any audio app I need would have to be recompiled from source so it works the way its supposed to as all the DEB repo's are screwed with no MP3 support versions. No thanks... I can use a distro with repos which are have the software ready to go... Linux Mint KDE.
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I can play mp3 files out of the box with my Debian installation, and I can swear I have recompiled no audio apps. When was the last time you used Debian?
And, about Cloud Hosting... Well, I think much as Stallman does (refering to Cloud Computing). When you put your files in a place you can't control, you lose control over these files, plain and simple. When you use Cloud based programs, you are doing outside your computer something you surely could be doing in your own workstation. In other words: most of the times you use a web based app instead of a local app, you are depending on others for completing a task you could do by yourself, and are taking a not necessary (but surely low) risk! My "Cloud" is a live usb-flash unit with a remastered copy of Knoppix and a remastered copy of Slitaz installed, that has every piece of softwareI would ever need to carry in my pocket. For backup purposes, I've got a couple of additional LOCAL drives. If you can afford it, you'd better survive by your own means and avoid hiring anyone to do what you can do by yourself.
Oh, and about encription: for local storage, it is better to use block-level encription (criptsetup, Truecrypt,etc). However, if you need to encrypt a file for hosting it outside your computer, it seems a good idea to use an asymmetric chipher with GPG. That way, no one will be able to decrypt the file in a computer in which you have not installed a copy of your GPG private key, unless they could compromise your key or cracked your cipher.
It is worth saying that GPG's RSA keys few bits do not seem to be as secure as a classical symmetric AES in the long or middle term. I has been told the mathemathical base of RSA could be compromised in a no so far future.
34 • Typo (by Anonimous Coward on 2011-05-16 18:37:45 GMT from Spain)
When I wrote "It is worth saying that GPG's RSA keys few bits...", I should have wrotten "It is worth saying that GPG's RSA keys with few bits..."
35 • CentOS security updates (by Dolphin on 2011-05-16 18:39:41 GMT from Israel)
>> "Where did you get the idea CentOS hasn't been releasing security updates? The issue being talked about is that they haven't put out CentOS 6, a new release yet. They're still releasing fairly regular security updates for the 4.x and 5.x series."
Let's see...
# cat /var/log/yum.log
Jan 06 18:16:05 Installed: kernel-xen.x86_64 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5
Feb 10 00:20:45 Updated: clamav-db-0.97-1.el5.rf.x86_64
Feb 10 00:20:51 Updated: clamav-0.97-1.el5.rf.x86_64
Feb 10 00:20:52 Updated: clamd-0.97-1.el5.rf.x86_64
Feb 10 00:20:52 Updated: clamav-milter-0.97-1.el5.rf.x86_64
Mar 13 04:14:09 Updated: tzdata.x86_64 2011b-1.el5
Apr 09 02:26:02 Updated: hwdata.noarch 0.213.22-1.el5
Apr 09 02:26:05 Updated: centos-release-notes.x86_64 5.6-0
Apr 09 02:26:09 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 10:5-6.el5.centos.1
[SNIP the rest of the new CentOS release batch]
Do you want to say that between January (if not earlier, I'm too lazy to check the last year) and April there were no security updates to issue? I run yum -y update daily.
36 • Knoppix & Mepis (by Robert A. Eiser on 2011-05-16 18:57:04 GMT from United States)
Knoppix was one of the very first live CD's! It was wayyyy before Mepis. I'm sure Warren would agree. Bob
37 • First livecd (by Kabloink on 2011-05-16 19:11:52 GMT from United States)
Demolinux came on a livecd years before Mepis and Knoppix.
38 • Slackware (by Ruarí Ødegaard on 2011-05-16 19:30:45 GMT from Norway)
I very much enjoyed your Slackware review however I think you should have made some mention of http://www.slackbuilds.org/ as this seems to be the place where modern slackers get most of their 'non-official' software these days (in addition to Eric and Robby's repositories). slackfind is missing quite a lot of popular software. A quick note about http://sbopkg.org/ which automates using slackbuilds (and provides 'queue files' to help with dependencies) would have also helped new users.
39 • @22: Citation (by eselma on 2011-05-16 19:48:44 GMT from Spain)
I must clarify my assertion: MEPIS was the first "live AND installable" CD Distro in October 2003. Knoppix and Demolinux then worked only in "live" mode.
After that, appeared Mandrake One (live & installable), and three years after (oh yes!) Ubuntu.
Re, to the "non free" apps, that is a reason for me to use MEPIS. MP3 decoders and other stuff come freely with the distro. Even in live mode you can have the proprietary nVidia drivers installed.
40 • 36 • Knoppix & Mepis (by anticapitalista on 2011-05-16 19:51:41 GMT from Greece)
MEPIS was not the first livecd, but was probably the first live installable cd. Sure Knoppix *could* be installed, but it wasn't/isn't meant to be installed.
41 • Slackware 13.37 (by Schultzter on 2011-05-16 19:57:23 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for quickly reviewing Slackware 13.37. It was the first distro I tried; and no matter what else I tried I always came back to Slackware.
And like #38 Ruarí Ødegaard said: don't forget about slackbuilds.org and sbopkg!
42 • On cooking (by koroshiya.itchy on 2011-05-16 20:00:03 GMT from Belgium)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
43 • Live Linux (by Robert A. Eiser on 2011-05-16 20:06:28 GMT from United States)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DemoLinux Let's put this to rest. Number 37 wins the prize Bob
44 • LiveCDs (by koroshiya.itchy on 2011-05-16 20:13:41 GMT from Belgium)
The first Linux-based 'Live CD' was Yggdrasil Linux first released in beta form 1992~1993 (ceased production in 1995), though in practice its functionality was hampered due to the low throughput of contemporary CD-ROM drives. DemoLinux, released in 1998, was the first Linux distribution specially designed as a live CD. The Linuxcare bootable business card, first released in 1999, was the first Live CD to focus on system administration, and the first to be distributed in the bootable business card form factor. As of 2010[update], Finnix (first released in 2000) is the oldest Live CD still in production. Knoppix, a Debian-derived Linux distribution, was released in 2003, and found popularity as both a rescue disk system and as a primary distribution in its own right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD
45 • livecds (by Reuben on 2011-05-16 22:13:51 GMT from United States)
Interesting. I remember playing around with the SuSE livecd sometime around 2002 and thought it was a cool concept. Doesn't seem like such a novelty now that every distro has releases a LiveCD.
46 • CENTOS (by rictec on 2011-05-16 22:55:11 GMT from Portugal)
Just comment to say CentOS is well and 5.6 is very alive and working well every day
CentOS 6 does not exist and if and when he came to existence it will be what all CentOS users expect it to be.
DW you can't point to a leaving dev opinion and make it the Distro ultimate fate thats untrustworthy news and completely untrue.
rictec
47 • Intel Graphics Support Bug(s) - Still Crawling Around (by RO on 2011-05-16 23:32:08 GMT from United States)
Sad that even Slackware's latest cannot improve on Ubuntu in that respect. Why is one of the most common graphics chipset families on notebooks (and fair number of desktops) still so poorly supported - even getting worse since about Ubuntu 9.04? Any back stories on that issue?
TIA
48 • DAG = CentOS (by polycarp on 2011-05-17 00:11:34 GMT from United States)
Dag = Centos.
No Dag = No Centos.
49 • CentOS and cloud (by papaya on 2011-05-17 00:16:14 GMT from France)
Like everybody, except for a handful of diehards like rictec for instance, I guess all users should go to Scientific now. Period. CentOS is ill, we'll see if it will really die but it is no more trustworthy...
About the Cloud, it is one of the worse and stupid thing the humanity has invented. It's one of the signs that show the humanity is on the wrong slope...
50 • CentOS (by Scott on 2011-05-17 00:24:39 GMT from United States)
Dag does NOT equal CentOS--he makes 3rd party packages, that RH doesn't provide. If rpmforge stopped making RHEL packages, there's a good chance others would fill the void, but I think that Dag himself would certainly tell you that a) he does not make or break CentOS, and b) that the rpmforge packges will continue, as well as ELRepo (and those folks aren't leaving CentOS) to support RHEL and whatever is compatible with it.
Now that Distrowatch has printed one person's rather unstudied opinion, I've seen it on the Fedora forums and a few mailing lists.
While not all who are silent are satisfied, I think this whole CentOS is dead thing is really becoming almost comical
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLcc26-Mzac
51 • RE: 46, 50 CentOS (by ladislav on 2011-05-17 00:28:07 GMT from Taiwan)
Of course, you have every right to believe that there is absolutely no problem with CentOS. But that would be ignoring the evidence. If you care, you can read the following article (which was referenced in an earlier issue of DWW) to understand the extent of the problem CentOS 5.x users have been forced to put up with in recent months:
http://lwn.net/Articles/435744/
A brief quote: "The real problem is that there have been no CentOS 5 security updates since January 6, and only one since December 14, 2010. During this time, RHEL 5, on which CentOS 5 is based, has seen updates for dbus, exim, firefox (twice), gcc, hplip, java-openjdk, kernel (thrice), krb5, libtiff, libuser, mailman, openldap, pango, php, postgresql, python, samba, subversion (twice), tomcat5, vsftpd, and wireshark (twice)."
(Then again, we have some guys lurking around here who always log in as root and don't care about security vulnerabilities (because they have never been hacked). If you are one of them then you are right - CentOS is perfect and any criticism of it is totally unjustified.)
As for CentOS 6, I agree that there is no rush - six months means nothing when you know that the OS will be supported for 7 years. But maybe the project has spoilt its users - CentOS 5 came out less than a month after RHEL 5, so some CentOS users might have had high expectations for an early release. When it still doesn't exist six month later and when communication from CentOS is non-existent and when security patches don't arrive months after upstream and when some well-known developers start leaving the project, etc. then I don't think you can blame people for starting to have doubts about the distro's future and viability.
52 • Re: 51 CentOS updates (by Yan on 2011-05-17 01:20:52 GMT from Canada)
The claim that there have been no security updates for CentOS 5 since January is simply wrong. Here are just a few examples:
# cat /var/log/yum.log | grep -i kernel
Apr 17 12:30:55 Installed: kernel-PAE-devel-2.6.18-238.9.1.el5.centos.plus.i686
Apr 17 12:31:13 Installed: kernel-PAE-2.6.18-238.9.1.el5.centos.plus.i686
Apr 17 12:31:29 Installed: kernel-2.6.18-238.9.1.el5.centos.plus.i686
# cat /var/log/yum.log | grep -i firefox
Apr 07 20:36:07 Updated: firefox-3.6.15-1.el5.centos.i386
May 01 21:24:59 Updated: firefox-3.6.17-1.el5.centos.i386
# cat /var/log/yum.log | grep -i python
May 06 09:30:03 Updated: python-2.4.3-44.el5.i386
May 06 09:30:27 Updated: python-libs-2.4.3-44.el5.i386
May 06 09:30:31 Updated: python-devel-2.4.3-44.el5.i386
May 12 16:40:19 Updated: python-numeric-23.7-2.2.2.el5_6.1.i386
The CentOS developers thought that it was more urgent to keep version 5 up to date than to release version 6, and I agree with that decision.
53 • RE 52 CentOS updates (by ladislav on 2011-05-17 01:29:58 GMT from Taiwan)
Nobody claims that there have been no security update since January. The claim was that there had been no security updates between 6 January 2011 and roughly the time when CentOS 5.6 was released in early April. That's three months of no security updates during which time there was a long list of upstream (RHEL) security updates, including security patches to the the Linux kernel (three times), PHP, PostgreSQL, Python, Samba, etc.
54 • Ubuntu Live USB (by Taigong on 2011-05-17 02:11:58 GMT from Canada)
This is the oddest thing I had with Ubuntu. I have been making live USB with Ubuntu for several years with maybe 6 different versions (releases). This time when 11.04 came out, I made two live USBs, one under Windows using the Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.4.7 and one with a live CD running Ubuntu 11.04, both followed the instruction on Ubuntu's website just below the downloading screen and both had a persistent file of about 1gb. To my surprise, the two USB had very different behavior when boot up. From past experiences, I knew the live USB made with the two different methods will be behave differently when booting up. But their performances were about the same. But this time, the difference in performance is HUGE. The one made under Windows, took only 50 seconds from push the power button to system ready, while the one made under Ubuntu took 2 minutes.I did it on the same USB key so that I know the performance of the USB itself had nothing to do with it. With previous version of Ubuntu, it took about 50 sec for the live USB without the persistent file to boot up and 1'55" with a 1gb persistent file. So this time, for the one made under the Windows using the Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.4.7, there is a HUGE performance improvement and I really like it. So, if you want make a live USB with persistent file, do it under Windows. As for the reason why, I don't know. All I can tell, is that the one made under Ubuntu live CD, behave just like the live CD and the one made under Windows behave like old Ubuntu (more like 9.04, 9.10). I suspect one try to load the persistent file during the boot up process and one after. It was just a guess. But I think loading it after is the way to go if they haven't done that.
As for the Unity interface, I didn't like it. So I found this solution on the web. I went to search for "login" and got the program called "login screen". Then unlock it and select "Ubuntu Classic" as the default session. And launcher is gone, it is just like the old Ubuntu.
55 • RE: Ubuntu Live USB (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-05-17 07:27:18 GMT from Spain)
If you want to create a Live Usb with persistence, just copy the distribution into the flash unit and set a syslinux bootloader manually into it. I don't like automatic live usb creators
very much.
Better yet, use a distribution that fits best for the task. Ubuntu is a pain to use from Live medium when compared to many mini-distros. You'd better get Slitaz (30 Mb) or Porteus and remaster it to your needs. Knoppix is also a good option for the ones that need a full featured live operating system, and is more reliable.
56 • Slackware + Kwort (by Marios on 2011-05-17 10:23:53 GMT from Greece)
Thanks for the Slackware review. I enjoyed reading it a lot!
I also wanted to say that Kwort http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kwort is no longer based on Slackware. The distrowatch page misses the recent releases based on Crux.
57 • RC1 release (by ennael on 2011-05-17 11:09:47 GMT from France)
As a note, RC1 will be available tomorrow. Planning was changed because of events of last week (Solution Linux in Paris and Liuxtag in Berlin)
58 • #57 RC1 Release (by kilgoretrout on 2011-05-17 13:22:58 GMT from United States)
@57 I assume you are talking about the upcoming release of Mageia RC1. I've been looking forward to it. Good luck to all involved in the Mageia project.
59 • CentOS 6 (or not) (by Diggy on 2011-05-17 18:22:05 GMT from United States)
Too bad about the travails of CentOS. As we were first building the information system seven years ago for my current company, we chose to build on CentOS (as opposed to Whitebox Linux, the first, and only other,clone at the time). We felt like geniuses after a while as CentOS gained more and more traction. It certainly has served us well, to now. Pity the project is foundering. Has it become a victim of its own success?
60 • Slackware (by Tom on 2011-05-17 18:22:42 GMT from United States)
I do not understand why reviewers keep referring to things like slapt-get and reference 4 year old articles about Slackware package management. Today's Slackware user does not use slapt-get or anything like that but instead uses the build scripts at SlackBuilds.org and the utility "sbopkg."
61 • Post 20 (by Phillip on 2011-05-17 19:48:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Unfortunately I have to agree with you. Theres another five added today. Just how many varients of ubuntu do we need ? Seems they are just changing the theme and wallpaper plus adding a couple of programs and call it a new flavour of buntu..
62 • Poste 61 (by Geekboula on 2011-05-17 21:39:35 GMT from Canada)
After thinking and Work for 48 hours. I decided to custom 5 differences Distro based on Ubuntu. I finished today! Summary: 1 different theme, 1 different environment and a few different applications for each. I'll make a website with a big button * DONATION * for each new Distro. Always to be credible, I will submit each project on Distrowatch.
Bingo ... 5 new distro another for you in next couple week.
Seriously : Perhaps having a new Distrowatch only for Babybuntu.
63 • Slack... (by Anonymous on 2011-05-18 00:47:23 GMT from Canada)
Can any of you Slackware elite tell me if it can partition a harddisk yet for us newbies??? The following part of the review was not clear on that: "Slackware includes three partition managers -- fdisk, cfdisk and gdisk. I went with cfdisk because I find its menu system can be navigated relatively quickly and easily. With partitioning completed, I turned to the installer, which guides us..."
64 • 63 (by TobiSGD on 2011-05-18 01:49:07 GMT from Germany)
I don't feel elitist, but if the review says that there are three partitioners and that Jesse has used cfdisk to complete his partitioning, what is unclear then?
65 • re:63 (by 123 on 2011-05-18 02:10:55 GMT from United States)
No Slackware partitioning is manual and controlled by you the user.
That means you should have some idea of what you want and how to use those tools before you start and/or get into trouble.
If you already have used uSoft's FDISK then you probably know enough, that is if you did ok with FDISK before.
66 • RE: 63 (by A. Person on 2011-05-18 02:17:22 GMT from United States)
cfdisk is relatively straightforward and easy to use, expecially compared to fdisk
67 • Slackbuilds (by RobertD on 2011-05-18 03:59:15 GMT from United States)
Tom,
I agree with you that most Slackware users use slackbuilds to add third party software.
RobertD
68 • Change for the sake of change? (by RollMeAway on 2011-05-18 05:24:59 GMT from United States)
Change is good, when it is beneficial, and wanted.Not so good when forced upon you without any choice.
I must admit, I am dumbfounded by the current smartphone, facebook, twitter crowd. They seem to desire NO privacy and live for (and IN) their 'smart' world. I see 2 or 3 of this crowd walking "together", each on their own smartphone communicating with some distant society, instead of each other!
This crowd will love the gnome3/unity desktop. It allows them familiar large picture icons to connect with their online communities quickly, no distractions.
Realize there are other cultures or groups of individuals with different goals.
Some of them actually use computers for work Some are programmers, some are artists, musicians, engineers, technicians, accountants, teachers, etc. They need to get their JOB done, whatever it is. They are not interested in the latest crazy modification to the desktop. They NEED familiar environments, so they can WORK!
There is NO reason any group cannot tolerate the others.
I do not want you to be like me, and I don't want to be like you.
To each his own, do your own thing, without criticizing others, please?
69 • RE:68, Good Words (by Eddie on 2011-05-18 12:17:39 GMT from United States)
"There is NO reason any group cannot tolerate the others.
I do not want you to be like me, and I don't want to be like you.
To each his own, do your own thing, without criticizing others, please?"
That's the way it should go. Todays crowd will be tomorrow's users and developers. Change won't be stopped by ones who want the old style because they are use to it. One could argue that one of the reasons MS Windows is on so many computers is that basically nothing has changed since Windows first was developed. People are use to it. That was the old crowd tho and this is the new crowd with new technology. Even tho I may be part of the old crowd I'll try anything just to see what it's like. Because I don't like it doesn't mean that it's not any good. I'm not an expert on what different groups of people want, just what I want. I do love choice and I don't feel like I'm forced into anything. No one should with all the different ways we have to compute in the open source world. Everything has it's place and that's the way it will continue as well as it should.
70 • CentOS (by rictec on 2011-05-18 13:32:41 GMT from Portugal)
you can call it as you please i dont care.
Scientific as a goal an it does what it needs to achieve that goal and orientation. i like that too and respect the team there.
CentOS as a different goal and a different orientation.
i use CentOS and will keep on using it until it is line with my goal
CentOS Devs have donne what i need them to do is that simple really.
71 • @68 - Well Said (by Mark Pace on 2011-05-18 15:43:59 GMT from United States)
Words to take to heart and live by RollMeAway.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"...the current smartphone, facebook, twitter crowd...will love the gnome3/unity desktop. It allows them familiar large picture icons to connect with their online communities quickly, no distractions.
"Realize there are other cultures or groups of individuals with different goals.
Some of them actually use computers for work. Some are programmers, some are artists, musicians, engineers, technicians, accountants, teachers, etc. They need to get their JOB done, whatever it is. They are not interested in the latest crazy modification to the desktop. They NEED familiar environments, so they can WORK!"
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Different strokes for different folks. Millions who want and need familiar well polished desktop environments in which to do their WORK each day are not drawn to the new unpolished alpha or early beta quality picture book desktops that some are trying to push down users throats. For the "smartphone, facebook, twitter crowd" that thinks in picture book terms these new environments may well be just the thing, but for the real world in which productive things actually get done give us our time tested fully functional desktops to work in.
72 • Re: #20, #61 - Ubuntu "derivatives" (by Andy Prough on 2011-05-18 17:45:54 GMT from United States)
#61 is absolutely right - there is no reason whatsoever to list every Ubuntu re-spin as if it is a different distro, when all the devs have done is added a different program or different desktop and a different wallpaper or theme.
You could dive into SUSE Studio and find hundreds of openSUSE "distributions" to list, if you followed the same criteria as the Ubuntu derivatives. However, there's no need - everyone knows where to get openSUSE and nearly all its derivatives through one convenient set of portals.
I think DW needs to seriously re-think its listing criteria with respect to the Ubuntu re-spins. They are beginning to congest the website enough that it's getting harder to find the data on real special purpose distributions that have much greater value. I would say that if a "distribution" uses the exact same software management tools, the exact same repos, and the exact same kernel, then its not really a different distro at all - just a re-spin. Let someone else create the "Ubuntu re-spin" website.
73 • Ubuntu and its babies. (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-05-18 23:50:55 GMT from Spain)
I think that having all those *buntu distros listed in Distrowatch is not the problem. The problem is them being made and published massively.
Most distros have a good reason to exist. Debian is a effort to create a stable distribution with big repositories, while avoiding non-free software in the main repositories (non-free still availible if desired). Slackware exists because it promotes an specific way of administrating the system. Red Hat is designed for bussiness computing, and has an own model of customer support. And so on.
Even some distros based upon "root distros" make sense. Ubuntu (which I don't like at all) was designed to be easy, and mantains its own repositories. It takes most of its packages from Debian, but also package some of its own software and has a more liberal way of managing non-free licensing. Knoppix is also based in Debian, but has a different objetive, brings its own installer and handy utilities that you couldn't include in a Debian Live CD easily. Etc,etc.
Now, if a took Debian itself, changed the default pakage selection, codecs and apps, but mantained Debian repos and pakcage managers, and called it Anonymous_Coward's_MegaDistro, I would be thought to be an idiot. And you would be right, because anyone could take my MegaDistro and make it be Debian again by removing the packages I installed before in less than five minutes!
Look, there should be a distro for each task. If a distribution A does something and I clone it and call it B, I am just wasting resources and developing efforts that would be much better used by A's devs. Cloning distributions for the sake of cloning has little sense. Why the hell do we still doing it?
74 • Ubuntu and its babies (by fernbap on 2011-05-19 00:49:46 GMT from Portugal)
I wonder why Fedora or Opensuse or Slackware don't have as many babies....
Perhaps because they are not so easy to deal with?
Perhaps because the purpose of a OS is to be simple to work with?
it's Fedora, Opensuse and Sackware's fault, imho......
75 • sed -i `s|Distro|Ubuntu|g' Watch (by Another Coward on 2011-05-19 01:22:32 GMT from United States)
I am sorry to say, but sadly I think the situation has gotten out of hand :(, but let Ladislav, Jesse and Caityln deal with it. They are the ones that decide which distribution(s) if any have a right to get some exclusivity.
@74
While you are personifying Distributions and given them human qualities `having babies`. I have to say which Distributions are the most promiscuous? Which ones have more fun creating babies? If that is the case, then Debian is the grandmother/granddaddy of many of them, then like you mention Slackware/Fedora/OpenSUSE are more reserved and don't have multiple partners and don't have as much fun?
My $0.02
76 • #74: Slackware "babies" (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-05-19 02:20:25 GMT from United States)
@fernbap: Slackware is the distro with the most derivatives after Debian/Ubuntu. Let's see: Zenwalk, VectorLinux, SuperGamer, SalixOS, Kongoni (new release this week), Porteus, Absolute, Austrumi, CDLinux.... I can go on with some of the more obscure ones if you want. There is no shortage of Slackware "babies" around. There is a shortage of people writing about them :) Jesse and I may have something to say about that...
77 • Slackware "babies" (by fernbap on 2011-05-19 02:31:42 GMT from Portugal)
perhaps you're right, Caitlin, but then it is not Ubuntu's fault :P
78 • Re: #74 (by Andy Prough on 2011-05-19 03:22:43 GMT from United States)
@fernbap - "I wonder why Fedora or Opensuse or Slackware don't have as many babies....
Perhaps because they are not so easy to deal with?"
There were 5,293 "babies" generated on the SUSE Studio site this past week alone. There are over 2,400 "babies" sitting on the SUSE Gallery site, created by the community for over 2,400 special purposes, ready for download and use.
Nothing could be easier than building your own personalized distro on SUSE Studio. Clone a standard desktop version or server version or someone else's build with one mouse click. A few more mouse clicks to add your favorite packages or subtract some you don't like. Take it for a testdrive online. Build a live-CD or a flash-drive image or a VMware/VirtualBox/KVM/Xen vm image or an Amazon EC2 image with one click. Download, install, or use it live. Wash, rinse, repeat.
79 • Re 78 (by GeekBoula on 2011-05-19 03:41:46 GMT from Canada)
It,s a chance that all SuseStudio (2400) babies are not listed here . Still, these are all custom version of OpenSuse. Not necessarily a new Distro.
VectorLinux is a really good example of a real distro based on another. It brings its own character. Proper installer, proper tools and more... Really good Distro ! It one of my prefer Linux système.
Thank Distrowatch for your good review of Slackware !
80 • #79 (by Andy on 2011-05-19 04:09:11 GMT from United States)
Many of the distros on SUSE Studio are not simply custom versions of openSUSE. There's a Meego based build, an Android Developer's Desktop, a Medical distro with specialized database applications for doctor's offices, a cross-browser QA testing appliance, a "cloud in a box" appliance, a distro just for handling your home security closed circuit TV system, and a VoIP distro in a box. There's a Drupal 7 Testdrive, an iFolder server, and an "Ultimate Indexing and Search Appliance Powered by Apache Solr" (something I need to check out, stat!). There are multiple Firefox Kiosk appliances, and the list goes on and on. Well worth checking out, and without a doubt, the easiest way to spin a distro and make it available for others to download.
81 • @74,77 (by TobiSGD on 2011-05-19 11:45:47 GMT from Germany)
Why do you think that this situation has to be distros fault?
It is just that this situation is here, and that it must be handled, nothing more, nothing less.
No one to blame here, except may be the "developers" of this spin-offs
82 • RE:Respins (by Eddie on 2011-05-19 11:53:32 GMT from United States)
As far as distro re-spins goes what we have is a double edge sword. Everyone wants Linux to be successful and bring in more and younger users. That's a worthy goad but with that you also get the wide eyed ones who say "WOW, I can make my own distro". To make it your own is promoted in the open source world and there is nothing wrong with that. You will get the ones who try to use this as just a way to make money tho, but most don't. What should be the criteria for a distro being listed. I don't really know. I guess it depends on who does the listing.:) The point is that there are going to be hundreds of re-spun distros and everybody has a right to do so. When the open source world promotes doing so, should we really criticize the ones who do it? No not really. We can say that it's getting out of hand, that it confuses us, that it's a waste of resources, and on and on and on. I've said the same thing and it's really none of our business. It's everybody's right to do so and that's the way it will continue to be. That my friends is the REAL WORLD.
83 • fault (by Rudolf Steiner on 2011-05-19 12:13:06 GMT from United States)
I don't understand the way you guys are using the word "fault". The word implies wrong doing or failure on someone's part.
To say a developer is at fault for creating something is just nonsense. I also see the word "blame" being thrown around. Its being used incorrectly as well, at least it is in the above comments.
How many "spin-offs" of the tire are there?. Each one serve a purpose: One is good for the snow, one is good for the rain, one is good for 4-wheeling, etc.
I guess a manufacturer who creates only snow tires is at fault.
Some of you are going to say- Yeah, but there are more than just cosmetic differences with those tires. True, but what about white-walls. I like to run white-walls on my 69 camaro super sport.
Am I going to blame someone for creating a tire that is aesthetically different? No, I'm not.
RS
84 • RE 82 (by GeekBoula on 2011-05-19 12:20:43 GMT from Canada)
I customized a version of PC-LinuxOS many different package and a totally different look. I could do a Re-spin. But the reality is that this version is a custom PCLinuxOS. That it !
I can do not claim to have created a new Distro using the work of others. I just customized my system. nothing more! SuseStudio provides the tools necessary for a customized version of OpenSuse. The core, tools administrators, package manager etc ... It, s OpenSuse nothing more! Changing the look or use a different desktop manager does not allow me to suggest creating a new Distro.
I do not question the fact that people can change their system to make a custom version. All the better if Linux allows it! That's the beauty of Linux.
But between that and to create a new Distro, it is not the same!
85 • Custom Distros (by OnoSendai58 on 2011-05-19 13:12:14 GMT from United States)
Actually, two distros created in SuseStudio are listed here at Distrowatch: UpstreamOS and MeOS. So what does that tell you?
86 • What is a distro? A miserable little pile of secrets! (by megadriver on 2011-05-19 13:20:41 GMT from Spain)
As I already mentioned a few months ago, my "yardstick" to measure "distro-ness" is this one:
Same main repository = same distro
Different main repository = different distro
For the "not-quite-distros", I favor the terms "distrolet" or "respin", to describe the more worthy efforts, and "reskin", reserved to the "I changed the wallpaper and a couple of applications, so I created a new distro, yay!" types.
But enough talk, have at you!
87 • Semantics (by OnoSendai58 on 2011-05-19 13:34:17 GMT from United States)
So...Ubuntu uses Debian repos, it`s not a separate distro? Linux Mint Debian Edition, not a separate distro? It really doesn`t matter what our terms are, so what? Eddie in comment 82 hit it square on the head. This is Linux, here we can do what we want and no one can say squat about it. The rest is all semantics.
88 • Ugh (by Fewt on 2011-05-19 13:42:24 GMT from United States)
I don't know why everyone is constantly bickering about the amount of distributions there are. Can it be confusing? Yes. Can it also be valuable? Yes. Do these authors have the right to be creative, and try new things outside of the mainstream distributions? ABSOLUTELY.
Lets support them, not punish them for being creative. We are supposed to be a community that supports each other, not one that whines and complains because someone does something that isn't mainstream.
That said, there is a pretty clear definition.
Respin - Using only upstream packages and changing minor details like package installation and the theme.
Remix - Using the upstream package as your base, but adding one or many packages that do not or can not exist upstream.
Fork - Using only packages from the "new" distributions internal repositories.
Most "new distributions" fall into categories 1 and 2 (Respins and Remixes), few fall into category 3 (Forks) however due to level of effort. If you folks want to see more of these respins move down the stack towards Remixes and Forks, I suggest that you all join one of the projects and help .. or stop complaining.
It is a huge effort to move from Remix to Fork as it requires a shift from supporting just a few packages internally (212 unique packages in the case of my distribution, Fuduntu) to supporting thousands of packages internally. :)
89 • Speaking of doing what we want... (by OnoSendai58 on 2011-05-19 13:43:43 GMT from United States)
I`m posting this using Ultimate Edition 2.9 updated to 11.04 with a custom 2.6.38-6 kernel made with Kernel Check. I`ve got a Halo Reach wallpaper theme pack and Faenza icons. Would I try and pass this as a new distro? Of course not, but if a friend saw it and wanted it I would remastersys him a copy. The point is, I can do it, because this is Linux. Is this a "new" distro? Yes, in the sense that I created it out of found parts, assembled them all and am happy with the result. That`s all that matters, you see.
90 • Okay, Fewt (by OnoSendai58 on 2011-05-19 13:46:25 GMT from United States)
Somehow we knew knew you`d work your remix into the mix, lol.
91 • @90 (by Fewt on 2011-05-19 13:54:42 GMT from United States)
It is a good example. I could have used Bodhi, or any other respin (kubuntu, lubuntu) .. remix (Fusion, Linux Mint Debian Edition) .. or fork (Ubuntu, RedHat) though and still made the argument work. :)
92 • respins and updates (by jack on 2011-05-19 14:17:52 GMT from Canada)
Using Ubuntu I keep getting updates; almost every day.
I expect them
I rely on Ubuntu because I have heard that they have a large staff and the resources of time and money to insure that their OSes are kept up to date
As a noobie I have no way of knowing if any given NEW respin (OS) has that ability
(or even not new.e.g. Centos)
Even as a hobbiest I still need to be able to access the internet (or better, know that tomorrow I will be able to) and this would seem to restrict me to mature OSes.
93 • @86, Semantics (by Stan on 2011-05-19 14:34:45 GMT from United States)
No, Ubuntu most definitely does *not* use the Debian repos, nor can it, as a lot of the core library versions are different. You kind of shot your own argument there. What it does do is import from the Debian repos, recompile them with an Ubuntu base, and freeze their versions once every six months, mostly for its "Universe" repository, but it manages its own core packages and often tweaks even the Debian-imported packages quite a lot. It is its own distribution. (How good it is compared to its parent distribution, of course, is another matter and open for debate. ;) )
Now, Mint on the does use the Ubuntu repos (in the main editions) and the Debian repos (in the Debian editions, naturally). However, it has its own repo on top of them, albeit with not a huge number of packages. Therefore it falls under the "Remix" category by Fewt's definition.
I myself would call Mint a "distrolet", along the lines of Chakra before they fully split off from using Arch's repositories. As I would also call Fuduntu at this time, though if the number of packages managed separately keeps increasing, it probably will evolve into a distribution in its own right soon enough (the border for me is somewhere between a remix and a full-fledged fork in Fewt's terminology).
BTW, Fewt (@91), two other forks worth mentioning are PCLinuxOS and Mageia; both spawned from Mandrake/Mandriva, used pretty much unchanged packages at first, but then drifted away to create their own packages and import them from wherever is the best in the RPM world; I'm noticing a lot of Fedora changelogs in Mageia, for instance. By now, the only thing really left in PCLinuxOS from its Mandriva base are its RPM package format and its control-center/draktools, and a very few of its packages (recompiled onto the new base, of course). I suspect the same will be true of Mageia in a couple years.
94 • @93 Again, semantics. (by OnoSendai58 on 2011-05-19 14:50:20 GMT from United States)
You said the same thing I did with different words. Think about it. Plus, no one cares what you call a "distrolet" or "remix." You just don`t get it, they are what they are, calling them by different names changes nothing.
95 • More semantics... (by OnoSendai58 on 2011-05-19 14:54:39 GMT from United States)
"...import from the Debian repos, recompile them with an Ubuntu base, and freeze their versions once every six months..." Does Ubuntu create their Honest-to-God "own" repos? No. Everything else is wordplay, only that.
96 • @95 (by Fewt on 2011-05-19 15:03:19 GMT from United States)
OnoSendai58 - Ubuntu does create their own repositories. They fork Debian's source repository (every 6 months for non LTS), build all of their packages internally with their own set of patches, and then host them internally. They are a genuine fork.
@93 - Stan yes I agree with your comment about PCLinuxOS and Mageia. I also agree with your comment on Mint and Fuduntu, though I use the term remix since it's the term designated by Fedora and I think it fits well.
Our plan at Fuduntu is to fork from Fedora around version 16. With our current rate of growth of the community and team, it is a reasonable goal. Until then, we'll happily remain in the Remix category. :)
97 • @94, Semantics, Yet Again (by Stan on 2011-05-19 15:04:15 GMT from United States)
Sure, it's not like calling them something different changes what they are, but so what? People categorize things, and there's nothing you can do to stop that (and some categorizing is even a good thing; it helps ease people's cognitive load). You don't have to categorize things if you don't want to, but if you do (as you did, even if implicitly, in 87), then you have to at least be consistent with your own categorizations, which you didn't, hence why I corrected you.
FWIW, I do agree with your other point in 87, that people are free to do what they will, and it's their prerogative to make any kinds of derivatives they want as long as they adhere to the licenses. The moment they open it to public consumption, though, people are free to talk about it, or even criticize it, so I do not agree with your "no one can say squat" part.
98 • *Sigh* (by OnoSendai58 on 2011-05-19 15:19:04 GMT from United States)
I give up, carry on. You people always do...
99 • Semantics (by fernbap on 2011-05-19 15:21:00 GMT from Portugal)
If you want to look at it under the semantic point of view, then a distribution is something that someone distributes, and means nothing more.
Regarding Mint, perhaps the best way to describe it is a word already used here, a "layer".
Mint is a layer installed on top of a basic distro, and is installed on top of both Ubuntu and Debian.
The layer in itself has its own repo, and comes in different "flavours". The layer also has some alternative applications and a filter so that not all upstream updates are installed.
I think there is still no classification for what Mint is, perhaps we should invent something...
100 • @98 (by Fewt on 2011-05-19 17:34:29 GMT from United States)
"Prior to this date, new versions of packages will be automatically imported from Debian unstable where they have not been customized for Ubuntu, that is when the version number of the package in the current Ubuntu development branch does not contain the substring "ubuntu" and there is a newer version in Debian. Entirely new packages (those not in Ubuntu at all) are also automatically imported prior to this date. The import is done by copying the source package verbatim from Debian and building fresh binary packages on the Ubuntu autobuilders.
By this date, all packages that have been modified by both Debian and Ubuntu since the last merge should have been merged at least once in the current release cycle.
After this date, packages will only be imported from Debian in this way by explicit request from a developer. (If the package needs to be modified for Ubuntu, or is not in Debian, then a developer can of course also upload it directly.)"
- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebianImportFreeze
101 • The great Gnome debate (by Jesse on 2011-05-19 19:19:07 GMT from Canada)
Not sure if anyone else is following this, but there's an interest fight going on over on a Gnome mailing list between a Red Hat employee who seems to want Gnome to be exclusive to Linux and a Debian developer who wants to keep Gnome portable to other OSes (such as Debian's kFreeBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc).
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-May/msg00439.html
From Red Hat's Lennart Poettering, "Debian kFreeBSD is a toy OS. .... I am not sure why you ask me to care about your interest into toy OSes."
I'm thinking restricting Gnome to one platform wouldn't going to help the project in the long run. Thoughts?
102 • Re: 20-61-72 UbuntuMania (by VectorLinuxUser on 2011-05-19 19:32:23 GMT from Canada)
First : Thank to Distrowatch for your reviews of Slackware
I agree with you! The Personalization BuntuMania is really good for some Linux User. But some really interesting Distro suffers from this omni presence questionable Ubuntu derivative. these Distro is deserve in comparison to the attention that is given to the copy of Ubuntu. This is not a theme, a different desktop environment and some packages that made a real Distro. We must be respectful of the work is done upstream by real developers. The remix was Buntu be available in the website of the Ubuntu community. Without presenting them as new Distro. Which in itself is not really the case.
But beware:
Mepis is Debian based but there is a significave difference on several levels it is considerate a full proper distro.
LinuxMint is in this categories, Chakra, VectorLinux, Zenwalk and many others too !
103 • @101 • The great Gnome debate (by Jesse (by meanpt on 2011-05-19 22:26:15 GMT from Portugal)
Jesse, I believe this debate over gnome within the "ix" OS family is about the inclusion of systemd in gnome 3.2. So far gnome has done well regarding some autonomy in its decisions and, despite being truely questionable, if that's the strategy of the developpers I can live with it and hope the other os's may find a negotiated solution which does not prevent linux from progressing. Nonetheless the situation doesn't entitle anyone from a "linux powerhouse" to play down the other os's as if the still to be a billion dollar company was the ruler God of the community. For that, we already have the other multibillion dollar OS.
104 • Should be a systemd, upstart, sysv debate (by RollMeAway on 2011-05-20 02:48:20 GMT from United States)
systemd is Linux-only. Most major distributions are moving to use it.
Ubuntu is the notable exception, so far sticking with upstart.
The stable, solid distros like slackware, debian stable still use sysv.
More changes. Might not be so bad if some means of controlling upstart or systemd was provide. Both are monstrosities! Ever try to manipulate (disable/enable) services with either of these? Without the sysv compatibility mode, I have NOT been able to. Tools were promised but never delivered for upstart. Maybe that is why people are moving to systemd?
All this complexity being added to save a couple of seconds at boot time.
Running startup services in parallel makes sense for multicore processors,
but the world is still full of single core machines. All of mine still are!
So, on a single core, parallel processes may even run slower, as the overhead to multiplex processes would cancel any benefit.
Another case of forcing users to buy new hardware to run the next version of software.
Sounds like ms
105 • distrolets? (by Edwin on 2011-05-20 06:27:35 GMT from Germany)
Last week DWW had one "spin of Ubuntu" as a in the waiting list, and it turned out to be the way to get Gnome 3 installed in Ubuntu 11.o4 without a problem. This I used and I have Gnome 3 along with Unity and Gnome Classic.
I am using that Gnome 3 all the time, and its very helpful. If DWW didn't put that "spin of Ubuntu" there, I would have been still fighting to get Gnome 3 in to Ubuntu 11.04 or using Fedora 15beta still.
There is another "spin of Ubuntu" in this week's DWW which would give you Gnome 3, practically the same way.
GNU/Linux is for everyone, so there is no harm in producing Ubuntu babies as much as possible!
106 • RE:Should be a systemd, upstart, sysv debate (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-05-20 09:46:31 GMT from Spain)
RolleMeAway wrote:
-------------------------------------------------
systemd is Linux-only. Most major distributions are moving to use it.
Ubuntu is the notable exception, so far sticking with upstart.
The stable, solid distros like slackware, debian stable still use sysv.
More changes. Might not be so bad if some means of controlling upstart or systemd was provide. Both are monstrosities! Ever try to manipulate (disable/enable) services with either of these? Without the sysv compatibility mode, I have NOT been able to. Tools were promised but never delivered for upstart. Maybe that is why people are moving to systemd?
--------------------------------------------------
As far I as know, Slackware uses a BSD-like initialitation system, not sysv (even when Slackware keeps a compatibility system for using sysv start scripts if you want).
What I would like to know is why the hell it is necessary for a desktop to include ANY particular boot system as a dependency. I mean, I undestand Evolution to depend in a particular set of libraries, but It shoud not need to care about what is starting services in the computer. I have always disliked Gnome's way: "We have a DE, we do as we like, we don't care about what third party deveolpers think, we bring the dependencies we want and if they break non-gnome software, it is your problem".
I have always thought Gnome to be extremely invasive (you know, to install a single app you end up installing a dozen libraries). If they finally decide to include systemd as a dependency, they will be invading the most important process of the computer: the booting. And they will be discriminating non-Linux kernel operating systems, something I found very selfish.
It seems Slackware development team has a real reason to stay away from Gnome. They would be enfoncing Patrick to drop the current BSD-like booting system, no more, no less.
About the systemd vs upstart vs sysv debate, it seems that Debian is planing to keep on supporting sysv, but they would like (if they found coders for th tasks) to allow support for systemd so the user can use which he likes the most.
107 • distros (by Fed on 2011-05-20 12:36:20 GMT from United States)
Why do we need a computer? To do certain work and/or to play. Why do we need a operating system? To use that computer to make it work for us or play with it.
We pay certain money to buy the computer, and we can download a Linux distro to make that computer work. This Linux distro is free, and you have your computer working. Someone somewhere lost some free time, some sleep to make that distro. So, we say thank you and use it, rather than criticize it!
108 • #107: Criticism is good. (by Taigong on 2011-05-20 15:08:32 GMT from Canada)
"Someone somewhere lost some free time, some sleep to make that distro. So, we say thank you and use it, rather than criticize it!". Oh, do we have to pay for the right of criticizing? LOL!
Seriously, criticizing can help the distro to find where it can or need to make improvement, it is critical to the development of an OS. The most of criticism has its reason. You may or may not agree with them, just like everything else. The best way to avoid criticism is keep the distro to the developer itself, don't distribute it. If a distro is for people other than the developer to use, then there will be criticism.
109 • Gnome requireing systemd (by RollMeAway on 2011-05-20 15:20:09 GMT from United States)
@106
Yes, I agree, it is ridiculous for a desktop environment to require a specific init system.
Even more so, than requiring the user have an active 3D video card.
Gnome requiring systemd would not only stop its usage in BSDs and other Unix derivatives, but many linux distributions would also be dropping it.
Kind of like shooting yourself in the foot, during a race.
110 • Arboursculpture (by Alvin on 2011-05-20 16:47:45 GMT from Singapore)
I just thought that the evolution of Linux of all the distros listed is almost like history of shaping trees in Arboursculpture. (http://arborsmith.com/about.html)
Referring to article, I wonder if we could find analoguous situations in the distros: (ref: wikipedia)
coppiccing - Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which takes advantage of the fact that many trees make new growth from the stump or roots if cut down.
pollarding - pruning system in which the upper branches of a tree are removed, promoting a dense head of foliage and branches.
topiary - horticultural practice of training live perennial plants, by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes,
pleaching - technique that may be used to train trees into a raised hedge or to form a quincunx. (leading to inosculation)
espalier - horticultural and ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth by pruning and tying branches so that they grow in relatively flat planes, frequently in formal patterns, against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis, and also plants which have been shaped in this way.
bonsai - growing a tree or shrub in a container - and shaping it in an aesthetic fashion. (for contemplation)
Other terms with possible analoguous scenario:
inosculation, conjoined tree, grafting, marcotting, budding, ...
Your thoughts?
111 • systemd and Gnome (by Patrick on 2011-05-20 17:16:58 GMT from United States)
I'm all in favor of the move to systemd, no question about it. I've had to deal with the steaming pile of crap that is the normal SysV init system when building embedded systems, and I consider it an unmaintainable, incomprehensible wad of hacks and kludges held together with band-aids. Kudos to distro maintainers for making it work as "well" as they did all these years, but seriously, it needs to go. Upstart tried to do something about it, but it was from the start designed the wrong way around, using a domino effect based on events to trigger things to happen. On the other hand, systemd uses the much more sane approach of "what needs to happen to get the system in the requested target state".
As for Gnome integration, I'm not following all the details of this discussion, so I probably have a limited view, but I'm torn on the issue. On the one hand I like it when projects maintain compatibility as much as possible. But I also like real improvements and integration when it results in a better system. Since I never really use any BSD's or other Unix derivatives, from a practical point of view, tighter integration of Gnome and systemd could only be of benefit to me, even if it would be Linux only. But I think the Gnome project should spend some effort in finding a way to make this an optional feature so Linux users can get the benefits without shutting the other Unix systems out.
112 • Pardus (by David on 2011-05-21 11:47:58 GMT from United States)
I can't believe the lack of coverage/comments pertaining to Pardus.
This is an exceptional distribution from Turkey. Aside from it limited package list it may be one of the best examples of Linux just working out of the box.
I have used it for some time now and have yet to run into any issues.
Try it and you'll be glad you did.
113 • pardus review and regression (by jack on 2011-05-21 14:47:09 GMT from Canada)
CM's review of Pardus 2009 ended by recommending it for beginners.
Her review of Pardus 2011 did not recommend it for beginners but for
"...moderately experienced Linux user(s)..."
Being a newbie I have been waiting for Pardus 2011.1 in the hope that the points raised by CM will be cleared up
114 • re 112 (by Geekboula on 2011-05-21 16:11:43 GMT from Canada)
I use Pardus 2011 on one of my computers since its release and I'm very happy. This distro is perfect for a beginner. Easy to install, simply to configure, simply to update, very nice, good community, including one in French very dynamic. For packages, they are sufficient for 98% of users. Honestly Pardus 2011 is definitely in the top 12 Linux distributions. And for a change it is not just a copy of Ubuntu.
For coverage: Distrowatch has 2 reviews, which is very good. Pardus on the web is very present and comments are always excellent
Long life to Pardus
115 • Painless Encrypted Cloud Storage (by Wil Barath on 2011-05-21 16:21:17 GMT from Canada)
I've lost data twice in my life to disk failures. No more! I have a cloud FTP service which runs me about $100 per year (not plugging them, their customer service is atrocious), and with a USB RAID1 (Western Digital WorldBook) which was $300ish when I got it, now a fair bit less expensive. I use both rsync and duplicity: rsync creates a mirror; duplicity creates a revision history. I have them on crons, you may want to do something else.
# To install the software:
sudo apt-get install rsync duplicity curlftpfs encfs
# To mount the mirror:
curlftpfs -s -o no_verify_peer,no_verify_hostname,transform_symlinks example.com /mnt/cloud
encfs -S /mnt/cloud/crypt /mnt/cloud_crypt <~/.cloud_pass
# To sync the cloud mirror (I've long ago forgotten what these flags do!):
rsync --inplace --progress -hrSlptgoD /home/user /mnt/cloud_crypt/
# And to a USB external harddrive:
rsync --inplace --progress -hrSlptgoD /home/user /media/backup_volume/
# To backup with duplicity: (I don't keep a local copy of this, you might want to?)
PASSPHRASE="your_pass_phrase" FTP_PASSWORD=cloud_ftp_password
duplicity --include /home/user ftp://cloud_ftp_user@cloud_server.com/backup/user
** Note that the rsync mirror is encrypted in transit and storage by the encryptfs mount, but you can still access them transparently from the mountpoint /mnt/cloud_crypt. The duplicity data is encrypted in core and sent over plain old insecure FTP. I wasn't happy that my cloud storage supplier didn't provide either SFTP or FTPS, this is the next best thing. If you can use a secure server, you may want to turn off dupicity's encryption for performance reasons if you are on a very fast uplink (not cable or A/DSL)
116 • What happened to Dreamlinux? (by Simply Robert on 2011-05-21 19:43:56 GMT from Germany)
Is Dreamlinux dead? It seems to be so "quiet" since the last release...
I hope this fabulous Debian-based distro doesn't die. At least in my desktop, version 3.5 XFCE keeps running beautifully, much better than Mint 10.
As for CentOS, whether it's dead or not, I think Scientific Linux is a very good replacement, although it needs a lot of tinkering to become a distro specifically made to run in a server environment.
117 • @116 - Dreamlinux (by Mark Pace on 2011-05-22 01:47:32 GMT from United States)
Like you I too wonder about Dreamlinux. Last available DL 4 Beta 6-3 was issued just one month shy of a full year ago, and since then nothing further. Apparently development has come to a halt, which is not always surprising on small projects such as this.
I've installed and throughly enjoyed DL 3.5 in the past, and currently have DL 4 Beta 6-3 running in a VM, so it would be sad to learn that the Dreamlinux dream has come to an end. Therefore I'm still hoping for better news than that.
Number of Comments: 117
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| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
Cool Linux CD
Cool Linux was part of the LINUX EMERGENCY CD project and was based on Red Hat Linux. It was a bootable, live Linux CD with NVidia drivers, Blender, VMware (trial), OpenOffice and plenty of other software.
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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0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
