 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 457, 21 May 2012 |
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Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Modern technology can truly improve lives of people, even those unlucky ones who find themselves being physically disadvantaged. If provided with decent accessibility features, that is. Unfortunately not all operating systems care for these kinds of users or if they do, the cost is often prohibitive. This week's feature story is an interesting narrative of one blind user's experiences with both proprietary and free operating systems and a chilling reminder of how much we need open-source software and open standard in the world of increasing shareholder pressures and profit motives. In the news section, Fedora 17 delivers a much improved GNOME 3 experience, Red Hat celebrates a decade of enterprise Linux deployments, Mandriva hands the popular distribution over to its user community, and ROSA provides a highly customised desktop with many innovative features. Also in this week's issue, news about MultiSystem, a useful live CD with a graphical utility for creating multi-boot live USB drives, and a command-line tutorial on running tasks when the computer is idle. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (28MB) and MP3 (28MB) formats
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Feature Story (by Robert Cole) |
Linux accessibility - what is it and why does it matter
A note to readers. This article focuses on accessibility from the standpoint of a blind user. There are other assistive technologies available for users with other disabilities in the Linux world, but due to my lack of experience with these technologies I do not feel comfortable writing about them. I offer a sincere apology for this.
We live in a society today that is laden with many different terms which have multiple meanings, and sometimes one simply looks at a specific term but not its underlying definition. One of the terms which we will look at today is that of "accessibility", not to be confused with "usability". Although both of these terms often go hand-in-hand, they are two separate areas when it comes to technology.
Before we get into this mysterious word, "accessibility", let me first introduce myself. My name is Robert Cole. I have been a Linux user now for nearly seven years, five years of which I have been an exclusive user of this excellent and open platform. So, what makes me any more "different" than other users? Well, I am not trying to be boastful of the fact, but I am a blind user. For the record, however, I am not totally blind, but I am pretty close. I suffer from an eye disorder known as microphthalmia, which basically means "small eyes". I have no sight in my left eye, and a very small amount (literally 20/2000) in my right eye. And yes, I love using Linux.
I will not completely go into detail about why I use Linux. Suffice it to say that if you are a blind Windows user, you are, for the most part, a target of big name companies who make extremely pricey software products (namely screen readers and screen magnifiers as well as other technologies) which allow you the "privilege" of using your computer system. You literally would have to pay for two or more additional computer systems just to be able to use the one you already have, not including the upgrade costs for said software. Not very nice, is it? But that's life if you are blind and you are "into" computers. Well, it used to be for me.
What is this "accessibility"?
I am certain that those of you who are reading this have seen the term "accessibility" thrown around somewhere. Maybe you happened to stumble across an article like this and you wondered, what exactly is going on here? I will for the record, being blind myself, say that I do not agree with everything which these "accessibility advocates" say and do. However, I do feel that accessibility in this day and age is very possible and very important.
"Accessibility" basically means "to provide access". In the case of technologies such as computers and operating systems, it means to provide access to as many different types of users -- blind, deaf, physically disabled, etc -- as possible either through hardware modifications or through software which assists these users to use their systems - called "assistive technologies".
Accessibility in Linux
I stopped using Windows because I could no longer afford to use it. At the time when I completely switched to Linux (approximately June of 2007) the price for a popular screen magnifier was US$600 to US$700, not including the price of upgrades to new versions when they were made available. Even to this day, the price for a standard version of a very popular screen reader among blind users starts at US$895. Oh, the software does its job, but you have to go into debt to use your computer. That's tough if you are a student or if you need your computer for work related activities. Believe me, I've been there.
In 2007 I realized that the Compiz Enhanced Zoom Desktop (or simply Ezoom) plugin did everything I needed a screen magnifier to do - it did it well, and it did it for free! I was sold on Linux from that point on.
Compiz's eZoom is not the only screen magnifier available, however. If you run KDE along with its KWin window manager, there is a Zoom feature built right in, as well as other accessibility related features (for info on KDE Accessibility, visit the KDE Accessibility project page). Though it has been controversial in the eyes of many, GNOME 3 is loaded with plenty of accessibility features for disabled users (see the GNOME Accessibility page). GNOME Shell uses its own window manager, named "mutter," which, like KDE, has its own Zoom feature.
No sight? No problem! Really!
My good eye gets tired quite easily nowadays. I honestly believe that what little vision I have may not last as long as I will. Years ago this could have been a problem, but not now. GNOME has a screen reader named Orca which is in active development and is maintained by Joanmarie (Joanie) Diggs. Joanie is one busy developer, but she always is there to listen to the concerns of Orca users. Unlike the big name commercial assistive technology companies, Joanie (as well as many other developers of open source assistive technologies) has a true and sincere desire to present to disabled users a free and open system which they can use, regardless of their disability. If you don't believe me, just go on over and read through the countless threads in the Orca mailing list archives. One of the big reasons why I switched to Linux, beside all of the great free and open source technologies available, is that the Linux community cares. Developers like Joanie and many others are not out to empty your wallet and put you in debt for a lifetime, but rather they are there to help folks with disabilities find freedom so that they can literally own their systems and the technologies which are on them.
Just because you use Orca does not mean you have to use GNOME! Joanie and others are working diligently together to make other desktop environments (including Unity, KDE, Xfce, and LXDE) accessible via Orca as well. I know that there are many disputes about which desktop is the greatest, but behind the scenes (at least as far as accessibility is concerned) the groups behind these different environments are working together so that those who are disabled can use whichever environment they prefer, just as everyone else does.
No GUI? No problem!
If you like to strictly use the command line (as in no GUI whatsoever), but if you are no longer able to see your screen, no worries. There's a screen reader for that. Take a look at Speakup. While I personally feel that Orca and Speakup do a wonderful job, there are other Linux screen readers available such as Emacspeak and YASR.
Ever installed a system with your eyes closed, literally?
As many of you reading this know, Ubuntu 12.04 was released not too long ago. I actually had the joy of installing it with my eyes closed, literally. Don't believe me? When you boot up an Ubuntu live CD or USB drive, press CTRL+S when you hear a drum sound. This will start the Orca screen reader, and you can either try Ubuntu using Orca or install Ubuntu with your eyes closed; it's entirely your choice. I was able to do a complete installation (including partitioning my drives) without having to look at my screen!
This is one area in Linux accessibility, however, that does need some work. I am referring to accessible installers. As of right now, at least to my knowledge, one can completely install Debian (see the Debian accessibility page), Ubuntu, Vinux (an Ubuntu derivative designed for blind and visually impaired users), Trisquel and Arch Linux (via Chris Brannon's TalkingArch ISO image). There may be other distributions which have fully accessible installers, but I do not know of them personally.
I have worked with other distributions such as openSUSE and Fedora, and I think that they have a lot to offer, but they are not fully installable by a blind user at this time. However, according to a response from Joanie to an Orca Mailing List thread which I was involved in, a fully accessible Fedora installer is in the works.
Conclusion
Although much more could be to be said about Linux accessibility, I believe that I have covered a good amount of ground in this article. Linux accessibility is very important. I want to present to you a scenario to demonstrate just how important accessibility is, not just in Linux but in other technologies as well:
Imagine that you are locked in a cage. You are only allowed to ask for certain things and you only receive what the key holder wants you to have. And, for the most part, what you are given is given at your expense, and the price is steep. You are locked up and going in debt, and even if you do not like what you are given you are simply stuck with it.
This is what life is like for many disabled computer users. They have to rely on technologies which are produced by commercial companies in order to utilize already existing technology. They do not have too much say in the product, but they are required to pay an extremely high price for it, even though their disability is not their own fault. They literally go into debt so that they can use something which they already own. In my opinion, this is very unfair.
This is why open source is important to me. Even if you use Windows, you can get a free and open source screen reader called NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA). How is all of this possible? Because there are people out there who see a cause and fight for it. There are people out there who feel that everyone should have access to technology, and that they should not have to worry about how they will ever be able to afford it.
With this article having Linux as its primary focus, I want to end this by pleading with distribution maintainers and developers. Please, try to make your distribution accessible. Please fight for the cause. Not everyone will want to be an Ubuntu, Arch, or Debian user. Make your distribution count even more than it already does. Help in the fight to free those locked in the cage of commercial technologies so that they can find freedom.
Is Linux accessibility important to me? You'd better believe it is!
Thank you for reading!
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About the author: Robert Cole holds an Associate degree in Computer Information Systems from Modesto Junior College. He lives in Modesto, USA, with his wife Gloria and two sons, R.J. and Adam.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Fedora 17 overview, ten years of Red Hat, update on Mandriva and ROSA, Ubuntu in Businessweek, MultiSystem
 Fedora 17 is just around the corner. Previously scheduled for release on 22 May, it is now expected to be available for download on 29 May, unless new show-stopper delays the launch once more. One of the major features of Fedora 17 is GNOME 3.4 desktop which, according to this test review by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, is a vastly improved version of the popular desktop: "The improvement that everyone wants to know about in Fedora is GNOME 3.4.1. It's much better than the version of GNOME used in Fedora 16. Unlike earlier versions, GNOME 3.4.x will now run without the need for a 3D driver. This has been a real problem for some users trying to run GNOME in virtual machines. Borrowing from Ubuntu's GNOME desktop forks, Unity and Head Up Display, GNOME 3.4 new and improved search function in its activities overview makes it easier to find programs. Search functions in general are much faster than they were than in its interface's earlier incarnations. This new edition of GNOME also includes an application level menu that sits on the top of GNOME Shell bar and contains the application's menu. If that sounds familiar, it should. It's also taken from Ubuntu's Unity interface."
* * * * *
 Fedora is of course sponsored by Red Hat, Inc., the world's biggest and most successful Linux company. Established by Bob Young and Marc Ewing in 2002, the enterprise celebrated its ten-year anniversary last week: "Red Hat Software was founded through the merger of Bob Young's ACC Linux, a software utility supplier for Linux and Unix tools founded in 1993, and Red Hat Linux, a popular Linux distro created by Marc Ewing, the original Shadowman (the nickname for the Red Hat logo) who roamed the halls at Carnegie Mellon University. This was not a company you would have guessed would be valued at US$19.7bn by Wall Street in the December following its initial public offering. But there was a reason why a company that only generated US$10.8m in its fiscal 1999 year ended in February just exploded when it went public later that year. After Red Hat came crashing back down to earth, and Wall Street with it, what was left was a company that was a credible threat to the UNIX, Windows, and proprietary system incumbents that had an army of enthusiastic, idealistic, and sharp open-source coders who were not so much interested in getting rich as they were in being right and to have their peers concede that they were."
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 The fate of Mandriva Linux (which, incidentally, started as a fork of Red Hat Linux with the KDE desktop) has been hanging by a thread for several months now. But after a long period of uncertainty, it seems that the distribution is off to a fresh start - as a community project. Mandriva CEO Jean-Manuel Croset explains in this brief blog post: "After reviewing all your messages, suggestions, ideas and comments, Mandriva SA took the decision to transfer the responsibility of the Mandriva Linux distribution to an independent entity. This means that the future of the distribution will not be arbitrary decided by the Mandriva company anymore, but we intend to let the distribution evolve in and under the caring responsibility of the community. Mandriva SA will of course be a part of this entity and will support it with direct contributions. It is expected to fulfill this move within the next months and a workgroup of community representatives is being setup right now. This workgroup will be assigned the task to define the structures, processes and organization of the new entity and will start to work in the next few days. We believe that this new approach is the best to achieve a better relation of Mandriva Linux with its community and to encourage the contributions that will lead to issue the best possible products."
Will Mandriva Linux return to vigorous development or is this decision a case of "too little too late", especially now that many former Mandriva employees and contributors continue to work on Mageia? Only time will tell. In the meantime, the remaining Mandriva developers led by Per Øyvind Karlsen have set up a tentative development draft which calls for the first alpha release of Mandriva Linux 2012 next month: "In a posting on the Mandriva wiki, development community members stated that even though there is no official roadmap as of yet, 'there is a Mandriva community effort around a new Mandriva release, in order to keep people stimulated to contribute.' The community draft is not hosted or sponsored by Mandriva, so any plans are tentative on Mandriva's official position to come. In the Development Community Draft, a few details are emerging. The first was the assumption that the next release will be dubbed Mandriva Linux 2012, 'scheduled to be released in 2012.' Per Øyvind Karlsen will be acting as project leader with Bernhard Rosenkränzer and Matthew Dawkins serving as release managers. They figure the desktop edition will be released in 'i586, x32 and x86_64 DVDs live and installable images.' A technology preview is planned before the end of the month with an alpha to arrive in June."
* * * * *
 One of the interesting alternative to Mandriva Linux that emerged recently is a Russian distribution called ROSA. The Moscow-based ROSA Laboratory was a major contributor to Mandriva 2011, but given the uncertainty surrounding the future of the French company, its developers later went on to create an independent fork of Mandriva Linux. Susan Linton reports about the week-old release of ROSA 2012: "ROSA Labs, Mandriva's partner on their last desktop, has been working on their own Linux distribution and have recently announced their latest release. If you liked Mandriva 2011, then you'll probably like ROSA 2012 'Marathon'. In fact, to the casual observer, it looks like ROSA 2012 is Mandriva 2011. While trying to find differences in Mandriva 2011, ROSA 2011, and ROSA 2012, one finds very little. Firefox, KDE, and Qt are among the few updated software versions. The release announcement states that 'ROSA Marathon 2012 operating system is the first product of ROSA company created using our own software development and build environment - ROSA ABF - that gives us complete control of package base and development tools, guarantying technological independence and high quality of the distribution.' So, it sounds as though ROSA's experience mirrors Mageia's. After a fork, one needs to concentrate on their infrastructure, so users should see more divergence in the future."
* * * * *
 The recent release of Ubuntu 12.04, with all its new and exciting bells and whistles, has created an opportunity for the project's founder Mark Shuttleworth to feature in one of the more influential English-language business publications - Bloomberg's Businessweek. Here is a brief extract from the article entitled "Mark Shuttleworth, Open-Source Software's Sugar Daddy": "Ubuntu has, in fairly short time, become the favored operating system of geekdom. Many software developers have it on their laptops, and tech companies run it on their data center servers. Google is the highest-profile customer, and thousands of its employees use a modified version called Goobuntu. A lot of the software's success can be traced to Shuttleworth, who is exactly what the open-source world needs—a quixotic, wealthy guy willing to fund brutal, long-term wars against giants like Microsoft and Apple who also happens to have enough charm to interact well with non-geeks and enough technical cred to woo geeks. Canonical strives to make Ubuntu easier to use and as pretty to look at as something that might come out of an Apple lab. The reality, though, is that Ubuntu has failed to achieve liftoff among the masses. (Next year about 18 million PCs, or 5 percent of the total market, should ship with Ubuntu preloaded, according to Shuttleworth.)"
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Finally (and on a more technical note), a link to a new project that some of our "geekier" readers may find useful. MultiSystem is a live CD which comes with an interesting tool that enables users to create multi-boot USB images. The graphical utility is very simple to use - all you need to do is connect a FAT-formatted USB Flash drive (you can use the included Disk Utility to create and format partitions on the drive), then add ISO or IMG files of your choice from a hard disk. The tool will then create a bootable USB Flash drive which will boot into a menu listing the added ISO and IMG files. Useful not only for building custom multi-boot USB Flash drives, but also for booting netbooks and other computers without a CD-ROM drive. The project's SourceForge page and home page are all in French, but the MultiSystem live CD offers a choice between French and English languages directly from the initial boot menu. Here is a quick link to download the latest MultiSystem ISO image (based on Ubuntu 12.04): ms_lts_precise_r4.iso (668MB).
MultiSystem r4 - an Ubuntu-based distribution with a utility for creating multi-boot USB images
(full image size: 878kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Launching tasks when computer is idle
The-importance-of-being-idle asks: You have talked before about scheduling tasks at a specific time. Is there a way to launch tasks when the computer is idle, not just at a set time?
DistroWatch answers: It is possible to check how busy your CPU is and run certain programs when the processor is idle. However, this may not be the best solution if your goal is running programs without having them interfere with system performance. First, let's look at how to run a command when the CPU is relatively idle. There are a few ways to check to see how busy the CPU is, but one of the easiest is using the uptime command:
jesse@drew:~$ uptime
15:40:49 up 8:17, 3 users, load average: 0.92, 0.88, 0.85
The uptime program shows us the current time, how long the computer has been running, how many users are logged in and the processor's load average. The load average tells us how busy the CPU is. The uptime program displays three numbers for load averages, the first shows us how busy the CPU has been, on average, for the past minute, the second number indicates average processor load for the past five minutes and the third number indicates load for the past fifteen minutes. A load average of 1.00 would mean the CPU is constantly busy, a load of 0.00 would indicate the machine is practically idle. If we want, we can set a job to run only if the load average falls to a certain point, say 0.01. The following script checks the system load once a minute and, when the load drops below 0.05, it will run a job, provided on the command line, for us:
#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
echo usage $0 command
exit 0
fi
load=`cat /proc/loadavg | awk '{print $1*100}'`
while [ $load -gt 5 ]
do
sleep 60
load=`cat /proc/loadavg | awk '{print $1*100}'`
done
$@
Now there are problems with this approach. One being that we're constantly running checks, which is a little wasteful. Another is that if our load average never drops below 0.05 our task doesn't get to run. Another issue is that if we want to use the computer while our intensive task is running we either have to interrupt it or deal with reduced performance while our important job is running. In my opinion a better way to handle the situation is to run our special task whenever we want, but make sure it does not affect system performance.
One command useful for keeping jobs out of the way is nice. The nice command tells the operating system to assign a lower priority to our job. The lower priority will help to keep the job from using the CPU while other, higher priority tasks, are active. Here is an example of the nice command in action, being used to run the apt-get program:
nice apt-get update
Should a job already be running and we want to lower its priority, making it less intrusive, we can use the renice command. The renice command typically accepts two pieces of information, the new priority we want to assign and the process ID of the job we want to alter. Priority numbers are typically set in the range of -20 to 19, with 19 being the lowest possible priority. The following command assigns the lowest priority to process 3175:
renice -n 19 -p 3175
While the nice and renice commands work on adjusting the priority of jobs in the CPU sometimes we find that the main bottle neck to performance is with the hard drive. For instance backup processes require a lot of disk access and we might want to keep them out of the way. For these sorts of tasks we have the command ionice. The ionice command works much the same way as nice and renice. With ionice we can either launch a new task with altered priority to the disk or we can make adjustments to processes already running. The ionice command recognizes three classes of priority: realtime (which is the most aggressive), best-effort (which is the default) and idle (which should not interfere at all with other tasks trying to access the disk). The ionice manual page tells us to make a process idle, we assign it a class of 3. In the following example we perform a backup using a polite, idle, disk priority:
ionice -c 3 tar czf mybackup.tar.gz ~/Documents
In this next example we tell the system to make sure the process with ID 4571 takes the lowest priority when accessing the disk:
ionice -c 3 -p 4571
Should we wish to, we can use both the ionice and renice commands to make sure our job stays out of the way both when accessing the CPU and the disk. This next example begins a backup of our Documents directory and assigns the process both a low disk and low CPU priority:
ionice -c 3 tar czf mybackup.tar.gz ~/Documents &
renice -n 19 -p $!
The above commands -- nice, renice and ionice -- affect the scheduling and priority of a task. There is another command, called CPUlimit, which throttles a process. (CPUlimit is usually not installed by default, but is available in many Linux repositories.) What's the difference between throttling and scheduling? Well, a task with a low priority can still use 99% of the CPU if nothing else is competing for system resources. The low-priority task only backs off when another process wants to step in. Throttling a process, on the other hand, forces that process to only use a limited per cent of the available CPU. We can limit a process to use only 10%, 20%, 50%, etc of the CPU, whether the machine is idle or busy. The CPUlimit command typically takes two pieces of information, a process ID of the job we want to throttle and the maximum percentage of the CPU we want to allow to the process. For example, the following limits the process 6112 to using just 25% of our CPU:
cpulimit -p 6112 -l 25
The following commands start a new backup job and then throttles its CPU usage to 10%:
tar czf mybackup.tar.gz ~/Documents &
cpulimit -p $! -l 10 -b
There are a number of tools available to schedule jobs and to keep jobs from interfering with the running of the rest of the system. One of the above, or a combination of them, should get the job done the way you want.
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| Released Last Week |
Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.05
Anke Boersma has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.05, an updated release of the project's rolling-release "Archimedes" series featuring KDE 4.8.3: "The Chakra project is proud to announce the third 'Archimedes' release. As with the previous release, Chakra is no longer shipping a GUI for package management. Appset-qt was the GUI for Pacman, but was not handling complex updates as should, so it is dropped from this ISO. With this release KDE is updated to 4.8.3, a new toolchain including GCC 4.7 and glibc 2.15, updated glib2 stack, latest NVIDIA and Catalyst, updated SQLite, unixODBC and Python groups, to name a few of the newer base packages included. These base updates made it so that the second Archimedes release is no longer usable for bundles, thus a new ISO needed." See the full release announcement for additional details.
Ophcrack LiveCD 3.4.0
Cedric Tissieres has announced the release of Ophcrack LiveCD 3.4.0, a specialist Linux distribution featuring a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables: "This new live CD includes the latest version of ophcrack 3.4.0. It is built on Slitaz GNU/Linux 4.0, the latest version of this great live CD. Christophe Lincoln from Slitaz helped us to enhance the scripts for partitions and tables detection. A new ncurses interface is also available to help users look for tables on other drives or interact with ophcrack. Finally a live CD without tables has been released as well for users that already downloaded or bought tables. The directory containing the table files must be placed inside another directory called tables in order for ophcrack to find them automatically." Visit the project's news page to read the release announcement.
Parted Magic 2012_05_14
Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 2012_05_14, an updated build of the project's specialist live CD with a collection of software for hard disk management and data rescue tasks: "Parted Magic 2012_05_14. Huge updates with this one! New 3.3.6 Linux kernel, X.Org Server 1.12.1 with the most recent drivers, SpaceFM replaces PCManFM-Mod, Udisks replaces PMount, and an optional firewall for wired connections. To enable the firewall hit TAB and add 'firewall' at the first boot screen. All incoming traffic is blocked. Support for wireless connections is coming soon." Other updates include glibc 2.15 and MesaLib 8.0.2. See the distribution's news page to read the release announcement and consult the changelog for details about upgraded and newly added packages.
Hybryde Linux 1
Olivier Larrieu has announced the release of Hybryde Linux 1, a desktop Linux distribution with one unique feature - the ability to switch rapidly and fluidly between a number of desktop environments and window managers without logging out and without having to close open applications first. The list includes Enlightenment 17, GNOME Shell, GNOME 3 "Fallback" mode, KDE, LXDE, Openbox, Unity, Xfce and FVWM. The switching between desktops is achieved via a customisable Hy-menu which also allows launching applications and configuring the system. The project's website is in French and by default the distribution only supports the French language, but extra language packs can be installed from standard Ubuntu 12.04 repositories. If you understand French please visit the project's home page to learn more about the concepts and techniques employed by this distribution.
ExTiX 10
Arne Exton has announced the release of ExTiX 10, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution for 64-bit computers featuring the GNOME 3 and Razor-qt desktops: "ExTiX 10 64-bit is a remastered build of Ubuntu 12.04. The original system includes the Unity 5.8 desktop. After removing Unity I have installed GNOME 3.4, GNOME Shell and Razor-qt so that everyone can compare the different desktop environments. The system language is English. Installed programs include LibreOffice 3.5.3, AbiWord, Firefox 12.0, Opera, Thunderbird 12.0.1, Brasero, VLC 2.0.1, GIMP and win32 codecs. In addition, Java and all necessary additions are available in order to install programs from source. All programs have been updated to the latest available stable versions as of May 17, 2012. I have installed NVIDIA driver 295.53 so that you can enjoy the full GNOME desktop." Visit the distribution's home page to read the full release announcement.
ExTiX 10 - an Ubuntu-based distribution with Razor-qt
(full image size: 1,664kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Dream Studio 12.04
Dick MacInnis has announced the release of Dream Studio 12.04, an Ubuntu-based distribution with a goal of helping users to create graphics, videos, music and websites: "DickMacInnis.com is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Dream Studio 12.04, the latest version of our popular multimedia content creation suite. 12.04 is the best Dream Studio ever, featuring graphic design and photography tools, composition and audio editing applications, and programs for video editing, script-writing, and physical media authoring. Some of the features Dream Studio users have come to know and love: a full desktop operating system based on Ubuntu, for unprecedented security, stability, portability, and ease of use; graphic design tools such as Inkscape for vector graphics, and GIMP for painting and photo retouching...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a more detailed list of features and improvements.
Dream Studio 12.04 - an Ubuntu-based distribution for creative work
(full image size: 918kB, 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 |
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New distributions added to database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Linux-Bro. Linux-Bro is an Ubuntu-based distribution with the Xfce desktop and a large set of extra applications and configuration options.
- Linux Regal. Linux Regal is an Ubuntu-based distribution for the desktop.
- Oblong Linux. Oblong Linux is a Linux distribution that falls in the ultra-minimalist category that ttylinux and Tiny Core Linux do. It is more network oriented than many minimalist distributions, it is built completely from source for the i586 architecture and up, weighs in at less than 50 MB for the extracted file system, and has a unified file system layout.
- Xamin. Xamin is a Debian-based distribution created by an Iranian Linux developer community. The project's website is in Farsi.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 28 May 2012. To contact the authors please send email to:
- Robert Cole (feedback on the feature story on accessibility)
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, suggestions and corrections: news, donations, distribution submissions, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (feedback and suggestions: podcast edition)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
OLPC OS
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was an initiative to build a low-cost laptop computer with a pre-installed operating system and applications designed for children in developing countries. The operating system was a Linux-based solution, a heavily customised edition of Fedora Core with a special graphical user interface called Sugar. Among applications, the system includes a web browser built on Xulrunner, a simple document viewer based on Evince; the AbiWord word processor, an RSS reader, email, chat and VOIP clients, a multimedia authoring and playback environment, a music composition toolkit, graphics toolkits, games, a shell, and a debugger.
Status: Discontinued
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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!
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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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