 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 457, 21 May 2012 |
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) |
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 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Issue 984 (2022-09-05): deepin 23 Preview, watching for changing to directories, Mint team tests Steam Deck, Devuan posts fix for repository key expiry |
| • Issue 983 (2022-08-29): Qubes OS 4.1.1, Alchg Linux, immutable operating systems, Debian considers stance on non-free firmware, Arch-based projects suffer boot issue |
| • Issue 982 (2022-08-22): Peropesis 1.6.2, KaOS strips out Python 2 and PulseAudio, deepin becomes independent, getting security update notifications |
| • Issue 981 (2022-08-15): Linux Lite 6.0, defining desktop environments and window managers, Mint releases upgrade tool, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 980 (2022-08-08): Linux Mint 21, Pledge on Linux, SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan base |
| • Issue 979 (2022-08-01): KaOS 2022.06 and KDE Plasma 5.25, terminating processes after a set time, GNOME plans Secure Boot check |
| • Issue 978 (2022-07-25): EndeavourOS 22.6, Slax explores a return to Slackware, Ubuntu certified with Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 |
| • Issue 977 (2022-07-18): EasyOS 4.2, transferring desktop themes between distros, Tails publishes list of updates, Zevenet automates Let's Encrypt renewals |
| • Issue 976 (2022-07-11): NixOS 22.05, making a fake webcam, exploring the Linux scheduler, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 975 (2022-07-04): Murena One running /e/OS, where are all the openSUSE distributions, Fedora to offer unfiltered Flathub access |
| • Issue 974 (2022-06-27): AlmaLinux 9.0, the changing data of DistroWatch's database, UBports on the Pixel 3a, Tails and GhostBSD publish hot fixes |
| • Issue 973 (2022-06-20): openSUSE 15.4, collecting distro media, FreeBSD status report, Ubuntu Core with optional real-time kernel |
| • Issue 972 (2022-06-13): Rolling Rhino Remix, SambaBox 4.1, SUSE team considers future of SUSE and openSUSE Leap, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant |
| • Issue 971 (2022-06-06): ChimeraOS 2022.01.03, Lilidog 22.04, NixOS gains graphical installer, Mint replaces Bluetooth stack and adopts Timeshift, how to change a MAC address |
| • Issue 970 (2022-05-30): Tails 5.0, taking apart a Linux distro, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop |
| • Issue 969 (2022-05-23): Fedora 36, a return to Unity, Canonical seeks to improve gaming on Ubuntu, HP plans to ship laptops with Pop!_OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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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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