 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 465, 16 July 2012 |
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Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
In a world that is increasingly connected many people want a desktop operating system which combines the best of both sides -- the traditional desktop and the cloud. In this week's issue Jesse Smith takes Netrunner, a Kubuntu-based distribution with its head in the clouds, and reports on the hybrid desktop. In our News section we will address a new, bold move by Mandriva, check out which distributions are supporting ARM processors and talk about an interesting new feature coming out of the PC-BSD camp. As usual we will touch on the various releases of this past week and look forward to new versions from the Frugalware, Ubuntu and ROSA projects.
In our Question & Answer section this week we talk about security and accessibility, two concerns on the minds of many. Do you use open source accessibility tools at work or at home? Tell us how you keep your computer accessible in the Comments section below. We here at DistroWatch wish you a pleasant week and happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First Impressions of Netrunner 4.2
The Netrunner distribution is one I've been asked to review recently. It's a project based on Kubuntu and the latest release of Netrunner, version 4.2, is based on Kubuntu 12.04, making it a long term support release. According the to the project's website, Netrunner aims to be a complete desktop OS that will feel comfortable to new users while remaining flexible. The latest release is offered in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds and the ISO download is approximately 1.6GB in size.
Booting off the live DVD brings us to a KDE desktop with large icons across the top of the screen and wallpaper featuring a desert scene. The application menu and task switcher sit at the bottom of the display. The icons on the desktop lead us to welcome documentation, the Runners-ID website and something called Web Accounts which, when launched, only reports an error saying it can't run without Akonadi. There are two other icons, one for connecting to network shares and another for launching the system installer. I used the Netrunner live DVD a few times during the week and found it usually worked well, though once the live session failed to detect my DNS service which brought web access to a screeching halt until I manually adjusted the network settings.
Netrunner 4.2 -- Welcome Notes
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The Netrunner system installer is the same as the one supplied by Kubuntu (and Ubuntu for that matter). It asks us to select our preferred language and then checks to make sure our system meets the minimum hardware requirements. Netrunner demands at least 8.6GB of free disk space, 6,2GB of which is taken over by installed software and the rest is reserved for swap and home folders. The installer then offers to download updates and multimedia add-ons such as Flash and audio codecs. We then get walked through partitioning and Netrunner makes this easy while supporting a wide range of file systems. We're then asked to confirm our time zone and our keyboard layout. The last screen of the installer asks us to create a user account and gives us the options of enabling auto-login and encrypting our home folder.
My installations completed without any problems and booting from the local hard drive brought me to a bright graphical login screen featuring a space theme. Logging in for the first time didn't bring up any sort of welcome screen or wizard so I got straight to exploring the distribution.
Looking in the Netrunner application menu we find an interesting combination of local software and web-based services. The Firefox web browser is installed for us, as are the Filezilla file transfer client, the Pidgin instant messenger and the Thunderbird e-mail client. Skype is available and the Transmission bittorrent client is there too. For handling multimedia we're given the VLC player, Tomahawk, a desktop recording app, the Amarok music player and the WinFF video converter. Netrunner also provides codecs for popular multimedia formats. The LibreOffice suite is installed for us and it is complimented by some Calligra productivity applications, including the Calligra flowchart program, Karbon for scalable graphics and Krita for image editing.
We find links in the menu to Google web services, including Google Calendar, Mail, Maps and Docs. There are also links to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and a small collection of games. To help users connect to these web services Netrunner provides Network Manager and KPPP. There are several package managers available in the distribution including Synaptic, the Muon Package Manager, the Muon Update Manager and the Muon Software Centre (more on those in a moment). Rounding out the application menu we find the KInfoCenter, the KDE Partition Manager and VirtualBox for running virtual machines. We also find the usual collection of small apps, including a text editor, a calculator and an archive manager.
Whether Flash is installed on the system will depend on our choices at install time. However, regardless of our install options, Java, Wine and the GNU Compiler Collection are available. In the background we find the Linux kernel, version 3.2, running the show.
Netrunner 4.2 -- Running various applications.
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Earlier I mentioned there is an icon on the desktop which leads us to the Runners-ID website. I hadn't heard of the service before and, as it turns out, Runners-ID is a cloud storage service which offers users 1GB of free space. I suppose this is a nice option for users, though since Netrunner is based on Kubuntu users will additionally have the option of installing support for the One cloud services which features 5GB of free storage space.
I experimented with Netrunner on my laptop (dual-core 2GHz CPU, 3GB of RAM, Intel graphics, Intel wireless card). The distribution performed fairly well and all of my hardware was properly detected and utilized. Wireless networks in range were automatically picked up, audio worked out of the box and my screen was set to its maximum resolution. While running on the laptop performance of the desktop interface was a touch slow with the default settings, but once file indexing and effects were disabled the distro performed well. I also ran the distro in a VirtualBox virtual machine and found there performance was very sluggish. Disabling extra services and installing the VirtualBox guest additions helped, but performance in the virtual machine remained a touch slow. When logging into the desktop, prior to launching applications, Netrunner tended to use a little over 260MB of RAM.
When we login to Netrunner an icon will appear in the system tray letting us know when software updates are available. Clicking the icon brings up the Muon Update Manager. The Update Manager's layout is fairly simple, it shows us a list of available packages waiting to be downloaded and we can check/uncheck items. We can also refresh the list and choose to download all checked packages. During my time with the distribution I ran into repeated problems with this update application. The first issue I encountered was an error informing me not all repositories could be contacted, either because they were off-line or busy. Other times when trying to apply updates I would be presented with a warning saying not all available packages could be authenticated, apparently not all of Netrunner's repositories are signed, or if they are, the update manager isn't aware of the security keys by default. On a few occasions I would open the update manager, tell it to download all available updates and it would tell me authentication to perform administrative actions had failed, though no password prompt had been displayed. Eventually I gave up using Muon and switched to the Synaptic package manager to acquire updates.
There are quite a few updates to be had too, over 300MB worth when I first installed Netrunner. Fortunately, Synaptic, the venerable package manager, was up to the task. There are two other package managers, the Muon Software Centre and the Muon Package Manager. The latter is more or less a copy of Synaptic. There are a few minor differences, but it looks and acts in a similar fashion. The Software Centre is designed to be more like the Ubuntu Software Centre, though with fewer features. It divides software into categories, represented by icons, and users can browse through these items in a similar way to navigating a series of disk folders in a file browser. The only odd thing I found with regards to using the Software Centre was there didn't appear to be any way to install or remove command line software, such as shells, the Centre displayed graphical applications only.
Netrunner 4.2 -- Package managers
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Using Netrunner was an unusual experience for me, it is an interesting creation and I'm still trying to figure out if I like it or not. It has good qualities such as long term support, lots of software installed out of the box, multimedia support, wonderful artwork and good hardware support. On the other hand it had some things which, while I acknowledge these are subjective issues, didn't quite suit me. For example, having effects and indexing turned on by default. Software updates from the Ubuntu repositories apparently weren't applied to the new Netrunner ISO prior to release making for a flood of updates right away. Further, I can't shake the feeling that the large icons across the top of the screen combined with the array of sub-menus filled with web/cloud services make Netrunner look like a smart phone. Speaking of web services, I don't have anything against them exactly, but I also don't use them all that much and Netrunner's focus on this particular area, while probably useful to many, didn't do much to help me personally. I've never come around to the idea hunting through the application menu for things like YouTube and Facebook, I'm more likely to open a web browser to visit a site. I do want to say though I appreciated Netrunner's organization in this regard. The local applications, like LibreOffice, are clearly separated from on-line services such as Google Docs. In some other distributions which have focused on cloud apps I've found it difficult to tell a local program from a remote service just by looking at its menu entry and I think it's great the Netrunner team makes the distinction between the two.
While trying Netrunner it crossed my mind that this distribution is, in a way, the opposite of the Peppermint project. Both projects have a focus on cloud services, but where Peppermint is small, fast and minimal, Netrunner comes fully loaded with a big desktop, lots of local software and extras. I would guess the Netrunner developers want people to be able to experience the best of both worlds, local and cloud. At any rate, Netrunner is an interesting distro, it is trying something different and, while it didn't quite fit my style, I think what they are doing they are doing well.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Mandriva's two codebases, ARM support among distributions, PC-BSD's new killer feature
Mandriva is a distribution which is almost always in a state of change. Whether the project is facing financial problems, merging with another distro, trying to raise funds or forking off new community efforts, it is never a dull ride for Mandriva users. This past week Mandriva's CEO, Jean-Manual Croset, announced the Mandriva SA organization will be trying a new experiment, namely they will be using two different codebases in their product lines. In the future Mandriva's server editions will be based on the Mageia project and Mandriva's desktop and OEM editions will be based on Mandriva's existing codebase. While this move appears to parallel Fedora's relationship to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there is a notable difference. Fedora provides a testing ground where code can be introduced prior to being polished and copied into Red Hat's enterprise products. Mandriva's move, by contrast, will mean their two editions maintain separate, unmerging, codebases. When asked why the distribution is taking this new approach Croset replied, "Our Mandriva distribution is too innovative and too young for our server offerings. Mageia is more mature." He later added, "We are going to have two upstreams and the best of both worlds."
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Last week we covered the introduction of new 64-bit ARM architecture support to the Linux kernel. ARM processors have a reputation for low energy usage and have gained widespread use in embedded systems and hobbyist projects like the Raspberry Pi. So where can fans of ARM processors go to find distributions which support their favourite architecture? Carla Schroder has put together a list of Linux distributions with ARM ports. The Arch, Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu projects each get a nod. Users interested in Slackware are also in luck. Are you running Linux on ARM? Let us know which distribution you are using in the comments section.
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The next release of PC-BSD, version 9.1, is expected to arrive by the end of the summer. Though the FreeBSD-based project currently does not have an exact release date, the PC-BSD blog does carry word of an interesting new feature: multiple boot environments. Have you ever upgraded you system only to find out the new software packages broke something? Have you ever wanted to experiment with a piece of software, but were afraid it might cause problems with the rest of your OS? These are the problems multiple boot environments try to solve. The user takes a snapshot of the operating system in its current state, then upgrades or installs new software. If anything goes wrong the user is able to revert back to the previous snapshot. The PC-BSD wiki has more details on how multiple boot works and the simple commands required to use it.
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Webconverger is a live distribution designed for web kiosks. The Debian-based project is typically used in offices or public places where only web applications and services are required. Recently the Webconverger project announced they are developing a sub-project, called Neon, which will be dedicated to web signage (also known as digital Out-of-home
advertising. The Neon software has already been adopted by Renew for use in street-side displays in London, England. At the moment an evaluation edition of Neon is free to try for one week from the Webconverger website. The developers behind the Neon project feel Linux will offer a better, more secure, platform for content providers than the proprietary alternatives.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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On firewalls and window frames
I-feel-like-there-is-something-between-us asks:
Do I need to run a firewall on my Linux desktop? Am I safe without one?
DistroWatch answers:
A firewall is typically used to prevent other people's computers from accessing network services on your own. If you're running a desktop machine with no network services running then a firewall will be of limited use to you. In fact, some Linux distributions ship with the firewall disabled and no network services running with the assumption that with no ports open there is nothing to guard. Let's say you are someone who isn't running any network services such as secure shell or Sendmail on your computer, then you are probably safe without a firewall.
That being said, I recommend looking at the situation from the other side of the question, is there any downside to running a firewall? And the answer is almost certainly no, you can enable the firewall without interfering with the normal operation of your machine. This gives you a margin of protection in the event a malicious program gets run on your machine and tries to open a network port, a back door, so others may connect. A firewall almost never gets in the way of daily activity and won't slow down your network connection making it a good thing to have in place just in case something bad happens.
Security is often a matter of layers. How many barriers are there between your system and those who would like to access it? It may be that you will never need one of the layers, but having it makes your machine a slightly less likely target. For this reason I recommend enabling the firewall and turning on access controls like SELinux or AppArmor. Chances are they will never get in your way, but they offer a bit of protection which would not otherwise be there.
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Standing-on-the-edge asks:
Do you know of a mainstream desktop environment and/or window manager that has noticeable borders (resizable even) that can help folks like me with fine-motor control hand issues?
DistroWatch answers:
It could be that other desktop environments or window managers will do this for you, but the only one I know of for sure that will give you larger window borders is KDE. The KDE4 desktop will allow you to set window borders to be the size you want, ranging from virtually non-existent up to around an inch thick. To change the thickness of your window border go into the KDE System Settings panel and click the icon labeled Workspace Appearance. Make sure the Window Decorations category is selected. Then click the Configure Decoration button at the bottom of the window. You should see a drop-down field labeled Border Size. Select your preferred window border width and click OK, then click Apply.
KDE 4 -- Changing the width of window borders.
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I've played around with this feature a little and found different themes have different limits on window borders. For example, I've found the Oxygen theme will allow me to remove borders entirely, but the Plastik theme will only go down to "Tiny". Likewise, the Tabstrip theme won't let me adjust the border size at all. So play around with a few different themes if the one you are using won't support borders as thick as you would like.
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| Released Last Week |
CentOS 6.3
Karanbir Singh has announced the release of CentOS 6.3, the latest version of the enterprise-class Linux distribution derived from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3: "The CentOS team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS-6.3 for i386 and x86_64 Architectures. CentOS-6.3 is based on the upstream release EL 6.3 and includes packages from all variants. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. There are some important changes to this release compared with the previous versions of CentOS and we highly recommend reading this announcement along with the Release Notes. There is also a minimal install CD that will get you a very small base install that you can add to." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information.
OS4 12.5
Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of OS4 12.5, a custom Linux distribution previously known as PC/OS that is based upon Ubuntu and is built for fun, compatibility, security, and mobility: "OS4 12.5 has been designed from the ground up to satisfy the needs of casual PC users all the way to the professional user. It is available in 32 and 64 bit releases. Built for the professional: With OS4 you have a quality multi processing core in your system, and with support for 3D graphics and audio, everyone from the digital animator, video editor, musician all the way to the researchers studying DNA sequencing to working in clusters, OS4 will fit your needs. With a fine set of standard applications, to the extensibility of installing thousands of more applications, OS4 was built for you." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
Finnix 105
Ryan Finnie today announced the availability of Finnix 105, a live CD distribution for system administrators based on Debian's testing branch: "I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 105, a major architectural update to the Finnix series. Finnix 105 brings major organizational changes to the build and boot systems, along with the usual assortment of software updates. Finnix 105 is the first Finnix release to be produced under Project NEALE (Normalized Extraction and Assembly of LiveCD Environments), a new set of procedures to build Finnix CDs from a minimal base Debian bootstrap. This allows for a consistent build process each time, and between architectures. It also allows for more future options, such as a native userland AMD64 release." See the release announcement and release notes for full information.
Parted Magic 2012_07_13
Parted Magic 2012_07_13, a live CD with utilities for disk management and data rescue, has been released: "Major GParted bugfix and feature release! From the GParted site: "This release of GParted adds the ability to show if partition size differs from file system size. This new feature enables you to identify unallocated space within a partition and can suggest how you can put this space to good use. Also included are bug fixes and language translation updates. Key changes include: Show difference if partition size differs from file system size. Avoid end partition overlap when resizing extended partition.' There are also some other notable changes. Parted Magic now uses the Tango Icon Theme. It creates a very uniform look and feel. Btrfs-progs has been updated to the latest git version so it's possible to create smaller file systems. Udev has been updated to version 182." See the project's news page for the announcement.
VectorLinux 7.0 64bit
For around a decade only the i386/i486 edition of VectorLinux has been available, which is a Slackware-based distribution optimised for business and office use. Today Robert Lange announced the first 64-bit edition of VectorLinux 7.0 Standard under the name "VLocity": "The main desktop is based on Xfce-4.8 with a custom theme and artwork unique to us. All the VectorLinux trademarks are included: DVD playback, audio and video codecs, multimedia and Java plugins are installed and working out of the box. The best of the open source world is included: GIMP, Inkscape for graphics; Firefox, Opera, for Internet Browsing; pidgin and xchat for instant messaging; Brasero for CD burning; MPlayer, Exaile for playing most available media formats. The office applications are Gnumeric, Abiword and Epdfviewer. Wireless networking has been extended with updated drivers and firmware, wicd has been employed to manage wireless and non-wireless networking. UFW is included for firewall protection and there is added support for several webcam makes and models." Check the forum for the announcement and feedback.
GParted LiveCD 0.13.0-0
Steven Shiau has released a new version of GParted Live, a live CD based on the Debian unstable release with graphical tools for disk management and data recovery. From the changelog and the release announcement: "The underlying GNU/Linux operating system is based on the Debian sid repository (as of 2012/Jul/14). The most significant enhancement is with GParted 0.13.0, which now shows when there is a difference between the file system size and the partition size. Thanks to work by Mike Fleetwood this resolves bug #499202 that has been open since 2007. With this new feature, users can learn if there is unallocated space within a partition that can then be put to good use. Another important application change is a fix for bug #678831 which resolves a problem with overlapping partitions when resizing an extended partition. Also new in this release: adds web browser icon to desktop; adds menu button keyboard shortcut to bring up Fluxbox root menu (bug #578842); useful when using GParted Live without a mouse; updates Linux kernel to 3.2.21-3."
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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 |
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 July 2012. To contact the authors please send email to:
- 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Netrunner Smoother (by Alex on 2012-07-16 13:43:50 GMT from United States)
I know Netrunner is based on Kubuntu, but it seems to run more smoothly on my old dual core laptop than Kubuntu does. Wish I knew what the difference is.
2 • netrunner (by sanjay on 2012-07-16 14:03:29 GMT from India)
I didn't tried Netrunner but tried Kubuntu, everything gonna fine except writing files on memory card , it showed filed copied to memory card but on mobile files shows of 0KB, now I am using Linux Mint lated mate its remind me of old gnome 2 desktop but bluetooth is not working, if any body has similar problem and know how to solved it please comment.
3 • Mandriva (by Blue Knight on 2012-07-16 14:16:20 GMT from France)
> "Mageia is more mature."
Hum, I don't think so. Mageia is a not bad distro but still young and its version 2 has some problems, even some that the first version had not.
Mandriva is dead, or almost, if they continue like this. More and more the things go crazy and in perpetual change and instability.
4 • So... now Mandriva is finally admitting defeat. (by uz64 on 2012-07-16 14:28:05 GMT from United States)
I've slammed Mandriva to hell and back and still kind of wish they would just die, even with this semi-decent news. Still, it's both funny and ironic that they are admitting that their new desktop is unsuitable for when stability is needed (no, really?), and that they are going to base their business version on... Mageia? LMFAO. You know, maybe they should have considered this before jumping off the deep end in the first place.
It's like Mozilla trying to turn Firefox into a carbon copy of Chrome, all the way down to the disgusting version jumps and upgrade treadmill; claiming that they're right, you're wrong, and that you're just going to have to deal with it, and if you're a company use some other (competing) product, not ours. And then release an extended support release without directly saying you were wrong. Only, the way Mozilla handled it was possibly more pathetic.
Don't get me wrong, Mageia is great and it's what I would recommend anyone who liked Mandriva to use, yet I don't see this as a bad thing. At least for the time being, until Mandriva deems their new crappy version "stable" enough, people can use a modern Mandriva that once again feels like classic Mandriva, without a bunch of craptastic changes that someone on the team thought would be such a brilliant idea. Of course, Mageia will be there when Mandriva decides it's really time to make the classic version obsolete. I still find it amusing that they're deciding to build on Mageia's work at modernizing classic Mandriva (from a competitive standpoint), but at the same time--once again--that's a good thing, and it's good to see open source licenses working as they were intended.
5 • Webconverger (by Carlos Felipe on 2012-07-16 14:46:34 GMT from Brazil)
How can I shutdown / restart it? Is just a browser without buttons or a panel.
6 • Netrunner (by claudecat on 2012-07-16 15:13:59 GMT from United States)
I found Netrunner to be yet another 'buntu + codecs, a few different apps and a spiffy new wallpaper. It works for the most part but is it really that difficult to just customize Kubuntu to your own liking? I guess there aren't many of these 'buntu clones that are KDE based, so it does fill a niche, I just wish it brought more to the table in terms of uniqueness, or was less idiosyncratic with regard to web-apps and other "enhancements" (like Mint KDE).
One thing that drives me crazy with these lesser 'buntu clones is the pre-installation of several (mostly useless) Firefox extensions. If I want an extension, I'll install it myself, in less time than it takes to disable and remove the ones that Netrunner (and some others) comes with. All in all, Kubuntu is more stable, runs faster, and can be made as "useful" as Netrunner in mere minutes, so once again, was this really necessary?
7 • Window Border (by some_guy on 2012-07-16 15:34:26 GMT from Argentina)
Some managers (dwm, Fluxbox, etc) have a selectable key you can use in conjunction with the mouse to move or resize (e.g. MODKEY + Left Button to drag, MODKEY + Right Button to resize).
This way you can click anywhere on the window.
8 • multipble boot environments is nothing new! (by SysOp on 2012-07-16 20:31:43 GMT from India)
Looks like PC-BSD is trying to be more like Solaris? multiple boot environments is nothing new, atleast not in the Solaris World.
9 • Dicephalic Mandriva (by paroxysm on 2012-07-16 21:22:30 GMT from United States)
An argument could be made that, at this point in time, Mageia bears more similarity to the current Mandriva Enterprise Server (5.2) than the current Mandriva One/Powerpack (2011) does itself, and that the Mageia codebase is more of a natural progression for MES customers. The cynic in me wonders if turning over sustenance and development of the Mandriva codebase to a community foundation will serve as a way of slowly divesting itself (i.e. Mandriva SA) of some of the changes that have been made. It is interesting, however, that ROSA Company feels confident enough in the current Mandriva codebase to base an LTS version (ROSA Marathon 2012 & ROSA LXDE 2012 LTS) off of it. It begs the question whether it is immaturity of the codebase or incompetency on the part of Mandriva SA in being unable to base a stable product off of said codebase that is the real stumbling block.
I expect that the community version will see a return of official support to other desktop environments in addition to KDE. I hope the new (and as yet unnamed) community foundation will see a move to scale back the default installation of some of the ROSA technologies. I also hope the new foundation will not be expecting much support from Mandriva SA. It may have promised to invest manpower and financial support in the new foundation, but given the company's current organization and financial position, I do not see it being able to adequately contribute to and manage two codebases. To be honest, I don't think it can adequately manage one codebase, and I don't see the company being around in its current form 10 years down the road. I do wonder if on the part of Mandriva SA there will be a return of a Mandriva Corporate Desktop-like product.
10 • Secure Boot (by Woody Oaks on 2012-07-16 22:45:30 GMT from United States)
You will easily guess from this question that I don't understand much about "Secure Boot": It seems as though the firmware-locks must somehow interact with UEFI code in the EPROM chip: If so then is that interaction a necessary or simply a sufficient condition for firmware operation? Could there be written some open source alternatives to a particular mainboard's UEFI code, a BIOS-of-Sorts? Could such a "BIOS-Flash" become simply another step in assembling a new home-built computer or in resurrecting an old one? And if such a procedure could work at all, could it be applied to small ARM devices? Just askin'
11 • Netrunner (by john on 2012-07-16 23:38:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
Not unique, granted, but a rather good out-of-the-box KDE distro, of which there aren't that many.
I rather like the pretty-much-everything in one hit approach (though it is possible to go over the top, sometimes way over), and it's often easier to uninstall or simply ignore something than it is to install it, particularly for a newbie. Some of the choices seem a little idiosyncratic, but that's simply a matter of taste, and can be quickly altered (I removed the icons from the desktop, for example, but appreciated the inclusion of glChess and VirtualBox).
In short, this, or something like it, is how I might have ended up installing Kubuntu for a friend. I think it's the best KDE distro since Pardus (what happened to that cat?).
On the broader point, I too would like to see a definition of "distro" that didn't just mean a re-spin with different software choices and different wallpaper, and maybe a different launcher. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate them though.
12 • Kubuntu installer crash (by zulfahmi on 2012-07-17 01:01:22 GMT from Sweden)
I got installer crash at same point when install netrunner, kubuntu and kubuntu oem (kubuntu ua remix). Look like kubuntu Pangolin dont like my pc.
13 • Move and Resize Handles in Openbox (by Arkanabar on 2012-07-17 01:11:09 GMT from United States)
As I said last week: if you're using an OpenBox environment (Madbox, CrunchBang, ArchBang, CTKArch, LXDE), one behavior that's pretty common is that if you alt-drag a window, it moves, and if you alt-right-drag it, it resizes -- even if the window is completely undecorated. This behavior is controlled by the openbox config file (generally at ~/.config/openbox/*rc.xml).
14 • Looking Glass (by Gary on 2012-07-17 01:41:02 GMT from United States)
Ran across an old(?) project called Looking Glass.( http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=144229) Did all development stop in 2007 or did it branch off or get adopted by another distro? It was very interesting, especially if you like the eye candy.
Would love to find a full fledged distro with LG3D as the window manager.
15 • WindowBorders (by lutz on 2012-07-17 01:54:09 GMT from Germany)
mostly every "true" WM has configurable borders.
if someone has fine-motor control hand issues, then (s)he might think about a TilingWM,
because there is window-"{dragging,resizing}" a mouseless concept.
only keyboard driven.
by-the-way: why someone should use over 200MB RAM in KDE to have resizable borders?
with that amount of RAM you can almost have everything started up
and do mostly all work!
16 • firewalls, ARM (by Candide on 2012-07-17 03:32:59 GMT from Taiwan)
A good firewall makes you invisible on the Internet. That is what you want. Hard for anyone to mount an attack against you if they can't see you.
If you're accessing the Internet through a router, you've already got a firewall. However, these days it's getting more popular to access via a 3G USB modem (which is what I have), and no firewall is built into that type of device. In that case, most definitely one should enable a software firewall.
Different distros have different firewalls installed by default. As a Lubuntu user, the default is ufw (Ubuntu FireWall). To be sure it's enabled, as root (on the command line) type "ufw enable" which you only need to do once. If for some odd reason you want to disable it, then not surprisingly it's "ufw disable." If you need to do it point-and-click style, there is gufw (Gnome Ubuntu FireWall).
=====================
About ARM. I've been very interested in getting a low-power ARM board, but most (or all) of the commercial offerings look pretty lame, and I'm not geeky enough to build my own board. At US$35, the Raspberry Pi has been a hit because it's so cheap, but still pretty lame specs. Then the other day I saw this article on Arstechnica:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/korean-company-offers-3-5-inch-quad-core-arm-linux-computer-for-129/
At US$129, it's nearly four times as expensive as the Raspberry Pi, but packs a lot more punch. I just might spring for it, though I'll wait a few months for a few others to write up their reviews. Maybe something else even better will come along in the meantime.
17 • Linux on ARM (by Michael Murphy on 2012-07-17 03:41:45 GMT from United States)
I'm currently running Arch Linux ARM on my Seagate Freeagent Home network drive and using it as my NAS. It was really easy to setup and has been running with no issues since as my backup destination for three PCs.
18 • Kubuntu + Low fat Settings (by Woodstock69 on 2012-07-17 05:25:35 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
To follow-up from a couple of weeks ago - Thanks very much to RollMeAway, Peter and Greg for their suggestions, in particular for kubuntu-low-fat-settings. After installing Kubuntu 11.10 in VirtualBox 4.1.16 I was initially disappointed with its slow and sluggish responsiveness.
After applying the low-fat package, I nearly fell off the chair (though probably more due to the broken chair leg...). Kubuntu was flying. Well enough to surprise the heck out of me anyway. I'm so close to dropping KDE3, now it's not funny. Just a bit more testing after updating Oneiric to Precise and that will be that. KDE4 + Digikam 2.6 (or 2.7) + Dolphin 2.0!
Kubuntu isn't my preferred distro, Debian is, but the reviews I read about kubuntu-low-fat-settings don't go into much detail so I can't apply the same setting to Debian.
I can honestly say I'm very happy with Kubuntu 12.04 + VirtualBox 4.1.16 + KDE4.8.4. I am anticipating very similar results when I install on my real system.
Do I have to say it? Probably.... YMMV.
19 • Windows Borders (by Steve on 2012-07-17 10:53:56 GMT from United States)
Compiz also lets you do custom-size window borders with Emerald and the Emerald Theme Manager. This works with Mate, XFCE, KDE, and possibly Unity.
20 • RE: ARM Linux Computer. (by Eddie on 2012-07-17 15:38:08 GMT from United States)
For anyone interested in a small ARM computer that is perfect for Linux, check out this article. A good value for the money.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/korean-company-offers-3-5-inch-quad-core-arm-linux-computer-for-129/
21 • Linux on ARM (by Patrick on 2012-07-17 18:30:44 GMT from United States)
I am still running my Sheevaplug as a home server and MythTV backend, and I just got a Raspberry Pi a couple of weeks ago. I'm using Debian on both. Actually, on the Pi I'm using Raspbian now, which is a Debian version compiled for the processor in the Pi so the hardware floating point can be used.
Both are nice ARM based systems and work very well if you keep their limitations in mind. For server or embedded use they work great, using them as a desktop system seems limiting, mostly due to lack of RAM. When running Debian, you can pretty much forget you are not running a normal PC, the experience is very similar to using a low end PC, especially if you stick to the terminal.
22 • CentOS (by Johannes on 2012-07-17 21:35:35 GMT from Germany)
Excellent to see that CentOS has been updated quite rapidly from 6.2 to 6.3. They're doing an excellent job :-)
23 • Re: #18-have you tried Arch w/kde? (by brad on 2012-07-18 00:30:52 GMT from United States)
Arch is very vanilla, fast, lets you install only what you want.. and you can tweak it till your hearts content..
once you go Arch... its hard to use any other distro... but of course Kubuntu is WAY more compatable w/ 3rd party .deb packages.. but if you just want to run pure linux and dual boot etc.. than Arch is the proberly the fastest way to go... that's my .02 now I'm broke
24 • PCBSD (by Grumpy on 2012-07-18 04:25:06 GMT from United States)
The last PC-BSD live cd takes 20 minutes to boot on my system, a core i5. If they're adding multiboot, who really gives a rat's ass. They should spend their time fixing the problems they already have.
25 • @18 • Kubuntu + Low fat Settings (by greg on 2012-07-18 06:19:46 GMT from Slovenia)
Another option is razor-qt which is kind of like a light KDE. but still under development. I've played arround with it a bit (a couple Ubuntu remixes with it exists) and it is really snappy. Well some stuff are still missing but on my test the things ran smoothly.
26 • @ 11: Where's the cat? (by Antony on 2012-07-18 08:23:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi john,
"In short, this, or something like it, is how I might have ended up installing Kubuntu for a friend. I think it's the best KDE distro since Pardus (what happened to that cat?)."
http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php
27 • @24 (by Chuck Borris on 2012-07-18 10:56:59 GMT from Europe)
maybe you have a crappy CD-ROM unit? try booting from a USB stick
28 • ARM devices (by Shankar on 2012-07-18 11:45:36 GMT from India)
Since the article asks, I have a GoFlex Home (just the base, was available for $16) running Debian Squeeze / Testing. Runs flawlessly as a server except for occasional crashes as a result of apparent bugs in the bluetooth module.
29 • Thunderbird (by Nate on 2012-07-18 13:27:58 GMT from United States)
Even though it's off topic, as a Linux user, I feel this warrants our attention: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/06/so-thats-it-for-thunderbird/
Thunderbird is our most common E-mail client to ship with Distros. This sort of changeover could be disastrous.
30 • Thunderbird (by Jesse on 2012-07-18 14:01:05 GMT from Canada)
@29:
>> "Thunderbird is our most common E-mail client to ship with Distros. This sort of changeover could be disastrous."
Interesting, I had the opposite reaction. Thunderbird being moved into a stable, slower development model strikes me as a good thing. Thunderbird has a strong set of features, a decent interface and, in my experience, is very stable. It doesn't really need a full team of developers hacking in new features. Thunderbird is a mature project and I think having a small team of coders just doing maintenance makes sense at this point in the project's life. A think slower development will give the project a greater sense of stability (especially next to Firefox).
31 • @25,18 razor-qt (by Pearson on 2012-07-18 15:07:09 GMT from United States)
Antony said "Another option is razor-qt which is kind of like a light KDE"
This sounds like reasonable advice, but I have to correct some terminology. Saying "razor-qt is kind of like a light kde" is like saying "XFCE is kind of like a light GNOME". The KDE and razor-qt projects are very different, and happen to use the same underlying GUI library (Qt). I'm sure some of rezor-qt look-and-feel will be inspired by KDE, but they aren't really the same at all.
Again, razor-qt may very well be a great option. I have no real experience or knowledge on it, but what I hear sounds very promising and fun.
32 • #16, ufw (by mcellius on 2012-07-18 15:37:50 GMT from United States)
Candide,
That default firewall with Lubuntu (and with lots of other distros), ufw, is actually named "uncomplicated firewall." I assume many people thinks the "ufw" stands for "Ubuntu firewall," but it doesn't. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncomplicated_Firewall)
So "gufw" stands for "GUI for uncomplicated firewall."
(I'm not involved with either; I just like the name.)
33 • Low power, small form factor, alternative CPU PCs (by Troy Banther on 2012-07-18 15:57:02 GMT from United States)
I use Debian GNU/Linux as my primary operating system for personal and professional purposes.
My preference for hardware, has, and continues to be, low power, small form factor, and alternative CPU PCs where and when available.
Of course I do the Google search for PCs fitting this category. It can get overwhelming just sifting.
I would really be interested in other individuals who've built this type of system and willing to share photos of them.
34 • Purdus (by john on 2012-07-18 20:06:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi Antony,
Thanks for the information.
Very sad. It was a wonderful distro. Hope the fork/s prove successful.
35 • Kudo's (by Don on 2012-07-18 20:26:50 GMT from United States)
I just want to say Thank You to all the folks who make DW available every week. It is one of the very few places that I MUST go to every week and is an invaluable resource. So, thanks folks.
36 • Re X (by Woody Oaks on 2012-07-18 23:14:23 GMT from United States)
Answering your own questions is kind of like ... Anyway, this isn't really an answer, but it might point the way: www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html.
37 • Correction to post #31. (by Antony on 2012-07-19 08:14:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Pearson (#31) wrote:
Antony said "Another option is razor-qt which is kind of like a light KDE"
It should read: "Greg said ........"
38 • the child surpasses the parent (by Julian on 2012-07-20 02:48:06 GMT from United States)
"it's good to see open source licenses working as they were intended".
It is indeed. It's great to see a fork contribute something that the parent distro was never going to create by itself. Clearly some upstart distros are produce something truly useful.
Ubuntu attracted a huge following largely by taking many of the things people liked about debian adding something useful. Mint turned around and did the same with Ubuntu.
Now the world of RPM distros is getting shaken up a little, again by a new distro that adds something valuable to the base distro that came before it. Mageia may not be as well known or as widely used as Fedora (or Red Hat) but clearly it's generating a lot of excitement and attention among people that watch new distros. It takes something, to achieve the #3 spot on distrowatch with a 6 month average at 1700+ hits per day. (8 years ago, mandrake linux managed to achieve the top spot on distrowatch at 1400 hits per day ;) )
39 • Sabayon9 is my choice. A great operating system that I must recommend. (by avelinus on 2012-07-20 17:50:04 GMT from Portugal)
Sabayon 9, the KDE edition.
I am very pleased with it. I installed the 64 bit version on my HP dv6 2180 with an i5 520M
I tried all versions since 4 to 9 and the last is the best ever.
Appears to be the safest and friendliest of user friendly OS.
I haven't any problems so far with any of the programs that I added.
Only the update that i decided to do, I canceled twice due to the delay.
In the older versions, i didn't like the installer.
I like very much my custom Zorin 3 wich i use on the same laptop and wich i can customise and easy install into a pen to take to my job and use in another pc. Later versions are not so friendly.There is always some program that doesn't work out of the box (once cheese no image, once tux guitar with no sound) the same problems why i don't use ubuntu daily.
Sabayon9 is my best choice. A great operating system that I must recommend.
avelinus@iol.pt
40 • @ 39 - Sabayon 9 KDE (by claudecat on 2012-07-20 18:47:20 GMT from United States)
I've said it before - Sabayon is a great distro with but one flaw - insanely slow update speed. I can literally install and update Arch in the time it takes to do a major update (100 or more packages) in Sabayon. Not so keen on the new gui "package manager" Rigo either. Aside from that, it's very stable compared to previous versions.
41 • Carla Schroder/Arm Ports - 25/31 - 40 (by Landor on 2012-07-21 00:31:58 GMT from Canada)
Poor reporting on the Arm Ports in the Miscellaneous News section. I've grown to dislike most, if not all, of writers that I previously liked. Gentoo, a long standing distribution has an Arm port. While it's omission may not be Carla Schroder's fault, but the fault of Ladislav Bodnar for wording it to sound as a defacto list of distributions with ports, it's still an undeserving omission of one of the major distirbutions in this community.
Carla probably couldn't compile a whole system anyway.
#25/31
At first glance, if it looks like anything, it actually looks like XFCE more than KDE.
#40
The problem with Sabayon is if the system is being updated by source packages then it's going to take forever because it's set to compile everything into each package, including the kitchen sink, That's how Sabayon gets it functionality, at the cost of compilation.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
42 • RE: 41 Arm Ports (by ladislav on 2012-07-21 00:53:50 GMT from Brunei Darussalam)
No need to dislike me just yet, Landor. I am on holiday at the moment and I did not do any writing for the last two weeks :-)
43 • RE: 42 (by Landor on 2012-07-21 01:07:58 GMT from Canada)
I hope you're having an amazing holiday.
As you notice I left the blame open. :) I didn't read Carla's article, skimmed through to see what distributions were represented and decided it wasn't worth my read. In all truth though, I've found that I dislike Carla's opinions and writing as of late. Yours is still without major flaw, so far. :P :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
44 • Distros (by Leon on 2012-07-21 02:37:10 GMT from France)
Does on e really need to download and install clones of Ubuntu, Fedora, etc? One might have to install a distro based on Gentoo, or Arch as its not that easy for a novice.
If one installs Ubuntu, and then installs necessary apps, even delete some, add Cairo dock, one gets a very fast very well working distro. One can install Remastersys and make one's own iso and give it to friends or even upload it. What do you think?
45 • RE: 44 - gNewSense Alpha (by Landor on 2012-07-21 03:46:34 GMT from Canada)
#44
I don't find much of a use for many remastered/clones of other distributions, that's actually putting it lightly. I can say though that there are a few exceptions in my opinion. One distributions that comes to mind is gNewSense, now based off of Debian, previously Ubuntu. I used to strip Ubuntu down to make it libre and it was a massive undertaking to say the least. Far harder than making Debian libre, say. Without distributions like gNewSense, those that wanted a libre distribution would have to jump through a billion hoops. It's not simply add or removing a few packages like most of the others are.
gNewSense Alpha:
As I stated here before, DistroWatch classified gNewSense as dormant in error. Well, they released an Alpha ISO for i386 and amd64 systems, I forget, a week or two ago and I didn't mention it. If you feel like testing it, feel free, it's rough around the edges though.
Here's the announcement from gnewsense-dev:
Hi all,
I'm glad to inform you that the first alpha installer for the 3.0 release (Parkes) is available for download at http://beta.gnewsense.org/gnewsense-three/installer/3.0-alpha1/
Known issues:
* No gNewSense branding integrated yet.
* The parkes-updates repository doesn't work yet. parkes-security is available.
* The version of some of the patches packages is lagging (e.g. Linux, Iceweasel).
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
46 • RE: 45 (by Landor on 2012-07-21 03:48:32 GMT from Canada)
I should say that the announcement was made by Sam Geeraerts.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
47 • @44 and 45 (by Burt on 2012-07-21 09:30:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Salix is one exception. An excellent desktop implementation of slackware.
48 • Libre distributions (by Barnabyh on 2012-07-21 13:21:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
@45. Perhaps you could do a comparison between gNewsense and Trisquel from your well-informed POV. I would find that very interesting as you're obviously much more into pure libre than I am. Always enjoy your opinionated contributions ;).
49 • Gentoo on ARM (by Jesse on 2012-07-21 14:16:18 GMT from Canada)
>> "Gentoo, a long standing distribution has an Arm port."
Carla might have omitted Gentoo because the project is often referred to a a meta-distribution. Since Gentoo offers source packages it could be compiled just about anywhere and mentioning it would be redundant.
50 • @49 re:gentoo (by Reuben on 2012-07-21 15:08:01 GMT from United States)
>> Carla might have omitted Gentoo because the project is often referred to a a meta-distribution. Since Gentoo offers source packages it could be compiled just about anywhere and mentioning it would be redundant.
This could be said for any distribution. After all, all the source needed to compile for another platform is out there. Gentoo on the other hand, tests and make sure a package compiles on a specific platform before unmasking a package on a specific platform.
51 • RE: 48 (by Landor on 2012-07-21 15:33:43 GMT from Canada)
Surely you jest. I'm just a simple, ordinary Linux user, who is far from well-informed about anything. There's so many more who could do the job a lot better than I could, just look around here week in and week out.
I'd love to see one of them do it too. It would be a highlight of DistroWatch Weekly in my opinion.
Even that would be better than all press the kiddie distributions like say Mint and Salix get. :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
52 • Ubuntu with Cinnnamon (by Pete on 2012-07-22 15:41:10 GMT from Germany)
I am quite thankful to Clem for making the Cinnamon desktop. I have Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity and also Cinnamon and Cairo dock+Gnome+effects, so do I have to install Mint 13 Cinnamon? I don't think so, because Ubuntu 12.04 is quite fast.
Any desktop environment can be installed in Ubuntu 12.04. I am quite thankful to Cannonical too for such a nice distro.
Number of Comments: 52
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| • 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.
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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| Random Distribution | 
FoX Desktop
FoX Linux was a single-CD desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Fedora Core, with KDE as its preferred desktop, main components recompiled for the i686 architecture and out-of-the-box support for popular multimedia formats.
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.
|
| 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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