 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 526, 23 September 2013 |
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Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Technology is always changing and nowhere is that more apparent than in the realm of open source software. Open source projects and operating systems tend to be transparent, where anyone can read along on the mailing lists or observe the back-and-forth on bug trackers. This week we will be talking about software which is currently still in the development phase or on the cutting-edge, but should be making its way into mainstream distributions soon. In our news section we look at the upcoming release of GNOME 3.10 and one of its more interesting features. Plus, we discuss openSUSE's plans for adopting Btrfs as the distribution's default file system. We also touch upon a new resource for BSD users and talk about a report on Linux kernel development supplied by The Linux Foundation. We also talk about how the city of Munich is planning to use Ubuntu in an effort to protect its users from malware. In this edition of DistroWatch Weekly Jesse Smith takes a bleeding-edge distribution, called ArchBang, for a spin and reports on his first impressions. How does the project perform and is it a good solution for fans of Arch Linux? Read on to find out! We will also go over some tips for making the most out of the command-line, cover distributions released over the past week and look ahead to new developments. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of ArchBang Linux 2013.09.01
 The ArchBang Linux operating system is based on the Arch Linux distribution and maintains a rolling release upgrade model. ArchBang is designed to help users get up and running with an Arch-based system while taking most of the work out of the initial installation process. To this end the distribution provides live disc images that come with the Openbox graphical interface and a system installer which automates a good deal of the work which goes into installing Arch. ArchBang comes in 32-bit and 64-bit builds, the 32-bit ISO is approximately 400MB in size and the 64-bit image is about 440MB in size. Prior to downloading the live disc image I recommend reading the ArchBang guide for new users. It covers several important points with regards to performing the initial installation and setting up package management.
Booting from the ArchBang Linux CD brings up a boot menu which allows us to load the distribution in a variety of video modes. The operating system boots quickly, bringing us to the Openbox window manager. The background has a cloudy blue appearance and there is a widget in the upper-right corner which displays CPU and memory statistics. Down the right side of the screen we find a list of shortcut keys which can be used to manipulate application windows. At the bottom of the display we find a task switcher and system tray. The distribution's application menu may be accessed by right-clicking on the Openbox background. Looking through the application menu we find a couple of useful entries, including one for the system installer and another which opens the Firefox web browser and displays the on-line ArchBang documentation.
ArchBang Linux 2013.09.01 - the distribution's system installer
(full image size: 857kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
The ArchBang Linux system installer is driven by a text-based menu system. It reminds me of Slackware and FreeBSD in its style, with the user being guided through menus where we can usually take the default offerings. The project's documentation recommends partitioning the local hard disk using the friendly GParted partition manager prior to running the installer. This is good advice, though not strictly required as the installer will launch the text-based cfdisk partitioning utility if we need it. The ArchBang installer lays out its steps in a hub arrangement rather than a linear path, allowing us easy navigation back to previous steps. We're walked through selecting our time zone and setting the system clock. Then we are asked if we need to partition the disk and, once that is done, we can assign one partition to be used for swap space and another to be used for the root file system. ArchBang offers a variety of supported file systems, including ext2/3/4, XFS, JFS and ReiserFS. Once we have formatted a partition we can instruct the installer to copy over its files to the drive. Once the files have been copied we set a password for the root account, create a regular user account and, optionally, install a boot loader. By default ArchBang installs the GRUB boot loader. I found the installer worked quite quickly, the entire process taking a little under 15 minutes.
Booting the local copy of ArchBang Linux brings us to a graphical login screen where the background resembles a cloudy sky. Signing in brings us back to the same Openbox graphical environment we experienced on the live disc. One of the first things I noticed about the distribution was that it is fast. The system loads in mere seconds from cold boot to login, the operating system also shuts down surprisingly fast. The graphical interface is extremely responsive. Another thing which stands out is that the operating system stays out of the way and takes the approach of only speaking when spoken to. There are no pop-ups, no software update notifications, no welcome screen. If we want the operating system to interact with us, we must first issue it commands. ArchBang does not do anything on its own, it is entirely passive. A third aspect I quickly noticed was that the graphical file manager does not, by default, recognize file extensions. This means that if we double click on a text file or an audio file, the file manager does not have any default actions and we will have to set up associations between file types and applications.
Speaking of applications, ArchBang Linux does not come with many. We're given the Firefox web browser (without Flash), the medit text editor, a virtual calculator, an image viewer and the SpaceFM file manager. We are also given a few configuration tools to help adjust the look and feel of the Openbox window manager. Network Manager is provided to help us get on-line. There is no compiler, no Java and no multimedia codecs on the system. In the background we find the Linux kernel, version 3.10. This means we are essentially tasked with building our operating system from a small foundation. It also means there isn't any clutter, nothing extra to get in the way or weigh us down.
ArchBang Linux 2013.09.01 - various applications and configuration utilities
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As ArchBang's default installation is not weighed down by unnecessary software it is natural to assume we will spend a good deal of time working with the distribution's package manager. There does not appear to be any graphical package manager, we instead manipulate packages by way of the Pacman command-line utility. By default Pacman does not recognize any software repositories. One of the first things we should do, post-installation, is edit Pacman's list of repository mirrors, enabling ones regionally close to us, and then synchronize our local package data with the remote servers. I found it was a good idea to enable multiple repositories in case one is slow or in the event one mirror is out of sync with other repositories. Once Pacman's list of mirrors has been updated and the manager synced, then we can get to upgrading and installing software.
ArchBang is based on Arch Linux and uses Arch Linux packages. The distribution also inherits its parent's rolling release style of upgrades. This means software is updated fairly frequently and the software on our system will be close to the latest upstream version. This means running ArchBang will keep us on the leading edge of open source software. It also means updates are more likely to break the system as they haven't had a lot of testing yet. The ArchBang documentation recommends caution (and research) when it comes to applying updates to avoid serious problems with the base system. I find Pacman has a rather cryptic syntax, but I also found it ran very quickly and I encountered no problems while using the command-line package manager.
I ran ArchBang Linux on a physical desktop machine (dual-core 2.8 GHz CPU, 6 GB of RAM, Radeon video card, Realtek network card) and in a virtual machine powered by VirtualBox. In both cases I found the distribution performed very well. The system booted (and powered off) very quickly, the Openbox interface was amazingly fast and all of my hardware worked out of the box. My screen was set to its maximum resolution, my network connection was enabled automatically and sound worked without any problems. I found ArchBang was quite light on resources. While running the distribution I found signing into Openbox only used approximately 75MB of RAM and my CPU was, more often than not, idle.
ArchBang Linux 2013.09.01 - end user documentation
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The ArchBang Linux developers are quite up front about the fact that their distribution is not designed with beginners in mind. It is a distribution that takes the approach of providing a simplified design which means, quite often, the user is expected to do things manually. Running ArchBang will require users to be comfortable with the command-line. Potential users should be familiar with editing configuration files in a text editor too. This means ArchBang is a bit of a niche distribution. It is hands-on and it takes some manual work, though not as much as plain Arch. The distribution maintains a cutting-edge rolling release so users should be aware things will break from time to time and blindly upgrading packages is not recommended. For the reasons listed above there aren't many people to whom I would recommend ArchBang, but at the same time I was quite pleased with what the developers have accomplished.
From a technical perspective, ArchBang Linux is blazingly fast, it has an uncluttered interface, super fast package management, a minimal installation footprint and takes up very little RAM. This is probably a good distribution for people who like to explore the nuts and bolts of an operating system, who like running the latest versions of software and who like the Arch philosophy of simple operating system design. I like that ArchBang has lowered the bar to trying an Arch-based system and that they have good documentation for people starting out. The project may not have mainstream appeal, but it is very good at what it does, providing an easy way to pop in a CD and simply enjoy Arch. My experience with ArchBang was, in a word, sparse, with few features and no bugs.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
New BSD resource, Linux kernel statistics, Munich gives away Ubuntu discs, GNOME gains Wayland support
 BSD Now is a new resource for BSD users and administrators that covers news and developments in the BSD communities. Their latest podcast is full of useful information for users and fans of the BSD family of operating systems. Some of the highlights include thoughts on tackling the adoption of a time system which can be used beyond the year 2038, the FreeBSD project's move to drop the GNU compiler in exchange for Clang, creating package repositories and new developments in the BSD communities. The BSD Now podcasts are available in a variety of audio and video formats and worth a listen if you're curious about activities in the BSD communities.
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 The Linux kernel is at the heart of every GNU/Linux distribution, Android and any number of embedding devices. Linux is virtually everywhere, running desktops, laptops, servers, routers and phones. The kernel is made up of millions of lines of code (version 3.10 if the Linux kernel contains nearly 17 million lines of code) and thousands of changes are included in each new release. This raises the question of who writes all of this code and The Linux Foundation has some answers. According to their report, Red Hat contributes the lion's share of kernel code, with approximately 10% of changes coming from Red Hat employees. Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, Google and Oracle are also big contributors. Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman made some comments with regards to the pace of Linux development, observing: "Rate of change, and number of patches accepted, keeps going up as our community size has increased," indicating the pace of development is continually growing. "Every year, since 2003 when I started keeping these numbers, I have said, 'Wow, we are going so fast, there's no way we can keep rate of change and number of developers and companies going,'" Kroah-Hartman said. "And, every year, that number has increased. So I'm a bad judge of these things."
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 Many people in technology circles have been looking ahead to April 2014 when the widely used Windows XP operating system will hit its end-of-life date. At that point the common desktop operating system will no longer receive security updates and many believe this will lead to millions of people being exposed to security vulnerabilities. The city of Munich is not going to sit idly by and wait to see what happens. Instead the government is handing out CDs with copies of Ubuntu 12.04 on them, offering citizens a chance to try the free operating system. The city government plans to make approximately 2,000 Ubuntu discs available through the Gasteig Library. It is hoped the freely available Ubuntu operating system will protect Munich citizens from falling prey to malware. It is also a great opportunity to introduce people to free software and the rights users of free software enjoy.
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 Later this week we should see the release of a new version of GNOME. Version 3.10 of the popular open source desktop is expected to come with several new features. Perhaps the most interesting of these new features, from a technological viewpoint, is the support for Wayland, a new display server that offers an alternative to X. While still a work in progress with several features left to implement, it is good to see GNOME offering support for Wayland. People interested in trying the new GNOME with Wayland may get their chance when Fedora 20 is released later this year. Fedora's planned feature list includes the new release of GNOME 3.10. It will be interesting to see how well the new display server works with a major desktop environment running on a mainstream Linux distribution and how Fedora's users react to the migration.
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 Btrfs is an advanced file system designed to provide rich features to Linux administrators. The file system, which is still considered experimental, will likely become the default file system in many distributions in the years to come. Up to this point, several Linux distributions have added initial support for the advanced file system, but Btrfs has yet to become the default in any mainstream distributions. The openSUSE team is considering a move to make Btrfs their default file system in the near future and are encouraging users who are taking part in beta testing to install openSUSE using Btrfs. The openSUSE News page states: "Of some special interest for this release is Btrfs. A discussion has been going on about making this future-oriented file system the default on the next openSUSE. That won't be, but Btrfs is still a prominent option during installation so any relevant testing and bug fixing will benefit many openSUSE 13.1 users. And, more importantly, we aim for having it default in the future."
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Quick-n-easy command-line tips
Most weeks I get questions from people asking for quick bits of advice. Sometimes a person is looking for a helpful guide or a specific command or a command-line short-cut to performing a specific task. Here are three tasks people have approached me with recently and some easy ways to accomplish those tasks.
The first scenario we will look at is copying all of the files in a directory tree that have been modified in the past month from their current location to another directory. The exact solution in this case may depend on whether you want to maintain the structure of the directory tree or if you are dumping all of the files from one directory tree into a specific place. If we are dumping all of our files into one folder, perhaps for archiving purposes, then we might use the find command. Using find we can search for files based on when they were last modified and then copy the files we locate to a specific place. Such a command might look like this:
find Documents -mtime -30 -exec cp "{}" Backup \;
The above command locates files stored in the Documents folder that have been modified in the past 30 days. These files are then copied into another directory, called Backup. The find command performs the copy procedure using the copy (cp) command. We can search for files which have been modified more or less recently by changing the mtime parameter, which is set to the past 30 days in the above example.
More often, we will want to preserve the structure of the source and destination directories. Quite often people wish to synchronize the contents of one directory with another and run a script to keep the two directories in step with each other. For cases such as these we will probably want to use the rsync command. This utility copies new files, and files which have been modified, from one directory to another while maintaining the layout of the original directory:
rsync -a Documents/ Backup
The above example makes sure the files existing in Documents also exist in the Backup directory without copying any files unnecessarily.
A common task we may wish to perform is to locate a word in a text file and replace all instances of that word with another word. As an example, imagine I have a document in which I've referred to a person as "Becky", but I've decided it would be better to use the more formal sounding "Rebecca". The following command would be useful for making this simple correction throughout the file:
perl -pi -e 's/Becky/Rebecca/' mydocument.txt
This miniature Perl script executes a search for all instances of the text "Becky" in our document and changes the text to read "Rebecca". The text to be changed is read from (and saved back to) the mydocument.txt file.
One common concern is what to do with sensitive data on a hard drive prior to the drive being given to another person or thrown away. Some of us keep banking or tax information on our computers and it is good to be able to destroy that data before the drive is handed off to someone else. There are a few ways to do this and there are several tools available. One of my personal favourites, as it works on individual files as well as full devices, is the shred command. To overwrite the contents of a file we can run shred as follows:
shred mytaxes.odt
The above example removes the contents of the file, but does not delete the file itself from our hard drive. To also erase the file after the data has been destroyed we can run:
shred -u mytaxes.odt
It is important to note shred does not always work on all file systems, especially newer file systems which feature journal support. The shred manual page includes notes on which file system may not work well with the shred command. When dealing with sensitive information it may be best to erase the entire drive. The shred command can do this too. The following example removes all of our data from the first hard drive attached to the computer. Use this with extreme caution:
shred /dev/sda
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| Released Last Week |
ArtistX 1.5
Marco Ghirlanda has announced the release of ArtistX 1.5, a new version of the Ubuntu-based distribution and live DVD with a large collection of multimedia applications and graphics software: "After nearly ten years of development and more than ten versions, the ArtistX 1.5 multimedia studio on a DVD is finally here. It's an Ubuntu 13.04-based live DVD that turns a common computer into a full multimedia production studio. ArtistX 1.5 includes the 3.8 Linux kernel, GNOME 3.6 and about 2,500 free multimedia software packages, nearly everything that exists for the GNU/Linux operating system organized in the menu. Main features: based on Ubuntu 13.04 without Unity and with all updates (from April 2013); most of GNU/Linux multimedia packages and the very easy Ubiquity installer. A partial list of software included in the DVD is available at the software page. We have now a new forum and a new software page with the top 100 free software available in ArtistX!" The release announcement is on the distribution's home page.
ArtistX 1.5 - an Ubuntu-based distribution live DVD for artists
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Zorin OS 6.4 "Educational"
Artyom Zorin has announced the release of Zorin OS 6.4 "Educational" edition, an updated version of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution with a collection of educational software: "The Zorin OS team has released Zorin OS 6.4 Educational, the education-oriented version of our operating system designed for Windows users making the switch to Linux. Zorin OS 6.4 Educational includes newly updated software, a newer kernel out of the box and bug fixes. As Zorin OS 6.4 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 it is an LTS (long-term support) release, provided with 5 years of security updates. Users who already have installed earlier versions of the Zorin OS 6 Educational series of operating systems do not need to get Zorin OS 6.4 Educational as all the aforementioned updates and improvements in 6.4 can be applied by installing the latest updates from the Update Manager." Here is the short release announcement.
Untangle Gateway 10.0
Untangle has announced the release of Untangle Gateway 10.0, a Debian-based network gateway with modules for network applications like spam blocking, web filtering, anti-virus, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, bandwidth control, captive portal, VPN and firewall: "Untangle, Inc., a network software and appliance company, today announced the release of Untangle 10.0, the latest version of its award-winning multi-function firewall software. Untangle 10.0 is the most significant update to the popular platform in more than five years; 10.0 includes a new application, HTTPS Inspector, as well as a complete refactoring of its networking architecture. More and more websites and popular application require users to connect via HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), the protocol for secure communications on the Internet." Read the press release and the more technical changelog for further details.
Zentyal 3.2
José Antonio Calvo has announced the release of Zentyal 3.2, an Ubuntu-based distribution designed for small business servers: "The Zentyal development team is proud to announce the release of Zentyal 3.2, a major new release of the Zentyal Linux small business server. Zentyal Server is an open-source alternative to Windows Small Business Server, including a native replacement to Active Directory. Highlights: new base distribution - Ubuntu 12.04.03 featuring a new Linux 3.8 kernel and providing updates for all the packages and services managed by Zentyal; unified style and usability across the GUI featuring drag-and-drop support to move table rows, single-click support to enable modules and their dependencies; integration of the latest Samba 4.1 release; new mode that allows to authenticate against an external Active Directory server...." Read the official press release and check out the more technical release notes for further details.
Tails 0.20.1
An updated version of Tails, a Debian-based distribution with Tor integration designed for increased anonymity on the Internet, has been released: "Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.20.1, is out. All users must upgrade as soon as possible - this release fixes numerous security issues. Notable user-visible changes include: install Tor 0.2.4.17-rc; install Linux kernel 3.10.11; remount persistence devices read-only at shutdown/reboot time; greeter - display a warning icon on admin password mismatch and on persistence unlocking failure; fix the I2P IRC account; allow installing 'Priority: standard' packages that we do not install by default; additional software - point to the system log on upgrade failure; many translation updates all over the place." See the release announcement and changelog for more information and a full list of changes and improvements.
Backbox 3.09
Raffaele Forte has announced the release of BackBox Linux 3.09, an Ubuntu-based distribution with a large number of software tools designed for penetration testing and security assessment: "The BackBox team is pleased to announce the updated release of BackBox Linux, version 3.09. This release includes features such as Linux kernel 3.8, EFI mode, anonymous mode and armhf Debian packages. What's new: pre-installed Linux kernel 3.8; system improvements; upstream components; bug corrections; performance boost; improved Update menu; improved Forensic menu; new Anonymous mode (Tor transparent proxy); removed pre-installed compat-wireless 3.8 with Aircrack-NG patch; predisposition to ARM architecture (armhf Debian packages); new and updated hacking tools (Armitage, BeEF, binwalk, Ettercap, Hashcat, Hydra, Hismet, MSF, Nmap, OpenVAS, Recon-ng, SE Toolkit....)" Here is the brief release announcement with system requirements.
Kwheezy 1.2
Euan Thoms has announced the release of Kwheezy 1.2, a Debian-based distribution with a pre-configured KDE desktop and a selection of software applications for everyday tasks: "Version 1.2 is now available from the download page. This release has three main focuses. Stabilizing the installer, Linux gaming and removing the deb-multimedia.org third-party repository. Changes in version 1.2: incorporates a couple of remaining installer bug fixes; Kwheezy Profiler, a new GUI tool to backup and restore user profiles; rekonq browser updated to 2.3.2; Steam client installed by default; PlayOnLinux installed by default; some open-source games (KDE Games, DreamChess) included; deb-multimedia.org packages replaced by official Debian packages, the necessary codecs / decoders included from Kwheezy repository instead; some minor tweaking here and there; version 1.1 installations can be upgraded to 1.2 via Apper or apt-get." The release announcement.
Pardus Linux 2.0 "Community"
Ortanca Samuray has announced the release of Pardus Linux 2.0 "Community" edition, a Debian-based distribution featuring a customised GNOME 3.8 desktop with usability extensions, pre-configured multimedia codecs and pre-installed device drivers: "Pardus Community 2.0 GNOME has been released. Linux kernel 3.10.11; 3D Ironvolt icon set; simplified installation; GNOME 3.8.4 (with GNOME Shell 3.4.2); pre-installed NVIDIA 304.108 and ATI 13.4 drivers; all multimedia codes and firmware; LibreOffice 4.1.1; Firefox 24.0; Thunderbird 24.0; Chromium 29.0.1547.57; Adobe Flash player 11.2.202.310; VLC media player 2.0.8; Skype 4.2.0.11; TeamViewer 7.0.9377; Wine 1.4.1; GIMP 2.8.6, Scribus 1.4.3, Inkscape 0.48." Here is the brief release announcement.
Pardus Linux 2.0 "Community" - a Debian-based distribution with GNOME 3.8
(full image size: 183kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
SalentOS 12.04.3
Gabriele Martina has announced the release of SalentOS 12.04.3, an updated build of the project's Ubuntu-based set of DVD images offering a choice of Openbox or Razor-qt desktops user interfaces: "With great pleasure I announce the release of SalentOS 12.04.3, UbuBox and Razor-qt editions. After months of work on the 12.04.2 version here are the new ISO images with these main features: new Plymouth theme; replaced ADeskBar 0.4.3 stable with tint2 panel (UbuBox); Openbox main menu integrated into tint2 panel; Oblogout theme chooser to change the icon theme in Oblogout (UbuBox); latest Razor-qt stable Desktop (Razor-qt); updated all core packages and applications to their latest versions; all Ubuntu LTS updates; minor bug fixes and security updates." Here is the brief release announcement in Italian and in English.
Chakra GNU/Linux 2013.09
Neophytos Kolokotronis has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 2013.09, a major new update of the Linux distribution that always features the latest KDE desktop: "The Chakra project team is delighted to announce the first release of Chakra Fritz. 'Fritz' is the name of a series of Chakra releases that follow the KDE Software Compilation 4.11 series and is dedicated to the memory of Fritz_Van_Tom. With this ISO image we offer KDE SC 4.11.1. In this release, many areas have received a number of improvements that affect multiple applications; most notably a speed boost on Akonadi. The Plasma Workspaces 4.11 will receive long-term support as the KDE team focuses on the technical transition to Frameworks 5. You may have noticed that there is no new artwork with this new series as it is usually the case, since it wasn't ready by the time of the release. Hopefully work on the artwork will be completed soon so we can include it in a future release." Continue to the release announcement to find out more.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- WebXperience OS. WebXperience OS is a live operating system designed for personal secure Internet browsing purposes.
- Inventare OS. Inventare OS is a general-purpose operating system based on openSUSE. The project's website is in Italian.
- NodeZero Linux. NodeZero Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu which focuses on penetration testing and security auditing.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 30 September 2013. 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 • Modifying a text file inplace: (by dbrion on 2013-09-23 10:32:45 GMT from France)
"A common task we may wish to perform is to locate a word in a text file and replace all instances of that word with another word. As an example, imagine I have a document in which I've referred to a person as "Becky", but I've decided it would be better to use the more formal sounding "Rebecca". The following command would be useful for making this simple correction throughout the file"
sed --inplace does it very well (and is used to some configuration scripts)
2 • shred secure? (by DavidEF on 2013-09-23 12:28:45 GMT from United States)
How hard is it to recover a hard drive that has been wiped using the shred command? I know the secure erase utility supported by all ata drives, is considered to be very secure. How does shred compare to that? On a scale of one to 100, with one being you simply give a delete command to your OS through the file browser, and 100 being that you throw your hdd into an actual, mechanical, hard drive shredder, where would these other utilities (shred, secure erase) rank?
3 • Modifying a text file inplace (by greenpossum on 2013-09-23 12:52:52 GMT from Australia)
sed --in-place
4 • Re: Archbang (by silent on 2013-09-23 14:01:48 GMT from France)
Arch Linux is good, cutting-edge and rolling fast. On the other hand Larch, a live CD/DVD/USB-stick construction kit for Arch Linux, has been abandoned in 2011, because Arch has dropped aufs2 support. In 2012 initscripts has been obsoleted in favour of systemd and with that rc.conf (formerly a hallmark of the KISS philosophy) is no longer supported. In 2013 the filesystem has been modified on the fly and the "/bin", "/sbinˇ" and "/usr/sbin" folders have been removed. So a user friendly distribution based on Arch Linux is a bit like a house built on quicksand.
5 • @4 Re archbang (by mandog on 2013-09-23 14:41:24 GMT from Peru)
Time moves on Arch lives in the present not the past.
systemd is KISS its just new thats all, makes it simple to start stop services by simple commands . The system files scattered all over the place is not KISS. I find Arch so simple to use since the latest changes. I've used arch for 7 years without major problems but i'm only a young man at 64 thats why.
6 • Re: shred secure (by Andrew Yeomans on 2013-09-23 14:53:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
> How hard is it to recover a hard drive that has been wiped using the shred command?
It's basically impossible to recover any data blocks that shred has overwritten.
But note that this applies if you run shred on the whole disk. If you run on a file in a filesystem, data may still remain - see "man shred". Also, especially on flash memory devices, some physical blocks might not be overwritten, so might be readable if you do a hardware mod to bypass the memory controller and read the memory chips directly.
7 • shred vs. scrub (by David on 2013-09-23 15:01:02 GMT from United States)
There is also a scrub command which is basically supposed to do the same thing as shred. Do you know of any advantages/disadvantages of one tool vs. the other?
8 • perl global substitution (by David on 2013-09-23 15:01:58 GMT from United States)
Your Rebecca example is missing the 'g' to make it a global substitution, so it'll only replace the first occurrence. The correct command would be:
perl -pi -e 's/Becky/Rebecca/g' mydocument.txt
9 • @1 and @3 (by David on 2013-09-23 15:03:04 GMT from United States)
the sed --in-place or -i option is only supported on very new versions of sed, so it does not work on a lot of systems. Using perl for this is a lot more portable.
10 • @4 Re archbang (by joji on 2013-09-23 15:07:21 GMT from Belgium)
Allow me to disagree with your statement : "So a user friendly distribution based on Arch Linux is a bit like a house built on quicksand."
Have installed archbang on hard disk in December 2013. Updating / upgrading almost every week and without any problem. The only time I got into trouble was when the "/bin", "/sbinˇ" and "/usr/sbin" folders have been removed.
My experience disagrees also with the reviewer's statement :
"so users should be aware things will break from time to time and blindly upgrading packages is not recommended." You never should do things blindly. And if things break there is a reason. But they don't break from time to time.
And my conclusion is : there are many people to whom I would like to recommend ArchBang,
11 • 10 (by joji on 2013-09-23 15:10:18 GMT from Belgium)
Kindly read : "Have installed archbang on hard disk in December 2012"
My error.
12 • Q 9 : What does "very new " mean (by dbrion on 2013-09-23 15:23:59 GMT from France)
sed -i is documented in http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/html_node/Invoking-sed.html#Invoking-sed (2004 version)
A google search (with date *before* 2007) leads to interesting links...
Advantages of the "very new" version of sed w/.re perl is that sed is line oriented -eats very few memory- and is very classical (vim syntax): perl choosed the same syntax...
13 • Munchen and Lubuntu (by ange on 2013-09-23 15:26:03 GMT from Hungary)
In Munchen the original idea was distributing Lubuntu CDs, but it's a great marketing opportunity for the mother distribution. It's true that Lubuntu lighter, faster, almost as fast as XP, but Canonical and His Majesty Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life needs all acknowledgment in these troubled times. "Gimme tha cookies!"
14 • Shred and text replacement (by Jesse on 2013-09-23 16:08:23 GMT from Canada)
@2: The shred command's ability to erase the drive may vary depending on which command line flags you pass it. You can make any number of passes over the data and over-write with random data or zeros or both. Nothing is secure as physically shredding the drive, but the shred command should do well enough that anything sort of a focused professional recovery effort will fail. And that's what most people want, I think, just to avoid someone turning up their private data while doing a typically file recovery.
@8: "Your Rebecca example is missing the 'g' to make it a global substitution, so it'll only replace the first occurrence. "
You are mistaken. The perl command does not require the trailing "g" to perform global substitution. You can use the trailing "g" if you want, but it is not required.
15 • Munchen and Lubuntu (by bam on 2013-09-23 16:20:19 GMT from United States)
Lubuntu definitly would have been an excellent choice for distrubution,no learning curve for users.
16 • A topic for discussion? (by LinuxMan on 2013-09-23 16:20:31 GMT from United States)
@13,
Okay, I read where Lubuntu was first considered, but where did you get the rest of your information from? I couldn't find it anywhere in the article. Are we bitter? :)
17 • Update on perl (by Jesse on 2013-09-23 16:34:46 GMT from Canada)
As an appendix to my post in 14, I want to add that the reason the trailing "g" usually isn't required in text replacements is the perl interpreter handles one line at a time and passes it through the substitution filter. So each line is sort of treated as a block. So, assuming you only need to replace one instance per line you won't need the trailing "g" for global replacement. However, if you have multiple instances of a block of text to replace on each line, then that is where the trailing "g" becomes useful.
18 • Wayland and btrfs (by M. Edward (Ed) Borasky on 2013-09-23 18:54:39 GMT from United States)
1. I'm running Fedora 20 pre-alpha on one of my laptops and I tried the "GNOME on Wayland" option. It didn't come up and I had to drop back to plain 'ol X. But that brings up an interesting point. What's *better* about Wayland? Why would I want to use it?
2. btrfs. Same question - what's *better* about it? What are it's *advantages*? Where does it fall short? Why would I want to use it?
19 • Wayland (by bam on 2013-09-23 19:40:36 GMT from United States)
@18 from what I understand Wayland gives excellent graphics rendering.
Eventually all major distributions will be using Wayland.
20 • User Friendly Arch... (by brad on 2013-09-23 19:45:11 GMT from United States)
I used Arch since I learned /read how to install it by printing out their 84 page "beginners manual" in 2008. When the got rid of the installer.. in favor of lots a scripts.. I couldn't install it for the life of me, using a wireless only connection. I tried asking for help, but the egos/rudeness/and outright RTFM comments were too much... no matter how much I read the wiki, or what I asked, or how streamlined my question was.. their forums were NO HELP. So I moved on, went with bridgelinux (nice but had issues) , went with Manjaro(arch w/leading edge, not bleeding edge).. then I found cinnarch now antergos.. which uses actual ARCH repos.. which means it IS ARCH but with an installer that finds my wireless. So there are user friendly arch based distros out there.. for those not willing to put up with the forums. And those distros DO WORK! And their forums are not only more friendly, but also respect new users and/or those people whose questions are not exactly answered by searching for forums or reading the wiki.. With all the above being said (or typed), arch is an awesome distro regardless of the attitudes of the userbase.. .
21 • User Friendly Arch (by sasdthoh on 2013-09-23 20:11:33 GMT from United States)
As a user that spent a great deal of time using the earlier versions of Arch, I understand completely how an individual feels when made to feel inferior, simply because you have yet to obtain a certain level of knowledge. I simply used the Arch wiki and tried multiple times until I learned. It worked for me but I had to practice a lot of patience. I can tell you from experience that the Archbang and Manjaro user base are wonderful people and will extend you every courtesy. And, all you have to do is use Manjaro to do a net install. It practically takes care of every hardware and pre-configuration issue. All you have to do is to install your desktop environment, your favorite software, then away you go with a super fast clean custom install. If you have decent Internet bandwidth, you can be up and running in 30 minutes to an hour with a great working desktop. I realize there are configuration procedures with each installation but it's not from any problems during the base install. Try Manjaro's net install. It's worth it!
22 • One More Thought (by sasdthoh on 2013-09-23 20:15:15 GMT from United States)
Sorry everyone. I wanted to say one more thing. When you eliminate all the grief with the initial setup of Arch, you are left with something all users are looking for with Linux,
And that's Lot's 'O' FUN!
23 • 20 • User Friendly Arch (by mandog on 2013-09-23 20:20:11 GMT from Peru)
I must agree on you last statement yes it is awesome.
I beg to differ on some parts, the forums are full of well answered and polite posts, check how many posts are received on a daily basis. if it was that bad the forums would be dead.
Wireless is on the install CD its not installed by default as a lot of people don't need it so to them its bloat-ware, a simple pacman -S command and its installed never used it as I don't use arch on a laptop.
Yes Antergos is a mimic of arch but the forums were next to useless when I used them a year ago. Bridge Linux, and Manjaro, have install problems with grub for a lot of people. and arch install to openbox in 20 mins using the scripts.
Manjaro is no more stable than Arch it just a hold your hand distro I have it on 2 laptops Arch on my main desktop.
Archbang is not true arch as it has a small repro but its the next best thing to arch.
24 • About "simplified" arch-derivative (by AleCon on 2013-09-23 21:09:50 GMT from Italy)
In my opinion the distinctive traits of Arch are:
- the thoroughness of the documentation
- the strong user empowerment (admittedly with some side effect in term of easy of use!)
A combination of these two make Arch an excellent educative distro for the ones willing to learn
I believe that most of the arch based distro partially defeat this purpose
not willing to start a flame war ...to each his own
25 • http://themaxtruth.blogspot.com (by bam on 2013-09-23 21:20:30 GMT from United States)
Arch Linux offers many Ayatana components, including Unity and Unity 2D, via an unofficial repository or through the AUR[
26 • Arch knows a winner when it see's one (by bam on 2013-09-23 21:50:42 GMT from United States)
@25
Arch Linux offers many Ayatana components, including Unity and Unity 2D, via an unofficial repository or through the AUR
27 • @20 (by jaws222 on 2013-09-23 21:53:10 GMT from United States)
I hear you with the egos/rudeness/and outright RTFM comments. As far as Manjaro vs Antergos which do you prefer? I'm currently running Manjaro 0.86 and love it. It is so fast on my SSD.
28 • Needlessly Arch (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2013-09-23 22:12:36 GMT from United States)
Lacking social skills, I defended my fragile pride with deliberate obfuscation, in younger days.
I was not welcome in orientation rooms or elementary classes, back then.
As I matured (or had sense beaten in) my rough edges were worn down and blunted - slightly.
Keep it Short and Simple. Short is often undervalued; nobody who asks questions is stupid.
29 • perl command (by Pearson on 2013-09-23 22:32:58 GMT from United States)
To put in layman's terms what Jesse said last, if you have the following file:
"Becky,
Two Beckys would be cool, you should meet my other friend Becky"
the command perl -pi -e 's/Becky/Rebecca/' mydocument.txt
would yield:
"Rebecca,
Two Rebeccas would be cool, you should meet my other friend Becky"
however, the command perl -pi -e 's/Becky/Rebecca/g' mydocument.txt
would yield:
"Rebecca,
Two Rebeccas would be cool, you should meet my other friend Rebecca"
30 • Re: #20 Communication in Linux distribution forums (by silent on 2013-09-24 01:30:56 GMT from Hungary)
I think it is important for every Linux distribution to have communication guidelines for their forums and the developers should be trained, because nobody is born with perfect communication skills. Developers should understand that it is their personal interest as well. Imagine the situation when you apply for a job and you proudly mention in your CV that you are a contributor of a Linux flavour, and you don't get the job just because of that, as one of the stakeholders in the selection process checks the forums and finds that you used offensive, arrogant or inappropriate language.
31 • @18 (by Adam Williamson on 2013-09-24 03:33:01 GMT from Canada)
Wayland isn't necessarily focused on providing you, the end user, with huge obvious improvements in the short term. it's really more about improving the framework for development in the future. there are some fairly minor wins you might notice, various elements of ui rendering ought to be smoother.
btrfs is a whole different kettle of fish. it provides a bunch of stuff that traditional file systems don't; just off the tip of my head, you get mirroring/striping and volume management right in the fs, and that's just for starters. but it can be a bit of work to get your head around it, not all the user space tooling quite groks it yet, in some cases it's still slower than ext4, and it does seem to be the case that data loss issues are still cropping up occasionally. your call... but I'm still installing my boxes with ext 4 for now.
32 • Archbang (by Chanath on 2013-09-24 04:16:29 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Jesse's right. Archbang is blazing fast. Idling ram usage was just 59.4 MB in my old Acer Aspire One 8", and the working ram with Firefox on and with some pages, is 243 MB. I've been trying few light distros, and Archbang comes on the top. It is also nice to the eye than the other bang, Crunchbang.
The snappiness of Archbang is probablt because of its Arch base, while all the distros with the Debian base is slower.
33 • @27 (by brad on 2013-09-24 05:42:57 GMT from United States)
I prefer Antergos for now.. its the same as arch, but has a repo for artwork and some antergos specific things.. but uname -a comes up as the latest arch kernel version and its just as up2date as Arch proper..
But if this ever breaks or Manjaro comes out with something ground breaking.. I'll switch back..
but on another note no matter what you choose.. antergos/archbang/bridgelinux/manjaro.. w/o arch itself, they are nothing.. have you ever tried Chakra? (used to be a fork of arch, but now they are doing their own thing.. check it out on here)
I read a review by an arch founder/dev that in no uncertain terms belittles/trashes/considered arch based forks irrelevant compared to arch itself.. i mean with linux being open source.. why bother complaining.. I"m sure debian doesnt openly complain about ubuntu, and ubuntu doesnt openly complain about Mint, Slackware doesn't complain about its forks, gentoo doesn't go ballistic over Sabayon..
i think I'm right.. but my linux using hierarchy goes like this..
1. arch/arch based
2. linux mint
3. pclinuxos
4.Sabayon
5. slackware/slackware based.
I recommend Mint/pclinux to linux newbies.. I recommend arch/manjaro/archbang/slackware to those who want "MORE" than their computer to "just work"
34 • Pardus (by cm7 on 2013-09-24 05:45:54 GMT from Austria)
What is Pardus? Someone takes a distro, install a few programs (which he believes most users would also install them) and burn an iso. Where is the own contribution? Maybe the desktop background? Is that enough? Anyone could do the same thing, but fortunately most people have better thing to do. I have enough of "distros" like this and I ask myself, why do I still visit distrowatch and read the contributions.
35 • Quick-n-easy command-line tips (by Sanjay Prasad on 2013-09-24 05:53:03 GMT from India)
Thanks a sharing,
find Documents -mtime -30 -exec cp "{}" Backup \;
command is really helpful for me ......
I request you publish some cpanel (centOS) cron jobs command if possible
36 • Does shred see the whole drive? (by DavidEF on 2013-09-24 09:58:20 GMT from United States)
Another thing about secure erase utility is that it is built in at the hardware level, so it securely wipes every area of the drive, including bad sectors that have been remapped by the hdd. Does shred reach into all the crevices? Sorry to question so much.
37 • Happy Birthday (by kc1di on 2013-09-24 11:25:26 GMT from United States)
Happy Birthday to The Fedora Project that turn 10 years old yesterday Sept 23rd.
:)
38 • Pardus (by Angel on 2013-09-24 12:20:38 GMT from Philippines)
@34,
Pardus has been around since 2005. That's one year after Ubuntu and one year before Linux Mint. Started by the Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology, it's not a venerable grandfather, but certainly no Johnny-come-lately.
Angel
39 • divadgnol67@gmail.com (by divadgnol on 2013-09-24 12:51:00 GMT from United States)
As a linux user for more than 13 years. I truly enjoy the simplicity that Ubuntu offers. I started out using using Red Hat 7 then Slackware, and then graduated to less friendly distro's like Gentoo, Crux and OpenBSD ( less friendly is subjective).
All of them have their place in the ecosystem. At 45 years of age, married with two kids and a full time job, I want something that just works. And with "my hardware" Ubuntu works.
As a computer user for more than two decades, I understand as my needs change so may my distro of choice.
40 • @33 (by jaws222 on 2013-09-24 14:10:51 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the update. I'll have to check out Antergos. As far as Chakra, I tried it about 2 years ago maybe but had issues installing it. Now that I hav a bit more Linux experience I may revisit it. I noticed a new version came out recently.
As far as people trashing "forked" distros I don't get that either. Open Source, right? I do know there used to be a sayig, "Ubuntu is an ancient african word, meaning 'I can't configure Debian." However, this was true in my case as a noob. Like you say, Mint is a good starter for newbies. I started on Ubuntu 10.04, then went to MInt, next Debian and am now exploring Arch.
41 • Manjaro & Chakra (by Gustavo on 2013-09-25 01:38:06 GMT from Brazil)
I don't know why but both Manjaro and Chakra won't boot on my machine (ApireOne 722 C-50 CPU). Just after grub loads the kernel it reboots. No message, just reboot. Arch installs just fine.
42 • arch (by justanoob on 2013-09-25 10:00:49 GMT from Indonesia)
i'm forever noob, so why bother using Arch. keep it simple and stupid principles, rtfm and utfg for your community. chakra, manjaro even archbang runs fine on my machine.
and i thought fun is on linux from scratch not arch.
43 • Arrogant? (by LinuxMan on 2013-09-25 13:13:29 GMT from United States)
"As always in Arch, if you do not contribute, we do not care about you."
I try to see the point of view from both sides. There has been a lot of flack from ex-users and present users of Arch about the treatment in their forums from the developers. It didn't take but a minute to find an indication of the Arch mineset. The comment above was written by one of the developers explaining a new data collection package they are wanting users to install on their systems. Some didn't want to.
I have tried Arch and in my opinion the benefits of using Arch did not outweigh having to exist in their land of Valhalla. For the most part the developers are polite but very arrogant and if need be can be very rude. To their credit they do tell you that Arch is not for beginners but for the experienced. They don't really care what others outside of their circle thinks about their policies, the way they do things. They can run their organization however they see fit and their is nothing wrong with that. That is part of the freedoms of using open source software. At the same time it does not give them the right to belittle or criticise forks of Arch and associate projects. After all that is the way that open source works. I'm not really speaking of opinions for everyone has a right to those.
Antergos, Archbang, Manjaro, and others have a place in our ecosystem. It's a great way for the less experienced to use a somewhat Arch like distro. Using forks may even allow someone to migrate over to Arch the same way that some have migrated from Ubuntu to Debian. One of the greatest strengths of open source is how it evolves. Forks and derivatives are part of the national evolution process and that makes it that much more exciting.
44 • UTFG (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2013-09-25 13:19:37 GMT from United States)
"Go Fish" through disorganized contradictory confusion, because organizing a versioned hyperlinked Full Manual is too much work while having fun writing code, though the quality of code written thus shines clearer, since perspective is engaged. Neither Short nor Simple, but certainly Stupid.
45 • @43 : Just curious, but is an elitic policy that bad? (by dbrion on 2013-09-25 14:52:59 GMT from France)
Suppose you are asked a question and :
a) you know it is the 30(0)*rd time you answer this question
b) you know a good answer is given in wikipedia (this might be the man who asks best friend) or in a manual (but it should have been read...).
If you answer kindly, other people will help you loose **your** time....
I do not know arch -never had to beg for information with Fedora (which is not meant to work, but often does for me) or arm-cros-compilation chains. This situation happens very often in 8 bits microcontrollers support -95% of the questions would have been answered with reading a 300 pages manual, the remaining 4% with wikipedia- and having always the same questions might be annoying -and what would people do, ifthey are no longer supported? cry? read manuals? read wikipedia?)
46 • UTFG (by LinuxMan on 2013-09-25 15:36:56 GMT from United States)
Well a person can learn something new every day. I went and Googled to see what UTFG meant. :) Also I agree with others that a good manual is worth its weight in gold.
47 • Manjaro support (by Bill on 2013-09-25 19:32:21 GMT from United States)
I have never been that interested in a lot of compiling to get my OS to work. I gave all that up when I quit writing code for a living back when we used C++ for programming. But I did try Manjaro and I had a few questions about using AUR to get the programs I wanted. What I can say for certain is that Phillip over ay Manjaro was one of the nicest, kindest most helpful human beings I have met and that worked with me to get some stuff up and running. I would recommend anyone who may want to try Manjaro to do so without hesitation. Well done guys!!
48 • Fedora 20 (by PFB on 2013-09-25 20:03:27 GMT from United States)
Fedora 20 has shown me that Linux is passing my computer by. I had troubles with an update to F19. Kernel 3.11.1 would not recognize my Ethernet adapters. Both the Marvell and D-Link cards are recognized but not functional. When I got the Alpha for F20, I found the same thing. It works just fine when I plug in an old TP-Link wireless adapter. Maybe Fedora is declaring Ethernet to be obsolete?
Or maybe the newest kernel needs help. It also takes forever to power down my AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+, with 1G ram.
49 • @48 (by jaws222 on 2013-09-25 21:58:52 GMT from United States)
Yeah, the 3.11.1 is the newest kernel. That's Fedora for your though always using the latest and greatest, not the most stable. F16 was the last Fedora I used religiously. I wasn't that impressed with 17 or 18 and doubt I'll check out 19.
50 • Archbang: suitable for power users (by Didje on 2013-09-25 22:03:20 GMT from France)
I have very little experience with Archbang but have been using Arch Linux for over 8 years. I do not understand the comment of the reviewer that "there aren't many people to whom he would recommend ArchBang", while the only negative point raised is that "things will break from time to time".
I think this belief stems from the warnings issued by the developers. In my experience Arch Linux is on the contrary very stable. I remember having met problems with an upgrade only once in 8 years, after the migration to KMS. It is clear from the forums of mainstream distributions that any system is likely to break down in the hands of beginners or awkward users.
I agree with #24 regarding the distinctive features of Arch Linux, but I believe that a distribution such as ArchBang might appeal to power users. I do not mean geeks nor system administrators, but end users such as engineers, computational/modeling scientists... who use a wide range of specialized programs. Without spending to much time to set up their system, ArchBang should allow them to take advantage of another asset of Arch Linux, namely the availability of many such programs in the AUR and the ease to create and maintain new packages.
51 • @48 (by Adam Williamson on 2013-09-25 22:55:09 GMT from Canada)
I'd file bugs with the upstream kernel. Fedora's kernel is not very heavily modified from upstream and your issues are likely just down to bugs in upstream kernel 3.11.
52 • UTFG, RTFM, OMG! (by divadgnol on 2013-09-26 02:45:49 GMT from United States)
Maybe I'm old school or just plain old. But I enjoy reading the manual or finding the answer myself. In a world of instant satisfaction many people want the answers right away, understandably so.
I am not an Arch Linux user myself but just spent the last 20 minuets on their site and this is what I found
"Newbie Corner
Beginners' subforum for general Arch issues. Please consult the excellent Arch wiki and web before posting. Also try the forum search function at the upper left."
The above quote was taken directly from their site. I then decided to look into their forums and I found two instances under "Newbie Corner" where the answer was found in the wiki. I can appreciate the fact that it's "Newbie Corner" but some effort on the part of the reader can be reasonably expected.
I am in no way advocating arrogance or even down right rudeness. But considerable time and effort goes into each and every wiki written.
53 • 52 • UTFG, RTFM, OMG (by mandog on 2013-09-26 11:43:49 GMT from Peru)
Well written comments. It must be a full time 2nd occupation writing and updating the arch wiki because of the rate Arch evolves they are constantly playing catchup. I personally have never had a problem with the forums but then I always check things 1st.
To defend their position on arch spins It clearly states the forums are only for arch,
I do do not see this as a problem, Manjaro, Archbang, Antergos, all have there own small repositories, so they are not pure arch. The nearest is archbang and the devs acknowledge this. archbang 56mb ram arch openbox the same, Manjaro 156 mb ram thats almost 3 times as much Manjaro patches the kernel the Gpu drivers. uses its own config files, for the base, uses out of date repositories. How could arch forums help a Manjaro user if they give the wrong advice then they will be trashed on the net better to stick with forum rules.
Saying that I use manjaro on 2 laptops and they work fine for the children and wife and pure arch on my desktop, is Manjaro any more stable in a word NO.
54 • @51 Bugs (by pfb on 2013-09-26 12:54:30 GMT from United States)
I just checked with the kernel bug page. It seems they have similar problem with the 686 kernel. If they fix that, I would think my problem will go away.
As for the shutdown problem, could it be related? I know an old version (do not recall which) of Fedora would refuse to boot up if there was no Internet connection. Maybe Fedora now "phones home" on shutdown?
55 • SalineOS is it dead ? (by Jeff on 2013-09-26 22:13:12 GMT from United States)
There has not been a new release since August of 2012, and that was an early development release.
Debian Wheezy has been the current stable for some time now, but the stable release of SalineOS is still based on Squeeze (old stable)
56 • @55 (by jaws222 on 2013-09-26 22:23:08 GMT from United States)
It's funny you mention SalineOS because I finally got aroung to downloading the development release a couple days ago (SalineOS 2.0Dev) and it's pretty nice. It is based on Wheezy. According to one of the lead moderators over there on the forum it is not dead, but apparently the main guy there, Anthony Nordquist is extremely busy and involved with some other things. I hope it doesn't die because it is a good OS. I'm still running 1.6 on my laptop. Never had an issue.
57 • PartEd Magic, ATA Secure Erase (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2013-09-27 23:53:58 GMT from United States)
Would it be fair to note the 26SEP update for this handy toolset distro?
It has several new GUIs, updates (including GpartEd), and utilities.
Of course, a modest download fee now prevents wasteful mooching, but the still-freely-available 01AUG vintage still serves (me) for try-before-you-buy.
Don't only the low-level hardware ATA option of Secure Erase assure there's no residual data?
Doesn't that also (sadly) erase any S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic data?
Of course, this would only apply to "pure" hard drives, not SSD-hard-drive hybrids ...
58 • Parted Magic (by Terence on 2013-09-28 02:09:10 GMT from Paraguay)
I am a bit saddened at now having to pay for updated editions of PM. I am an active user and keep a copy perpetually updated on a thumb drive. However, I do not have access to a debit card and thus cannot pay for the newest edition.
59 • @42,32: Arch forums and emailing lists user-hostility (by Thomas Mueller on 2013-09-28 05:06:43 GMT from United States)
I had been looking toward Arch Linux, joined the emailing lists, and asked if it was possible to compile the system from source as can be done with FreeBSD and NetBSD. Moderator rejected my question, saying I could find the answer in the wiki in less than one minute (I still haven't). When I queried, and then asked if all Arch emailing lists were moderated, I got just evasion, no answer, and unsubscribed a few days later.
"As always in Arch, if you do not contribute, we do not care about you."
How can I contribute if I'm so tongue-tied?
60 • Private Club (by shootme on 2013-09-28 08:55:37 GMT from United States)
Arch
Keep It Simple Stupid
Ubuntu
Linux for human being
Too stupid to join Arch club and not human enough to use ubuntu. So I'm going to wear my canvas shoe, my jeans and t-shirt, and walk out from those private club.
61 • @59 Compiling OS from source (by Miro on 2013-09-28 10:44:26 GMT from Belgium)
If you really want to compile your system from source, I guess you would be better off with a system which has been specifically designed to do so. I would suggest Gentoo and Funtoo which use the BSD-like Portage tree system.
Other options are LFS and the like, but I am unsure about how functional they actually are for the "average user", for whatever that may mean.
62 • arch is not for you (by firippu on 2013-09-28 11:00:23 GMT from Philippines)
@59
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Build_System
you didn't look very hard did you.
Answers to basic questions should be found via arch's wiki not the forums,
if you don't like it "then arch is probably not for you".
Agreed though gentoo is what you want.
63 • @59 Compiling OS from source (and II) (by Miro on 2013-09-28 12:42:24 GMT from Belgium)
This is most likely what you want:
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Source-based
I find this particularly interesting:
http://www.calculate-linux.org/main/en/cls
Number of Comments: 63
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| • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Cub Linux
Cub Linux (formerly Chromixium) was an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that attempts to recreate the look & feel and functionality of Google's Chrome OS on a conventional desktop. It combines the Openbox window manager with the Compton desktop compositor, Plank dock and LXDE's LXPanel to provide the desktop and menus. The Chromium web browser, equipped with the PepperFlash plugin, was the main online application, although the complete array of Ubuntu software can be easily added for offline/desktop use. Ubuntu updates are installed automatically, providing long-term security support.
Status: Discontinued
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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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