 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 543, 27 January 2014 |
Welcome to this year's 4th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! There are a lot of Linux distributions out there, hundreds of them, filling just about every niche of personal and corporate computing in existence. But who makes these distributions and why? What motivates them to create? This week contributor Tomasz Niedzielski sits down with the creator of Bridge Linux, Dalton Miller, to find out how his Arch-based distribution came into existence. In this week's feature review Jesse Smith takes the latest release of the Korora distribution for a spin and reports on his findings. How does the latest version of Korora perform and how does it compare to its parent, Fedora? Read on to find out. This past week was a fun one for fans of servers and modern desktop systems alike. The Ubuntu team announced they will include GNOME 3.10 in their software repositories for their next release and the FreeBSD project celebrated the launch of FreeBSD 10.0. Be sure to check out the News section for further details. Also this week Valve gives back to Debian and Carla Schroder raises the question of which Linux distribution is the most beautiful and offers an enlightened answer. As usual, we cover the distribution releases of the past week and look ahead to exciting new launches to come. We wish you all a great week and happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: First impressions of Korora 20
- News: FreeBSD 10.0 launches, Fedora debates DNF, Ubuntu upgrades GNOME, Valve gives Debian developers games, ZFS rescue CD, Bodhi Linux in media
- Interviews: Bridge Linux, its founder and genesis
- Released last week: FreeBSD 10.0, Tiny Core Linux 5.2, Semplice Linux 6
- Upcoming releases: Zorin OS 8, Mageia 4, OpenMandriva 2014.0 Alpha
- New distributions: Gigastrand OS, Oikyo Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (22MB) and MP3 (36MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First Impressions of Korora 20
 The Korora distribution is a Fedora-based project which tries to make the underlying Fedora operating system easier for new users to set up and operate. The Fedora distribution has a strict policy when it comes to licensing and this results in a distribution which does not support much in the way of multimedia, Flash and other proprietary (or questionably licensed) software. Korora takes the latest Fedora release, adds multimedia support and configures a number of third-party software sources (such as Google's Chrome repository, Oracle's VirtualBox repository and RPMFusion's third-party repositories). All of this hopefully results in an operating system which will "just work" for most users and provide easy-to-access software for everyone without requiring additional set up time.
The latest Korora release features some cutting edge software including GNOME 3.10 and KDE 4.11. Browsing the release notes we find Korora 20 comes with some new features too. There is a new application installer for GNOME users, a new Network Manager applet for KDE fans and a virtual machine manager which supports easy snapshots. There are three new desktop spins for this release (MATE, Cinnamon and Xfce) in addition to the existing GNOME and KDE flavours. Each edition is available in 32-bit and 64-bit x86 builds. This release features a new third-party driver manager called Pharlap which replaces Jockey. I opted to try the MATE edition of Korora, the download for which was 1.6 GB in size.
Booting from the Korora media brings up to the MATE desktop. A welcome screen appears giving us links to documentation, release notes and the system installer. Dismissing the welcome screen reveals a traditional desktop interface with icons for browsing the file system and launching the installer sitting on a neutral blue background. The interface's menus sit at the top of the screen next to a system tray and the task switcher rests at the bottom of the display. As everything appeared to be working normally I launched Korora's graphical system installer.
Korora 20 - the welcome screen with information links
(full image size: 902kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Korora makes use of Fedora's new graphical installer. The application uses a hub-based navigation system that allows us to go through most of the configuration steps in the order of our choosing. We are asked to select our preferred language from a list, we confirm our time zone and, if we wish, we can confirm our keyboard's layout. Partitioning with the Korora system installer is a strange process. We are first asked to select which disks (or special devices) we want to use in the installation. This step struck me as unusual as highlighting a device isn't enough to insure it is used, we also need to make sure the device has a check displayed next to it. The installer asks if we wish to use LVM volumes, Btrfs volumes or traditional disk partitions.
From there we can choose to use guided/automated partitioning or manual partitioning. The partitioning screen uses an odd combination of hyperlinks and buttons and I found it was not always clear what I could/should interact with and what was merely text. I eventually went with the automated installation option and asked for Btrfs volumes to be used. The installer set up a few partitions for me, a /boot area formatted with ext4, a swap partition and separate root (/) and /home volumes formated with Btrfs. Next we are brought to a second hub screen where we can set a password on the root account and create a regular user account. From there we wait while files are copied from the live media to the local hard drive.
There are a few aspects of the installer which bothered me, apart from the unusually complex partitioning screen. One is that navigation isn't consistent. Sometimes we proceed to the next screen by clicking a button at the bottom-right of the screen, other times the button is in the upper-left. When putting in a password on our account (or the root account) a password the installer deems too weak results in the user needing to click a button to apply settings multiple times. (A warning about the password displays at the bottom of the window while the button to proceed is at the top of the display.) I also noticed that, at a couple of points, the installer appeared to hang for a few minutes while transitioning between screens. Leaving the system alone for a few minutes caused the installer to sort itself out and proceed. The process wasn't all bad. The hub style of the installer is starting to grow on me as it means the installer can work on copying files while we do other things, saving time.
Korora 20 - MATE's application menu and Firefox's extensions
(full image size: 633kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
After the install completes, launching Korora brings us to a graphical login screen. Signing in returns us to the MATE 1.6.1 desktop and the project's welcome screen appears the first time we sign in. The first time I logged in I noticed there was no active network connection. Clicking the Network Manager icon in the system tray allows us to connect to any available networks. The MATE interface I found to be fairly pleasant. There are few notifications or pop-ups (after we dismiss the welcome screen), the environment is responsive and MATE remained stable during my trial. I tried running Korora on a laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 4 GB of RAM, Intel video card, Intel wireless card) and found everything worked smoothly. My desktop was set to its maximum resolution and networking worked once it was enabled via Network Manager. I also tried running Korora in a VirtualBox virtual machine. In the virtual environment Korora was a bit sluggish, certainly usable, but there was noticeable lag when operating on the MATE desktop. The distribution used approximately 160 MB of RAM when logged into MATE, a fairly light footprint for a modern graphical interface.
Korora comes with quite a bit of software, about 5.8 GB of packages in total. We are given the Firefox web browser with support for Flash and an extension for blocking unwanted advertisements. The project ships with the Deluge bittorrent client, the Filezilla file transfer application, the Gwibber micro-blogging software and the TigerVNC remote management software. We find the Ekiga software phone in the application menu along with LibreOffice, the Claws Mail e-mail application and an e-book reader. The Graphics sub-menu is populated with Inkscape, the Shotwell photo manager, the GNU Image Manipulation Program and a document viewer. We find the Audacity audio editor installed for us along with the VLC multimedia player and the Rhythmbox music player. Korora ships with the HandBrake media converter and the OpenShot video editor.
Digging through the application menu we find a virtual keyboard, an archive manager, a virtual calculator and a text editor. Korora ships with the SELinux access management software and a policy generation tool which makes point-n-click creation of SELinux rules possible. We are given an ownCloud file synchronization client, Java and the GNU Compiler Collection. Korora comes with a full range of multimedia codecs for playing video and audio files. The distribution also ships with some great system administration tools, including a firewall configuration app, a user account manager, a system services manager and a printer configuration utility. In addition there is a handy Samba network share configuration tool. The MATE desktop comes with a full range of configuration apps for changing the look and feel of the user interface. Under the hood Korora runs on the Linux kernel, version 3.12.
Korora 20 - the distribution's system administration utilities
(full image size: 678kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
For the most part, navigating the Korora menu and the distribution's applications went well. The software generally worked for me, the applications are all nicely modern and I found the combination of the cutting-edge software with the classic MATE desktop to be a pleasant mix. I found just a few minor issues. One is that some programs in the application menu are labeled using a description of what they do, "Power Management", "Users and Groups", "Eye of MATE Image Viewer" while others are labeled only with the program's name, for example, "Pharlap", "systemadm" and "FBReader". I don't mind locating programs based on their name only, but newcomers to the Linux scene might find themselves opening programs in a trial-and-error approach.
The other thing I noticed was, shortly after installing Korora, I tried to launch the Pharlap driver manager to see if my experience could be improved by using alternative hardware drivers. Clicking the menu item labeled "Pharlap" didn't accomplish anything, no window opened and no error message was displayed. Switching to a command line and running Pharlap resulted in some error messages seemingly related to missing repository information and the Pharlap program shutting down. Going on a hunch, I used the distribution's package manager to download package repository information and applied all waiting software upgrades. Following this I found Pharlap worked. The driver manager didn't find any alternative hardware drivers for me to use, which surprised me as I had expected to find some on this equipment. Still, my experience with the operating system was generally good so I cannot fault the lack of additional driver options.
On the subject of software management, Korora ships with the YUM command line package manager and its graphical front-end, Yum Extender. Working with the command line tool was a positive experience for me. YUM works fairly quickly, shows lots of human-readable output and has an intuitive syntax. Running Yum Extender was somewhat less pleasant, which surprised me as I've generally been a fan of Yum Extender in the past. On my systems, actions such as loading Yum Extender and performing searches for software were unusually slow. Even switching between viewing installed software or available packages took a long time. I also found any attempt to access Yum Extender's transaction history would cause the graphical package manager to lock-up and I needed to terminate the application. All that being said, Yum Extender does have its perks. Like YUM itself, Yum Extender shows lots of useful information and I find the program's controls easy to navigate. During my time with Korora I had to download several hundred megabytes of software updates and I found Yum Extender handled the load easily.
Korora 20 - the settings panel and the Yum Extender package manager
(full image size: 327kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
One final observation I made while working with YUM was that I could not install the Apache web server using YUM, either via the command line utility or through Yum Extender. Any attempt to install the httpd package failed with an error indicating there was a problem with the pre-install script. All other software transactions went smoothly so I suspect there is something specifically wrong with the httpd software as it is packaged.
Conclusions
I feel as though there are places where Korora and, by extension, the underlying Fedora distribution, could be improved. The system installer is an obvious place to start as it is part of the distribution's important first impression. The new Fedora installer still comes across as unusually slow and the interface feels uncoordinated. I think this latest version was better than the previous two, but the installer could still use some polish. The Pharlap device driver utility worked for me after a while, but it would have been nice if, when it didn't work, it had displayed an error message on the desktop letting me know why it was not working. As for package management, YUM worked well for me, but Yum Extender was really slow and stopped working whenever I clicked the program's History button. I feel bad as I am one of the people who pushed for Korora to adopt Yum Extender and, now that it is here, I admit I was wrong. Yum Extender is not an ideal package management solution; I think the Korora project needs to find a better front end for software management.
Still, most of my time with Korora proved to be a pleasant experience. The distribution's MATE edition is stable, it performs fairly well and it comes with a lot of useful software out of the box. The distribution stays pretty close to the cutting edge and appears to do so without a loss of stability, at least not in the underlying operating system. Typically my biggest complaint that comes from using Fedora is it takes a while to set up the Fedora distribution as a full featured desktop system. With Korora that work is done for us and it means we can perform an installation and get straight to working or playing without pausing to set up additional repositories and adding codecs, Flash and other items. In that sense Korora is certainly a success as it takes the general purpose base of Fedora and turns it into a cutting edge desktop operating system.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
FreeBSD 10.0 launches, Fedora debates DNF, Ubuntu upgrades GNOME, Valve gives Debian developers games, ZFS rescue CD, Bodhi Linux in media
 Last week brought exciting news for fans of server operating systems as FreeBSD 10.0 was officially announced. The FreeBSD project is usually known for being conservative, but the 10.0 release contains several important advancements. Among the significant changes are a move from the GNU Compiler Collection to the Clang compiler and a switch from FreeBSD's make utility to NetBSD's bmake. This release drops FreeBSD's traditional binary package management utilities in favour of pkg (sometimes referred to as pkgng), adds TRIM support for solid state drives running under ZFS and adds LZ4 compression to ZFS. As a bonus, this is the first version of FreeBSD to offer support for the Raspberry Pi mini computer.
* * * * *
 One of the possible changes that await the Fedora users in the near future is a switch to a new package manager called DNF. Although the change is likely to be smooth (it looks like DNF might even be renamed to YUM, with a syntax identical to the current package manager), the technical issue behind the new utility are currently undergoing serious debates. LWN's Jake Edge summarises the issues and complaints in "DNF and Yum in Fedora": "Harald Reindl noted an announcement from DNF project lead Aleš Kozumplík that invited Fedora users to start trying out DNF in place of Yum. Reindl is concerned that various important Yum features are getting left by the wayside and that DNF will replace Yum without being ready. In another post, he likened it to the GRUB2 and systemd transitions, which were done before those components were ready, he said. In particular, Reindl believes that the kernel package should be treated specially, as it is in Yum, rather than treated like any other package, as DNF does." Read also the lively discussion that follows the article for some more insight.
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 Back in December we mentioned that Ubuntu developers were forking the GNOME control panel in an effort to allow them to continue offering a wider range of features without being stuck on older versions of GNOME packages. This work by the Canonical team has paid off as new GNOME desktop packages can (and have) been imported into the Ubuntu repositories. The next release of Ubuntu, version 14.04, is expected to ship with GNOME 3.10 packages. This not only benefits Ubuntu users who like the GNOME desktop, it will also allow Ubuntu-based projects, such as Ubuntu GNOME, to offer upgraded versions of the GNOME interface.
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 The Valve company has been hard at work recently developing a Linux-based platform for gaming. The new Steam gaming console is powered by a Debian-based operating system, giving Valve a great deal of flexibility and performance. In a gesture of appreciation to the Debian development community Valve is offering Debian developers free games, a lot of free games. Neil McGovern posted the following to a Debian development list: "Valve are keen to contribute back to the community, and I'm discussing a couple of ways that they may be able to do that. Immediately though, they've offered a free subscription to any Debian Developer which provides access to all past and future Valve produced games!"
Still on the subject of Debian GNU/Linux, here is something for advanced users who prefer a powerful file system, such as ZFS. Last week Debian developer John Goerzen announced the availability a Debian rescue CD with specialist tools for repairing the ZFS file system in case of trouble: "Before I build a system, I always want to make sure I can repair it. So I started with the Debian live rescue image, and added the zfsonlinux.org repository to it, along with some key packages to enable the ZFS kernel modules, GRUB support, and initramfs support. The resulting image is described, and can be downloaded from, my ZFS rescue disc wiki page, which also has a link to my source tree on github. In future blog posts in the series, I will describe the process of converting existing Debian installations to use ZFS, of getting them to boot from ZFS, some bugs I encountered along the way, and some surprising performance regressions in ZFS compared to ext4 and Btrfs."
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 As the calendar turns from December to January it is common for people to ponder which Linux distribution best fits a particular niche. The Ubuntu family typically stands near the top of the "best of" lists for desktop systems while Red Hat dominates in server and enterprise environments. Carla Schroder adds a few extra categories to her list of favourite Linux distributions, adding the entries such as "best fighting the man distro" (an award which goes to Tails) and "most beautiful distro" (which goes to Bodhi Linux). Schroder writes: "This is an easy choice: Bodhi Linux. Bodhi Linux uses the Enlightenment window manager, which has always occupied a unique niche. The team has done a great job of taming Enlightenment and giving users a beautiful, ready-to-use implementation. Bodhi Linux is based on Ubuntu LTS and takes a minimalist approach: minimum system requirements are 300+ MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, and 2.5 GB hard drive space, and it installs with a bare minimum set of packages. Then you make it your own. Sharing artwork is a big part of the Bodhi community, with something for everyone."
The above article wasn't the only one that talked about the Ubuntu-based distribution with Enlightenment last week. Tech Republic's Jack Wallen seems equally impressed with the unusual desktop interface in "Bodhi Linux could easily become a desktop distribution contender, even though he also has a few suggestions for improvement: "When you complete the installation of Bodhi and log into the desktop, you're presented with simple wizard to set up Enlightenment. This needs to go away. Yes, it's awesome that Enlightenment can be configured more than probably any other desktop interface. I was weaned on such window managers, but for users not accustomed to such configurations, this can be an issue. And since everything about Enlightenment is drastically different than any other window manager ever used by the average person, much of this is going to be confusing at best. With that in mind, it would be smart of Bodhi to eliminate this step in the process. Instead, it needs to have a default configuration, one that both shows off the incredible power and flexibility of Enlightenment, yet makes the whole of the environment easy for new users."
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| Interview (by Tomasz Niedzielski) |
Bridge Linux, its founder and genesis
 On the 17th of November 2013, Bridge Linux became a two-year old. This operating system is an Arch-based distro, developed by an American, Dalton Miller. Miller, who is the leader of the Bridge distro, gave a short interview in which he tells us about his history and the beginning of Bridge Linux.
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DistroWatch: Tell something about yourself. What do you do in life for work or study?
DW: Tell us about your first computer? Did it have Linux installed? When did you start using Linux? How did it happen?
DW: When did you experience Arch Linux for the first time? Why did you choose it as a base of your distro?
DW: How did it happen that you decided to make own distro? When was its first release?
Bridge Linux 2013.06 - the default Xfce desktop
(full image size: 1,331kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
DW: Did you take any inspiration from existing distros? If so, which?
DW: Why did you name it Bridge Linux? Did you think about any other names?
DW: Did you expect that it would gain any popularity? When did you start to believe it would become popular?
DW: What are your expectations about Bridge Linux in the future?
DW: And the plans for your distro?
DW: Are you the only developer of Bridge Linux now? Do you try to get anybody to help you?
DW: Are you afraid it may die one day, if there isn't a person to continue your job?
DW: Does it take a long time to prepare a release of Bridge Linux? Which are the biggest problems in creating a release?
DW: What about the Bridge Linux community? Is it big in your opinion?
DW: Thank you very much for your time and we wish you all the best with your work on Bridge Linux.
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| Released Last Week |
Endian Firewall 3.0
Endian has announced the immediate availability of Endian Firewall 3.0, a new "bleeding-edge" release of the Linux-based distribution designed for firewalls and routers: "Finally the Endian Firewall Community 3.0 has reached its final stage. This release includes the following changes: HTTPS filtering; SMTP proxy - domain management and SMTP delivery status notification configuration; OpenVPN - support for TUN mode, connections page for VPN users; user management and authentication - user management for OpenVPN, integrated certificate authority, external certificate authority support, user password and certificate management (two-factor authentication); logging and reporting - live network traffic monitoring (powered by ntopng), system status graphs are not lost at every reboot, images for SMTP mail statistics graphs...." See the release announcement and release notes for further information.
FreeBSD 10.0
Following a long development process, FreeBSD 10.0, the latest stable version of the popular UNIX-like operating system, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE. This is the first release of the stable/10 branch. Some of the highlights: GCC is no longer installed by default on architectures where clang(1) is the default compiler; unbound has been imported to the base system as the local caching DNS resolver; BIND has been removed from the base system; make(1) has been replaced with NetBSD's bmake(1); pkg(7) is now the default package management utility; pkg_add(1), pkg_delete(1) and related tools have been removed; major enhancements in virtualization...." See the release announcement and release notes for a detailed list of changes.
Tiny Core Linux 5.2
Tiny Core Linux 5.2, the latest stable build of the distribution that prides itself to be as small and light as technically possible, has been released: "Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce the release of Core 5.2: Change log: rebuildfstab - do not replace fstab entries for a device that does not have 'Added by TC' on the line; init - increase the default inode count; ondemand - don't list extensions under subdirs in onboot maintenance; ldd - add wildcard to support both x86 and x86_64; BusyBox updated to 1.21.1 plus wget patches and split suid/nosuid for better security; ldd - added quotes for binaries with spaces in their names; /etc/services - modified to suit rpcbind rather than portmap; tc-functions - removed the getpasswd stars to allow backspace to work. Notes: rootfs64.gz available for corepure64; a new nfs-utils extension has been issued to work with Tiny Core Linux 5.2." Here is the brief release announcement.
Tiny Core Linux 5.2 - the live desktop environment
(full image size: 60kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
SolydXK 201401
Arjen Balfoort has announced the release of SolydXK 201401, the latest version of the project's set of desktop Linux distributions with a choice of Xfce (SolydX) or KDE (SolydK) desktops, both based on Debian's "testing" branch: "New ISO images include the latest update pack: KDE has been updated to version 4.12.1; LibreOffice has been updated to version 4.1.4; Firefox has been updated to version 26.0 and Thunderbird to version 24.2.0; these community packages were added to the community repository - grub-customizer, kdeconnect, plasma-mediacenter, xfce-theme-manager, xfwm4compositeeditor. The 'Business' editions will follow later." Other interesting package updates include FreeType 2.5.2, GCC 4.8.2, Linux kernel 3.11.10, NVIDIA driver 319.76, OpenSSH 6.4p1 and VLC 2.1.2. Read the brief release announcement here.
Semplice Linux 6
Eugenio Paolantonio has announced the release of Semplice Linux 6, a lightweight GNU/Linux distribution with Openbox, based on Debian's "unstable" branch: "It's our pleasure to announce the release of Semplice Linux 6, code-named 'Stairway to Heaven'. This release brings many important performance-related changes, such as systemd as the default init system, a new desktop-optimized kernel and compressed memory. Also, we have rewritten our menu builder. With this release, the central part of the system, the menu, is faster than ever. Other noteworthy changes are the support to window snapping and an easy-to-use tool to add launchers to the panel. The Semplice live system cointains: Openbox 3.5.2, Linux kernel 3.12.7; Chromium web browser 31.0.1650.63, Exaile 3.3.2 and GNOME MPlayer 1.0.8, Abiword 2.9.2 and Gnumeric 1.12.9, Pidgin Internet messenger 2.10.7...." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information.
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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
- Gigastrand OS. Gigastrand OS is a general-purpose desktop operating system which draws inspiration from Linux Mint.
- Oikyo Linux. Oikyo Linux is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that comes with three desktop environments (Unity, KDE and GNOME) on the installation media.
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 3 February 2014. 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Voltalinux
Voltalinux was a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware Linux and the pkgsrc package system from NetBSD. The project offers a pre-built distribution where the user can enjoy the clean design of Slackware Linux with the availability of over 5,000 NetBSD ports ready to be installed.
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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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