 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 560, 26 May 2014 |
Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DistroWatch Weekly! We often think of successful open-source projects as those which are able to provide the most packages, those which have the most developers or those which support the widest range of hardware architectures. However, often times what makes an open-source project exceptional is the leadership, the director who drives focus on one area or who brings diverse people together in a common goal. This week we talk about projects and people who have made open-source operating systems more than just large collections of packages. We start with KaOS, a project which believes a narrow focus and a preference for quality over quantity are the best way to develop a desktop operating system. In the news this week we cover the resignations of Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron and Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon. We also share an interview with the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, in which Torvalds talks about the technology industry and innovation. Speaking of innovation, Fedora may soon become the first mainstream Linux distribution to ship with Wayland support, get the details below in our News section. Also this week, we talk about Linux distributions which provide commercial support and some of the things to consider when shopping for a supported distribution. As usual, we cover the releases of the past week and look ahead to exciting distribution releases to come. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of KaOS 2014.04
 KaOS is a Linux distribution which draws a good deal of its design from the Arch Linux project. KaOS is a rolling-release distribution and maintains a narrow focus to achieve its goals of creating "a tightly integrated rolling and transparent distribution for the modern desktop, built from scratch with a very specific focus." KaOS focuses exclusively on providing one desktop environment (KDE), for one hardware architecture (x86 64-bit) and most included applications are based on the Qt toolkit. If this list of characteristics sounds familiar it may be because the Chakra project has similar goals and blueprints and KaOS even borrows some technology from the Chakra project. There are differences, however. Where Chakra maintains a semi-rolling release platform, updating end-user software regularly while keeping the base operating system relatively static, KaOS takes a pure rolling-release approach, keeping its users on the cutting edge. The download image for KaOS is approximately 1.7 GB in size.
Booting from the KaOS disc brings us to the KDE desktop. When the desktop finishes loading a window appears. This window contains buttons which open portals to the project's documentation, user forum and package list. There are also buttons we can use to launch the system installer and discover what login credentials are used in the live environment. Dismissing this window reveals the KDE 4.13 desktop featuring a Windows 8 style theme. The icons look flat and square, the desktop has bright, soft colours.
KaOS 2014.04 - the welcome screen
(full image size: 299kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
KaOS uses the same graphical system installer featured in the Chakra distribution. The installer does a nice job of walking us through reading the project's release notes, confirming our keyboard's layout and selecting our time zone from a 3-D map of the world. We are then asked to create a user account for ourselves and, if we wish, we can create multiple accounts during the installation. The first user we create can also have administrative access. Partitioning our hard drive is handled by the KDE Partition Manager. Once we have divided up the local hard disk and closed KDE Partition Manager the installer detects our partitions and gets us to assign mount points and file systems to each partition. From there the installer copies its files to our local drive and, when it is finished, we are brought to the two final configuration screens. These final steps ask us if we would like to customize our initial ramdisk, a way of adding extra support for features at boot time. Chances are most people will be fine without adjusting the ramdisk. The other question put to us is whether we would like the installer to set up the GRUB2 boot loader for us. Once these steps are completed the system reboots and we are brought to a graphical login screen. The login page features bright colours and a floral design.
Logging into the KDE desktop we find icons on the desktop (in a folder view widget) for accessing our files. The application menu and task switcher sit at the bottom of the screen. The application menu features a classic layout with categories of software. Also in the menu are quick-launch buttons. Some of the quick-launch icons I did not recognize and this made for some interesting trial-and-error as there was no text to hint as to what each button would do. Shortly after I logged in a notification appeared in the lower-right corner of the screen letting me know software updates were available. There was no button to push to access these updates, so I turned to the application menu to find an update manager. While I did not find a dedicated software update utility, I did find a multipurpose package manager, called Octopi.
KaOS 2014.04 - the Octopi package manager
(full image size: 220kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Octopi has a fairly simple layout and is divided into three panes. One pane shows us an alphabetized list of software packages available to us. A coloured box next to each package lets us know if the item is installed, available or can be upgraded. To the right is another pane where we can filter our list of software. At the bottom of the window is a display area which shows us status reports and detailed package information. Octopi is not pretty, but it did allow me to download software updates, install new packages and remove unwanted items. The package manager worked quickly and I encountered no problems while using it. When I first installed KaOS, about two weeks after the release was announced, there were over 100 updates waiting for me, totalling about 250MB in size. These updates all downloaded and installed smoothly.
KaOS ships with a collection of desktop software which gives us a wide range of functionality, though many of the programs have been selected to fit into the KDE/Qt family rather than, I feel, to provide the best end-user experience. We are given the QupZilla web browser, the Quassel IRC client and the Calligra productivity suite. The SpiderOak on-line storage client is available. Also, KaOS provides the KPPP dial-up software and Network Manager to help us get on-line. The distribution provides us with the Calibre e-book reader, the Clementine audio player and the k3b disc burning software. SMPlayer is included for playing video files and the Kdenlive software allows us to edit videos. KaOS features multimedia codecs out of the box and supports most media formats. There is no Flash player in the default installation, but Flash is available through the project's software repositories. The distribution features some other applications, including the KGpg privacy and encryption software, text editors, the Ark archive manager and a backup utility. There are also tools for managing user accounts and the KDE System Settings panel helps us tweak the user interface in great detail. The GNU Compiler Collection is installed for us and, behind the scenes, KaOS 2014.04 ships with the 3.13 release of the Linux kernel.
KaOS 2014.04 - KDE System Settings and Calligra
(full image size: 260kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Most of the time KaOS and its default applications worked well for me, though there were a few minor glitches. For example, most times I logged into the KDE desktop I would be greeted by a message saying the KDE Daemon had crashed. Once this message was dismissed I could continue on with my work without further interruptions. On one occasion the application menu folded over on itself which caused most of the menu entries to stack on top of each other, making launching applications from the menu impossible. This problem was fixed by logging out and signing back into the desktop. The first few times I launched the SMPlayer multimedia player it asked me to confirm the version of MPlayer I was using. This isn't an error, but it did seem unusual and unnecessary since taking the default option worked.
I ran KaOS in two environments, on a desktop machine and in VirtualBox. In both environments the distribution performed well. KaOS booted quickly, ran smoothly and the desktop was always responsive. Sound and networking worked without any configuration and my screen was set to it maximum resolution. When logged into KDE I found KaOS used approximately 265MB of RAM, which puts about on par with other Linux distributions running the KDE desktop.
KaOS 2014.04 - running various desktop applications
(full image size: 255kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
What puzzled me while running KaOS wasn't technical in nature, KaOS did fairly well from a technical standpoint. What I found hard to figure out was exactly what it was the project was trying to accomplish. The website talks about narrowing the distribution's focus (one desktop, one architecture, focusing on packaging only rather than developing new tools). The project states: "There is no goal to make the most possible software available, KaOS will stay limited in size of the repositories, and will work on quality instead of quantity. That goal makes it clear, a large user base is not what is intended or expected." In short, the project's website talks a lot about what the distribution is not, but rarely mentions what it is or what its goals are. The project's About page briefly mentions trying to make the best choices for the user, but the software bundled with KaOS doesn't appear to consist of the best applications available, rather applications seem to be selected based on toolkit purity.
What it comes down to is I am not sure how to evaluate KaOS as I am not entirely sure what it is the developers are attempting to do. The project appears to be focused entirely on the small niche that wants a 64-bit, rolling-release, KDE/Qt only operating system with crude & fast package management. I am guessing that is a fairly small portion of the population. That being said, KaOS does cater to this special interest group fairly well. Almost everything in the distribution functioned properly, the system installer (borrowed from Chakra) worked well, the distribution comes with a lot of useful software and the performance of the distribution was excellent. So KaOS may have a very narrow focus, ignoring much of the Linux user population, but what it does it does passably well. I suspect the distribution will appeal to fans of the Arch Linux philosophy who would like to have a way to get their desktop operating system up and running quickly.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8 GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500 GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6 GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
Fedora's Project Leader and Ubuntu's Community Manager step down, Fedora 21 with GNOME on Wayland and KDE 5, new BLAG pre-alpha, Linus Torvalds on technology trends
 Robyn Bergeron, Fedora's Project Leader, has announced she will be handing off the helm of the Red Hat sponsored project to someone else. "With Fedora 20 well behind us, and Fedora.next on the road ahead, it seems like a natural time to step aside and let new leadership take the reins. Frankly, I shouldn't even say "the road ahead" since we're well-entrenched in the process of establishing the Fedora.next features and processes, and it's a rather busy time for us all in Fedora-land -- but this is precisely why making the transition into new leadership as smooth as possible for the Fedora Project community is so important. It's a good time for change, and fresh ideas and leadership will be an asset to the community as we go forward, but I also want to make sure it's not going to distract us from all the very important things we have in the works." Bergeron has stated she will remain connected to the project to assist the next Fedora Project Leader as they transition into the position.
Fedora may be the first mainstream Linux distribution to adopt the next generation display server Wayland. The Wayland protocol and the Weston display server recently announced an update which mostly focused on bug fixes. At the moment, there are plans for the upcoming release of Fedora 21 to include GNOME sessions running on top of Wayland technology.
Still on the subject of Red Hat's community distribution, the recently released beat version of KDE 5 is now available for Fedora. Those of you who would like to test it or just to get a feel of what's coming to your Fedora KDE desktop in the near future should download the Fedora Plasma Next live DVD image built by Daniel Vrátil: "The Fedora KDE SIG brings you all the new and cool stuff from KDE Frameworks and Plasma Next worlds! First, our Copr repository with KDE Frameworks has been updated to 4.99.0 release, so go get it. All frameworks are co-installable with KDE 4, so you can develop against KF5 without needing any special setup. Also KDE Frameworks 5 were approved as feature for Fedora 21, which means that in next Fedora release, we will ship all Frameworks in the Fedora repositories! There are already some packages imported into rawhide, the rest will follow in next weeks. And now for the awesome news: we have a live ISO image with Plasma Next preview! We packaged as much as we could (but still not everything!), including Rekonq, Dolphin, System Settings, Baloo, Milou and more – all built against Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5."
* * * * *
 Fedora was not the only open-source project to lose a valuable member last week. Jono Bacon posted on his blog that he will be stepping down as Ubuntu Community Manager and taking a role with the XPRIZE Foundation. Bacon looked back on his time working with the Ubuntu community fondly, stating, "Working with the Ubuntu community has not just been a privilege, it has been a pleasure. One of the many reasons why I love what I do is that I am exposed to so many incredible people, minds, and ideas, and the Ubuntu community is a text-book definition of what makes community so powerful and such an agent for making the world a better place. I will be forever thankful for not just the opportunity to meet so many different members of the global Ubuntu family, but to also continue these many friendships into my next endeavour."
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 Remember BLAG Linux And GNU? It was a single-CD Fedora-based distribution popular with advocates of software freedom as it was built on top of a libre kernel and included libre software only. It seemingly disappeared from the radar after its last stable release in May 2011, together with the project founder, Jeff Moe (also known as "jebba"). But the community around the project has resurrected the distribution and a pre-alpha release of the upcoming version 200000 (based on Fedora 20) was released over the weekend. From the announcement by Abdur-Rahman Morgan: "I'm done with the initial BLAG 200000 pre-alpha ISO images. They serve as a preview for the base applications for the next release of the MATE and GNOME desktops. What you'll find are: 32-bit and 64-bit ISO images under 700 MB (with the exception of the 64-bit GNOME ISO image); partial branding, logos and other customization are in the works; repository for BLAG setup upon install, packages will be coming soon, but there are none to install as yet."
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 Linus Torvalds is the original author of the Linux kernel, an open-source project he continues to manage to this day. The famous father of the Linux kernel appeared in an interview with Bill Robinson last week in which they discussed technology trends, personality cults and leaps forward in technology. Torvalds shared a number of personal opinions on the technology industry, including innovation, saying: "I'm a big believer in pushing the envelope, and I'm not a huge believer in trying to be entirely stable and 100% "sane". A lot of real development happens in spurts, and as part of what later is called 'hype' and other unflattering things. But the thing is, trying too hard to be sane and boring and not doing stupid things is actually counter-productive. I personally think the stable development model is not one of continual incremental improvements, but a succession of overshooting and crashing."
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux distributions offering commercial support
Looking-for-business-alternatives asks: As I understand it, the primary benefit of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the support that is available. If a company needs to use another distribution (for example, support for a 32-bit OS, newer than what RHEL 6 provides), what options are available? Anything like what Red Hat offers?
DistroWatch answers: One of the two main benefits Red Hat provides is technical support. Red Hat has built its business on helping enterprises implement technical solutions and keep their servers running. Red Hat also offers long-term support cycles, approximately ten years worth of security updates. This makes Red Hat Enterprise Linux very appealing in places where server downtime is expensive and businesses want to keep servers running for a long time (as opposed to upgrading every three to five years).
There are other commercially supported open-source operating systems that offer both technical support and long support cycles. The SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution also offers technical support and comes with ten years or more of security updates. Another distribution which comes to mind is Ubuntu. The Ubuntu Server distribution is free to run, comes with five years of security updates and technical support is available.
There are other solutions to be had. While the above examples are for commercial distributions which directly support their products, there are plenty of companies and consultants which can help support other open-source operating systems. The Debian project maintains a list of consultant companies world-wide who support the Debian distribution. Over in the BSD community, iXsystems offers hardware and software support for customers running FreeBSD, PC-BSD and FreeNAS. Many popular open-source projects have these unofficial support consultants who will work with you (and typically the upstream project) to support your operating system of choice.
Going with a third-party may not be as attractive an option because the third-party might not be able to get fixes pushed back into the distribution or further upstream. However, third-parties may be less expensive, especially if they charge on an as-needed basis. Whether you go with a commercial distribution or a third-party provider, make sure you examine different trouble-shooting scenarios. Will the support provider send someone to your location? What is their policy on on-going issues? Does the company support third-party software beyond the base operating system? How liable is the support company if they cannot fix your issue in a timely manner? Make sure you consider all the possibilities and make sure you know the answers to all of your questions before signing a contract.
Something which caught my attention while reading this question was the requirement for a 32-bit operating system with newer software than Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 offers. It seems unusual that someone would want new software versions, enterprise support and a 32-bit operating system. New software and legacy hardware (or new software and enterprise environments) rarely go together and it might be worth looking into whether these criteria are really necessary.
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On a personal note, a few weeks ago I was helping a friend set up a web server. The machine we were using was running Ubuntu Server 14.04 and most of the initial configuration went smoothly. During the installation process I decided to install a security tool called DenyHosts which monitors remote login attempts. When DenyHosts detects a series of failed login attempts it treats the remote machine trying to login as an attacker and blocks future login attempts from that computer for a period of time. It is one utility I have found useful for protecting servers running a secure shell service as it reduces the risk of an attacker guessing a user's password by trial and error.
I found, when I attempted to install DenyHosts, that the package was not available in the Ubuntu 14.04 software repositories, which surprised me as DenyHosts had been available in previous versions of Ubuntu. A quick check showed DenyHosts had been dropped from Ubuntu 14.04 as the package was no longer included in the Debian Unstable repository. Further reading revealed that DenyHosts had been dropped from Debian as the software was no longer maintained by its original developer. At this point a reasonable system administrator would shrug and install an alternative tool, such as fail2ban, which basically performs the same task. However, I have always considered myself a developer first and a system administrator second, plus I really liked the design of DenyHosts.
I decided to grab a copy of the latest version of DenyHosts I could find. Then I began hunting down patches which had been added by various distributions and other patches posted to bug trackers by users trying to work around existing problems. Soon I had a patched and working copy of DenyHosts and was able to install it on the new server. At this point, it seemed everything was taken care of. My friend had his web server, I had an updated version of a security tool I like; it was a win-win situation. Still, in the spirit of open-source, I wanted to make my work available to the rest of the world. With this in mind, I attempted to contact the original author of DenyHosts with the hope of sharing my updates with him. Unfortunately I did not hear back.
My next approach was to introduce a fork of the DenyHosts project. This fork is mostly made up of patches from various downstream projects such as Debian, Ubuntu and FreeBSD and contains some additional minor fixes and updated documentation. It is freely available for anyone who would like to try it out on SourceForge. I believe people who have enjoyed using DenyHosts in the past will find this fork to be a suitable drop-in upgrade. I am also in the process of trying to get DenyHosts reintroduced back into Debian and, by extension, the many distributions which use Debian as a base. Debian contributor Kyle Willmon has been very helpful in getting the process of restoring DenyHosts to the Debian software repositories started and I thank him for all his assistance.
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| Released Last Week |
Clonezilla Live 2.2.3-10
Steven Shiau has released a new stable version of Clonezilla Live, a Debian-based live CD designed primarily for disk imaging and cloning tasks: "This release of Clonezilla live (2.2.3-10) includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded, this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2014-05-18; Linux kernel has been updated to 3.14.4; the drbl package has been updated to 2.8.25 and Clonezilla has been updated to 3.10.11; added diskscan; added option '-batch' for ocs-restore-mdisks and it's the same function as '-b' or '--batch'. Bug fixes: this release fixes a bug in live-boot 4.x which is not patched and which caused live-betty to not work; when in 'restoreparts' mode, the '-t' option should now be set by default...." Continue to the release announcement to read the complete changelog.
Tiny Core Linux 5.3 "piCore"
Béla Markus has announced the availability of a new version of "piCore", a specialist edition of Tiny Core Linux designed for the Raspberry Pi single-board computer: "Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce the immediate availability of piCore-5.3. Changelog: Linux kernel updated to 3.14.4; Raspberry Pi firmware updated to 2014-05-12 version; e2fsprogs updated to 1.42.10; util-linux updated to 2.24; official BusyBox patches applied; curaga's wget3 BusyBox patch applied, setting default timeout to 10s; tce-load - don't show an error when extension contains multiple modules; tce-load - use sudo when unmounting meta-extensions; patched to enable HDMI sound at 192 kbit/s rate; patched rtl8192cu driver to disable power saving; enabled CMA and FIQ-FSM by default." See the release announcement for a full changelog and update instructions.
openSUSE 13.1.1 "Edu Li-f-e MATE"
Lars Vogdt has announced the release of openSUSE 13.1.1 "Edu Li-f-e MATE" edition, a variant of openSUSE 13.1 designed for schools and featuring the MATE desktop environment: "The openSUSE-Education team is proud to present a special, 64-bit edition of openSUSE Edu Li-f-e with the MATE desktop environment. Li-f-e MATE edition came about to support schools in Gujarat, India. They needed a synfig studio: a very simple-to-use C and Java IDE, apart from standard fare of complete office suite and other applications. Gujarat now starts teaching OpenOffice (LibreOffice) in the 9th grade, and the Linux operating system all the way to shell scripting in 10th, and Java, C, HTML, JavaScript in the 11th and 12th grades. This Li-f-e edition tries to get everything they need in an integrated bundle which they can use on a stand-alone PC." Here is the full release announcement with a screenshot of the default desktop.
openSUSE 13.1.1 "Edu Li-f-e MATE" - the default desktop and the release notes
(full image size: 324kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Robolinux 7.5.2
John Martinson has announced the release of Robolinux 7.5.2, the latest update of the project's Debian-based distribution featuring a pre-configured VirtualBox for running Windows as a "guest" operating system. What's new in version 7.5.2? "We added Firefox 29 to Robolinux as our users did not like Iceweasel. So now Robolinux has the newest versions of Thunderbird and Firefox. We also updated our Debian-based operating system to the most current Debian 7.5 with upstream security updates and improvements. We updated VirtualBox to the latest version 4.3.12. We updated the proprietary AMD ATI Driver to the newest version. Robolinux has added more professional technical support staff to continue providing highly responsive support for the C Drive to VM support package." Read the project's page on the SourceForge site for a brief announcement and visit Robolinux.org for more detailed information about the product.
Chakra GNU/Linux 2014.05
Neophytos Kolokotronis has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 2014.05, the new stable version of the project's desktop Linux distribution featuring the KDE 4.13 desktop: "The Chakra team is proud to announce the first release of Chakra 'Descartes' series which will follow the 4.13 KDE releases. This new release includes new features and updates as follows: KDE Software Compilation - the latest stable version of the KDE series; Nepomuk search has been replaced by Baloo, we have implemented a patch that permits the user to disable Baloo; Chakra Tools are fully translated into more than 30 languages thanks to the amazing job done by our users on Transifex; artwork - new Chakra Logo and new default theme for GRUB, KDM, KSplash, Yakuake; NVIDIA 331.38 and Catalyst 13.12 drivers; Linux kernel 3.12.15, X.Org Server 1.14.5...." Here is the full release announcement with a screenshot.
Chakra GNU/Linux 2014.05 - the project's new series that feature KDE 4.13
(full image size: 485kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- RuneAudio. RuneAudio is a free and open-source software with a specific objective: to transform an embedded platform into an Hi-Fi digital music player.
- X Distro. X Distro is a Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution which focuses on being attractive and easy to use.
- distro-valombre. The distro-valombre project builds a desktop distribution for French-speaking users. It is based on Linux Mint. The project's website is in French.
- Fatdog64 Linux. Fatdog64 is a 64-bit fork of the Puppy Linux distribution which features multi-user support and more default applications.
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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, 2 June 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • denyhosts (by hadrons123d on 2014-05-26 10:44:42 GMT from India)
The denyhosts is available in Fedora 20. Its Available in EPEL too.
2 • Jono Bacon/Ubuntu (by kc1di on 2014-05-26 11:36:28 GMT from United States)
Sorry to hear of Jono's departure from Ubuntu. I always enjoyed hearing his comments. Wish him all the best in his new venture with Xprize.
3 • denied! (by greg on 2014-05-26 12:19:07 GMT from Slovenia)
tha's just awesome that you shared the patch for DenyHosts.
although fail2ban doesn't look bad either...
4 • KaOS focuses exclusively on providing one desktop environment (by schultzter on 2014-05-26 12:50:27 GMT from Canada)
I appreciate their objective, but I'm not expecting them to be successful. At some point you're going to say "I absolutely need this software" even though doesn't follow the design of your OS. And there's no way KaOS is going to be able to offer everything according to their design (ditto for Elementary and others).
I would rather the developers work on the features of their apps rather than divide the pool of developers into GTK vs Qt. This means half the features and twice the bugs!!!
5 • Bravo Jesse on DenyHosts (by Georgia on 2014-05-26 13:06:40 GMT from Canada)
That's so great that you took the initiative to keep a good thing like DenyHosts alive. It seems too often that a developer gets overwhelmed by life's trials and has to set a worthwhile project aside, which then slowly fades away. Bravo for you efforts, and to the original developer(s) who built the foundation.
6 • DenyHosts in Fedora (by Jesse on 2014-05-26 13:48:19 GMT from Canada)
@1: I am sorry to say that DenyHosts will probably be dropped from Fedora soon. The package maintainer, Jason Tibbitts, posted to the DenyHosts mailing list that the package would likely be dropped in the near future. This is unfortunate, I have been going through the Fedora bugzilla in order to fix problems Fedora users reported and work around depreciated libraries. I am hoping someone in the Fedora community picks up ownership of DenyHosts and works with me to keep the package going for Fedora/RHEL/CentOS users.
7 • DW Weekly (by FSFer on 2014-05-26 14:06:41 GMT from United States)
Just wanted to say I thoroughly appreciated this issue. Good work!
8 • 4MLinux (by Aldous23 on 2014-05-26 15:43:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
4MLinux looks to be a fast and easy-to-use system but the installer does not work. I only have have one hard drive which is /dev/sda but the installer sees 13 partitions and gives an error:
ERROR. Too many partitions.
and does not me procede with the installation.
It would make life easier for everybody (except the great Distrowatch team) if distros were checked in a multi-boot environment before being accepted by Distrowatch and there fore given publicity by Distrowatch.
Apart from that niggle, thank you Distrowatch for always giving an interesting read.
9 • KaOS ? same name for an old and different project (by musty on 2014-05-26 16:15:53 GMT from France)
Once upon a time, there was an project called KaOS from carbonmountain.com
Here is some link to it :
http://freshmeat.net/projects/kaos-sdk
http://www.ohloh.net/p/kaos
PS: thanks Jesse for the patches
10 • KaOS (by Mario on 2014-05-26 21:03:19 GMT from Puerto Rico)
Is a good distribution. Their goals aim to a small and lean 64-bit only system. There is no 32-bit edition, or 32-bit packages on it, and that will be a limited factor to becoming a mainstream OS. But keep in mind, they don't have any intention to becoming mainstream either.
Also I would like to comment, I tested most mainstream 64-bit KDE distributions lately on my AMD 6GB laptop, and only 2 of them have a memory usage under 400MB. The lowest one was KaOS with like 380MB and the second was Tanglu at 392MB. Next was openSuSE 13.1 at 430 MB. All the others where over 500MB, and even some over 600MB.
11 • 4MLinux (by zk1234 on 2014-05-26 22:27:12 GMT from Poland)
@Aldous23
This is true that 4MLinux installer accepts max 9 partitions on one disk, so you could see this error message. On the other hand, there are not too many users that have so many partitions one one disk (you are the first one, who has been reporting this problem since 2010!), so please do not exaggerate...
12 • Distro CD sized obsession (by cykodrone on 2014-05-27 00:08:48 GMT from Canada)
Fine, there are a handful of people that still have CD burners/readers but even DVDs are yesterday's news, pretty soon Blu-rays will be a thing of the past. All that being said, at least release a DVD size TOO, with the cream of the FOSS app crop, lightweight aging apps just don't cut it for me, give me VLC, Clementine, Libreoffice, Iceweasel/Firefox, etc, or death, lol. Aside from the fact most testers/distro hoppers use Unetbootin, why waste the plastic and make more landfill? The average [i]small[/i] USB stick is 8GB fer cryin' out loud.
13 • @12. I use rewritable Blu-ray,DVD, & cd disks. (by Elcaset on 2014-05-27 00:51:43 GMT from United States)
I use rewritable Blu-ray,DVD, & cd disks.
I reuse them, so i don't throw recycle them, or put them in the landfill.
14 • 8 • 4MLinux (by Aldous23 on 2014-05-26 15:43:23 GMT from United Kingdom) (by Jeffersonian on 2014-05-27 02:24:58 GMT from United States)
Yes, I join here Aldous, in his/her statement.
I also had issues with installing "some distro to try" on my multi-boot (GRUB 2) system.
Recently it was as bad as damaging to the point of non repair, an existing Linux, on a different partition !
For one the names of the files in /boot should be specific to a distro...
However my feeling is that it would be better if theses files were in a separate directory on top of /boot this is indeed a GRUB2 issue, however, as it is GRUB2 is pretty good functional, and the distro creators should be a bit more careful to not dammage, files from an other distro....
small cat... big fight?
15 • 4MLinux and too many partitions (by Thomas Mueller on 2014-05-27 03:45:38 GMT from United States)
How can a Linux distro set 9 as the maximum number of partitions allowed on a hard disk, when GPT allows up to 128 partitions by default? In these days of 3 TB and 4-TB hard drives, working with multiple OSes and multiple versions can easily bring the number of partitions into at least the teens.
An installer should just install what it's supposed to and not mess with the rest of the disk without warning the user. I want to know what's going on and keep control.
16 • 4MLinux and too many partitions (by zkl1234 on 2014-05-27 07:00:02 GMT from Poland)
The author of the installation script (it's me) noticed (during series of tests that took place 3 years ago !) that it might lead to errors when the number of partitions is larger than 9. This is why I added a line of code which orders the script to leave without applying any changes when the number of partitions is 10 or more (this is what Aldous23 described in post 8 above).
@Thomas Mueller You have posted something ... just to post. What "mess with the rest of the disk" you are talking about? The limitations of my script are implemented to avoid such errors.
17 • @13 Release size, not media (by cykodrone on 2014-05-27 08:19:52 GMT from Canada)
I was referring to the size of distro releases, cdroms debuted in 1985, that's 29 years ago, so considering most people use DVDs, Blu-rays or USB sticks now, the obsession to cram a live system or installer in to a cdrom ISO has also become obsolete. Those tiny releases should be an afterthought, not the priority release.
18 • My Wish (by Ari Torres on 2014-05-27 10:31:40 GMT from United States)
to me nothing beats elementary pantheon desktop, i also miss pear os a lot only if ubuntu had that choice without the over bloated useless crap the throw in it,that will make buntu the best ever and now that all codecs are included by default it will make it a winner or a killer.
that's my wish.
19 • 32-bit OS with newer software (by Pearson on 2014-05-27 12:33:40 GMT from United States)
Jesse, you raised a good point about wanting a 32 bit OS with modern software. In the U.S. Department of Defense, the replacement cycles for deployed/fielded hardware can be so long and expensive that very old computers must be supported for years. As far as I know, this is about the only situation I can imagine where such old computers *must* be supported.
20 • KaOS Linux (by Duskfire on 2014-05-27 13:14:51 GMT from United States)
I consider myself a KDE fanboy, but there's such as thing as going to an extreme. I've been meaning to look at Chakra, now I will have to check out KaOS also just to see what they are about.
21 • Size of download image (by Jesse on 2014-05-27 13:19:35 GMT from Canada)
>> "the obsession to cram a live system or installer in to a cdrom ISO has also become obsolete."
You are assuming the type of media is the primary concern when dealing with image size. Many parts of the world still have slow Internet connections or caps on data downloads. In a region where it can take all day to download a CD-sized image or a single DVD will eat up half a person's bandwidth quota for the month, larger ISOs are not practical. This is why a lot of people prefer to download small (CD-sized) images and add software later.
Look at it from the other side, why download 4GB of data when you probably will not use most of the content on the DVD? For a lot of people it makes more sense to download a base installation and add required software later, skipping the items which are of no use (and would use up more precious bandwidth).
In short, the practice of producing small ISOs is not obsolete, you just happen to live in a place where you are lucky enough to enjoy high-speed, high-bandwidth Internet. Not everyone is so lucky and distributions should not punish people for their situation.
22 • @17 & 21 Distro Image Size (by Rev_Don on 2014-05-27 13:50:41 GMT from United States)
As Jesse stated, it isn't just about the media you put the ISO on, but the bandwidth necessary to download overly large images along with the waste involved with ISO's bloated with a lot of useless software.
But the media does still come into play. There are a lot of computers still out there and running well that do not support booting from USB and some that don't have DVD drives (or can even support them very well). There is a significant amount of users who can't afford to replace these old computers but need fairly up to date software to run on them, hence the need for CD size images is still highly relevant for a number of reasons.
Just because YOU don't see the need for them, doesn't mean they don't exist. I personally don't see the need for Unity or Gnome 3 or any number of the small niche distros, but there is a significant amount of users who do so I would never go so far as to suggest that they be discontinued. Only a fool would make a ridiculous statement like that.
23 • @17 (by RobertG on 2014-05-27 14:56:23 GMT from United States)
bluray is too expensive for the ordinary joe. At most I could see the average joe having a DVD-RW drive and a 4GB or 8GB USB2 flash drive.
24 • Jono Bacon (by Nick on 2014-05-27 16:07:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Working with the Ubuntu community has not just been a privilege, it has been a pleasure."
He was experiencing so much pleasure, that he decided to leave the Ubuntu community.
25 • 14.04 and wine (by fernbap on 2014-05-27 17:26:05 GMT from Portugal)
After trying both Mint 17 RC and Xubuntum and reporting that 2 old windows games stopped working on both, just tried Makulu just to check.
Both worked perfectly.
So, the problem is not with wine, the kernel or not even Debian. It lies entirely on the Ubuntu base (which is to be expected, Cannonical uses its time making patches so that Unity can work).
Anyway, either Clem manages to find out where the issue is, or Mint LTS will share this flaw with Ubuntu.
26 • @25 - mint problem (by twodogs on 2014-05-27 17:54:29 GMT from United States)
@25, Have you notified the Mint team about your problem? Maybe you could provide a log file, or the results of trying to run the game in a terminal so that they can try to fix this problem.
27 • Jono Bacon (by JJ on 2014-05-27 20:28:15 GMT from United States)
Maybe Jono's April Fool's Day "Quitting Ubuntu" Hangout was more than just humour?
For the "next Jono", Ubuntu should look to one of their own Engineering Managers - Alan Pope (Popey) [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AlanPope] {http://popey.com]. He does the Ubuntu UK webcast, among many other things. He is often the only "voice of sanity" on some well-known computer TV shows, and can hold his own in a debate when things get out of hand. He would seem to be a natural for this.
Popey for President!
28 • Fatdog (by VS on 2014-05-27 21:22:12 GMT from United States)
Fatdog64's been around for a long time, since 2008 I think. It's a fork of Puppy based on T2 and comes with LXDE. If the developer wants it listed on Distrowatch after such a long time, he must be serious about giving it a larger audience, and I recommend it for inclusion in the database.
Here's a mention of it in a review of Puppy I read some time back:
http://all-things-linux.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-appreciation-for-puppy.html
29 • 4MLinux and too many partitions (by Thomas Mueller on 2014-05-27 23:25:43 GMT from United States)
I've been planning a partition layout for a new 4 TB hard drive, and in estimating the number of partitions, I forgot about the swap partitions for FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux. OpenBSD is ruled out for lack of support for GPT and USB 3.0. So partitions will number in the teens.
I don't want an installation program messing with the rest of the disk: that includes installations on other partitions, and the boot selector, where I need to keep control. On an old computer, I had Linux Slackware 13.0 booting with LILO, and when I installed FreeBSD, the FreeBSD was willing to do nothing on the boot selector; I added FreeBSD partition/slice to LILO, and that worked.
Some other unrelated comments: "bluray is too expensive for the ordinary joe." : Now you can buy a new Blu-Ray drive/burner for around $70 US, my references being Tiger Direct and Newegg.
On the use of a 32-bit OS on a new computer, first thing that comes to mind is running MS-Windows programs from BSD or Linux with Wine. Wine64 is in its infancy as far as I can tell; wine32 is currently much more serviceable. I am told from NetBSD emailing lists that wine can run from i386 only, not amd64.
30 • RE #14 Ubuntu 14:04 (by Gee on 2014-05-28 00:51:41 GMT from United States)
I've also noticed the same issue upon upgrading to 14.04.
Also network conectivity issues, ignoring the ethernet driver and looking for noexistant wifi. Not alowing networking set up from the taskbar or having to resort to the command line to set up networking. Getting intermitant Avahi errors with older faceboook games and flash errors on older games.
I also made the mistake to upgrade a server and I could not get two erthernet cards to work on the same machine. It would ignore the one on the motherboard and swap it between eth0 and eth1 after I did reinstall the Realtek driver.
31 • denyhosts (by Richard Mockler on 2014-05-28 01:06:12 GMT from United States)
I am using the current version of Linux Mint Debian Edition (201403), and the repositories contain denyhosts for installation. The version is listed as: 2.6-10
32 • @29 (by greg on 2014-05-28 06:48:42 GMT from Slovenia)
you forgot abotu the blue-ray media prices. but what i wonder is why tape drives are so expencive?!
oh and Wine can run windows apps just fine on 64 bit OS. as well as other 32bit linux applications can run on 64bit OS (all one needs is a few extra libraries).
33 • @22 (by cykodrone on 2014-05-28 07:41:26 GMT from Canada)
Name calling is not necessary, you obviously didn't read my OP correctly, nobody said "discontinue".
34 • @20 (by jaws222 on 2014-05-28 13:10:01 GMT from United States)
I tried Chakra the other day and was disappointed. I had a tough time installing it and when I did get it installed pacman was broken. I never could get it fixed.
35 • Linux Mint and DenyHosts (by Jesse on 2014-05-28 13:49:57 GMT from Canada)
>> "I am using the current version of Linux Mint Debian Edition (201403), and the repositories contain denyhosts for installation. The version is listed as: 2.6-10"
That is odd since Linux Mint does not include a DenyHosts package for LMDE [1] and the DenyHosts package has been dropped from Debian for any release newer than Wheezy[2]. You might want to check your list of repositories because it sounds like you are pulling from Debian's Stable branch rather than Testing, which is the default for LMDE.
[1] http://packages.linuxmint.com/list.php?release=Debian
[2] https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/denyhosts
36 • @34 jaws222 & Jesse Smith (by DipTheBeak on 2014-05-29 03:21:55 GMT from United States)
@34 jaws222"I tried Chakra the other day and was disappointed. I had a tough time installing it and when I did get it installed pacman was broken. I never could get it fixed."
Just a recommendation, the new release of Antergos (Arch based) is very slick and awesome. It even installed on UEFI secure boot rig, without a hitch. Has a choice of desktop environment, during installation. On my desktop puter, Antergos flies to login screen, no need for boot splash, too fast. :) The GRUB2 boot screen graphic, is a nice touch, it is too bad more distros do not add this polish. Excellent choices available during the graphic installer.
For me, this Arch based distro, is a big WOW (not the game either ;))! Funny the Cnchi installer, is considered a beta, but appears very solid to me. Try and enjoy. :) http://antergos.com/antergos-2014-05-26-available/
@Jesse Smith Please do a review of this Arch based distro, thanks. Great review on KaOS (name sounds like a Get Smart bad guy). A big thanks for picking up the torch on DenyHosts.
Have a great week/end, all.
37 • Debian testing, Makulu (by fernbap on 2014-05-29 17:31:37 GMT from Portugal)
As i said before, i just reied Makulu for 2 reaons: to check if the current issues i have with windows apps is exclusive of the ubuntu base, which it is, and to check the current state o Debian Testing.
So, i got Makulu Xfce and installed Mate, Compiz and Emerald on it, besides wine and a couple of my favorite apps.
The performance is impressive. Fast and light, Ram usage with Mate, compiz and Emerlald with a lot of eye candy enabled, around 230 MB, which i find great, spacially comparing to XFCE. The CPU load was also light, around 9% (Single core AMD Athlon 64), which is less than most of the desktops with compositing enabled.
I would like to make a remaster with what i did to distriobute among friends, So, i'm looking for anything able to replace Remastersys, the awesome tool that is not being developed anymore. Can anyone help me on that?
Anyway, what i can say is that Debian is doing all right, and i'm looking forward to the next freeze.
38 • @37 RE: Remastersys (fork) (by :wq on 2014-05-29 19:35:49 GMT from United States)
It is with great reservation that I provide this link: http://system-imaging.blogspot.com/.
Beware of any grand claims you might encounter.
39 • #37 remaster (by anticapitalista on 2014-05-29 20:55:03 GMT from Greece)
You could use the snapshot app made by the Refracta team.
http://www.ibiblio.org/refracta/
40 • ISOs, Grand Claims (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2014-05-30 01:23:14 GMT from United States)
While plastic disc technology is aging, and small flash drives are often faster more portable, it would be premature to drop their support. That said, I suspect some distro reps cover laziness with provincial attitude when asked how to add a live/install ISO to a multi-boot setup.
Sometimes I wish for distro hype ratings ...
41 • CDs/DVDs (by Dave Postles on 2014-05-30 11:55:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd prefer not to have to use a usb when using LPS or TAILS.(although in the former case, it may be self-defeating using it anyway!)
42 • 32-bit Enterprise OS (by Caitlyn Martin on 2014-05-31 01:46:45 GMT from United States)
While I certainly understand Jesse's point about 32-bit being legacy hardware, there are still many use cases where 32-bit and enterprise quality software and OS are necessary. Many current Linux apps are still very light and can run very well on rather old hardware.
I've done a lot of support of government servers and they run them for about forever, as in until they serve no further use. Even retired, old servers are often repurposed and put back into service due to budget restrictions and/or long lead times to order new equipment under the required procedures for government procurement. This is especially true at the state level. That's one common use case.
Non-profits and small businesses often get by with older equipment as well, and in the case of non-profits it may even be donated second hand equipment that was no longer useful in it's former commercial enterprise home. Once again, a 32-bit OS and current software makes sense in cases like this.
My personal hope is that one of the clones (CentOS, Scientific Linux, Springdale Linux) will take Red Hat's 64-bit sources and create a 32-bit version. It isn't hard to do but it is time consuming.
43 • Image size for OS download (by Caitlyn Martin on 2014-05-31 01:54:27 GMT from United States)
In comment #21 Jesse Smith wrote:
" Many parts of the world still have slow Internet connections or caps on data downloads. In a region where it can take all day to download a CD-sized image or a single DVD will eat up half a person's bandwidth quota for the month, larger ISOs are not practical. This is why a lot of people prefer to download small (CD-sized) images and add software later."
Jesse nailed it here. In addition, running a consulting business does mean traveling now and again, though not quite as much as I used to. On the road I may be limited to mobile broadband, which means 4G or even 3G speeds. Most of the "unlimited" mobile broadband services in the U.S. are metered, meaning you get a fixed number of gigabytes of data and then they throttle your speed down if you don't pay and additional charge. Sometimes, if I want to look at a different distro or distro build on the road it sure is nice to have a small image as an option.
I've been testing Vector Linux 7.1 RC2 (and RC1 before that). Assuming the developers get all the bugs out this should be a very good and interesting release. (No, I'm not making that assumption since it really didn't happen with 7.0 for quite some time.) It comes as a single CD sized iso and certainly delivers a very functional system with a very decent application selection on a small image. I'd honestly like to see more distros doing this.
44 • Image size for OS download (by mandog on 2014-05-31 12:27:13 GMT from Peru)
> In the U.S. Department of Defense, the replacement cycles for deployed/fielded hardware can be so long and expensive that very old computers<
I don't think using the US government as a argument, Is a good Idea as they would ban Linux at a stroke as according to them Linux is mainly used by terrorists and illegal torrent down-loaders? Of course Apple/Ms users would never be any of those would they.
45 • ISO size (by Dave Postles on 2014-05-31 18:02:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
@44 The US Dept of Defense uses LPS (Lightweight Portable Security) - a Linux distro.
46 • @44 (by :wq on 2014-05-31 19:55:30 GMT from United States)
Linux usage is actually pretty pervasive at the US federal level. You are certain to find it in use in some capacity by every executive department and independent agency of the US government. While it seems the US government often goes out of its way to shoot itself in the foot (not to mention the feet of citizens, allies, etc), banning Linux won't be added to that tally.
47 • Linux Mint 17 (by cykodrone on 2014-05-31 20:53:34 GMT from Canada)
Perfect timing, have lots of end of month bandwidth cap left, downloading via torrent, I like to share and give their server a break at the same time.
48 • Mini or full, direct or torrent downloads (by gregzeng on 2014-06-01 02:02:41 GMT from Australia)
Pinguy offers all four download possibilities, in both 32 or 64 bit. Solves the bandwidth & slow download connections. Other distro publishers should try similar offerings.
Personally I'm not likely to use Pinguy, since I'm a KDE fanboy now.
49 • @48 kde (by Mac on 2014-06-01 03:11:58 GMT from United States)
Me too I am here with simplyMEPIS and realy like it. Have tried 2 other distro's this week based on debian. Both had single user password and that is a deal breaker for me.
Have fun Mack
50 • @13, 17 & 21 Distro Image Size (by HakunaMatata on 2014-06-01 10:48:07 GMT from Kenya)
"the obsession to cram a live system or installer into a cdrom ISO has also become obsolete."
I like in a part of the world where Internet access is both very expensive and very slow! Downloading single CD distros is generally the most feasible option.
@22: "Only a fool would make a ridiculous statement like that."
Let's keep it civil please!
51 • 32-bit systems (by theOldDog on 2014-06-01 14:08:28 GMT from United States)
Just to add to the comments on older 32-bit systems still being necessary, I'd like to point out that lab and research instruments often use older processors and systems, sometimes for many years after the initial release. These devices are not easily upgraded, so there's probably quite a few old computers in use, running fluorimeters, MRIs, spectroscopes, and the like.
Number of Comments: 51
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| Shells.com |
Your own personal Linux computer in the cloud, available on any device. Supported operating systems include Android, Debian, Fedora, KDE neon, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Manjaro and Ubuntu, ready in minutes.
Starting at US$4.95 per month, 7-day money-back guarantee
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| Random Distribution | 
StartCom Linux
StartCom Enterprise Linux, which was based on the Red Hat AS source code, was the ultimate solution for middle-size servers to large data centres. The current version supports the largest commodity-architecture servers with up to 16 CPUs and 64GB (on x86 systems) of main memory, Global File System - for highly scalable, high performance data sharing in multi-system configurations. Included in this distribution was a comprehensive collection of open source server applications like mail, file (SMB/NFS), DNS, web, FTP, and a complete desktop environment.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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