 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 562, 9 June 2014 |
Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It has been said that the one constant in this world is change. This week we take a look at projects which are embracing change, be it in the form of new people, new policies or new approaches to package management. We begin with a review of the GoboLinux distribution, a project which takes an unusual approach to file system structure and software management. In our News section this week we discuss the Gentoo Council's views on packaging and configuration. We also hear from Gentoo developer Brian Dolbec and his views on Gentoo and open source software. Last year Ubuntu began raising funds by way of donations and we link to a report on how that donation money is being spent. Fedora chose a new Project Leader, Matthew Miller, last week and we share Miller's initial thoughts on his new position. In our Tips and Tricks section we discuss command line tricks and link to a fun command line resource. As usual, we cover the distribution releases of the past week and look ahead to fun, new releases to come. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Introducing GoboLinux 015
 As you may remember from my review of NixOS, I appreciate projects which attempt to deliver alternative approaches to software management. There are problems inherent in any package management system and it is good to explore alternatives which may make life easier for either the people who package software or the end-users. One distribution which takes an unusual approach to delivering software is GoboLinux. As the project's website states, "GoboLinux is an alternative Linux distribution which redefines the entire file system hierarchy. In GoboLinux you don't need a package database because the file system is the database: each program resides in its own directory."
In essence, GoboLinux organizes software on the system differently than most Linux distributions. Software is stored in a directory hierarchy which divides software by name and by version. This allows users to locate and manage software using directories based on the package's name. New software versions can be installed alongside older versions of packages. Old versions of software we no longer want can be removed simply by deleting the program's directory. This means that, rather than having most of our executable files all collected together in the /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin directory while data files are scattered through /usr/share and configuration files reside in /etc, we might have a directory called /Programs/Firefox/28.0 or /Programs/Firefox/29.0. All of a program's configuration files, data and executables reside in these self-contained directories. On paper, at least, it makes the organization of the file system much cleaner.
The latest release of GoboLinux, version 015, includes some brief release notes and a list of available software packages. There is just one edition of GoboLinux. It is built for the 32-bit x86 architecture (with PAE support) and features the Enlightenment graphical user interface. Prior to trying GoboLinux I recommend reading the distribution's documentation as GoboLinux does a few things differently from most other Linux distributions. The download for GoboLinux is approximately 1.5 GB in size.
Booting from the GoboLinux media brings up a screen with text-based menus. Using these menus we are asked to select our preferred language from a list and choose our keyboard's layout. We are then presented with a text console where we are logged in as the user "gobo". Instructions on the screen tell us how to bring up a graphical user interface and how to launch the system installer. The graphical environment turns out to be the Enlightenment window manager. On the desktop are icons for running the GParted partition manager and the system installer. At the bottom of the screen we find an application menu, task switcher and system tray.
GoboLinux 015 - the graphical system installer
(full image size: 1.4MB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Opening the graphical system installer we are first shown a screen which lets us know we should partition our hard drive prior to going through the installation process. Assuming we have already partitioned our disk the installer asks us which partition we should use for GoboLinux and what file system we would like to use. Our file system options are limited to ext2, ext3 or ext4. We can choose to create a swap file within the GoboLinux partition if we wish. We are next asked whether we would like to perform a Base, Typical or Full installation. The Base set of packages appears to provide a text console interface only and requires 1 GB of hard disk space.
The Typical installation gives us a minimum graphical environment. The Full option installs all available packages from the GoboLinux media onto our hard drive and uses about 4 GB of space. I opted to perform the Full installation. We are next asked whether we want to install the GRUB 2 boot loader and, if so, where. The installer then walks us through choosing a hostname for our computer, selecting our keyboard's layout, selecting our time zone from a list and guarding the root account with a password. We can then add regular user accounts to the system, several accounts if we like. The installer then copies its files to the local drive and, when it is finished, we are asked to reboot the computer.
GoboLinux boots to a text console and presents us with a login prompt. We can get back to the Enlightenment graphical interface if we want by signing into our user account and running the "startx" command. At this point I had a running installation, the distribution seemed to be working okay and I had some desktop application to play with. My next step was to try to figure out how to install security updates and download additional software and that is when things started getting tricky. My first problem was I could not find a package manager in the application menu. Browsing through the website I had trouble finding documentation which related to package management, which struck me as odd since the distribution has a focus on alternative software management. Next I tried to access the user forum, but it was down (at the time of writing). I also tried the GoboLinux wiki and ran into a series of database errors.
Next I considered downloading packages directly from the project's mirrors, but most of the mirrors were off-line. I eventually found a Wikipedia entry which talked about the Compile program and how it is used to download and build third-party software on GoboLinux. I tried running the Compile program on a few packages. Typically Compile would fail to download the source code it needed or it would fail to locate a dependency and exit with a message telling me I should run InstallPackage instead. The InstallPackage program appears to handle pre-built binary software. However, each time I ran InstallPackage it failed to find the software I wanted. I tried running both utilities in an attempt to grab a variety of software including Inkscape, Java, Gnash, a few command-line shells and other desktop programs. The only item I successfully managed to download and install was the tcsh command-line shell, which Compile downloaded and built from source code. All other items I attempted to download failed at some point in the process.
GoboLinux 015 - the Enlightenment desktop and Firefox web browser
(full image size: 996kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
GoboLinux comes with a handful of desktop applications. We are given the Firefox web browser, the Epour bittorrent client, the Pidgin messaging software and the Econnman network manager. The VLC multimedia player is included for us along with the Audacious music player and the Rage video player. GoboLinux ships with multimedia codecs for playing most media formats. Flash is not included by default, though I did find an entry for the Gnash open source Flash player in the distribution's collection of build scripts. The installation of Gnash eventually failed. Digging into the application menu further we find the LibreOffice productivity suite, a PDF document viewer, the Htop process monitor and the Enlightenment File Manager. The distribution ships with the GNU Image Manipulation Program, the Mirage image viewer and the GParted partition manager. In the background GoboLinux runs on the Linux kernel, version 3.14. Typing in a command which is not available locally, but is in the repositories, will bring up instructions for acquiring the package using Compile or InstallPackage. Running either of these commands to install packages usually failed during my trial.
I tried running GoboLinux in two test environments, on a desktop machine and in a VirtualBox virtual environment. In both environments GoboLinux performed well. All of my desktop's hardware was properly detected and utilized, the distribution ran fairly quickly and the Enlightenment desktop was responsive. While sitting at the command line GoboLinux used approximately 32 MB of memory and, when logged into Enlightenment, the distribution required approximately 140 MB of RAM.
Conclusions
When considering GoboLinux I think it is important to divide the conversation into two parts, the design of the file system as a theory and the functionality of the package management tools in practice. Looking at the theory first, the idea of placing software into modular directories to make organization easier has been tried a number of times. The idea is appealing because it makes finding software and organizing the file system easier from a human point of view. This approach feels more tidy and makes directory structures easier to read.
However, to implement these alternative file systems we need to teach the computer to find and use resources and that is where the idea typically starts to break down. How does one tell the computer to find the executable files in the correct spot? Do we hack in symbolic links and, if so, how do we manage multiple versions of files? Do we add additional paths to our list of areas where executable files can be found? In both cases the package manager needs to know how to cleanly remove software we no longer need without orphaning remaining versions. Finally, how do we deal with legacy issues when older (or unpatched) software wants to use standard file system layouts? In a perfect world software would be flexible on the locations of files, but the reality is software often looks for files in standard locations.
GoboLinux 015 - the alternative file system layout
(full image size: 344kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
What the GoboLinux distribution has done is create a new file system layout that lives alongside the original. The original file system structure is filled with symbolic links to the new, modular locations. Then the standard file system is hidden from the end-user using a kernel module. The standard file system is still there, full of symbolic links, but we cannot see it by default. This means if something goes wrong and we need to access a file in the traditional file system we need to either have a good idea of where everything is located or we need to disable the kernel module which hides directories from us. What I took away from my time with GoboLinux is the developers have put forward an interesting concept, but to do so there are several layers of hacks in place which use (and hide) the traditional file system. Which leaves me wondering if we might be better off with less complexity and stick to the traditional file system layout.
The second aspect of GoboLinux, the practical side of package management, is basically broken. There are two tools I found for working with software, InstallPackage for dealing with pre-built binary files and Compile for building software from source code. The InstallPackage program failed on every bundle I attempted to download. This was especially frustrating when, after trying to run a program that was not yet installed, the system would prompt me to run "InstallPackage package-name". Following the instructions always resulted in the system telling me it could not find or install the package. Using the Compile utility to build software from source code rarely worked either, most packages failed to build due to missing dependencies or broken links to source code. The end result was that I was stuck using just the software which was provided in the installation image as the package management tools were rendered ineffective.
In the end, I appreciate the GoboLinux developers for trying something different. I always like to see someone come along and try to improve software management. I even appreciate trying to shake up the arcane Linux file system. However, GoboLinux, from a practical point of view, simply did not deliver an alternative file system or effective package management. Perhaps, down the line, the software management tools will improve and the collection of available packages will grow. For now, GoboLinux presents some interesting ideas, but not a practical implementation.
* * * * *
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) |
Gentoo shares developer interview and software packaging policy, Ubuntu reveals community funding, Fedora announces new project leader
 Each month the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter interviews a member of the project's development team and this month it was Brian Dolbec's turn. In the interview Dolbec discusses his background in Linux, his profession, his involvement in various projects within the Gentoo community and open source software he would like to see developed.
In other Gentoo news, the Gentoo Council recently discussed an interesting issue. When bugs like Heartbleed are discovered it is often found that exploiting the bug relies on the software being configured in a specific way to enable certain features. This raises the question of which features should be enabled by default in distribution packages. Disabling the heartbeat feature in OpenSSL, for example, would have protected the servers where the OpenSSL package was installed and the OpenSSH daemon enabled. The Gentoo Council decided the subject was too broad for a one-size-fits-all policy and encouraged package maintainers to stick to the default configuration provided by upstream projects.
* * * * *
 Though the Ubuntu distribution is free to download and use, the project does attempt to generate revenue via various methods. One of the methods Ubuntu uses to raise funds is accepting donations from people downloading installation images from their website. Some people have wondered how this money is spent and Michael Hall, a Canonical employee, addresses this in a blog post. "As part of our commitment to openness and transparency we said that we would publish a report highlighting both the amount of donations made to this category, and how and where that money was being used. Linked below is the first of those reports." The report can be viewed on Google Docs.
* * * * *
 In May we reported that Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron was stepping down from her position with the Red Hat sponsored community project. On June 3 eWeek announced a new Fedora Project Leader had been appointed. Matthew Miller is stepping into the leadership position and is aware he has a difficult job ahead. "As the FPL, you've got the responsibility, but no actual authority to tell anyone to do things,' Miller said. 'So you have to find people that have an interest and are aligned with the direction you want to go.'" Long time Fedora fans may recognize Miller's name, he is a regular contributor to Fedora Magazine and was a member of the Fedora Legacy project which extended the life cycle of early Fedora releases. Miller shared more thoughts about his new role in Fedora Magazine saying: "I'm proud to have been part of the Fedora community since the early days. I'm grateful to have been given the opportunity to work on Fedora as my full-time job for the past year and a half. And now, I'm excited to be stepping into a new place within the community as Fedora Project Leader. These are incredible times in computing and in free and open source software, and we have incredible things going on in Fedora to match -- the next years are full of opportunity and growth for the whole project and community, and I'm thrilled to be in a position to help."
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Command line tricks from climagic
It is not easy to convey useful information in 140 characters or less, which is why I usually do not place much interest in Twitter feeds. However, there is one topic for which Twitter is unusually suited and that is sharing cool command line tricks. The Twitter account climagic has been holding my attention recently by publishing useful or interesting command line tricks. Some of the ones I think are useful I would now like to share with you.
The first command line trick I would like to share involves finding a collection of songs and then playing that group of songs using the mplayer multimedia player. Let's say we have a collection of music files and folders under our Music directory. The music files are not organized in any meaningful way, but we know the file names include the name of the artist and song. Using this information we can use the find command to locate all songs by The Pretty Reckless. We use the find command to create a playlist file, called mylist in the example below. We then launch the mplayer command and tell it to play all of the music files in our newly created playlist. Putting all of that together gives us the following command:
find ~/Music -iname "*the*pretty*reckless*" -type f > mylist ; mplayer -playlist mylist
Have you ever plugged a USB thumb drive into your computer and wanted to either mount it or copy an image to the drive using the dd command? It is handy to be able to quickly find the name of the newly attached device without wading through the dmesg log entries. There are two commands which will quickly show us the names of all attached storage devices, including hard drives, optical drives and USB devices. Running either lsblk or lsscsi will display a short list of available storage devices and their device names.
The printf command can be very helpful when it comes to displaying information. It can be used in many situations, but one handy feature of printf is its ability to give us the character code for a particular symbol. Knowing the proper character code for a symbol can be useful when writing a program or creating a web page. Here we get the character code for the * symbol:
printf '%d\n' "'*'"
42
Here is another example where we get the character code of an accented é:
printf "%d\n", "'é'"
233
Sometimes it is useful to be able to use a form of shorthand for things we have already typed. Linux shells have all sorts of short-cuts for accessing previous commands and arguments. One of the more useful command line short-cuts is the symbol for accessing the last parameter of the previous command. The $_ symbol will always give us the last parameter of the last command run. For example, if we run:
mkdir -p /tmp/a/b/c
then the $_ symbol can be thought to hold the value /tmp/a/b/c. In the following example we create a new directory and then move into the new directory in one command:
mkdir -p ~/Web/DWW/20140609 ; cd $_
Earlier I mentioned the dd command can be used to transfer an image from our hard drive to a USB thumb drive. This is something I do on a regular basis in order to test distribution releases. One problem I have with the dd command is that it does not display progress information. When waiting for a large file to transfer it is nice to be able to see regular status updates. The following command shows us the status of all dd jobs in progress:
killall -USR1 dd
We can take this a step further and see updated progress reports every few seconds by using the watch command:
watch killall -USR1 dd
The above command displays status updates every few seconds until we press CTRL-C.
To get more fun command line tricks you can follow climagic on Twitter.
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| Released Last Week |
Tango Studio 2.2
Tango Studio is a Debian-based Linux distribution featuring an extensive collection of free and open-source software for sound, video and graphics editing and creation. A new stable version was released earlier today: "Six months after the release of the first version, we are pleased to announce the release of Tango Studio version 2.2. This new version has been updated to Wheezy 7.5 and it contains some new features and bug fixes, as well as an update of the best open-source applications available for sound creation. Users of 2.1-rc1 do not need to re-install, the distribution can be updated via Synaptic or apt-get. Changes: add quick search filter for Synaptic; add ntpdate to make computer clocks accurate; add information about audio and video files via the properties of Caja; fix to open shell script with Pluma...." Read the full release announcement for a full changelog.
Tango Studio 2.2 - a Debian-based multimedia distribution
(full image size: 319kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
SparkyLinux 3.4 "LXDE", "E18", "Razor-qt"
Paweł Pijanowski has announced the release of SparkyLinux 3.4 "LXDE", "E18" and "Razor-qt" editions, a set of Debian-based distributions with a choice of three lightweight desktop interfaces: "SparkyLinux 3.4 'Annagerman' LXDE, Razor-qt and Enlightenment 18 is out. The new ISO images of SparkyLinux 3.4 provide tons of updates, changes and system improvements, such as: Linux kernel 3.14; all packages upgraded from Debian's 'testing' repositories as of 2014-05-31; LXDE 0.5.5; Openbox 3.5.2; Razor-qt 0.5.2; Enlightenment has been updated up to version 18 (0.18.2/0.18.5); support for installation on machines with EFI; systemd is the default init system now; Sparky Center – our system control center for LXDE desktop has been rebuilt, added tabs for every option and upgraded to version 0.2.1...." See the release announcement for more details and screenshots.
SparkyLinux 3.4 - live LXDE interface
(full image size: 1.2MB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Alpine Linux 3.0.0
Natanael Copa has announced the release of Alpine Linux 3.0.0, a security-oriented distribution designed primarily for servers: "We are pleased to announce Alpine Linux 3.0.0, the first release in the 3.0 stable series. This is the first release with musl libc instead of uClibc and is not ABI compatible with earlier versions, so special care needs to be taken when upgrading. Since v2.7, among the various bug fixes, several packages have been upgraded: Linux kernel based on 3.14.5, LXC 1.0.3, QEMU 2.0.0, Asterisk 12.3.0, OpenSSH 6.6p1, OpenJDK 7, Varnish 4.0.0. Some of the desktop applications that got upgraded and are available for 3.0: X.Org Server 1.15.1, Firefox 29.0.1, Gnumeric 1.12.8, Evince 3.12, VLC 2.1.4, Inkscape 0.48.4, GIMP 2.8.10. A port for ARM has been created, but it is still experimental and not included in release builds." Here is the full release announcement.
Dragonfly BSD 3.8.0
Justin Sherrill has announced the release of DragonFly BSD 3.8.0, a new version of the UNIX-like operating system created in 2003 by Matthew Dillon as a fork of FreeBSD 4.8. This will be the last release supporting the i386 architecture. From the release announcement: "DragonFly release 3.8. Big-ticket items: dynamic binaries in the root file system; DragonFly binaries in /bin and /sbin are now dynamic, which makes it possible to use current identification and authentication technologies such as PAM and NSS to manage user accounts; some libraries have been moved to /lib to support this; USB4BSD is now default in DragonFly, USB3 devices are supported, though some network devices may not be recognized; the drm/i915 driver had originally been ported from FreeBSD, an ongoing synchronization work with the version present in the Linux 3.8 branch is now going on."
Robolinux 7.5.3
John Martinson has announced the release of Robolinux 7.5.3, an updated version of the project's Debian-based distribution featuring a pre-configured VirtualBox for running Windows as a "guest" operating system: "Announcing global private internet access for all of your Internet devices. Protect your privacy and say good-bye to the NSA, also stops ISP torrent throttling. Now you can protect your PC, laptop, phone, tablet, TV and gaming console too. In fact anything you own that is connected to the Internet can now be protected with just one VPN account. The Robolinux VPN is fully integrated to a global private Internet access provider and takes less than 30 seconds to set up. We added Lucky Backup. The 64-bit edition has a new kernel from Debian upstream; Robolinux has also released an updates repository so users no longer need to reinstall Robolinux when new versions come out." The announcement is available on the project's SourceForge page.
Superb Mini Server 2.0.7
A new version of Superb Mini Server (SMS), a Slackware-based distribution designed for servers, was released yesterday: "Superb Mini Server version 2.0.7 released (Linux kernel 3.10.41). After almost 8 months we have a new release with LTS 3.10.41 linux kernel, many server upgrades and security fixes, including OpenSSL 1.0.1h. The main reason for the delay, was four hard disk failures. Although I couldn't prepare a release, updates were right on time, regarding security and regular packages updates, so those who track the 'Current' tree will have little to upgrade. For this release we had a dilemma for our web server, to either switch to PHP 5.4 or stay with PHP 5.3. We decided to stay with 5.3 for now, but there is a 'php54' package in extra, built for httpd 2.2.27, if someone wants to upgrade their PHP package, but beware to remove php package first." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and a full changelog.
LinuxBBQ Cream
Julius Hader has announced the release of LinuxBBQ Cream, a small Debian-based distribution that offers a choice of 76(!) window managers: "LinuxBBQ is proud to announce the immediate availability of 'Cream', an installable live session that features no less than 76 window managers, untouched and vanilla from the developers' sources. Cream is an easy and quick way to test window managers, even those obscure ones that have never been featured in other Linux distributions before. We made sure to create a uniform look and feel, while staying on the light side in resource usage. Cream runs smoothly on any IBM-compatible PC with at least 256 MB of RAM. The live ISO image weighs in at 478 MB, so it can be put on a small USB stick or on CD. As an extra, there are framebuffer, tmux and TTY sessions included, as well as the Enlightenment desktop environment." Here is the brief release announcement.
LinuxBBQ Cream - a distribution showcasing 76 window managers
(full image size: 810kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Wifislax 4.9
Wifislax 4.9 has been released. Wifislax is Slackware-based live CD with an extensive collection of tools for performing wireless connection analyses and related security tests, although it can equally serve as a general-purpose desktop Linux distribution with a choice of KDE or Xfce desktops. This is a release that corrects the recent security issues with OpenSSL, as well as a bug in Linux kernel that could cause memory overflow. It includes a patched version 3.13.11 of the Linux kernel and the application set has been synchronised with Slackware's "Current" tree. There have been no changes on the desktop front where KDE remains at version 4.10.5 and Xfce on 4.10.2. Some of the package updates include OpenSSL 1.0.1h, GCC 4.8.3, Hydra 8.0, Crunch 3.6, FFmpeg 2.2.2, Firefox 29.0.1 and Wireshark 1.10.7. Read the rest of the release announcement (in Spanish only, even though the distribution also supports English) for further information and a detailed changelog.
Wifislax 4.9 - a Slackware-based security distribution
(full image size: 1.2MB, 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
- Black GNOME Linux. Black GNOME Linux is a distribution for beta testers. The project combines Ubuntu's 14.10 software branch, GNOME 3.10.4 and the latest release of the Linux kernel.
- VyOS. VyOS is a community fork of Vyatta, a Linux-based network operating system that provides software-based network routing, firewall, and VPN functionality.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 16 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Batocera.linux
Batocera.linux is a minimal distribution dedicated to running retrogaming software. The distribution is able to run on most desktop computers, laptops and several single-board computers, including the Raspberry Pi. batocera.linux can be run from a USB thumb drive or SD card, allowing it to be transferred between computers. batocera.linux is based on RecalboxOS.
Status: Active
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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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