 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 577, 22 September 2014 |
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Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The only constant in this world is change. This paradoxical wisdom is especially true in the world of open source software where things are constantly evolving. Projects grow, developers experiment with new ideas and new designs become available. This week we discuss projects going through important changes and trying new approaches. We begin with a review of the SymphonyOS distribution, a project based on Ubuntu which features an unusual desktop environment. In the news last week there was talk of several changes. The FreeBSD project dropped support for its legacy package manager, choosing to focus support on pkg, the MINIX developers pushed out a new release that runs on ARM-based hobbyist hardware, Fedora confirmed they are experimenting with multiple product lines and the openSUSE project addressed fears in the wake of their parent company's merger. Also in this edition of DistroWatch Weekly we share how to move running programs between terminal sessions, cover the releases from the last week and look ahead to fun new developments to come. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (31MB) and MP3 (36MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of SymphonyOS 14.1
 I wanted to try something experimental this week and the SymphonyOS project provided just the unusual flavour I was looking for. "The SymphonyOS Project began in 2004 as an experiment in web technologies in the desktop space and usability. Now, the project is reborn and we are again pushing the boundaries of web-desktop integration and usability." This sounded interesting. Over the past few years several desktop environments have changed direction, responding to different screen sizes, mobile-style interfaces and touch screen technology. I was curious to see what the SymphonyOS developers had created.
What I found while looking around the distribution's website is that SymphonyOS is based on Ubuntu 14.04 and the project's unique desktop environment runs with the help of the F Virtual Window Manager (FVWM). SymphonyOS 14.1 is technically considered a development release and the project's team warns the distribution may have rough edges. So warned I downloaded SymphonyOS which is available in just one build, for the 32-bit x86 hardware architecture. The download is approximately 880 MB in size.
Booting from the SymphonyOS media we are shown a boot menu where we can choose to either try the distribution's live desktop environment or launch the project's system installer. Booting from the live media brings us to a login screen which has a bright red background that I suspect is a close-up image of a strawberry. From this screen we can sign into either a guest account or an account with the user name "symphony". As it turns out the password to sign into the "symphony" account is also "symphony". The guest account requires no password. Once we get signed in we find the desktop is decorated with the same strawberry background. The desktop environment has two panels, located at the top and bottom of the screen. The top panel acts as a location for window controls (more on that in a bit) and the bottom panel provides the interface's task switcher.
In the four corners of the screen there are buttons for opening full-screen menus. The button in the upper-left corner of the screen opens the distribution's configuration menu where we can configure the network, search for third-party hardware drivers, configure user accounts and perform other system administration tasks. In the bottom-left corner we find the full screen application menu. The upper-right corner of the screen features a button that opens the distribution's file manager. The button in the lower-right corner of the display brings up a menu where we can logout, reboot the computer or shutdown the system. While playing with the live environment I found most applications and configuration utilities would open and run, but for some reason the system installer would not launch from the live desktop. To get around this I rebooted the computer and took the Install option from the boot menu.
SymphonyOS 14.1 - the default desktop
(full image size: 1,032kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Taking the Install option brought up what appears to be GNOME 3's fallback desktop environment. A short time later the graphical system installer appeared. Symphony's system installer is similar to Ubuntu's installer with a few small differences. The first screen asks us to select our preferred language from a list and we are offered a chance to read the project's release notes. The next screen asks if we would care to download software updates during the installation process and whether we would like to install third-party multimedia support. The first time I ran the installer I did try to opt-in to downloading third-party codecs and this caused the installer to lock-up. I had to reboot the computer and start the installation process over. This time I decided not to download updates or install any extras and simply proceeded to the next screen where we tackle disk partitioning.
The installer will offer to automatically divide up the hard disk for us or we can manually partition the drive. The manual partition editor is quite simple to use and supports a wide range of file systems, including ext2, ext3, ext4, JFS, XFS and Btrfs. I opted to use the advanced Btr file system. Once the drive has been partitioned to our liking we can choose where to install the project's boot loader. The following screens ask us to confirm our time zone and our keyboard's layout. When we install Ubuntu the system installer asks us to create a user account for ourselves, Symphony's installer does not do this. We skip account creation and instead the installer moves straight on to copying its files to our local disk and then we are prompted to reboot the computer.
SymphonyOS boots to the strawberry-themed login screen where we can, once again, login with the "symphony" account or sign in as a guest. Playing with the default desktop environment I soon discovered a few interesting characteristics of SymphonyOS' unique interface. One is that all new windows open in full screen mode. There does not appear to be any way of changing this behaviour, windows are either minimized or maximized, I did not find any way to re-size open windows. I suspect this behaviour is designed to reflect the interfaces of mobile devices, but it feels wildly out of place on a desktop machine. The maximized by default behaviour is specially awkward when dealing with applications which usually have relatively small windows, such as the update manager application or a screen shot application. The way SymphonyOS handles application dialog boxes posed a problem too as each small window would be forced to stretch to fill the display. This made using some applications, such as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, virtually impossible unless the application supported a single-window mode. I also found that SymphonyOS made it impossible to place windows side-by-side to compare content.
SymphonyOS 14.1 - the settings menu
(full image size: 839kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Problems with SymphonyOS continued when I tried to update software packages on the system. There is an application available in the Settings menu which will check for updated packages and display them for us. However, when I opted to download the available updates the software updater crashed. The update manager crashed each time I tried to use it during the week. I ran into a similar problem when I tried to run the Synaptic graphical package manager. The launcher for Synaptic did not work, clicking on it produced no results. I was able to drop to a command line and launch Synaptic manually which gave me full access to the classic package manager. Using Synaptic I was able to download available software updates and install new packages. For people who prefer working from the command line, SymphonyOS users can use APT to manage software packages. Looking at the repositories SymphonyOS connects to we find almost all packages come from the Ubuntu repositories. There is an addition personal package archive for SymphonyOS-specific items.
Speaking of software, let's look at some of the items SymphonyOS ships with. The distribution presents us with the Firefox web browser, a document viewer, the Transmission bittorrent client and an image viewer. We are given an archive manager, the Xfburn disc burning software, the Leafpad text editor and a virtual calculator. There are several tools for changing the look and feel of the desktop, an account manager and a printer configuration application. The Network Manager software is available to help us get on-line and the GNU Compiler Collection is available too. In the background I found the Linux kernel, version 3.13. As I could not install third-party multimedia support at install time my installation of the distribution did not include Flash support or popular media codecs. In fact, no multimedia applications were available by default, though media support could be downloaded via the package manager.
SymphonyOS 14.1 - checking for software updates
(full image size: 38kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Perhaps one of the bigger annoyances I ran into while using SymphonyOS was that configuration applications did not launch with (nor prompt for) administrative access. This meant running the Users & Groups manager from the Settings menu would allow me to see existing user accounts, but I could not create, remove or edit accounts. I suspect this may have been why the update manager failed to work properly too as it may not have had administrative rights. Other programs failed to launch, possibly due to the default desktop environment. For example, the Desktop Preferences configuration tool would not launch and merely displayed an error saying the "Desktop manager is not active". Likewise there was an application present labelled "Openbox Configuration Manager" and this application refused to run, correctly pointing out that Openbox was not installed.
I tried running SymphonyOS on a desktop machine and in a virtual machine supplied by VirtualBox. In both environments SymphonyOS ran without any hardware related problems. The distribution booted quickly, sound and networking worked out of the box and my screen was set to its maximum resolution. The distribution generally required 160MB of RAM to get logged into the desktop. During my trial the distribution was stable and I ran into no system crashes.
SymphonyOS 14.1 - running the Firefox web browser
(full image size: 43kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusions
Right up front I want to acknowledge SymphonyOS is a distribution in development. The release I was using came with a warning letting me know some features wouldn't work properly and so I was not expecting perfection. For this reason I was willing to generally overlook certain issues. For example, I was willing to give a pass to some configuration utilities not working when launched from the graphical user interface and I, personally, don't mind dropping to the command line to perform some tasks. Many of the little annoyances I ran into during my time with SymphonyOS appear to stem from programs not receiving administrative rights before they run and I suspect this will be easily fixed as the distribution matures.
Putting aside these little bugs and quirks though I still found myself scratching my head at some of the design decisions which have gone into Symphony. As an example, SymphonyOS is based on Ubuntu and uses Ubuntu's system installer. Yet SymphonyOS does not allow us to create a user account for ourselves at install time the way Ubuntu does. We are stuck using the default "symphony" account unless we are willing to open a command line and edit our account or create a new account for ourselves. Another choice I found odd was the way all windows, including dialog boxes, are maximized with no obvious way to re-size them. I realize that some users are comfortable with running many of their applications in full screen mode, but having only one application window open at a time strikes me as a very odd restriction for a desktop operating system. I suspect Symphony's developers are trying to make their desktop interface familiar to users of mobile devices, but desktop computing becomes quite cumbersome when only one window can be accessed at a time.
There were aspects of Symphony's interface I appreciated. For instance, the way the four corners of the desktop acted as buttons to access different features was pleasant for me to use. I like that documents, settings and application where physically separate and I felt this approach was more natural to me than putting documents, programs and settings all in one place. I also liked how light the distribution's interface was on resources. SymphonyOS requires very little RAM and uses virtually no processing power. The desktop loads very quickly and mostly stays out of the way, which meant I could focus on work without distractions.
One aspect of the distribution I found odd was that there did not appear to be any web apps available in the default installation. The project's summary mentioned "pushing the boundaries of web-desktop integration", but I did not encounter any web apps during my time with the distribution. In fact, I did not find any aspect of the distribution that married web technology with the desktop environment.
In the end, I feel the SymphonyOS project has a number of bugs to tackle and some design features that could be improved upon. The project is under development and I suspect many of the issues I ran into will get sorted out in the coming months. I am hoping the SymphonyOS team will be able to improve their desktop's window management without losing the impressive performance they have managed to achieve.
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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) |
FreeBSD drops support for legacy package manager, MINIX gains ARM support, Fedora to test three-product releases and openSUSE unaffected by Attachmate Group merger
 There have been some interesting developments in the FreeBSD community lately. One is that the FreeBSD operating system has finished transitioning from the legacy pkg_add package manager to the pkg package manager. As the FreeBSDish blog reports: "The ports tree has been modified to only support pkg as package management system for all supported versions of FreeBSD. If you were still using pkg_install (pkg_* tools) you will have to upgrade your system." The blog goes on to explain how to transition an existing installation of FreeBSD from the old package management tools to the new one.
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 The MINIX operating system is often seen as the project which inspired Linus Torvalds to create the Linux kernel, but MINIX has a legacy and direction of its own. The latest release of MINIX, version 3.3.0, included some interesting new features. One key feature of the new release is close compatibility with NetBSD's userland tools. This means MINIX users will be able to install and run most software compatible with NetBSD. The latest version of MINIX also introduces ARM architecture support and is confirmed to work on a number of hobbyist ARM boards, including the BeagleBone White, and BeagleBone Black.
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 The Fedora team plans to unveil a Alpha test release of Fedora 21 this week. Among the changes we can look forward to is the introduction to the idea of Fedora as three separate products: "The Fedora 21 Alpha will be the first test release of the new 3 product Fedora.next structure that introduces Fedora Workstation, Fedora Cloud and Fedora Server." Testers trying out the Alpha release will be able to experiment with new monitoring tools, a minimal kernel for virtualized environments, the latest build of the GNOME desktop and several other features.
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 People in the openSUSE community may have been concerned about the project's future when it was announced SUSE's parent company, Attachmate Group, would be merging with Micro Focus. However, SUSE's President, Nils Brauckmann, contacted the openSUSE Board to assure them business would continue as usual. Brauckmann writes: "There are no changes planned for the SUSE business structure and leadership. There is no need for any action by the openSUSE Project as a result of this announcement." This is good news for the developers and users of openSUSE. A new release of openSUSE, version 13.2, is planned for November 2014.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
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Moving running programs to different terminals
Anyone who works on Linux distributions remotely has probably run into a situation where we have started running a program and then realized that the program will take a long time to finish. Now we cannot logout or it will terminate the process we started. Or perhaps we were working on a computer, started a process and then walked away. Now we are signing in remotely and want to see what our process is doing. What is it outputting, how far along is its text-based progress bar?
Normally, people who do a lot of remote work on Linux machines run long-lasting processes using the screen utility. The screen program is a great way to keep processes running when we logout and screen makes it easy to check up on running processes. That is assuming, of course, that we remembered to use screen when we began working. But what if we lapsed and now we are running a process without screen? We want to either hijack a process and get it running in our current terminal or we want to move a running process into a screen session for added flexibility. What can we do?
There is a command for Linux distributions which addresses this specific and (in my case) frequent scenario. The command is called reptyr. The reptyr command accepts the process identification number of a running program and transfers that program out of its current terminal session and into our current shell. Let's take a look at reptyr in action. In the following example we have logged into a remote server and started a download using the wget command:
wget http://myfavouritedistro.com/downloads/latest-release.iso
Now that the download has started, I realize I want to logout and go do something else. What can I do? First, I open new connection to the server, creating a new terminal window. Now I have a shell on the same server. I run the screen command to create a shell session I can leave running while I'm logged out:
screen
Next, I need to get the process ID of the running wget job. I run the pgrep command and it gives me back the process ID of wget:
pgrep wget
32430
Now that I have the process number of the running job I can grab the wget process and transfer it into my screen session:
reptyr 32430
This should cause the wget process to appear in my screen session. The wget job and its progress will no longer appear in the original terminal where it was first launched. I can now disconnect my screen session by tapping CTRL-A and the D key and logout of both terminal sessions. The wget process will continue running while I go do other things.
On some Linux systems the ptrace functionality reptyr uses to transfer processes is locked down for security reasons. If you happen to be running a Linux box with ptrace locked down you can relax access to the function by running:
sysctl sys.kernel.yama.ptrace_scope=0
On Ubuntu and related distributions the ptrace feature is locked down by default. To give us access to ptrace and thereby enabling reptyr we can edit the text file /etc/sysctl.d/10-ptrace.conf and change the last line of the file to read:
kernel.yama.ptrace_scope = 0
I find the reptyr program is very helpful on occasions when I have forgotten to run screen before a long-running process or if I want to check on a job I originally started at the office, but now want to examine from home. It is a handy way to move processes across terminals, taking our work to where we want it.
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| Released Last Week |
OpenMediaVault 1.0
Volker Theile has announced the release of OpenMediaVault 1.0, a major new release of the specialist Debian-based distribution for network-attached storage (NAS): "Today we are happy to release OpenMediaVault version 1.0 (Kralizec). The main features at a glance: OMV 1.0 is based on Debian 7 'Wheezy'; better support for weaker systems (i.e. Raspberry Pi, Cubieboard, Cubox); nginx (instead of Apache 2) for the WebGUI; dashboard with support for widgets; systems can be put into standby mode; improved infrastructure for plug-ins. Excerpt from the changelog: the list of updates and plugins are indexed, that is, the search for new updates or plugins will not be launched each time when the user invokes the WebGUI to; file systems on non-rotating drives are with the mount option 'discard' hooked (ext3, ext4, Btrfs, VFAT, JFS, XFS); infrastructure improvements for plugins...." Continue to the release announcement for the rest of the changelog.
Proxmox 3.3 "Virtual Environment"
Martin Maurer has announced the release of Proxmox 3.3 "Virtual Environment" edition, a Debian-based distribution providing an open-source virtualization management solution for servers: "Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, developer of the open-source server virtualization solution Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE), today released version 3.3. The series of new features focus on security and include the Proxmox VE Firewall and two-factor authentication. A HTML5 console, the ZFS storage plugin and the Proxmox VE Mobile touch interface extend the range of use. Many package updates are included in the release. The highlight of the new release is the Proxmox VE Firewall. It has a distributed nature and is designed to protect the whole IT infrastructure. Completely integrated into the web-GUI and the cluster stack, it allows the user to setup firewall rules for all hosts, the cluster, virtual machines and containers." Read the press release and see the more technical release notes for further information.
Raspbian 2014-09-09
Eben Upton has announced the availability of an updated release of Raspbian, a Debian-based distribution designed for the Raspberry Pi single-board mini-computer: "If you head over to the downloads page, you’ll find new versions of our Raspbian image and NOOBS installer. Alongside the usual firmware and kernel improvements, major changes to the Raspbian image include: Java updated to JDK 8; Mathematica updated to version 10; Sonic Pi updated to version 2; Minecraft Pi pre-installed. Following its release last week, our port of Epiphany has replaced Midori as the default browser, bringing with it hardware-accelerated video support and better standards compliance. Our Raspbian image now includes driver support for the BCM43143 802.11n WiFi chip." Here is the complete release announcement.
MINIX 3.3.0
Andy Tanenbaum has announced the release of MINIX 3.3.0, a major new version of the UNIX-like operating system based on a microkernel architecture - now also with support for the ARM processor: "We are pleased to present the MINIX 3.3.0 stable release. The major new features and improvements of this release include: the first release with ARM support, three Beagle targets are supported; experimental USB support for the Beaglebones (hubs and mass storage); cross-compiling for both ARM and x86 - the buildsystem is very portable; big source code cleanup - cleaner C types in messages, improved NetBSD compatibility, all MINIX-specific code moved to a top-level minix/ folder; updated packages overall - a big set is built now; and they are dynamically linked now; improved driver modularity...." Here is the brief release announcement, with a longer list of new features and improvements available in the release notes.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11
Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.11, the final update in the distribution's 5.x branch: "We are pleased to announce the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11, the final minor release of the mature Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform. In addition to security and stability enhancements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 provides additional updates to subscription management, debugging capabilities, and more, including: new storage drivers - updates that provide customers with the benefits of some of the latest storage adapters from Red Hat hardware partners; enhancements to Red Hat Access Support's debugging capabilities - Red Hat Access Support makes it easier for customers to manage, diagnose, and engage with Red Hat directly through a console within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5; improvements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests running on VMWare ESXi...." See the release announcement and release notes for more information.
Clonezilla Live 2.2.4-12
Steven Shiau has released a new stable version of Clonezilla Live, a Debian-based specialist live CD designed for disk cloning and backup tasks: "This release of Clonezilla live (2.2.4-12) 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 2014-09-15; Linux kernel has updated to 3.16.2; the Partclone package has been updated to 0.2.73 with new support for f2fs and updated exfat lib; drbl has been updated to 2.9.2; Clonezilla has been updated to 3.10.33; syslinux has been updated to 6.03-pre20; added f2fs-tools, iw, davfs2, fstransform and rfkill; Turkish language files have been added. Bug fixes: the vmwgfx.enable_fbdev=1 instead of vmwgfx.enable_fbdev=no is used in boot parameters; now we use vesafb instead of uvesafb in both Debian-based and Ubuntu-based Clonezilla Live." Here is the brief release announcement.
KNOPPIX 7.4.1
Klaus Knopper has released KNOPPIX 7.4.1, a bug-fix update of the project's Debian-based live CD/DVD that provides the LXDE (default), GNOME 3.12 and KDE 4.13.3 desktops, as well as a separate "ADRIANE" edition designed for visually impaired users: "Version 7.4.1 of KNOPPIX is based on the usual picks from Debian "Wheezy" and newer desktop packages from Debian "testing" and Debian "unstable". It uses Linux kernel 3.16.2 and X.Org 7.7 (Core 1.16.0) for supporting current computer hardware. Bug fixes: transparency problem (invisible mouse pointer) when using the 'write on screen' or 'fullscreen zoom' plugin fixed; stabilized speech dispatcher 0.8 for ADRIANE; added boot option "knoppix mkimage" for auto-creating writable overlay on flash-knoppix-installed USB flash disk...." Read the release notes for a full list of changes and package updates.
Webconverger 26.0
Kai Hendry has announced the release of Webconverger 26.0, a new update of the specialist distribution designed for web-only computers - now with Firefox 32.0: "Webconverger 26 release. Highlights of this 26.0 signed and tagged snapshot: revised boot menu, helping you get started with Neon, our web signage product; Firefox 32.0; basic proxy authentication - a customer wanted this to fit into their complex Windows deployment, so now you have it too; tab right click menu removed to make user interface simpler; bug fixes to the print button and the job scheduler API (cron=); the usual stable security updates and Adobe Flash, with an additional font to make Flash video text render correctly. Please ask your web developers to switch to HTML video. If you host your video on YouTube, you can make embeds use HTML5 with a html5=1 argument." Read the rest of the release announcement to learn about a known issue and the project's upcoming plans.
Window Maker Live 0.95.6-1
Paul Seelig has announced the release of Window Maker Live 0.95.6-1, a Debian-based Linux distribution featuring the latest version of the Window Maker window manager: "ISO images of Window Maker Live 0.95.6-1 for both amd64 and i386 are now available from for immediate download. What is new since the last release? Updated to the latest version 0.95.6 of the Window Maker window manager; this release is still built on top of Debian's stable release, but contains all updates and security fixes accumulated up until the date this final release version was built; the system now uses the much more current backported kernel 3.14.15 version; a fully functional virtualization setup based on qemu, KVM, libvirt, and the user friendly virt-manager desktop application is included; the included Firefox 32.0.1 features the new Australis GUI design...." See the rest of the README file and also the changelog for a complete list of updates and new features.
Window Maker Live 0.95.6-1 - a Debian-based distribution featuring the latest Window Maker
(full image size: 108kB, 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 database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- OmniOS. OmniOS is a distribution of the Illumos operating system created by OmniTI.
- AWbian. AWbian is a Debian-based distribution that provides users with the AWesome window manager and system administration utilities.
- Winspee OS. Winspee is a Linux distribution designed to be used as an educational tool for people who want to learn about programming and operating systems.
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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, 29 September 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 • SymphonyOS, fedora .. (by musty on 2014-09-22 09:40:38 GMT from France)
Hi. Nice to see symphony back in town but it not as good as it was before...
I cant wait no more to test the new Fedora and see if separating workstation from server will speed things off.
thank you for all the reviews you bring us.
ps: can you test some linux-tablet, (if they exist) ?
2 • openSUSE scare (by cykodrone on 2014-09-22 15:26:11 GMT from Canada)
The perils of being corporate backed, house of cards, meet pulled rug. Part of the reason why I stick with Debian.
Peace out.
3 • great tip on reptty (by oringo on 2014-09-22 15:31:13 GMT from United States)
I've always wanted to do this but thought it was not possible. I guess nothing is impossible with an open system. Question, in other guides that I've found through googling, the recommendation is to first background the task, disown it from shell, then reptty in another shell. Is the disowning processing unnecessary?
4 • reptyr (by Jesse on 2014-09-22 16:05:07 GMT from Canada)
@3: No, there is no need to stop a running task before moving it to another terminal. There is no reason for you to background it or disown the running process. All you need to do is open a new terminal and run "reptyr" and the command does all the work.
5 • Debian is just as evil, lol. (by Garon on 2014-09-22 16:09:39 GMT from United States)
@cykodrone,
Debian has plenty of corporate sponsors. Without this corporate sponsorship, besides the many volunteers working on Debian it would not, could not, exist in its present state. By the way, Debian calls them "Partners," and not sponsors but they are there giving support to Debian, and there is nothing wrong with that.
6 • tmux is the new black (by Scott Dowdle on 2014-09-22 16:53:21 GMT from United States)
@Jesse Smith - Thanks for the reptyr tip. Just wanted to mention tmux. It's like screen but more cats meow. First thing I do though is remap the tmux prefix key from the default (control-b) to match screen's (control-a). Some people enjoy running one inside of the other. That's too much inception for me.
7 • Mezzo Desktop (by Eric on 2014-09-22 17:23:13 GMT from Canada)
The Mezzo desktop used by the SymphonyOS distro IS a "web technology". The desktop is mainly programmed in Perl with a little bit of JavaScript presented in HTML form, so the desktop IS HTML or a "web app".
8 • @5 yeah but... (by cykodrone on 2014-09-22 18:06:17 GMT from Canada)
...if a "Debian sponsor" pulled out, it wouldn't bring the whole organization down, not quite the same. Kinda like sports figures' corporate backers, once they blacklist, hard for those athletes to recover their status.
9 • Web app (by Jesse on 2014-09-22 19:21:34 GMT from Canada)
>> "The Mezzo desktop used by the SymphonyOS distro IS a "web technology". The desktop is mainly programmed in Perl with a little bit of JavaScript presented in HTML form, so the desktop IS HTML or a "web app". "
The language a piece of software is written in has nothing to do with whether that software is a web app or not. You can write web apps in C, you can create location applications in PHP. Web apps are served from a remote host and run in a document interpreter on the local machine (usually a web browser). Mezzo is stored and run locally, therefore it is not a web app.
10 • Web tech (by Somewhat Reticent on 2014-09-22 22:09:04 GMT from United States)
Doesn't Hybryde (F)use web-tech to Facilitate seamlessly switching DEs?
11 • systemd, Salix Fluxbox 14.1 (by Paraquat on 2014-09-23 01:24:22 GMT from Taiwan)
I'm somewhat distressed that systemd is destined to be the default on most distros. Right now using Ubuntu which is still not systemd encumbered, but will be soon.
It's not that init systems are a religious issue with me. I would be happy enough with systemd if it wasn't so complex. You have to have faith that there are programmers out there who can actually understand it and debug it, and spot any vulnerabilities it might have. That's the part that worries me, as I'm a security nut. Ironically, Fedora - which gave birth to systemd - is one of the most secure distros thanks to Selinux. But Selinux is itself complex enough to understand, so putting systemd on top of it means that you've really got to have faith in the (mostly unpaid) developers who volunteer to keep Linux secure and stable.
Concerns like mine have sprouted a boycott systemd movement:
http://boycottsystemd.org/
So I've been casting around to have a second distro on my hard drive which isn't systemd dependent. Slackware is one such distro, but easier to work with (due to package management) is Salix, which is a Slackware spin-off.
Published on Distrowatch just after DWW was posted was an announcement for Salix Fluxbox 14.1.
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08609
I will be downloading and testing it shortly.
12 • systemd (by cornelius on 2014-09-23 11:12:39 GMT from Canada)
Systemd must be superior to sysvinit since almost all distros have switched to systemd. Heck, even LFS has announced a systemd based variant.
I like systemd mainly because:
1. My quad-core (soon octa-core) desktop boots *way* faster.
2. I've been using systemd in Fedora for three years now. Never had an issue, not a single one. Never. And I use Fedora every day at work and at home (two boots per day).
3. I enjoy the pain of those who oppose it.
13 • systemd (by greg on 2014-09-23 11:44:30 GMT from Slovenia)
I am not going to pretend I know much about background and all. but the real tests regarding security concerns and such will come when this stuff get's moved to corporate/government servers. no one cares if a few users pcs are using it. they can't really steal much form them. but other corporate servers is a whole other issue.
the part I got form reading about it is that current system makes sense and can easily be read even by relative non techie, while the system obfuscates things in some computer language. kind of like nginx - faster and leaner than apache but commands on apache make sense even to me that I am not a programmer. it's like talking to a computer by giving it clear commands. no need to learn some codes...
14 • Corporate Backers (by Bob on 2014-09-23 15:28:14 GMT from Austria)
Anything wrong with corporate backers? I'd finally like to see a distro matching Android's qualities. That could'nt be done with the usual student hackers alone.
15 • re 2 and 14 the evil corporations (by corneliu on 2014-09-23 16:06:28 GMT from Canada)
@Bob:
Exactly. The stupidity of boycotting corporate Linux distros is beyond words when you consider the fact that more than 80% of the kernel code is submitted by engineers paid by the evil corporations. Last year RedHat contributed more than 10% and Suse 3.5% of the code. Part of the reason why I stick with Fedora.
16 • systemd, sponsors, etc (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2014-09-23 16:07:12 GMT from United States)
Any large complex system change will be buggy at first; systemd's no exception. Hopefully, over time, it'll get better UIs.
Corporate backers aren't inherently evil (they're simply amoral) but it's simply foolish to be too dependent on any one supporter, corporate or otherwise.
Other than proprietary lock-in app stores and drivers, what does Android offer?
17 • corporate backers, Android (by Kazlu on 2014-09-23 16:24:34 GMT from France)
I join Kragle von Schnitzelbank here: it's not about who writes the code, it's more about who decides to do this and to include that on your distro. It's who it was assembled by. Some distros are not only backed by a company, this company commands life or death of that distro, and so can shape it in the form it wants, to fit the company's interests. Others are just backed by companies, several of them, making them less dependant of a single company. The distro team, consisting of people not coming from a single company, then can have less biased decisions.
@14: About Android: What qualities does Android have that no GNU/Linux distro has? In my opinion, Android can't match the qualities of many GNU/Linux distros, so I wonder.
18 • re 16 (by corneliu on 2014-09-23 17:19:47 GMT from Canada)
Quote: "Other than proprietary lock-in app stores and drivers, what does Android offer?"
1. Drivers have nothing to do with Google. It's the hardware companies that write the drivers. So that part of your comment is irrelevant as far as Android's openness is concerned.
2. The official app store is never imposed on you. You can install and use alternative app stores. Heck, you can even download from the Internet any app you want and install it freely, no app store required.
19 • Android, systemd & corporate backers (by M.Z. on 2014-09-23 20:03:57 GMT from United States)
@16 & 17
What qualities does Android have that other Linux based projects don't? Isn't it obvious? How about a massive amount of consumer market share & common visibility? I'm sure Android could stand to be more open, but didn't Apple try to sue people for unlocking phones that were purchased from their company? Android seems to give smartphone owners a lot more control over the devices that they own, while providing a relatively open platform & helping to create a competitive market. Given the importance of the smartphone market it seems perfectly obvious that Android rivals any Linux based project for the title of most important Linux based OS. It may be far from perfect, but Android seems to me to be the least bad alternative amongst the major smartphone competitors, and the fact that other projects are based on it proves that it is still relatively open.
@11
I've heard others claim on slashdot that systemd was far less complex & problematic that people were making it out to be & the wisdom of the tech minded crowed over there gave some of them a +5/5 insightful rating. Now if tech minded people start saying that systemd is the same kind of poorly coded gibberish that openssl was after the heartbleed bug was found, then I'll know we have a problem.
__________________________________
On the more general topic of corporate backers, well I for one am glad that companies like Red Hat are around to do so much heavy lifting for Linux & similar open source projects. We are all dependent on them, but we also have things like the GPL to help protect our rights as users. Even if the biggest backer of a GPL licensed product disappears, code can still be forked. The forking of OpenOffice into LibreOffice proves that in the open source world companies have to respect their users or face the possibility of new competition appearing overnight. After all RMS created the GPL to protect you the user, so don't worry the bad eggs will all get forked in the end.
20 • init (by meh on 2014-09-23 22:32:58 GMT from United States)
As long as the system is booted properly, services are started properly, and logs are kept properly why does the init process warrant so much woolgathering from people?
21 • @20 (by :wq on 2014-09-23 23:40:30 GMT from United States)
Because the hand wringing, allegations and recriminations over the good and bad of change are the closest thing tech-minded people have to a soap opera?
22 • Mezzo Desktop (by Eric on 2014-09-24 00:31:51 GMT from Canada)
@9 http://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/OSAlternatifs/Logiciels-2/debian-desktop-symphony-sujet_56460_1.htm#t806137
Since the SymphonyOS's site is having problems I'll paste here as to what "Mezzo" down below, which is largely "Orchestra".
/begin paste
Orchestra is Symphony's application environment. This set of programs and tools allows programs composed of just HTML and Perl to run as local GUI apps. Anyone who writes Perl CGI scripts will feel at home writing Orchestra applications. Orchestra will be used extensively in the Symphony OS.
Orchestra is made up of two main parts, a localhost only http server and a slimmed down mozilla renderer. Because mozilla is used as the base for rendering Orchestra apps can utilize the following technologies:
* Javascript/DHTML
* Perl/CGI
* Java Applets (when plugin is included)
* Flash (when plugin is included)
* Embedded media players (when plugin is included)
* XUL Interfaces
* Any other technologies for which a Mozilla Plugin is available.
Eventually support is planned for the following technologies
* PHP
* Python
* Bash Shell Scripts as CGI's
* Compiled CGI scripts
* SVG Graphics (when support is compiled with the mozilla renderer)
/end paste
23 • Systemd integration, KDE, Gnome, Debian (by gregzeng on 2014-09-24 05:21:59 GMT from Australia)
Being a KDE toyboy, I'm interest in Debian's assessment
gnome 3
kde -1
lxde 0
xfce 0
cinnamon -2
mate 0
(Debian Desktop Requalification Jessie, with my "unweighted totalling final scores", (from: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDesktop/Requalification/Jessie)
On the Android readiness, etc - "architecture requalification status for jessie" (Debian), only amd64 & i386 are ready. (https://release.debian.org/jessie/arch_qualify.html)
So now I'm waiting for the soon to be ready "KDE Plasma 5", still in beta, in a few weeks. Daily betas are downloable from: (http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu-plasma5/daily-live/), which I'll be testing on my multi-booting Dell XPS-15.
24 • @19 Android (by Kazlu on 2014-09-24 09:41:47 GMT from France)
"What qualities does Android have that other Linux based projects don't? Isn't it obvious? How about a massive amount of consumer market share & common visibility?"
Agreed, that means Android is more successfull than any GNU/Linux distro, but how does it make it better? I see only one possible advantage: if you have more users, potentially you discover more bugs that can then be fixed. Then it's up to Google to decide what is a bug and what is a feature. Of course, that advantage only benefits the user if his/her device is still supported by the manufacturer, else say goodbye to bugfixes.
I agree with most of the things you said after, but that only says that Android is, both technically and from a user freedom point of view, better than iOS and Windows, nothing concerning its advantages over GNU/Linux distributions.
25 • @23 Debian desktops (by Kazlu on 2014-09-24 09:46:38 GMT from France)
Isn't that a bit biased towards GNOME? How come systemd integration being as important as accessibility? How *depending* on systemd is seen only for its benefits and not for its drawbacks? As long as the tools provided by the DE work and the user is able to perform given tasks, who cares if systemd is "integrated"?
It seems like MATE is in good way after all, it just lacks testing but that could be improved shortly. It's not my favorite DE, but I feel it would fit very well as the Debian default DE. If there is not enough time to test MATE, maybe sticking with GNOME for Jessie but considering MATE for the next release would be a good move.
26 • Systemd..... (by Smellyman on 2014-09-24 13:26:02 GMT from Taiwan)
is the new moving the buttons to the left!
27 • @20 (by Pearson on 2014-09-24 16:59:03 GMT from United States)
You'll probably get 15 answers for every 10 people you ask.
My answer is "Generally, it shouldn't matter. But, migrating to systemd has implications -- lack of a sense of control, impact on non-init things (like logind) -- that concern some technical people."
28 • The more things change, the more they stay the same (by :wq on 2014-09-24 18:04:20 GMT from United States)
All of the teams haven't weighed in yet, but I doubt there will be a switch back to Xfce as the default desktop for Jessie. Prior to Jordi Mallach's 2014-08-07 blog post, I think the change in course was already set in motion somewhere around the time of the "Xfce 4.12 stabilization" thread (Jun-Aug) on the xfce4-dev mailing list.
Furthermore, having gone through a temporary switch to Xfce during Wheezy's development, and now again for Jessie, I don't expect the DE evaluation issue to be raised again in any serious way for Jessie+1 (at least as it regards Xfce), as there is no reason to believe circumstances will have changed in a significant way. Xfce will still be Xfce, GNOME will still be GNOME, and Debian will still be Debian. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion. Maybe MATE or KDE have a shot for Jessie+1, though given MATE is seen as being a regressive choice, and KDE is deemed to be not accessible, I doubt those stand much of a chance.
As for the Debian XFCE team having "not seen much added contributions from it being the default in testing", I think it would actually take Debian making a commitment to Xfce being the default for that to happen. Otherwise, I expect a bulk of potential contributors would assume exactly what happened.
I do expect Xfce to be the default DE for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.
29 • Debian (by KI on 2014-09-24 18:56:10 GMT from Belgium)
Debian is a great OS but few people use it as it is. Most people either carry out an expert install (be it a minimal install, or one with an alternate DE, etc) or just install some saner derivative. Things have always been like that. In that sense I see Debian more as a proto-distribution than as a ready-to-use OS.
The problem right now seems to be the lack of leadership for the best developers tend to find jobs in the private sector.
30 • @24 Android (by Angel on 2014-09-25 02:35:40 GMT from Philippines)
"Android is, both technically and from a user freedom point of view, better than iOS and Windows, nothing concerning its advantages over GNU/Linux distributions."
Great! Now give me the names of some Linux distros that can replace Android on my phone and do as good a job on my tablets.
31 • Just an init system (by RollMeAway on 2014-09-25 03:55:51 GMT from United States)
If systemd was "just an init system" many users could learn to accept it.
Problem is, with every new release it takes over more functions.
As stated last week, a recent blog rambles about plans to take over package
management for all distros. Guess that means no more *.deb or *.rpm pkgs.
Just *.systemd packages.
I relate it to finding a small red rash on the back of your hand.
It is minor, doesn't really hurt, so you kind of ignore it.
Then you discover the rash has covered your entire arm. Better do something about this.
The next morning you wake up and it has cover both arms and now shoulders.
Left unchecked it will take over your entire body.
Just like systemd is taking over our favorite operating systems.
32 • Systemd (as in system-delete) (by Ooops on 2014-09-25 04:35:38 GMT from Canada)
31) RollMeAway
NOW you warn us? Too late for me. Took over my entire body. Awoke after "molting". My new body proceeded to "Roll Myself_away"back to the security of my "backup" system running ye old reliable init system under Slackware, one of the last refuges of sanity.
33 • @32 Systemd and Slackware (by KI on 2014-09-25 05:28:53 GMT from Belgium)
Yes, I am also considering migrating to a more POSIX compliant system.
From what I have read, Slackware would be the best option. I am also considering a binary Gentoo derivative for it seems that Gentoo will also remain systemd-free.
The problem I see with Slackware is package managing. Does it handle dependencies now? How many packages are there available?
Are there other options with a package managers similar to apt-get in terms of dependency handling (both when installing and uninstalling) and with large number of packages in the repos?
34 • Slackware dependencies (by jadecat09 on 2014-09-25 06:57:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
For a 'proper OS' you are the dependency handler.
35 • Slackware dependencies (by jadecat09 on 2014-09-25 07:15:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
I should add that if you are so inclined, there is Slapt-get for dependencies, and Sbopkg for SlackBuilds.
36 • @33 - Slackware dependencies (by Uncle Slacky on 2014-09-25 07:25:38 GMT from France)
I think there are Slackware derivatives (like Salix, for example) which include package management with automatic dependency handling.
37 • re Slackware dependencies (by Ooops on 2014-09-25 08:47:58 GMT from Canada)
34) 35 and 36)
Thanks for your replies to 33) - pretty much sums up anything I could have replied. Personally, I usually compile from source and use checkinstall. Have not tried Sbopkg and would be interested in any feedback on tradeoffs and preferences between checkinstall and Sbopkg.
One thing that has not been pointed out is that on SysV systems, the init files often have multiple spaghetti code of symlinks. Works fine, but when troubleshooting, I like the simplicity of Posix style init script.
For binaries, slaptget is prettymuch like aptget for Slackware.
Slackware also supports rpms, but there may be complications because of different versions and types of rpm between rival distributions. Compiling from source may seem like more work, but has saved me many headaches in the long run.
Gentoo is a completely source-based distro with excellant documentation, but I prefer plain text-based docs as opposed to xml files (same sort of thing between openbox and fluxbox window managers).
I THINK Landor may be one of the most experienced Slackware users around here? Maybe we can get more such tutorials. The nice thing about Slackware is, you REALLY get to know the plumbing. Things are far less likely to break, but if they do, you have a better understanding of how to fix things.
Another tip: Note the just released update to LFS (Linux from Scratch). Eevn if you don't read the whole thing through, it is a "must have" reference to understand the plumbing. After all, that IS one of the reasons to use Linux rather than Windows.
There are some good books on FreeBSD (eq - Absolute FreeBSD from NStarch Press) as well as documentation from their site, but have not come across any book on OpenBSD.
Guess that's enough tips for one post without "hogging" all the space....
38 • @30 Android (by Kazlu on 2014-09-25 09:21:08 GMT from France)
"Great! Now give me the names of some Linux distros that can replace Android on my phone and do as good a job on my tablets."
I can't since I don't know your phone :) I think you may install Ubuntu on some Nexus phones, but other than that there is no GNU/Linux distro that works on phones I believe.
But that was not my point. I was actually responding to #14 Bob: "I'd finally like to see a distro matching Android's qualities." The point was not to find a GNU/Linux distro to install on a phone or tablet, but to know what are the qualities of Android that you can't find on a GNU/Linux distro. A matter in OS properties rather than on which device it is supposed to run. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough :)
39 • @33 (by kc1di on 2014-09-25 09:32:39 GMT from United States)
As someone has said their it slap-get , you may want to take a look at PCLinuxOS also, it's to this point systemd free as far as I know. And uses apt-get for rpm as the pkg manager. It has a huge repository of programs that just work mostly.
40 • Debian (by Mac on 2014-09-25 13:14:50 GMT from United States)
As of 9-15 Debian Jessie is working great for me hope the final is as good. It does take a bit of work to get it going the way I think it should. Hope the way systemd is going it don't mess it up. Have been with and liked Debian for years. And I also use kde for de. But to me linux is all about choice hope that never ends.
Have fun Mack
41 • Shellshock - Security Concern (by Bob on 2014-09-25 14:29:23 GMT from Austria)
... "more serious than the Heartbleed bug" ...
... "found in software component known as Bash ... part of Linux & Apple's Mac OS" ...
... "Shellshock could hit at least 500 million machines" ...
... "security researchers warned that the patches were "incomplete" and would not fully secure systems" ...
Windows needs a break anyway with Win 9 Preview around the corner ;-)
42 • shellshock (by sam on 2014-09-25 16:09:25 GMT from )
using centos 6 here, was reading the news on shellshock and the update icon popped where it does on gnome 2, it was a bug fix for bash. I cannot tell if it was fixing shellshock or something else affecting bash. I have already applied the update and do not know how to go back and check the details of what was fixed. If they have done it so fast, they they are great.
43 • Shellshock (by jadecat09 on 2014-09-25 17:54:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Got this news from The Register. Slackware had already sent a security warning and patch.
Have a great day/night
44 • Shellshock (by Jordan on 2014-09-25 18:42:39 GMT from United States)
The BASH fixes are "incomplete," according to RedHat.
It's still out there. Been looking around for large scale exploits but have seen none so far (1:42pm U.S. Central Time 25 Sep 14).
45 • Some quotes about systemd (by RollMeAway on 2014-09-26 04:07:08 GMT from United States)
Poettering:
"it unifies system objects and their dependencies"
"One goal of systemd is to unify the dispersed Linux landscape"
"trying to gently push everybody towards the same set of basic configuration"
"we’d like to unify the most boring bits where there’s really no point at all in being different"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd:
"While systemd has succeeded in its original goals, it's not stopping there".....
"systemd wants to control most, if not all, of the fundamental functional aspects of a Linux system"
So, continuing my analogy from post #31.
You find the simple rash has now covered your head, all your head and facial hair has fallen out.
Good thing is now you don't have to shave, or wash, cut, and comb your hair !
Now you discover most of the people around you all look like you do.
How do like your new system created by systemd ? (er I mean a simple rash)
Such a shame you cannot control it.
46 • media bash FUD party (by cykodrone on 2014-09-26 05:04:23 GMT from Canada)
Wow, the sky is falling again, NOT. I don't ever remember getting a patch/fix this fast with any expensive proprietary OS. My tinfoil hat is ablaze again, lol, anybody else get the feeling the powers that be want to scare people to NSA friendly corpware?
47 • BASH vulnerability (by frodopogo on 2014-09-26 05:20:22 GMT from United States)
This is the test line to type (or paste into) the command line in Terminal:
env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"
Then hit Enter.
If you get the response "vulnerable this is a test".... it's vulnerable. If you get another response, it's been patched.
Linux Mint 17 has already been patched.
One article mentioned CUPS vulnerabilities, so I installed those updates too.
This is the Ars Technica article mentioning a BASH "exploit in the wild":
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/09/concern-over-bash-vulnerability-grows-as-exploit-reported-in-the-wild/
48 • @Shellshock (by KI on 2014-09-26 07:52:40 GMT from Belgium)
Apparently, the bug started to be exploited 4.5 hours after its existence was announced in the media. Never before.
Now this is a problem. Because it would seem that the guys who found the bug decided to spread the information without giving the developers the time to release a fix. Why? Most likely because in our society one gets more fame by acting like this than by acting in a more ethical and responsible manner.
And I guess there is nothing we can do about it.
49 • Ethical (by Somewhat Reticent on 2014-09-26 12:42:42 GMT from United States)
If clear attempts to warn security agencies of an urgent threat is dismissed and ignored, what to do?
50 • @49 @Shellshock (by KI on 2014-09-26 17:41:07 GMT from Belgium)
Yes, but what I mean is that, in an ideal scenario, by the time the media find out about the bug, a patched version should be ready so that system administrators have the time to update the application before anyone can possibly exploit the vulnerability.
51 • re 45 -> systemd (by corneliu on 2014-09-26 21:02:16 GMT from Canada)
I see that we are going the analogy route. OK. Here is mine:
Let's imagine a true and tried system that has been around for ages, it is simple, well tested and just works. Let's say an oxen cart fits the given description. Also the oxen cart does not have a single point of failure. If one ox goes down, the other can do the job.
Now why would anyone want to switch to a more complex solution which also has one point of failure (one engine), is new and not tested enough such as for example a truck? Obviously the truck would be systemd and the oxen cart would be sysvinit.
I know my analogy is not perfect, it's just an analogy, but it is obviously better than RollMeAway's.
52 • @45 & 51 systemd BoogeyMan (by FUDBucket on 2014-09-26 22:07:27 GMT from United States)
The way I see it is, you have three choices, if systemd really bothers you:
1) Switch to a Distro, that has been and is very clear about never using systemd.
2) Fork and roll your own, minus systemd.
3) Quit Linux and using a entirely different OS.
It really is not that hard. Thus far, I have no issue with systemd. If it should start to turn into some unholy beast, then I drop it like a bad habit, move on and be like gone, with the wind.
No wringing of hands or sweating bullets, required.
Peace out.
53 • @Systemd-free distro (by KI on 2014-09-27 07:22:28 GMT from Belgium)
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions:
1.- PCLinuxOS looks indeed like an option worth considering.
2.- For a binary-based Gentoo derivative I meant something like Sabayon or Calculate Linux. I have already used Gentoo for over a year and Funtoo for nearly a year. Both are great but I was spending too much time administrating the system.
3.- Salix seems really impressive, but there seem to be still few packages in the repos.
4.- Installing everything from source (or from binary packages) without automatic dependency control is not an option for me.
I think I will go for PCLinuxOS first. It seems that the performance is also remarkable.
54 • #53 (by jadecat09 on 2014-09-27 11:21:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think you will find Salix is compatible with the Slackware repos
55 • @53 • @Systemd-free distro (by mandog on 2014-09-27 21:15:03 GMT from Peru)
I think you will find Sabayon uses Systemd
You can also use any system Systemd free it only takes about 3 mins so its really not that bad to use your favourite distro
56 • systemd takeover (by WonderWoman on 2014-09-28 00:55:53 GMT from Australia)
After 20 years Linux it's still nowhere on the desktop. Might be because it's a kernel + userland + other things and not a predesigned OS? So why not let these ppl go all the way - unify the internals, the packaging, everything. Let's see what a full systemd distro could be like. You never know, it might do the trick and usher in the "year of the Linux desktopd".
57 • @56 - systemd distro (by Ika on 2014-09-28 02:25:28 GMT from Spain)
"Let's see what a full systemd distro could be like."
Obviously it would be Windows like. That simple.
58 • A fully s*****d distro could be like a ... (by Kragle on 2014-09-28 13:48:52 GMT from United States)
Tivo'ized 'droid gnome? Sole survivor of mmorg zom'bot bash?
59 • re 57 (by corneliu on 2014-09-28 19:34:01 GMT from Canada)
Quote: "Obviously it would be Windows like. That simple."
You mean Linux will be extremely popular?
60 • #59 (by jadecat09 on 2014-09-28 20:17:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
Er, It already is.
61 • re 60 (by corneliu on 2014-09-28 23:39:17 GMT from Canada)
On desktop?
This discussion was about the desktop in case you didn't read the previous comments.
Number of Comments: 61
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| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
Vital Data Forensic or Rescue Kit (FoRK)
The team at Vital Data have been in development to adapt the Knoppix live CD for use as a forensic imaging and previewing tool. They have previously been using the Penguin Sleuth Kit to obtain images in the field, but wanted something more user-friendly for their staff and colleagues to be able to use efficiently without requiring a high level of Linux knowledge.
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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