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1 • Nouveau vs Nvidia (by Bob on 2014-10-27 18:05:53 GMT from Austria)
Once in a while I am having a brief encounter with Nouveau - at least before its compulsory replacemend with Nvidia. It is very difficult to imagine why anyone would prefer Nouveau to Nvidia. I might opt for OSS in some other cases, but Nouveau is trailing in performance by such a huge margin that it is completely unacceptable. Phoronix seems to prove me right: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_nouveau_utopic&num=3
2 • Thanks for the Research (by G Savage on 2014-10-27 18:09:42 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for checking into this whole systemd thing. It's all very curious to me. I install and use distros, not build them. There's an awful lot good ones. Mint and Macpup have been my workhorses. It troubles me to see infighting. It only benefits the big boys. (I'm still upset about Pear/Klementine.)
3 • GhostBSD (by :wq on 2014-10-27 18:40:45 GMT from United States)
"In the virtual environment GhostBSD would boot, but I found the operating system wouldn't take full advantage of my display's resolution, even with VirtualBox's guest add-ons in place."
It's a configuration issue with your xorg.conf. See: https://wiki.freebsd.org/VirtualBox#Installing_Guest_Additions_for_FreeBSD_guests
"The package manager downloaded and installed these items for me without any problems, but when I rebooted the machine, I was dropped at a text console login screen. I was no longer able to launch the X display software and I could not get back to a graphical login screen. After trying to boot in safe graphics mode and trying to manually correct the problem with X I re-installed GhostBSD. The operating system worked well for me again until I performed another software update a few days later. Once again, installing updates disabled X, reducing GhostBSD to a command line only operating system."
Whatever the issue was, it might be resolved, as I was unable to reproduce it in VirtualBox via pkg upgrade.
4 • GhostBSD (by hotdiggettydog on 2014-10-27 18:54:04 GMT from Canada)
I could not get Ghost to boot on any machine of mine. Something about scsi. I soon lost interest. It did boot up on Virtualbox but Guest Additions was not available. I lost interest. I see the link posted earlier for installing guest additions. Might try again someday.
5 • GhostBSD (by AlanB on 2014-10-27 19:21:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have GhostBSD running on my spare pc ( AMD Athlon II, Nvidia graphics card ). It runs perfectly. I've also re installed 3 times in between installing other distros. Each time it installed without any problems. Indeed, I reckon it's one of the easiest and quickest installs of the many distros I've tried over the years. I must add that I let it use the whole of the hard drive for the install, and that it's the sole OS on the drive.
6 • PCLinuxOS kernel & GhostBSD (by M.Z. on 2014-10-27 19:42:17 GMT from United States)
I wanted to point out that I'm on kernel 3.16.6 on my copy of PCLOS, so the chart has another caveat. It is true though that upgrading the PCLOS kernel does require manually selecting a new kernel in Synaptic, so you can run an old kernel for as long as you want.
----
On the subject of GhostBSD, I had video card issues as well when I tried version 3.5 on a number of different systems. In fact the only thing I think GhostBSD 3.5 worked on was my laptop with Intel HD graphics, but of course then the Intel wireless didn't work. I've never had a desktop version of BSD just work with any computer of mine, but I may try again soon.
7 • openSUSE Factory multimedia (by AnklefaceWroughtlandmire on 2014-10-27 19:56:12 GMT from Ecuador)
The trick to get multimedia working for openSUSE Factory (soon to be called Tumbleweed) is here: https://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories#Packman
zypper ar -f -n packman http://packman.inode.at/suse/Factory/ packman
Or, if you prefer the YaST method, add a new repository by URL, the URL being "http://packman.inode.at/suse/Factory/" and you can name it whatever you want.
After creating the repository it's better to set it to a higher priority (unintuitively a lower number) and then use the YaST option to switch all installed packages to the versions in this repository. Then you can add any other additional multimedia packages that you can think of, Packman has EVERYTHING.
Hope this helps!
8 • Arch boot time and systemd in general (by Charles Burge on 2014-10-27 20:30:20 GMT from United States)
I'm really curious what kind of system is taking 40 seconds to boot Arch Linux. I have it installed on a 7-year-old PC (Lenovo ThinkCentre M55) and I just clocked the boot time at 17 seconds.
Having said that, I find it curious that fast boots are being touted as one of the most compelling features of systemd. The very nature of Linux is that well-suited to very long uptimes. For me, I like systemd for what Jesse calls the reduction in fragmentation. I've tried a lot of different distros, and to me it's frustrating that I always have to google the correct command for restarting sshd or apache or whatever, or turning off postfix (which always seems to be running by default even on so-called "minimal" installations that aren't called Arch). But with systemd, I always know what those commands are. I think it's great that there can be such variety in the way different distros look and feel, but when it comes to the under-the-hood nuts and bolts, I think the Linux world would really benefit from a little more homogeneity.
9 • GhostBSD 4.0 (64) (by Galasrinnion on 2014-10-27 21:06:51 GMT from United States)
Well....I must say that I found GhostBSD 4 (64-bit) stunning and stable !! That doesn't mean that GhostBSD doesn't need some touch-ups, like the package manager. From the posts I read on the forums, that is being addressed. Never the less with my NVIDIA graphics card, and for some reason BSD prefers these; there was no problem whatsoever. I haven't checked out you tube yet, but videos played just fine on NFL.com and MLB.com. Be sure you download the latest released ISO. Also watched some movies online. BRAVO again. With my desktop, because I use usb speakers, there was no sound at the get-go; so I needed to add: # sysctl hw.snd.default_unit=5 to /etc/sysctl.conf.; but after that, luscious sound on every boot-up. I too like Jessie, appreciate very much this effort and like the direction they are taking with BSD. I quickly made GhostBSD 4 a part of my system and found it to be more of a TREAT than a TRICK !! When they get the package manager issue resolved...LOOKOUT !!
10 • Re 8: systemd fast booting (by hobbitland on 2014-10-27 21:23:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, I moved from Ubuntu 12.04 to Debian 7. One thing I miss is fast boot with upstart. But I am glad to rid myself of unity (even xubuntu has unity libraries).
I have tried Debian 8b2 and it does boot extremely fast. Fast boot & fast shutdown is important to me as we use mini PC connected to TVs. So they system is switched on and off a number of times everyday.
I enabled 1 second shutdown on my systems by forcing kernel to mount read only and power off on power button. System must shutdown in one second. I replace "/etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh" with
#!/bin/sh echo s > /proc/sysrq-trigger sleep 0.25 echo u > /proc/sysrq-trigger sleep 0.25 echo o > /proc/sysrq-trigger
11 • GhostBSD package updates (by Galasrinnion on 2014-10-27 21:25:51 GMT from United States)
Check out the warning given here by the developers about package updates for 4.0. Warning:
Updating software using "pkg upgrade" will corrupt xorg and might corrupt GDM too. The solution is to use update the software that you want to update with "pkg install" , you can see the list of update by doing "pkg upgrade -n", "pkg install" automatically update software dependency. Be sure to not upgrade xorg-server, xorg-drivers, and any xf86 with "pkg" use "portupgrade"
12 • PCLinuxOS packages versions (by Ika on 2014-10-27 21:30:32 GMT from Spain)
Jesse,
Thanks for your nice work in all you're doing. I understand it's a massive work and time consuming... It would be nice if the tests would be made in a physical installation as this is what shows the real atributes of an operatind system...
With regard of PCLinuxOS' packages versions please note 1. As the poster #6 already pointed it out, the current kernel version is 3.16.6 (this has already 2 weeks). It is not automatically upgraded for obvious reasons, so it must be done manually. 2. LibreOffice is at version 4.3.2.2 (and shortly will go to 4.3.3) and it was already available when you started the test, so, please, run LibreOffice Manager to update it.
Peace and all the best. Ika.
13 • @1: Nouveau vs Nvidia (by Will B on 2014-10-27 21:34:56 GMT from United States)
I'm sorry you're having those kinds of issues. Sometimes it depends on the distro.
I'm running Slackware 14.1 and Nouveau on a semi-modern Nvidia GT 610 and it's very fast with good 3D performance when using SweetHome 3D. I haven't bothered to go with the proprietary Nvidia driver because Nouveau works great (and any glitches or latency would be immediately noticed...I'm very picky about that).
On Debian, I have tried Nouveau, but it's awful. Window borders and other visual elements are corrupted and the performance is slow on the same hardware.
I guess it just depends on how your distro patches and builds Xorg. :-\
14 • systemd boot times (by Paraquat on 2014-10-27 23:38:26 GMT from Taiwan)
A friend of mine who is a Gentoo developer took the time to compare systemd boot time with OpenRC (the default init system in Gentoo).
He actually found that OpenRC booted about one to two seconds faster. Boot times with OpenRC were between 9 and 10 seconds, systemd about 10 to 12.
It should be noted that OpenRC runs startup scripts in parallel, and should be noticeably faster than sysvinit, though my friend didn't test that.
Since Gentoo supports both OpenRC and systemd, my friend also did evaluate the latter. His big fear is security - systemd is simply too large and offers too great an attack surface for him to trust, especially on a server but certainly on a desktop too if you use it for online banking, credit card purchases, or even want to protect from snooping. The very feature that systemd developers brag about - the fact that it does so much more than simply provide init - greatly increases the potential to get compromised.
15 • boot time obsession (by cykodrone on 2014-10-28 00:06:11 GMT from Canada)
With my hardware ANY OS will boot in under a minute, that's not the issue (maybe for an obsessed few), the issue is stability, user control (user tweaking), security, developer openness, etc. I really don't care how long my OS takes to boot, but I do care what it does after it boots, that includes the possibility of secret or locked code. From what I've read in comments, systemd is supposed to handle networking, I'm not too comfortable with that.
16 • LibreOffice Manager? (by a on 2014-10-28 00:12:50 GMT from France)
@12, why does PCLinuxOS need a LibreOffice Manager? Why doesn’t LO get updated like all other packages?
Also not sure why the kernel isn’t updated as well. It’s certainly not obvious.
17 • @8 • Re: Arch boot time (by Rev_Don on 2014-10-28 00:36:53 GMT from United States)
"I'm really curious what kind of system is taking 40 seconds to boot Arch Linux. I have it installed on a 7-year-old PC (Lenovo ThinkCentre M55) and I just clocked the boot time at 17 seconds."
After much prodding, Jessie has been kind enough to list his system specs at the end of each review. While he doesn't state which computer he tried the test on, I would be willing to bet it is the one he uses for reviews so that info would be at the end of the GhostBSD review.
18 • Arch boot time (by linuxista on 2014-10-28 02:14:33 GMT from United States)
For what it's worth, I have Arch and Mint in partitions on the same SSD on a Lenovo x201.
Arch booting into Gnome3: 9.66 seconds Arch booting into i3: 6.04 seconds Mint booting into Cinnamon: 16.53 seconds
Mint is Upstart not Sysvinit, but that's all I've got right now.
19 • #16 (by Ika on 2014-10-28 03:08:36 GMT from Spain)
!why does PCLinuxOS need a LibreOffice Manager? Why doesn’t LO get updated like all other packages?"
Ask the devs why. :) The script just download and installs LO directly from libreoffice.org. Simple.
"Also not sure why the kernel isn’t updated as well. It’s certainly not obvious."
Let's say it will automatically upgrade. This means the old kernel will be removed, replaced by the new one. Now, what happens if that new kernel do not play well with your hardware and you're no more able to boot into your system? So, you can install the new kernel and, at the same time, keeping the old one too so you can boot the system with this if the newer gives you problems. I always have at least two or three kernels installed, just in case (besides the one(s) from the testing repos). Or, in a 322 bits environment, which kernel should be offered for upgrade: ,pae or non ,pae? Can a package manager guess your architecture? What if it'll ofer the "better" .pae and your processor is not .pae capable? Is it better an automatic kernel upgrade or a manually one? All this is about stability. Now, is it obvious? ;)
20 • a (by a on 2014-10-28 03:39:13 GMT from France)
@19
The way Arch "solves" the problem is by having two kernel packages: one normal, and one LTS. So if you have a problem with the normal one you can always boot on the LTS (well, assuming it’s working).
The way Ubuntu "solves" the problem is by never deleting any kernel.
It shouldn’t be that hard to add a post-install script that deletes old kernels, keeping a few ones known to work.
There is no need to decide which kernel to install (PAE or not…), just update the package that the user selected.
21 • Boot/shutdown times (by hsw on 2014-10-28 04:04:20 GMT from Taiwan)
I would see fast boot/shutdown times as becoming more important now that we hav hypervisor capability on many machines. I is not just the host boot to consider, but the VMs as well, I would sooner spin up VM to run browser instances than run them on the host.
22 • LXLE 12.04.5 installed (by Ben Myers on 2014-10-28 04:28:05 GMT from United States)
I installed LXLE 12.04.5 on an elderly 15" screen IBM Thinkpad R51 that I souped up (relatively speaking) with a 2GHz Pentium M and 2GB memory. Install went smoothly, and system runs responsively, way better than it did with a Windows XP boat anchor to slow it down. Because this distro plays nice with non-PAE CPUs (or a BIOS that masks out the PAE, because I installed a Dothan with PAE capabilities), it is certainly one to consider for older laptops. Despite the older Lubuntu LTS base, it does include the latest greatest versions of some major software like Libre Office, Firefox and GIMP. User gets choice of different desktop paradigms, looking variously sort of like XP, OS X, Netbook (holy tiles, Batman!) or Gnome desktops.
23 • The death of Peter Miller was in July! (by RJA on 2014-10-28 04:28:17 GMT from United States)
Just got in the news in October, like it was during the weekend!
24 • Systemd and Boot times - much do about nothing? (by Transform Humanity on 2014-10-28 07:45:38 GMT from India)
Most production machines probably don't care about boot times (If you are using Linux) probably because they don't get booted for years (months or may be the whole day depending on what you are doing). Most Linux systems don't crash every hour, nor do they present BSOD.
Someone tell me why there is so much fuss over boot times - honestly. Does it really matter if it boots in 20, 30 or even 40 seconds or more - except if you are a developer/ tester requiring to reboot every now and then. And then they could always virtualise to improve boot times.
25 • boot times (by hsw on 2014-10-28 08:41:02 GMT from Taiwan)
@24 I would like boot times to be very short say <2sec so that machines can be brought on-line quickly without having to wait tens of seconds. This would also apply to VMs since they boot just like a normal OS. VM may be slightly slower than the host since they have to access disk resources over an extra virtual driver. Given the current drive towards containers I might expect that we will see individual applications booted in their own VM (for security reasons), then it will be frustrating if every app needs an extra 40sec just to open. I am no longer sure that months/years of uptime is acheivable with the constant need to patch nowadays, we are just going to need more responsive to such things. Perhaps the host OS can be slower to be updated (unless its a bug in the hypervisor - then reboot the data centre). All a bit frustrating I think.
26 • Boot times (by Sam on 2014-10-28 12:38:03 GMT from Uganda)
I have manjaro and centos 6 on the same machine. My experience is that centos will give me the logging screen faster than manjaro. My manjaro is xfce and up to date. Systemd can talk about other things but not faster boot time.
27 • @25 (by Jason on 2014-10-28 12:54:21 GMT from United States)
you should only need to reboot when updated kernels are released, and that isn't too often.
28 • Boot times in Debian (by Barnabyh on 2014-10-28 15:01:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
I did exactly the same test as Jesse has done to replace systemd with the old sysvinit. On what started out as a Crunchbang install on an SSD sysvinit is very noticeably faster. Systemd init takes about 3 secs, sysvinit is just lightning fast in a little under a second.
Sadly there are other problems as now even networkmanager seems to depend on systemd so I have several packages marked as 'broken' on my system and it won't do an upgrade untyil rectified, that means until systemd is installed again. That, to me, is broken. Looking at how few alternatives are left I'll probably have to stay with Wheezy and backports until that is EOL and get back to using Slackware and Salix more. Sadly, 'cos Debian is very comfortable if you don't have much time.
29 • Funtoo (by a on 2014-10-28 16:14:10 GMT from France)
Well it’s decided, I’m gonna use Funtoo… my USE flags: "-systemd -pulseaudio -avahi". No problem so far :).
30 • Linux blocked by router (by Simon on 2014-10-28 16:36:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm posting this issue problem here because I figure if anyone can help it is distrowatch readers/ commenter.
I access the Internet at a local "leisure centre" (Lochinver, Scotland) and everything has been fine up until some wifi 'hotshot' upgraded the service. I don't know what the idiot did (and neither does he, I think) but now only Windows and Mac OS's can access the Internet.
When a Linux system tries to connect, the Network manger claims to be connected but nothing can be accessed via a browser. I have a Debian-based system (Point), my girlfriend uses Linux Mint on her laptop, and all mobile phone users with Android are equally blocked.
Anybody got any ideas what could cause this, and could there be a workaround?
Thanks for reading :)
31 • Fast boot times and required hardware (by Ben Myers on 2014-10-28 19:10:29 GMT from United States)
If you want your system to boot fast, install the operating system on a solid state drive. I keep a version of Mint on an SSD for testing hardware, and it boots in about 20 seconds on most dual and quad core machines. The best and newest hybrid drives, a mix of spinning disks and flash memory, can come close. I suppose a 15000 RPM server drive might, too.
One more thing, if the OS had a modified hibernation file, and that file was written to contiguous hard drive sectors, booting from this file would be mighty fast. AFAIK, no operating system has done this yet. Or maybe some OS, and I just don't know about it.
32 • @30 Linux and wifi router (by Ben Myers on 2014-10-28 19:15:35 GMT from United States)
First, get the blaggard who messed up the router, flog him and tell him never to lay hands on the router again. There ought be a law against ignorant people mucking with technology they know nothing about.
I can only guess, but the wizard who messed up the router may well have set it up with a type of encryption that neither Linux nor the Droid know about. What about Apple iPads and iPhones?
Unfortunately, wifi standards provide too many options for setting up encryption and not enough advice for choosing a mode of encryption that works with everything.
33 • Missing a BSD (by Onederer on 2014-10-28 23:02:40 GMT from United States)
I wish that Desktop BSD was still around! I couldn't find any flaws in it. It was complete, and very well developed. I couldn't tell that I was running a BSD OS, with the GUI being in use. I had no problem with updates.
I was real sad when I found out that the OS was being discontinued and no one picked it up to continue updating it. Most of the work was already done, it would have been simpler to just make it keep up with the times. It sure would have beaten having to start writing a fresh new version form scratch.
The current GUI BSD's now all seem to be flawed. They have this or that missing or malfunctioning. They don't even come close to what I once enjoyed using.
34 • systemd fork (by takeitezsuitepc on 2014-10-28 23:33:15 GMT from Australia)
Been following the chatter on the interwebs, and it seems that the systemd fork devs are going to call their new project "Unevolve OS" :)
35 • Ubuntu (by Mac on 2014-10-29 00:42:02 GMT from Mexico)
¡Ten years! ¡Gracias Ubuntu!
36 • reboot and systemd (by hsw on 2014-10-29 04:19:36 GMT from Taiwan)
@27 true.
There are some critical programs: init, systemd, presumably any update to these will require an reboot since they are directly started by the kernel. Perhaps even /bin/sh would fall into this category as there might be a resident sh process started early in the boot that is exploitable.
Also have to remember to restart any affected daemons if either they, their plug-ins or dependencies were updated. If boot time is quick then reboot does flush out any old resident programs and ensures the machine can actually reboot.
If nothing else perhaps future LCD TVs will get faster boot times, then we'll look for the little "systemd inside" sticker :)
37 • @25 boot time (by greg on 2014-10-29 09:13:36 GMT from Slovenia)
boot of VM is not an issue as you can just save a snapshot. there is no need to reboot the os each time in VM. you just save the state of the virtual machine and then load the state. no reboot necesary,.since I have an old single core PC I use this function a lot. way faster than boot.
38 • Re: #1 Nouveau vs Nvidia (by Kazlu on 2014-10-29 09:23:44 GMT from France)
I am using nouveau on my 7 year old HP pavilion laptop and I am certainly not going back to Nvidia. Last time I tried both, it was when I ran a test drive of Mageia 4. When logged in the Xfce desktop, before opening any app, my RAM usage was at 750MB (!). I swapped the Nvidia driver for nouveau and memory usage dropped to 200-250MB. No performance drop observed, although I admit I did not play any game or used particularly graphics-hungry application. Actually the performance was a bit better but maybe the free RAM that could be used as cache for something else was the main reason for the performance boost.
"It is very difficult to imagine why anyone would prefer Nouveau to Nvidia." Besides what I said earlier that is only applicable to my specific case, don't forget that the Nvidia driver is not FLOSS and to some, THAT is not acceptable. Isn't user freedom worth a performance loss, if your system is still usable? Different people will have different answers.
39 • Systemd (by Darren Hale on 2014-10-29 09:25:01 GMT from New Zealand)
I have only opinion on this Systemad seems more appropriate. I will avoid it like a plague.
40 • Re 10: systemd fast booting (by Kazlu on 2014-10-29 12:14:02 GMT from France)
"Fast boot & fast shutdown is important to me as we use mini PC connected to TVs." How about using hibernation instead of shutdown/boot? On my computer, going to hibernation speed is about the same as shutdown, but wake up after hibernation is much faster than boot. Besides, if you have opened apps, like a video player in full screen on your TV, it gets restored, no need to relaunch it and wait a little extra time.
41 • Puppy et al (by G. Savage on 2014-10-29 12:34:46 GMT from Canada)
A shout out to Phil and the contributors to the latest Puppy. Puppy has fostered such an positive community with an incredible can-do attitude. I can't wait to try it out.
Just when I started to worry Linux might fade away with the decline in PC sales, I see a flurry of activity by so many who sacrifice so much time, and push through setbacks to release solid and polished distros. Thank you to them all.
PS I have great expectations for Ubuntu Touch for tablets.
42 • Linus not liking arrogant systemd developers (by cykodrone on 2014-10-29 22:41:01 GMT from Canada)
Linus telling one off... http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html
43 • @37 boot time (by hsw on 2014-10-30 04:27:37 GMT from Taiwan)
I seem to remember reading someing along those lines for embedded devices to achieve instant-on. I think is was something like bott the kernel and have it all initialised, then suspend, but save the suspended image to flash. Seems like that might be an option for "devices". Not sure if anything ever came from this technique.
44 • Boot times (by SImon on 2014-10-31 07:49:17 GMT from New Zealand)
Fastest boot I've ever seen was a trim Slackware box (using a handful of BSD-style init scripts): just under 8 seconds, and most of that was loading the kernel rather than running the boot scripts. Systemd is just Windows-like "let's make things more complicated" stupidity: it was more or less inevitable that they'd start jamming that kind of rubbish into the boot process now that there's so much rubbish to manage (useless services that are becoming necessary as more and more packages depend on them) all the time on a typical Linux desktop. It's a huge relief that people are forking Debian so that we can continue to use a reliable OS if we want to; but long term we might be better off jumping ship and switching to FreeBSD, where some of the developers still seem to be aiming for sanity rather than Windows-like bells and whistles.
45 • Veteran Unix Admins... (by debrouxl on 2014-10-31 14:45:48 GMT from France)
"cannot face such a big overhaul as a dist-upgrade to a systemd based Debian 8" is silly. That's not such a big overhaul, especially for so-called veteran admins...
Hopefully, DDs will be sane enough to punt the GR and let the Debian project (and its derivatives !) move full steam ahead, without counter-productive burden for maintainers (it will be shouldered by the VUA, should they keep proceeding in their will to fragment the Debian ecosystem), and marginalizing itself from the vast majority of other distros which only embrace systemd.
46 • Systemd (by Perico de los Palotes on 2014-11-01 18:53:10 GMT from Belgium)
Systemd is the way that governments and corporations have found to introduce backdoors and spyware in Linux (via severe code obfuscation). Well, this will hold true until the moment in which systemd will entirely replace the Linux kernel and distributions based on the Linux kernel will become a geeky thing with fewer users (provided the fact that the most popular ones will be systemd-based) and worse hardware support (provided the systemd will be a dependency for most drivers) than BSD.
47 • Dispel obfuscation (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2014-11-02 18:36:12 GMT from United States)
Shouldn't the 69-daemon complex of d's forming a system HAL API be named clearly, as distinct from some initialization daemon (Disk And Execution MONitor)? (After all, GNU's Not Unix, and "isn't the kernel", right?)
48 • @30 (by Jerry on 2014-11-02 19:50:09 GMT from United States)
Just wondering if the genius who updated the router closed the system to certain mac addresses or if even the encryption was changed from wep to wpa2 etc.
I would have been nice to have a notice with contact info in case of issues after any change in a closed system like that.
Number of Comments: 48
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
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| • Issue 1169 (2026-04-20): Lakka 6.1, free software and source-based distributions, FreeBSD Foundation publishes compatible laptop list, Debian holds Project Leader election, Haiku progresses ARM64 port, Mint to extend development cycle, Linux 7.0 released |
| • Issue 1168 (2026-04-13): pearOS 2026.03, EndeavourOS 2026.03.06, which distros are adopting age verification, Arch adjusts its firewall packages, Linux dropping i486 support, Red Hat extends its release cycle, Debian's APT introduces rollbacks, Redox improves its scheduler |
| • Issue 1167 (2026-04-06): Origami Linux 2026.03, answering questions for Linux newcomers, Ubuntu MATE seeking new contributors, Ubuntu software centre is expanding Deb support, FreeBSD fixes forum exploit, openSUSE 15 Leap nears its end of life |
| • Issue 1166 (2026-03-30): NetBSD jails, publishing software for Linux, Ubuntu joins Rust Foundation, Canonical plans to trim GRUB features, Peppermint works on new utilities, PINE64 shows off open hardware capabilities |
| • Issue 1165 (2026-03-23): Argent Linux 1.5.3, disk space required by Linux, Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and builds RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking |
| • Issue 1164 (2026-03-16): d77void, age verification laws and Linux, SUSE may be for sale, TrueNAS takes its build system private, Debian publishes updated Trixie media, MidnightBSD and System76 respond to age verification laws |
| • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Linux-EduCD
Linux-EduCD was a PCLinuxOS-based live DVD developed by Poland's SIMP Studium Techniki. It focuses on education, graphics, office and multimedia use and was designed specifically for use in Polish educational institutions.
Status: Discontinued
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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