 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 586, 24 November 2014 |
Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! A great operating system is not always about having exciting features and the latest applications. Some people value stability and predictability in their operating system. Our Feature review this week covers Scientific Linux, a distribution that places a great deal of importance on being reliable. In our Questions and Answers column this week we talk about blocking network access for specific applications and the various methods we can use to block programs from phoning home. In our News section we discuss Debian's general resolution regarding init software. Plus we talk about the Ubuntu MATE community distribution, Mageia dropping support for older releases and we share good news from the FreeBSD Foundation. Plus we take a look at the distributions released last week and share two new projects added to our waiting list. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Observing Scientific Linux 7.0
 Scientific Linux is an operating system sponsored by Fermilab and built using the source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The distribution is lightly customized, making it similar to RHEL in most respects, but with different artwork. The current release of Scientific is available for the 64-bit x86 CPU architecture only. There are several editions to choose from, including a regular installation DVD (3.9 GB), an "Everything" double-sided installation DVD (6.2 GB), a net-install minimal CD (394 MB), a live CD (690 MB), a GNOME-flavoured live DVD (1.1 GB) and a KDE-flavoured live DVD (1.2 GB). I opted to download the live KDE disc.
Booting from the Scientific Linux media brings up the KDE desktop with a background that resembles either dark, abstract art or perhaps a close-up view of black hair. The application menu, task switcher and system tray rest at the bottom of the screen. There are no icons on the desktop. For the most part, Scientific 7.0 looks and behaves like the latest version of RHEL, just with different artwork and branding. Browsing through the application menu we can find an entry for launching the project's system installer.
Scientific's system installer is a graphical application that starts by asking us for our preferred language. We are then brought to a hub-style screen where we can proceed through configuration modules in the order of our choosing. We are presented with modules for adjusting the system time, changing our keyboard's layout and setting our computer's hostname. There is also a module dedicated to partitioning the local hard drive. I found it interesting to note Scientific correctly guessed which time zone I was in, but provided me with an incorrect default keyboard layout. With regards to hard drive partitioning we have the option of letting Scientific automatically divide up our drive or we can manually adjust our partitions. The system installer supports regular partitions (such as ext3 and ext4), LVM volumes and the advanced Btr file system. The default approach appears to a combination of LVM volumes formatted with XFS.
I decided to experiment with Btrfs and used this as my operating system's root partition. When I chose Btrfs it seems this forced the use of a separate /boot partition formatted with a traditional file system, such as ext4. Once we complete each configuration module the installer begins copying its files to the local drive and we are presented with a second hub screen. This screen contains modules for setting a root password on the system and creating a new user account. When the installer finishes copying its files to the local drive it suggests we read the project's license agreement and then asks us to reboot the computer. Personally, I find the new system installer used by Scientific (and its upstream distribution) a little awkward to navigate. There doesn't appear to be much consistency in the interface, but the installer is functional and I encountered no errors.
The first time we boot into Scientific Linux 7.0 we are asked if we would like to enable kdump and then the system reboots again. When the distribution comes back on-line we are presented with a graphical login screen. Shortly after logging into the KDE desktop an error message appears letting us know there was a problem with the GNOME Shell software. This seems like a strange error to see on the KDE edition of the distribution since there isn't any reason for GNOME Shell to be present. This error message appeared after every login.
Scientific Linux 7.0 - KDE documentation and changing system clock
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I tried running Scientific Linux in two environments, on a desktop machine and in a virtual environment provided by VirtualBox. When running on physical hardware Scientific performed very well. The distribution booted up quickly and ran smoothly. My display was set to its maximum resolution with networking and sound working out of the box. When running in VirtualBox I found Scientific was responsive, but my computer's mouse pointer did not integrate with the Scientific guest. In either environment Scientific used approximately 550 MB of RAM to login to the KDE desktop. The operating system also cached quite a lot of data in memory. Just booting and logging into KDE resulted in over 880MB of data being cached in RAM.
Concerning package management, Scientific Linux does not appear to ship with any graphical package manager or update manager. There were no notifications when new software updates were made available in the project's repositories. To work with packages I turned to YUM, a command line package manager. YUM works a bit slowly compared to Debian's APT or Arch's Pacman, but it gets the job done and the output and prompts displayed by YUM are clearer in their intent, I find. The first day I ran Scientific there were 16 updated packages waiting to be downloaded from the project's servers and these totalled 30MB in size. Toward the end of the week I checked for updates again and found 10 more packages, 5MB in size, waiting to be downloaded. Every action I performed with YUM, whether it was installing new software or applying security updates, completed successfully.
While I was using Scientific Linux I found the distribution did not ship with multimedia codecs or Flash and I looked into adding these features. Usually I would get these extras from a third-party repository such as RPMFusion or RepoForge, however neither repository appears to have support for Scientific 7.0 and compatible distributions at the time of writing. The Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) is available and this repository contains some extra software, though it appears to lack popular video and mp3 audio codecs.
Scientific Linux 7.0 - running various desktop applications
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Scientific Linux 7.0 ships with a small collection of desktop software. We are treated to the Firefox web browser, the LibreOffice productivity suite and the Evolution e-mail client. The distribution ships with the Ekiga Softphone software, the Empathy messaging client and the Konqueror web browser. Digging through the application menu we further find a remote desktop client, the Dragon Player media player and the k3b optical disc burning software. Scientific provides us with the KolourPaint drawing application, the Okular document viewer and the Gwenview image viewer. To adjust the look and feel of the desktop we are given the KDE System Setting panel. The KGpg and Kleopatra applications are provided to help us encrypt files and manage security keys. I found applications for working with the distribution's firewall, configuring printers and adjusting the computer's clock. To help us get on-line Network Manager is provided. In the background the distribution runs on the Linux kernel, version 3.10.
Conclusions
Running Scientific Linux 7.0 is what I would call an intentionally uninteresting experience. This distribution, and its upstream project, are both designed to be stable and to run, largely unchanged, for years. There are not supposed to be any surprises nor trendy flare. In this regard I would say Scientific is largely a success. It is dull in a predictable way, the sort of workstation operating system you can install and then pretty much forget about.
That being said, there were some aspects to the operating system that I felt stood out. Or rather there were pieces I felt were missing. For example, Scientific Linux does not appear to have any graphical package manager. In fact, RHEL is famous for its many flexible configuration tools and, apart from the firewall application and the printer manager, there appears to be a notable lack of administration tools installed on Scientific by default. Administration tools for working with user accounts, software packages and other aspects of the system are available in the package repositories. Following that line of thought, Scientific feels a lot like previous versions of Scientific, but with some corners cut. This version appears to ship with slightly less software while featuring a larger memory footprint.
Scientific Linux 7.0 - adjusting firewall and desktop settings
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Part of the problem with spending a week with a distribution like Scientific is that the benefits of running a stable distribution with nearly a decade of support ahead of it are largely lost on the person testing the software. I can point to minor bugs (like the GNOME Shell warning) or the lack of multimedia support or the giant command line I kept seeing in my process list (see below), but I did not get to experience the benefit of running a presumably stable operating system for over seven years. My trial was too short for that and I believe the strengths of Scientific exist in its predictability and longevity. I suspect if one were to install Scientific and enable automatic software updates the operating system would continue to run for the better part of decade without visible change or disruption and some people need that.
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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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Occasionally during my trial I would bring up a list of running processes and I kept seeing entries in the list with long command lines which looked like the one below. This is something I haven't seen a Linux distribution do before and the massive command line, with its developer comments thrown in, is a bit strange to see. Here is one such command line of a running process that appeared shortly after I logged in one evening:
/bin/sh -c nice sosreport --tmp-dir "$DUMP_DIR" --batch \ --only=anaconda --only=boot --only=devicemapper \ --only=filesys --only=hardware --only=kernel --only=libraries \ --only=memory --only=networking --only=nfsserver --only=pam \ --only=process --only=rpm -k rpm.rpmva=off --only=ssh \ --only=startup --only=yum --only=general --only=x11 \ --only=cups --only=logs --only=grub2 --only=cron --only=pci \ --only=auditd --only=selinux --only=lvm2 --only=sar \ >sosreport.log 2>&1 \ && { rm sosreport.log rm sosreport*.md5 mv sosreport*.tar.bz2 sosreport.tar.bz2 mv sosreport*.tar.xz sosreport.tar.xz exit 0 } 2>/dev/null # Error in sosreport run. Let user see the problem. echo "sosreport run failed with exit code $?, log follows:" # sosreport prints many useless empty lines, nuke them: # it looks awful in syslog otherwise. cat sosreport.log | sed 's/ *$//' | grep -v '^$' rm sosreport.log exit 1
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
Debian votes on init coupling, Ubuntu MATE combines classic desktop with Ubuntu packages, Mageia 3 approaches end of life, FreeBSD Foundation receives generous donation, Linux Voice releases first issue for free download
 Starting on November 5th, the Debian developers began casting votes on a general resolution which would determine whether packages included in Debian could require the use of a specific init package. With systemd becoming the default init implementation earlier this year there was some concern as to whether Debian users would be able to select their preferred init software. The vote would determine whether software accepted into Debian's repositories would force packages to be independent of a specific init implementation or if package maintainers could link to a specific init package. The votes have been counted and the result is Debian developers have chosen not to rule on coupling packages to any specific init software. This means upstream developers and package maintainers will be free to depend on (or not depend on) specific init software as they see fit.
The long and sometimes tumultuous debate over init software has stirred up a lot of emotion in the Debian community. Many users feel their voices are not being heard while several developers have expressed frustration over the delays caused by the long running debates. Two weeks ago we reported on the resignation of Debian developer Joey Hess. More recently developer Tollef Fog Heen left Debian's systemd package maintainers team, citing personal attacks as his motivation to contribute to other parts of the Debian project. On November 16th Russ Albery stepped down from his position on the Debian Technical Committee (TC), stating he would rather work on developing software than being a part of the project's governance: "Right now I don't have the additional resources to spend, I need to step down and let someone else take their own approach to the TC role. This is particularly true right now, where every decision the TC makes that has anything remotely to do with systemd is incredibly fraught."
Albery's resignation comes a week after Colin Watson declared his intention to retire from Debian's Technical Committee. In Waton's post to the Technical Committee's mailing list he wrote: "I've been doing a good deal of refactoring of my life recently as a result of realizing that I was burning out, and right now it's important that I make an effort to spend my Debian time on things I find relaxing rather than things I've been finding stressful." Last week also saw the resignation of Ian Jackson from Debian's Technical Committee. Jackson was the Debian developer who first put forward the general resolution addressing init coupling and the debate on init software appears to have taken its toll on him. In his departure letter Jackson wrote, "While it is important that the views of the 30-40% of the project who agree with me should continue to be represented on the TC, I myself am clearly too controversial a figure at this point to do so. I should step aside to try to reduce the extent to which conversations about the project's governance are personalized. And, speaking personally, I am exhausted." Jackson wrote that he hopes to turn his focus from politics to developing software.
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 For people who liked the user-friendly features of Ubuntu, but did not like the project's switch from GNOME 2 to the Unity desktop environment, there is good news. The Ubuntu MATE project is a flavor of Ubuntu that ships with a traditional GNOME 2 desktop: "Ubuntu MATE is an unofficial (for now) Ubuntu flavor which uses MATE as the default desktop environment. MATE is a GNOME 2 fork introduced after GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell replaced the classic desktop metaphor." The Ubuntu MATE project has released a development version and a long-term support release for people who long for Ubuntu with a classic look and feel. The project's release announcement can be found on the Ubuntu MATE blog. For the more adventurous, a newer build of Ubuntu MATE, version 14.10, is also available.
Ubuntu MATE 14.10 features the MATE 1.8.1 desktop.
(full image size: 1,216kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
(Editor's note. For those who are wondering why the seemingly very popular Ubuntu MATE has yet to be listed on DistroWatch, the explanation is simple - as it stands, the project is possibly violating trademark laws, since it's Canonical who owns the right to use the word "Ubuntu" in their product names. Unless Ubuntu MATE becomes an official member of the Ubuntu family or Ubuntu MATE obtains a permission to use the word "Ubuntu" in their product name or Ubuntu MATE renames itself to something else, we prefer to wait with the listing. This saves us a lot of unnecessary work in cases where distribution projects are forced to change their names and logos in compliance with international trademark laws. This, of course, shouldn't prevent you from giving it a try or using the distribution. Besides Ubuntu MATE, there are several other Ubuntu-based distributions with MATE, including Linux Mint, Ultimate Edition, wattOS and CAINE.)
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 The Mageia project, a community fork of the Mandriva distribution, announced last week that Mageia 3 is nearing the end of its support cycle: "It's time to say goodbye to Mageia 3. After Wednesday the 26th of November, this release won't benefit from any more security or bug fix updates. This will allow QA team to give more time for polishing our coming Mageia 5. So you have only one week left to upgrade to Mageia 4 if you want to keep an up-to-date system." Version 3 of the user friendly operating system will be retired as developers are currently focused on the final stages of Mageia 5. The project urges people who are still running Mageia 3 to upgrade their installations by following the steps provided in the Mageia Wiki pages.
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 The FreeBSD Foundation, a non-profit organization which supports the FreeBSD operating system, received a generous donation last week. The Foundation's blog reports: "The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce it has received a $1,000,000 donation from Jan Koum, CEO and Co-Founder of WhatsApp. This marks the largest single donation to the Foundation since its inception almost 15 years ago, and serves as another example of someone using FreeBSD to great success and then giving back to the community." Jan Koum also commented on the donation, explaining why FreeBSD and similar open source operating systems are so important. "I started using FreeBSD in the late 90s, when I didn't have much money and was living in government housing. In a way, FreeBSD helped lift me out of poverty - one of the main reasons I got a job at Yahoo! is because they were using FreeBSD, and it was my operating system of choice. Years later, when Brian and I set out to build WhatsApp, we used FreeBSD to keep our servers running. We still do."
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 Despite much scepticism about the prospects of a new print publication in the digital era we live in, the Linux Voice magazine, launched by several former editors of Linux Format and crowdfunded by Linux users from around the world, appears to be a success. Nine months have passed since the inaugural issue hit the retails shelves and download servers (for subscribers) and as promised by the founders, this 116-page release is now available for free under the Creative Commons BY-SA license: "Yes, it's been nine months since the first issue of Linux Voice hit the newsstands, so we're making it available under the Creative Commons BY-SA license. In a nutshell: you can modify and share all content from the magazine (apart from adverts), even for commercial purposes, providing you credit Linux Voice as the original source, and retain the same license. Highlights in this issue: master Vim, understand systemd, solve word puzzles with Bash and grep, discover the technology behind Bitcoin, and secure your communications with PGP. Plus many more tutorials, features and interviews - 116 pages in total!" Download the complete 1st issue of Linux Voice from here: Linux-Voice-Issue-001.pdf (61MB).
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Blocking network access for specific applications
Taking-away-the-keys asks: I've been trying to switch over to Linux from Windows full time and I'm finding advice from people such as: "Firewalls at the application level don't exist on Linux as they essentially are of no use." But what if I want to block one specific application? I hear this too: "There really is not much of a point in having an application based firewall in Linux. The problem in Windows is all the spyware calling home. We do not have to deal with such things." Is it possible to block network connections on Linux on an application-by-application basis? If not, why not?
DistroWatch answers: First, let us examine, briefly, the difference between how Linux firewall configuration tools usually work and what people mean by application-aware firewalls. On some operating systems there is this concept of blocking network traffic based on which application is trying to send or receive information. For example, we might want our web browser to be able to access the Internet, but we might wish to prevent our media player from connecting to the outside world. An e-mail client should be able to connect to remote servers to send and receive messages, but we probably do not want our e-book reader reporting on our favourite titles. Some firewall configuration tools on other platforms, such as Windows, allow the user to specify which applications may connect to the Internet and which may not.
By contrast, Linux and other UNIX-like systems, focus on filtering traffic based on where the traffic is coming from and where it is going. For example, we might block all incoming connections from the Internet to our local network shares. Or we might block all traffic trying to leave our computer on its way to a server we suspect is malicious. Or we might block all incoming login attempts that come from outside the local network.
There is some truth to the idea that often times Linux does not need application based firewall protection. Traditionally, at least, Linux administrators have pulled in packages from vetted repositories where it has been generally assumed spyware and other malware would not exist. This meant packages installed on Linux were usually considered to be trusted or at least it was assumed packages installed from a repository would not misbehave and phone home. However, this approach makes a few assumptions. One is that software that reports on user activities will not exist in the software repository of your distribution and that users will never need to install software from a third-party. In the real world both these assumptions are often wrong.
I find it disappointing that many people don't think there is any reason to have application-based firewalls on Linux. There are lots of cases where an application-aware firewall makes sense. This is especially true of cases where applications report home on a common port, like port 80, which makes it look like just another connection attempt from a web browser. There is a demand for application-aware firewalls on Linux from people migrating from Windows, and this demand has existed for over a decade.
As to whether it is possible to block network traffic on an application-by-application basis, it is possible. Usually this involves some technical ability on the part of the user. For example, someone might be able to use fine-grained security technology like AppArmor or SELinux to limit a program's access to the network.
Another way to go would be to monitor your network traffic and spot the name/IP of the server your applications are contacting. Then block all traffic going out to that address. This would be a lot easier than blocking specific applications with fine-grained access tools. However, it does carry the downside that if the address of the remote server changes, then your misbehaving application will be able to report home.
Yet another approach would be to install a lightweight Linux distribution in a virtual machine. Then install the suspicious application and leave networking to the virtual machine disabled. In a virtual machine the user can enable networking to perform updates or download files and then disable networking again prior to starting the application we want to keep isolated.
Perhaps the easiest approach though is to take advantage of a Linux feature which allows you to block commands run by a specific user. If you can set up your application so that it runs as a specific user, let's call that user "dummy", then you can block all network access made by programs run by the "dummy" user. Here is an example of blocking a user's access to the Internet using iptables.
Though perhaps not entirely practical in some cases, I feel the best approach is to not install software you suspect is misbehaving. Programs that phone home or report on user activities should probably be removed from the system. Replacing a misbehaving program may be easier than regularly monitoring it to make sure it has not introduced any new bad behaviour.
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| Released Last Week |
PC-BSD 10.1
Dru Lavigne has announced the release of PC-BSD 10.1, a new stable release of the FreeBSD-based operating system for the desktop: "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 10.1. Highlights: KDE 4.14.2, GNOME 3.12.2, Cinnamon 2.2.16, Chromium 38.0.2125.104, Firefox 33.1, NVIDIA Driver 340.24, Lumina desktop 0.7.1-beta, pkg 1.3.8; new AppCafe HTML5 web/remote interface for both desktop and server usage; new CD-sized text-installer ISO files for TrueOS and server deployments; new Centos 6.6 Linux emulation base; new HostAP mode for WiFi GUI utilities; UEFI support for boot and installation; automatic tuning of ZFS memory usage at install time; support for full-disk (GELI) encryption without an unencrypted /boot partition (also on mirror/raidz setups!); new VirtualBox, VMware and RAW disk images of desktop and server installations." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions.
PC-BSD 10.1 - the Lumina desktop environment
(full image size: 1,350kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Grml 2014.11
Michael Prokop has announced the release of Grml 2014.11, a Debian-based live CD featuring ZSH as the default shell and a large collection of specialist scripts for system administrators: "We just released Grml 2014.11 'Gschistigschasti'. This Grml release provides fresh software packages from Debian 'testing'. As usual it also incorporates up-to-date hardware support and it fixes known bugs from the previous Grml release. New features: new boot option getfile.retries=... - by specifying a number it controls the number of download retries for the netscript=...; grml2usb - improved check for boot flag, new option --skip-bootflag and Python 3 support; grml-quickconfig - display IP and password if SSH boot option is used; grml-lang - support language settings for Italy; grml-hwinfo: support i2c-tools's decode-dimms, edac-utils and mcelog; grml-zshrc - rework and unify $PATH handling...." See the release announcement and release notes for further details.
Univention Corporate Server 4.0
Nico Gulden has announced the release of Univention Corporate Server 4.0. Univention Corporate Server is an enterprise-class distribution based on the stable release of Debian GNU/Linux, featuring an integrated management system for central administration of servers. From the release announcement: "We are very happy to announce the availability of Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 4.0. Considerable highlights are: the design and the usability of the UCS management system have been completely revamped to allow the comfortable administration with tablets and smartphones via a responsive design; in addition to local virtualization servers, the UCS Virtual Machine Manager (UVMM) can now also manage cloud computing environments based on OpenStack or Amazon EC2 environments; the management of applications has been simplified through a centralised App Center...." See the release notes for a detailed description of the product.
NetBSD 5.1.5, 5.2.3
Soren Jacobsen has announced the release of NetBSD 5.2.3 and 5.1.5, the project's legacy versions in the 5.2 and 5.1 release branches: "The NetBSD project is pleased to announce NetBSD 5.1.5, the fifth security and bug-fix update of the NetBSD 5.1 release branch, and NetBSD 5.2.3, the third security and bug-fix update of the NetBSD 5.2 release branch. They represent a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, and if you are running a prior release of either branch, we strongly suggest that you update to one of these releases. For more details, please see the release notes at NetBSD-5.1.5.html and NetBSD-5.2.3.html. Complete source and binaries for NetBSD are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other services may be found here." This is the brief release announcement.
Guadalinex 9
Guadalinex 9 has been released. Guadalinex is a Linux distribution developed by the Council of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Government of Andalucía (Spain) to facilitate the access to information technology for all citizens of the Spanish province. It is largely based on Ubuntu 14.04, with elements from Linux Mint and Debian GNU/Linux. The main edition comes with the Cinnamon desktop, while the "lite" variant, provided for the first time and designed to run on older computers or computers with limited hardware, includes the lightweight LXDE desktop environment. The main components include: Linux kernel 3.13, Cinnamon 2.2.16, Firefox 24.3.0esr, LibreOffice 4.2.6 and the usual selection of popular open-source applications. The distribution also comes with a comprehensive installation and user guide (PDF format, in Spanish). See the brief release announcement (in Spanish) and follow the included links for further information.
Guadalinex 9 - the Cinnamon desktop environment
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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 |
Distributions added to database
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Distributions added to waiting list
- Chromixium OS. Chromixium is a project to recreate the functionality, look and feel of Google's Chrome OS on a conventional desktop, GNU/Linux base system.
- Quantum OS. Quantum OS is a Linux distribution which conforms to Google's Material Design guidelines. The focus of Quantum OS will be on creating a stable and easy-to-use operating system.
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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, 1 December 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 • Blocking network access for specific applications (by kernelKurtz on 2014-11-24 09:10:11 GMT from France)
The only piece of Mac software i really really miss is called Little Snitch, and it does this job exactly, on a per application and per IP basis. I'd love to find a truly comparable functionality on the Linux side.
2 • a few thoughts (by Reuben on 2014-11-24 10:39:45 GMT from United States)
I think by this point Flash isn't really needed. Much video on the internet uses the video tag. Of course a lot of it is h264, so you would still need the rpmfusion repo. I haven't had flash on my desktop for a few months, and I don't really miss it.
Also, all the fighting going on inside of Debian is disheartening. Everyone is loses.
3 • @ 1 blocking (by greg on 2014-11-24 10:48:24 GMT from Slovenia)
how about gUFW? incoming deny, outgoing deny. although I am not sure if it blocks port or application.
otherwise Windows firewalls usually do that as well. block access for specific application, not port.
4 • Debian and SystemD (by Tux_Raider on 2014-11-24 11:31:55 GMT from United States)
i think making packages depend on systemD is a big mistake, what if someone wanted to install a multimedia player and apt started pulling all these dependencies that have nothing to do with playing audio & video files because someone built the multimedia player app with SystemD as a dependency?
Debian needs a Non-SystemD fork
Slackware might be the way to go
5 • Scientific Linux (by user6410 on 2014-11-24 11:47:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Interesting that there are issues with this release of SL, are the same things present in the parent Red Hat?
6 • Ubuntu MATE (by anon on 2014-11-24 12:21:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Couldn't they choose from name like; mabuntu, matbuntu, ubumate, mubuntu? etc ... and then possibly be taken aboard as a community/official distro later by the ubuntu team? A name matching *buntu would fit better with the naming scheme for other derivatives too, xubuntu, kubuntu, etc. With no on trademarks.
Distributions such as as fluxbuntu in the past (fluxbox and ubuntu) had no issues with naming as far as i know.
7 • @Tux_Raider (by RoestVrijStaal on 2014-11-24 12:30:15 GMT from Netherlands)
Which media player are you talking about?
Hopefully someone with proper knowledge about coupling and cohesion is willing to fork it. The current maintainers doesn't seem to have that knowledge.
8 • Debian init systems (by Dale Visser on 2014-11-24 12:50:34 GMT from United States)
I find it interesting that Canonical has been peacefully downstream of Debian running its own init system, Upstart, for some years now. Their reaction to the vote to go with Systemd? Paraphrasing here: "Not what we would have chosen, but we'll transition when Debian does." Is the resistance largely coming from veteran sysadmins sitting on piles of init scripts they don't want to be forced to rewrite?
9 • @8 (by Michele on 2014-11-24 13:46:48 GMT from United States)
Gnome depend of systemd, canonical can't chose.
10 • Application based firewalls (by Pearson on 2014-11-24 14:16:19 GMT from United States)
Jesse,
Your comment about using a VM brought to my mind Qubes - a security focused OS that I believe you reviewed recently. It is based on using different VMs to isolate applications, but with a seamless interface (at least that's the intent -- I don't recall how well they reached that goal). It seems to me that one VM could be set up with little or no network access,
11 • Firewalls and other things (by Jesse on 2014-11-24 14:38:14 GMT from Canada)
>> "how about gUFW? incoming deny, outgoing deny. although I am not sure if it blocks port or application"
It blocks ports, not applications.
>> "Interesting that there are issues with this release of SL, are the same things present in the parent Red Hat?"
Yes, I encountered the same issues when running Red Hat. If you dig back through the archives a bit you will find my observations on RHEL 7 Beta.
>> "Couldn't they choose from name like; mabuntu, matbuntu, ubumate, mubuntu? etc ... and then possibly be taken aboard as a community/official distro later by the ubuntu team?"
Lots of official community spins place "Ubuntu" in the name. Such as Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu GNOME, etc. Community spins do not need to use *ubuntu names.
>> " Is the resistance largely coming from veteran sysadmins sitting on piles of init scripts they don't want to be forced to rewrite?"
The resistence is mostly coming from people who either don't like the design of systemd or have run into compatibility problems or who do not like untested software being pushed into production or who feel "if it's not broke, don't fix it".
12 • @6 (by Frederic Bezies on 2014-11-24 14:52:25 GMT from France)
I think that ubuntu mate remix team wants to be since the beginning an official flavour of Ubuntu, as for Ubuntu Gnome.
And munbuntu ? Sound like the name of an african dictator, former president of Congo => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko
Sometimes names are hard to choose.
13 • Scientific 7 versus Centos 7 (by foxhollow on 2014-11-24 16:30:28 GMT from United States)
I am wondering what value-add Sci-Linux-7 now gives the user over Centos 7? I loaded both on side-by-side machines and went through every menu, every option, all exactly the same
Sci-Linux-7 == Centos 7
I could not see a difference. Did I make a mistake and only load "Centos mode" or was this rushed out to have a "7.0" release and the group simply downloaded the Centos compile scripts?
14 • Ubuntu MATE (by Nick on 2014-11-24 16:51:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's been a four year wait, but the traditional Ubuntu is finally back.
15 • Scientific Linux 7 (by Oko on 2014-11-24 17:27:42 GMT from United States)
One more in series of useless reviews. Scientific Linux 7 is not just community distro of CentOS which is now part of Red Hat project. It would being much more useful to review a genuine Red Hat clone like Springdale Linux. I stop reading the review at point when you chose Btrfs. There is a reason why good old trusted Silicon Graphics XFS is the default file system of Red Hat 7.0. Linux "community" whatever that means has not being able to come up with a genuine working (and useful) native file system for over 20 years. Now somebody wants me to believe that Btrfs will become production ready soon. No thanks. I am sticking to ZFS :)
16 • Debian fork (by bison on 2014-11-24 17:31:21 GMT from United States)
> Debian needs a Non-SystemD fork
It probably just need a non-systemd base system and install image. Some stuff won't work, e.g. Gnome, but that probably doesn't matter much, since most people who object to systemd have probably already abandoned Gnome.
17 • @9 (by Michael on 2014-11-24 18:10:29 GMT from United States)
You don't need systemd to run Gnome. We're already doing this on Funtoo.
18 • Debian's Move to Systemd (by Buntunub on 2014-11-24 18:12:09 GMT from United States)
Regardless of where you stand on Systemd, Debian's move to making it default, and then voting to not restrict package dependancies is really problematic for a stable release. Because Debian is the upstream source project for so many derivative Distros, this impacts a vast amount of Linux users, such as Ubuntu, who now has no choice but to use Systemd.
Does this not raise alarm flags off with anyone here?
19 • @13 Sientific Linux vs CentOS (by Pearson on 2014-11-24 18:19:11 GMT from United States)
I haven't looked at the 7.0 stuff, but (speaking from memory) at one time Scientific Linux changed things more "under the hood" so to speak:
* Easily allowing various configurations of installs (presumably, kickstart configurations?), to support the diversity of different labs under the Fermilabs umbrella
* Adding or updating a couple of science related packages (I'm thinking data analysis related packages).
You might want to perfom 'rpm -qa' on your CentOS and Scientific Llinux installs, and see what is different.
20 • Debian and Systemd (by Corbin Rune on 2014-11-24 18:48:57 GMT from United States)
That's a good point, Buntunub. Thing is, at this point, systemd's becoming default all over the place. Hell, if you want to escape it full-stop, you're getting to the point where it's Slack, Gentoo or run for the (BSD) hills. One _can_ replace systemd ... but it does require some work.
As for alarm flags. I'll admit to having some concerns with how many functions systemd is beginning to incorporate. (Although, I wasn't originally a big fan of PulseAudio, either - and these days, it's been pretty workable on my side.)
21 • @18 app init dependcies (by cykodrone on 2014-11-24 19:51:41 GMT from Canada)
Yes, I am quite alarmed by this, no single app installation should pull in an init system I do not want or be any part of. I want no part of this 'Winux' (pronounced win+ix) ideology.
22 • Chromixium OS (by Ari Torres on 2014-11-24 19:53:29 GMT from United States)
It is so close, so close that it's hard to distinguish from the real thing
I am impressed and can attest that it's very stable
holly macro you guys are smoking..........
just be careful with big brother Google :)
23 • Debian and Systemd (by Buntunub on 2014-11-24 21:23:54 GMT from United States)
@ Corbin - Running for the BSD hills may be the thing to do these days, considering they just got a million dollar gift bucket. I have no doubt that with as many people being alarmed/concerned about what is happening to Linux with Systemd, that they will get some fresh talented new devs, and that money will go a long ways to helping out with further refining what is already a fantastic OS with ZFS to boot!
@ Cykodrone - I understand your analogy. Systemd is very much like the Windows svchost. In fact, it is nearly a clone of it in many ways, and perhaps will even clone the problems Microsoft has had as a result of svchost based attacks! Most likely, it will given that massive attack surface.
24 • Evolve OS (by Ari Torres on 2014-11-24 21:24:17 GMT from United States)
I cannot say the same about Evolve OS it is NOT stable and has few boot bugs
it does works cause I am typing from it right now BUT well try for yourself :(
settings are a bit tricky (Volume)
Icon Theme looks very good :)
keep working on it, love what you are doing :)
25 • Ubuntu Mate (by Ari Torres on 2014-11-24 21:27:47 GMT from United States)
You guys know what you are doing, STABLE!!!
if you are an old guy like me, lover of DON"T FIX IT IF IT AIN'T BROKEN here we are :)
Everything works right out of the box, Gnome 2 here we stand :)
you've never left
Thumps Up Ubuntu Mate :)
26 • Phoning home (by David on 2014-11-24 22:56:31 GMT from United States)
If a package in a distribution's repositories phones home, please file a bug in your distribution's bug tracker! This is something the distro should fix in the package, or they should drop the package. I packaged ufdbguard for my distro, and it is open source and phones home, but I was able to fix the package such that it won't phone home out of the box. It took a bit of effort (and I have to check source code changes carefully each time there's a new version), but it was do-able.
27 • @10--Qubes and application-based firewalls (by Ralph on 2014-11-24 23:07:05 GMT from Canada)
You are correct about Qubes, but you would not have to install an entire "lightweight distro" to a VM just to shutter one application, all you would have to do is create an application VM just for that one app in which network access is blocked. Qubes makes this very easy to do as they have a GUI VM manager that is streamlined for just this sort of thing.
28 • DebIan - Testing vs Stable (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2014-11-25 00:58:33 GMT from United States)
When people object to bug-riddled code migrating from Sid into Testing, don't devs simply say they'll work it all out before it goes to Stable? Why call Testing "Production"?
29 • RE: 19 Scientific Linux vs CentOS (by ladislav on 2014-11-25 01:35:14 GMT)
You might want to perfom 'rpm -qa' on your CentOS and Scientific Llinux installs, and see what is different.
You can get the package lists (all packages available on the installation media) of CentOS 7.0-1406 and Scientific Linux 7.0 directly from DW:
http://distrowatch.com/resource/scientific/scientific-7.0.txt
http://distrowatch.com/resource/centos/centos-7.0-1406.txt
30 • It's a PID thing. (by slartybartfarst on 2014-11-25 08:56:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
Systemd is better at handling PID's, I read somewhere.
On a ROSA Linux install, systemd uses 161 PID's with the highest number being in the 60000 range. Slackware used 153 with the highest number being in the 1000 range.
Systemd means Red Hat now controls all but 3 distros (Slackware, Crux and Pisi - despite posts to the contrary - Gentoo uses systemd). If you're happy with that I would suggest you haven't been paying enough attention.
31 • Blocking network access for specific applications (by zcatav on 2014-11-25 09:11:02 GMT from Turkey)
Android performs these action with same linux kernel via SElinux.
You can see on NoRoot firewall application.
32 • @30 (It's a PID thing) (by steve on 2014-11-25 12:25:02 GMT from Italy)
I have PCLinuxOS installed in my netbook:
cat /proc/1/comm
results:
init
so you can add PCLinuxOS to the list of the distros that don't use systemd.
33 • Now I know to skip the current Scientific Linux release (by RJA on 2014-11-25 12:33:35 GMT from United States)
Bug that should have been squashed during beta stages!
34 • @30 (by a on 2014-11-25 13:34:38 GMT from France)
There are more than 3 distros, and Gentoo *can* be installed without systemd.
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=118319
But yes the list is very small and I haven’t found any easy to use distro in that list. (Maybe you’ll have more luck if you’re a qwerty user.)
35 • non-systemd search (by Marten on 2014-11-25 15:02:02 GMT from Netherlands)
Perhaps it's an idea to make it more clear on DW which init system is used by each distro? The summaries of distro's clearly state available architectures and DE's. With the rise of systemd and the way it is pushed into many (most) distro's, this may also become an important search criterium.
Searches for packages sysvinit and systemd yield overlapping results. It tells nothing about the default init system nor whether it's much work to switch.
36 • Application-level firewalls for Linux (by AnklefaceWroughtlandmire on 2014-11-25 19:15:47 GMT from Ecuador)
Good point about the lack of application-level firewalls for Linux. There are definitely some use cases for something like this. For example, let's say I have a bandwidth-limited backup 3G/4G internet connection. When my DSL goes down, maybe I just want Pidgin and Firefox to continue being able to connect, but I don't want my filesync app, Thunderbird, Skype, and the OS updater to use up my limited bandwidth. This is when an application firewall would come in handy.
I think I found a new application-level firewall for Linux:
http://douaneapp.com/
It's recently open-sourced, and I haven't tried it yet. But it might be a good option.
37 • @29 Scientific Linux vs CentOS (by Pearson on 2014-11-25 20:00:47 GMT from United States)
Thanks, Ladislav. It looks like most of the differences are of the variety of 'centos.x86_64' vs 'sl7.x86_64'. I don't know if that necessarily means the packages are built differently or just named differently.
Scientific Linux does appear to add a few packages that aren't in Centos (and likewise, excludes some packages that appear to be specific to the RedHat infrastructure such as RHN).
38 • SL 7.0 (by GrzegorzW on 2014-11-25 20:01:05 GMT from Poland)
I think testing "KDE edtion" was poor choice and it distorts usability test to some extent. Red Hat is known for its poor integation of KDE desktop - it is absolutly GNOME centric distribution. SL goal is to add some more sci related software - like R packages but I did not heard they tried to improve KDE integration. So for next time choose GNOME/Default edition, with this you got Grafical Package management, update notifications in default setup.
BTW: GUI Package management can be added by installing gnome-packagekit package. There are also packages elrepo-release and epel-release which enable addtional repositories that contain multimedia related stuff and much more.
39 • @30 (by jadecat09 on 2014-11-25 21:11:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have Kwheezy installed on my desktop:
cat /proc/1/comm
results:
init
But how long for, I don't know, because it is Debian with KDE.
40 • systemd vs. Unix Philosophy (by frodopogo on 2014-11-26 03:56:29 GMT from United States)
I'm kind of an outsider since I'm a music geek who likes Linux Mint. I don't really have a horse in this whole systemd thing, but it's sort of fascinating to watch except that things are getting so heated that people are quitting and retiring and stuff in Debian project, and that may at some point impact the Mint project.
Somewhere in the last few days, I discovered this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
Even as an outsider, it's pretty clear to me that systemd flies in the face of the Unix philosophy, and the developers HAD to know that, and that what they were doing was really bucking the way Unix and Linux had been from the beginning... in other words, they are GOING AGAINST A TRADITION. From my experiences and observations in the music world, when you buck a tradition, be prepared for fireworks... things WILL get heated. And in the music world, you often end up with TWO genres instead of one! (Bluegrass vs Newgrass, New Orleans Jazz vs Modern Jazz, and innumerable subgenres of rock) So the heatedness of the discussion doesn't surprise me.... what surprises me is that some are surprised by it!
41 • So much talk about systemd (by Diego on 2014-11-26 10:02:06 GMT from Italy)
I can see a lot of comments about systemd, but no technical insight in it. All points are vague, or nonsense. C'mon it's 2014, why do we think a Unix shell is still a good programming language for an initsystem? Why can't we use modern kernel functionalities?
42 • @34 a: distros without systemd (by Kazlu on 2014-11-26 11:50:14 GMT from France)
Well, Debian Wheezy does not use systemd and is still far from EOL, nor does Ubuntu 14.04, so you still have at least 5 years ahead with easy to use distros without systemd (just pick any Ubuntu derivative you want). But for the longer term, have you tried Salix? It's Slackware based, I haven't tried it but I heard good from it. And like #32 steve said, PCLinuxOS does not use systemd either and it's also said to be easy to use (never tried myself).
43 • SystemD (by Rev_Don on 2014-11-26 15:09:29 GMT from United States)
All of the ranting against SystemD is getting to be really annoying. Okay, a lot of you don't like it. Fine. So figure out how to work around it. Find a distro that doesn't use it or find a way to install the Init system you prefer. If you want to complain and whine about it like a bunch of little 5 year olds then do so on the DEVELOPER'S and DISTRO'S forums instead of here at Distrowatch. Complaining here will accomplish very little at best, and more likely won't accomplish anything at all positive.
Instead of wasting your time complaining, go out and do something POSITIVE and CONSTRUCTIVE about the situation. I for one and sick and tired of all the constant infantile whining about it.
And please don't start ranting at my post. You've had your say for the past few weeks and it's time for it to stop
44 • systemd (by Carlos on 2014-11-26 15:58:36 GMT from Portugal)
For more than a year I've used Fuduntu on my laptop, until it disappeared from the map.
Fuduntu was a rolling distro, originally forked from Fedora, (very nice) Gnome2 desktop and no systemd.
It was IMO and IME the most stable rolling distro ever, it just worked and worked without any issue, I loved it.
Anyway, these were Lee Ward's reasons to close Fuduntu:
"Particularly in light of Fuduntu's growing success, the decision was not made lightly to close its doors, Ward noted.
Waning support for the GTK+ 2 cross-platform toolkit was one key factor. “With this, apps using GTK 2 have been moved to GTK 3 and old versions are no longer being maintained for either bugs or security flaws,” Ward explained.
Another influencing factor was the Linux world's transition to the systemd system and service manager. Fuduntu does not use systemd, but it has become required for many programs, causing increasing problems for the distro.
“Fuduntu has reached an impasse,” Ward explained. “To move forward would take quite a bit of time and manpower, neither of which can be supported.”
Taken from here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2034669/fuduntu-linux-is-closing-its-doors.html
These days, it is not easy for a distro to remain systemd free.
45 • @42 & 34 (by cykodrone on 2014-11-26 16:02:23 GMT from Canada)
Mint 17 (all DE flavours) is based on Ubuntu 14.04
http://ubuntuportal.com/2014/03/linux-mint-17-18-19-and-20-will-based-on-ubuntu-14-04-lts-trusty-tahr.html
But...Mint 17 'sports' some systemd parts, unless DW's package list is wrong, it still contains systemd-services and systemd-shim so it's not *completely* free of it...
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint&pkglist=true&version=17#pkglist
46 • It's the end of the world as we know it (by Alex on 2014-11-27 00:39:03 GMT from France)
RE: 43
Flaming anywhere won't accomplish anything, other than scorched earth. systemd as a project is larger than Lennart Poettering, but since he is the face of systemd, I will say that he has displayed gratingly poor people skills on several occasions, but the anti-systemd flaming is making him look cordial and constructive by comparison. So much of this has been counterproductive if the goal is to maintain existing alternatives to systemd, as well as develop new alternatives. I wish I could say that the moral panic has been limited solely to the peanut gallery, but it hasn't.
47 • LXLE, best for old PC, not downloadable (by Jan on 2014-11-27 10:34:13 GMT from Netherlands)
Based on a search on Distrowatch, for old PC's LXLE is the best.
It seems not to be downloadable.
Pretty annoying for a best distro, maybe DW should not advise it?
Jan
48 • @47 re: LXLE download (by Jeff on 2014-11-27 12:30:54 GMT from United States)
It appears that there is a captcha that must be answered to download LXLE, a bit odd for a Linux distro
Do they really get that many bots trying to download an ISO that they need a Turing type test to stop it?
49 • LXLE (by Somewhat Reticent on 2014-11-27 14:38:31 GMT from United States)
Torrent downloading is simply more reliable (than http/ftp), and reduces the bandwidth burden on the developers. Not everyone will be immediately aware of the Adobe Flash "captcha" or additional domains (esp. solvemedia.com) integrated into the website's download page, but that's not the only place to find a (torrent) link.
50 • @47 @48 @49 LXLE, best for old PC, not downloadable (by Jan on 2014-11-27 15:13:06 GMT from Netherlands)
I succesfully entered the captcha and the torrent program tried to download, through both Linux and Windows torrent programs, several times. No success.
51 • @50 LXLE (by Rev_Don on 2014-11-27 17:56:13 GMT from United States)
I just went to the download site, selected the 12.04.5 32bit Revisited, entered the captcha, and the torrent started within seconds. It's downloading at 6MB/s which is essentially saturating my connection. This was about 4 minutes ago and it will just completed so there is nothing wrong with the system on their end.
Using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and uTorrent.
Just tried it in Deluge and that worked perfectly as well.
52 • @50 LXLE (by Rev_Don on 2014-11-27 18:04:21 GMT from United States)
Deluge finished it in about 5 minutes as well. This is in a small town north of Green Bay Wisconsin if that makes any difference.
Don't have a Linux box handy to try it in that, but I can't imagine that would make any difference. Sounds like an issue with your ISP of some sort.
53 • @51 @52 LXLE download (by Jan on 2014-11-27 19:12:36 GMT from Netherlands)
After your experience I just tried it again, with a negative result.
So I have to admit this must have something to do with my current ISP.
Sorry for my earlier negative remarks.
However now I can ask a friend in my neighborhood to download and burn it for me.
Thanks for your effort to test it for me.
54 • Devuan is now an official project (by cykodrone on 2014-11-28 03:21:32 GMT from Canada)
aka Debianfork dot org...
https://devuan.org/
Take that you systemd lovers. :P
55 • @53 LXLE (by Rev_Don on 2014-11-28 04:41:22 GMT from United States)
That might be the best thing to try. I'm still seeding it and it's showing 123 seeders and 25 peers.
If you are in the USA I would be glad to burn a copy and mail it to you tomorrow at no charge. Just send me an e-mail with your mailing address.
56 • Continue with Take What? (by Garon on 2014-11-28 04:47:43 GMT from United States)
@54,
What does that mean. I don't think that the so called lovers of systemd are in any danger. Also I don't believe you will be seeing the Debian fork called Devuan anytime soon. That's going to be a gigantic undertaking. All that this in house whining will cause is further fracturing of the open source community. There is nothing wrong with a fork of a project if it is done for the right reason. What is so sad is that there are so many people who are giving an opinion on this issue when they have no ideal of what they are talking about. Only the future will tell how all this will turn out. At this time I can't see any good coming out of people being arrogant and refusing to work together. So sad.
57 • Debian knife & fork (by don't ask - just hack on 2014-11-28 05:18:33 GMT from Australia)
# 54 Debian fork: it doesn't look good for the vets. Because after they've died and gone to tech heaven, Leonard - with his boyish good looks - will still be Poettering away on his systemd code.
58 • @53 LXLE (by Rev_Don (by Jan on 2014-11-28 09:18:31 GMT from Netherlands)
That's a very nice offer.
However I am in the Netherlands (Europe), so I think its easier to ask a friend here.
Best Regards
Jan
59 • @56 (by Alex on 2014-11-28 10:51:49 GMT from France)
It needn't be gigantic if "VUA" only focus on the relevant packages, although it sounds like their scope may increase with time, resources permitting.
By all means, fork Debian. Hopefully almost everyone can be content this way, and the acrimony can die down. Debian will continue moving forward in its path, Devuan can move forward with its own plan.
60 • Devuan (by Kazlu on 2014-11-28 12:52:04 GMT from France)
@59: I'm with you on this one. I don't think this fork is a bad thing, since the (initial) goal is to reuse as many packages from Debian as possible, and modify them only if necessary to run without systemd. That way, many experience and bug reports can be shared between the two projects, when the bugs affect identical or nearly identical packages, for mutual benefits. So I think it's good as long as Devuan does not get too far away from Debian. It's particularly good for Debian, since the other solution for the people starting this project would have been to switch to another GNU/Linux distribution or a *BSD.
We have gotten so far in this systemd fight, even to the point of disrespecting others here on the distrowatch comments, that if this solution is a way where everyone can find one's place, that's a great way to come out of this. Generally I am sceptical about forks made for any reason, but in this case, since it does not seem trivial to run Debian without systemd, it seems like a good reason.
I wish luck to the Devuan project and hope that both Debian and Devuan may progress together in a way that keeps the fun going for all of us.
61 • Another fork... Another waste. (by Frederic Bezies on 2014-11-28 16:18:21 GMT from France)
Devuan will be a dead end, for some reasons :
1) Built on systemd hating. How many alive distributions are based only because they hate a technology ?
2) Wheezy will be alive until spring 2016.
3) Who is beyond VUA ?
But I can be wrong. For me, devuan is a waste. Nothing less, nothing more.
A french speaking article on my blog related to this waste : http://frederic.bezies.free.fr/blog/?p=12139
Winners : Microsoft, Apple and Google.
Losers : all the linux community.
62 • More on Scientific Linux 7.0 KDE (by eco2geek on 2014-11-28 19:48:41 GMT from United States)
There's an unofficial forum for Scientific Linux that has a lot of information about using third party repositories, installing multimedia codecs, etc. And of course you can sign up and ask other SL users for help.
http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?
I put the KDE live DVD on a USB stick. It is unusual that it doesn't come with a GUI-based package installer, but, as GrzegorzW mentions in comment #38, if you
sudo yum install gnome-packagekit
you'll get a package manager ("/usr/bin/gpk-application") in your System menu. It shows up in the menu system as "Software".
Another unusual cosmetic detail was that it uses gdm, rather than kdm, as its login manager. Otherwise, it looks like a straightforward version of KDE 4.10.5.
63 • Debian Systemd (by linuxista on 2014-11-28 20:43:14 GMT from United States)
I'm trying to figure out why the stink over systemd erupted with the Debian community. Other distros such as Fedora, Suse, RHEL, CentOs, Arch, Manjaro, Frugalware, Mageia, and Sabayon made the switch without any (much?) controversy, and Ubuntu committed to the switch without controversy. Why Debian? I've heard the arguments that admins running multiple servers and other serious sytem admin types have to have their plain text init scripts, but many (more?) servers run CentOs and Ubuntu as well, and there are certainly serious server admins running CentOs, RHEL, Suse, and Ubuntu (and maybe Arch in some cases).
So why no "looming catastrophe" protests from admins running these other distros? I know this has the potential for starting a flame war, but the question is not systemd, good or bad? , but systemd, why Debian? FSF purity, community/democratic decision-making structure, timing/coincidence?
64 • systemd (by PasserBy on 2014-11-28 22:28:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
Just a quick note, Manjaro has active open-rc init support, & openrc packages in AUR for Arch & derivs.
(While mentioning alternatives)
65 • @ 53 LXLE download with Torrent (by Ben Myers on 2014-11-28 22:58:22 GMT from United States)
It is possible that your ISP prohibits use of Torrent clients because Torrent is often associated with downloads that violate copyrights. Or possibly your computer blocks the ports used by your Torrent client? Torrent can be a little bit tricky to set up, but I am now comfortable using uTorrent.
A few months ago, I asked the LXLE team to make available a non-Torrent download, i.e. regular everyday FTP or HTTP, but they declined. My reasoning was very simple. LXLE wants to attract users, and people who would want to download it are in the newbie category, unfamiliar with Torrent.
It's all about getting your distro exposed to as many eyes as possible and used as much as possible. So one would believe... Ben Myers
66 • @65 LXLE and Torrents (by Rev_Don on 2014-11-29 00:14:03 GMT from United States)
I agree. The LXLE team does seem to have gone out of their way to make it as difficult as possible to download their iso image for their target user base. One of the reasons I've been recommending MX-14 and Q4OS more than LXLE these days. Much easier for the new user to download.
67 • Deb spoon fed (by don't give - just take on 2014-11-29 02:03:01 GMT from Australia)
Like someone said on osnews, when the vets are asking for money and not publishing any code yet, or giving any names or addresses - like, "I'm the dev maintainer, Pastor Dan Jonson, and I'm from the Outback Tavern, on Emu Plains, next to the Dingo Reserve, where wild koalas roam free - and here's our code" - then their efforts are likely questionable.
Also, how long will their interest last when it is only based on disliking a new piece of technology? And are they going to rebel with every new technology release?
68 • @67 (by Ika on 2014-11-29 03:34:36 GMT from Spain)
First of all new doesn't mean better. It could be or it could be not.
The problem with systemd is not because it's new but because it's waay more than a simple init system, creating a Windows like environment.
Personally, I don't want to go out from Windows to encounter another Windows. If so, I already have the "original" one.
69 • Wow, I have to clear a few things up (by cykodrone on 2014-11-29 04:08:07 GMT from Canada)
1st, Devaun is NOT based on hate for systemd, it's based on CHOICE and no forced lock-in to any one particular init system (there are other less 'domineering' inits than systemd), major DEs and apps will HAVE TO BE compatible with systemd now and more so in the future. Do you realize the implications of this? This is a total nightmare for upstream apps and DE development OUTSIDE of systemd, FYI, systemd is a moving target development wise, please, 'do the math'.
Secondly, I'm on Devuan's email list, at the bottom of an email from them, it's signed by Roger Leigh, and accompanied by a GPG Public Key.
Some of the links from that email:
(the obvious) https://devuan.org/
http://without-systemd.org/debian-jessie/
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
https://github.com/devuan
http://jenkins-debian-glue.org/
https://github.com/devuan/devuan-baseconf/issues
http://without-systemd.org/wiki
(email address is linked in my nick)
https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
IRC chat channels on freenode:
#debianfork (generic discussion)
#devuan (focus on development)
Does this look like some fledgling wannabe project? It's still in its infancy and some haters can't wait to bash it, really sad. Each to their own, if you choose and like being locked in to one particular init, that's YOUR deal, some of us don't. Ironically, some of you will come running to our 'camp' when systemd blows up in your face, for some reason or another.
70 • @63 (by Alex on 2014-11-29 04:45:17 GMT from Germany)
There has been difference of opinion within Debian to be sure, but some of the noise has not come from within Debian, but has been injected into it by outside parties. Debian has become a proxy war, a battleground for people who aren't stakeholders in Debian, but who do have inflamed passions with regard to the adoption of systemd, not to mention all the clickbait born of it.
Debian has decided the matter for the next release, and now is time to fix release bugs and consign the FUD to the historical logs. After the next release, maybe the issue will be actively revisited. I somewhat doubt that, as the energy and goodwill for that discussion will be exhausted for some time due to all the attacks. I would personally prefer that another discussion of default init system wait until FreeBSD decides how to evolve on that front. Jordan Hubbard's talk at MeetBSD gave me hope that it will sometime in the next five years. Should that solution be portable, then Debian can factor that into any future discussions down the road, otherwise Debian would likely just be considering the same options as before.
As for, « The current leadership of the project is heavily influenced by GNOME developers and too much inclined to consider desktop needs as crucial to the project, despite the fact that the majority of Debian users are tech-savvy system administrators. » (debianfork.org), to quote from a debian-devel email written by Russ Allbery : « This idea that systemd is somehow aimed at desktop environments and is not useful or a good idea for servers is complete nonsense. I say this as someone who barely uses desktops at all and who has been running large-scale server environments professionally for twenty years, and who has had extensive conversations on this topic with professional colleagues in environments ranging from a hundred servers to hundreds of thousands.
Obviously, there are some server administrators who disagree with me, just like there are some desktop users who don't like systemd, and some embedded developers who don't like systemd (and others who love it and think it will help their work immensely). The opinions about systemd do not at all break along the lines that you have imagined.
Given that, could you please stop trying to divide Debian's users into artificial opposing camps, and then trying to play those camps off against each other?…
The decision about the default init system to use for Debian was made with an eye to *all* of Debian's users and all of their varying use cases. You are certainly entitled to disagree with that decision on its merits, but if you're going to claim that it was made solely for desktop users while ignoring server administrators or embedded users, directly contradicting the statements of the people who were actually involved in that decision-making process, you're going to need some really good evidence to back up that assertion. Not just a gut feeling. »
71 • Torrent tool for newbies (by Somewhat Reticent on 2014-11-29 04:47:52 GMT from United States)
I recommend Transmission (also-known-as qtTransmission) - Keeps-It-Short-&-Simple, available for many systems.
72 • Debian Systemd (by linuxista on 2014-11-29 06:28:21 GMT from United States)
@70 Thanks for the informative answer. I didn't realize there was a proxy war going on with Debian. I thought it was just peanut gallery from withing and without. Do you think there are system admins from other projects that are trying to prevent or roll back systemd in their own distros?
As far as my motives, I'm not trying to divide Debian into opposing camps, I was just wondering why, without starting a flame war, this all came to a head with Debian in particular and not with Suse or Fedora or whatnot.
Also, I'm not claiming the decision was made solely for desktop users. That's just the way things are portrayed in all the flame wars. I have heard, in fact, that systemd has a lot of features for server management that you can't accomplish with init scripts. But I'm not claiming or asserting anything. I think you are closer to the center of the fire on this one than I am (in fact, I don't use Debian; just Arch and I like Systemd, so I don't have a dog in the fight), so I understand your concern.
What I was really fishing for was information about the structure of the Debian community, community management, size of the project, or as you pointed out proxy war dynamics related to the blowup. Like is Debian too democratic? Again, not trying to start a flame war, but maybe there is something useful to learn in this for all distro communities about implementing big changes.
73 • @72 (by Alex on 2014-11-29 10:07:15 GMT from Germany)
Excluding Chrome OS (which uses an older version of Upstart), I don't think anyone will dispute that the Debian family tree is the most used in GNU/Linux. That doesn't mean Debian-based distributions are better. Arch is great, but I don't have to tell you that. Debian defaulting to systemd (or Upstart or OpenRC) carries a lot of weight, both for distributions based on Debian, as well as for the wider community. Distribution usage share statistics are nebulous enough that I won't say the Debian family is the last of the major distribution families to transition to systemd, but it is one of the last, and as such was also somewhat of a final opportunity to stem the systemd tide. I don't expect Slackware to ever adopt systemd, nor do I expect systemd to replace OpenRC as the default in Gentoo, although systemd is supported in Gentoo (I would like to add that Slackware and Gentoo are also both great distributions). There will probably also be several smaller distributions that will continue to abstain from systemd, but once Debian and Ubuntu transition to systemd, GNU/Linux at large will have transitioned, and that will be the new paradigm. Thereafter, I think Canonical's commitment to Upstart will wane. I expect it to mostly be in maintenance mode. After Ubuntu 14.04 reaches its end of life, I don't know if any Canonical employees will be be working on Upstart on company time, although perhaps they will continue working on it on their own personal time. Maybe Google will take hold of the Upstart reins. Who's to say? Regarding systemd's future, I would not at all be surprised if in the next decade systemd is upended by another solution. Regardless of where that next solution originates, I hope that transition will see significantly less enmity.
I hope it didn't read as if I was accusing you of anything. I quoted debianfork.org and Russ Allbery in address of your question about system administrators who use Debian. I understand some people's natural hesitation to forks, and I also hope my comment to Garon earlier wasn't taken the wrong way. But I do think this fork is for the best, for the sanity and health of all involved. I see Devuan's primary value as being a landing place for people who don't feel Debian's vision and values match their own. Devuan's success or failure is largely irrelevant to me, but I certainly don't wish it to fail. I just hope that the bickering is mostly at an end.
Regarding community, Debian upholds a social contract, of which #4 will likely be the most cited regarding this issue.
« 4. Our priorities are our users and free software
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environments. We will not object to non-free works that are intended to be used on Debian systems, or attempt to charge a fee to people who create or use such works. We will allow others to create distributions containing both the Debian system and other works, without any fee from us. In furtherance of these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality materials with no legal restrictions that would prevent such uses of the system. »
I believe some who are unhappy with the decision feel let down or even betrayed in this regard, but #4 doesn't stipulate that everyone gets what they want. I do believe Debian developers as a whole have tried their best to do right by Debian users as whole. I don't think systemd is in Debian because Debian has been infiltrated or extorted by agents of Red Hat, I think systemd is in Debian because it has been deemed to be of use.
As to how decisions are made, this is covered in the Debian Constitution. Given its length, I won't quote it, but here is a link https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-2.
In the last general resolution, 483 out of 1006 developers voted. For context, https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/11/msg00192.html compares these numbers to previous votes.
Here is a list of packages for the next Debian release https://packages.debian.org/jessie/allpackages?format=txt.gz
One positive out of this mess is that questions regarding project bureaucracy and Debian Technical Committee structure and term limits have been raised.
74 • Lies, damned lies and statitics. (by Frederic Bezies on 2014-11-29 12:01:15 GMT from France)
@69 :
"1st, Devaun is NOT based on hate for systemd, it's based on CHOICE and no forced lock-in to any one particular init system (there are other less 'domineering' inits than systemd), major DEs and apps will HAVE TO BE compatible with systemd now and more so in the future. Do you realize the implications of this? This is a total nightmare for upstream apps and DE development OUTSIDE of systemd, FYI, systemd is a moving target development wise, please, 'do the math'."
s/CHOICE/HATING/g
Let's be honest at least for once.
Well, Black Sabbath sophomore album name applies here flawlessly.
"Secondly, I'm on Devuan's email list, at the bottom of an email from them, it's signed by Roger Leigh, and accompanied by a GPG Public Key."
Good to know this. But this information was not available last time I came to this - going to be dead soon and useless - fork.
"Does this look like some fledgling wannabe project? It's still in its infancy and some haters can't wait to bash it, really sad. Each to their own, if you choose and like being locked in to one particular init, that's YOUR deal, some of us don't. Ironically, some of you will come running to our 'camp' when systemd blows up in your face, for some reason or another."
Bash it or look at it with reality ? I'm sick of this religious war on init systems.
Blows up ? Only time will tell, but devuan is - I am only a bottom hole thing called end user.
By the way, boycotting something is about choice or reject of this thing ?
And if sysVinit was the good choice, why another well known unix based system dropped it ? I'm talking about... MacOS-X.
And FreeBSD wants a new init system within the 10 next years. Another war to foresee ?
75 • Debian Systemd (by linuxista on 2014-11-29 15:44:30 GMT from United States)
@73 Thanks again for the informed post. I think it makes sense about Debian being the last stand on stemming the tide, and from the dev voting statistics it looks like there was very high Debian dev participation (historically) in the decision. So, then are you saying that the complaints are coming not from users/devs within Debian itself but more from the many distros that depend on Debian? And this is the proxy war being fought with Debian in the middle?
The decision-making procedures in the constitution are VERY long. I wonder if there's a mechanism to challenge a resolution, or, if the anti-systemd contingent is dissatisfied, why can't they just call for a new resolution that dumps systemd or requires all software to be init system agnostic? If that mechanism is available and they simply don't have the support, then it seems like they ought to accept it or if there are enough of them to go ahead and fork Debian (or at least a piece of it, if that's realistic).
76 • systemd flames (by cykodrone on 2014-11-29 16:23:05 GMT from Canada)
Wow, I can't believe some of the posts here.
1. Systemd is NOT developed and maintained by an independent purely FOSS developer, but by an employee of a corporation which ultimately seeks more market share on desktops and servers, true or false? TRUE
2. Systemd, when fully installed and used initiates and controls almost every service (including networking, huge NSA red flag) on your machine and has secretive binary format log files, true or false? TRUE
3. Systemd developers have tried to bully LINUS TORVALDS to ingrain not fully tested buggy code in to the Linux kernel itself to which he replied, "fix your stuff first, I'm tired of OTHER people fixing your bugs for you", true or false? TRUE
@ 72 wrote "this all came to a head with Debian in particular and not with Suse or Fedora or whatnot". SUSE (who caved to MS software patent threat 'deal') is the corporate version of openSUSE, which has its roots in rpm based distros, which brings me to Fedora, the beta testbed for the very CORPORATION behind systemd, Redhat.
I can't believe a lot of you are missing the main point in all of this, normally under the old Debian guard, systemd would have been banished to contrib or even the non-free repository, since it is built and supported by a corporation, regardless of it being GPL (for now, I'm going to laugh when they pull that license), nevermind completely caving and making the rest of Debian a DEPENDENCY OF SYSTEMD, lol. *shakes head*
I'm tired of feeding trolls, but that's what they want, silence the voices of true software choice and freedom.
77 • @76 : ah, fanboyism... and red hat bashing... (by Frederic Bezies on 2014-11-29 18:16:53 GMT from France)
"1. Systemd is NOT developed and maintained by an independent purely FOSS developer, but by an employee of a corporation which ultimately seeks more market share on desktops and servers, true or false? TRUE"
What a bad thing... Are you living in a world without capitalism ? :D
"2. Systemd, when fully installed and used initiates and controls almost every service (including networking, huge NSA red flag) on your machine and has secretive binary format log files, true or false? TRUE"
Source about NSA ? So, let's kill with fire SELinux too... Which is what ? 10 years old or so ?
"3. Systemd developers have tried to bully LINUS TORVALDS to ingrain not fully tested buggy code in to the Linux kernel itself to which he replied, "fix your stuff first, I'm tired of OTHER people fixing your bugs for you", true or false? TRUE"
Ah, this thing you never sourced ? When you say something, either source it or don't say anything. But you're nothing but a troll and a fanboy.
"I can't believe a lot of you are missing the main point in all of this, normally under the old Debian guard, systemd would have been banished to contrib or even the non-free repository, since it is built and supported by a corporation, regardless of it being GPL (for now, I'm going to laugh when they pull that license), nevermind completely caving and making the rest of Debian a DEPENDENCY OF SYSTEMD, lol. *shakes head*"
What a bag of... total fanboysm and RedHat bashing ! You're just ridiculous.
"I'm tired of feeding trolls, but that's what they want, silence the voices of true software choice and freedom."
From a troll, really funny ! I'm only a linux end user, that crappy and useless thing, full time since 2006... So... :D
You're just paranoid and you want to tell what freedom is.
78 • Close to 'true', and yet ... (by Somewhat Reticent on 2014-11-29 18:19:32 GMT from United States)
DebIan's non-freed repository is segregated by licensing, not by the day-jobs or motives of the contributors. (Even the internet came from military interests in research, right?)
There are many corporations who make huge contributions to Freed Open-Source Software (for example, HP, Intel, and Novell, not just RedHat). DebIan benefits from many of these contributions, as do many others. They are not inherently immoral, though they may often seem amoral.
A visionary may off-load debugging and code cleanup to others within a business organization; a greater community might refuse that burden. (Did we all move on?)
Any operating system needs process management, and some sort of start. Many contributors prefer to work on what they enjoy, and grate when upstream changes increase their less-fun workload.
All the baiting does get tiresome.
79 • @65 @66 Linux for old nonPAE notebook, LXLE (by Jan on 2014-11-29 19:35:20 GMT from Netherlands)
As an alternative for LXLE I found and succesfully downloaded/installed Ubuntu 12.04 non-PAE http://people.canonical.com/~diwic/12.04-nonpae/
It clear to me now that my current ISP does not allow torrents. I know there are mirrors all over the world (universities, scientific institutions, etc.) who supply linux-iso downloads, however for LXLE I could not find any.
I changed the desktop from Unity to Gnome (easier survey of installed and available programs and starting them, in Debian (a.o. ANTIX) the available downloads seem to me a chaos).
Trough this Ubuntu 12.04-Gnome gives a nice experience, this is not a speed-beast situation.
So LXLE seems a perfect choice: the Ubuntu environment, optimized for old and low memory hardware.
I have now downloaded your suggestion of Q4OS and I am going to test it as a live-cd.
Jan
80 • @77 (by linux user on 2014-11-29 22:24:54 GMT from United States)
http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html
And by "their" you mean Kay Sievers.
Key, I'm f*cking tired of the fact that you don't fix problems in the
code *you* write, so that the kernel then has to work around the
problems you cause.
Greg - just for your information, I will *not* be merging any code
from Kay into the kernel until this constant pattern is fixed.
This has been going on for *years*, and doesn't seem to be getting any
better. This is relevant to you because I have seen you talk about the
kdbus patches, and this is a heads-up that you need to keep them
separate from other work. Let distributions merge it as they need to
and maybe we can merge it once it has been proven to be stable by
whatever distro that was willing to play games with the developers.
But I'm not willing to merge something where the maintainer is known
to not care about bugs and regressions and then forces people in other
projects to fix their project. Because I am *not* willing to take
patches from people who don't clean up after their problems, and don't
admit that it's their problem to fix.
Kay - one more time: you caused the problem, you need to fix it. None
of this "I can do whatever I want, others have to clean up after me"
crap.
Linus
81 • @80 : smells like "holy war" now. (by Frederic Bezies on 2014-11-29 22:46:34 GMT from France)
I know about this mail. And all this "systemd vs other init" is smelling like an holy war, far from computing.
Only time will tell what will happen. I'm sick with "systemd vs other init" threads. It leads nowhere.
End of topic for me.
82 • more Deb forking (by big drama on 2014-11-30 04:47:12 GMT from Australia)
#69, 76 Anticorporation, Antimonolithic software, AntiNSA, anti this anti that. I know what this Debian fork is all about. It's a group of veteran hackers who are used to hiding behind Linux, other people's names, and bits & pieces of code, etc., They now feel threatened that their anonymity is going to be exposed by a piece of corporation-sponsored code making its way into Debian. So they decide to fork it to try to stay "free" (AKA anonymous).
83 • systemd (by Linux Apocalypsis on 2014-11-30 08:38:09 GMT from Belgium)
The problem about systemd is not about technology but about politics. It is about corporations trying to take full control of Linux.
It is ironic that the same fellows that applaud every new Ubuntu spin (on diversity grounds), are criticising so bitterly the advent of Devuan. So diversity seems to be good when it suits their agenda and bad when it does not...
But, then, what can you expect from the guys of the FN?
84 • @83 ah, corporations taking power ! :) (by Frederic Bezies on 2014-11-30 10:21:13 GMT from France)
The good old : "corporations trying to take full control of Linux."
Well, how many big corporations are participating in Linux distributions, either in kernel or third party tools ?
Cups is owned by Apple for example.
Kernel submitters ? IBM, HP, Intel and how many more ?
How many ubuntu based distributions are useless ? 50% or so ? :)
Well, only tell will tell is devuan is or not a good idea.
85 • A couple responses (by Barnabyh on 2014-11-30 11:46:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
@82: This doesn't make any sense at all. If it was about anonymity, how would people who are sysadmins at first be more anonymous by starting their own distribution and becoming developers who are more in the public eye?
@84: Didn't you just state in your previous comment you were sick of going on about this?
All I see here is ill-informed opinions and warped logic. We'll see what you say when systemd has finally become the attack vector into Linux so many have been looking for due to being omnipresent and unifying (almost) all distributions.
The defence will probably be "I didn't know" or the tried and tested passive-aggressive tactic displayed here.
86 • @79 - "Light" Ubuntu (by Uncle Slacky on 2014-11-30 14:47:55 GMT from France)
Why not just use Lubuntu? Or, as you already have "full" Ubuntu installed, install LXDE or lubuntu-desktop to give you a less resource-hungry desktop roughly equivalent to that provided by LXLE?
87 • @85 (by Frederic Bezies on 2014-11-30 15:29:20 GMT from France)
Tired of threads going nowhere indeed. All these "ill-informed opinions and warped logic" are poisoning everything and turning this debate into a war :(
systemd seems to be for some people like the "black death". Only time will tell if systemd will be a vector of all kind of attacks against linux distributions in the future.
In 2014, openssl and bash suffered a lot and got a lot of hotfixes. How much versions for both of them this year ? Lost count :(
And unification of almost of distributions ? Upstart used by ubuntu and its derivative will be plugged out in 2019.
Let's see what will happen.
88 • systemd - chill! I'm neutral (by Hoos on 2014-12-01 01:51:52 GMT from Singapore)
I have systemd on Manjaro and Semplice. I also have older Ubuntu and Debian Stable installations without systemd. I have nothing against it and have no problem using it, but I am troubled by the vehemence of some systemd proponents that those against it are paranoid or wear tinfoil hats. Why the need to label them and attack the person?
Putting aside this whole contentious issue of whether or not there is a deliberate plot by corporations (so maybe people against systemd should focus less on this in their arguments against it), is it not a reasonable or practical concern that with systemd, there is a large, single point of potential attack and failure?
If people want to come up with different init solutions to systemd, isn't it good for all Linux users?
Well, in my opinion it would be good, except there's so much heated arguments on both sides it makes me as an onlooker very troubled.
89 • Yet more systemd clarification (by cykodrone on 2014-12-01 03:41:45 GMT from Canada)
*sigh*, the main issue is not so much about any one piece or group of software, it's about developers having to write apps and DEs around ANY beta lock-in app, process, init, whatever.
Heres a scenario, just an example fanbois so please relax, let's say you really like a particular text editor and there is no systemd in your installed OS, so you select it for install via CL or GUI package installer, then you get this huge list of dependencies including low level system changing packages, now back in the day, this wouldn't happen, your favourite text editor would just drag in ESSENTIAL dependencies to make it work, in the new world, it's quite possible that your choice of text editor (or major app 'x') may drag in fundamental system changes (and possibly trash your install), right down to the layer that lies just above the Linux kernel and between you, your apps and your hardware. Some people are not comfortable with this, me included, I do not need or want a beta blob controlling 99% of my system, complete with secretive binary log files and dictating to me what 3rd party apps and DEs I can and cannot install, especially if I didn't want or ask for a new init system or any other piece of software in the first place.
3rd party app developers will eventually be FORCED to write everything AROUND systemd, in other words, everything will become dependent on systemd to work (this is a software dictatorship in the making, a slippery slope), including the OS and your choice of DE. Everyday user land apps should NEVER drag in an init system as a dependency, this is a low level OS layer. That would be like VLC saying you can only use it on distro 'x'. Do you see the insanity now?
I coined a new term, "distros will become an add-on to systemd", read that over again a few times, let it sink in. The lines are getting blurred, will you be using a Linux distro or a systemd distro in the future?
If what Lennart REALLY wants to do is write his own OS kernel, then that's what he should do, instead of being a barnacle on somebody elses. He can call it Lennux.
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| • 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 |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
How-Tux
How-Tux was a Slackware-based, desktop-oriented Linux distribution with the installer translated into Italian and most applications localised for the benefit of Italian speakers. Compared to Slackware, How-Tux was enhanced by GWARE GNOME, OpenOffice.org, and several extra multimedia and graphics applications.
Status: Discontinued
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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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