 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 594, 26 January 2015 |
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Welcome to this year's 4th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
What makes a distribution attractive to its users? It may be specific tools or a particular default desktop environment, it may be hardware support or a friendly package manager. The KaOS distribution has a strong focus on packaging, putting the operating system together in a way that is attractive, clean and avoids unnecessary extras. Read our feature review below to learn more about the KaOS distribution. In the news last week there were interesting updates from a number of projects. The Ubuntu team is trying to lower the bar to community participation, plus Canonical has announced Snappy Ubuntu Core for embedded devices. In other news, Debian announced its first release candidate for the new "Jessie" installer. We share a tutorial on using file snapshots with Hammer on the DragonFly BSD operating system, along with bug fixes and planned features coming to Fedora users. We also link to FreeBSD's quarterly update that outlines the work currently being done to the venerable operating system. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about commercial Linux distributions. This week we seed and share more torrents in Torrent Corner, plus we share the distribution releases of the past week and look forward to new releases to come. In addition, we talk about the AWStats project which is this month's recipient of the DistroWatch monthly donation. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: First thoughts on KaOS 2014.12
- News: Getting involved with Ubuntu, Snappy Ubuntu Core for embedded devices, Debian releases new installer for "Jessie", using DragonFly BSD's Slider, Fedora fixes PackageKit, features coming to Fedora 22, and FreeBSD's Quarterly Status Report
- Questions and Answers: Commercial distributions and DistroWatch
- Torrent Corner: 4MLinux, ArchBSD, MakuluLinux, OpenBSD
- Released last week: MakuluLinux 2.0 "Cinnamon", HandyLinux 1.8, Q4OS 0.5.24
- Upcoming releases: Mageia 5 Beta 3
- Donations: AWStats receives $300
- Distributions added to the database: NethServer, Porteus Kiosk
- New distributions: ubermix
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First thoughts on KaOS 2014.12
The KaOS distribution has been one of the most popular downloads from our new torrent seeding initiative. The project's website describes KaOS as follows: "The idea behind KaOS is to create a tightly integrated rolling and transparent distribution for the modern desktop, built from scratch with a very specific focus. Focus on one DE (KDE), one toolkit (Qt), one architecture (x86_64) plus a focus on evaluating and selecting the most suitable tools and applications. All work is geared toward packaging, not developing new tools or applications."
The latest snapshot of this rolling release distribution includes initial support for UEFI, the KDE 4.14 desktop, systemd version 218 and the Qupzilla web browser. I mention Qupzilla because I feel it is a rare gem in the open source world, a quick capable browser that perhaps does not get the attention it deserves. KaOS is available in just one edition, a 64-bit x86 build. The ISO we download for KaOS is 1.6GB in size.
Booting from the distribution's live disc brings up a menu where we are asked if we would like to run a live desktop environment, run a hardware detection tool where we can find detailed information on our hardware and there is an option to test our computer's memory. Taking the live desktop option brings up the KDE desktop. A welcome screen appears on the desktop and offers to provide us with information such as a list of installed packages, the default passwords for the live disc and the project's user guide. The user guide, I found, covers how to install KaOS and includes screen shots of the project's installer. The welcome window further provides us with buttons that will connect us with the distribution's user forum and launch the operating system's installer.
KaOS 2014.12 -- The project's user guide and welcome screen
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KaOS provides users with a graphical system installer. I found the installer to be friendly and straight forward to use. We are quickly walked through selecting our preferred language, selecting our time zone from a map of the world and choosing our keyboard's layout. The installer warns us at a few points that there may be issues with setting up GPT disk layouts and/or booting on systems with UEFI enabled. The installer provides links to these topics on the project's website to help users work around potential problems. The KaOS installer offers to automatically set up disk partitions or we can divide up our hard disk manually. I like the distribution's partition manager, it is straight forward to use and supports a wide range of file systems, including ext2/3/4, JFS, XFS, Btrfs and LVM volumes. I decided to install KaOS on a Btrfs volume. Next, the installer asks us to create a user account for ourselves and set a password on the root account. From there we are shown a confirmation screen where the installer's pending actions are listed and we are given a chance to go back and make changes to our configuration. Then the installer quickly copies its files to our hard drive. When the installer finishes its work we are returned to the live KDE desktop.
KaOS 2014.12 -- The KDE System Settings panel
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Once we reboot the computer the KaOS distribution boots to a graphical login screen. Signing into our account brings us back to the KDE 4.14 desktop. A folder view widget sits on the desktop with shortcuts provided to our personal files and deleted items. The desktop is mostly decorated in grey. An application menu, task switcher and system tray sit at the bottom of the screen. I found the default theme quite drab, almost depressing, and was pleased to find KaOS ships with several alternative wallpapers and themes. KDE makes it easy to adjust the look of the desktop interface through the System Settings panel.
Shortly after signing into my account I noticed an icon in the system tray which resembles a red octopus. This icon indicates software updates are available in the distribution's repositories. Clicking the icon gives us the option of opening the distribution's package manager, Octopi. The Octopi package manager is a graphical program roughly divided into three sections. On the left side of the window we see a simple list of available software packages. Over on the right we see filters we can use to narrow the list of displayed items. We can also search for specific packages by name. The pane at the bottom of the screen shows status information and details about selected packages. I found Octopi worked quickly for me. The package manager may not be pretty, but it is fairly easy to use. Right-clicking on packages brings up a menu showing what actions we can perform on the selected package. Octopi makes it easy to upgrade packages and I encountered no problems while using the software manager. During my trial with KaOS I upgraded 29 packages (44MB in size) and all the updated packages installed without any problems.
KaOS 2014.12 -- The Octopi package manager
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The KaOS distribution ships with a relatively small collection of software, most of it either related to the KDE desktop or built using the Qt toolkit. Looking through the application menu I found the Qupzilla web browser, the Quassel IRC client, the KGet download manager, the Seafile software and a link to Appear. The Calligra productivity suite is installed for us along with the Okular document viewer. The Clementine music player, the Kdenlive video editor and the SMPlayer media player are available out of the box. KaOS further ships with multimedia codecs, allowing us to play most media files. The k3b disc burning software is provided along with the miniBackup utility, the KUser account manager and the KInfoCenter hardware browser. KaOS ships with the Yakuake drop-down terminal, the Ark archive manager and the Kate text editor. The distribution provides us with Network Manager to help us get on-line and the KPPP dial-up networking software. The GNU Compiler Collection is installed for us and, in the background, I found the 3.17 release of the Linux kernel. Given that KaOS is a rolling release distribution, I suspect all of these components, including the kernel, will receive regular updates.
There were a few programs included in KaOS that I usually do not see featured in Linux distributions and so I'd like to cover them here briefly. For instance, the Qupzilla web browser is an unusual find. I quite like Qupzilla, it has a clean layout and reminds me a bit of the Opera web browser before Opera's recent interface redesign. KaOS does not ship with Flash, but I found a Flash plug-in in the distribution's repositories and Flash, once installed, automatically worked with Qupzilla. The Seafile application was new to me. The program starts by asking us for a server, username and password without any context for what we are signing up for. I soon found out Seafile is a cloud file synchronization and messaging service. The miniBackup program does not, as one might suspect, backup regular files or our home directory. Instead miniBackup creates archives of our settings and known e-mails. This can be useful, but probably not what most people are expecting. Finally, I'd like to touch on the distribution's "top" command. The "top" program on KaOS has some unusual defaults, including displaying information in red text, showing related processes in a family tree and sorting processes by PID rather than by CPU usage. The "top" program is quite flexible and I found it interesting the developers went with these unusual defaults.
I tried running KaOS in a VirtualBox virtual machine and on a physical desktop computer. When running inside VirtualBox the distribution performed fairly well. For some reason I could not get KaOS to display at higher resolutions in the virtual machine, even with VirtualBox add-ons installed. Other than dealing with lower screen resolution, I had no problems with KaOS in the virtual environment. The desktop was responsive, the distribution booted quickly and smoothly completed tasks. When running on physical hardware I found the distribution performed well. Once again KaOS booted quickly and ran smoothly. My screen was automatically set to its maximum resolution and the system was stable. My one issue when running KaOS on the physical computer was that periodically the audio volume would suddenly be maximized. This meant that a few times an hour an audio notification would suddenly blare out of my speakers. I would turn down the audio volume, only to be surprised ten minutes later when another blast would thunder from my computer's speakers. I found this audio bug almost as interesting as annoying since I haven't heard a distribution behave this way since PulseAudio first appeared years ago. In either environment, I found KaOS used approximately 240MB of memory when logged into the KDE desktop.
I noticed a few other small things of interest during the week. One is that KaOS always seems to respond quickly. This is a nice feature to have, I like it when a distribution manages to ship a desktop interface that is both feature rich and responsive. Another thing I noticed was that there isn't a lot of software in KaOS by default, nor is there a lot of software in the repositories. Popular items such as LibreOffice, the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the VLC multimedia player are in the repositories. However, people who like a large variety of software will note KaOS provides about a tenth of the software packages larger projects, such as Debian, do.
I have not used the Calligra office suite much over the past year and I was happy to find the flexible productivity software appears to be both stable and functional. Calligra now offers support for opening Microsoft Office files, though it appears Calligra is not yet able to save files in Microsoft Office formats. I like that Calligra feels lighter than LibreOffice and I think, for many home users, Calligra will provide all the necessary features.
KaOS 2014.12 -- The Calligra word processor
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Conclusions
Though the KaOS website points out the distribution is not technically based on Arch Linux and therefore KaOS is not directly related to Arch-derived projects such as Manjaro or Chakra, I couldn't help but notice these distributions all share a similar feel. KaOS, for example, uses the pacman command line package manager and, like Manjaro, uses the Octopi graphical front end to pacman. KaOS has a fairly narrow focus with the developers putting their efforts into packaging a small selection of software rather than making new tools. KaOS is a rolling distribution and, as with Arch and Manjaro, there is a certain stark simplicity to the distribution. The operating system has a no-frills feel to it and a small memory footprint.
That's not to say KaOS isn't friendly. I found the distribution easy to set up and fairly straight forward to use. But while KaOS is functional and fast, this is not a distribution that does much hand holding. Nor are there a lot of administration tools or extras like we might find in distributions such as Mint or openSUSE. To me, KaOS feels like a slimmer Manjaro in darker clothes, or like a simplified Chakra. All in all, I think the distribution is functional and, despite a few minor bugs, the operating system worked well for me. However, I also feel KaOS has not yet distinguished itself, separating itself from the pack. I'm hoping the coming year sees KaOS set itself apart in some fashion.
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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 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Getting involved with Ubuntu, Snappy Ubuntu Core for embedded devices, Debian releases new installer for "Jessie", using DragonFly BSD's Slider, Fedora fixes PackageKit, features coming to Fedora 22, and FreeBSD's Quarterly Status Report
For people who want to get involved in open source projects it can be difficult to know where to start. A lot of people want to give back to open source communities, but do not always know where to begin and who to talk to. The Ubuntu team wants to lower the bar for volunteers and make sure people with the right skills can get involved with the right tasks. With this in mind the Find A Task page has been created. The Find A Task page helps volunteers find categories of tasks they may be interested in such as coding, writing documentation, software testing and community support. Within each task there are sub-projects looking for help that visitors can explore. Once a volunteer has picked a task they are interested in, they are directed to a page with more information on the sub-project and given contact information for people already involved. This helps new community members find mentors and will hopefully make contributing easier for more people.
Snappy Ubuntu Core is a new spin on the Ubuntu operating system where administrators begin with a minimal installation of Ubuntu and software is added (and updated) via transactional updates. The idea is to provide a reliable core operating system with isolated services and applications where updates are always applied cleanly and can be rolled back. Snappy Ubuntu was originally released for cloud services, but new work has gone toward porting Snappy Ubuntu Core to network enabled embedded devices. The Ubuntu website has more details, "Snappy Ubuntu Core on smart devices delivers bullet-proof security, reliable updates and the enormous Ubuntu ecosystem at your fingertips, bringing the developer's favourite cloud platform to a wide range of Internet things, connected devices and autonomous machines." Snappy Ubuntu Core is now being tested on various minimal computing devices such as the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black.
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The Debian team has announced the availability of a new system installer to accompany the upcoming Debian "Jessie". Cyril Brulebois posted on Sunday, "The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the first release candidate of the installer for Debian 8 "Jessie". Note: One shouldn't worry about the noticeable delta between the file timestamps (which match when the build happened) and the date of this announce. The delay in announcing this release is entirely my fault, and I'm very sorry the inconvenience." More information on the Debian installer, its features and 75 supported languages can be down on the project's website.
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The DragonFly BSD advanced file system, called Hammer, tends not to get as much attention as other modern file systems such as Btrfs or ZFS. However, Hammer is a very capable file system with desirable features like snapshots. Often times the hurdle with using snapshots is the complex syntax involved when it comes to locating and recovering data. John Marino has written an excellent tutorial on accessing Hammer snapshots and historical data using the Slider utility. Marino shows us how to easily locate snapshotted files, compare them with other versions of the same file and how to recover old versions of a file. The tutorial includes screen shots of Slider working with files on Hammer to help us follow along.
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Adam Williamson has announced some bugs were found and fixed in the PackageKit software which ships with Fedora. Since the PackageKit service is involved in updating software on the operating system, this means users may need to take additional steps to update the problematic software. Williamson's post on Fedora Magazine outlines the steps users can take to resolve the issues found in PackageKit.
Though Fedora 21 was released only last month, the Fedora team is already planning ahead for the release of Fedora 22. There are some exciting new changes planned for the upcoming release of the Red Hat sponsored community project. Some items at the top of the list include improved GNOME on Wayland support, better battery life for laptop users and third-party application support. The last item is perhaps the most interesting as Fedora has traditionally been reluctant to facilitate the installation of, or even officially link to, third-party software. "How to deal with 3rd party software has been a long and ongoing discussion in the Fedora community, and there are a lot of practical and principal details to deal with, but hopefully with this infrastructure in place it will be a lot easier to navigate those issues as people have something concrete to relate to instead of just abstract ideas and concepts. One challenge for instance we have to figure out is that on one side we don't want 3rd party software offered in Fedora to be some form of endorsement or sign of being somehow vetted by the Fedora Project on an ongoing basis, yet on the other side the list will most likely need to be based on some form of editorial process to, for instance, protect both Red Hat and Fedora from potential legal threats." Christian Schaller has all the details on the upcoming release.
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The FreeBSD project posted its Quarterly Status Report for the final quarter of 2014 last week. The report includes status updates on new FreeBSD features and features-in-progress and explores all aspects of the FreeBSD operating system. "The fourth quarter of 2014 included a number of significant improvements to the FreeBSD system. In particular, compatibility with other systems was enhanced. This included significant improvements to the Linux compatibility layer, used to run Linux binaries on FreeBSD, and the port of WINE, used to run Windows applications. Hypervisor support improved, with FreeBSD gaining the ability to run as domain 0 on Xen's new high-performance PVH mode, bhyve gaining AMD support, and new tools for creating FreeBSD VM images arriving." The report goes on to cover information about software ported to FreeBSD, including updates to the GNOME and KDE desktop environments.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Commercial distributions and DistroWatch
Filtering-the-commercial-distributions asks: Does Parted Magic have a place in your distro line up, or should they be put in an ad column? I have never seen a commercial distro posted before. You don't seem to have a filter to weed out the commercial distros and if they're going to make money maybe you should charge them. I have recommended DistroWatch to many people over the years and thank you for supporting free and open source software. Please keep up the good work.
Jesse Smith answers: Thank you for the recommendation, it is appreciated.
Parted Magic, while commercial in nature, is still an open source, Linux-based distribution. As such I feel it has a place on DistroWatch. I know some people feel commercial software should be kept separate from free-cost distributions, but there is quite a spectrum of commercialization in the Linux ecosystem.
Over the years DistroWatch has always been supportive of Linux distributions, regardless of their level of commercialization. For instance, DistroWatch reports Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases on the front page and Red Hat is a commercial company. DistroWatch has also featured SUSE Linux Enterprise which is free to download and try, but security updates require payment after 60 days. We have listed Hymera and Elive which are commercial distributions. Ubuntu is a free-to-download distribution, but the company sells support, making Ubuntu a semi-commercial distribution. I feel there is a bit of a grey area between completely free and commercial products in the open source community.
In the instance of commercial distributions DistroWatch tries to make it clear when a distribution is commercial in nature on the distro's information page (see the links above for examples) and in release announcements. This should avoid any confusion as to which projects are exclusively commercial and which downloads are offered without charge.
Regarding the idea of charging commercial distributions, I am not sure what it is we would charge them for. We list distributions and share release announcements with our readers in the hope of being a good resource for the community. I feel it is our priority to provide information on as many options and products as possible to better inform our readership. Removing commercial distributions from our listings or insisting on a fee for release announcements is not, in my opinion, the best way to serve our readers.
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
Bittorrent is a great way to transfer large files, particularly open source operating system images, from one place to another. Most bittorrent clients recover from dropped connections automatically, check the integrity of files and can re-download corrupted bits of data without starting a download over from scratch. These characteristics make bittorrent well suited for distributing open source operating systems, particularly to regions where Internet connections are slow or unstable.
Many Linux and BSD projects offer bittorrent as a download option, partly for the reasons listed above and partly because bittorrent's peer-to-peer nature takes some of the strain off the project's servers. However, some projects do not offer bittorrent as a download option. There can be several reasons for excluding bittorrent as an option. Some projects do not have enough time or volunteers, some may be restricted by their web host provider's terms of service. Whatever the reason, the lack of a bittorrent option puts more strain on a distribution's bandwidth and may prevent some people from downloading their preferred open source operating system.
With this in mind, DistroWatch plans to give back to the open source community by hosting and seeding bittorrent files for distributions that do not offer a bittorrent option themselves. This is a feature we are experimenting with and we are open to feedback on how to improve upon the idea.
For now, we are hosting a small number of distribution torrents, listed below. The list of torrents offered will be updated each week and we invite readers to e-mail us with suggestions as to which distributions we should be hosting. When you message us, please place the word "Torrent" in the subject line and please make sure the project you are recommending does not already host its own torrents. We want to primarily help distributions and users who do not already have a torrent option. To help us maintain and grow this free service, please consider making a donation.
The table below provides a list of torrents we currently host. If you do not currently have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
All torrents we make available here will also be listed on the very useful Linux Tracker website. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 13
- Total downloads completed: 900
- Total data uploaded: 392GB
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| Released Last Week |
MakuluLinux 2.0 "Cinnamon"
Jacque Raymer has announced the release of MakuluLinux 2.0 "Cinnamon" edition, an updated build of the project's Debian-based distribution featuring the Cinnamon desktop environment: "MakuluLinux Cinnamon 2.0 is a continuation of the first release, with focus on updating, polishing, refining and fixing issues reported in the previous release. There are many little changes throughout the system to give it a smoother and more refined feel. There are also some major changes in this release; some will be backported to 1.1, some won't. if your existing systems runs to your satisfaction then continue using it and wait for the 1.2 patch that will backport some of these changes. If however you want all the changes you will need to download 2.0 and reinstall Cinnamon. Features: based on Debian 'Testing'; PAE i686 Linux kernel 3.16.7; updated Cinnamon core desktop...." Continue to the release notes for further details.
Makululinux 2.0 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
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HandyLinux 1.8
Arnault Perret has announced the release of HandyLinux 1.8, a Debian-based desktop distribution with some innovative features, designed for newcomers to Linux. The release announcement (in French only, although the distribution supports both French and English languages) provides some details about the improvements in this version: removal of the Videolan repository which is now replaced with an in-house repo due to problems with the availability of the libdvdcss2 library; upgrade of Iceweasel to version 35; deactivation of several Iceweasel plugins to improve browser launch times; switch to StartPage as the default search engine and addition of new search options (Wikipedia, Searx, Daily Motion...); update to HandyMenu and an addition of links to Wikipedia and to HandyLinux wallpapers; addition of gpart, a simple data recovery program; removal of non-free music.
Q4OS 0.5.24
The developers of Q4OS have announced the availability of an updated build of Q4OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution with Trinity (a fork of KDE 3.5) as the distribution's preferred desktop: "Q4OS 0.5.24 released. New command-line tool to globally change display DPI is introduced in Q4OS to be usable with high-DPI screens. Important core system packages updates and security fixes applied. Users can appreciate better system integration and cleaner dependencies of Adobe Flash Player, especially in combination with Firefox 34 or later. The new version brings improvements for Q4OS developers too. The underlying development pack API has been extended with localization and internationalization tools and unique Q4OS installer has been integrated into core system, so Q4OS self-extracting setup files can be packed much more efficiently. We are getting ready to bring a stable version 1.0 in expectation of the forthcoming Debian 'Jessie' release, stay tuned." Here is the brief release announcement.
Q4OS 0.5.24 -- The Trinity desktop
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Proxmox 4.0 "Mail Gateway"
Daniela Häsler has announced the release of Proxmox 4.0 "Mail Gateway" edition, a specialist email proxy based on Debian GNU/Linux 7.8: "Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH has released version 4.0 of its antispam and antivirus solution, Proxmox Mail Gateway. All packages have been updated and the new version is now based on Debian 7.8. The product, available on the market since ten years, continues its focus on stability and performance. Proxmox Mail Gateway is an email security system protecting email servers from spam, viruses, trojans and phishing and is managed through an easy, web-based interface. In the integrated Proxmox Message Tracking Center users can get an overview of all email logs. The Mail Gateway can run on a physical system (bare-metal) or as a virtual appliance. For this, the customized Linux kernel already contains all the necessary drivers for QEMU/KVM (virtio), VMware tools or Hyper-V integration services." Read the rest of the press release for more information.
Tiny Core Linux 6.0 "piCore"
Béla Markus has announced the release of version 6.0 of Tiny Core Linux "piCore" edition, a minimalist distribution designed for the Raspberry Pi single-board computer: "Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce the immediate availability of piCore 6.0. The most important change is the use of the official long-term 3.12.y (3.12.36) Linux kernel to offer more stable operation over experimental kernels and to get wider range of hardware supported, specially audio devices. The FLTK library has been updated to 1.3.3 to enable Unicode. FLTK 1.1 and 1.3 can be installed at the same time, and old applications using 1.1 will continue to work. The size of SD card images has been reduced. It boots in safe overclocking mode to shorten boot time by 20% with performance governor; switch to 'ondemand' when startup completes. Other changes: Core base synchronised with the common 6.0 base; Raspberry Pi firmware updated to January 19, 2015 version; e2fsprogs updated to 1.42.12..." Here is the full release announcement.
Robolinux 7.8.1
John Martinson has announced the release of Robolinux 7.8.1, the latest update of the project's beginner-friendly distribution based on Debian's stable branch: "Robolinux is quite proud and excited to announce its brand new 'Supersonic 3D Speed' GNOME version 7.8.1. A massive amount of time and effort was spent to significantly speed up this new Robolinux GNOME version by creating a more streamlined menu system, removing the Nautilus file manager load time lag to zero seconds, and optimizing many other GNOME core applications. The 32-bit and 64-bit variants are based on the newest rock-solid Debian stable 7.8 kernel and source code. Please note that the Robolinux GNOME FAQ section is being edited as fast as we can to reflect the completely new user interface. We also upgraded Robolinux Xfce and LXDE with the newest Debian upstream 7.8 kernels and security updates..." See the project's SourceForge page to read the rest of the release announcement.
pfSense 2.2
Chris Buechler has announced the release of pfSense 2.2, a major new update of the project's FreeBSD-based specialist operating system for firewalls and routers: "I'm happy to announce the release of pfSense software version 2.2. This release brings improvements in performance and hardware support from the FreeBSD 10.1 base, as well as enhancements we've added such as AES-GCM with AES-NI acceleration, among a number of other new features and bug fixes. In the process of reaching release, we've closed out 392 total tickets (this number includes 55 features or tasks), fixed 135 bugs affecting 2.1.5 and prior versions, fixed another 202 bugs introduced in 2.2 by advancing the base OS version from FreeBSD 8.3 to 10.1, changing IPsec keying daemons from racoon to strongSwan, upgrading the PHP backend to version 5.5 and switching it from FastCGI to PHP-FPM, and adding the Unbound DNS Resolver, and many smaller changes." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete list of changes and new features.
Netrunner 14.1
Clemens Toennies has announced the release of Netrunner 14.1, an updated build of the project's Kubuntu-based Linux distribution featuring a customised KDE 4.13 desktop: "This is the release announcement of Netrunner 14.1 Main edition 'Frontier'. The '14.1' indicates an updated and polished release of Netrunner 14 LTS on the same underlying base. Since 14.1 is using the same 'Trusty' base as Netrunner 14, there is no need for users of 14 to migrate; simply updating from the shared backports ppa of the Frontier release cycle should give the same result, while keeping customizations in place. So 14.1 is a fresh starting point for new users who want to install an up-to-date KDE 4-based system from the ISO image. This is the first time we are working on both updating our current LTS base (Frontier), while at the same time preparing the next release, Netrunner 15 (Prometheus), with the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.2." Here it the full release announcement with a screenshot.
Netrunner 14.1 -- Default desktop environment
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IPFire 2.15 Core 86
Michael Tremer has announced the release of IPFire 2.15 Core 86, a new stable build of the project's specialist Linux distribution for firewalls: "This is the official release announcement of IPFire 2.15 - Core Update 86 which brings various security fixes across several packages. Hence we recommend installing this update as soon as possible and to execute a reboot afterwards. The openssl library which implements the TLS/SSL protocol and is used by various other packages in the system has been updated to version 1.0.1k. This release fixes eight security issues that have all been classified with 'moderate'. OpenVPN has been updated to version 2.3.6 which also fixes a security vulnerability that allowed remote authenticated users to cause a denial of service. strongSwan has been updated to version 5.2.1. Originally, Core Update 86 was planned to become IPFire 2.17. This release has been postponed because we still require some people to send us feedback." The release announcement.
4MLinux 11.0
Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 11.0, an updated version of the project's lightweight desktop Linux distribution built from scratch and featuring a customised JWM window manager: "The status of the 4MLinux 11.0 series has been changed to stable. Major changes in the core of the system, which now includes GNU C Library 2.20 and GNU Compiler Collection 4.9.2. The development of some of the 4MLinux editions has been dropped, but at the same time new 4MLinux spins have been announced. The most important one is 4MRescueKit, which has started its journey to become a lightweight alternative to other system rescue live CDs (there's a detailed description on the 4MLinux blog)." Here is the brief release announcement with a screenshot of the JWM desktop.
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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 |
December 2014 DistroWatch.com donation: AWStats
We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the January 2015 DistroWatch.com donation is AWStats, "a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically." It receives US$300.00 in cash.
AWStats is a log analyzer that can look through large logs files to extract and summarize the data contained in the logs. AWStats can process log files produced by Apache, IIS, Webstar, several streaming servers, web proxies, along with most mail and FTP servers. Data can be extracted either from the command line or via CGI scripts.
Launched in 2004, this monthly donations programme is a DistroWatch initiative to support free and open-source software projects and operating systems with cash contributions. Readers are welcome to nominate their favourite project for future donations. Those readers who wish to contribute towards these donations, please use our advertising page to make a payment (PayPal, credit cards, Yandex Money and crypto currencies are accepted). Here is the list of the projects that have received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NDISwrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a Powerpack competition), Digikam ($408) and Sabayon Linux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
- 2008: VLC ($350), Frugalware Linux ($340), cURL ($300), GSPCA ($400), FileZilla ($400), MythDora ($500), Linux Mint ($400), Parsix GNU/Linux ($300), Miro ($300), GoblinX ($250), Dillo ($150), LXDE ($250)
- 2009: Openbox ($250), Wolvix GNU/Linux ($200), smxi ($200), Python ($300), SliTaz GNU/Linux ($200), LiVES ($300), Osmo ($300), LMMS ($250), KompoZer ($360), OpenSSH ($350), Parted Magic ($350) and Krita ($285)
- 2010: Qimo 4 Kids ($250), Squid ($250), Libre Graphics Meeting ($300), Bacula ($250), FileZilla ($300), GCompris ($352), Xiph.org ($250), Clonezilla ($250), Debian Multimedia ($280), Geany ($300), Mageia ($470), gtkpod ($300)
- 2011: CGSecurity ($300), OpenShot ($300), Imagination ($250), Calibre ($300), RIPLinuX ($300), Midori ($310), vsftpd ($300), OpenShot ($350), Trinity Desktop Environment ($300), LibreCAD ($300), LiVES ($300), Transmission ($250)
- 2012: GnuPG ($350), ImageMagick ($350), GNU ddrescue ($350), Slackware Linux ($500), MATE ($250), LibreCAD ($250), BleachBit ($350), cherrytree ($260), Zim ($335), nginx ($250), LFTP ($250), Remastersys ($300)
- 2013: MariaDB ($300), Linux From Scratch ($350), GhostBSD ($340), DHCP ($300), DOSBox ($250), awesome ($300), DVDStyler ($280), Tor ($350), Tiny Tiny RSS ($350), FreeType ($300), GNU Octave ($300), Linux Voice ($510)
- 2014: QupZilla ($250), Pitivi ($370), MediaGoblin ($350), TrueCrypt ($300), Krita ($340), SME Server ($350), OpenStreetMap ($350), iTALC ($350), KDE ($400), The Document Foundation ($400), Tails ($350)
- 2015: AWStats ($300)
Since the launch of the Donations Program in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$42,275 to various open-source software projects.
* * * * *
Distributions added to the database
NethServer
NethServer is a CentOS-based Linux distribution for servers. The product's main feature is a modular design which makes it simple to turn the distribution into a mail server and filter, web server, groupware, firewall, web filter, IPS/IDS or VPN server. It also includes a comprehensive web-based user interface that simplifies common administration tasks and enables single-click installation of several pre-configured modules. NethServer is designed primarily for small offices and medium-size enterprises.
Porteus Kiosk
Porteus Kiosk is a lightweight Linux operating system which has been restricted to allow only use of the web browser. Furthermore, the browser has been locked down to prevent users from tampering with settings or downloading and installing software. When the kiosk boots it automatically opens Firefox to your chosen home page. The history is not kept, no passwords are saved, and many menu items have been disabled for total security. When Firefox is restarted all caches are cleared and browser the reopens automatically with a clean session to ensure no trace of history is left.
Porteus Kiosk 3.2.0 -- Initial setup wizard
(full image size: 337kB, resolution: 1020x768 pixels)
Distributions added to waiting list
- ubermix. The ubermix distribution is based on Ubuntu and is geared toward fulfilling roles in education. The ubermix oeprating system is designed to install quickly and provide software useful for teachers and students.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 2 February 2015. 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)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Commercial distributions (by Transform Humanity on 2015-01-26 03:27:29 GMT from India)
The QA on commercial distributions seems to miss the Free (as in Freedom) point. IMHO, I guess, as long as the licence is open source compatible, the distribution should find a place here. The point should not be about price!
The problem with proprietary closed source software is that you cannot even change the blue to something else.
2 • Non-gratis Freed Software (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-01-26 04:18:59 GMT from United States)
I suggest what DistroWatch could require for listing is clear up-front revelation of pricing & method(s), preventing unwelcome surprises.
What business model(s) provide robust support for Freed Software?
3 • Dear Windows refugees, libre != gratis (by Milo on 2015-01-26 05:07:44 GMT from Poland)
I come to DistroWatch for news and feature lists of Linux distributions, the BSDs and a selection of other open-source operating systems, whether non-commercial or commercial.
While I think Elive specifically could/should be more explicit about its commercial nature before users have invested time and bandwidth downloading it, I don't think commercial distributions are inherently despicable. If you don't like something, don't buy it. If you think Parted Magic adds zero value, roll your own. That anyone could do it doesn't make it valueless, much like many of the jobs people hold. People pay for the convenience of not having to do it themselves so that they can invest that time and energy elsewhere, or they pay because they don't have the knowledge to do it themselves, or they pay for support.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
"Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software."
"The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code. Those who do this are required by the GNU GPL to provide source code on subsequent request. Without a limit on the fee for the source code, they would be able set a fee too large for anyone to pay—such as a billion dollars—and thus pretend to release source code while in truth concealing it."
4 • KaOS and Distributions "Based" on Arch Linux (by Allan on 2015-01-26 05:24:44 GMT from Australia)
Saying KaOS is not based on Arch, unlike Manjaro and Chakra is wrong.
Manjaro uses the packages from Arch and adds some of its own. KaOS and Charkra use many PKGBUILDs from Arch and build their own binary packages from them, at least for the core of their system (I recognize the KaOS toolchain PKGBUILDs even with the maintainer lines stripped off...) . They also both add there own packages on top.
Chakra used to be like Manjaro and use Arch binary packages, but that changed several years ago.
5 • @4 : KaOS is "half-arch" :) (by Frederic Bezies on 2015-01-26 09:21:51 GMT from France)
For me, KaOS is an half-Archlinux. Because it uses both package manager and package format from Archlinux. But that's all.
There is no other links between both distributions. By the way, octopi is more a Manjaro project than a pure Archlinux one, if I'm right.
Manjaro ? Archlinux Ubuntu is some way.
Chakra ? Not anymore based on archlinux package for what ? 4 years or so ?
There is a french proverb which is translated in english by being on the fence. This is really the position of KaOS now.
6 • Ubermix, like HP? (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-01-26 09:30:57 GMT from United States)
The rapid-recovery mechanism resembles the system-restore mechanism on several brands of computers, keeping the original system on a separate partition. Looks nice at first, but what of the cost of restoring cumulative changes? Now there's an educational motivator! Imagine a (school) year of system customizations reset to Day Zero by a prankster...
7 • @5: Re - KaOS is "half-arch" :) (by Allan on 2015-01-26 10:18:22 GMT from Australia)
It is not just the package manager and format, most of the build scripts for the base of the system are copied directly from Arch. This happens for both KaOS and Chakra, which means that Arch developers are doing the packaging and then these distributions just rebuild the package.
This is only for the [core] repository - I have not looked at any packages beyond that, and I am sure these differ. Not that there is anything wrong with doing that (it is a good use of their smaller resources), just claiming they are not based on Arch is wrong.
8 • Non-gratis Freed Software by Kragle von Schnitzelbank (by Alex on 2015-01-26 10:42:41 GMT from Poland)
And also @ Commercial distributions by Transform Humanity
Two weeks ago, I replied to you on about so-called commercial distributions like Elive. Actually, if you take Elive, and really wants to install it, all you have to do is disregard the "Elive Installer" and install using apt-get or aptitude the Debain installer to your live image and use it to install Elive. There are few 'installers' to install Debain based distros to your computer, you can even use the Ubuntu installer to do this.
Like I wrote before, I am not very keen on Enlightenment DE, so won't bother to install this 32 bit distro. Everything in it is Debian, and the only thing that stops you installing is the custom installer. In any live image, you can always disregard the custom installer and use a generic installer, if you really want to install the Debian-based distro.
This "Elive Installer" is the commercial part of the distro, and you don't use it, that's all there is to it.
9 • The Price Of Freedom !? (by Kroy Ip on 2015-01-26 14:14:53 GMT from Canada)
Before I start let me make it clear that I donated to distros and other projects before. Therefore my view is that for those who use opensource software should contribute to the project(s) anyway one could afford, including monetary contributions.
The most recent example is that I deliberately purchased two top of the line pfSense appliances directly from them instead of building our own. I also budgeted for their gold support even though we have very little use of it. This is just some of the ways I can contribute back to the pfSense team for their fantastic job and to keep the development going.
However I also understand that some people may have the misconception of "Opensource = Free Software" and honestly there's no way to eliminate cheapos so I don't even bother wasting my time on them.
On the other hand Jesse's argument is weak (at best) because I too share the same view as the one who ask the question. In my opinion we should further separate "Opensource" into two sides:
A. A product that does not take away core functions per the design goal and/or hamper major functionality with or without monetary contributions of the users.
B. Payment is mandatory in order to realize the majority of the core functions per the design goal.
EXAMPLE: A distro designed to work with disk drives and partitions can boot and allows one to make changes but the [Save] function is grey out unless someone pay for the unlock key is considered to be (B).
Obviously distros that can't be downloaded without payment up front are (B) by default. However pay support is *NOT* (B) but rather (A) because one can freely use the software and if you need help, it's only fair to compensate for the time someone spent on your problem.
I am sure I'll get a lot of hate responses from those who have a strong opinion on this subject matter, just like I responded to Jesse's article. :-)
10 • libre=gratis (by Jim on 2015-01-26 14:19:18 GMT from United States)
In comment #3, Milo from Poland nails it! And he says it eloquently! I love the analogy: "That anyone could do it doesn't make it valueless, much like many of the jobs people hold. People pay for the convenience of not having to do it themselves so that they can invest that time and energy elsewhere, or they pay because they don't have the knowledge to do it themselves, or they pay for support."
While I am a fan of the GNU concept of FOSS, I am not opposed to paying for commercial software that offers a level of functionality and/or polish that the FOSS version simply does not have...yet! There are times when a suitable FOSS version of software simply will not do, especially when initially migrating to Linux!
As specifically relates to MYSELF, I found FOSS offerings of GnuCash, KMyMondey, HomeBank, etc... for personal finance to be so strange & foreign to my Quicken experience that I felt the need to pay a little extra for MoneyDance. I have long since weaned myself from it, but it was WONDERFUL to have that affordable option as a bridge! I have also purchased VueScan software for its additional included drivers for a problematic AIO device in Linux. I am not capable of writing my own drivers, and purchasing VueScan for the driver functionality was less expensive than purchasing a new Linux-friendly AIO device. Since that time, the kernel has caught up and now provides drivers for that device, which has made VueScan obsolete to me; I now favor FOSS SimpleScan and gScan2PDF, depending on what I'm scanning. While I no longer use that proprietary software, I'm glad I had the option and I feel it was worth the $$$ at that point in time. CHOICES!!!
With respect to Elive, I noticed their fee disclaimer for an installation module, so it IS disclosed, but perhaps it could be more prominent. Knowing that it would cost $$$ to install, I still elected to download the ISO and try it in a Live environment. I liked it for many reasons, but I am able to customize a distro to my liking and see no reason to pay for a turnkey distro. But for those who also like Elive and don't have that knowledge, nor experience, to customize an Enlightenment DE, it will take numerous 10s, if not 100s, of hours to acquire that knowledge & experience. If you fall into that category, you'd be silly NOT to pay the installation fee, as your time is absolutely worth more than the fee.
Either way, I'm glad we have the CHOICE!!! Unfortunately, with the privilege of choice comes the responsibility of educating yourself with enough knowledge to exercise your choice to your own best advantage. If you're not willing to do that, just accept the MS and Apple software models where the choices are made for you, because they have already decided what's in your "best" interests...
11 • info is what's important (by Jason on 2015-01-26 15:26:24 GMT from United States)
I don't mind if distros with closed source or commercial components are listed. It's only frustrating when that info isn't made readily available.
12 • What #11 said (by cykodrone on 2015-01-26 16:07:19 GMT from Canada)
I agree, I hate sneaky too, AAMOF, I'm more likely to make a modest donation to smaller projects with a sob story, "$#1+ costs money, we need to keep the lights on, yada yada", no, really, seriously, up front is better.
13 • 10 • libre=gratis by Jim (by Alex on 2015-01-26 18:12:43 GMT from Poland)
> With respect to Elive, I noticed their fee disclaimer for an installation module, so it IS disclosed, but perhaps it could be more prominent. Knowing that it would cost $$$ to install...<
The one app you can't use in Elive live iso is the "Elive Installer." It is the only custom app in Elive, that is, it is THE app placed there, so you wouldn't be able to use it, if you don't pay and buy another file to get it going.
If you really want to install Elive, then disregard this "Elive Installer" and install another installer app from Debian repos. If this is too hard for you, just install any Debian based distro and install Enlightenment from the Debian repos.
14 • FreeBsd Available on DO (by Robin on 2015-01-26 18:53:36 GMT from )
I am happy to see freebsd available on digitalocean.
15 • #4 Poster (by c00ter on 2015-01-26 19:01:58 GMT from United States)
...happens to be Allan McRae, who knows a bit about Arch. I would listen to him. ;)
16 • Commercial Distros (by Jordan on 2015-01-26 22:44:56 GMT from United States)
Thank you Jesse for the transparency. As it is, I don't see it as highly needed wrt the mentioned (and other) distros. But questions do arise and purists are among us. ;)
Commercial distributions and DistroWatch go just as well together as any of the definitions of free distributions and Distrowatch, of course.
17 • Commercial Distros - my thought on having the freedom of decision- linux (by Centaurus on 2015-01-27 00:57:30 GMT from )
I personally welcome and if I may say demand, clear up-front Information of pricing on Distros that do require donation with no way around them before testing or using for long time (testing is not one day only),just to prevent unwelcome surprises or wasted downloads. We should have the freedom of making the decision on who we donate and not to be forced to do so up front. We are talking Linux here. Distributions I will never download are: Parted Magic - Robolinux - Elive - Ubuntu (list could go on...)
Distros I love using: Mint - Lite - CrunchB - AVLinux - UberStudent (list also could go on even more..) Linux is something special to me, because I get angry at it and then I start loving it and I am glad it is around. Also I want to add as there is no perfect OS yet out (probably never will be), it is good to know and be fluent in, on what is out on the market.
Thank you Distrowatch for your hard Work!
Greetings to Linux developers and hardcore distrohoppers.
C.
18 • Elive, Kaos, Evolve (by linuxista on 2015-01-27 05:38:32 GMT from United States)
I don't have any issues with software that charges a fee upfront. (I might not use it, but I certainly wouldn't complain about it.) The issue with Elive seems to be dodgy disclosure practices that some think amount to a scam. I will re-post something someone else posted about their experience with Elive that sounds a lot worse than what people are talking about here. Maybe we could get some confirmation about just what Elive's payment practices are.
61 • Elive @55 (by fernbap on 2014-09-20 13:47:26 GMT from Portugal)
GPL? Who said anything about GPL?
Elive asks you to pay for their distro. I have nothing against it, i was even curtous about it enough to pay for it and install it on my computer.
Then i found out that i had no package manager whatsoever. Selling a debian based distro that has no access to the debian repos? really? And the only way i could get it was to pay (again) for the "office disk" which included Open Office, apt and synaptic.
And all of that i learned only after i had installed a linux distro that i had payed for.
No, that is not a GPL breach. That is a conn job. People are intentionally fooled into having to pay again in order to have a funcional system. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.... http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20140915&mode=67
Can anyone confirm whether Kaos uses the AUR?
Is Evolve Ubuntu based?
19 • Torrent downloads in Linux (by gregzeng on 2015-01-27 06:36:35 GMT from Australia)
A dedicated site exists for Linux torrents, but it is outdated, because of low user numbers:
http://linuxtracker.org/index.php
Some distros have torrent urls on their download page; eg
http://www.netrunner-os.com/download/
Using their suggested url gave me 16 simultaneous download sites. Much faster and more reliable than idiot (traditional) ways of downloading any large computer files.
Using qBittorrent search only showed 11 sites, even as I was d-l from the distro creators url. I could see that most of my d-l sources were using Linux torrent handlers, and which urls they were in: USA & Europe usually.
qBittorrent is preferred on all my operating systems: Linux, Windows & Android (which is a Linux op sys, IMHO). Unlike Transmission, ktorrent, etc, qBittorrent is similar to Vuze & Frostwire. It allows integrated search-download, but without the heavy resource overheads.
If you dare use specialized torrent search tools, you will usually get many silly & misleading hits. Specialized torrent downloaders might be faster, lighter on resources ... but the tediousness of using these instead of integrated torrent apps is too annoying: bug-tracing, app-updates, snafus, etc.
Most (all?) Linux distro creators don't understand torrents, so just include crippled torrent apps. qBittorent is the leading (just) app of its kind, in the Linux Mint user stats, ATM. On Android, it can be controlled by remote apps from my smartphone or my desktop-replacement tablet pc (Samsung Note Pro 12.2), via wifi or www.
20 • Allan, KaOS, EvolveOS ! (by Frederic Bezies on 2015-01-27 06:47:34 GMT from France)
@15 : Oups, I should have known it ! Sorry, Allan !
@18 : KaOS can use AUR and CCR, if you look here :
http://kaosx.us/packaging-guide/#AUR_CCR
EvolveOS is based on nothing but itself.
https://evolve-os.com/about/
"Evolve OS is a Linux distribution built from scratch, using a forked version of the PiSi package manager (maintained as “eopkg” within Evolve OS)"
Not every single third party distribution is debian or ubuntu based :)
21 • KaOS AUR (by linuxista on 2015-01-27 15:44:22 GMT from United States)
@20: Thanks for the info. It looks like with KaOS you have to download the tarballs from the AUR or CCR and build from source. Do you know if that means you can't use yaourt or packer to install from the AUR with KaOS? (That would be a deal-breaker for me).
22 • Elive (by Rev_Don on 2015-01-27 16:00:15 GMT from United States)
Distrowatch states that " those wishing to install it to a hard disk are asked to pay US$15 for an installation module". This needs to be changed to REQUIRED to pay. Stating "asked" implies that it is a voluntary donation which is incorrect.
As far as I'm concerned DistroWatch (probably Jessie) needs to do an in depth review of Elive to see EXACTLY what is and is not required and how much all of the fees are and state them on the DW Elive Page to resolve any of the ambiguity we now have.
23 • @22 (by jaws222 on 2015-01-27 18:41:50 GMT from United States)
Evolve OS is a Linux distribution built from scratch, using a forked version of the PiSi package manager (maintained as “eopkg” within Evolve OS)""
This is Ikey Dougherty's new project. I loved the Alpha ans loved SolusOS too. Can't wait to try the beta.
24 • Paid distros (by Mark on 2015-01-27 20:17:34 GMT from United States)
@17 You erroneously included Ubuntu in a list of distros that require payment, either sooner or later. Ubuntu is - and has always been - completely free of any charges at any time.
There is a page that asks if you'd like to donate, and allows you to specify where you'd like that money to go, but you don't have to donate at all. This seems entirely appropriate to me and isn't really any different than the vast majority of distros: they'd all welcome donations, but most don't require anyone to pay at all.
25 • @24 Paid Distros. (by Rev_Don on 2015-01-27 20:40:45 GMT from United States)
I don't see him stating that Ubuntu is a paid distro, only that it is one that he would never download. Nothing is specifically stated that it requires payments.
26 • 22 • Elive - Rev_Don (by Alex on 2015-01-27 23:32:21 GMT from Poland)
> Distrowatch states that " those wishing to install it to a hard disk are asked to pay US$15 for an installation module". This needs to be changed to REQUIRED to pay. Stating "asked" implies that it is a voluntary donation which is incorrect. <
Actually, it should be changed to "those, who want to use the blocked Elive installer should pay US$15."
You can check this yourself:
# donation warn before to install {{{
#if ! ((is_version_development)) ; then
$guitool --info --text="$( eval_gettext "In order to install Elive you need to make a small donation to support the future of the project. If you are unable to make this payment we have alternatives that have no economical cost, or if you live in one of the first 20 poorest country's the payment process is totally skipped, because we don't want to stop anybody from using Elive. More details about this donation will appear during the installation stages." )"
#fi
27 • @ 25 Paid distros (by Mark on 2015-01-27 23:34:20 GMT from United States)
I don't mean any offense, but that's a pretty weasly response.
He spent a paragraph criticizing distros that charge, and concludes the paragraph with a list of distros he'd never download.
See: "I personally welcome and if I may say demand, clear up-front Information of pricing on Distros that do require donation with no way around them before testing or using for long time (testing is not one day only),just to prevent unwelcome surprises or wasted downloads. We should have the freedom of making the decision on who we donate and not to be forced to do so up front. We are talking Linux here. Distributions I will never download are: Parted Magic - Robolinux - Elive - Ubuntu (list could go on...)'"
if he was changing the subject, as you're suggesting, it sure doesn't read that way.
So, just to be clear: Ubuntu does not and has not ever required payment for its distros, neither to doanload them nor to use them. Like many other distros, they ask if you'd like to donate, but you can still download and use the distros if you decline.
28 • @ 24 and 27 (by Centaurus on 2015-01-28 01:03:36 GMT from Switzerland)
@ 24 and 27
Hay Attorney Mark with your paragraph.
Learn to separate the 2 put in one of my personal opinions first and think before you comment on me and state I am criticizing. O_o I do not criticize nothing!
You call 27 on some weasly response? What is your problem !?
I and others appreciate your Information regarding Ubuntu. Thank you!
My main opinion and comment is about what I feel about payments. That is all! The down below opinion is my personal opinion on what Distros I like and what Distros I dislike.I did feel Like sharing it O_O You can write all you want about Ubuntu (for example, you picked it) I do not care about Ubuntu.(you get that?)This Distro stopped existing for me at the 10.04 version, period.I do not use it. Again , thank you for your great Information about Ubuntu, but stop mixing my preferred Distros with the first opinion.
Yes I will pay attention in future comments to just not make to many opinions on one single post (some people get it and some people just make Attorney work out of it, like you)
Looks like we speak English but I do not know sometimes...People like you, bring me to cooking temp with such If I can say rhetoric pure stiff computer like teenager Mind. All in all - I did not mean to offend anyone.I do not want to offend you either. I have my personal right to my opinion just like you. Go be an Attorney , leave me alone.We got your point on your first posting!
So yes Mr.Attorney Mark you made it clear to us, about Ubuntu. Ubuntu never charges anyone, we get that. Thank you for letting us know.
29 • @28 Multiple Comments (by Rev_Don on 2015-01-28 02:46:20 GMT from United States)
To make things easier for everyone to comprehend you might want to take a little more time separating your different comments within a single post by adding line spacing between them. Essentially use separate paragraphs for each separate thought/comment. Might end some of the confusion as your posts can be a bit difficult to follow at times (missing capitalization, punctuation, etc.).
Not meaning to be critical, just trying to help.
30 • EvolveOS (by Hoos on 2015-01-28 04:11:48 GMT from Singapore)
EvolveOS is a nice project. I have the Alpha v.4 version on my laptop, and it's very promising and fast. It's also good looking, being an Ikey project.
It's still early days. Multimedia was introduced fairly late in the life of the alpha, and the GUI package manager was released with the beta version which I haven't had time to try yet.
Lots of things still to be done, but it's quite fun to see a distro take form and develop before your eyes. There's a pretty active community on their Google+ page.
31 • distros and choices (by ken on 2015-01-28 11:26:42 GMT from South Africa)
At any one given instance I can only be using one distro. So I choose one out of the many. When I choose one it does not mean that the others are bad. Its just a preference. If my best choice wasn't there I would go for another one that would then become the best. I am using slackware but could still happily use any other distro. To me there are no bad distros or one that I can never use or download. I thank all those who give their time and knowledge to make sure that we have all the choices that we have have.
32 • EvolveOS (by Bill on 2015-01-28 15:31:31 GMT from United States)
I was on-board for SolusOS and even made a donation, but then Ikey just
quit and walked away from the whole thing leaving us without support.
I know he does good work, but personally, I won't be fooled again.
33 • SolusOS (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-01-28 19:50:46 GMT from United States)
"Ikey just quit and walked away from the whole thing"
These days government agencies and corporate lawyers alike make dire threats if someone they coerce reveals their involvement. I'd be slow to foist blame on Ikey directly. I doubt he made such choices lightly.
It reminded me too much of how DebIan dropped handy drivers from its distro some years (decades) ago ... took years to recover.
34 • @32 EvolveOS, SolusOS (by Hoos on 2015-01-29 03:52:41 GMT from Singapore)
I believe in taking it in the right spirit and having the correct level of expectations. And I say this as a user of SolusOS who was disappointed when that distro was discontinued.
I view EvolveOS as a fun project and hobby, not something to be used for or depended on as a production system. He himself has said he originally started the project for himself, but got a good response when he shared it online. It's generating good ideas, nice GUI, people are contributing and coming together to work on aesthetic and other ideas.
Even if it dies tomorrow, there are already substantial things that have come out of it, which presumably could be forked or continued. For instance, his desktop environment, Budgie-desktop. This is already packaged for AUR, Ubuntu PPA, and perhaps more.
35 • Parted Magic - why? (by BobWya on 2015-01-29 14:49:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
Is it just me - but I can't see the value in Parted Magic. Whatever your point of view on the ethics of the matter... The move to a chargeable version doesn't make much sense.
Anyway I just made a re-spin of Ubuntu Mate 14.04.1 - which does all the same stuff as Parted Magic (Clonezilla launcher, Gparted, etc.) - but also significantly more. It's built with the GB locale setup in the live environment, Libreoffice, Chrome & Firefox with the flash-plugin, a "non-ethical" MS font-pack installed, native-ZFS & exfat all in the live environment. The image is even the same size as the stock one!! With a persistent partition on a flash drive it's simply way, way more functional...
Anyway my point being that creating an Ubuntu (/derivative) respin is not nearly as time consuming as running a #Gentoo -based Desktop machine - it's practically child's play!! There's even an idiots guide in the Ubuntu Wiki!! So how can you justify charging for something far less functional?
36 • PartEd not-Magic (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-01-29 15:50:55 GMT from United States)
Clearly you're not a Slacker ... or you wouldn't have implied an accusation of PM being Gentoo-based.
So you "just made a re-spin" that "does all the same stuff" and "significantly more"? Incredible!
You listed two tools - did you collect all the tools in the PM toolset? Does your re-spin support all the file-systems listed? Does your ISO work for both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware, including Secure-Boot and Intel Mac? Have you tested all this?
Did you set up a host server for ISO distribution? Support forum?
Documentation, including how-to, covering the entire toolset?
Fantastic!
Why not include the URL to your new website?
37 • 35 • Parted Magic - why? (by mandog on 2015-01-29 15:59:23 GMT from Peru)
No disrespect to you could you afford the time and cost to yourself to maintain a project like parted magic. I know you come from the land of everything should be free, I'm from the UK.
Why use mate why install chrome, and firefox, libre-office when parted magic runs in both 32 and 64bt does your re-spin do that does it run on .386 does it run on old machines does it run in ram, if not its not a rescue environment does it even run in root. Anybody can make a ubuntu re-spin and think its better than the real thing but in reality its only as good as the knowledge of the person that made it.
parted-magic as far as I know is built from Slackware as source that's why it is stable and will run on all computers.
Anyway good luck with your dream make a torrent and website then check how many other people contribute to your project ?
Then ask again Why parted magic
38 • Ubuntu 14.04.2 / Commercial distributions and DistroWatch (by Peter on 2015-01-29 20:45:38 GMT from Germany)
Because of the list of the upcoming releases, I would like to announce the
Ubuntu 14.04.2 on February 5th ;) I'm verry happy about that because I like
the 14.04 LTS Ubuntu.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseSchedule
-
I think it's good to see Commercial distributions and DistroWatch beause like
Jesse Smith says very right, there are so many situations, where people pay
some money for a distribution to get advanced help or a special update. ;)
-
And also I would like to say Thank You for DISTROWATCH.COM! ;)
39 • @32 Evolve (by mandog on 2015-01-30 01:32:34 GMT from Peru)
If as you say you were aboard when Ikey so called walked away from SolusOS he really had no choice as it was Debian based and there was just 2 much work to make the project viable.
evolve is a completely different ball game designed from the ground up by him and the proof is in what he has achieved in 12 months it normally takes a independent distro with its own desktop years to get as far as evolve has got to the desktop is ultra fast all the tools apart from pisi are from Ikey.
I personally think walking away from a lame duck with Debian and its out of date GTK3 was the best move he made.
I also think its time Mint did the same and showed us what can be done with out being tied to Ubuntu/Debian
40 • Servers (by Ted Miller on 2015-01-30 15:19:37 GMT from United States)
I have been trying to find a decent server replacement for the old RedHat 4 servers that are in place now. It appears that Windows 7 does not like talking to those server as well as not liking to talk with the NAS servers. I am hoping that the later versions of Ubuntu, CentOS and others will make the grade. Sad to say though I was surprised that no one offered a GUI based server solution. I understand the arguments for the command line as being better. Sad to say though there appears to be a priesthood of sorts, with their blinders on saying that should be the only way. I disagree! Why? First: Many people (myself as one) have a hard time dealing with a command line without the Internets help. Second: Business wants to do business, not spend all their time baby sitting a DARK command line network not knowing where to go. Third: Cripes! this is 2015, why are we acting its still 1975? If Linux really wants to take the lead and never look back, they need to make a server that is easy to use right out of the box. It should only take an hour to set up users and shares, It should take no time to communicate with other OS's! Everyone should be able to use the network with little to no training. Of course I can go on! I would just like to congratulate NethServer for taking on that challenge! Good job! I challenge the big corporations to donate to this company or others who take up the challenge to dump the priesthood and get us looking more like what 2015 should! Perhaps a company could offer a large sum to the one who succeeds to make the greatest and most easy to use server ever! Please Please Please dont't tell us that OS's rob hardware resources to work as a gui! Maybe in the past but not in the present. Lets get on with it NOW!!!
41 • @40 server distro (by Kazlu on 2015-01-30 16:43:09 GMT from France)
I don't understand. You seem to have been searching, and you post here in Distrowatch's comments, so I assume you searched through Distrowatch's database for server distros at least. Yet you claim only the newest addition to DW's database - NethServer - proposes a GUI and simple configuration for a server. I did ONE 2-minutes research on Distrowatch, in the research page with the "server" category filter. This gives a bunch of results and there are several which propose simple GUI configuration, commercial of not. Just look at:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=univention
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zentyal
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=sms
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=turnkey (this is a particular case, it is actually a set of ready-to-use small one-purpose server distros)
I admit did not try any of those, but simple configuration is their motto. Besides, for for all those distros - and also for NethServer actually - configuration is made remotely via a web interface. Best of both worlds in my opinion: there is no GUI running full-time on the server to consume resources, but there is still a graphical configuration tool accessible via a remote computer.
Finally, if you need some advice before testing, you can read last year's review of server distributions made by Jesse here on Distrowatch. 4 server distros reviewed in 2 weeks: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20140106 and http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20140113.
I hope you find things that will suit you here. But please stop making false declarations.
42 • @42 @40 But why command line anyway, in the year 2015? (by Ben Myers on 2015-01-30 18:58:49 GMT from United States)
Setting up a server via a web interface is just fine. Setting up a server via a built-in desktop is fine. Either way is OK. The point about a web interface consuming fewer resources is a valid one, as compared to many desktops.
Mr Miller takes exception to having to use terminal/command line to do any server-oriented setup and maintenance tasks at all. Ever. This is 2015, and the software industry at-large has emerged from the swamp of the command line.
43 • @41 (by Ted Miller on 2015-01-30 20:29:20 GMT from United States)
"But please stop making false declarations." has never been my intent. Just looking for the best Linux server available that has a GUI interface. I plan to test out the Nethserver completely on my home computer as a virtual machine. The hardware is a 6 core processor using virtual box and 8 gigabytes, the other unit is the same except that it has 16 gigabytes. On the 8 gigabyte machine I have Lubuntu64 as the host (Low resources) for virtual machines I have Lubuntu Server, Xubuntu Server, CentOS Server, Ubuntu Server, Resara Server and a few others I am working with. Most of these I will be using Webmin as the interface. I just got kind of turned on by Nethserver as they showed the front end. I want to thank you for the Jesse's articles.
I had tried the SMS in the past but had a bit of difficulty with it.
I think I will give that one another look though. Zentyal looks pretty good. My POINT though is that a server should be setup quickly and be truly easy to use and maintain by just about anyone. I might be a good candidate for this I got stuck handling the servers here after all the administrators left in mass. I need to upgrade all the computers in the company and these old servers are holding me back. (No the company will not hire someone else to do it, as for now I am stuck with the task) At least this windows guy is learning an awful lot about linux in a very big way. To say the least I am very impressed with it
44 • @43 (by mandog on 2015-01-31 15:48:22 GMT from Peru)
You do know you can setup any OS as a Linux Server just follow the Wiki its very simple to do Debian is a very good choice once setup will run for years with no problems, Or better still Slackware, Salix is a easy version of slack with GUI tools and and a GUI software installer that also takes care of dependencies Slack/Salixwill stay running when we are all dead and buried,
45 • What's the fuzz about Elive? (by Dimitry on 2015-02-01 04:09:00 GMT from Russian Federation)
Elive is actually Debian + E17.
Just get Debian and install E17 - actually you get the same thing without any problems with repositories, etc...
Why so much attention is paid to that lame distro?
The guy is actually trying to sell air...
46 • Parted Magic Source? Where? (by Ben Myers on 2015-02-01 04:46:03 GMT from United States)
Jesse, Just looked at the Parted Magic web site, and I did not see an obvious way to download the source code. If one cannot download the source code, is it still open source????
47 • A case for cross-platform (by cykodrone on 2015-02-01 15:11:25 GMT from Canada)
From KaOS's self-description:
"plus a focus on evaluating and selecting the most suitable tools and applications"
I've actually tried KaOS and I do think it's a pretty good distro, but I despise distro author(s) 'deciding' what programs are or aren't good for me, bolstering the case for cross-platform binaries or compiler capable distros, like Slax for example, it's a blast watching Sourcery work.
48 • Open source and Parted Magic (by Jesse on 2015-02-01 15:40:40 GMT from Canada)
>> "Jesse, Just looked at the Parted Magic web site, and I did not see an obvious way to download the source code. If one cannot download the source code, is it still open source?"
Yes, at least it is within the definitiion of the GNU GPL. The GPL clearly states that the author only need provide source code to people whom
A) receive a copy of the binary (ie they purchase a copy of the software) and
B) the person receiving the source code requests a copy of the code.
Projects can (and often do) volunteer their source code without limitations, but that is not a requirement of the GPL. I highly recommend you read the license(s) in question.
49 • Slight correction (by cykodrone on 2015-02-01 19:10:51 GMT from Canada)
I meant Sourcery in Salix, but Slax is pretty cool too.
50 • Korora 21 Beta Live, (Some feedback) (by Jeffersonian on 2015-02-01 21:21:31 GMT from United States)
https://www.kororaproject.org/download
Hello All:
Fedora especially with the latest kernel (3.18x) is superb (solid and fast!) ... but install is not as easy as Unbunu/Mint !
I tried Korora 21 Beta (an enhanced Fedora, like Ubuntu), Live with a flash drive (x64 version, latest still beta) and to my good surprise everything (Broadcom Wifi AMD-Video) works out of the box for my HP ProBook 6475B), so it may be now a "distro" to consider seriously for everyone.
The flash drive I use is USB3... and unlike Mint 17.1 this one is fast (driver perhaps?), so USB3 support seems to be there.
Beta is fine, and the release should be pretty soon... (Just check).
I like Mint 17.1 but Fedora 21 is still (much) better in many aspects (repositories, latest kernel, better developer support etc...).
1) For the download, bittorent is much more reliable, ideally with "Deluge" client, the best in my experience. ( Works well and same on both Windows/Linux)
2) For flashing of the ISO I use Unetbootin ( Works well and same on both Windows/Linux).
Jeffersonian
Number of Comments: 50
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