 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 600, 9 March 2015 |
Welcome to this year's 10th (and our all-time 600th) issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A big part of the open source ecosystem is collaboration. People from all around the world come together to work on projects in an effort to scratch an itch, contribute to society or to earn a living. This week we focus on developers collaborating and developing new features on top of existing technology. We begin with a review of Korora, a Fedora-based distribution which attempts to make the Fedora platform more appealing to desktop users. In our News section we discuss FreeBSD being ported to the POWER8 architecture, the many projects participating in this year's Summer of Code and new security features coming to PC-BSD. The OpenMandriva distribution now has a special edition for the Raspberry Pi computer and we link to the project's announcement. Plus we talk about work being done to integrate systemd into Ubuntu and share details on how well the new Ubuntu phone performs. In our Questions and Answers column this week we discuss the large number of Linux distributions and whether it is a good thing so many exist. Plus we share the torrents we are seeding this week in our Torrent Corner. As usual, we share the distribution releases of the past week and look ahead to new developments to come. We wish you a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of Korora 21
Last week I downloaded the latest release of the Korora distribution. The distribution's goals are well defined on the project's website: "Korora is a Fedora remix, meaning it ships packages from the default Fedora repositories but also a number of other packages (often ones that Fedora cannot ship directly). We also make changes to the default system, whereas Fedora generally sticks to upstream. For new users, Fedora can be tricky because it doesn't include many of the extras that users often need, things like media codecs and some proprietary software. This is one area where Korora can help." The Korora website has more details with regards to the distribution's features.
The Korora distribution is available in four editions -- Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE and Xfce. There was previously a MATE edition, but at the time of writing that flavour of Korora appears to have been discontinued. Each edition of Korora is available for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 machines. Since I tried the default GNOME edition of Fedora a few months ago I decided to get some variety by installing Korora's KDE edition. The download for Korora's KDE flavour is 2.5GB in size.
Booting from the Korora live disc brings up the KDE desktop. The wallpaper is soft blue and the application menu, task switcher and system tray rest at the bottom of the screen. On the desktop we find a single icon for launching the project's system installer. Upon arriving at the live desktop a welcome window appears. The welcome screen provides us with links to documentation and on-line support and there is a button for launching the distribution's installer.
Korora uses the same installer Fedora does and I talked about it back in December. In brief, the system installer is primarily divided into two hub screens and a language selection screen. Once we choose our preferred language from a list we are brought to the first hub where we can partition the disk, set our computer's hostname, change our keyboard's layout and select our time zone. On the second hub screen there are just two modules, one for creating a password for the administrator account and another for creating a user account for ourselves. While I found navigating the installer's partition manager a bit cumbersome, all the modules worked for me. The only problem I noticed was that once all modules had been configured and the installer was copying its files to my hard drive, the installer consistently reported (for about twenty minutes) that it was 3% finished and the progress bar was always at the halfway point. This meant I could not tell how long the installer would take to finish. Once the installer completed its work, I was returned to the KDE desktop where I could continue to experiment with the live environment.
Korora 21 -- KDE System Settings and the Apper package manager
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When we boot our new copy of Korora we are brought to a graphical login screen. The login screen is fairly minimal and decorated with a light blue background. Logging into our account brings up the KDE desktop and, the first time we sign in, the welcome screen appears, guiding us to support resources. Shortly after I signed in an icon appeared in the system tray which let me know 38 new software upgrades were available. Clicking the appropriate icon brings up a list of these updates where we can click boxes next to the name of each of the updates to select them. Then we click a button labelled "Install" to begin downloading new packages. A moment later a window appeared and asked for permission to download a few extra packages to fulfil dependencies and I granted it permission. A second later a pop-up appeared with an error saying a new kernel package could not be downloaded and all mirrors had been tried. I tried performing the upgrade again and immediately was shown the same error message.
It seemed unlikely that all repository mirrors could have been checked in under a second so I fired up one of Korora's graphical package managers, Apper. The Apper software manager has a nice interface with colourful icons to help us browse categories of software. Apper also has an update screen we can use to acquire software upgrades. Apper's update module listed 34 available package upgrades (rather than the 38 promised by the update widget). When I told Apper to install the waiting upgrades I immediately received an error message saying the "icd" package could not be downloaded and all mirrors had been tried. At this point I gave up using a graphical tool to install software upgrades and turned to the command line. There I ran the YUM software manager which identified 38 new packages it could download. YUM quickly downloaded the available 38 packages (totalling 74MB in size) and installed them. Actually, YUM uses delta updates which means it does not always download entire packages, sometimes YUM is able to download smaller packages containing just the changes between two software versions. In downloading delta updates when it can, YUM saves us some bandwidth. This bandwidth reduction is good as Korora moves quickly. Over the one week I ran the distribution I downloaded approximately 200 updates, totalling about 450MB in size.
Korora 21 -- Accessing software updates via YUM
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A short time later, I returned to the Apper software manager in the hope of installing new applications. When attempting to browse categories of software I was shown an error saying "SearchGroups not supported by backend". What this meant was all categories of software in Apper appeared to be empty. I could still search for specific packages by name, but I was unable to browse through lists of software available in the project's repositories. A short time later I discovered Korora ships with a second graphical package manager, Yum Extender (YumEx). The YumEx software manager has more filters and options than Apper and displays lists of available (or installed) software in long alphabetized lists. I found YumEx would work, allowing me to find, install and upgrade packages. However, there were two problems that kept me from using YumEx on a regular basis. One was that YumEx was very slow. Switching between filters or reloading the package list could take well over a minute. Second, YumEx shows most packages in the repositories twice, once for 32-bit packages and again for 64-bit packages. This greatly pads the length of software lists and means the user must be careful to choose the correct package for their hardware architecture.
Korora ships with a large collection of desktop software. Scanning through the application menu we find the Firefox web browser with Flash enabled. We also find the KMail e-mail client, the Konqueror web browser, the Konversation IRC client and the KTorrent bittorrent software. Korora ships with the Linphone software phone, a remote desktop client and Sieve Editor. The distribution provides the LibreOffice productivity suite, the Calibre e-book manager and the KOrganizer personal organizer. Korora provides users with several multimedia applications, including the Amarok music player, the Audacity audio editor, the Handbrake transcoding software and the k3b disc burning application. The KAudioCreator audio disc ripper is included along with the Kdenlive video editor, a desktop recorder and the VLC multimedia player. The distribution provides us with a full range of media codecs, allowing us to play and edit just about any media file. Korora ships with the GNU Image Manipulation Program the Gwenview image viewer and Inkscape. We are also treated to the Okular document viewer, the ShowFoto photo viewer and the KolourPaint drawing program. Korora provides us with several system administration utilities including one for changing user authentication methods, the Back In Time backup tool, a utility for configuring the firewall, a program for setting up Samba network shares, a SELinux policy manager, two services managers and a utility for managing user accounts. We further have a hardware device driver manager, the KDE System Settings control panel, KInfoCenter for browsing hardware information, the GParted disk partition manager and the Dolphin file manager. Korora offers a handful of accessibility utilities, including a virtual keyboard, a screen magnifier and a text-to-speech reader. Plus we find Jovie, an archive manager, a calculator and the KWrite text editor. Rounding out the available software we find the KRename file renaming utility, the KGpg security key and encryption tool and the ownCloud client software. Network Manager is available to help us get on-line and Korora ships with Java. We also find the GNU Compiler Collection present for developers and Korora runs the OpenSSH secure shell service in the background. Korora offers users version 3.18 of the Linux kernel.
Korora 21 -- The Back In Time backup manager
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As I was going through Korora's massive collection of software I encountered a handful of applications I had not used before or that I felt deserved special mention. One of these is the Cloud Storage Manager, an application designed to connect our computer to one or more on-line storage accounts. Cloud Storage Manager supports a handful of services, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and WebDAV (WebDAV is used by ownCloud along with other on-line services). I tried to add both a Dropbox and an ownCloud account to the Cloud Storage Manager. The application was unable to successfully connect to either on-line account, reporting errors with authentication tokens.
One application I did not recognize in Korora's application menu was Sieve Editor. I launched it, the application repeatedly asked for my wallet password (I didn't have a wallet password set up yet) and, once I had clicked "Cancel" several times I was brought to a screen where we can configure accounts. Clicking the button to add an account again brought up several more prompts for my wallet password. Then I was asked to put in my e-mail credentials and the address of an IMAP server. At this point I still had not discovered what Sieve Editor is or what it does. I went into the application's help manual and all the manual said, in its entirety, was: "Sieve Editor is a sieve script editor." As that was the only information available and I wasn't sure what the application might do to my e-mail once I granted it access to my server, I moved on. (For those who are curious, sieve scripts are used to filter e-mail messages.)
On a positive note, the Pharlap application, despite its somewhat cryptic name, turned out to be a welcome feature. Pharlap is a device driver manager. When we open the application it locates devices attached to our computer and tries to match appropriate drivers to the device. We can click a box to assign an available driver to a given device. Pharlap was very slow to load, requiring a few minutes to locate all the potential drivers and devices, but once it was ready I found the application worked quite well.
Jovie provided some disappointment. This application did not run for me and I couldn't find any local information on what Jovie was supposed to do. A quick on-line search revealed Jovie is a text-to-speech reader associated with the KDE project.
One program I was happy to see was the systemd settings module located in the KDE System Settings panel. Using this configuration module we can enable/disable system services (units, in systemd terms). We can also configure logging and core dumps. The systemd module worked well for me and it is probably one of the best systemd front-ends I have seen to date. I especially like that the module allows us to adjust what is logged by systemd and to where. The only problem I encountered while working with the systemd module was that it would allow me to enable/disable services, but I could not find a way to start/stop services. In other words, I could disable a service and reboot for the change to take effect, but I couldn't simply stop a service if I no longer needed it.
Korora 21 -- configuring systemd
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The Systemadm utility in the Korora application menu also deals with background services. Systemadm has a smaller selection of options when compared against the System Settings module. Using Systemadm we can view the status of available services. I found I could not, however, start or stop services. Any attempt to manipulate a service caused an error to appear saying I did not have the required permissions to manipulate the service.
There is a third services manager included in Korora. Opening the Services application displays a list of services available on the operating system. For some reason, opening the Services program caused systemd to start using 100% of my CPU's resources and this continued for as long as the Services program remained open. This effectively locked up the Services interface and brought all other desktop activity to a halt until I forced the Services window to close. Once Services was terminated, desktop responsiveness gradually returned to normal and systemd stopped gobbling up my CPU cycles.
One aspect of Korora I found interesting was that, when working from the command line, if I tried to run a program not available on the system a prompt would appear asking if I wanted to download the missing software from the project's repositories. I found this feature worked quickly and it worked well. One thing I noticed while the distribution was installing missing software for me was that I had not been prompted for a password before the software was installed. I did a little experimenting and found the user account I had created at install time was part of the "wheel" group. Any users who were members of this group could install software using Apper or command line tools without providing further credentials. Users not added to the wheel group needed to have the root user's password in order to install new software packages. Personally, I found this approach to software management convenient, especially early on when I would sometimes want to run applications I had not yet installed.
I ran Korora in two environments during my trial, a VirtualBox virtual machine and a physical desktop computer. Korora detected all my hardware and used it properly. My network connection was automatically enabled, sound worked out of the box and my screen was set to its maximum resolution. The distribution required approximately 390MB of memory when sitting idle at the KDE desktop. Most of the time I found Korora worked smoothly and the graphical interface was responsive. Occasionally the operating system would become very sluggish for brief periods of time. I eventually discovered this temporary sluggishness was caused by the systemd-coredump program using up 70-90% of the available CPU resources. Presumably systemd-coredump was running due to a background process crashing and its process information being dumped. Once I had disabled systemd's core dump handling via the System Settings panel, these temporary moments of sluggishness ceased and Korora ran smoothly.
Conclusions
Approximately three months ago I experimented with Fedora 21, the distribution which serves as a base for Korora 21. I encountered a number of problems with Fedora, but my issues basically boiled down to three things: 1. Fedora is taking a minimal approach and the default Workstation branch of the project ships with very little software. 2. The Fedora software repositories are missing several popular packages, meaning users need to manually hunt down and enable third-party repositories. 3. The default software manager in Fedora was buggy and only displayed desktop applications.
Korora, in its attempt to be more user friendly and desktop ready, does a nice job of tackling the first two issues. Korora ships with a lot of software in the default installation. Some of the programs didn't work for me, or didn't work well, but most of the applications Korora provides out of the box are powerful and useful. I think Korora deserves credit for fleshing out the base distribution with a wide assortment of desktop applications, system administration tools and multimedia support. On a similar note, Korora enables several third-party software repositories by default. This gives us access to a wide array of additional software not available to Fedora users under the default configuration. However, the third issue, graphical package managers, is still very much a problem in Korora. The distribution ships with two graphical front-ends for package management, plus an update widget. Apper and the update widget were unable to download software upgrades and Apper was unable to browse software categories, limiting the package manager's usefulness. Yum Extender is a capable tool, but it ran so slowly in my test environments I cannot imagine users coming from other distributions being willing to sit through using it. Despite the problems I encountered with the graphical package managers, the YUM command line package manager worked well. Using YUM, I was able to download new packages, remove unwanted software and acquire software upgrades, all without any problems.
I admire the amount of work that has gone into Korora to transform Fedora into a more user friendly, desktop oriented distribution. Fedora, on its own, supplies a fairly bare (some might prefer the term sleek) Workstation product. Korora's developers have done well as far as expanding Fedora's core offering, adding many desired applications, codecs and providing alternative (if imperfect) graphical package managers. While most of the software shipping with Korora works and works well, I feel my main issue with Korora is the quality of some of the applications provided. Some applications simply did not launch for me, others (especially those relating to systemd's configuration) tended to be buggy or cause unusually high CPU usage and some, like the cloud storage management software, did not provide the desired functionality.
All in all, I think Korora does provide a better desktop solution than its base. I think Korora is a step, nay two steps, in the right direction as far as being user friendly in concerned. There are still some rough patches to iron out and it is my hope that Korora 22 will manage to improve on package management and configuring systemd.
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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) |
FreeBSD running on POWER8, projects approved for GSoC, PC-BSD unveils new privacy software, OpenMandriva on the Raspberry Pi, systemd coming to Ubuntu and Ubuntu running on phones
The POWER8 architecture is a family of processors based on the Power CPU architecture. POWER8 is a relatively young design suited for multi-threaded tasks. Work is currently being done to port FreeBSD to the POWER8 architecture. The FreeBSD News site reports on the work being done: "A post to freebsd-ppc from a couple of months ago asked if we had support for POWER8 and offered to provide remote access to anyone interested in working on it. I was sufficiently intrigued that I approached the FreeBSD powerpc hackers to ask about it, and was informed that it'd be nice, but we didn't have hardware. After a bit of wrangling of hardware logistics and with the FreeBSD Foundation purchasing a box, a Tyan POWER8 evaluation server appeared. Nathan Whitehorn started poking at it and managed to get a basic "hello world" going." There is still work to be done, but the new port is nearing the point where FreeBSD will soon be able to run directly on machines running POWER8 processors.
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Google's Summer of Code is an annual event where students are sponsored by Google to work on open source projects. Each year interested projects offer to mentor students who wish to get hands-on experience with real world, open source software. The OpenBSD Foundation is one of the many organizations to announce their participation and a list of tasks waiting for students can be found on the Foundation's website. OpenBSD is far from the only open source project to be involved in Google's Summer of Code. The list of participating open source organizations and their waiting tasks can be found on the Summer of Code website.
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Security and personal privacy are increasingly hot topics in today's world. The PC-BSD team recognizes that many users want to be able to protect their data and browse the web with some degree of anonymity. With this in mind, the PC-BSD project has unveiled five new security features that will be available in the project's next release. These features include PersonaCrypt, a method of storing a user's home directory on removable, encrypted media; Tor Mode, a tool to force all network connections to pass through the Tor network; Stealth Mode, a way to login to a system using an encrypted guest session; a move to use LibreSSL over OpenSSL and sending encrypted backups to a remote server.
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The Raspberry Pi is a minimal, inexpensive computer that is popular with hobbyists and frequently used in classrooms to teach students about computers and programming. A few Linux distributions will run on the Raspberry Pi's minimal ARM processor, though support tends to be limited. In a blog post last week, the OpenMandriva team announced they have released an edition of OpenMandriva for the Raspberry Pi. The blog post includes instructions for transferring the provided image to a SD card. The new OpenMandriva image offers users a command line interface only.
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The Ubuntu distribution will follow in the steps of its parent, Debian, in adopting the systemd init software later this year. According to this ticket on Launchpad, most of Canonical's product lines will adopt systemd, probably in time for the release of Ubuntu 15.04 next month. "We are a few days past feature freeze now, Steve and I discussed last week and we still want to aim for switching the default [init] in Vivid. To be clear, this will affect Ubuntu desktop/server/cloud and the flavours like Kubuntu, but not Ubuntu Touch. Migration to systemd is blocked on Touch."
We usually do not talk much about mobile operating systems such as Android or Ubuntu Touch, but having Ubuntu ship on dedicated phones last month was a milestone and it received a lot of attention. Having a GNU/Linux operating system running on modern smart phone hardware is an attractive idea, but how well does it work in practice? Sujeevan Vijayakumaran shared some impressions of the Ubuntu phone, how it works, the quality of the hardware and Ubuntu's unusual user interface. "The hardware isn't too bad, even if the display doesn't have a high resolution. You'll get a device for 170€ from BQ with a quite good build quality. The device and the system do have a few bugs, hick-ups and lags. Anyway, I personally wouldn't recommend this device for end users because there are still many apps and scopes missing, to have a nice smart phone operating system. This phone is mainly targeted for early-adopters, Ubuntu enthusiasts and developers."
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
The number and diversity of Linux distributions
So-many-distributions-so-little-time asks:
It seems to me that we have too many distros out there, some of them very close to each other. I understand that there are enough people and enough tastes out there to have probably seven billion different distros, but my main concern is about resources.
What drives the Linux development is, more than anything, passion. Of course money has its share, but still, there is a lot of passion. Not only to Linux, but to free software.
I would say that we evolved a lot in the past ten years, but my question is:
Wouldn't it be better to focus all this effort, these resources into fewer areas? Or do you think that, as we have enough tastes out there we also have enough developers?
I think there are some areas that could be evolved a lot more which would allow a better penetration of Linux (or BSD, etc.). To give one example, the LibreOffice project.
Going back to the CrunchBang story, I was a user of this distro for a long time, until I realized (like Phillip [Newborough]) that there is no point in using it instead of Debian. I would really appreciate to see your comments on that.
DistroWatch answers:
First, allow me to talk about open source and finite resources, as the person asking the question seems primarily interested in the limited number of people available to work on open source software. I think it is important to keep in mind a few things when talking about which projects should (or could) benefit from having more contributors. One thing to remember is that not all technical skills are interchangeable. For example, someone who can build packages may not be able to work on productivity software and someone who develops a web browser might not have the skills required to contribute to the kernel. My point is: the skills required to re-spin a distribution are not the same skills required to improve LibreOffice. Many people have both skills, but we should not assume someone making a new distribution could be contributing to upstream projects.
Another thing to keep in mind is a lot of re-spins and forks happen because upstream projects are either uninterested in accepting new volunteers or they have a specific vision in mind and that vision is not compatible with the ideas of potential new developers. Over the years I have approached over a dozen projects (including five distributions) and volunteered services, code, bug fixes or documentation. Most of these offers have been ignored or rejected. As a result, I usually ended up volunteering my time elsewhere or forking the project so I could form the software into the shape I wanted. Many popular software projects, including the GNU compiler, the C library sitting at the heart of most Linux distributions and LibreOffice exist in their present form today because differences in vision or politics caused a fork. A fork that turned out to be beneficial in the long run.
My point is that many developers create a fork or a re-spin because the original project rejected their input, not because the new developer doesn't want to help the original project. Many people see creating a re-spin or fork of a distribution as a waste of resources or as a selfish action. However, let us not forget many developers will try to work within the existing project first and end up leaving because of politics or a lack of interest on the part of the original developers.
Maybe it would sometimes be better to focus more effort into fewer projects, but for that to happen existing projects would need to be more welcoming. It also means in instances where two visions are not compatible, one developer must give up their plans to work on another's. Take, for example, the recent concerns over Debian adopting systemd. Some people welcome the change, some people do not like it, but are willing to continue working with Debian, and some dislike the change enough to switch to a different project. These big changes (and varying reactions) happen a lot in the open source community. The competition is usually good, in the long run, for the end users.
While it might sometimes be best for developers to group together and focus their efforts, there are times when I think it is beneficial to have more forks and more competing projects. People tend to think focusing all effort into one project is a good idea until they realize their favourite software probably would not exist if everyone contributed to a few core open source projects. For instance, having software developers focus on one desktop environment sounds nice until you try to get people to agree on which desktop environment we should all use. Should it be GNOME Shell, KDE, LXQt? It would be difficult to get a group of ten people to agree on such a restriction, let alone the millions of people who populate the open source community. One runs into a similar problem when it comes to restricting Linux distributions. Should we do away with all distributions except Slackware? Or maybe we should all use Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Ubuntu? Few people would be happy with such a restriction.
Personally, while I think the question of whether we should have fewer distributions is an interesting topic and while I think good points can be made for either side of the debate, ultimately any conclusions we might come to do not matter. A lot of the power in open source software comes from the freedom given to developers to create what they want. A developer may choose to add to an existing project or they may fork it and create a new vision. Open source gives developers the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants and create whatever they like. When that happens some developers will create things you like and some will not, some will wish to cooperate with other developers and some will not. Ultimately though, the freedom to choose is in the hands of the individual developers and it is a freedom that cannot (and should not) be taken away. Whatever conclusions we may come to in this debate do not matter as developers will continue to do as they wish.
Open source software is a lot like free speech. Society might be calmer and more focused if everyone held the same opinion on everything and we all worked in harmony, but wouldn't that be a dull place to live? So much of what makes the world interesting, fun and full of invention is the variety of opinions, the endless debates, the constant arguing back-and-forth trying to find answers to age old questions. The open source community, much like the world as a whole, is full of inventions and wonders because of differences in opinion and vision. Sure, sometimes someone has an unpleasant opinion and sometimes it might seem like we have too much conflict because of our differences. But, ultimately, I think free speech is more important, is more beneficial, than the alternative. Similarly, I think the freedom to develop and explore alternative projects is what makes the open source community vibrant and innovative. To my mind asking if we have too many distributions is akin to asking if we have too many novels or too many paintings. The practical benefits of these things to society might be questionable, but what a sad world we would live in without them.
The open source community is chaotic, full of debate and features an overwhelming amount of choice. However, when we compare the open source community as it is today against the stale, repressive alternatives of proprietary operating systems, I am very glad for the diversity we have. I wouldn't have it any other way.
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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, make sure to include a link to the ISO file you want us to seed 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.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found here. All torrents we make available here are also 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: 29
- Total downloads completed: 8,734
- Total data uploaded: 2.2TB
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus Kiosk 3.3.0
Tomasz Jokiel has announced the release of Porteus Kiosk 3.3.0, a lightweight Gentoo-based distribution designed for web kiosks: "I'm happy to announce Porteus Kiosk 3.3.0 which is now available for download. This is a major kiosk release which brings a number of new features, package upgrades and security fixes. The Linux kernel has been updated to 3.18.8 while Firefox sticks to the ESR channel which is intended for large organizations such as universities, governments and businesses and is numbered as 31.5.0. All packages from the userland which are living in the Gentoo stable branch are upgraded to the snapshot tagged on 20150301. Aside from the package upgrades, Porteus Kiosk 3.3.0 brings exciting new features which are implemented in the kiosk wizard and the ISO image itself. The most notable ones are: introduced central management function which allows to remotely control multiple kiosk PCs from single configuration file stored on your server..." Here is the complete release announcement.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1
Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1, the first point update in the distribution's latest stable branch: "Red Hat, Inc. today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1, the first minor release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, which launched in June 2014. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 offers improved development and deployment tools, enhanced interoperability and manageability, and additional security and performance features. As with all releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, these enhancements are delivered over a stable, secure, 10-year lifecycle backed by Red Hat’s award-winning global support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 delivers significant functionality improvements for heterogeneous operating system environments, particularly for infrastructure that uses Active Directory. By integrating the Common Internet File System (CIFS) with SSSD, users can now gain native access to Microsoft Windows file and print services." See the release announcement and read through the detailed release notes for a full list of improvements. A 30-day evaluation edition si available for download from Red Hat's product pages.
Linux From Scratch 7.7
Bruce Dubbs has announced the launch of Linux From Scratch (LFS) and Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS), version 7.7. The latest copies of the freely available books come with several updates and walk the reader through assembling a Linux distribution from individual packages. "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS Version 7.7 and BLFS Version 7.7. This release is a major update to both LFS and BLFS. The LFS release includes updates to glibc-2.21, binutils-2.25, and gcc-4.9.2. In total, 30 packages were updated, fixes made to bootscripts, and changes to text have been made throughout the book. The BLFS version includes approximately 750 packages beyond the base Linux From Scratch Version 7.7 book. This release has over 710 updates from the previous version including numerous text and formatting changes." The brief release announcement can be found on the project's website.
Tiny Core Linux 6.1
Tiny Core Linux 6.1 has been released. This is the latest stable build of the minimalist (15 MB to download) desktop Linux distribution built from scratch. From the release announcement: "Team Tiny Core is proud to announce the release of Core 6.1. Changelog: tce-load - remove extraneous ls check, apply awk patch, remove unused depi variable; tc-functions - getbasefile speedup; tce-audit, tce-load - ignore spaces in dep files; BusyBox 1.23.1 patched for modinfo, modprobe, wget and dc; BusyBox updated to 1.23.1; settime.sh - fix systems with default year not 1970; search.sh - awk patch and move common part to a function; tce-audit - awk patch. Also in conjunction with the above in Xprogs: apps - quote the search argument, reload the list on an empty search, set a minimum size to the window, nicer resize behaviour. Several elements of X.Org 7.7 were also updated between 6.0 and 6.1 so users should use the apps GUI to check for updates and check for changed deps after upgrading."
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Distributions added to the database
Void
Void is an independently-developed, general-purpose operating system based on the monolithic Linux kernel. It features a hybrid binary/source package management system which allows users to quickly install, update and remove software, or to build software directly from sources with the help of the XBPS source packages collection. Other features of the distribution include support for Raspberry Pi single-board computers (both armv6 and armv7), rolling-release development model with daily updates, integration of OpenBSD's LibreSSL software, and native init system called "runit".
Void 20150221 -- Running the MATE desktop environment
(full image size: 569kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Distributions added to waiting list
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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, 16 March 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 • The number and diversity of Linux distributions (by Out Of Peanuts on 2015-03-09 00:27:27 GMT from North America)
While I agree in general, I think the following misses the user's point:
"Should we do away with all distributions except Slackware? Or maybe we should all use Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Ubuntu? Few people would be happy with such a restriction."
I think the real point is Can we do without the "Fedora-minus-Tetris" respin or the "3-teens-in-the-garage" distro? While I wouldn't want to stop them, the answer is probably Yes.
2 • microlinux (by erinis on 2015-03-09 01:05:02 GMT from North America)
So how do we download and install it ? I try hard to keep up but Hummm sometimes it gets odd and not really user friendly. From a long time Linux user.
3 • @2 (by ecormier on 2015-03-09 01:24:08 GMT from North America)
erinis go to the website and read the installation guide (you use a slackware cd, it's in the guide)
4 • Linux Diversity (by Richard Carlson on 2015-03-09 01:27:44 GMT from North America)
Linux diversity isn't such a bad thing.I think I'd rather see more time spent in improving software apps instead of the numerous OS shells ie.(Unity, Cinnamon, Xfce4,Gnome3, KDE4) all under the guise of different distro brandings. . Let's get them all up to speed and give them the best versatility we would come to expect a desktop computer can handle with all the bells and whistles. Then concentrate on developing the best software apps to then function in these shells.Too much time is spent on the shell environment with less emphasis on the actual apps that run within them. Just my opinion. (The top 10 distro's are plenty for me to play with and enjoy.)
Rich :)
5 • @1 (Number and diversity of distros) (by Simon on 2015-03-09 02:31:10 GMT from Oceania)
LOL@ "Fedora-minus-Tetris" distros. Yep, or "Ubuntu-with-my-favorite-packages-installed", which somehow counts as a "new distro" if it's got new artwork and a new name. Calling these little personalized installations "distributions" just creates confusion for new users and potentially lures them away from the real distributions. Distrowatch is cluttered with dozens of "distributions" that are actually closer to the major distributions upon which they're based than some of my own systems are. A bunch of custom artwork and installers with a few tweaked bootscripts and extra packages does not belong in the same category as a project like Debian or Fedora. I wish the developers of these little personalized installations would just contribute to the distros that they're using rather than claiming to be creating new ones.
6 • linux diversity... (by jay coeli on 2015-03-09 02:48:00 GMT from North America)
@ out of peanuts, et.al...
while I get annoyed often by a spin-off of ubuntu (or another "mainstream" popular distro) by virtue of being "directed to" arabic speakers (or polish or turkish or whatever) I do LIKE seeing lots of initiatives out there... I like seeing the innovative use of different desktop environments and different architectures (a newer ppc maybe? or a distro running the sony ps4?) and appreciate the effort into doing something unique (or nearly so; I would LOVE to see another mitraX running on 50 MB! that's pretty amazing) and some excellent distros (slax or slitax or even TAILS) will never be in the top ten but what would the linux users of the world do without such? vive la difference... *s*
7 • Linux Diversity (CrunchBang) (by jwz on 2015-03-09 02:49:08 GMT from North America)
My two cents worth regarding Crunchbang. In a sense you are right, there really is no sense in using CrunchBang when you can load up a minimal Debian install and make it CrunchBang-like... IF you know how. IF you even realize you could create such a thing. You see, you are speaking from the perspective of working with Linux for years, with a deep knowledge of the system and what options there are. It wasn't that long ago I was as green as green can get. I ran through more distros than I care to count, most of them with DEs pretty much a variation on what I was using with Windows XP. Unity was different, nice but just didn't fit. Same thing with the new Gnome and Enlightenment. CrunchBang shown me something quite different than what I had seen so far; shown me there were more alternatives than I had seen. In its own way, it taught me how to bulid up a Debian install to be what I want. That was the value of Crunchbang. Not that you couldn't do it another way, but to show newbies like me that it can be done.
8 • Yumex and other GUI PMs (by cykodrone on 2015-03-09 04:45:33 GMT from North America)
My biggest pet peeve with almost all GUI package managers is the page, list, whatever, doesn't refresh back to the package you just installed, in other words, you lose your 'spot', so you better remember its name and be prepared to scroll or drag the scroll bar a kajillion miles back to where you just left off. Synaptic and PC-BSD's PM is also guilty of this, not just Yumex.
Yumex does do a ridiculous amount of refreshing, for even the slightest change or query, that being said, enthusiast class CPUs/PCs don't take quite as long to refresh, but not everybody builds/owns enthusiast class PCs, making Yumex a clumsy, poorly written resource hog, or a Franken-manager, if you will.
I have to give credit where credit is due, I've always found Synaptic to be fast, thorough and reliable. It took a little time to fully understand how it works (years ago), but when you do, it's hard to beat. This could be why Bill Reynolds still prefers it in PCLinuxOS.
I've also tried other iterations of PMs (Muon, Software Center, insert name de jour here), where they have the voting system, comments, etc, and it's all very pretty, very dumbed down in the hopes of soothing fears of MS refugees, but in those, the tiny jems get hidden by a handful of big names (including proprietary, which I tend to steer clear of whenever possible).
@Jesse...is there not a list view filter (32 vs 64-bit or native arch) in Yumex? I could swear there is one, but even so, n00bs will be scratching their heads.
9 • FreeBSD Power 8 (Playstation) (by Andrew Mac on 2015-03-09 06:15:00 GMT from Africa)
I think that the porting of FreeBSD to Power8 is probably very good news for Sony. I wonder if the PS5 will be using Power8. Also I note that Nvidia is a member of the openPower foundation, so that could have interesting graphics implications going forward.
10 • Korora #FTW (by Andrew Mac on 2015-03-09 06:17:58 GMT from Africa)
Korora is my go-to for users that would be better suited to Fedora than xbuntu/Mint. Like Mint, for desktop end-users, everything they need pretty much "just works". I'm not knocking either upstream project, I understand why they cannot ship certain codecs, etc.
11 • Re: The number and diversity of Linux distributions (by eco2geek on 2015-03-09 06:23:12 GMT from North America)
The original question included:
> I would say that we evolved a lot in the past ten years, but my
> question is: Wouldn't it be better to focus all this effort, these
> resources into fewer areas?
You can't "make" open source developers focus their efforts on any particular area. You might try to convince them, but most of them seem to already have their minds made up.
Microsoft can and does make their developers focus on their products, because they're a company whose goal is to making money for their shareholders, and they have paid employees who have to do what they're told to do.
With Linux software, on the other hand, there's little monetary incentive, and, by and large, few profit-driven corporations involved. Meaning, it's largely volunteer-driven, by developers who follow their passions. You can't really "fire" a developer when that developer can, by all rights, use your open-source code to do what he or she wants.
It's pretty amazing (to me, anyway) that there's the amount of focus and organization that there is now. That, for example, a distribution like Debian exists, and it's available totally free of charge.
Think: Windows was at version 3.0 in 1990, before the Linux kernel even existed. 25 years later, there are quite a few Linux distributions that rival Windows in terms of both cosmetic appeal and ease of use. Linux has come a long way in a relatively short amount of time.
Linux seems to be doing just fine the way things are.
12 • Diversity IS a human (by Eric Yeoh on 2015-03-09 08:53:39 GMT from Asia)
Working together is a difficult thing since throughout human history we have never been a united race. We have different creeds, political affiliations, languages, cultures etc. Hence those who ask why couldn't people just get along and work for a common good obviously haven't read enough of history. It is just who we are, rejoice in the diversity. It will be dangerous if we allow the big boys to dictate everything.
13 • Korora partition tool (by Justiniano on 2015-03-09 09:13:37 GMT from Asia)
After successfully testing Korora 21 Cinnamon live on a low-powered quad-core desktop, I have some suggestions based on the ease provided by the Universal Puppy Installer of Simplicity. Unless you want to use the entire hard drive of a workstation, a Windows user would prefer to set aside one portion of the disk before loading the installer. Try to make it easier and less worrisome to install Linux.
14 • Void Linux (by Paraquat on 2015-03-09 11:04:11 GMT from Asia)
Really good to see Void Linux has made it to DistroWatch. I admit that I don't use it (yet), but the fact that there is a Void release for the Raspberry Pi and it doesn't use systemd makes this an option to explore. I am definitely go to try it on my Pi2 as soon as I receive it.
For those interested in testing it now:
http://www.voidlinux.eu/download/
15 • Diversity (by mechanic on 2015-03-09 11:36:11 GMT from Europe)
Well, the problems of small independant distros are mainly:
- there are not enough resources to devote to testing and reviewing releases, hence they are usually beta quality or worse;
- one man bands have a habit of disappearing after a while (Fuduntu, Crunchbang,...) no matter how good or worthwhile they may be.
- even respected one-man distros (SolydXK) may change direction on a whim.
- lack of user support (although there are exceptions with large userbase distros - Crunchbang).
People may not like the MSFT product, but it does overcome these issues - I can 'google' an error message from Windows and get useful info in seconds. Big is sometimes better.
16 • (Number and diversity of distros) (by Joe on 2015-03-09 12:49:14 GMT from North America)
"Wouldn't it be better to focus all this effort, these resources into fewer areas?" Maybe just have one Linux distro.
Wouldn't it be great if Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso all
painted the same picture? (Maybe dogs playing cards.) :)
17 • Diversity (by Jim on 2015-03-09 13:52:14 GMT from North America)
LOVE the article about the number of Linux distros and diversity. I also see the arguments on both sides of the coin and acknowledge the validity of each perspective. But I ultimately come to the same conclusion as the author. Diversity is a double-edged sword in that forking someone else's project and taking it in a different direction could blaze a trail that many others want to follow, now that they've seen it in action. Want proof? Mint came from Ubuntu, which came from Debian, and each fork (essentially a respin of the mother distro in a unique way) is more popular than the original. Evolution provides diversity: great features/ideas blossom, while others die on the vine. The same spirit that forked Debian into Ubuntu also forked it into Lindows/Linspire. Both seemed like great ideas (or stupid ideas, depending on perspective), but each turned out differently. I believe this argument applies to the software ecosystem as well as the distro macro-ecosystem.
In that spirit, I have also remixed distros in a custom manner to completely scratch my own itches, and the itches of those who ask for my assistance & support. Inasmuch as I lack the skills to code, package, etc..., it made sense to me to create "standardized" distros that suited some unique criteria that my favorite distros did not address. Pangaea-Lubuntu and XPubuntu allowed me to provide a turnkey drop-in distro for folks who could not or would not be able to follow along with download Debian, install the following packages, make the following changes to wallpapers, icons, etc... I will readily acknowledge this does NOT make me a developer and there is nothing "new" in my remixes that would qualify me as one. In fact, if my remixes somehow navigate the 1-in-a-thousand odds to shoot up the charts, I'll probably have to hand them over to someone with the skills to continue. It is much more likely that, someday, my remixes will die on the vine. And I'm okay with that.
But I LOVE the fact that Linux allows me, nay ENCOURAGES ME to do this! This is what drew me to Linux in the first place, in my attempts to break the shackles of dictatorial control that someone else had over MY system. And when you break it down to the most common denominator, isn't that why MOST of us are Linux users? And if my theory is correct, why do some suggest that our Linux ecosystem should more similarly resemble the monolithic and proprietary system with pre-determined and limited "choices" that we escaped from? And, if that would happen, what would you do if the Linux software/distro that YOU prefer is no longer an option? Would you just accept what others had decided for you? Would you migrate to another OS that accommodates your vision? Or would you stay put, come up with a "better" idea and fork it?!
I personally CHAFE at the notion of "I got mine, now pull up the draw-bridge"!
18 • The number and diversity of Linux distributions (by Fer on 2015-03-09 13:56:47 GMT from South America)
I'm not a linux expert, and I don't know why, always it was easier to install Slackware than Debian. Obviously, I never could config correctly many apps because I didn't know how to do it, so using a derivative of Debian I could have a linux debian-based running without problems.
If we go to a world with less distributions, maybe a lot of people leave linux because they don´t find a friendly and easy distro for them.
On the other hand, I'm in accord with do not have one-man-distros or a teen-weekend-experimental-distros, because if these distros disappear from one day to another, a lot of people will remain walking on air.
19 • Divwersity, thy name is Linux (by Ben Myers on 2015-03-09 14:06:06 GMT from North America)
I have no problem whatsoever with distros tailored to a specific language.
I routinely use specialized distros for specialized tasks.
What still drives me up the wall are the many "lightweight" desktops. Sorry, way too many.
And, as others have said, taking a mainstream distro, making minor tweaks to it, adding artwork to make it look different is really stretch to call it a distro.
It would make sense to have distro installs that offer three choices: minimalist (no added software packages), the max (install them all), and a somewhat laborious but comprehensive set install menus to let one pick and choose.
20 • There is much inherent value in diversity (by Sitwon on 2015-03-09 15:43:05 GMT from North America)
It is one of my core beliefs that diversity is a fantastic thing. And with regards to Linux, it has strongly influenced the community and code we use today. While to outside observers it may look like inefficient and disorganized chaos, at ground level I can tell you that it's actually more like rapid organic growth and evolution.
While experienced admins may scoff at respins which make minimal changes to their parent distro, these are actually important to the ecosystem for at least two reasons. First, because often the developers behind it are learning valuable skills and lessons in the process. Think of it as being like an entry level job for FOSS contributors. Nobody is born with the skills to contribute to the upstream distro they use. Making a spin-off is one way to experiment and learn the skills necessary.
Second, the respins are often inspired by perceived difficulty or omission in the parent distro for accomplishing a certain task. Someone ran up against a barrier and decided to build a bridge to get past it. The thing is, probably 100 people hit that barrier, 60 gave up and turned back, and only one or two built that bridge. But by building that bridge, they ensure that the NEXT 100 people will never have to deal with those same difficulties. In that way, they are helping the people who are currently standing where they one stood themselves. This is noble, but also vital. A lot of newbie Linux users don't yet have the skills or knowledge to solve all of their own problems, and having these alternative distros helps them to ease in using the Linux (and keeps them from turning back) while they're still getting their footing.
Even when someone has the skills to contribute to an upstream project, they may not want to. They may have a different vision for how something should work. They may want to try an approach that is experimental and unproven. Forking the project costs the upstream developers nothing, but allows for the exploration of new ideas and strategies which can always be rolled back into the upstream project if it turns out that they work well. There's a certain element of democracy and technocracy in the FOSS world. At one point there were nearly a half-dozen different init systems, but now the major distros are consolidating on one or two based on their technical merits and the size of their communities. In this way, we keep evolving towards better solutions. Forks and respins are the genetic mutations, and the dying of failed projects or merging of good ideas is the natural selection.
FOSS contributors are driven by their passion to solve the problems that they personally face. Trying to treat them as "resources" and direct their work towards specific projects or areas that they're not personally vested in or affected by is like trying to herd cats. Not only is it near impossible to do, but you'll end up driving many of them away and winning yourself some fresh scratches in the process. Typically FOSS contributors are happy to submit their changes to the upstream project, but if they upstream project doesn't want them, they just fork the project. The think to note, however, is that they were always going to make those changes anyways. They are fixing problems for themselves, and making them available to others who have the same problem. Whether or not that work is accepted by the upstream project is often not their concern. But what's also important about this is that while you might see what looks like a lot of parallel development efforts, very rarely are two projects actually re-doing the same work that the other did. Good developers loath duplication of effort. More often than not, if you see two projects deliver what seem like the same set of changes, they are either implementing them differently (usually for some technical reason to satisfy different constraints or design goals) or one project simply merged the work of the other. Developers typically just care that their problem gets solved, not who wrote the code that solves it. If someone else has already crafted a working solution, why re-invent the wheel?
So really, none of the work that is being done in FOSS community is really being "wasted". Because even if it's not directly or immediately useful to everyone else, it's a side-effect of how our community innovates, and in the process the developer is becoming more skilled and learning important lessons which will inform their future contributions, which you may directly benefit from.
21 • Korora (by Chris W on 2015-03-09 16:28:57 GMT from North America)
I Recently tried the latest Korora..and though i thought it a step up from Fedora....I almost could mirror the issues Jessie raised.. so I didn't carry on ...
Diversity in Linux...? there was a time I guess !!
for me now it seems that apart from slight variations in the base distro/ installer most either follow Gnome, Kde, Xfce, nearly all have identical software and its only in themeing that many change much..
MicroLinux Enterprise Desktop..
am i missing something. like a previos poster I was wondering where to get it.....then found that you need to download and install Slackware as i would if i was installing Slackware.....then istall XFCE desktop...???
Salix has a Slackware based Distro which installs XFCE ..and wifislax.. so why would anyone who is going to install Slackware not already add XFCE from Install..
Maybe i need to read abot it again i may have lost the plot on something..
Gentoo and Calculate seem to have taken a bug hit over the weekend..Gentoo dropped from 34? down to 38 and Calculate 86 down to 95.... I have seen this happen on a lot of distros ..Manjaro being one that was up in the top 15 before, then went into feefall for weeks..and now its back in the top 15 it was always obvious by its popularity and download numbers it was deserved of a higher ranking....
A weird one has always been Mageia....I travel the world very regularly and have met a lot of Linux users using almost every distro specially in the top 20 but I have never met anyone who uses Mageia...during online communications I have never met a Mageia user... ....Odd
22 • 19 • Diversity, thy name is Linux by Ben Myers (by Alex on 2015-03-09 16:40:55 GMT from Europe)
>I routinely use specialized distros for specialized tasks.<
Actually specialized task here is a specialized application, isn't it?
Then again, it looks like people are not creating any distros anymore. Maybe, it doesn't appear to be a necessity. Only 5 distros were announced last week in Distrowatch, where one is a commercial distro, another is a book. Maybe one of them could really be used by an ordinary user.
23 • My Rant (by Ari Torres on 2015-03-09 17:07:23 GMT from North America)
since we cannot negative comment on any distro's forums before being shot at least here it's non in particular forums,here i go:
1-Mint (it just works but it has and ugly ui,shhh don't tell clemen)
2-Ubuntu (unity suxs,add flashback and docky,boy are we talking? BUT is over bloated with apps we do not need,maybe slingcold :) )
3-Suse,Fedora,Mageia,Centos,Arch (why bother)
4-Elementary (looks good,functions out of the box,some icons are ugly[network] but please some body shoot this Snap app they added and worse cheese won't even work,tons of work to be done,maybe next year,right Daniel?)
5-Diversity it's a great thing but maybe cooperation it's even better.
6-Linux Rocks and please don't forget to donate at least for a coffee to that distro that you so much like
7-my 2₵
24 • @21 I was rather surprised with mageia5 : it seems a good surprise- (by dbrion on 2015-03-09 19:22:30 GMT from Europe)
Though today, mageia5 is beta3, I used it for two week ends (it is the first time I feel satisfied with mageia : before, I prefered Fedora). Between beta3 and final, I noticed there were little changes, except for the installer (their portitioner did not work and I managed to pre-partition with Fedora gparted... I hope they will have fixed). The only unpleasant things I noticed were two (one at install, the other for specialised software) :
a) if one tries to install on an external (USB) disk, grub default option is on the internal disk (maybe it does not need a grub...). Fedora has given nice default options since years.
b) once installed, there are very little cross compilers/debuggers. Fedora, with its Electronic Lab respin, offers every cross compiler an hobbyist in electronic may need. Same thing applies to debian (at least Raspbian..) Arduino's - a popular controller, with an IDE and a compiler- is broken on Mageia (I noticed it on mageia4: the same issue is for mageia5 -this could be fixed by downloading and untaring a binary version from Arduino's site, and modifying one's path...)
25 • deversity (by Euler on 2015-03-09 20:16:45 GMT from Europe)
It is strange to discuss about it in a way that suggest somebody can control it. The good think about open source software is that nobody can control it. Everybody is allowed to create his own distro. Most of them I would not recommend to anybody, but some emerge as something fantastic.
26 • Distro Diversity <> Distro Originality (by Joncr on 2015-03-09 22:11:45 GMT from North America)
In a very real sense, musing on the value of all those distributions is pointless since people can do what they bloody please. We might just as easily have triple that number, or more.
But, it doesn't really do any harm, except gobble bandwidth and USB sticks. As users gain experience and more insight into their own preferences, they usually back off obsessive distrohopping and acquire the savvy to look for something that's actually a better fit for them.
But, distro diversity doesn't mean distro originality, just as having 100 indy restaurants in town does not mean you'll find 100 tasty and original menus at each.
Personally, I use the same apps on any distro and would love to see a project that focused on building a modern, stylish, desktop environment I liked that was not tied to QT or GTK or whatever, and did not load up a gig's worth of packages that I never use.
27 • Distro Diversity <> Distro Originality (by Joncr on 2015-03-09 22:31:45 GMT from North America)
In a very real sense, musing on the value of all those distributions is pointless since people can do what they bloody please. We might just as easily have triple that number, or more.
But, it doesn't really do any harm, except gobble bandwidth and USB sticks. As users gain experience and more insight into their own preferences, they usually back off obsessive distrohopping and acquire the savvy to look for something that's actually a better fit for them.
But, distro diversity doesn't mean distro originality, just as having 100 indy restaurants in town does not mean you'll find 100 tasty and original menus at each.
Personally, I use the same apps on any distro and would love to see a project that focused on building a modern, stylish, desktop environment I liked that was not tied to QT or GTK or whatever, and did not load up a gig's worth of packages that I never use.
28 • it's not diversity, but isn't it just someones time? (by Brad on 2015-03-09 23:31:36 GMT from North America)
When it comes to moving Linux to the masses, Diversity is where it's at. While many of the top distros are just "usable" depending on the user, many of them just fill a small niche'.
Mint is to Ubuntu what PCLinuxos is to mandriva.
Sabayon is to Gentoo what Manjaro/Archbang/Chakra/Antergos is to ARCH.
If I know someone personally that isn't "very" computer illiterate that wants to "try" Linux, I'll point them towards Mint/PcLinuxOS. If I know someone that really WANTS to learn, and has the time means etc.. I'll point them towards Arch/Gentoo/Slackware. I've distrohopped ALOT in my short 9 years using Linux..I've settled on Arch , why? because after a lot of cursing, screaming, getting banned from arch forums for asking questions deemed RTFM worthy, I figured out what's going on under the hood and enjoy it, and for the life of me, once I've went Arch, I can't go back to anything else personally.
So all this being said to say, diversity is a GREAT thing when it actually fills niche's, but when it fills someones ego, by changing a wallpaper, or trading this app/package for that app/package, it's no longer diversity as much as it is just annoying..
I have, on the ready, an Arch cd, Evolution (live arch script installer distro), Manjaro, Mint, PcLinuxos, Archbang, and Gparted cds in a pouch ready to show it all off to a new to Linux user.. This is where diversity helps to get the message out there.. that there is choice.
that's my .02 now I'm broke!
29 • @23 • My Rant (by Georgia on 2015-03-10 00:40:32 GMT from North America)
... 5-Diversity it's a great thing but maybe cooperation it's even better...
Thank you for hitting the nail on the head. Without pulling to together, PC Linux may fade away. Where is the version of Distrowatch for phones and tablet OSs? How many alternatives to iOS and Android are there? Half a dozen, maybe? How many are viable/available?
I was disappointed when Barry Kauler backed away from Puppy to concentrate on other things like mobile devices, but I now realize he was right. I never thought I'd see the day when a tablet with a keyboard would be wildly popular, but the Windows Surface pros have also proved me wrong. I also worry you people are disinterested in tinkering the older people did when they were younger.
The bottom line is, I hope the people who turn away from full distro development, don't turn away entirely. Even small efforts in a big tent distro can can have a great impact for everyone.
30 • Diversity, or resources? (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-03-10 01:30:43 GMT from North America)
I suggest the original question was not so much about diversity as about scarcity of support/resources.
Extremism in licensing is a major obstruction to sound business models. Giving away all for the sake of marketing leads to failure, especially in a tightening global economy. So, long-term, does mandating monopoly. It may take number theory and socio-economics to come up with viable methods. At least several "pirates" (and a few radical entrepreneurs) are attempting to apply clear critical thinking to the question, which is larger than Freed Open-Source Software alone.
31 • diversity, reality (by Milo on 2015-03-10 02:49:46 GMT from Europe)
The Linux ecosystem is like open mic night. Anyone can pick up an instrument, not everyone can play.
32 • Diversity (by Hoos on 2015-03-10 05:31:56 GMT from Asia)
Diversity relates not only to developers making a new or different distro/respin (extent of "newness" or difference is of course debatable in some cases!), but also to the type of Linux users around.
For instance, not every user wants to install the basic Debian system by himself and then have to set the whole thing up to suit his preferences. They are perfectly happy with Debian derivatives that have already done a lot of the configuration and setup work, including aesthetics, drivers and choice of packages/applications.
Maybe they don't know how to do it properly, or maybe they do but can't be bothered to spend the time.
Or, maybe, they are interested in learning but at a gentler pace and curve. So they start with a distro that is quite feature-packed, then slowly acquire the skills after which they may turn to the parent distro and build up their own system.
I have no issue with the fact that there is a wide diversity of distros. As with many things, you have to discern and pick out the good stuff from among the chaff.
33 • 23 • My Rant by Ari Torres (by Alex on 2015-03-10 10:52:47 GMT from Europe)
Very interesting!
1-Mint (it just works but it has an ugly ui, shhh don't tell Clement)
I told that and something else, like it is not all that user friendly and somewhat soviet and got thrown out of the forums. I also told that he'd not make another LMDE.
2-Ubuntu (unity suxs,add flashback and docky,boy are we talking? BUT is over bloated with apps we do not need,maybe slingcold :) )
Actually, its much better to use Xubuntu with its very user friendly main apps. You can still use Slingshot, instead of something "cold."
3-Suse,Fedora,Mageia,Centos,Arch (why bother)
I agree!
4-Elementary (looks good,functions out of the box,some icons are ugly[network] but please some body shoot this Snap app they added and worse cheese won't even work,tons of work to be done,maybe next year,right Daniel?)
Sure, worthless even trying to remaster it. It better to get rid of the ugly E17 and remaster Bodhi with some Xfce apps.
Well, no one really donates...
34 • Diversity of distributions - the status quo is not good enough (by Greg Zeng on 2015-03-10 11:19:45 GMT from Oceania)
Diversity of distributions because the status quo is not good enough? That's my impression.
Each new distro tells me that the market leaders are doing something wrong. For example, only a few Ubuntu-derived distros have detected that the Ubuntu fail to recognize that it is color-blind, and end-user ignorant (preferring coders to endusers).
All the distro reviewers I've seen, did not test the final end-user perspectives, with different target uses in mind: school kids, teenagers, business owners of different types, or specific parts of the general public. Final end-users will use the operating system with their preferred apps, and preferred settings. In my case, it means Gparted, Unetbootin, qBittorent, Screenlets & Opera 12.16 (+ extensions), amongst other mods.
I feel that the upstream distro producers (Red Hat, Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, etc) are failing to read the comments made wthin their own forums, so many downstream users are forced to try coding. themselves, to explore why the upstream coders are so slow. A very recent example this is "teenage" creator of Makulu -- "Makulu Construction Kit offers an Extremely Easy way to Build Distro’s" ... but in a matter of a few hours, instead of days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwGLlwR_UOU
Upstream coders seem proud of being One-Per-Centers. Until they learn to be more welcoming to the 99%, and to the diversity of the full world, Linux will continue being its low status in the non-server, non-factor worlds.
35 • Mageia (by Carlos on 2015-03-10 15:23:45 GMT from Europe)
@21, Chris W
"A weird one has always been Mageia....I travel the world very regularly and have met a lot of Linux users using almost every distro specially in the top 20 but I have never met anyone who uses Mageia...during online communications I have never met a Mageia user... ....Odd"
When Mageia 3 was released, I installed it on my laptop, with XFCE.
The installer was great and it already had an option to install Grub2 as "experimental", but it has worked well.
BTW, probably the most beautiful XFCE I've seen back then, without the dreadful (IMO) Whisker Menu.
It worked very well but it lacked some emotion.
Very stable, but very few updates.
Soon after, I switched to the Cauldron development repositories.
It has been working nicely since then as a rolling distro, just some very minor problems once and a while, that get corrected after a few days (!!!). Not much to bother and to maintain.
So there you have it, now you know at least one Mageia happy customer. :o)
36 • Diversity of Distributions (by frodopogo on 2015-03-10 17:41:04 GMT from North America)
I appreciate Jesse answering that question in particular, because the question mirrored a lot of my own feelings about Linux. And even those answers, good as they are haven't made the feelings go away entirely- there is this sense that Linux keeps reinventing the wheel (the desktop) and never goes on to the cart (paying attention to the applications). That's a little extreme, there ARE apps, but I do have the feeling that they are neglected. But the point that someone who is coding on a desktop might not have the skills to code on Libre Office makes sense.
Someone was talking about one-man projects, and that's been a concern of mine from the beginning, when I was first poking through the distros here, looking for an alternative to Windows. I didn't want to get all comfy with a distro and have it disappear. MEPIS seemed attractive in many ways, but had too much of that one-man feel. PC-LinuxOS is also appealing, but I find myself holding back for the same reason. Mint started with Clement Lefebvre, but he seems to work hard to include others. But that's where Mint being based on Ubuntu is a good thing- if the Mint project were to fold (and I hope it doesn't!), I COULD adapt to something in the Ubuntu family pretty easily. (Ubuntu MATE seems to be the current likeliest lifeboat)
When it comes to software projects, hedging your bets seems like a wise thing to do.
37 • Distro diversity (by M.Z. on 2015-03-10 18:49:27 GMT from Planet Mars)
I think Jesse puts it very well, freedom to do what you want (in software projects or elsewhere) can be messy, but there is nothing better when you really think about it.
@36
Actually another developer seems to be doing most of the work that texstar once did over at PCLinuxOS. He had some health issues awhile back & had to let others step in, which they did. If you look at the different versions of the Distro you'll see that Mate is done by texstar and all other version were produced by Pinoc. I'm not sure what else is being done behind the scenes, but it isn't a one man show over at PCLOS, & I like what they're giving me. There are a few things Mint does better like make a more attractive package manager, but on the whole I'm very satisfied with what the PCLOS _Team_ have given me for my main desktop OS. I'm still running Mint elsewhere & could switch totally to it if PCLOS went away, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
See the produced by line here:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/get-pclinuxos/mate/
Vs in these:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/get-pclinuxos/kde/
http://www.pclinuxos.com/get-pclinuxos/lxde/
38 • Distro Diversity (by Ron on 2015-03-10 20:16:51 GMT from North America)
Just imagine if just a few distros prevailed, only ones for 64 bit architecture. Where would we (those with perfectly fine machines, those of us with Raspberry Pi, or Beagles) be, huh? huh?
39 • Diversity (by A_Lurker on 2015-03-11 02:49:07 GMT from North America)
There are good and bad reasons for diversity. The ones revolve around someone filling an unfilled niche. The bad ones revolve around personality and politics. The net effect is generally positive; users have options. Having used several distros I find myself gravitating to certain types of distros and DEs. The freedom to create based on other's work is very critical without which things will stagnate.
40 • Distro Diversity (by LinuxuserNZ on 2015-03-11 03:58:31 GMT from Oceania)
@35 " Not much to bother and to maintain.
So there you have it, now you know at least one Mageia happy customer. :o) "
Exactly, so that makes 2 happy Mageia customers.
41 • Mint - ugly user interface??? (by Cor on 2015-03-11 09:12:25 GMT from North America)
Mint comes in all the popular flavors so how could there be an issue with an "ugly ui"?; you can make your desktop as attractive as you like. If you choose not to customize your ui then that is your choice. Mint also offers some one of the best user forums to get answers to any issues.
Regarding the abundance of distros: it is all good, to a degree. Someone commented on how an end user has customized a top distro to their specs and then released it to the world as their own. Again this is a choice, stick with the big distros and do your own customizing or go with the tweaked sub-versions. This helps to hone Linux into the best experience possible. You have a choice so make the most of it.
42 • Diversity/Mageia (by kc1di on 2015-03-11 11:33:05 GMT from North America)
I find the diversity of Linux very good. If you have a need it can be met by one or more of the distros. So it a good thing not a bad. Stop trying to compete with MS. people will come for two reasons 1. they have a need that is no longer met by M.S. or they find free software that meets the same need. I find just having them try a live DVD usually wins them over.
I would love to use Mageia. but they've had a problem and it goes all the way back to Mandriva -- where their 64 bit versions will not play wine 32 bit programs. which unfortunately I need for work. While Deb distros have worked with wine 32 for a long time.
PCLinuxOS has the same problem as Mageia in this respect so I suspect it's root are a common background.
43 • Microlinux (by Eric Hameleers on 2015-03-11 11:35:54 GMT from Europe)
@1 , @21 - Microlinux's MLED is not a distro. The title of the post is misleading.
MLED (MicroLinux Enterprise Desktop) is a nice customized desktop add-on to Slackware. You do need Slackware before installing MLED on top.
Furthermore, since the developer has moved from Slackware to CentOS, MLED is in fact abandonware.
44 • Win them over?? (by Wolf on 2015-03-11 13:59:31 GMT from Europe)
If one would put a user through a complete Installation cycle of Windows... taking forever then updating then booting updating again and of course don´t forget to boot every once in a while a new Driver was found.
Or not found as in my case on two different cheap Lenovo Units I had the pleasure to configure for friends. Well in the end I told them Windows wouldn´t work on their cheap Equipment so I installed plain and simple Ubuntu on.
Of course I never heard from those guys again, maybe just because Ubuntu didn´t give them a hard time. I´ll have ti check
Bye Wolf
45 • Mageia (by Carlos on 2015-03-11 14:32:13 GMT from Europe)
Just let me add that I've reported a few bugs to Mageia and they were promptly corrected.
One of those bugs has taken more time to correct, but just a few months.
It was not an easy one, and it happened not only in Mageia but in several of the distros that derive from Mandriva (it also happened with Rosa).
PCMCIA was not recognized, in my laptop.
I kept receiving mails from the bug report, so there was a lot of work going on.
Finally the bug was closed, and a few days later, after an update everything was working fine.
Impressive. Kudos to you guys in Mageia.
46 • @43 Microlinux abandonware? (by Pearson on 2015-03-11 15:58:31 GMT from North America)
Eric Hameleers said
> Furthermore, since the developer has moved from Slackware to CentOS, MLED is in fact abandonware.
That must be pretty recent (or maybe outdated?), since I see the following from http://www.microlinux.fr/
> MLED 14.1 Release Notes - Tue Jan 13 14:16:54 CET 2015
NOTE: not throwing stones at anyone. I've not seen MLED before, so did a little looking to learn more. I was *not* expected a full desktop experience in something named "Micro" =)
47 • Re: 46 (my comments on Microlinux) (by Pearson on 2015-03-11 16:44:00 GMT from North America)
I see that Eric Hameleers is of some notoriety (even mentioned on the Microlinux site as a mirror), so I am *definitely* not casting doubt on the information. Now, I'm just plain curious.
48 • Re 43,46,27: Microlinux migrating from Slackware (by Pearson on 2015-03-11 18:19:11 GMT from North America)
I did some more digging and found the announcement from February of this year (so, yes, it was pretty recent). You can see the announcement on linuxquestions.org at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/mled-microlinux-enterprise-desktop-a-full-blown-production-desktop-kde-or-xfce-4175519901/page16.html#post5321362
49 • @29 • Georgia (by YO on 2015-03-12 01:14:05 GMT from North America)
I agree, there are no real distros that can be installed natively on android devices. Maybe partially because of lack of standardization, and rapid release of instantly obsolete hardware. But a lot is laziness lack cooperation, and lack of interest also abound. No one seems willing to work on touch screen, or drivers of any kind. With the binary blobs, USB debugging vulnerabilities, non-modular components non-removable hard-drives, ram that can't be upgraded etc. No straightforward methods exist to install a real desktop, just about all require use of the garbage chroot method, while retaining the archaic inability to remove the android "OS" in favor of a full install. Without this freedom, using these devices comes with insecurity lack of choice, dumbed down systems full of “apps”, with no real programs, and constant tracking. Wheres the diversity here? Eh?
50 • MLED development (by Microlinux on 2015-03-12 14:28:23 GMT from Europe)
I am the manager of Microlinux (a small Linux-based IT company in South France) and maintainer of MLED (Microlinux Enterprise Desktop). MLED has been developed for quite some time now, and if I remember correctly, it was around Slackware 13.37 that I applied for a listing on DW.
Eric Hameleers is right. A few weeks ago, I decided to rebase MLED on CentOS rather than Slackware. There's one single - technical - reason for that. Due to the absence of Linux-PAM in Slackware, I hit a roadblock and couldn't develop some enterprise solutions like centralized LDAP authentication. This - and only this - explains my move to CentOS.
It's an irony that just as I make this move, MLED finally gets added to the waiting list on DW. Unfortunately I haven't found the time yet to update the information on the website.
This being said, I still recommend Slackware, which is a very sane, robust and reliable distribution.
51 • small very important bug in a largely bug free distro (by sam on 2015-03-12 18:44:09 GMT from Africa)
I recently traveled with my slack 14.1, only that, to a place where the only possible access to Internet was through mobile broadband. I had a huawei usb modem and got myself a sim card. The networkmanager could recognize the modem, start connecting but the connectention failed at the point it was being established. Sakis3g did the connection but could not communicate with the system. I could only get help by going online and this is exactly what I could not do. Luckily I had carried with me a Debian 7 DVD. I wiped slackware, replaced it with Debian and got connected with my Huawei USB modem, with not slightest hussle. I love slackware, I have used it without problem where I had wifi or wired connected. But for just that problem I had to leave slack for Debian. Just like Microlinux did @50
52 • @51- Bug (by Smellyman on 2015-03-13 00:05:02 GMT from Asia)
Do you know it was a slack bug? Kernel regression? Were you running the same kernel? Same Network Manager version?
USB modems are often hit and miss.
53 • Why always Debian is mentioned? (by Eric Rspino on 2015-03-13 02:52:23 GMT from North America)
Why always when refering to a distro based on Ubuntu always Debian is mention but if a distro is based on Fedora there is no mention of Red Hat?
My opinion is that should only mention Ubuntu without mention Debian.
54 • On Linux Diversity and Distro Watch Ranking (by Oko on 2015-03-13 03:21:30 GMT from North America)
Let do little bit of reality check. Red Hat Enterprise Linux the greatest contributor to Linux kernel, 800 pound gorilla in the room which can push systemd down the throat of mighty Debian, probably first most used nix like system on the Earth last month distro watch ranking 35. Never heard of Deepin Linux (looks like Ubuntu with a different wallpaper) Distro Watch ranking 25.
FreeNAS 7 million downloads and counting not even in top 100. OpenBSD forcing 64 bit time and arc4random across entire industry, home of OpenSSH and LibreSSL with more than 100 000 individual downloads each a month even though it is part of any OS, distro watch ranking close to 100.
Lets get real here. There might be two dozen or so GNU/Linux derivatives which deserve to be called distros and dozen or so specialized appliance which really bring something useful to the table. Everything else in the Linux eco system is just Ubuntu with another wall paper.
In BSD world situation is simple but diversity is far greater. Four derivatives of BSD 4.4 each one with a niche goal. Arguably one of which (NetBSD on the life support). Two great appliance pfSense and FreeNAS, two other appliance worth watching OPNsense and NAS4Free, two dead appliance m0nowall and AskoziaPBX worth mentioning. Two specialized desktop distros PC-BSD and GhostBSD.
I would really like to see little bit more focus on the special purposes LInux distros (ROCKS for example) or useful appliance (Clonezila for example) as little as possible noise about new wall paper of the month Linux distro.
55 • fedora 22 (by Bob on 2015-03-13 07:29:10 GMT from Europe)
And maybe the more interesting in Fedora release announcement is:
Plasma 5, the successor to KDE Plasma 4, is now the default workspace in the Fedora KDE spin.
56 • @52 (by sam on 2015-03-13 07:30:23 GMT from Africa)
I really do not know what the problem was. After going online with Debian I checked in forums, some suggested it was a bug with the network networkmanager version and others said it was a kernel issue. I understand that slack 14 did not have that problem.
57 • @54 • On Linux Diversity (by All Gore on 2015-03-13 08:04:16 GMT from Europe)
You hit the nail there, Oko. In the Linux world there is plenty of vanity-driven projects but little actual diversity. I would be tempted to define the current state of affairs concerning distributions as a "fashion business" if there only were any business at all ongoing. But, quite obviously, it is not the case.
However, as you rightly pointed out, we hardly speak about the real work. We waste most of our time discussing about the new trends on icons and wallpapers. Only the recent systemd putsch had us discussing a little bit on technical affairs and business politics. But, then, as soon as the new Linux dictatorship consolidate itself, icons and wallpapers will be the only diversity left in the Linux world.
58 • Diversity and choice during installation (by Walt on 2015-03-13 14:08:29 GMT from North America)
Interesting discussion on diversity within the Linux community. I have no problem with the number of Linux distributions out there. I personally would hate for that number to be boiled down to just a handful. I have tried a number of them and find that each one brings something a little different to the table, whether it be emphasis on a specific DE/WM or the specific selection of applications included. Sometimes, I like a lighter weight distro (MX-14 is the last distro I had installed before my laptop died). Other times, I might gravitate toward a heavier distro. (I had SuSE 13.1 installed prior to MX-14 but switched when my laptop started bogging down.)
My first distro was Mandrake 8.0 (Anyone remember it?), and one of things I liked best about it and miss most was that it allowed me to go through various categories of applications and install what I wanted from the install disc(s). While I know there are several distributions that allow for minimal installs, are there any that provide groupings of application types on the iso and allow you to choose during the installation without having to go online to this repository or that website? While I know bandwidth and disc storage are not a huge issue for many people (myself included), I would rather be able to install only what I want and be able to make those choices at the time of installation.
59 • Linux install CDs (by Carlos on 2015-03-13 14:36:43 GMT from Europe)
@58, Walt:
Oh my... that brings back some memories.
In the late 90's (probably, 1998) I've tried Red Hat Linux on an old 486 machine that I had laying around.
Red Hat came in 4 CDs, full of software to install. And big printed product manuals.
I don't remember what was the Red Hat version, but I do remember that the most known (at least to me) Linux distros at that time were Red Hat, Suse, Mandriva, Debian, Slackware. That was basically it.
60 • Wallpaper De Jour Linux (by cykodrone on 2015-03-13 15:50:31 GMT from North America)
@54 Maybe DW needs a more strict criteria for a distro to be listed on this site? For example, Wallpaper De Jour Linux should have at least one in-house coded unique or groundbreaking "appliance" that separates it from its 'parent'? If that criteria already exists, please disregard.
Here's another possible criteria, does Wallpaper De Jour Linux have its own repositories/mirrors or does it leech of its parent.
As the old saying goes, maybe it's time to separate the grownups from the kids.
I left Debian (my donation bucks follow me to the distro I use) because of systemd, I'll boycott it as long as there is an OS on this planet that refuses to use it.
61 • Same criteria as before (by M.Z. on 2015-03-13 22:37:19 GMT from Planet Mars)
@60
It seems obvious to me that DW should use the same criteria as before. I think they only track a tiny portion of all Linux 'Distros', especially if you count all the tiny one person projects on the web. I think I heard RMS or someone else who seemed authoritative say distros numbered in the thousands, plural, so the couple of hundred active Linux distros being tracked could easily be a tenth or less of all distros. Why bother to cut the list down any more when we only see such a tiny portion to begin with? Not every project wants to be on distrowatch anyway, though the wait list is nearly as long as the number of currently tracked distros. There is already a significant amount of gate-keeping here at DW. I Don't see it as an issue that too many of to few distros are tracked, I'd guess its more of an issue of resources needed to track all the projects while keeping fly by night distros that disappear from eating up time better spent updating other distro info. From what I can tell from the outside a decent balance seems to have been struck.
62 • Diversity and resources (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-03-13 22:45:48 GMT from North America)
At least there are some crowdfunding and bounty systems available. All-or-None Bounty Systems may become a good community support platform. One bounty system morphed into a "reverse-bounty" system…
(So much sneering and carping. Shame!)
Truth-in-labeling is appreciated - a remix/spin is not an independent distro. That said, if the work to produce one is not trivial, someone will appreciate at least a recipe, if not an iso. If it's offered on a Try-Before-You-Buy+Price-Is-Negotiable basis, why whine?
As I remember it, nobody bullied DebIan into systemd - they felt adequate to resist bug-dumping, didn't want to tackle supporting multiple process-control methods, and knew Linux_Is_Not_UniX, right?
63 • @53 (by Milo on 2015-03-14 02:04:36 GMT from Europe)
Debian GNU/Linux is Ubuntu's upstream, hence why Debian is mentioned as part of the "Based on" information for some distros like Zorin OS which are based on Ubuntu. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not Fedora's upstream, Fedora is RHEL's upstream, hence why Fedora is mentioned as part of the "Based on" information for some distros like Springdale Linux which are based on RHEL.
I don't see the harm done. Perhaps the "Based on" information for a few distros like Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux could be expanded on to match.
64 • Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, (by frodopogo on 2015-03-14 07:04:50 GMT from North America)
Ari, Alex,
"There's no accounting for taste", they say. At some point, you have to pick a "look" or style of some kind. That choice will be affected by your cultural background and other things, and it might not work for everyone, especially someone from a culture with a different esthetic sense. I probably won't use it for other reasons (problems with updates and software acquisition), but I enjoyed the fact that Manjaro is such a contrast with Mint, even with the same desktop. Manjaro is more flashy, Mint is more subtle. In different moods, I could like either. But if you like flashy, perhaps "subtle" seems drab and ugly to you.... or if you like subtle, flashy is garish and tasteless.
Also, there's constructive criticism, and criticism that is either mean spirited (trolling) or even if not mean spirited, by being less than helpful, it can easily be MISTAKEN for trolling. Last week, someone said Linux Mint was buggy- buggy HOW??? What kind, where, what version did you try? This week- Linux Mint is ugly? How? What's wrong? What desktop are you talking about? If you like Xubuntu, did you try Mint xfce??? Be sure you are comparing "apples to apples."
Perhaps you mentioned more specifics on the Mint Forums, but if you just said what you said here... well I see how it could be seen as less than helpful. Actually, it's not that helpful here either.... although I do recognize that each distro has it's fanboys, especially the popular ones. Admit it... you just went there to rile up the fanboys, didn't you? ;^D
There is also the phenomenon that some people just hate something that is popular or somewhat successful.
I'm glad to hear that PCLinuxOS is developing into a broader community!
65 • Mint ui (by Jordan on 2015-03-14 22:08:31 GMT from North America)
Commenting about the Mint ui being bland or whatever seems strange. Mint users can make the ui have any appearance wanted. Menus can be tweaked.
But you know that. You had another point to make, forgot what it was, but hopefully the Mint distro won't suffer loss of interest among distro hoppers because of that remark about the ui.
Wish I could post a screeny here. 3d transparent task bar and menus, etc. ;)
66 • @54 Linux Diversity (by Ben Myers on 2015-03-15 05:10:20 GMT from North America)
"Ubuntu with another wall paper." Yes. And let's not forget all the desktops, many of which claim to be lightweight without defining what lightweight is.
67 • @66 If you want lightweight desktop (by Frederic Bezies on 2015-03-15 09:16:15 GMT from Europe)
There are some choices : xfce (4.12 is a great release), lxde, lxqt or any openbox based desktop environment.
Or for old school users : Trinity :)
68 • @60 wallpaper du jour Linux and current flamewar technology (by Frederic Bezies on 2015-03-15 09:20:00 GMT from Europe)
I agree about your idea related to distributions which are only a wallpaper or an icon theme change. Just look at waiting list, you'll find a lot of them !
And for the flamewar technology : there are free BSDs, many gentoo based distributions or Slackware, void as far as I remember.
Number of Comments: 68
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| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Full list of all issues |
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