 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 603, 30 March 2015 |
Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are many threats lurking on the Internet with all sorts of people monitoring what we do, trying to break into our systems and initiating scams. This week we focus on security and some of the tools available to help protect ourselves when we are on-line. We begin with a review of the Tails distribution. Tails provides users with a live operating system that locks down the web browser and redirects network traffic through Tor for added anonymity. Read on to find out more about Tails and its features. This week we also share a book on Linux firewalls and security tools, a good resource for people who wish to lock down their networks and keep the bad guys out. In our News column we discuss new features coming to Kubuntu, share an update on the Debian Project Leader election and talk about a new on-line office suite based on LibreOffice. Next we discuss some surprising changes happening with the systemd project and its roadmap. We then share the torrents we are seeding in our Torrent Corner and present the distributions released last week. Finally, we have a new feature coming soon and we share the details below in our Ask A Leader column. We wish you all an amazing week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Privacy and Tails 1.3
Privacy and security are difficult to come by in our progressively connected world. Advertisers track our browsing habits, employers monitor productivity and government agencies monitor our communications. Most operating systems do not take steps to protect our privacy or our identities, two things which are increasingly difficult to guard. Tails is a Linux distribution that is designed to help us stay anonymous on-line and protect our identity. Tails is a Debian-based live disc that we can use to scrub our files of meta data, browse the web with some degree of anonymity and send private messages. According to the project's website, "Tails is a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity, and helps you to: use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship; all connections to the Internet are forced to go through the Tor network; leave no trace on the computer you are using unless you ask it explicitly; use state-of-the-art cryptographic tools to encrypt your files, emails and instant messaging."
The latest release of Tails, version 1.3, ships with the Electrum Bitcoin wallet and an updated web browser that limits reading & writing data to specific directories. The developers of Tails go out of their way to point out that while Tails should help to keep people anonymous and secure when on-line, the software does have limitations. In other words, Tails is one tool that can be used to help keep our on-line activities private, but it is not perfect and additional precautions should be taken.
Tails 1.3 -- Browsing the web through Tor
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I downloaded the 910MB image of Tails 1.3. Booting from the live media brings up a graphical screen. A menu then appears asking if we would like to configure the Tails environment. If we select "No" on this screen, then we are immediately brought to GNOME 3's Classic desktop environment. Selecting "Yes" brings up a configuration screen with a short list of options. The configuration screen allows us to set an administrative password on our live session and enable "camouflage" which makes the desktop environment resemble Windows 8. We can also enable/disable the spoofing of MAC addresses and configure network settings such as the operating system's firewall and proxy settings. At the bottom of the display we find options for switching between two languages (English and German) and changing our keyboard's layout.
Tails uses the GNOME Classic desktop with the application menu and system tray positioned at the top of the screen. The task switcher panel is placed at the bottom of the screen. The desktop's wallpaper is a neutral blue and on the desktop we find icons for opening the file manager, reporting bugs and accessing the Tails documentation. Clicking the icon for reporting a bug opens a web browser which displays the Tails documentation and support portal. The documentation icon opens a local copy of the project's Getting Started guide. In the upper-right corner of the screen we can find an icon that resembles an onion. This onion icon indicates whether we are connected to the Tor network and clicking the icon allows us to view information about Tor and change our network settings as they relate to Tor.
I experimented with running Tails with the Windows 8 themed desktop. I think the Windows theme holds up fairly well, at least if another person merely glances at the screen. The desktop generally resembles Windows 8 and the only icon on the desktop is a recycle bin. The task switcher and system tray are positioned at the bottom of the screen. The main thing which gives away the fact we are not running Windows is the desktop's traditional application menu.
Tails 1.3 -- Blending into the crowd with the Windows desktop theme
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During my trial, I tried running Tails on a physical desktop computer and in a VirtualBox virtual machine. In both environments Tails performed well. Networking and audio functioned out of the box and my screen was set to its maximum resolution. Tails integrates with VirtualBox well and I was pleased to see Tails will detect when it is running in a virtual machine and display a warning, letting the user know the operating system is running on virtual hardware. When the operating system shuts down it ejects our live media and wipes the computer's memory in an attempt to remove all trace Tails was being used. I found the distribution required about 220MB of memory when sitting idle at the GNOME Classic desktop.
Tails ships with quite a number of applications. We are given the Firefox web browser (version 31), the Claws Mail e-mail application, the Electrum Bitcoin wallet, the Pidgin instant messaging software and the Gobby collaborative document editor. Tails provides us with a copy of the LibreOffice productivity suite, a document viewer, the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the Inkscape vector drawing software. The distribution ships with the Scribus desktop publishing application, a sound recorder and a meta data removal tool to scrub identifying information from files. In the application menu we find the Audacity audio editor, the Brasero disc burning software, the Totem video player and the PiTiVi video editor. The distribution also ships with an audio CD ripper, the Traverso audio recording and editing software and a full compliment of multimedia codecs. The WhisperBack application is available to help us send encrypted bug reports and there are tools for creating and removing persistent volumes. The persistent volume utility appears on only work if we are running Tails from a USB flash drive. Tails ships with accessibility tools, including a virtual keyboard, the Orca screen reader and the Dasher predictive text selection program. Further, Tails ships with an archive manager, a calculator, a text editor and the KeePassX password manager. There is also a program for verifying the checksum hashes of files and text. Java is available with the distribution and there are a number of small configuration tools for changing the look of the GNOME Classic desktop. In the background we find the Linux kernel, version 3.16.
Tails 1.3 -- Scrubbing meta data from files
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I found the software that ships with Tails generally works well and I did not run into any serious bugs. I do feel there are some applications and characteristics of the distribution that are worth mentioning. One is that the Firefox web browser can be run in one of two modes, Tor and Unsafe. The Unsafe version of the browser does not run network traffic through Tor and should probably not be used if we wish to remain anonymous. The Unsafe version of Firefox has a red theme to remind us it is not the recommended way to browse the web. The Tor version of the browser looks like plain, regular Firefox, but the browser does ship with extra add-ons enabled. The Firefox web browser has AdBlock Plus, HTTPS-Everywhere and NoScript enabled. In addition, the browser has a Tor button in the upper-left quadrant of the window that allows us to change our security settings and select a new Tor identity.
Another aspect of the distribution worth mentioning is Tails allows us to install additional software using the Synaptic package manager. To work with Synaptic we should set a password on the root account first using the configuration screen that is available when we first boot Tails. Using Synaptic we can connect to the Debian, Tails and Tor software repositories to download additional applications. Since Tails is usually run as a live disc the programs we install will not persist across a reboot and should be small enough to fit inside our computer's memory.
I think it should be noted that while our web traffic and, I think, our messaging traffic are routed through Tor, we can still access services on the local network. For example, I was able to connect to OpenSSH servers on my local network by specifying the remote host's IP address. This direct access to servers can be convenient, but it side-steps the anonymity of Tor and should be avoided.
Tails 1.3 -- Checking messages with Claws Mail
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Conclusions
Tails is one of my favourite types of distributions to review. The project has a clear set of goals: providing anonymous browsing and secure messaging without leaving behind any trace of our activity. The distribution worked well in my test environments, I did not run into any problems and all the software that shipped with Tails worked as expected.
For most people I think setting up something like Tor is probably going to be confusing and some people will make mistakes trying to add security software to their computers. Having a project like Tails means a person interested in privacy can download (or otherwise acquire) a copy of the live disc, put it in their computer and just start using it. While Tails cannot provide perfect security and anonymity, it is probably one of the best "boot and go" security distributions currently available.
I like that the Firefox web browser ships with several extra add-ons to further protect the user and provide additional guards against tracking and man-in-the-middle attacks. I further appreciate that Claws Mail makes it easy to encrypt e-mail messages, assuming we have access to another person's public security keys. I also like that Claws Mail will warn us that parts of our e-mail message may not be encrypted, depending on our settings.
The one thing I missed while using Tails was a simple key/encryption utility such as KGpg. While Claws Mail will send encrypted messages and do some basic key handling for us, I think having a dedicated encryption/key application would be beneficial.
Perhaps my favourite Tails feature is the project's documentation. The user guide is well organized and explains concepts clearly, in a way I feel most users (even less technical minded ones) will understand. It is easy to make mistakes when trying to be secure on-line and the Tails documentation does a great job of warning people about potential dangers and explaining both the features and limitations of the Tails distribution. For people who need to communicate privately on-line, I believe Tails to be a very useful tool.
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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) |
Kubuntu prepares to roll out Plasma 5, Debian's Project Leader election update and a web-based LibreOffice in the works
Jonathan Riddell, Kubuntu's lead developer, blogged last week and talked about some of the important changes coming to the Kubuntu distribution. One such change is the switch from using KDE 4 to Plasma 5. Riddell claims Kubuntu will be the first Linux distribution to offer a stable release with the Plasma 5 desktop. Riddell also had some thoughts to share on Ubuntu adopting systemd: "Last week Ubuntu switched over to systemd for [its] boot system. It's complex and faffy but at least we have the same complex and faffy as the rest of the world. There was a strange issue during the switchover where login manager SDDM suddenly disabled itself from starting. If you get that just run: `systemctl enable sddm'."
* * * * *
The election for the next Debian Project Leader (DPL) is now in full swing. The campaigning part of the election where candidates get to discuss their platforms is nearly at an end. Later this week, starting April 1st, Debian developers will begin casting their votes for their next Fearless Leader. There are three nominees for DPL and they have presented their platforms. The nominees are: Mehdi Dogguy, Gergely Nagy and Neil McGovern. The election for DPL will conclude on April 14th.
* * * * *
The Fedora Magazine reported last week that an on-line version of LibreOffice will soon be available. LibreOffice Online will serve as a competitor to Google Docs and Microsoft's Office 365. LibreOffice Online is being developed as a joint project between Collabora and IceWarp and both organizations say they will be working closely with the upstream LibreOffice project. Collabora's announcement has more details: "The lightweight document management features already built into the collaboration and messaging solution, IceWarp Server, allow users to store, manage and preview office documents in the web browser, without having any office suite installed on their computers. To edit the documents, IceWarp provides a seamless connection between its web-based storage and productivity applications installed on [the] user's computer. The growing popularity of these features lead IceWarp developers to consider how best to do without an office suite completely, and move it into the browser." The proposed solution could be attractive to people who need to work from the road or collaborate on documents with peers.
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| Humour (by Jesse Smith) |
The systemd Project Forks the Linux Kernel
The systemd project began as an alternative implementation of init, the software which brings an operating system on-line when a computer boots. Traditionally, Linux distributions have used either the SysV init software or Upstart. While these older init systems had their benefits, systemd developers saw room for improvement and the chance to leverage several underutilized features available to modern Linux distributions. Using systemd, distributions are able to more easily start services in parallel, simplify service dependencies and make easier use of cgroups.
Many people in the Linux community have welcomed the improvements systemd's init implementation brings and have praised the speed and ease of use systemd provides to the distributions adopting the new init implementation. The benefits of systemd have caused most mainstream Linux distributions, including Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia and Debian, to replace their ageing init software with systemd packages. Later this year, Ubuntu will switch from using Upstart to systemd, with Ubuntu community distributions expected to follow. Only a few conservative or experimental distributions such as Slackware and Void have stuck with alternative init software.
Despite systemd's many benefits and modern features, some people in the Linux community are wary of the project and its rapid expansion. One common concern is the systemd project has a habit of taking on additional features outside the scope of a traditional init implementation. To date, systemd has taken on logging, time synchronization, mounting partitions, a console daemon (replacing the Linux virtual terminal), login sessions and seats, network configuration and device management. Some people feel the systemd project should focus on performing one task well while allowing separate projects to handle other tasks. Detractors of systemd point out the UNIX Philosophy recommends each project have a narrow focus and try to do one thing well while playing nicely with other projects. Lennart Poettering, the founder and lead developer of systemd, argues the systemd project is more UNIX-like than the way Linux distributions have traditionally been developed, in large part because systemd brings many small projects under one umbrella: "In fact the design of systemd as a suite of integrated tools that each have their individual purposes, but when used together are more than just the sum of the parts, that's pretty much at the core of UNIX philosophy. Then, the way our project is handled (i.e. maintaining much of the core OS in a single git repository) is much closer to the BSD model (which is a true UNIX, unlike Linux) of doing things (where most of the core OS is kept in a single CVS/SVN repository) than things on Linux ever were."
The systemd developers have occasionally bumped heads with developers working on other projects, perhaps most notably Linus Torvalds, lead developer of the Linux kernel. Since systemd's init software works to bring the operating system on-line at boot time, systemd needs to work closely with the kernel and this can cause problems. In fact, some conflict and proposed solutions have resulted in at least one systemd developer getting banned from contributing to the Linux kernel.
Now it appears as though the systemd developers have found a solution to kernel compatibility problems and a way to extend their philosophy of placing all key operating system components in one repository. According to Ivan Gotyaovich, one of the developers working on systemd, the project intends to maintain its own fork of the Linux kernel. "There are problems, problems in collaboration, problems with compatibility across versions. Forking the kernel gives us control over these issues, gives us control over almost all key parts of the stack."
In essence, systemd will gain another component, the Linux kernel, which can be patched as needed to work better with other systemd components. Having both the init software and the kernel managed by one project will also allow bug fixes to be addressed more quickly and avoid conflict between Linux and systemd developers. Ivan says systemd developers plan to merge improvements and changes from Torvalds' kernel into the systemd project and, in an e-mail, confirmed systemd developers will make their own patches public so they can be merged back into Linus' Linux.
Having two versions of the Linux kernel raises concerns about compatibility, but Ivan Gotyaovich states the systemd developers will work hard to maintain ABI compatibility and avoid breaking any userspace packages. He also states this could be an exciting time for Linux users: "Since until now development of GNU/Linux has been fragmented, slowed by poor communication and conflicting designs. Our systemd project offers distributions a united core where almost all key components live. Soon we will not need dozens of separate userland components talking with an alien kernel. All components will work together by design. We will no longer need GNU/udev/ntpd/NetworkManager/syslogd/Linux. Instead we will soon have GNU/systemd, [a] much simpler, unified platform. GNU/systemd will be a better target for third-party developers and easier to support."
While some members of the Linux community may not like the idea of a further expanding systemd project, it is hard to deny GNU/Linux has been a difficult platform for independent software vendors, particularly game developers. Products like WPS and Steam tend to target one or two specific distributions and leave porting and compatibility issues up to individual distributions to solve. Having one united core operating system for Linux users may make the platform more attractive to a wider range of companies and developers who do not have the resources to properly support the hundreds of permutations of software found across GNU/Linux distributions.
What do you think of a united GNU/systemd operating system? Is this a way for Linux distributions to become more standardized, the way other platforms like OS X and FreeBSD are? Or is the systemd project expanding too far, taking on more than its developers should? Leave us a comment below with your thoughts on the subject.
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| Book Review (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Firewalls (Fourth Edition)
Last November I talked about an educational text called The Book of PF. The Book of PF talks about firewalls and packet filtering on OpenBSD, FreeBSD and other operating systems in the BSD family. The book is filled with short examples and bits of practical wisdom that guide the reader through setting up packet filtering on the BSD family of operating systems. Despite its powerful nature and straight forward syntax, PF is not available on Linux and so I wanted to explore another text that would talk about the powerful firewall technologies available to Linux users. To that end, I picked up a copy of "Linux Firewalls: Enhancing Security with nftables and Beyond" by Steve Suehring.
While I have used Linux for many years and set up many a firewall using Linux distributions, I tend not to deal with the low-level commands that are at the heart of Linux firewalls. In my work I can usually get away with using a convenient front-end to Linux firewall technology such as UFW or FirewallD. It is not often I need to descend deeper to work with iptables and I have not, to date, ever had the need to work with the more modern nftables, which appeared in version 3.13 of the Linux kernel. Reading the book Linux Firewalls seemed like a good opportunity to learn about the benefits of nftables.
One of the first things to stand out about Linux Firewalls is that the author tends to take a high level approach when discussing topics. The book talks a lot about theory and general ideas, more so than diving into practical examples. I suspect the author did this because networking concepts stay more or less the same over time while specific implementations of firewalls and networking tools change. By taking an abstract view of networking, the material covered in Linux Firewalls will probably remain relevant even after iptables and nftables become obsolete. The abstract approach is perhaps most apparent in the chapter on virtual private networks (VPNs). The book talks a bit about what a VPN is and why we might use one and even mentions three VPN packages available for Linux. However, there is no discussion about how to set up a VPN or how to securely configure a VPN. Such information, which is likely to be distribution and/or package specific, is left for the reader to look up in other resources.
Another thing I noticed about Linux Firewalls is the book appears to work from the assumption we are passingly familiar with other firewall technologies, such as iptables, and that we are reading this book to either polish our knowledge of iptables or we want to learn about nftables while using iptables as a reference point. In this way Linux Firewalls is probably not intended as a beginner text and is better suited to either freshen up our existing knowledge or expand our knowledge from one packet filter implementation to another. People already somewhat familiar with iptables will likely appreciate this direct approach and lack of hand holding. However, newcomers to Linux and/or firewalls may feel overwhelmed as the book dives quickly into the subject matter.
One aspect of Linux Firewalls I appreciated was that there are reference implementations of complex firewalls in the book's Appendix B. The Appendix provides a number of examples and scripts for setting up complete firewalls. The scripts include variables and flags we can set, customizing the scripts to our specific network. By just adjusting two or three lines of the provided scripts we can tailor the provided firewall recipe to our network and quickly enable or disable specific services. Usually I recommend against copy/pasting code from a reference into a live network environment, but these examples appear flexible enough to work in many cases with minimal adjustments.
On the other hand, I found Linux Firewalls was often terse in is explanations and instructions. I had the impression the author assumed the reader would have a strong working knowledge of Linux and feel comfortable performing tasks I would consider advanced concepts. As an example, early on we are told we may need to enable a specific feature by "using make config, make menuconfig or make xconfig and then recompile and install the new kernel". To an experienced Linux system administrator this idea may seem straight forward, but less experienced users may be wondering where they can download the kernel's source code, what to select after they run "make menuconfig", what the difference is between "make config" and "make xconfig" and how to compile and install a kernel from source code. The answers to these questions are provided elsewhere and the book does not dive into the details, instead sticking to higher level concepts and moving on to tackle the next firewall-related topic.
Earlier I mentioned The Book of PF and that is mostly so I can contrast the two texts. The Book of PF has a very "hands on" approach to dealing with firewalls. We are shown brief examples and the mechanics of those examples are explored. As the book goes on the examples grow and we see the pieces of firewall configuration snap together like building blocks. The Book of PF shows us the differences between PF implementations and is written for specific versions of PF, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. By comparison, Linux Firewalls is quite a different sort of resource. In Linux Firewalls we deal more with abstract concepts and then we get to see firewall configurations which demonstrate these concepts. While Linux Firewalls does provide examples, I feel individual components are explored less, in favour of dealing with more topics such as security, network monitoring and packet forwarding. I think Linux Firewalls covers more territory as far as big-picture networking is concerned and the material covered is less tied to a specific distribution or technology.
To put it another way, I feel Linux Firewalls is like a chemistry text book where we learn about atoms and molecules bonding and we get to see instructions on how to cause certain reactions. The Book of PF is more like a home chemistry set where we touch and mix bits of material together to see what happens. Both approaches are valid and both are good teaching tools, but chances are each person will have a preference for one style of learning over the other.
I want to stress that one nice thing about Linux Firewalls is the book is distribution agnostic. The nftables examples provided in the text should work with any modern Linux distribution and the iptables examples should work with every Linux distribution. This is nice as it makes the book practical for any Linux administrator without tying us to one distribution. This book does jump straight into advanced concepts, making it more of a resource for upgrading our skills rather than a beginner guide. This is also one of the few texts I've encountered that explores the relatively young nftables packet filtering technology in Linux and I found it useful for exploring the topic.
* * * * *
- Title: Linux Firewalls: Enhancing Security with nftables and Beyond (Fourth Edition)
- Author: Steve Suehring
- Published by: Pearson
- Pages: 432
- ISBN-10: 0-13-400002-1
- ISBN-13: 978-0-13-400002-2
- Available from: InformIT and Amazon
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| Ask A Leader |
Ask A Leader: Introduction
At DistroWatch we talk about a lot of open source operating systems and we have a great time sharing new technology with you. We always try to focus on distributions and features we feel our readers will find interesting. However, sometimes we overlook things people later tell us they are interested in and, other times, we hear from distribution developers asking why we have not mentioned a special aspect of their project. We love talking about technology, but we just can't cover every characteristic of every distribution.
With this in mind we are going to try an experiment where our readers have a more direct way to communicate with leaders in the open source community. You will be able to ask questions and developers can share their cool new features. We are calling our new column Ask A Leader. Through this column readers will have a chance to submit questions on any subject to a member of the open source community. The open source leader or developer will respond to the questions and talk about the cool new projects they are working on. We will then post their answers and comments here in the Ask A Leader column.
This week we are happy to present several leaders who have kindly volunteered to answer your questions. They are:
- Matthew Miller of the Fedora Project
- Jeff Hoogland from Bodhi Linux
- Sunit Kumar Nandi of the SuperX distribution
- Dru Lavigne from the PC-BSD project
To ask these leaders a question, please leave a comment below with "Ask A Leader" in the subject line along with the name of the person you want to answer your question. For example, "Ask A Leader: Matthew Miller". Feel free to ask as many questions as you like. You can also e-mail your questions to jsmith@distrowatch.com and put "Ask A Leader" in the subject line of the e-mail with the name of the community leader (or leaders) you wish to have answer your question. Feel free to ask anything about their projects, open source, licenses or community issues.
We will collect your questions, forward them to the community leaders and, in a future edition of DistroWatch Weekly, we will publish their responses and comments.
We also welcome open source developers and community leaders to join in the discussion. If you are an open source distribution developer and would like to answer some questions, please drop us a line at jsmith@distrowatch.com and let us know you are available to respond to our readers' queries.
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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: 36
- Total downloads completed: 18,543
- Total data uploaded: 3.5TB
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| Released Last Week |
Pinguy OS 14.04.2
Antoni Norman has announced the release of Pinguy OS 14.04.2, a point update of the project's Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with a customised GNOME Shell desktop: "I am happy to announce the availability of 14.04.2 point release. Apart from bug fixes and updating packages not a lot has changed from 14.04 Papercuts. So if you are running 14.04 Papercuts and have kept it updated there is no need to install the point release. Pinguy OS 14.04.2 is running Linux kernel 3.13 and the UEFI version of GRUB. If you had issues installing Pinguy OS on a UEFI-enabled system in the past, this should now be fixed. List of some of the pre-installed applications: Mozilla Firefox 36.0.4, Mozilla Thunderbird 31.5.0, Synaptic package manager 0.81.1, VLC media player 2.2.0 RC2, GNOME Tweak Tool 3.10.4, LibreOffice 4.2.7, Clementine 1.2.3, Shutter 0.93.1, PlayOnLinux 4.2.2, WINE 1.7.38." Here is the brief release announcement.
SuperX 3.0
Sunit Kumar Nandi has announced the launch of SuperX 3.0, code name "Grace". The new release, which is named after computing pioneer Grace Hopper, focuses on providing an attractive desktop solution on top of a stable platform. The release announcement mentions some of the features that go into making the distribution's desktop responsive. "Grace gives more priority to application responsiveness; you will feel it right from the start - a fast, smooth, responsive system. Grace, by default, compresses unused memory pages within RAM rather than swapping out to the swap partition, making it responsive even when the system memory is low. Commonly used applications are preloaded and cached in memory for faster start-up of your favourite applications." SuperX 3.0 ships with KDE 4.13.3, Linux kernel 3.13 and a full range of multimedia support.
SuperX 3.0 -- Running the KDE desktop
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antiX 14.4 "MX"
antiX 14.4 "MX" has been released. This is the latest update of the project's special edition developed in collaboration with the MEPIS Community and featuring the Xfce desktop. "MX 14.4 'Symbiosis' available. Upgraded bug-fix editions (PAE and non-PAE) of MX 14 are now available. This version has fixed some bugs found in MX 14.3 and Debian upstream. MX 14.4 is based on Debian 'Wheezy' uses SysVInit so MX 14.4 offers a rock-solid systemd-free experience for those who would prefer to stick with SysVInit. MX is designed to be fast, stable and light on resources. The MX 14 series will be supported until the end of life of Debian 'Wheezy'. Bug-fix and upgrade release including quite a few new enhancements. What applications are used? Clementine for music, VLC for video, full LibreOffice suite, Iceweasel for web browsing, Claws-Mail for email, Mirage for image viewing, Minitube for watching YouTube videos..." Visit the project's wiki page to read the rest of the release announcement.
Ubuntu MATE 14.04.2
Martin Wimpress has announced the release of Ubuntu MATE 14.04.2, an updated build of the Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the MATE desktop environment. Although the DVD image name sports the LTS (long-term support) tag, this version of Ubuntu MATE is not an "official" Ubuntu flavour as the project was formally accepted as an Ubuntu family member just before the recent 15.04 beta 1 release. From the release announcement: "Ubuntu MATE 14.04.2 is available for download. This release fixes a few issues that were present in 14.04.1, adds some new features and updates some packages. It is important to state clearly that Ubuntu MATE 14.04.2 is not an official Ubuntu flavour! The upside of maintaining an unofficial Ubuntu derivative is that we can roll out new features and package updates. So we did, most notably LibreOffice 4.4.1. The advantage of the newer Linux kernel is that it resolves most of the screen tearing issues some people experienced in Ubuntu MATE 14.04.1."
Black Lab Linux 6.5
The Black Lab Linux team has announced the launch of Black Lab Linux 6.5. The new release is available in a number of desktop editions and features improved hardware compatibility and fallback options for older machines. "Today we are pleased to announce the release of Black Lab Linux 6.5. With this release we continue to enhance and improve Black Lab Linux for public consumption. While the base is the same, the Open Distribution Release comes in four flavors. GNOME, MATE, XFCE and KDE. The XFCE release is built into the GNOME release because of customer demand. Some of our users run things like legacy 64-bit hardware, terminal services and certain systems where GNOME may not run all that great." Further information can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
GParted 0.22.0-1
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of a new stable build of GParted Live, a Debian-based live CD with a collection of software applications designed for disk partitioning and data rescue tasks: "The GParted team is proud to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. This live image contains GParted 0.22.0 which now supports reading and writing file systems to disk devices without partition tables, in addition to supporting GPT partition names. Items of note include: based on the Debian's 'Sid' repository as of 2015-03-23; now uses systemd which is the new default system init on Debian; includes GParted 0.22.0: adds read and write support for unpartitioned whole disk devices; adds read and write support for GPT partition names. This release of GParted Live has been successfully tested on VirtualBox, VMware, BIOS, UEFI, and physical computers with AMD/ATI, NVIDIA, and Intel graphics." Here is the brief release announcement.
NethServer 6.6
Alessio Fattorini has announced the release of NethServer 6.6, the new stable version of the project's CentOS-based specialist distribution for servers: "We are proud to announce a new NethServer release. This is a thrilling day for the whole NethServer community. It has been a journey to get to this point and we are so excited about the journey ahead of us. Upgrading from 6.6 RC1 is straightforward. From the Software Center page, just check for available updates. For previous releases, check out the release notes. At first login after system installation, the Server Manager displays the First Configuration wizard, where the administrator (root user) can set the password, change the host name, select the time zone and tune other security-related settings. We simplified the interactive installer removing some sections that were moved to the first configuration wizard. The Package Manager page has been renamed Software Center, and moved to the Administration section." See the release announcement and release notes for further details.
Voyager 14.04.4 "X"
Rodolphe Bachelart has announced the availability of a new edition of Voyager Live. Voyager "X", based on Voyager 14.04.4 LTS, is an experimental version built around the new Xfce 4.12 desktop which was only recently released. It also includes an updated Linux kernel, version 3.16. The entire layout of the desktop has been recoded and the scripts improved to work with the new Xfce. This is a version whose goal is to bring the latest Xfce and kernel improvements to some of the more recent computer systems. Although Xfce 4.12 is final, it has yet to be integrated into Ubuntu's official repositories; as such, it is considered as experimental. At the moment only a 64-bit ISO image is available for download, with a 32-bit variant possibly coming later if needed. This version of Voyager X has been tested extensively and it can be installed as an "official" Voyager. Xfce 4.12, coupled with Linux kernel 3.16, has made Voyager faster and more responsive, with many parameters optimised for better performance and with much improved hardware support. The release announcement (in French) offers more details and several screenshots. The announcement warns that due to the young nature of Xfce 4.12 and some Voyager features, users should backup their data prior to upgrading to the new release.
Voyager 14.04.4 -- Default desktop
(full image size: 366kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Zentyal 4.1
The Zentyal development team has announced the launch of Zentyal 4.1. The Ubuntu-based server distribution is designed to be easy to install and configure and ships with a powerful collection of web-based system administration modules. "Zentyal development team is proud to announce Zentyal Server 4.1, a new release of the Zentyal open-source Linux small business server with native Microsoft Exchange protocol implementation and Active Directory interoperability. This release is completely focused on improving the stability and set of features delivered by the OpenChange module, based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS to provide the latest stable packages. Zentyal server comes in two different flavors: development version, for bleeding-edge testing of the latest available features and commercial version for stable production environments. Features: support for Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013; multiple virtual mail domains; synchronization with mobile devices (ActiveSync support); central domain directory management..." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Distributions added to waiting list
- Spike. Spike is a rolling-release Linux distribution based on Sabayon. The distribution ships with the latest versions of several penetration testing utilities.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 6 April 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 • systemdOS here we come (by Jeff on 2015-03-30 00:38:24 GMT from North America)
It is becoming harder to ignore that the systemd devs intend to have it become the whole operating system.
They are largely RedHat employees, employees of a for profit corporation.
RedHat is also a US .gov contractor.
Still not worried?
2 • SuperX and PCLinuxOS Mini (by Randy McD on 2015-03-30 00:43:06 GMT from North America)
Ran the live cd of Super X and was going to install - but - I had to agree to a "subscription fee" to install? It wasn't THAT pretty!!! And, a guy named "Crow" referred me to PCLinuxOS Mini (still looking for a distro with no apps!) and it was almost perfect - installed on my Intel based desktop fine tried to install it on my AMD based system (where I really want it) and it won't install) - any other distrubitions that have minimal apps!
Thanks - Randy
3 • Relax, nothing is changing (by Henrique Rodrigues on 2015-03-30 01:10:28 GMT from Europe)
The thing you have to remember is that everyone is forking Linux, meaning that almost no distribution is using the exact code that Linus publishes. Red Hat adds some patches for their distribution, same goes for Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, etc.. I know that in Gentoo you can install the upstream kernel, but that's the only distribution I know that gives you that option on the packages list. Of course, you can install it yourself.
What I think is happening here is that the systemd developers are now providing their own fork to guarantee compatibility without having to wait for Linus. Patches will reach upstream eventually, but this makes the development of systemd faster and easier.
All in all, Linux will still be used, of course. This is just a convenience, like embedding a library on your code. And please remember the difference between systemd and systemd: one is an init system, the other one is an umbrella project, which includes the first one. This Linux fork falls under the umbrella project, not the init system. Yes, the nomenclature sucks and is responsible for most of the confusion surrounding systemd.
4 • Systemd (by MBarland on 2015-03-30 01:32:08 GMT from North America)
Jeff, you're right. This is getting scary. That they've already got so many of the core Linux distributions on board and now want to fork the kernel! They clearly have Linux-world domination on their minds.
I like the idea of systemd much less having read this. This is far worse than the fork ofthe kernel Google did for Android.
5 • systemd project's kernel forking (by cykodrone on 2015-03-30 02:04:21 GMT from North America)
Wow, that didn't take long, now distros adopting systemd will have to also adopt THEIR kernel too. All us 'detractors' are laughing right now, we told ya so just doesn't seem to cut it. All those early adopters have egg on their faces. Shhh, what's that sound, I think that's the sound of embarrassed developers scrambling for a workaround, that and PR spin damage control mode. I'm typing this between rolls on the floor. :D
6 • Systemd (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-03-30 02:23:20 GMT from North America)
@1-4: Most of us know so very little about systemd, and was quite a snafu with many developers of Debian distro's. Most seemed to have moved past the initial impact of the change. Sometime ago I read a article about Gnome being the most to benefit from systemd but why do something to benefit just one DE (desktop environment)? I believe this is only a partial reason, but not the sole reason. Then another article that the developers who left and created Devuan as a fork complained that systemd had tentacles reaching deep inside the core of the system, violating the principles of the Linux basic rules of simplicity. What ever the reason, the most senior, and most knowledgeable, left and I see and hear there are more to the rift. Greed is the most certain ingredient of all failed ventures. Perhaps it is time to start supporting Devuan, and push for a stable distro. AntiX and others are offering sysVinit as a alternate install.
7 • systemd (by Will B on 2015-03-30 02:47:41 GMT from North America)
I am not at all surprised that this development is coming to pass. I really saw this coming down the road a while ago.
God bless Pat Volkerding and others who are maintaining what I feel is the last bit of sanity in the Linux distro world. I personally believe that the systemd project has grossly overstepped its bounds. Now distros will have to 'fall in line' with systemd or be, basically, outcasts.
I'm glad I finally have a stable and reliable FreeBSD install. While Linux will always be my first open OS in my heart, systemd makes it easy to run to the open arms of the BSDs.
8 • Is this an April Fool joke? (by Jimmie on 2015-03-30 02:49:45 GMT from Planet Mars)
Is this systemd Linux kernel fork for real? Or is this just an early April Fool joke?
9 • Linux is free! Fork it, until you try to do something I don't like... (by Darren on 2015-03-30 02:55:16 GMT from North America)
It is so scary, someone is doing something that you don't like. Wow. I don't like Devuan myself, but I'm not complaining. If it succeeds, great, the distro I use might gain from it. It if fails? I told you so.
I didn't realize that change was so threatening in Linux.
Go outside, get a breath of fresh air and ignore it. At least until the robots that are created by the SystemdOS take over the world. Then you can all come tell me you told me so. :p Though it would be like Terminator, and that would be sort or cool. Until we all die that is.
10 • @8 (by Will B on 2015-03-30 02:55:43 GMT from North America)
Jimmie, if this was an early April fool's joke, the article would have probably said "systemd developers realize the error of their ways and cut all extraneous functionality, except for init tasks". Oh how I'd love to see that kind of article be true ;-)
11 • Dsystem[umbrella-project] (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-03-30 02:58:52 GMT from North America)
Oracle claims to have a better kernel. If RedHat believes they can come up with something better too, we should let them go for it. Swapping kernels with identical ABI should allow ample demo and testing, right?
"Yes, the nomenclature sucks and is responsible for most of the confusion surrounding systemd." And here I thought it was just over-hype scaring the timid among us, and buggy-code dumping. Yes, refusal to label clearly created the perception of exponentially increasing mission creep. That certainly contributed to concern. But I suggest the responsibility for most of the concern - not confusion - about Dsystem was the tidal wave of buggy code. Perhaps swappable kernels will be a wiser, gentler approach.
12 • Early April fool's joke? (by Thomas on 2015-03-30 03:00:18 GMT from Planet Mars)
"Ivan Gotyaovich"?
"Gotyaovich"?
"Gotya"?
"Got ya"?
"I have tricked you"?
Early April fool's joke?
13 • Systemd (by Ryan Mitchell on 2015-03-30 03:53:42 GMT from Oceania)
The thought that the systemd guys thing this will reduce fragmentation is astonishing.
One core linux platform? You mean like we've had for years now?
Linux, Xorg. And do-one ever had compatibility issues ever.
But no, let's make 2 kernals now, splitting development between 2 systems, for the first time in history truly fragmenting linux.
At least if this happens they'll get their hands out from the inside of the pure linux kernal. Give them their own cesspool to splash around in.
14 • systemd, and Tails--use a thumbdrive! (by Roland on 2015-03-30 04:09:06 GMT from North America)
I recommend highly Salix, a Slack derivative. SysV init, no PulseAudio, lots of software, much of it precompiled, gslapt for easy beginner administration. If Mint follows the 'buntu plan to switch from upstart, goodbye Mint!
Tails should be run from a thumbdrive. You can install software to a running Tails system, but it runs in memory, so it doesn't alter the thumbdrive and is lost at reboot. One exception: you should check out onionshare, a Tor webserver for transferring those special secrets. It creates a zipfile archive. It can automatically shut itself down after a single access. It is "installed" in the encrypted "Persistent" directory and you will need to install it to the OS from there at each boot, a single-click operation.
15 • systemd (by Teresa e Junior on 2015-03-30 05:04:23 GMT from Planet Mars)
This is trolling, folks! There is no "Ivan Gotyaovich" working on systemd, and the linked GitHub account was created only this month, and as "systemdaemon", which is not the same as the old "systemd" account.
16 • @2 • SuperX and PCLinuxOS Mini (by tony on 2015-03-30 05:20:00 GMT from Asia)
Hi.
Yes, if your problem was related to NVidea drivers, please have a look here
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=130843.msg1110616#msg1110616
I too had some c**p, but it was solved with one email.
Good luck
17 • systemd (by Endiz on 2015-03-30 05:36:29 GMT from North America)
I can't wait for all the systemd distros to start getting infected with malware, virus' and spyware since they are taking the WinBlowz approach. No more independence in the "systemd Linux distro" world, now they are all just RedHat distros with a different look.
I was watching the Devuan mailing list for a while, and the attitude is not that much different from Debian. Question anything and the defenses come out as if they know everything. I questioned something about security and was branded a pedophile. What a mess that place has become.
18 • systemd (by MoreGee on 2015-03-30 05:39:29 GMT from North America)
I've been scrambling to deal with machines that installed the latest ubuntu upgrades. All sorts of old weird issues are coming up. One machine started running bad x.org Intel i8x/i9x drivers that has been happily running vesa drivers for years. I had to run and install Debian expert on that one.
Another machine had a old gremlin of the start menu disappearing along with the distribution specific icon.
Another the shutdown icon disappeared from the toolbar and was not available anymore to add to the tool bar.
On another the the icon for networking on the toolbar changed to an older type and showed that it was working but was not and "edit networking" was grayed out. That one if I remember was a realtek 813x driver bug that I have not seen for years (version 8?).
A bunch of others would just come up with a black start screen or streaked and garbled white text on the black screen. Those machines I had to turn off the log in screen or get to a command line and get them into a vesa driver to fix. Puppy precise 5.6 was a big help on those machines. Newer versions don't check the previous configuration very well if you do not have a save file.
The last time I was getting black screens on these machines was because it would try and run a video mode that was OK for the monitor but the video card did not have enough memory. For instance 24 or 32 bit color to run a splash or login screen. The reason I say that is sometimes i was getting in text mode the old ask for video mode ie. 25x80 enter zero etc.
Systemd is just making bad assumptions.
19 • systemd (by jsm on 2015-03-30 06:10:58 GMT from North America)
I've been fairly neutral regarding this whole systemd controversy up until now. I've understood the arguments for and against, and I've thought that things were getting a little overblown. I no longer feel that way.
Some people have commented that forking the Linux kernel is no big deal, it happens all the time, and all distros tend to add their own set of patches.
However, most of those patches are either backports of fixes in later kernel versions, or other improvements. But for most distro's they are NOT required. For example, I use Debian more than any other Linux distro. However, I rarely use the kernel that comes with the distribution. I typically build a kernel.org kernel and use that (for a variety of reasons).
I like the fact that Debian (and most other Linux distro's) don't have a user space environment that REQUIRES their kernel. Yes, you can get into trouble if you try to install an older kernel than what the distro was built for, but that has never been the case (at least on Debian) in my experience. when using newer kernels.
Now, it appears that will no longer be the case. If I understand correctly, The Systemd team is forking the kernel so that they can make changes that will be required by new versions of systemd in order to run. So I will no longer be able to build a kernel.org kernel and have it boot successfully unless I get the right set of "systemd kernel patches" and apply them. No Thanks. I guess I'll be moving to a non systemd distribution in the future.
20 • systemdoesn'tmatter (by bin on 2015-03-30 06:35:04 GMT from Europe)
Sadly none of this is going to matter soon.
From ostatic.com quoting arstechnica article.
"MIcrosoft has made dual-booting machines with Windows 10 UEFI and/or Secure Boot a lot more difficult than with versions passed. With Windows 8.x a switch was authorized to allow users to disable Secure Boot checking or distributions could do the crypto-key dance with Microsoft. The Linux Foundation has been working to make the certification process accessible to more players, but now Microsoft has removed the previous requirement that a switch be available. That may not sound like a big change, but a lot of lower cost boards and systems will save money there no doubt. Mobile devices won't be allow to have a switch at all, but on desktops it's up the manufacturer. Microsoft knows it will be dropped on a large number of machines."
No doubt there will be some small incentive from Redmond to adopt that money saving option??
In other words in 18mths to 2 yrs time you probably will not be able to buy a normal laptop or desktop that will allow you to install anything other than Windows. OK some mfrs may produce a premium price range for linux and server mfrs will be able to charge an arm and a leg for 'Linux Enabled' stickers.....
Just suggesting we keep things in perspective and developers devote energy to the very real possibility of not being able to run systemd, upstart or sysvinit on anything at all................................
21 • How to trust systemd? (by denk_mal on 2015-03-30 07:08:24 GMT from Europe)
Linus is kicking one of the systemd developers out of the kernel team because it's development breaks the kernel and the reaction of the systemd is to fork the kernel?
How/why shoult I trust those new kernel?
Systemd is getting more and more to a single point of failure for *any* linux system.
It seems to me that Slackware is not only one of the first Linux Distro; It would also beeing one of the last one.
IMHO distrowatch (and the rest of the world) shoult than separate between linux distros and systemd distros
22 • re. 20 (by Sondar on 2015-03-30 07:44:11 GMT from Europe)
It defies understanding that folks want to dual-boot (duel-boot?!) anything, albeit liveCD is an entirely separate option. Two, at least, machines are required. The primary one will continue to be the 'favourite', which, for the younger set, first adopters and retirees wondering what next to use up their pensions rather than leave it to the grandchildren, means will be SOTA complete with go-faster stripes. This will run the user's preferred Linux distro, with or without 'd'. Post-W10, a BIOS intercept will permanently prevent any UEFI/SB/M$-based boot up. [It may opt as a live Tor base, of course].
The second machine can be something rescued from a skip/dumpster/boot-sale/gift/under-bed re-discovery/etc. which will never, eve,r have its NIC connected. It can run any of the other testing, obsolete or even WXP distros or all of the above depending on the user's proclivities. Archived apps., data, whatever, files can be statically transferred by USB, SD, CD/DVD, even FD from machine A, but never from B-to-A. Additional machines also remain unplugged from the vundernet. Of course, there will be detractors jumping up to point out the flaws and shortcomings of such a strategy but there's plenty of scope for refining it according to personal needs, abilities and innovationary skills.
23 • dual-boot (by excollier on 2015-03-30 08:12:02 GMT from Europe)
re: 22 I dual boot Windows 7 and Linux Mint. Why? Because my wife needs Windows 7, and I prefer to use Linux - simple. I maintain the whole setup and we are both happy. It boots to Windows 7 by default so my wife has nothing extra to do. Is that so hard to believe or understand?
24 • ...allow you to install anything other than Windows (by zcatav on 2015-03-30 08:30:00 GMT from Europe)
@bin
"In other words in 18mths to 2 yrs time you probably will not be able to buy a normal laptop or desktop that will allow you to install anything other than Windows. OK some mfrs may produce a premium price range for linux and server mfrs will be able to charge an arm and a leg for 'Linux Enabled' stickers....."
http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/
25 • Systemd, and the paradox of choice? (by Sander on 2015-03-30 08:33:43 GMT from Europe)
I hope this kernel fork is a joke.
Users already have to deal with myriad of distribution packaged with badly designed desktop environments, where software is designed with completely different tool-kits that sometimes fail to work together in the same system.
And now we have to deal with two different kernels? They want to unify with more fragmentation... nahh I don't believe it... yet....
26 • Wow ! How many fishes eaten here. (by FredBezies on 2015-03-30 08:48:16 GMT from Europe)
In France, there is no "april fools", but we're using april fish instead. You're not fooled, you ate the 1st april fish. A lot of fish was eaten !
It looks like nearly all comments before #25 do not realize it is a joke. How many looked at developer's name ? How many searched for him ?
How many looked at github repository ? Sad to see how many people were fooled here.
"I Got You Babe" from Sonny and Cher was released in 1965 and it could be applied again here !
27 • Systemd (by jura321 on 2015-03-30 08:50:39 GMT from Europe)
Hello all,
I see myself as just "Linux user" but why some more educated persons who don't like systemd just not put systemd on the surgical table and split that monolithic shit into working parts (manageable parts) where will be possible to identify what every line of code is doing? Perhaps some nonsenses would need to be re-written - like logging into binary blobs etec. Then every distro could have a choice of what parts are ok for them and avoid the rest. There are still some Linux distributions which are not using systemd - https://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page so there is still way to go further. So please stop complaining and start doing something.
One more question for Jessie:
Is it possible to write reviews for distributions which are really different and avoiding writing tests of same ones ? - Ubuntu for 100 times with different wallpaper for example? There are some really unique distributions which deserves much more attention and which brings something new or different technologies (VOID LINUX, SLACKWARE, GENTOO, ARCH,).
Best regards
Jura321
28 • systemd kernel = April Fool's joke (by Paraquat on 2015-03-30 08:59:26 GMT from Asia)
I'm pretty sure that this systemd kernel fork is an April Fool's joke.
But not a good one.
Indeed, would have been much funnier if Lennart Potstickers decided that both systemd and Pulseaudio are flawed concepts, and he's recommending we go back to sysvinit and Alsa...
"Simplicity is bliss," Potstickers mumbled as he submitted his resignation to Red Hat. "I see no reason for an init system, and if you want sound, what's wrong with cassette tapes? Which is why I'm going to work for the FreeDOS project. I'm also moving to Tibet."
29 • April Fool's joke continued... (by Paraquat on 2015-03-30 09:20:32 GMT from Asia)
Meanwhile, Red Hat management admits that Lennart Poettering is just a bot.
"It started out as a joke," Red Hat CEO Richard Stallman confessed at a news conference on Friday. "Some of our developers with a weird sense of humor got this idea after seeing the movie S1m0ne back in 2002...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258153/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
I mean, who would have thought that anybody would believe there was a real guy named Poettering? But the geek community fell for it. So they had Poettering introduce that bad joke of software called Avahi. Somehow that didn't raise eyebrows. And then Pulseaudio - still, the Linux community ate it up. So they tried systemd, and still nobody got the joke.
I'm just here to tell you that the gag has gone on for too long. If they keep this up, someone is going to think they'll fork the kernel. So just for the record, there is no Poettering, there is no systemd. Never was.
30 • RC1 (by der_bud on 2015-03-30 09:22:35 GMT from Europe)
I just tried the first RC kernel of that fork (from here: http://bit.ly/1HeDJ5I) and man - that boots lightening fast on my Amiga.
31 • systemd (by jb on 2015-03-30 10:06:03 GMT from Europe)
April Fool's joke or not ...
Here is an example of how its workings are transparent to end users and developers
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2015-March/029607.html
Oh, well.
This thread is quite telling - after so many years of systemd in testing and production,
a simple task of adding some modification to system booting order causes so much
interpretation and confusion about how its ordering works, if at all reliably.
One poster is convinced that systemd works very well - by "magic".
32 • Systemd fork is April Fool's Day (by Dawid on 2015-03-30 10:33:20 GMT from Europe)
You got me on that one, I'll grant you, Distrowatch. At first I was dismayed at this systemd kernel fork but then I took a look at the comments of some more wary readers and realised it was just a faux. If you try to google this Ivan Gotyaovich you'll get exactly one result and it's this very page, the Distrowatch Weekly.
I've also found this GitHub repo: https://github.com/systemdaemon/systemd/tree/master/src/linux which was made by a guy named Ivan Gotyaovoich [sic!] who joined on 18.03.2015 and has just one commit - the init commit to the said repo.
Still, good one. Terrifying. And really quite plausible, given the extent to which systemd has expanded already, just like in this gif: http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/112502661235/watching-systemd-evolve :)
33 • systemd - Salix (by dxr on 2015-03-30 10:38:53 GMT from North America)
Fully agree with Roland on Salix. In search of a distro without systemd, I gave Salix XFCE a try.
What a pleasant surprise; close Slackware based (same version #), very polished, 1 click full media codec support, GSlapt is similar to Synaptic, 1 application per function... Very simple; no Pulseaudio, no Plymouth, all inits from rc.d, simple lilo boot.... This is the first time in a long time I fully understand what gets booted from where and when. Been running Salix on 4 machines for a few months, solid.
I am surprised that this particular distro isnt more popular.
34 • @2 - Distro with minimal apps (by Uncle Slacky on 2015-03-30 10:43:17 GMT from Europe)
Bodhi is pretty minimal - only comes with a browser, terminal, file manager and (I think) picture viewer out of the box. You can of course easily change the DE if you don't like Enlightenment.
35 • April Fool's joke part III... (by Paraquat on 2015-03-30 10:56:28 GMT from Asia)
Mark Shuttleworth admits that Mir is also a hoax...
"I have to admit, those systemd pranksters really had everyone going. We also tried to lighten things up at Canonical with our Mir graphics server hoax, but nobody cared. Ever since we announced it in 2013, not a single person has even bothered to attempt to download it. If they'd clicked on the download link, they would have known it was an April Fool's joke. But I guess it's my fault - ever since we released Unity as a spoof interface, nobody has taken anything I say seriously."
"Nevertheless, I'm awed by Red Hat's systemd gag," Shuttleworth beamed in admiration. "First they said you'd need it for udev, then logind, and finally Gnome and KDE, but nobody batted an eyelash. If this had gone on for another week, they'd be saying that you'd need systemd to run VI and Emacs."
36 • systemd and control freakery (by Nematoad on 2015-03-30 10:57:39 GMT from Europe)
"...gives us control over almost all key parts of the stack."
Ah! there we have the systemd devs finally showing their true colours. A sort of "Apple complex" Control, control control.
"Since until now development of GNU/Linux has been fragmented, slowed by poor communication and conflicting designs."
Strange then given all these handicaps Gnu/Linux has almost managed to take over the computing world.
For those looking for a non-systemd distro that is actively maintained and has a lot of good features look no further than PCLinuxOS. No sudo, no systemd, diskdrake partitioning tool, apt-get, the list of good stuff goes on.
37 • Distro with minimal apps (by Nematoad on 2015-03-30 11:06:18 GMT from Europe)
I could not see any mention of Tiny Core Linux
http://tinycorelinux.net/
That might suit you.
38 • @19 (by Henrique Rodrigues on 2015-03-30 11:10:32 GMT from Europe)
"Now, it appears that will no longer be the case. If I understand correctly, The Systemd team is forking the kernel so that they can make changes that will be required by new versions of systemd in order to run. So I will no longer be able to build a kernel.org kernel and have it boot successfully unless I get the right set of "systemd kernel patches" and apply them."
Not at all. My understanding is that this fork is about rapid development, all patches will go upstream. So if you are building systemd from master Git you might need some extra patches, but for a normal distro usage you should be fine with Linux straight from kernel.org.
39 • systemd (by Nematoad on 2015-03-30 11:30:16 GMT from Europe)
OK, you fooled me. Well done!
The troubling thing is given the way that the systemd devs have been acting this April Fool joke was all to close to the truth.
I think that they *are* intent on grabbing control of the whole GNU/Linux system, whether through a conviction that they have the "One true way" or that they see commercial advantage in what they are proposing and doing I don't know. I do know that I consider systemd to be a threat to GNU/Linux by adding unnecessary complexity and as othershave said here introducing a single point of failure.
40 • tor (by greg on 2015-03-30 11:36:00 GMT from Europe)
Tor is kind of cool, but i found some issue while using it. the porblme is that it seems many attacks are made using this network. so you could be asigned IP and then get autobanned on some sites. i once tried to Access a page just for fun and i had to restart a couple of times before i got the IP so that i could connect to the site. the site was nothing special. just some local news. it happened to me again some time later when i had to reinitialise tor 2 times to Access the site. previous IP's were all baned due to spam or attacks. too bad they abuse it.
41 • Systemd (by Alex on 2015-03-30 11:42:04 GMT from Europe)
I am using my own remix of Ubuntu Trusty with Linux kernel 4.0 RC6 and was thinking to move to systemd permanently. I am also using another remix of Ubuntu Vivid, which is using systemd by default, and even in beta stage, I don't have any problems, crashes. This too is on Linux kernel 4.0 RC6.
I don't know why you guys are so paranoid on systemd. Why don't you guys try it for a while and come to a conclusion. As far as my computer's concerned, this systemd or upstart stays out of the way, never troubling me at work.
42 • SystemD (by Mister Linux User on 2015-03-30 11:48:18 GMT from North America)
sheesh! was a beast SystemD has become maybe more distro developers will wake up and realize what a terrible thing it has turned in to, i refuse to put a distro on any of my PCs that includes SystemD, not for a desktop, not for a laptop or mobile device, not for a server, not for ANYTHING!
43 • Kubuntu 15.04 (by kc1di on 2015-03-30 11:57:08 GMT from North America)
Kubuntu 15.04 with plasma 5 is looking pretty good. :)
44 • systemd (by gav on 2015-03-30 12:00:51 GMT from Europe)
Well done to all involved - totally got me!
Cheeky doing it a day early when our guards were down though
45 • Tails (by any on 2015-03-30 12:17:00 GMT from Europe)
I like the idea behind Tails but what I do not understand is why there are programs like Scribus, The Gimp , Inkscape, Audacity in it. Multimedia players OK, but video and audio editors and publishing software? Isn't it enough to have them installable through Synaptic? Instead of LibreOffice Gnumeric and Abiword are enough for a live CD I think.
Also I I would like to have a Tails version with LXDE or XFCE and not with Gnome3.
46 • secure boot Win10 (by Dave Postles on 2015-03-30 12:35:45 GMT from Europe)
I sincerely hope that the EU and national anti-trust/monopoly authorities will get on the case quickly and investigate that.
47 • The systemd project forks the Linux kernel (by M. Fraenkel on 2015-03-30 12:55:07 GMT from Europe)
In my opinion L. Poettering & co, namely Red Hat, is brazenly trying to undermine the freedom of linux, as Red Hat surely is the elongated claw of creepy nsa and furthermore in general of world ruling business interests. Can individuals with intellect really want this?
Only a dumb person can't imagine that implementing systemd into the kernel is dangerous in regards of easily implementing any spyware well hidden in future kernel versions.
So my urgent appeal to Linus Torvalds is to stand right against this corruptive behaviour.
This is as said only my opinion, but you know, what mankind is able to do, lastly mankind will do!
48 • @ Jesse Smith - You may have started something here.... (by Sander on 2015-03-30 13:36:46 GMT from Europe)
The news is spreading all over...
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=121167
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=5339805
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=424797
I was shocked where I read this comment in Debian user forums:
"Pretty crappy joke if I'm going to be honest. This is like an April fool joke that makes you want to punch the dude in the face, not laugh."
ROFL:ROFL:ROFL:ROFL
_^___
L __/ [] \
LOL===__ \
L \________]
I I
--------/
49 • @ 46, 47 April Fool's Day (by Alex on 2015-03-30 13:38:52 GMT from Europe)
Come on, guys!
Its just 2 days to April Fool's Day, but DWW comes only on Monday, the 1st April is Wednesday.
50 • Re: systemd April Fools (by Pearson on 2015-03-30 13:55:10 GMT from North America)
I, too,think this is an April Fools joke.
The sad thing is, it's almost believable. I actually started to look around at other reputable Linux news sources for confirmation. That says a lot about (the reputation of) the systemd maintainers.
51 • @48 (by Pearson on 2015-03-30 13:59:47 GMT from North America)
> I was shocked where I read this comment in Debian user forums:
> "Pretty crappy joke if I'm going to be honest. This is like an April fool joke that
> makes you want to punch the dude in the face, not laugh."
I kind of agree with that user. I don't go to news sites for humor -- I expect them to give me real news.
I have vary rarely disagreed with Jessee, but this is one area in which I must. As I said above, this was too close to believable.
Man, I hate being online April 1.
52 • systemd (by dragonmouth on 2015-03-30 14:23:08 GMT from North America)
"One common concern is the systemd project has a habit of taking on additional features outside the scope of a traditional init implementation."
Change for change's sake IS NOT an improvement. It has been proven over and over again in science, computers, corporate world, etc that the more tasks an entity takes on, the more inefficient it becomes at performing any one of them. The more tasks are integrated into systemd, the more of a kludge it becomes.
The forking of the Linux kernel is a joke, figuratively as well as literally.
53 • Ubuntu Mate 15.04 Beta2 (by Ari Torres on 2015-03-30 14:39:20 GMT from North America)
Great Job Team Ubuntu Mate!!!
it works great,looks good,feels like we never left :) (old timer here)
my I suggest:
1-cheese over guvcview
2-docky over plank (plank has some advantages over docky,location of the dock-bar but docky has the elegance no dock-bar can bring)
3-Tilda WTH?
4-Audio Recoder by osmoma (awesome app)
5-gedit over pluma
over all very satisfied,to the point that I am using it as my daily driver :)
54 • systemd (by Gordon Shumway on 2015-03-30 14:40:02 GMT from Europe)
I fully agree with this statement:
"Pretty crappy joke if I'm going to be honest. This is like an April fool joke that makes you want to punch the dude in the face, not laugh."
Let alone the impossibility of forking Linux by two (or a couple of) clumsy devs, i.e. Lennart, Kay and other systemd developers. It is a giant code base and cannot be managed by a handful of people. But to be honest; if they could, they would not hesitate a moment to fork it.
55 • Systemd April fool's joke (by Linux Apocalypsis on 2015-03-30 14:59:36 GMT from Europe)
I wrote the same joke a few months ago:
https://linuxapocalypsis.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/one-daemon-to-rule-them-all-systemd-a-corporate-putsch-in-the-linux-ecosystem/
Only that it is not a joke. It will happen sooner or latter. But now is too soon. They have to wait at least until the systemd package manager becomes the default and only PM in all the major distros and that, for instance, Nvidia and other drivers will work only in systemd distributions. This is going to happen and then the corporations will control all of main stream Linux and Torvalds will be history.
My guess is that in one or two Aprils it will become real.
56 • systemd joke exposes Linux NTP problem (by Oko on 2015-03-30 15:08:38 GMT from North America)
The systemd 1st April joke that somebody posted on March 30th exposes Linux real problem with NTP. Namely UNIX exclusively uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC abbreviation is from French) not the local time as a system time. Apparently Linux people (some distributions) should rethink whether adopting local time as Windows is a good idea.
Can anyone close to Linux foundation point out existence of a simple OpenNTPD http://www.openntpd.org/ ? Having OpenNTPD as a default network time protocol daemon would benefit Linux in two ways:
1. Their computers will be able to tell them accurately 30th of March from 1st of April.
2. As a bonus they will remove over 1500 vulnerabilities and potential attack surfaces due to their current "more accurate" implementation of NTPd.
Now that brings us to real problem with systemd. How does one enable something as simple as OpenNTPD through systemd?
57 • first stable plasma 5 distro (by Johan Borgstrøm on 2015-03-30 15:09:15 GMT from Planet Mars)
Regarding Kubuntu being the first Linux distribution to offer a stable release with the Plasma 5 desktop I think not quite :-)
While I'm sure the Kubuntu team will do a fine job and be one of the first, Manjaro already has a stable release with plasma 5 since 2015-03-20 afaik ;-)
58 • Forking the Linux Kernel (by Alex on 2015-03-30 15:11:17 GMT from Europe)
April fool's joke or not, it won't be a bad idea forking the Linux kernel. BSD kernel was forked and we have OS X. Linux was forked from Minix, so why shouldn't there be a Pinix or Sinix?
All for development!
Maybe someone really should fork Linux and make a thinner kernel.
59 • BlackArch (by Pearson on 2015-03-30 15:32:11 GMT from North America)
This project looks interesting (I haven't been to their site yet). Have there been any reviews on how well it stands against other pentest distros, (I think Kali is one?).
60 • April (or simply) Fools (by anticapitalista on 2015-03-30 15:33:25 GMT from Europe)
Well done Jessie!
It's about time people started reading more carefully and critically.
61 • @56 (by Sander on 2015-03-30 15:37:16 GMT from Europe)
@56 You made me look for the UTC etymology, a lot of things you can learn in a single day :)
http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/utcnist.cfm#cut
62 • Development (by Alex on 2015-03-30 16:00:45 GMT from Europe)
I use Ubuntu Vivid and Trusty.
I've been looking at Windows 10 9926 technical preview.
In the Linux world, only Unity DE is anywhere near Windows 10, or vice versa.
When are we going to stop fighting and create a top notch distro? Maybe, we should really fork Linux kernel?
63 • @62 (by jaws222 on 2015-03-30 16:14:40 GMT from North America)
"In the Linux world, only Unity DE is anywhere near Windows 10, or vice versa".
You can have them both. I'll stick to Openbox, XFCE, LXDE and Mate..
By the way, I did check out Oz Unity and Voyager this weekend and liked them both.
64 • @56 How long is March this year? (by dbrion1 on 2015-03-30 16:28:01 GMT from Europe)
"The systemd 1st April joke that somebody posted on March 30th exposes Linux real problem with NTP"
That would be logical if March were a 30 days long month (perhaps this year is an exception?)
65 • @58 (by Ivan on 2015-03-30 16:39:29 GMT from North America)
Linux was not forked from Minix.
The OS X kernel in XNU, a Mach/BSD hybrid.
66 • Playing right into the FUD (by schultzter on 2015-03-30 17:01:34 GMT from North America)
I like systemd, but this is getting ridiculous!!! All this name-calling, forking, and "I'm taking my ball and going home!" posturing is NOT how Linux and the open source community is supposed to work. Anyone looking for ammunition against open source has hit the mother load here! We're destroying ourselves from the inside-out!
67 • Systemd forks the kernel (by Rambo Tribble on 2015-03-30 17:08:44 GMT from North America)
The practice of bringing all the elements of development under one umbrella is an artifact of proprietary development, not UNIX, per se. Collaborative development is usually more distributed, but then systemd is the child of a proprietary interest.
68 • GNU/systemd (by William Barath on 2015-03-30 17:11:22 GMT from North America)
ROFL, Jessie!
It's slightly early for April Fools jokes, but I applaud you nonetheless!
69 • systemd (by eamonnb on 2015-03-30 17:26:10 GMT from Europe)
Congrats DW...all that instant outrage and streams of psychological projection.
Priceless!!.
70 • SystemD (by BrianL on 2015-03-30 17:32:23 GMT from Europe)
April Fool has been forked: Late March Fool.
71 • domination (by delta on 2015-03-30 17:52:08 GMT from Europe)
Already the 3rd poster found a reason for development to be done 'without having to wait for Linus'. Hoping for global monoply a for profit company may find its interest in forking kernel.
System Daemon tries to live up to its name, demon. Come up silently, at first bonding to a popular destkop environment [Gnome], getting to as much users as possible. Once tied, they will be more ready to get eased into other changes.
Really, for funs sake, how would you cook a frog? Say, you drop it in boiling water? It would jump out right away... But if you put it in cold water and then turn the heat on. Slowly?
72 • imho (by k on 2015-03-30 18:33:21 GMT from Europe)
(even if this is an april's fool joke...)
one should keep in mind that a kernel-fork with something interrelated into other (more surface-/userland-near) components of a system is more about politics than technicals. even if this not intended, it would be sooner or later. i wouldnt like that
73 • systemd forking the kernel (by Rich on 2015-03-30 18:35:19 GMT from North America)
Microsoft would be proud. This is a perfect example of the first two stages of their mantra: "embrace, extend, extinguish".
74 • GNU/systemd (by mw on 2015-03-30 18:36:04 GMT from Europe)
Sorry I thougt that 1st of April is on Wednesday, not today
75 • Plasma 5 (by charlieD on 2015-03-30 18:55:26 GMT from North America)
@57 Manjaro is still at Pre 5, I just checked there website.
76 • This was great, LMAO!!! (by Eddie on 2015-03-30 18:58:58 GMT from North America)
As usual people got bent out of shape over nothing. Very funny to see people act like idiots and some still don't realize that it's a joke. Funny indeed.
77 • Ask A Leader: Sunit Kumar Nandi (by latefordinner on 2015-03-30 19:08:17 GMT from North America)
does the study of heartbleed & shellshock et al improve developers quality assurance & security auditing ability?
78 • Systemd April 1st Joke (by Bill on 2015-03-30 19:52:31 GMT from North America)
Ha-ha... NOT.
79 • Systemd (by Scrumtime on 2015-03-30 20:19:20 GMT from North America)
Divide et impera Latin for Divide and Rule ( conquer)
a way of keeping yourself in a position of power by making the people under you disagree with each other so that they are unable to join together and remove you from your position
Maybe windows had started this rumour
80 • April fools weeks (by Alt Ek on 2015-03-30 20:45:26 GMT from Europe)
2015-03-30, the day the Systemd project forked Linux: Are you sure it's a joke? That seems like something the Systemd idiots would do, and it's not April 1st yet.
Anyway, April Fools is an irritating habit when it's done on April 1st. It's so much more annoying when it's spread out over weeks because every periodical has to participate even if they don't publish on the day.
81 • systemd (by bubbke on 2015-03-30 21:32:04 GMT from Europe)
Hmmm... Russian speaking community have no news about systemd (usually there are "holywars" about anything related to systemd), so I suppose that was Fool's Day joke.
Actually such new wouldn't be shocking for me, since I don't see anything scaring about the kernel forks. Any project can be forked anytime. Just remind Devuan, which by the way still haven't became Deabian-killer. Similar situation will happen with the kernel (if it will happen finally). Anyway it is up to you to decide whether to use systemd-kernel or pure linux.
82 • #80 (by anticapitalista on 2015-03-30 21:34:11 GMT from Europe)
"Anyway, April Fools is an irritating habit when it's done on April 1st. It's so much more annoying when it's spread out over weeks because every periodical has to participate even if they don't publish on the day."
It is even more worrying, IMO, that people just blindly accept anything written/said on tv/newpapers/magazines/blogs etc without question.
83 • SystemD "joke" (by Linux Lover on 2015-03-30 22:13:29 GMT from North America)
There's NOTHING funny about systemd
You got my hopes up that they were closing for the kill prematurely...that's not funny either.
84 • systemd linux (by stefan on 2015-03-30 22:34:43 GMT from Europe)
i don't understand the rumors about the message that systemd devs are forking the linux-kernel -- that's what it's made for, isn't it? And what's so bad about systemd anyway, i love it, just look how coreos e.g. is using it: making things very easy to maintain. I'm looking forward to a GNU/systemd/linux -- will be another option. Nothing is bad about slackware too, it's a matter of what you want your computers to do.
And whoever thinks he's doing just clear and familiar natural-langueage things when working on his SysV-Init script, doesn't know what he's doing. You can't avoid blobs unless u use a trigger switch to speak x86 instruction set with your machine -- or whatever architecture it is.
85 • Things were just starting to calm down... (by Milo on 2015-03-31 01:04:42 GMT from Europe)
As a community, the wounds, while still very much raw, were in the beginning stages of healing, even if it meant some people felt obligated to go a different way. At least people were beginning to move in productive directions, rather than the endless and poisonous hatefest that had been going on.
I know different people will have different reactions, but for me, this systemd April Fools attempt was poorly timed and really only served to stir back up the acrimony and conspiracy theories (which several of the reactionary comments demonstrate), but it is the latest, and final, indication to me that I need to move on from DistroWatch after years of readership. I leave bearing no ill will, and I wish all the best, but in the current environment, I don't think there is any constructive conversation to be had here either.
Also, threats of violence against Jesse (http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=121167#p572980), even if not seriously intended, are inappropriate, and are no better than numerous examples I've seen from zealots, such as https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/02/msg00462.html. Whether they agree or disagree, I had hoped that people could remain sensible adults, but it appear fanboy hysteria has won the day.
86 • systemd - the hidden demon (by M. Fraenkel on 2015-03-31 01:55:54 GMT from Europe)
All this shallow-brained clap speaking about the ostensibly harmless systemd - as if - fanboy hysteria - as if - conspiracy theory!
It's always easy to put someone in this corner, but to prove the opposite might be quite more difficult. Reality will overhaul those ones then sitting there saying how come we didn't see that.
Anyway, I wish the Devuan project good luck and many, many followers.
87 • @85 Two Linux camps (by cykodrone on 2015-03-31 02:24:31 GMT from North America)
Well said, the bearded Linux purists will stick to their non-systemd ways will the others will put their blind trust in Soylent Green distros. I wish them luck. If and when there's no more systemd-free Linux, then I switch to a BSD, that's if the barnacle-ware hasn't infected them by then too.
88 • GNU (by forlin on 2015-03-31 02:50:47 GMT from Europe)
GNU/systemd? No way.
Why opening the door for GNU/this, GNU/that or GNU/else? We already have enough distros :)
GNU/Linux was, is and should be the way to go.
89 • April Fools (by dooright on 2015-03-31 03:30:58 GMT from Europe)
Not just April. We wish systemd/Gnome would fork off any day of the year.
90 • systemd (by Coolsville on 2015-03-31 03:35:54 GMT from North America)
When UNIX brought small tools under one umbrella, it was not as invasive to other subsystems as systemd has become. For that reason, I find Poettering's response largely sophistry.
Originally, I was OK with the systemd idea, but I now think it has gone way too far. It seems to be spreading like a bad virus, and now seems to be taking over the kernel. Frankly, it looks more like a power grab than an init system.
It might be nice for commercial developers to be able to develop to a common core, but I would rather this core be common in only a subset of distros - leaving users the choice of using non-systemd distributions.
I use Xubuntu at present - but have used openSUSE, Debian, Mageia, Arch, etc. All have switched to systemd. Soon, anyone wanting a non-systemd distro will have few choices.
91 • systemd, the hidden demon (by M. Fraenkel on 2015-03-31 03:54:25 GMT from Europe)
As stated before: like a bad virus - BUT: not only like - it is a bad virus!
And the habit of a virus is that it cannot stop itself - like an obsessed creature.
And that's the way systemd pushers are acting, radically and recklessly - leaving no choice for other opinions!
And that is NOT a UNIX manner. Hopefully some more can recognize and act!
92 • Linux fork (by deant on 2015-03-31 05:17:17 GMT from Europe)
I am realy exited about that. Actualy sistemd devs are doing what Linus should have done LONG TIME AGO. Dont get me wrong, Linus is a great guy, and we love him for actualy develop the Linux kernel from scratch. But he is a Temper Temper guy, and should step back and look at the kernel from a diferent point. Its not a fun college experiment anymore. Billions od devices run his kernel now, the things are getting serious and there is no turning back. I want Linux to be a real alternative to MS Win, not only in server space but in the Desktop too. For that you need a well sticked core of the sistem, whixh is not only the kernel, but the booting tools, core tools and maybe, just maybe in near future - the graphics interface. You cannot deny that, without a good integration of graphics interface, you cant get linux to be a 100% alternative of win or osx. My wish is Linus to think about that, and even support this new project, or even join in. Take care, Distrowatch and keep up the good work.
93 • @ 86 • systemd - the hidden demon by M. Fraenkel (by Alex on 2015-03-31 05:55:06 GMT from Europe)
> Anyway, I wish the Devuan project good luck and many, many followers. <
https://devuan.org/donate.html The guy(s) had earned ~ 6000 euros without doing anything yet; https://git.devuan.org/explore and nothing here: https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng.
Maybe, its good way to earn...
94 • Systemd is about politics (by Linux Apocalypsis on 2015-03-31 07:20:50 GMT from Europe)
Reading quickly through the Debian fora and mailing lists, one realises how naive developers are. Most think that they can stay neutral just by claiming this is just a technical discussion. But it is not.
It is clear that the system (not d) has succeed at producing very clever and (technically) literate individuals who are, however, unable to see the big picture and have no clue about the world we live in.
The fact is that, with Android, Linux has become too big and commercially relevant to let Linus Torvalds and a group of aficionados manage it. So corporations are currently fighting to take over. They might not be able to "own" the thing, but they can control it. It is a war of power not of init times.
They could, of course, just fork the kernel and give it a different name. The problem is that, that way, they would lose most of the unpaid developers and user base (beta testers).
So they have devised a strategy to swallow the whole thing. Now they have systemd in all major distros and, as soon as those distros had adopted the systemd package manager (and other stuff such as network administration, graphics integration, etc), there will be no way back. They will be trapped. Why? Because, as I have explained before, as systemd become the universal administrative layer in all major Linux system all corporate developers will profit from it and all the drivers and installers will rely on systemd.
Then, and only then, they will fork the kernel. Of course, a minority will struggle to stay free but most people will just adapt (or migrate to BSD). Free Linux will become a minority kernel in the next few years.
95 • Systemd (by Linux Lover on 2015-03-31 07:58:00 GMT from North America)
@94
+1
One dep to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
How could our smartest be so blind?
96 • Systemd (by denk_mal on 2015-03-31 08:13:12 GMT from Europe)
@95
-1
because fools day is TOMORROW, not today or yesterday
and:
could you *really* be sure that forking the kernel by the systemd dev would not happen?
I am really not surprised if they will doing this.
97 • SystemD (by Russ Whitaker on 2015-03-31 08:26:02 GMT from North America)
Carry systemd to its logical conclusion and everyone will have three choices:
a Mac, Microsoft, or systemd.
98 • systemd (by bubbke on 2015-03-31 08:59:16 GMT from Europe)
Sorry, but some comments look like medieval religious slogans to me :).
Despite all cons systemd has the same right to live as any other project. And by the way it is supported and accepted by many developers. I just can't understand why people are so agressive. Where is the problem?
Why no one is concerned about dozens of Ubuntu-like distributions? As for me they bring nothing to linux except "shiny new cute wallpapers", i.e. they are just consuming resources without producing anything at all.
99 • systemd and kernel (by jb on 2015-03-31 09:21:41 GMT from Europe)
@94
If that's indeed the game played, it is dangerous to GNU and Linux future.
What about GNU Hurd as an alternative ? Would shifting of emphasis on its development
help ?
With regard to Linux, GNU Hurd, and GNU tools - is is time to look for a new license
type that woud make sure that they really stay "free and open" as originally intended and
that unwanted interests (corporate or within open source development movement) do not
gain unwanted control over them and do not have say in forming a direction for them ?
Also, a new governance that would prevent hijacking a la systemd of software architecture
internals from occuring ?
100 • systemd, the hidden demon (by M. Fraenkel on 2015-03-31 13:39:55 GMT from Europe)
Guys, as stated before: Despite all cons systemd has the same right to live as any other project.
But is has no right in my view for example to kick out users trying to do a fresh sabayon linux install due to not having the newest nvidia graphic card in their pc's. And exactly that is what's happening. Surely there are ways to get around especially this problem, but where does that end?!
As if - medieval religious slogans!
And it has no right to force users into an unmanageable and weiry situation anyhow. However if it still does that, nobody should ask why linux has a hard stand against the alternatives.
By the way, MAC or Windows to me are NO alternatives, and BSD is far too tricky to configure for a beginning user.
101 • BSD and systemd fork (by bison on 2015-03-31 14:55:54 GMT from North America)
@87
I'm already hedging my bets and learning BSD. PC-BSD is a good place to start because it's easy to configure, but I really like DragonFly, even though I haven't got a completely working installation yet.
But I don't think it will come to the point where I switch completely switch over to BSD. I expect systemd really will fork the kernel someday. Redhat probably has the resources to maintain a fork, and we're getting closer to the point of irreconcilable differences on design goals, so I think it's inevitable. And not a bad thing, if done right.
102 • Systemd As An April Fools Joke (by 2damncommon on 2015-03-31 15:53:55 GMT from North America)
Well.....
How much of a joke is reporting something that is completely plausible.
Like:
BREAKING NEWS. ISIS has beheaded John Kerry!!!
103 • After tomorrow there will be a new saying in open source: (by Sander on 2015-03-31 16:25:52 GMT from Europe)
The old fashion way:
- "if you can't beat them, join them"
- "Don't rage quit the game!"
The new way:
- "if you can't contribute it, fork it"
- "Don't rage fork the project!"
104 • Ask a Leader - all four (by Tourbali on 2015-03-31 17:28:15 GMT from Europe)
Could the systemd project one day overtake the Linux kernel? And if so, would this be as bad as many of the comments suggest?
105 • April Fools! (by DaveMC on 2015-03-31 17:31:34 GMT from North America)
I have to agree that this April Fools joke is in poor taste. These things are not supposed to rub people the wrong way, but rather, they are supposed to be light hearted and fun pranks that are designed to make people laugh, not gasp in horror.
106 • Systemd (by Henry Martin on 2015-03-31 18:28:01 GMT from North America)
OK. We get it already. This is an April Fools joke.
But look, there really IS a debate about systemd (the daemon replacement for init etc) going on. I am not too pleased with the init tool. It feels like it makes things HARDER to do, not easier. I liked the ease and convenience of parsing out the log info I wanted using grep or even a short inline perl at the command line. Call me old fart, if you like, but I like the flexibility and simplicity of access to the information.
But that isn't to say I am against the idea. I just hope that at least some distros will continue to support the more conservative UNIX-style implementations, maybe forking the majors off -- of course, that creates yet more distros, but... alas, that has been the history of Linux forever hasn't it? So I don't see anything wrong with this.
I have started learning the journalctl tool. I find its options a bit limiting, and many times, I still have to filter its output to discover the info I need or want. But whatever. I'll be sticking with the older stuff. Maybe some folks here will push for alternative distros that accommodate us hardcore "fanatics" (not my words, just what I think they probably think).
107 • @ 106 • Systemd by Henry Martin (by Alex on 2015-03-31 19:10:43 GMT from Europe)
> OK. We get it already. This is an April Fools joke.
But look, there really IS a debate about systemd (the daemon replacement for init etc) going on. <
Actually, the joke was not about Systemd--maybe, that was the original idea--but, about forking the Linux kernel. Now, why should it be a joke? We think that Linux is something holy, and no one would ever think of forking it. But, why not?
If someone would really fork it, would that be a joke?
108 • Not impressed (by IJ on 2015-03-31 21:33:14 GMT from North America)
I bet the developers at Tails were delighted to have their distro reviewed this week. I'm not sure they garnered a single comment amongst all the systemd BS...
109 • Linux & systemd (by M.Z. on 2015-03-31 23:36:06 GMT from Planet Mars)
@94
I'm fairly certain Linux was already a force in the corporate server market long before Android came along, so no that didn't really change all that much. In fact if I remember right Android originally ran on a fork of the Linux kernel that was later merged back with the mainline kernel. All that changed was more direct contribution from Google & other Droid device makers & better support for ARM. Red Hat still has big money from corporate servers & still does more of the work than any other single company, although they only make a modest portion of Linux & need to keep it GPL.
I see the whole fork talk as proof positive that the GPL is doing the job intended & giving users the power to do whatever they want with GPL software, be that forking a project or dropping a software package like systemd. This init software really has no more power over Linux as a whole than Gnome did when it pushed that shell garbage on everyone. When Gnome 3 came out Ubuntu & Mint drop kicked the packages out of their default installation because it was bad for users, & the same can happen with systemd if there are too many problems. If you don't like systemd and want something else right now there are also other options like PCLinuxOS, which is a fairly nice desktop distro. Of course you can also look up lists of non-systemd distros if you want, & support those projects. The power of the GPL is that no one can take your GPL software away & close the source code, so if you don't like something in Linux you can support developers doing what you want & use a non-systemd distro or one with a systemd fork like uselessd. That's right systemd was already forked, which can happen when someone doesn't like your open source project. Rest assured, if you're using GPL software you have the right to the source code & can do whatever you want to it as long as you keep the same license. No worries, you are in charge of your computer with Linux, relax & have a happy April 1st.
110 • Hilarious comment from a forum... (by cykodrone on 2015-04-01 02:45:43 GMT from North America)
cjcox over at Phoronix said...
"Well... there's some misinformation here. While it's true that the kernel is not being forked it's because it's being obsoleted!
According to Uve Benhad, one of the key developers, systemd will become self-aware in less than one day."
Self-aware, too funny!
111 • Classic April Fools nerdism! Well Done. (SystemD) (by G.Wolfe Woodbury on 2015-04-01 05:18:16 GMT from North America)
Some of the best April Fools nerdy jokes have taken a bit of time to prepare and were no presented on exactly April 1. It also is classic in that it takes on the form of something that could be plausible. Check out Tom Limmoncelli's book about April 1 RFCs for a bit of history.
I have modified some of my opposition to systemD to the extent tat I grant it some niceness as a replacement init system, but it fails miserably in regards to being overreaching and requiring too many additional changes to use in combination with other system tools. Personally, I prefer the mathod OpenRC uses to extend the SysVinit system to enable run-time sequence calculation. [I haven't studied Upstart, so I don't have a valid opinion about it.]
Additionally, there are some massive personalty and philosophical differences between the systemD group and a more "traditional" interpretion of open source development.
112 • @109 Power balance (by Linux Apocalypsis on 2015-04-01 07:01:35 GMT from Europe)
Yes, you can fork whatever you please. And it will be irrelevant because noone will use your fork, no matter how much better it is as compared to the mainstream project. Why? Well, there are several reasons, but the most important one when it comes to hardware and software is: compatibility. We have seen this many times.
So, as stated previously, you are right, they cannot "own" the kernel, but they can control it. The whole thing is about swifting the equilibrium of powers. Now they co-manage and soon they will rule.
As for your first proposition: you cannot copare the server market and the mobile devices market. This is so evident that I will not waste my and your time explaining it. It is not organges and apples, it is oranges and asteroids...
113 • April Fools (by hobbitland on 2015-04-01 10:42:39 GMT from Europe)
The systemd kernel fork sounds like April Fools. I switch off during April Fools. Its all a waste of time. Never believe you read during these days.
Don't even think about making real announcements during April Fools. Oh, Mozilla released Firefox 37.0
114 • Debian without systemd (by zcatav on 2015-04-01 11:20:39 GMT from Europe)
Hi,
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_remove_systemd_from_a_Debian_jessie/sid_installation Is it possible so easy to run Debian without systemd?
or
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/kfreebsd-i386/iso-cd/ Is it an alternative?
115 • systemd (by woua on 2015-04-01 12:44:36 GMT from Europe)
R. Stallman himself, when asked for the systemd issue, said that he doesn't care since from an ethical point of view systemd is under GPL license it is free and that the issue is only a matter of convinience.
I couldn't agree more, Red hat is following a microsoft-like policy for her products. Very well let them do what they want. You don't like systemd...don't use it.
I don't.
It is all about freedom
116 • forking linux kernel (by sam on 2015-04-01 16:00:08 GMT from Africa)
Serious question appearing here, to those who understand more about the kernel please, has the linux kernel ever been forked? It is forkable (legally and technically)? If the answer to first question is no and the answer to the second yes, why hasn't anyone thought of forking it?
117 • @116 forking the Linux kernel (by Kazlu on 2015-04-01 16:18:21 GMT from Europe)
Like M.Z. said on comment #109, Android forked the Linux kernel and maintained it for a while before merging back its kernel with the main Linux kernel. Also, Ubuntu uses a parallel version of the kernel, but it may be nothing more that what #3 Henrique says, being every distro patches the kernel to some extent.
118 • @117 forking the Linux kernel by Kazlu (by Alex on 2015-04-01 17:59:11 GMT from Europe)
Android is a mobile OS based on the Linux kernel and currently developed by Google. The kernel used there had been so forked that it has to be re-forked to get Android working in x86 machines. Google also showed us that forking Linux kernel was so successful that there were over one billion active monthly Android users. Interestingly the kernel used in Android is 3.4 and 3.10, whereas we consider those kernels as old.
119 • Forking the kernel (by Linux Apocalypsis on 2015-04-01 18:50:55 GMT from Europe)
If patching the vanilla kernel accounts as "forking", then, yes, the kernel is continuously being forked. One of the most conspicuous patched kernels is Zen (see for instance the Liquorix project):
http://liquorix.net/
For a while, this kernel was considered to provide better desktop responsiveness and it became quite popular among gamers. However, the Phoronix benchmarks have demonstrated that a recent vanilla kernel provides better performance.
Regarding the Stallman resmarks, with all the due respect, Richard can afford using exclusively free software and therefore he does not need to care much about Linux kernel politics. He does not mind using a minority distro and, besides, the whole thing can be good to resurrect the Hurd.
However, those who need proprietary drivers, CUDA, Intel compilers, third-party installers and the like will soon become prisoners of systemd.
120 • systemd (by Coolsville on 2015-04-01 19:00:45 GMT from North America)
OK, you magnificent bastards, you got me. Its pathetic when you sneak up on a guy on March 30th. Wasn't even April 1st yet!!!! Have you no shame!?
But that's STILL how I feel about systemd. So There!
And get off my lawn.
121 • apples & asteroids (by M.Z. on 2015-04-02 03:24:50 GMT from Planet Mars)
@112
Yes severs & smart phones are very different & the companies behind Android have a very different agenda than Red Hat or SUSE; however, the fact remains that Linux isn't controlled by any one company. It is controlled in part by dozens of companies, but none has more than moderate influence. Last I heard no one company did even 20% of kernel development, & individual contributors actually did more than any one company. That may have changed, but Linux is still free & not truly under control of anyone. Point me to proof that someone is doing over 50% of kernel work & independent devs feel controlled & then I'll start to worry, most of the rest is speculation. Life is good & there remain plenty of good Linux distros with & without systemd, as well as a few BSD alternatives.
122 • @112, 121, power balance (by Kazlu on 2015-04-02 07:06:14 GMT from Europe)
#121 M.Z., I'm with you on this. Indeed, if too many people are pissed off, they can counter attack and take over. See the example of LibreOffice over OpenOffice. Of course if should be hard to counter attack big companies, but right now no one "controls" Linux, there are several independant companies that contribute. So, as long as Google has not bought them all, it will be difficult for a single company to control everything. And if it does, there will be enough pissed off people and companies to counter attack.
123 • @53 Ubuntu MATE (by Kazlu on 2015-04-02 07:11:07 GMT from Europe)
"2-docky over plank (plank has some advantages over docky,location of the dock-bar but docky has the elegance no dock-bar can bring)"
I don't see any dock, only MATE panels, are we talking about the same Ubuntu MATE?
[...]
"5-gedit over pluma"
That wouldn't make sense: pluma is part of MATE, gedit is part of GNOME. Pluma makes full use of libraries you already loaded by just using MATE, whereas using gedit will get you to install and load into RAM a big bunch of GNOME dependancies... This seems really ineffective as far as system resources are concerned. What does gedit bring that you can't find with pluma?
124 • @98 (by Kazlu on 2015-04-02 07:16:27 GMT from Europe)
First, the Linux kernel fork is highly probably an April fools joke. But you asked what was the problem with systemd. This question has already been answered, there are multiple answers here and in other places of the Interet. Some people are worried, for different reasons: division in the Linux world, centralization of projects leading to big companies controlling more of and more the code used for our systems, adoption by many distros of a tool that is still in motion and is demanding a lot of work to catch up every time, one big piece of software becoming a target for many more systems because of its ubiquity, etc. Some are really subjective points, others are less. Some consider the pros outweight the cons, some not. One way or another, this is a very big change, so that implies risks, so people get worried, so they get angry.
"Why no one is concerned about dozens of Ubuntu-like distributions? As for me they bring nothing to linux except "shiny new cute wallpapers", i.e. they are just consuming resources without producing anything at all."
It does not work like that. You cannot easily swap "resources" in the GNU/Linux world. People do what they want and what they are able to do. Do you think the guys that do those multiple Ubuntu respins are all able to work on the kernel? I don't :)
125 • @ 121 • apples & asteroids by M.Z. (by Alex on 2015-04-02 07:47:15 GMT from Europe)
>Yes severs & smart phones are very different & the companies behind Android have a very different agenda than Red Hat or SUSE; however, the fact remains that Linux isn't controlled by any one company. It is controlled in part by dozens of companies, but none has more than moderate influence.<
If more than 80% of the Linux developers are paid by the companies, how could we say this corporate influence as moderate? The companies may have different names, different director boards, but they usually have clubs, associations to meet up, discuss and take decisions over a drink.
126 • @97 systemd (by Thomas Mueller on 2015-04-02 11:32:43 GMT from North America)
"Carry systemd to its logical conclusion and everyone will have three choices:
a Mac, Microsoft, or systemd."
Don't forget FreeBSD and Haiku!
127 • "nothing except shiny cute wallpapers"... a reminder of what GUI stands for. (by frodopogo on 2015-04-02 19:51:11 GMT from North America)
@98
First of all, I'm curious as to which distros you mean. Mint?
I think your comment shows a bias I see fairly often in the Linux world.
People who are good at writing code often have a very poor grasp of esthetics.
And because they've learned at least one computer language and use it well, the concept of a GUI is somewhat foreign.... someone who codes is meeting the computer much more than halfway... the tendency is to assume that everyone can do that, and it should be obvious by now that they can't.
Linux systems have featured graphical user interfaces for a very long time now.
The whole point of a graphical user interface is accommodating the USER. It's an interface or connection between the machine and the user.
Users have esthetic preferences, they have a sense of taste. Apple gets this, that is much of the reason why they are so successful. If a graphical USER interface is functional but as ugly as can be (Like a lot of Soviet era architecture, perhaps) it fails to be an effective connection between the machine and the user... because the user is human, they have emotions, preferences, and an esthetic sense... well, in most cases! If the user interface is GRAPHICAL it means it can be SEEN, and people like to look at "pretty" a whole lot more than they like to look at "ugly". These more esthetically oriented distros should be a reminder to coders that esthetics DO matter when it comes to GUIs.
There is a problem with esthetics is that it's a BIG challenge to find something that will appeal to people all over the world. Apple manages to do it, but it's not easy. This is probably one of the reasons for these national respins- each culture tends to have a different esthetic sense. So.... of course code is important- but esthetics are too.
Wallpaper may seem trivial, but for a new computer user or a computer user new to an operating system, getting new wallpapers may not be nearly as obvious as it is to you and I. Therefore, having a set of visually appealing wallpapers preloaded with the operating system will help the new user enjoy it at the same time they are learning it. Eventually they will understand things well enough to download their own wallpapers, and it will seem trivial... but until that point, it's NOT.
The other reason for respins is of course language. If someone knows an operating system well, they could easily go in and change the default language to their own. But if someone is new to the operating system AND English isn't their native language, changing the default language is WAY more than you could rightly expect them to do. I had a neighbor whose native language is Spanish, and whose English is weak, despite years of working at it. But he had bought a Windows laptop, and wanted help. I did a search on Distrowatch, found Trisquel (based on Ubuntu), and he's as happy as can be with it, and all I had to do was show him how to use it ONCE. So I'm REALLY glad that this website provides information on projects in other languages.
Basically, if the interface is in the wrong language, if FAILS to interface the computer with that particular user. So it's not a trivial thing, either.
128 • Never said that (by M.Z. on 2015-04-02 21:21:47 GMT from Planet Mars)
@125
"If more than 80% of the Linux developers are paid by the companies, how could we say this corporate influence as moderate?"
The answer is simple, I never said that. The point is that no one company is in control, & what control there is over the kernel if offset both by the sheer volume of companies from all over the world, & of course the nature of the GPL license. The newer GPL 3 was actually designed in part to solve some problems that the free software foundation believed were happening with some copies of Linux, & if big problems occur I'd guess a new license would fix them too as long as there were real issues that Linus & the kernel devs thought needed fixing.
129 • ...a reminder of what GUI stands for (by bubbke on 2015-04-02 22:08:12 GMT from Europe)
@127
Actually it was a kind of a sick joke. Sorry if it sounded offensively to you.
130 • GUI (by Kragle on 2015-04-03 03:04:09 GMT from North America)
A GUI allows the user to focus on the task, rather than such distractions as spelling or syntax; a good GUI design includes methods for access to advanced options and procedures, sometimes in multiple layers.
Perhaps this could be a discussion launching topic for purveyors of "simplified-for-beginners" systems, giving fearless Leaders a chance to deny "dumbing-down", or at least imply plans for future enhancements.
131 • Off by a day or two (by bison on 2015-04-03 03:58:44 GMT from North America)
@111
> Some of the best April Fools nerdy jokes have taken a bit of time to prepare and were no presented on exactly April 1.
Right. There's Windows 95, for instance, which came out on August 24.
132 • GUI (by Angel on 2015-04-03 05:13:10 GMT from Asia)
@127 Excellent points! First thing I do after installing a distro is set it up to my taste. If I'm going to spend hours every day looking at it, I'd rather it look pleasant to me.
@130 Same! I can spell and I can type, I just can't seem to do both at the same time.:-) Using the command line is a chore, so I keep lists of commands that I may need so I can just cut and paste.
While I'm at it, a vote of appreciation to all who offer help online and take the time to make sure the needed commands can be pasted to the terminal. Makes life a lot easier.
133 • 'wallpaper distros' & such (by M.Z. on 2015-04-03 07:14:43 GMT from Planet Mars)
re # 128
Just to be clear, it is obvious that there is a fair amount of corporate interest given the number of Linux service providers; however, individual companies only have moderate influence over Linux as a whole.
@127
You make some fair points, but I also think #124 hit the nail on the head about all those random remakes. Some tinkerer has an itch they want to scratch & they decide to do a distro. Good for them, that's part of what the GPL is there for. Give users control & they will create something they find aesthetically pleasing, or easy to understand etc. If its here today & gone tomorrow then so be it. Of course some may use work in one little side project as a springboard into something bigger & get a cushy job at some big Linux service provider where they can really work on the guts of Linux & fix problems. That could be awesome too, it just depends on what the tinkerer wants out of their little distro & whether they want to go further after they try making something a bit different that is all their own. I think those little distros do a lot of good, even if they just scratch an itch for their creators.
134 • Kubuntu & Plasma 5 (by speedytux on 2015-04-03 11:35:11 GMT from Europe)
"Riddell claims Kubuntu will be the first Linux distribution to offer a stable release with the Plasma 5 desktop."
Archlinux announced the switch on january 26th 2015.
135 • @134 Kubuntu & Plasma 5 (by Kazlu on 2015-04-03 12:06:09 GMT from Europe)
The annoucement was subtle: it did not say "first Linux distribution to offer Plasma 5" but "first Linux distribution to offer a *stable release* with the Plasma 5 desktop." Arch Linux has no such things as "stable release", it rolls :)
I did non say anything when #57 Johan Borgstrøm mentionned Manjaro because, officially, Majaro does indeed "releases" of snapshots of its "stable" repositories, but that's borderline!
136 • GNU (by forlin on 2015-04-03 12:37:17 GMT from Europe)
Jesse, who wrote about GNU/Systemd, must be laughing like a Boss!!!
137 • @ 128 • Never said that by M.Z. (by Alex on 2015-04-03 13:18:09 GMT from Europe)
>"If more than 80% of the Linux developers are paid by the companies, how could we say this corporate influence as moderate?"
The answer is simple, I never said that. The point is that no one company is in control, & what control there is over the kernel if offset both by the sheer volume of companies from all over the world, & of course the nature of the GPL license. <
If you'd check the Linux Foundation report, you'd find out that more than 80% of the Linux kernel contributors are paid by companies, which means the corporate influence is very high to say the kernel is that free. I know that the corporate heads usually meet at clubs in the corporate world, so how can be say the corporate influence as moderate? No one does anything for free. Have you seen the "donate" icon in practically all distro web sites?
138 • @137 Linux contributors (by Kazlu on 2015-04-03 15:01:54 GMT from Europe)
What M.Z. said, or at least what I've understood, and I agree with it, is that among the companies that contribute to Linux, no one does more than 11%. So no single company is in control by far. Every company has to do with others. For now at least.
"I know that the corporate heads usually meet at clubs in the corporate world"
Yeah, sure. That's where they decide the fate of the world and the next time an eclipse occurs. I'm not saying there are no secret arrangements, but given the number of companies working on Linux and the and the fact that there is no company that has monopoly by far, it would be difficult to anyone to impose something alone. No one is powerful enough to decide alone of the future of Linux among those companies, thay have to compromise with others, which is good. And in the end, Linus Torvalds still has the last word, since he is the project leader... That's the man who has the power. I think we're pretty lucky for now, he might have a temper but he's a good guy for this role. I don't know what will come next...
139 • Linux vs Win & Mac (by M.Z. on 2015-04-03 19:42:56 GMT from Planet Mars)
I think this whole corporate influence thing boils down to on core problem with Linux when compared to Windows & Mac. For Win & Mac users monolithic corporate influence & control is a given & everyone can just just ignore it & go about their business in ignorant bliss; however, in Linux we are given the promise of user control via the GPL, & after being given such a powerful thing we have to invent conspiracies to give ourselves an excuse to be weary of the kind of corporate control we see lorded over other computer users. Everyone knows that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, & no one who uses Linux wants to be forced to use some bloated half thought out mess like Windows 8, so people naturally feel that anytime there is a problematic piece of software put into Linux distros it is an excuse to ring the alarm bells. Even if it isn't strictly necessary at least the bells act as a safety drill. Then comes the excessive amount of back & fourth comments about the topic, & we just keep going in circles.
The fact remains that all software vendors that use GPL software have opted in to a license that is explicitly designed to create control & rights for all users. Not only that but the GPL has stood the test of time & defeated numerous legal challenges while continuing to guarantee user rights. As # 138/Kazlu indicates, corporate collusion & control is unlikely given the diverse nature of the companies creating Linux all over the world, & those who create Linux have accepted that they are giving control to users. Not only do Linux makers accept user control, but they admit it to their users & use things like 'no vendor lock in' as proof of the long term value proposition of Linux. Perhaps it's because I'm in the US, but I don't think I've heard drug companies admit that they should work hard to provide value to customers because generic drugs exist & should remain available to all. Drug makers over here prefer to play games with patents that drag out their singular control over drugs for as long as possible. In the Linux world I think Red Hat vendors would admit that you can get a generic version of their OS from Debian of SUSE, and they would say that gives them a reason to work that much harder at customer service.
Corporate influence in Linux is very different than in other areas because if Red Hat tries to diminish the generic version of Linux by making some new features in their OS, they will still have to release all code under the GPL. This means even if they want to take control all of their changes will simply be released by customers because they understand the value proposition of the GP. Part the value of having other equally good version of Linux as another option. This is an example of how the GPL really forces everyone to cooperate openly in a way that is totally alien to most of the corporate world. It is a very radically different model of creating something, so people can be forgiven for suspecting that things are actually operating the same in Linux as they do in other parts of the corporate world. I don't like & trust Red Hat & most other Linux makers just because the people in change their seem to 'get it' or be nice or whatever, even though they do seem to get it. I actually dislike some o the stuff Red Hat has been the top contributor to like Gnome 3, but then the GPL came along & let Mint create something useful out of the Gnome 3 mess by making Cinnamon. A major reason I trust these companies is that I think even if someone bad takes over Red Hat or SUSE or any other top Linux contributor some version of the GPL will eventually reign in their worst tendencies & retain user control. I know the world in general is fairly screwed up at times, but I think things are far better here in Linux land than any of the pessimists would suspect, & this is due to the amazing degree of user control.
140 • Linux freedom. (by Kubelik on 2015-04-03 23:20:07 GMT from Europe)
@ 138 "... given the number of companies working on Linux and the and the fact that there is no company that has monopoly by far, it would be difficult to anyone to impose something alone."
@ 139 "Everyone knows that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom"
@ 139 "The fact remains that all software vendors that use GPL software have opted in to a license that is explicitly designed to create control & rights for all users."
@ 139 "I know the world in general is fairly screwed up at times, but I think things are far better here in Linux land than any of the pessimists would suspect, & this is due to the amazing degree of user control."
4 x Amen:)
141 • Global warming, the "Big One" (earthquake) in Calif. (by Jordan on 2015-04-04 00:06:04 GMT from North America)
Corporate take over of Linux.
This discussion today ... wow.
There is an elephant in the room and it has the appearance of inevitability.
142 • In keeping with April Fools'... (by cykodrone on 2015-04-04 16:33:31 GMT from North America)
systemd has been re-branded to 'systemDominator', they have also adopted a new motto, "vee vill rrrrrrool zee verld!". ;D
143 • Systemd-April Fools (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-04-05 01:22:56 GMT from North America)
Regardless of it may or not be an April Fools joke concerning forking systemd, fact is that the whole situation really spills out about "mistrust". We all thought Microsoft had a monopoly on that in it's entirety. Facts are there is a lot of mistrust, and uncertainty about Debian's future. Sure it will be around, but will not resemble what we thought it would become. I believe it's time to head over to BSD.
144 • @114 (by DJ on 2015-04-05 07:13:45 GMT from North America)
I have to agree with Stallman and I'm getting tired of the Religious bigotry of the anti-SystemD movement.
can't we just get along. - Rodney King
145 • Religious bigotry? (by cykodrone on 2015-04-05 14:39:05 GMT from North America)
@144 What does MS style corporate creep in the GNU Linux landscape have to do with religion? So I guess you are saying all political uprisings against different forms of oppression were fuelled by zealots too? You might be comfortable with having your choices and freedoms controlled or extinguished altogether by a single entity, I and many others are not.
You are missing the big picture, soon all DE and app developers with have to make their software compatible with systemd, eventually dropping any support for other inits. DEs and apps should be init agnostic, not drag in an UNWANTED init as a dependency. Also, an init should not take almost total control of your system, it creates a huge attack surface. People are already finding flaws and security weaknesses, if you have a good search engine, you can see for yourself, I've already watched some interesting videos of people breaching systemd. It's already a joke, and not just during April Fools'.
146 • init (by M.Z. on 2015-04-05 21:27:16 GMT from Planet Mars)
@143
The systemd topic has been called 'Humour' for several days, so there really is no question of if it is or isn't anything. As for BSD, well I like to use it as a firewall but there really isn't good enough hardware support for a PC system from what I've seen. Also the GPL does a lot more to protect your rights as a user, so an evil takeover is probably a bit less likely in Linux. Of course there are also plenty of Linux distros without systemd & I feel confident that there will be for some time to come. I seriously doubt most DEs will have an absolute requirement for systemd, & if any do you can just change to another DE.
@145
I agree that it isn't really religious, this whole thing seems more like a conspiracy theory. The only difference is that instead of talking about who shot JFK or the evil left wing climate conspiracy everyone in Linux is talking about a piece of init software and how a few programs have tied in too closely with it. It really isn't the end of the free software world, at most its more like a few folks moving into some set camp of systemd using software. This could have some negative implications, but then again a fair amount of Linux desktop software like Firefox & LibreOffice also run on Windows & Mac, which will never use systemd. This ensures that systemd requirements aren't likely to be absolute for most desktop Linux software. Like most conspiracy theories the systemd one doesn't seem to match the hype; however, people just love to talk conspiracies, so the discussion will keep going in circles forever regardless of the reality.
147 • @145 • Religious bigotry? (by mandog on 2015-04-05 21:50:17 GMT from South America)
I think you really need to take a good look at what you have written over the last few months SystemD is not going to take over the world Linux is not going to crumble because of systemD, so you don't like it so what use something else systemD will not miss you nor will systemD users,
Learn Gentoo/slackware or go back to Windows its free for 12 months then come back and complain about SystemD and by the way Ms has contributed to the linux kernel in 2010 I think they contributed 3.5 million lines of code so if there are any back doors in Linux they were added then?
Number of Comments: 147
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| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
OSMC
OSMC (formerly Raspbmc) is a Debian-based minimal Linux distribution that brings the Kodi media centre software to a Raspberry Pi, Apple TV and Vero devices. This device has an excellent form factor and enough power to handle media playback, making it an ideal component in a low-cost HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer) setup, yet delivering the same Kodi experience that can be enjoyed on much more costly platforms.
Status: Active
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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