 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 619, 20 July 2015 |
Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Open source software is more than just aproduct, there is also an entire community which exists around free and open source software. A community which involves collaboration, competition, licensing and communication. This week we talk about the software, debates, community guidelines, licensing and collaboration which, when mixed together, form the open source community. We begin with a review of the SolydXK distribution. SolydXK originally began as a community spin of the Linux Mint distribution, but has since grown into its own project. Read our Feature Story to learn more about this user friendly distribution. In our News section we talk about Tanglu's new issue tracker and Ubuntu's push to adopt version 5 of the GNU Compiler Collection. We also discuss the licensing debate Ubuntu's parent company, Canonical, is having with the Free Software Foundation. Plus we share information on the FreeBSD project's new Code of Conduct, talk about Haiku's new init software and report on openSUSE's latest test builds of openSUSE Leap. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about security and politics, then we share the torrent we are seeding in our Torrent Corner. As usual, we provide a list of the distributions released last week and ask you to chime in with your two cents in our Opinion Poll. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
A solid experience with SolydXK 201506
SolydXK is a desktop distribution based on Debian's Stable branch. SolydXK originally began as an unofficial spin of the Linux Mint project, but has since grown into its own distribution with its own repositories. SolydXK is available in two editions, Xfce and KDE. While both editions strive to offer complete desktop solutions out of the box, the Xfce edition offers a faster, more resource friendly approach. The KDE edition provides more features and configuration options. At the time of writing, both editions of SolydXK appear to be offered as 64-bit x86 builds exclusively. I decided to try the project's Xfce edition (SolydX) and found the distribution's ISO was 1.4GB in size.
Booting from SolydX's live media presents us with the Xfce desktop. The wallpaper displays SolydX's branding. On the desktop we find icons for launching the system installer and opening the distribution's file manager. At the bottom of the screen we see an application menu, task switcher and system tray. The application menu has a layout similar to recent versions of Windows or KDE. The menu is compact, arranged into two panes, one displaying categories of software and the other showing us individual program launchers.
Starting SolydX's graphical system installer brings up a series of screens that ask us to select our preferred language from a list, pick our time zone from a map of the world and confirm our keyboard's layout. As often happens these days, I found SolydX assumed my keyboard had a French layout rather than its actual standard US arrangement. The next screen of the installer gets us to create a user account for ourselves and protect our new account with a password. We are next shown the installer's partition manager where we can assign file systems and mount points to existing partitions. Should we wish to add or destroy partitions on our disk we can click a button labelled "Edit Partitions". This button launches the GParted partition manager, a graphical utility which makes it quite easy to manipulate disk partitions. Once we have arranged our disk the way we want it, we are asked if the installer should place the GRUB boot loader on our hard disk. The following screen asks if we would like to install third-party multimedia support such as media codecs. Finally, we are shown a confirmation screen that lists our choices and the installer waits for us to give it permission to proceed. Once the installer finishes copying its files to our hard drive, it offers to reboot our computer. I think SolydX uses a slightly modified version of Linux Mint Debian Edition's system installer and I like its approach. The installer works quickly and clearly presents our options.
SolydXK 201506 -- The welcome screen
(full image size: 302kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Booting our new copy of SolydX brings up a graphical login screen. From here we can sign into our user account. Upon signing in for the first time a welcome screen appears. This screen shows us links to support forums and SoldyXK's social media pages and there is a Donate button for those who wish to support the project. The welcome screen includes a number of additional pages we can browse through which display information about popular desktop applications. At the bottom of the welcome screen there is an Install button. Clicking the Install button causes all applications currently listed on the welcome screen to be installed on our system. I appreciate the welcome screen's style and the way it offers new users easy access to additional software. I did find it odd that the welcome screen does not display information in our preferred language, instead displaying its text in what appears to be a Spanish dialect.
With the welcome screen dismissed we find ourselves in the Xfce desktop environment. The desktop is fairly quiet and empty. A few minutes after logging in I noticed an icon in the system tray which indicated software updates were available in the distribution's repositories. Clicking this icon presents us with two buttons. The first button, labelled "quick update", will cause all available updates to be quietly installed in the background. Clicking the second button opens the project's update manager. The update manager shows us a list of packages it can upgrade. Each package is displayed with its current (installed) version number and the version number of the new package in the project's repositories. We cannot select which items we want to download, the update manager offers us an "all or nothing" approach to updating software packages. The first day I was running SolydX there were 21 new packages available, totalling 17MB in size. Each of these items downloaded and installed without any problems. Digging through the update manager's configuration I found we can change how frequently the system checks for updates. We can also lock or "blacklist" specific packages to avoid having them upgraded.
SolydX provides users with a graphical software manager. This appears to be the same software manager which ships with Linux Mint. The software manager divides applications into categories that are represented by large icons. We can browse through categories and click on items to see a detailed description of the software and an accompanying screen shot. From the application's description page we can click a button to queue the software for installation or removal. We can continue browsing through the available software while packages are installed or removed in the background. SolydX's software manager allows us to search for applications too and will return search results for both desktop and command line programs.
SolydXK 201506 -- The Software Manager
(full image size: 164kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Should we wish to take a different approach to managing software on our computer we can turn to the Synaptic package manager. Synaptic has a less colourful interface and lists individual packages in a plain list format. Synaptic allows us to install, remove or upgrade specific packages and works quite quickly. I found SolydX pulls software from its own repositories as well as Debian's Stable ("Jessie") repositories. In total, the software manager reports there are just over 67,600 packages available for us in the repositories.
While there are plenty of packages in SolydX's repositories, there are also lots of useful applications installed for us right from the start. Looking through the application menu we find Firefox's extended support release (ESR) with Flash enabled. The Thunderbird e-mail client is available along with a remote desktop client and VNC server. The Transmission bittorrent software is available along with the LibreOffice productivity suite. SolydX ships with a document viewer, the Orage calendar application and an image viewer. The distribution also provides the VLC multimedia player, the Xfburn disc burning software and a full range of media codecs. The application menu further offers us a bulk file renaming utility, the Clam anti-virus software and the luckyBackup utility. The WINE and PlayOnLinux packages are installed, making it easier to set up and run Windows programs. SolydX ships with the Thunar file manager, an archive manager, a text editor and calculator. There are a number of system configuration programs available, including a printer manager, a service manager, a firewall configuration utility and a device driver manager for installing third-party hardware drivers. SolydX ships with Network Manager to help us get on-line, Java and the GNU Compiler Collection. Desktop settings can be adjusted through the distribution's control centre which also gives us the ability to create and modify user accounts. In the background we find SolydX runs the Exim mail service and version 3.16 of the Linux kernel.
SolydXK 201506 -- The settings panel
(full image size: 219kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
SolydX is one of those distributions where things tend to work smoothly and quickly enough that I do not think about the operating system. Once I adjusted to the new theme and became used a style of application menu that was different from the one I was using last week, I had a blissfully pleasant experience. At least my day to day activities went smoothly, but there were a few small problems which popped up during my week with SolydX. Perhaps the most obvious issue concerned window borders. The default theme SolydX uses has pixel-thin window borders, making it virtually impossible to resize a window by dragging its edges. This can be worked around, but it is an unpleasant default.
Another issue I ran into came about while I was trying to use the service manager, Systemadm. The Systemadm program acts as a graphical front-end to systemd. Through Systemadm we can view which background services are running and which are not. We can also sort services by status and by name. Though Systemadm displays buttons for starting/stopping/restarting services, these buttons do not work by default since Systemadm does not run (or prompted for) administrator credentials. We can run Systemadm from the command line, prefixing it with "sudo" to gain admin access. In that case we can start/stop services, but the window does not refresh automatically, we must manually refresh the window in order to see if our command has been carried out. A further problem I noticed was our changes do not last. While we can start/stop a service temporarily, there is no way to enable/disable a service permanently and our changes will be undone when the computer reboots. Long-term solutions require a trip to the command line and dealing with systemd directly.
I like the simple firewall utility SolydX provides. It worked quite well for me. I did find it odd that the firewall leaves port 22 (the default secure shell port) open though the distribution does not run a secure shell service. I'm not sure if this was an oversight or a featured offered as a convenience for people who wish to enable OpenSSH.
The luckyBackup utility was a feature I quite liked. The luckyBackup program makes it easy to create backup tasks and store archives of our files or synchronize our files across directories. I found it took me a while to get used to luckyBackup's interface, but the application provides tool tips for virtually everything, which greatly reduces a new user's learning curve.
SolydXK 201506 -- The luckyBackup utility
(full image size: 136kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I tried running SolydX in two test environments. When running in VirtualBox, the distribution performed quickly. SolydX automatically integrates with VirtualBox and allows for full screen resolution without any configuration from the user. When running on a physical desktop computer, SolydX worked very well. My screen was set to its maximum resolution, networking and sound worked out of the box and the distribution performed tasks quickly. In both environments the Xfce desktop was very responsive. I found SolydX, while logged into Xfce, used approximately 250MB of memory.
Conclusions
I enjoyed my time with SolydX. Though I haven't used Xfce much in recent months, I found the transition to the Xfce desktop environment went smoothly. SolydX ships with a lot of useful software and makes it easy to access Debian's massive repositories of software packages. All of my hardware was properly detected, the distribution integrates with VirtualBox and applications tended to work without surprises or mishaps.
One thing I appreciate about SolydXK is the distribution fills a niche that I feel needed to be explored. I have been using Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) quite a bit recently and I like it a lot. However, the Mint project offers just MATE and Cinnamon editions of LMDE. The Mint developers have decided not to ship KDE and Xfce editions, at least up to this point. SolydXK is quite similar to Mint in the technology and packages shipped and offers users these missing editions. As someone who likes to explore different desktop environments, I feel SolydXK picks up where LMDE left off.
I found SolydX to be very easy to install, the distribution offers good performance, I encountered very few problems and I generally found SolydX provided everything I wanted. People who would like to have modern conveniences, a powerful desktop environment and access to a lot of applications will appreciate what SolydX has to offer.
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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) |
Tanglu opens new bug tracker, Ubuntu migrates to GCC 5, FSF works with Canonical to resolve licensing issues, FreeBSD introduces their Code of Conduct, Haiku unveils a new init system and openSUSE tests Leap 42
People who use Tanglu, especially those who report issues, may be interested to know that the project has set up a new issue tracker. The new tracker, which is located at tracker.tanglu.org should help the project scale in size. At this time, all existing issues have been migrated to the new service, but user accounts have not. If you want to keep up with what Tanglu is doing, the developers recommend signing up for an account on the new tracker. Matthias Klumpp announced the new bug tracker and provided more details: "All tickets have been migrated from the previous bug tracker. Users, however, have not been migrated. This was partly to simplify the migration, but it also allowed us to get rid of several inactive users, which we migrated from the previous MoinMoin user database to
Trac to Redmine. This means, you have to re-register and adopt the bugs you have reported! We have done a fair amount of work on the bugs themselves too, so maybe the bug you care about has been fixed meanwhile or has a new comment."
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Last week we mentioned the Debian distribution will be migrating to version 5 of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), a change which will require a lot of work to make sure the migration goes smoothly. The Ubuntu developers announced last week that the next version of Ubuntu will also feature GCC 5. Matthias Klose posted to the Ubuntu development mailing list: "GCC 5 will be the default compiler for the wily release, and it's time to prepare the change of the default in wily, so that we don't have to do it during the next release cycle before the next LTS release. This time things are a bit more complicated, we basically need to rebuild all C++ packages using g++ 5, and we are not able to fall back to a newer compiler. For some C++11 language requirements, changes on some core C++ classes are needed, resulting in an ABI change. As the benefit, stable and complete C++11 standard support is provided by GCC 5. Details of the transition plan are documented in the Debian wiki, and I'm trying to get this transition going in Debian at the same time, however if it's delayed there, we'll need to go ahead to be able to finish the transition before the wily release."
In other Ubuntu-related news, the Free Software Foundation announced last week that the organization, after two years of negotiation with Ubuntu's parent organization, Canonical, is pleased to announce Canonical has updated their licensing information. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) wrote, "In July 2013, the FSF, after receiving numerous complaints from the free software community, brought serious problems with the policy to Canonical's attention. Since then, on behalf of the FSF, the GNU Project, and a coalition of other concerned free software activists, we have engaged in many conversations with Canonical's management and legal team proposing and analyzing significant revisions of the overall text. We have worked closely throughout this process with the Software Freedom Conservancy, who provides their expert analysis in a statement published today. While the FSF acknowledges that the first update emerging from that process solves the most pressing issue with the policy -- its interference with users' rights under the GNU GPL and potentially other copyleft licenses covering individual works within Ubuntu -- the policy remains problematic in ways that prevent us from endorsing it as a model for others. The FSF will continue to provide feedback to Canonical in the days ahead, and urge them to make additional changes." Concerns over vague or problematic licensing were also at the heart of the conflict between Kubuntu's Johnathan Riddel and the Ubuntu Community Council which came to a head last month.
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The FreeBSD project is trying to make sure its members are treated with civility and respect, making the project a nicer (virtual) place to work. The project has published a Code of Conduct it expects contributors to follow. In short, the Code of Conduct can be summed up as, "Keep it civil. Be tolerant. Remember that you are in public and that your actions determine the public perception of the project. Do not make it personal. Do not take it personally." Not everyone is thrilled with the new policy.
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The Haiku operating system, a modern version of BeOS, will soon be getting a new init process. In a blog post, Axel Dörfler explains the reason for the change: "Since some time, I am working on a replacement of our current shell script based boot process to something more flexible, a similar solution to Apple's launchd, and Linux's systemd. While there is still a lot to do, it's now feature complete in terms of being able to completely reproduce the current boot process. Since the switch to our package manager, there was no longer a way to influence the boot process at all. The only file you could change was the UserBootscript which is started only after Tracker and Deskbar; the whole system is already up at this point. The launch_daemon gives the power back to you, but also allow software you install to automatically be started on system boot as well. You can also even prevent system components from being started at all if you so wish. Furthermore, it allows for event based application start, start on demand, a multi-threaded boot process, and even enables you to talk to servers before they actually started." Though the new init software is in its early stages, it has been functional in tests. The blog post goes on to discuss Haiku's boot process and features which will be implemented in the future.
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Last week we shared an introduction to Leap, the upcoming edition of openSUSE. The openSUSE project has begun testing the software which will become Leap 42. "Developing Leap 42.1 is happening quickly and it was announced yesterday that the milestone was being built. The first milestone will hopefully be released this week. Leap is going through its testing and the importance of openQA (Quality Assurance) in this development process can not be understated. openQA is used for testing an operating system, finding and filing bugs and provides fully automated testing to ensure a distribution works correctly with clean functionality." The openSUSE blog goes on to discuss the openQA testing software and how to acquire an experimental test build of Leap 42.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Finding a secure distribution
Seeking-security asks: Is there any app that tests (or site that rates) security or hacking issues of various newly listed distros before they are downloaded?
I keep hearing "Don't download Deepin" or "Don't download ROSA", but I think I read you yourself mentioned upon-a-time that any distro could be viewed as equally "trustworthy" or "untrustworthy". Your revisiting this in the Q&A column would be greatly appreciated.
DistroWatch answers: I do not think there is any application or website that can effectively evaluate how safe a distribution is to use prior to downloading the distribution's ISO. There are a few reasons for this. One is that security is not a static situation, good security is an ongoing process. A person needs to look at more than just which security vulnerabilities might exist on the ISO. We also need to consider how the distribution will handle new security flaws as they appear. Another reason it is hard to evaluate security, especially in any automated fashion, is there are a lot of factors to examine and different people have different priorities.
When security is a concern we need to look at how quickly security issues are patched, if it is easy for users and developers to submit security warnings and patches, whether a distribution ships with good default configurations, if there are fine-grained access controls like AppArmor or SELinux in place, if a distribution patches its own packages or only pulls in new software from upstream. The list goes on and we might consider the characteristics of a distribution differently depending on its role. A home desktop machine has different security needs than a business's web server.
When security is a priority, my suggestion is not to look for an automated answer. Instead, take some time to look at how quickly a distribution reacts to security flaws. Check to see if the distribution has a security advisory mailing list. Ask if the project patches its own packages or if it relies on upstream projects to provide fixes. The answers to these questions will give a pretty good indication of how the distribution approaches security.
Also keep in mind that security is as much the administrator's responsibility as it is the distribution's. Even the best distribution can be compromised if the system administrator improperly configures a service or leaves ports open that should be protected by a firewall. A distribution with good default settings is nice for security, an administrator who is aware of potential risks and how to avoid them is even better.
In the past DistroWatch has tried to shed some light on security practises of various distributions. Though these articles may now be out of date, they showed (at the time) which distributions were proactive when it came to security. This article from 2007 shows which projects, at the time, had security mailing lists and bug trackers for keeping tabs on vulnerabilities. Another article from 2008 showed which projects were fastest when it came to patching known flaws. While some of the information in these editorials may be dated, they give an idea of where to start looking when it comes to distribution security.
Regarding the second half of the question, I'd like to address the comment about distributions all being equally trustworthy or untrustworthy. I do not think I have made such a claim, or at least never intended to do so. What I have said in the past is that people tend to have knee-jerk reactions to software distributed from certain locations. I sometimes hear people in North America express distrust for software distributed by Chinese or Russian organizations. People from Europe and Australia have sometimes told me they avoid software distributed from the United States.
I am of the opinion that these concerns are based on xenophobia and rumour rather than evidence. Open source programs, like the GNU utilities, compilers and the Linux kernel, are developed by coders from all around the world. Open source software does not recognize national boundaries. Anyone from anywhere could conceivably compromise any open source project, given enough patience and skill. The final distribution point of a piece of open source software is relatively unimportant in determining its security since the software could be accessed and modified from anywhere in the world prior to its final distribution point.
This globalization of open source means where software comes from is a nebulous idea. However, it does not mean all projects are equally trustworthy. Some projects take security very seriously, others do not. Some actively audit their code, others do not. Some lead developers will commit patches without examining them closely while other projects require peer review of code.
My point is, we should look at a project's security practises and track record and turn to independent code review in order to judge whether software is secure or not. Questions surrounding security and trustworthiness should be resolved by evidence. We should avoid making decisions about security based on unsupported claims.
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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 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. 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.
Update: One of our readers pointed out a problem with the Android-x86 torrent we are seeding this week. Some of the data in the torrent was corrupted and therefore the resulting ISO was no good. We have removed the old torrent file and replaced it with a working one.
If you downloaded the Android-x86 torrent on Monday, please delete it and replace it with the file we are currently serving.
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: 86
- Total downloads completed: 45,513
- Total data uploaded: 8.8TB
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| Released Last Week |
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP4
Yesterday SUSE announced the availability of the fourth service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 "Desktop" and "Server" editions, a set of commercial enterprise-class Linux distributions: "SUSE has made it easier for customers to take advantage of the processing power and innovations of the latest hardware with the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 4. In addition, scalability improvements in SP4 will allow more customers to run large-scale workloads such as in-memory databases on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. SP4 also upgrades key components in the high availability clustering stack - including pacemaker, booth and ReaR - to the same versions in SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 12. These upgrades allow customers to fully exploit the stack to enhance service availability for mission-critical workloads. SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension, a system specifically engineered to reduce latency and increase the predictability and reliability of time-sensitive, mission-critical applications, is also upgraded." Read the rest of the release announcement and check out the detailed released notes (desktop, server) for further information. The products, supporting five hardware architectures, are available for download for evaluation lasting up to 60 days.
Chromixium OS 1.5
Chromixium OS 1.5, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that attempts to recreate the look and feel of Chrome OS while providing a complete Linux system, has been released: "I am very proud to announce that the first major update to Chromixium is ready for download. This release marked 1.5 is the first stable release to ship with the standard Ubuntu installer. This is the first major update to the 32-bit edition of Chromixium since 1.0 was released. This release brings a raft of improvements: now using the standard Ubuntu (Ubiquity) installer with better language support, hardware detection and support for encrypted home and LVM; rolls up service pack 1 and all upstream updates (including latest Flash and Chromium updates) into a new ISO image; updated X.org, but Linux kernel remains on long-term support 3.13; faster right-click applications menu generation; inclusion of Cardapio menu for a standard dockable menu (find it in the control panel and drag it to the dock)...." See the release announcement for a complete list of changes and screenshot of the default desktop.
Chromixium OS 1.5 -- Running the default desktop
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Android-x86 4.4-r3
Chih-Wei Huang has announced the release of Android-x86 4.4-r3, the latest update from the project that builds an unofficial port of Google's Android mobile operating system for Intel and AMD x86 processors: "The Android-x86.org is glad to announce the 4.4-r3 release to the public. This is the third stable release Android-x86 4.4 (kitkat-x86). The 4.4-r3 release is based on the Android 4.4.4_r2.0.1 (KTU84Q) release. We have fixed and added x86-specific code to let the system run smoothly on x86 platforms, especially on tablets and netbooks. There are a lot of improvements since the 4.4-r2 release including: upgrade the kernel to 4.0.8 with more drivers enabled to support modern hardware, Baytrail platform is well supported; replace Bluedroid by the Bluez stack, Bluetooth is more stable and usable, be able to install image and grub2-efi to GPT partitioned disks; add a new HAL sensor to support iio style sensors; update Mesa to 10.5.9, enable hardware acceleration for NVIDIA chips (nouveau) and VMware (vmwgfx)...." Read the detailed release notes for more information and known issues.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Code of Conduct
Last week the FreeBSD project introduced its new Code of Conduct, a document designed to protect its contributors and community members from harassment and hate speech. This follows the Linux kernel getting its own Code of Conflict earlier this year. Most major Linux distributions, including openSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora, have similar documents.
Our question this week is: Do you think these Code of Conduct documents make any difference in the communities which adopt them? Most people agree with the principles outlined in the documents, but there is often doubt about how (or even if) the rules are enforced. Many believe the formal documents should not be necessary, but few could claim they are not needed. Please chime in with your thoughts in the comments section.
You can see the results of last week's poll on systemd usage here.
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Code of Conduct
| These documents have a positive effect: | 244 (37%) |
| These documents have a negative effect: | 66 (10%) |
| These documents do not have any effect: | 143 (22%) |
| These documents have some good and bad effects: | 181 (28%) |
| Other: | 24 (4%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Distributions added to waiting list
- GoBang Linux. GoBang is a light and fast operating system based on Ubuntu repositories. The default environment is built on the Openbox window manager.
- ClefAgreg. ClefAgreg is a French live USB key dedicated to maths/sciences. It is based on Debian GNU/Linux.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 27 July 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 • FreeBSD Code of Conduct (by Chris on 2015-07-20 01:17:37 GMT from Oceania)
Apart from a sneaky chuckle or two, this weeks FreeBSD mud slinging contest that has appeared in my inbox is just plain petty and immature.
I love FreeBSD and use it every day but this isn't high school guys. Let's all act like the adults we are and keep it professional.
All the name-calling and dummy spitting is just damaging the FreeBSD community and its perception by other users.
2 • Android-x86 (by Carlos Felipe on 2015-07-20 02:34:14 GMT from South America)
the older version was better, I used since r1 and now I cant do dual boot anymore. Some reason Windows is corrupted.
3 • Carlos, you could try... (by jonathon on 2015-07-20 03:00:19 GMT from Oceania)
Hello Carlos, hopefully windows is just fine and it's only your grub configuration that's causing your boot to fail. You could try a grub2 boot disk, like
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/
last time I updated my version it was about 7MB, burn the little ISO to a CDROM and it should find any previous grub configs and or installed operating systems.
Not every entry found may boot, but one usually does. Good luck
4 • Open Source (by Bill S. on 2015-07-20 03:28:40 GMT from Planet Mars)
"Open source software does not recognize national boundaries." - Here here!
And thank God for that. Long live Open Source without boundaries!
5 • Valid security concerns about small distros (by Billy Larlad on 2015-07-20 04:20:51 GMT from North America)
I agree that, if somebody is raising security concerns only about Russian and Chinese distros, then xenophobia may be at play.
But on the other hand, I wouldn't trust at all some of these distros that just pop up out of nowhere, with very small communities and somewhat mysterious developers. These _are_ untrustworthy in the sense that they haven't given me a reason to trust them. At least things like Debian and OpenBSD have open development methods, large communities, long track records, and fairly obvious reasons for existing.
6 • Code of Conduct (by Thom on 2015-07-20 04:28:47 GMT from Europe)
With freedom of speech should come responsibility of speech. That this it not so can be seen on far too many discussion fora, where people think the ability to post is a license to just rant, hurt, or abuse fellow posters.
Technology enables people in previously unheard of ways, but unfortunately does not improve social skills to a comparable degree.
It is a sad but true fact, that rules must be set to ensure rational and sensible on-line exchanges, but what is perhaps even sadder is the society-wide need for common CoCs to improve our social mores.
7 • FreeBSD code of conduct and Haiku (by Will B on 2015-07-20 05:46:07 GMT from North America)
[ @5 ]: "if somebody is raising security concerns only about Russian and Chinese distros, then xenophobia may be at play."
- - -
In my opinion, I feel your conclusion is inaccurate. Some countries have a much worse reputation than others when it comes to originating computer attacks on others. I am not speaking without proof -- my server logs are overfilled with repeated attacks from certain countries across the globe while I might get one or two attacks that appear to originate within my own country. I'm not making this up, and I am not racist nor am I xenophobic. At this point, no government, including my own, is innocent or trustworthy.
I personally would rather stick with a distro that I know is developed in a relatively 'safe' country without any kind of ulterior motive. So maybe Ireland, Australia or New Zealand? :-)
[ Haiku ]
I am surprised Haiku is still actively developed! I visited the site the other day and I haven't seen a new stable release for quite a long time. I recently tried a development snapshot, and it would not boot on my hardware. It works fairly well on VirtualBox, though.
For many years I wanted to use BeOS, then later Haiku, but there just aren't enough good apps to justify using it full time. If I could get up-to-date versions of Thunderbird, Firefox, Pidgin, VirtualBox, Python-Gtk2, Gtk-VNC, VPNC and others on Haiku, I'd probably be using it in a heartbeat. :-D
[ FreeBSD Code of Conduct ]
I think any well-written and fair Code of Conduct is a good thing, but there will always be people who think being courteous or considerate of others' feelings is being weak or 'PC'. I dislike being 'Politically Correct' myself, but I *do* like being treated fairly with people being honest with me, as long as they don't belittle me or bash me over the head with it. Some cultures and citizens of certain countries have a hard time grasping courteous and friendly communication, so having publicly available guidelines on behavior expectations can help them get up to speed. "Politically Correct" is just silliness, but being courteous and understanding is golden, no matter what field we're talking about.
8 • Xenophobia (by linuxista on 2015-07-20 06:10:30 GMT from North America)
>>I am of the opinion that these concerns are based on xenophobia and rumour rather than evidence.
Thanks, Jesse. You hit the nail on the head. If I were Russian or Chinese and/or living in those countries I might be wary of backdoors in, say, Rosa or Deepin. But as an average citizeo of the West it would be a form of paranoia to think that the FSB or Chinese intelligence have any sort of interest in my activities.
On the other hand, the NSA and GHCQ have proven records of massive data collection against their own citizens, forcing the insertion of backdoors, global spying and general malfeasance. I'm afraid we're peering out for distant threats when the boogeyman is already under our beds.
9 • pole suggestion (by poleclimber on 2015-07-20 06:13:02 GMT from Oceania)
Pole suggestion: what project have you / are you contributing your skills to?
* Linux OS
* Alternative OS
* Linux apps
* Android apps
* Windows apps
* Mac apps
* Malware apps
It would be interesting to know where most of the interest is.
10 • SolydX window borders (by Bill Chivers on 2015-07-20 07:30:41 GMT from Oceania)
"Perhaps the most obvious issue concerned window borders. The default theme SolydX uses has pixel-thin window borders, making it virtually impossible to resize a window by dragging its edges."
In XFCE and LXDE (and perhaps others) you do not need to find the window border. Hold Alt and the left mouse button - dragging moves the window, the right mouse button re-sizes it. Much easier!
11 • XenoLinux ??? (by AT on 2015-07-20 08:45:40 GMT from Europe)
Well said Jesse. Are we all forgetting that a Finish person wrote the very first Linux code? It is not the distro that is bad, its the people who thinks like that.
If a project started in US has poor security, and allow itself to be penetrated or hacked, it would be because of bad security practices and implementations. However, when a distro from China or Russia has the same security loopholes, somehow it was all intentional and a secret plan by their Intelligence organizations. *facepalm*
US, at least should not spread xenophobia under the banner of security concerns (especially after the whole Snowden revelations).
12 • SystemRescueCD (by LAZA on 2015-07-20 08:50:36 GMT from Europe)
SystemRescueCD released also a minor bug-fix release 4.5.4 at July 13th.
Still one (or THE?) of the best LInux systems to resolve hardware problems and recover lost data/drives
13 • SolydXK Welcome Screen (by Eduard on 2015-07-20 10:05:13 GMT from Europe)
Yes, I have been using SolydXK (stable) from 2013 onwards and this has been a really solid and reliable distro for me. The last issue is even better than before. usually I use the KDE desktop (SolydK), but recently installed the Xfce flavour (SolydX) on a laptop and loving it. It is not as light as MX-14 (Wheezy based), but fits very well even in older laptops.
I could not notice the wrong language in the welcome screen, because being one of the about ten million speakers of this language, Catalan. And it is NOT a dialect of Spanish, it is a Romanesque language like French or Italian, with roots on the X century, so it is so old (or older) than Spanish. You can look at Wikipedia (Catalan is the 7th language in Wikipedia, with an active community) for more data.
Formerly the welcome screen were in English only, but the new issue has it localized in several Western languages. Unfortunately, a bug provoked that Catalan appeared as the default language on the welcome screen despite the user's locale. I think that this bug has been fixed several weeks ago. Any tester downloading the ISOs in the repo can get their own locale or an English default.
By the way, there are community supported Enthusiast Editions (EE) following Debian Testing, and also 32-bit editions Stable (Jessie).
14 • Catalan (by Jesse on 2015-07-20 10:38:24 GMT from North America)
>> "Catalan. And it is NOT a dialect of Spanish, it is a Romanesque language like French or Italian,
I did not say Catalan was a dialect of Spanish, just that it has the appearance of one. I had never encounterd Catalan before and I could read it passably well due to my limited knowledge of Spanish. So it is pretty close to Spanish, at least close enough for this non-speaker to muddle through it. I would also like to point out Spanish is a romance language, so they share a common root.
15 • XFCE (by Wine Curmudgeon on 2015-07-20 11:28:36 GMT from North America)
The post-modern XFCE desktop is so good that it's hard to believe that it gets so little attention. Jesse is right -- MATE and Cinnamon are the new big things, but anyone who has tried Xubuntu 14.4 knows there is no reason to look elsewhere for a traditional desktop.
16 • Security is pretty bad for most distros (by Andrew on 2015-07-20 11:52:52 GMT from Europe)
I avoid distributions made by small teams mainly because they can't offer good security and stability.
For example the last distro I tested, Linux Mint, which according to Distrowatch is the most popular distribution has pretty bad *default* security settings by not updating the kernel and other very important core parts with security and stability patches.
Also they don't offer Apparmour like their parent and the team behind the distribution is small and mostly unknown so it's worrying that the most popular Linux distribution has a security level even below windows standards which at least automatically installs important patches.
And they cripple Synaptic to not allow it to install updates for unknown reasons since you can still use apt-get.
In rest it's maybe the most beautiful and user friendly distribution especially with Cinnamon but the default security is pretty bad.
And most distros from the Distowatch database are made by pretty small teams, sometimes a single person, and in many cases it's not even clear who exactly is responsible for the distribution and security is in most cases ignored.
Besides the official Ubuntu family, Debian stable and Centos I don't know what other distributions can be trusted if security is important.
Arch seems to have a good team behind it but you need packages from AUR to secure it properly and AUR is not exactly the best place to get software if you want maximum security.
Fedora and openSUSE seem to suffer from not enough developers, that's why openSUSE for example is switching to 42.1 Leap, and Red Hat and SUSE are not free.
FreeBSD might be ok but I am not sure, much more "eyes" are watching the source of linux core components and of linux major distributions.
PCBSD seems to be a one man show.
OpenBSD is renowned for security but it's not exactly a desktop distribution so it's not for most users.
17 • XFCE (by nolinuxguru on 2015-07-20 11:56:25 GMT from Europe)
I agree that XFCE is a usable alternative to the MATE or Cinnamon, which drag most of the GNOME infrastructure with them. I just weened myself off KDE, and XFCE and LXDE are a good compromise in my search for a lighter desktop without foregoing essentials [for me] like sticky keys.
18 • @15 - XFCE (by Andrew on 2015-07-20 11:59:01 GMT from Europe)
XFCE is great but you should try LXDE, it has about the same features as XFCE but uses less memory and it's faster and it can be made to look pretty good with the right themes, icons, fonts and settings.
19 • Security (by Jesse on 2015-07-20 12:09:22 GMT from North America)
@16:
>> "For example the last distro I tested, Linux Mint, which according to Distrowatch is the most popular distribution"
Not necessarily the most popular, just the one people click on the most when they visit DistroWatch. That's not a reflection of their install base.
>> "has pretty bad *default* security settings by not updating the kernel and other very important core parts with security and stability patches."
I think you're confusing ranking security patches with not updating them. Linux Mint pulls in patches from upstream, so whenever Ubuntu gets a kernel update, Mint users have the option of applying it too. Many Linux distributions "hold back" the kernel from automaticaly updating, including Ubuntu and its entire family, if you use apt-get. This just insures the operating system doesn't break horribly during the upgrade. You can still apply the update if you think it's important.
>> Also they don't offer Apparmour like their parent
Yes, actually, they do.
>> "And they cripple Synaptic to not allow it to install updates for unknown reasons since you can still use apt-get."
No, actually, they don't. Synaptic works the same under Mint as it does Ubuntu or Debian.
>> "FreeBSD might be ok but I am not sure, much more "eyes" are watching the source of linux core components and of linux major distributions."
A lot of FreeBSD's software comes from ports of Linux software, so it's the same eyeballs looking at most of the code/services being run.
>> "PCBSD seems to be a one man show."
Not sure where you got that idea, I've personally talked with at least four members of the PC-BSD team. Plus most of PC-BSD's software is copied in from FreeBSD which has a pretty big team and foundation behind it.
20 • @16 • Security is quite good in most small distros (by WSWS on 2015-07-20 13:07:54 GMT from Europe)
@ 16 - Security is pretty bad for most distros by Andrew
"I avoid distributions made by small teams mainly because they can't offer good security and stability."
Oh, nonsense!
Most small (read niche) distros, the base is the top OSs such as Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora etc. Most of these small & niche distros are just wrappers over the BIG base.Only, these wrappers are much nicer than the hard-to-install main Oss.
Its just looking-for-the-enemy-behind-every-bush attitude of some people. If you don't have something serious to hide, why worry, by the way?
21 • Security is not "black or white" (by Pearson on 2015-07-20 13:25:51 GMT from North America)
To determine "how secure" a distribution is, you need to consider "how secure" you need it to be. My go-to analogy is securing a home: if in the middle of a "really bad neighborhood", then proper security likely entails bars on the windows, well lit entrances, weapons, etc. If in a "nice, middle class neighborhood" then security likely entails good locks, and alarm system, and maybe well lit entrances.
For software, it's the same. If you have a Top Secret (USA) clearance, you *could* be targeted as an attempt for blackmail so you *should* worry more about passwords, etc. If you're a food distribution coordinator for a local Homeless Shelter (awesome!) then perhaps software security is trumped by ease of use.
22 • 'we don't need no stinkin' Code...' (by tom joad on 2015-07-20 14:21:03 GMT from Europe)
I voted that a code won't really effect folks behavior. I could have voted both good and bad might come with a code of behavior too.
Linux folks seem to be a passionate bunch. In the recent past we have seen some of that 'passion' over flow from time to time. The sneers and snipes flowed pretty well. I guess the Monara issue was a good example of folks ire.
None of that bothered me as I have long since grown up. I can tune out or in as the case may be. Some of it, though, did give me a good chuckle more often than not.
But will folks read and abide by a code of conduct before 'speaking up?' I wonder and I doubt it.
To me a code of conduct is window dressing that isn't often read or considered. Honestly, I didn't know about Linux codes of conduct before now.
23 • Secure distributions (by Magic Banana on 2015-07-20 14:23:30 GMT from South America)
An important point is that *all* the source code must be available for study. I would not trust the security of any distribution that ships proprietary software, including blobs in the kernel. That discards many distributions...
24 • Security (by bison on 2015-07-20 14:24:19 GMT from North America)
@8
> But as an average citizeo of the West it would be a form of paranoia to think that the FSB or Chinese intelligence have any sort of interest in my activities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-breach-federal-governments-personnel-office/2015/06/04/889c0e52-0af7-11e5-95fd-d580f1c5d44e_story.html
25 • no KDE and XFCE versions of Mint (by David Brown on 2015-07-20 14:29:44 GMT from North America)
"However, the Mint project offers just MATE and Cinnamon editions of LMDE. The Mint developers have decided not to ship KDE and Xfce editions, at least up to this point."
Ironic that this appeared on the same morning that Mint released the KDE and Xfce versions of version 17.2. Of course. you couldn't have known when you were writing.
26 • FreeBSD code of conduct (by cykodrone on 2015-07-20 14:54:24 GMT from North America)
People need to be reminded FREE and open source software is just that, FREE, it comes with no warranty (as in use at your own risk), that being said, people in the corresponding forums are VOLUNTEERS, they're NOT customer service reps of a utility or PAID software corporations, so be polite and be patient, with any luck, one day you too may have their skill level and be browsing forums to help people.
27 • Mint (by mrdachshund86 on 2015-07-20 15:36:47 GMT from North America)
@25
LMDE and the main editions of Linux Mint are different things. LMDE is based on Debian Jessie, while the main editions (17.x) are based on Ubuntu 14.04. Jesse is correct that there are no XFCE or KDE versions of LMDE.
28 • LMDE (by Dave Postles on 2015-07-20 15:41:00 GMT from Europe)
@25 I think the reference was only to LMDE. Are there now KDE and XFCE versions of LMDE?
29 • CoC • Code of Conduct (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-07-20 16:09:32 GMT from North America)
0. Inspirational reminder encouraging civil behavior.
1. Popular marketing device subject to fad.
2. Hierarchical organization public mask, ignore when inconvenient.
3. Weapon of Mensch Destruction for the Politically-Combative.
30 • @16: openSUSE security (by cba on 2015-07-20 16:21:11 GMT from Europe)
"Fedora and openSUSE seem to suffer from not enough developers, that's why openSUSE for example is switching to 42.1 Leap, and Red Hat and SUSE are not free."
OpenSuse security for example is handled by the Suse Security Team which is also responsible for security and maintenance updates in SLES/SLED.
It is quite simple: In general there are no security updates missing in openSUSE 13.1 or 13.2 with respect to the usual short reaction time frames after a security problem has been published.
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Security_team
31 • linux mint security… (by a on 2015-07-20 16:29:59 GMT from Europe)
I have been warned before of the lack of security updates for Linux Mint, but still installed Mint 17.2 Xfce a couple days ago because all the other systemd-free distros were terrible in one way or another (including Xubuntu 14.04 which was extremely slow and bugged). Jesse’s answer here in the comments didn’t make it very clear to me: do I or do I not get security updates in a timely fashion when I update my system normally with Mint’s software update tool?
32 • 16 • Security (by Andrew from Europe) (by Kragle on 2015-07-20 16:32:53 GMT from North America)
"a security level even below windows standards which at least automatically installs important patches."
Whenever Microsoft is forced to, by powerful clients or decades-dogged white-hats, reduce the number of malware windows (at least until the next "upgrade")?
33 • hi mom (by stu on 2015-07-20 16:48:46 GMT from North America)
wow.
@" If you don't have something serious to hide, why worry"
If you don't have any serious valuables in you car, you would leave your car unlocked?
You have young children, but they're not `serously young` children, so why bother locking the doors to the house at night?
34 • Distro Security (by nolinuxguru on 2015-07-20 17:12:46 GMT from Europe)
In respect of the reply by Jesse on Distro Security, I have to disagree that the level of security a user needs depends on whether they protecting State Secrets or not.
Most people use their computers to buy from the web, maybe manage their bank accounts, perhaps fill out their tax returns. If their computer is compromised by malware which installs a rootkit, then you can forget that little padlock symbol. I know this is not Windows Land, and security measures can often consist of a default Firewall and the degree of care that the distro maker has put into ensuring that the user can get the most recent security fixes.
There ARE distros that make an effort to be more secure, with things like Hardened Linux Kernels and Tool-chain. However, these distros tend to be for Servers or Penetration Testing. The latter community understands security issues. Indeed Debian has a Securing Debian Manual devoted to telling users how to harden their computer systems [for themselves].
Why cannot the ordinary user be given the same level of security? Is there some hidden cost to this? I know that security is more than smart technology, but can help.
35 • @Jesse: Typo (by AnklefaceWroughtlandmire on 2015-07-20 17:22:32 GMT from South America)
Thanks Jesse for another excellent review. Quick typo correction: I think you meant "Thunar" file manager instead of "Thunder"?
36 • Security (by Andrew on 2015-07-20 17:23:39 GMT from Europe)
@30 by cba:
Thank you for the useful information, I didn't know about that.
I based my conclusion about the security of openSUSE on the reasons that lead to the "leap" to version 42.
According to http://lwn.net/Articles/648578/ (for example): "Behind all of this, of course, there is a simple driving force: the openSUSE project does not really have the resources to properly maintain a lot of the low-level infrastructure that keeps a distribution going."
@32 by Kragle:
OK, I might have exaggerated a little.
@19 by Jesse:
>> whenever Ubuntu gets a kernel update, Mint users have the option of applying it too.
I was referring to the default settings, which a newbie would probably not change.
>> This just insures the operating system doesn't break horribly during the upgrade.
It is the job of the distribution maintainers to properly test the updates so that doesn't happen and in case it does happen they should be able to find a solution as quickly as possible.
The tests done upstream are not enough because particularities of Linux Mint might cause problems which the upstream testers from Ubuntu and more upstream would not have tested for.
That's why it's hard to have proper security with small teams.
>> >> Also they don't offer Apparmour like their parent
>> Yes, actually, they do.
In my test it was no present in the default install, and from what I googled now it seems you need to install it.
Again, a newbie would have no idea about this.
And I am speaking about newbies because they are an important part of the audience of Linux Mint.
>> >> "And they cripple Synaptic to not allow it to install updates for unknown reasons since you can still use apt-get."
>> No, actually, they don't. Synaptic works the same under Mint as it does Ubuntu or Debian.
Check again, it's missing the upgrade option.
Maybe you have last tested LMDE and maybe there it isn't crippled?
I only tested the standard 17.2 Cinnamon edition and you can google about this, it's an older issue.
>> >> "FreeBSD might be ok but I am not sure, much more "eyes" are watching the source of linux core components and of linux major distributions."
>> A lot of FreeBSD's software comes from ports of Linux software, so it's the same eyeballs looking at most of the code/services being run.
I was referring mainly at the core of the FreeBSD (kernel and core utilities) that is made by them, but also in case of the rest of the software there are bugs and security holes that can be present only on an operating system and not in others so if a program is not buggy on Linux that doesn't mean that it will also be fine on FreeBSD.
I am not saying that FreeBSD is not secure, I was only comparing it to the major Linux distributions, FreeBSD is a good OS.
>> >> "PCBSD seems to be a one man show."
>> Not sure where you got that idea, I've personally talked with at least four members of the PC-BSD team
Maybe my information is outdated, I didn't tracked it's development lately, last time I looked most of the development was done by Kris Moore.
And I just noticed that there is also a Ken Moore, oups, who knows how many K* Moore are there that I haven't noticed :)
37 • Security (by Jesse on 2015-07-20 17:51:21 GMT from North America)
@36:
I think the point of Mint filtering their updates and assigning rank is to avoid the problems which cannot necessarily be worked around. For example, one of the reasons to hold back kernel updates is broken drivers. This isn't something distributions can fix in the case of closed source video drivers. When you add to that, the fact that remote kernel exploits are very rare in Linux, it makes sense to hold back kernel updates by default (which Ubuntu does too).
Admittedly it is a trade off, but chances are a lot more newbie users will be plagued by kernel updates breaking things the developers cannot control than would be harmed by remote kernel exploits. It's not ideal, but it's much better for most people to not have the OS breaking because a video driver failed, rather than to have the latest kernel patch.
As for Synaptic, I think we have different ideas of what "crippled" means. Synaptic can still be used to install newer versions of packages on Mint, it's just a one-at-a-time process. Which makes sense since updates are supposed to be processed by mintUpdate.
As for AppArmor, if a user is too inexperienced to know to install AppArmor then they won't know how to use it properly either. Whether AppArmor is in place or not by default is somewhat moot.
38 • @34 Security (by Pearson on 2015-07-20 17:54:55 GMT from North America)
I may be wrong, but I think you're referring to my comment about security not being "black or white". I didn't mean to imply that security is only needed for state secrets; I used that as an example.
I agree that, if a computer is used for online purchases, tax preparation, then security should be considered important. The software packages should be kept up-to-date (reasonably), a good "man-in-the-middle detection" should be in place, better encryption by default, etc. I wouldn't necessarily expect the home user to add on 2 factor authentication to log into the (non-portable) desktop computer; whole-disk encryption would be optional as well (on the non-portable computer).
If a laptop were used for those activities, then on-disk encryption + 2 factor authentication makes more sense.
39 • 34 • Distro Security (by nolinuxguru from Europe) (by Kragle on 2015-07-20 17:59:17 GMT from North America)
"Why cannot the ordinary user be given the same level of security? Is there some hidden cost to this?"
Oh, the "ordinary" user can indeed be given the same security. The cost is not hidden. It requires learning and due diligence ... which an "ordinary" user's deliberate ignorance may perceive as bothersome complication and inconvenience, of course. Depends on your definition of "ordinary".
40 • @14 : Catalan, Spanish and French Occitan/Langue d'Oc (by dbrion on 2015-07-20 18:28:58 GMT from Europe)
According to a Spanish teacher, Catalan is nearer to French "Langue d'oc" -almost disappeared in its spoken form - than to Spanish ([very old] people speaking 'Langue d'Oc' are more likely to understand spoken Catalan than Spanish people).
On the Spanish side, Catalunya has 8 000 000 habitants -more than Greece-; most of them speak Catalan, though it was forbiddden 45 years ago ;
on the French side, in the early 1980s, I heard policemen speaking Catalan -not occitan- in Perpignan (was surprised) ... and many people in small villages did too...
41 • Community Code of Conduct • XFCE • Security and trustfullness • (by Foxyburner on 2015-07-20 18:37:52 GMT from Europe)
A lot of good things here to read and been wrote Down thanks PEOPLE !
I regret that such code of conduct was thought to be necessary to call peace and respect among Linux's users and Free-Software community in general. Yeap Pretty sad.. Reflecting how our world is going though. sadly
XFCE it's clearly misrepresented by articles and grateful comments every where I look , not so much places though ;p . LXDE is good as fast but is not at all comparable to XFCE plugins library.. by no mean.
SECURITY, ... Right.. Risk ZERO is a lure, a Dream, Never know if one member of your own house will not do something bad behind your back.. so think about your own Linux's houses then. Today Linux based operating system is drawing more users and adepts than ever in its history. So does the bad guys. they comes along !
Proprietary code... or open-source code Trustfulness a great and personal matter.
TRUST .... Trust... such a Big word when security matter the most.
A company have to defend at all cost its social reputation nowadays, what about an opened community divided into distributions' families made of such many different peoples and opinions ?
In who and what Would you yourself trust most when its comes to Hi-security matter as online-banking and shopping ?
Eventually a personal matter nothing to flame about still I am wondering...
42 • distro security (by nolinuxguru on 2015-07-20 19:26:27 GMT from Europe)
@39 Perhaps a better approach to distro security: provide the best available security technology, and invite users to disable it if they are feeling lucky. The human elements are tricky, but the fewer things to remember, the less chance of getting into trouble.
43 • @40 (by denethor on 2015-07-20 20:59:18 GMT from Europe)
Greece has actually around 11.000.000...
44 • @24 bison (by linuxista on 2015-07-20 21:54:04 GMT from North America)
Whatever harm a foreign gov't might be able to do with that information has limits. What is much more problematic is the stifling of dissent by totalitarian regimes (be they obviously autocratic or with a thin veneer of "democracy") against their > citizens. For that reason I might be inclined to use a Russian or Chinese distro, especially if it were gov't sponsored, as it might be better hardened against NSA or GHCQ spying.
45 • typos (by linuxista on 2015-07-20 21:56:17 GMT from North America)
Read "FOREIGN," and "against their OWN citizens." I'm not familiar with the markdown syantax.
46 • DE memory usage (by mikef90000 on 2015-07-20 23:15:57 GMT from North America)
I find the comparison of XFCE and LXDE memory usage to be borderline silly; in my testing LXDE usually starts up using about 180MB with XFCE about 40MB more. No problem on a computer with 1GB RAM except .....
What really bogs down modern DEs are the bloated, 'feature filled' *cough* web browsers like Chrome and Firefox. On a 12 y/o (!) system with Linux Mint that I often use, it only became usable when I reverted to the slightly less secure Firefox ESR v24. The FF Australis (>v28) interface noticeably increased the bloat.
The lack of SSE2 capable CPUs limits the use of many older x86 based computers - most browsers now require this feature. The only non-SSE2, lightweight FF alternative I found that rendered modern CSS/HTML decently was Dooble.
47 • SSE2 and Yeppp! (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2015-07-20 23:44:56 GMT from North America)
@mikef90000 (#46)
Firefox can be compiled sans SSE2. Arch Linux i686 compiles without SSE2 and Firefox works fine. Void Linux requires SSE2 in its 32-bit branch. Alpine Linux offers i386 sans SSE2, so it works on old machines. Debian and FreeBSD have some arches without SSE2. Gentoo of course you may tweak as you please via CFLAGS.
AMD never shipped any 32-bit chip with SSE2. Any distro requiring SSE2 thereby voids all 32-bit AMD CPUs. Distros should use Yeppp! if you ask me and stop fussing over compile-time flags, let Yeppp! handle things.
48 • XenoLinux (by jymm on 2015-07-20 23:46:56 GMT from North America)
I was worried about distros from certain countries. Then to find what I needed and wanted in a distro with the collapse of Solus, I tried Point Linux from Russia. It is by far the best distro (for me) i have yet to try. I have found no problems, and no longer worry.
49 • SolydX WM default (by mikef90000 on 2015-07-20 23:51:35 GMT from North America)
"The default theme SolydX uses has pixel-thin window borders, making it virtually impossible to resize a window by dragging its edges."
Somewhere along the line I discovered the Daloa theme which I chose (IIRC) purely due to a slimmer title bar. It also features a wider window border.
Try it, you may like it!
50 • Xenophobia my rear end... ;) (by greycoat on 2015-07-21 01:09:39 GMT from North America)
"I am of the opinion that these concerns are based on xenophobia and rumour rather than evidence"
Bad opinion, but "Politically Correct". China, Russia, & the regime in DC have a history in spying, espionage, including but not limited to, planting rootkits on hard drives & putting back doors in Chips. I don't trust the Chinese and "xenophobia" has nothing to do with it. Just saw this TODAY regarding NKorea...
North Korea's Red Star Linux inserts sneaky serial content tracker • The Register
The Register - 8 minutes ago
ERNW security analyst Florian Grunow says North Korea's Red Star Linux operating system is tracking users by tagging content with unique hidden tags.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/20/north_korea_red_star_linux_inserts_sneaky_serial_content_tracker/
#44 Bison made a good point however that using software from an enemy nation, my words not his, might be safer for Americans than using US based software whose current government look at basic flag waiving Americans as the enemies and Muslims just involved in workplace incidences.
51 • Chromixium OS 1.5 (by greycoat on 2015-07-21 01:38:24 GMT from North America)
Chromixium OS 1.5 is a nice distro. Trying it out in Virtualbox. One thing I don't understand about "developers" is giving their users crippled file managers like Nautilus. Thankfully it is easy enough for me to replace Nautilus with the Nemo file manager. Don't care much for the Gnome desktop either which I view Gnome like a cancer that metastasizes in the OS with all it's dependencies which are unnecessary for some programs one wants to install. I love Nemo, Thunar, and even PacmanFM over anything Nautilus offers or used to before it was dumbed down. Just my opinion for what it is worth and I would be even more impressed with Chromixium OS 1.5 if it came out of the box with anything but Nautilus.
52 • FreeBSD Code of Conduct (by Toran Korshnah on 2015-07-21 01:39:55 GMT from Europe)
Such docs should not be needed. At least not in a perfect world. However they make clear what is expected when an individual joins the community. It's normal a community has at least a minimum of rules with "common sense" often the major rule. Certain events force a community to take action. And changing the Code of Conduct is such action.
53 • Security issues (by frodopogo on 2015-07-21 02:29:16 GMT from North America)
Remember, hackers MIGHT NOT be necessarily interested in you as an individual, but they MIGHT be interested in accessing your computer to use as part of a botnet. While Windows computers are frequent victims, Linux computers can be used too. Botnets are used in denial of service attacks, and the cybercriminals make money because an unscrupulous competitor might pay to have another company (or country) attacked.
Also.... you might not be interesting to a cybercriminal for your own sake, but because of who you know, or who accesses your website. In other words, you could be interesting as an attack vector.
54 • Mint's crippled version of Synaptic (by RollMeAway on 2015-07-21 03:02:44 GMT from North America)
I too consider Mint's modified version of Synaptic to be crippled.
The ability to quickly select, even VIEW all upgradable packages is a necessity!
I have always assumed their developers had difficulty with dependencies for their own packages, was the reason.
I find it easy to "force version" for the parent disto (debian or ubuntu) real version and avoid their broken one.
I have also noted that deborphan never finds orphaned packages, when mint's synaptic is in use.
Removing orphaned packages is also a necessity.
55 • @40: Catalan, Spanish etc. (by Kubelik on 2015-07-21 03:03:20 GMT from Europe)
Thanks. I think you got it all right. I see Linux/free software as part of a democratic enlightenment project. That includes computer and human languages.
People speaking Catalan (Valencian and the rest of the 5 official languages + dialects in Spain) are doing a tremendous job getting those languages into Linux, Libreoffice, Wikipedia etc. After so many years of oppression under Franco.
I fully understand Jesse mistaking Catalan for a Spanish dialect. It is a Roman/Latin language. And it looks familiar to Spanish. But it is closer to the language of the troubadours:)
If you visit Perpignang, the main city of french Catalonia, or Mallorca/Majorca, you shouldn't be surprised to meet people speeking wonderful Catalan.
56 • Code of Conduct (by KDE KarKlepto on 2015-07-21 06:14:30 GMT from Oceania)
Here at distrowatch we're quite happy to abuse each other. Wazup with other communities??
57 • @54 - Mint's philosophy is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" (by eco2geek on 2015-07-21 06:36:54 GMT from North America)
Linux Mint takes a conservative philosophy to things like updates, whether they be kernel updates, package updates, or distribution updates.
For example, their Update Manager warns against installing new kernels due to the risk of regressions. So the kernel on my Linux Mint MATE 17.2 install, which is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, seems to be pinned to version 3.16.0-38. On my installation of Kubuntu, which is also version 14.04 LTS, it's up to kernel version 3.16.0-57, and counting.
(And I have to disagree with Jessie above; Ubuntu - meaning generic Ubuntu - tends to have one kernel per version. For example, 14.04 LTS has kernel version 3.16.0. But it's updated all the time, and if you do a dist-upgrade, you'll get the updated kernel (and kernel headers, if you have them installed). Every now and then, you have to purge the old kernels. Currently, on my Kubuntu 15.04 install, I have kernels 3.19.0-18 and 3.19.0-21 installed; I must have missed 3.19.0-20.)
Mint's Software Sources utility warns against enabling backports for the same reason. (Again unlike Ubuntu, where I use the backports repository on Kubuntu to keep it up to date with the newest version of KDE.)
Mint's upgrade utility from 17.1 to 17.2 specifically tells you not to upgrade unless you have a good reason for doing so.
And so on. I think the reason Linux Mint removed the "Mark All Upgrades" button from Synaptic is to force you to use their (more conservative) Update Manager, which makes you choose your level of comfort with certain updates.
See here for a discussion of it, including input from Clem in the comments:
http://fossforce.com/2014/10/synaptic-vs-update-manager-in-linux-mint/
This is not a bad thing at all; it's simply Mint's attempt to keep its users from experiencing problems.
58 • @ 50 • Xenophobia my rear end... ;) - greycoat (by WSWS on 2015-07-21 07:15:43 GMT from Europe)
>"I am of the opinion that these concerns are based on xenophobia and rumour rather than evidence"
Bad opinion, but "Politically Correct". China, Russia, & the regime in DC have a history in spying, espionage, including but not limited to, planting rootkits on hard drives & putting back doors in Chips. I don't trust the Chinese and "xenophobia" has nothing to do with it.<
Oh, oh!
Have looked at the backside of your laptop lately? It is made in China!
Or your phone? It too is made in China!
The rest of the world usually don't trust the US government.
59 • @ 57 Mint's philosophy is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" - eco2geek (by WSWS on 2015-07-21 07:23:15 GMT from Europe)
.Linux Mint takes a conservative philosophy to things like updates, whether they be kernel updates, package updates, or distribution updates.
This is not a bad thing at all; it's simply Mint's attempt to keep its users from experiencing problems.,
Not exactly!
Its just the attitude of Clem--I am better than Ubuntu.
Only, if he is, why not create his own base from Debian, without basing on Ubuntu?
I used to download and look in Mint, but I don't do that for quite a long time now. If I won't to see what Ubuntu is doing, I download Ubuntu or its derivatives, but not opinionated Mint anymore.
60 • Code of Conduct (by Vukoa on 2015-07-21 07:31:38 GMT from Europe)
I think this can go both ways. Take in example Linus. If it wasn't him, I doubt we would have Linux as it is today, but on the other side he did act arrogantly and did harass sloppy developers who thought they should have equal rights and say as Linus. I am not defending him, but there are always two sides of the coins, and I've seen both of them and can say that both of them are sometimes necessary for a successful project. Only paid business can accommodate to mandate political correctness, since someone else is paying or there is a legal penalty if you are doing it otherwise. Paid business also have hierarchical structure (you know who is your boss and who is giving money) and there are different ways to resolve conflicts between different personalities, experiences, etc.
61 • trust (by zcatav on 2015-07-21 07:41:14 GMT from Europe)
Please don't trust any government, even if your's.
62 • Valid security concerns about small distros (by Goetz on 2015-07-21 11:03:26 GMT from Europe)
As for "But as an average citizeo of the West it would be a form of paranoia to think that the FSB or Chinese intelligence have any sort of interest in my activities." (...2015-07-20 06:10:30 GMT from North America): Intelligence may not be interested in you and me at all. But they may be interested in using my identity and my computer.
63 • Mint's philosophy is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" (by Goetz on 2015-07-21 11:13:30 GMT from Europe)
Rather than addressing Clem's "attitude" ad hominem, I focus on what Mint delivers. I simply like it. And distributions like Mint are good for Ubuntu because they allow Ubunto to introduce new ways to use Linux without leaving those users alone who want a more conservative approach. This is win-win for Ubuntu, for Mint and for the users.
In a similar way, SolydXK helps Mint LMDE maintainers to focus on the desktops they like without letting those users down who need Xfce. Win-win again.
64 • Security concerns (by mechanic on 2015-07-21 11:25:14 GMT from Europe)
Future Crimes: A journey to the dark side of technology - and how to survive it - 26 Feb 2015 - by Marc Goodman
This book might show the problems we store up by careless use of the Internet.
65 • @58 - mutual distrust (by Pearson on 2015-07-21 13:17:17 GMT from North America)
"The rest of the world usually don't trust the US government."
I'm not surprised. There seems to be a general sense of mutual distrust among the various powers. And, sadly, it seems to be somewhat justified. Because "we" don't trust "them" (because of some invasion, economic policy, dangerous technology, etc.), "we" start acting in a way that makes "those" not trust "us". And the cycle continues.
Fill in whichever governments you wish for "we", "them", "those", and "us".
66 • Android torrent (by Jesse on 2015-07-21 13:43:27 GMT from North America)
One of our readers pointed out a problem with the Android-x86 torrent we are seeding this week. Some of the data in the torrent was corrupted and therefore the resulting ISO was no good. We have removed the old torrent file and replaced it with a working one.
If you downloaded the Android-x86 torrent on Monday, please delete it and replace it with the file we are currently serving.
67 • Catalán and Jesse (by Peter on 2015-07-21 14:58:39 GMT from Europe)
Jesse, I don't think Eduard #13 felt insulted, but if he's a catalonian he would surely feel the need to correct any misunderstanding concerning his native language. Most catalonians are quite nationalistic, and proud of their heritage. Still, I can understand you guessed it was a "castillian" dialect, same as if I read something in danish and would mistakenly think it swedish.
Jesse, keep up the good work, which is something we ALL understand perfectly. Cheers!
68 • @63 - I agree, Mint's a class act (by eco2geek on 2015-07-21 19:33:17 GMT from North America)
I think Linux Mint's offerings are all good, both from a cosmetic standpoint and from an ease-of-use standpoint. They deliver what their users want.
Ars Technica agrees - read their recent review:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/rare-breed-linux-mint-17-2-offers-desktop-familiarity-and-responds-to-user-wants/
69 • Mint's philosophy... (by frodopogo on 2015-07-21 19:54:31 GMT from North America)
@59...
I've been using Mint since version 5 (Elyssa) and have to agree "If it ain't broke don't fix it" sums up Clement Lefebvre's philosophy pretty well, and it works for me.
You won't find Mint doing something radical like Unity or Gnome 3- thankfully!
Contrary to being "better than"anyone (arrogance)- it's actually humility. Clem LISTENS to users.
The reason for Mint's consistent popularity was that Clem figured out that there a niche or a group of users with a desire for something similar to Ubuntu but more conservative.
Mint DOES have something based on Debian, without being based on Ubuntu.
It's called LMDE.
Mint was able to stay consistent by using MATE and creating Cinnamon, even when Ubuntu and Gnome were going crazy with radical interface changes.
If Canonical somehow makes Ubuntu unusable as a base for Mint, the LMDE lifeboat is READY, or very close to it.
Why don't they take it now? My guess is that it's because basing on Ubuntu means an extra layer of bug-fixing. That means a better end-user experience, which is really what Mint is about.
Is that unethical? Linux IS open source software, after all!!!
And the basic idea of open source is to have more eyes to fix bugs in the code.
70 • Mint security updates (by M.Z. on 2015-07-22 00:39:14 GMT from Planet Mars)
@31
I've said it before & hope I don't have to say it again, Mint gets all updates for every piece of software that doesn't effect system stability & is considered a safe update (level 1 to 3 in the update manager). There are at most a tiny handful of things like the Linux Kernel that don't update but do have security related bug fixes available (mostly kernel related as Jesse mentioned); however, you can easily do what I did & adjust the settings in the update manager by checking a box that says something like 'always select & trusty security updates'. Every potential security bug is then fixed, but there is a small risk of increased stability issues. Although I haven't run into any bugs that were caused by security related updates I have seen issues with video driver updates killing my system. It's a trade off of security vs stability that you have the power to make in Mint.
71 • OpenBSD: secure AND suitable for desktop use (by Billy Larlad on 2015-07-22 04:24:59 GMT from North America)
"OpenBSD is renowned for security but it's not exactly a desktop distribution so it's not for most users."
I disagree. Most of the developers are in fact using it as a "daily driver," it seems, and so are a good many users. If you look at the applications available (try openports.se) you'll notice that there's a ton of desktop goodies: GNOME 3.16, XFCE 4.12, work in progress for KDE5, lots of browsers and emulators and media players, picture viewers, etc, etc.
And, unlike, say, Fedora, you don't have to mess around with multiple repositories just to get MP3s and the like to work.
72 • Mint security (by Euler on 2015-07-22 07:45:23 GMT from Europe)
I feel Mint as a "desktop distribution" has a more relaxed attitude towards security than other distributions. Convenience is more important than security for them. It has a secure base, so maybe we should not worry too much.
I was I bit concerned when I use LMDE a few years back. There were no updates of the Debian base for several month, between the update pack. Mint made running Debian Testing much easier, but made is less secure.
73 • Solyd (by kc1di on 2015-07-22 13:47:28 GMT from North America)
I have to agree with Jesse Solydx is a very good distro. Solid pun intended :)
Have installed in on both laptop and PC both working quite well , had a little trouble getting broadcom wireless going but sorted that out rather quickly.
74 • 32 Bit SolydX and K (by Rev_Don on 2015-07-22 16:40:21 GMT from North America)
Jesse, you have to go to the Community section under Downloads to find the 32 Bit versions of Solyd K and X. They are there though, and they are up to date as of June 2015.
75 • What's Hatwatch??? (by OxyNewbie on 2015-07-22 17:34:16 GMT from South America)
Good job, Jesse! SolydX is really a wonderful distro, despite some minor bugs.
In 2014, I tried a lot of distros after reading a lot of reviews. The three most perfect ones I could find were Stella (based on RHEL 6), PCLinuxOS (based on Mandriva), SolydX Home Edition (based on Debian Testing), VectorLinux (based on Slackware), and ZenLive (also based on Slackware). Although I think Tails is, by far, the most interesting of all, but a little bit complex for a total newbie like me.
And now a friend of mine is saying "somebody told me that an operating system called Hatwatch is MUCH better than Linux". What the hell is it? "Hatwatch" sounds so strange... Searching on DuckDuckGo, I just haven't discovered anything about such an OS. Does it exist? Can you help me providing some information?
76 • Mint/Linux security (by M.Z. on 2015-07-22 19:20:32 GMT from Planet Mars)
@72
I had some similar concerns about the older versions of LMDE, but version 2 has the same updates as Debian proper minus a few packages for the sake of stability. The fact is both versions of Mint have their heavy lifting done by upstream security teams at Debian & Ubuntu, and there are very few security related updates that could cause the stability problems level 4 & 5 update filtering is meant to prevent. I think I've done at most a handful of level 4 & 5 security updates since I've been running Mint 17.x, and have easily had 100x that in other updates. Not only are the level 4 & 5 updates an extremely small attack vector, but I doubt that many of those have the possibility for a remote exploit.
Another important factor to remember about security on Linux is that the vast majority of attacks are made against server components on dedicated server systems. Such servers are common & often have lots of valuable data, so while they are hard to attack it is worth trying for black hats. Desktop Linux on the other hand is far more rare & generally run by savvy users who not only install their own OS, but also updated & maintain it properly. Add to that the variety of different Linux systems with different bases, simultaneously maintained software versions, & different security components & you have a system that is not an inviting target for attackers. Windows on the other hand should easily have more unaware & nearly computer illiterate users than Linux has users in total. There are no 100% secure computer systems, but Linux users have far less to worry about than most others.
77 • What's Hatwatch??? (by LinuxuserNZ on 2015-07-22 20:04:40 GMT from Oceania)
@75: maybe a poorly heard - chinese whisper of Mackintosh?
78 • What's Hatwatch??? (by OxyNewbie on 2015-07-22 22:23:17 GMT from South America)
@77: Yes, probably... :)
79 • 75 • WhatWatch (by OxyNewbie from South America) (by Fairly Reticent on 2015-07-22 23:03:42 GMT from North America)
What are your friend's preference(s)? One person's "better" is another person's "so?". Your definition of "perfect" may be related to your particular hardware, or time taken to polish an ISO.
80 • Linux anti-security (by KDE KarKam on 2015-07-23 00:46:50 GMT from Oceania)
Security on Linux is nothing short of frustrating. Some distros - like OpenSuse and TAILS - hide their firewalls, some - like puppy, Knoppix, and Ubuntu - have weak little firewalls. Many don't have firewalls at all. And most don't include log viewing software - to keep an eye on the system. At least with that other OS you can get off the web some comprehensive free firewalls. Linux on the desktop doesn't have an attitude of security, because everyone thinks it's not a target for viruses or hackers.
81 • Common Non-sense [80 • (by KDE KarKam from Oceania)] (by Kragle on 2015-07-23 07:26:43 GMT from North America)
"(Linux)'s not a target for viruses or hackers" - usually, until it is, of course.
Just like "It Just Works" - usually, unless it doesn't, of course.
82 • Mint and security (by imnotrich on 2015-07-23 07:53:53 GMT from North America)
Mint's a great distro, but it ships with a worthless, disabled firewall by default and the only anti-virus solution in the repo's does not run in the background, plus when you do scan with the clam it's about 98% false positives.
I've been using Firefox for years with Linux, even though the flash version is way out of date (ugh!) because I felt noscript kept me relatively safe. But more and more sites today are not compatible with Firefox so I recently began using Chrome. Even with all the google spyware/active content/ads/malware trying to download to my machine, Chrome is still way faster. But...as I already knew, Chrome is an attack vector and within a week my Linux system was infected. I accidentally typed latimes.cm instead of latimes.com and got mousetrapped and started getting those Alibaba worm pop ups.
Without the same tools available for Windows or MAC, I briefly considered a secure dban style wipe but nuked Chrome instead and that seems to have cleared up the infection.
Point I'm trying to make is, don't assume your system is secure just because it's Linux. With no firewall and no effective anti virus protection, Linux Mint or any similar distro is vulnerable the instant you connect to the internet. Be proactive.
83 • mint and security (by nolinuxguru on 2015-07-23 09:00:02 GMT from Europe)
hello @82. I am interested to know what you think: I use either ufw or my own iptables firewall, the router has another rather severe firewall, and I use chromium [not chrome], so I am less concerned with google spyware [one day I will write something to monitor this]. I use debian rather than mint, but they should have similar starting points. I never see adverts or pop-ups.
Is there more that I need to do security-wise?
84 • Linux security (by Euler on 2015-07-23 11:58:45 GMT from Europe)
Do you need a firewall for Linux? This question is long going. Basically you can configure a secure system without firewall as well as an insecure system with firewall. It often just is a further fail save against doing something stupid.
Viruses is another topic. Windows user are used to virus scanners and often feel more secure if the scanner actually finds something. On Linux I expect security problems to be solved by rapid updates. Why try to find the virus if you can close the loophole it uses. Even server systems just run anti-virus software against Windows viruses.
85 • @73 (by jaws222 on 2015-07-23 16:45:00 GMT from North America)
You're right about SolydXK. I've been using X for about a year and half with hardly any issues. I had a printer issue awhile back but a little Google magic and the problem was eliminated. As far as Debian derivatives go I'm also a big fan of Point Linux and the new Crunchbang ++ is also pretty solid.
86 • Code of Conduct question (by champted on 2015-07-23 17:17:02 GMT from North America)
I don't object to protecting community members from harassment and/or hate speech. I do object to those who deliberately take offense where none is intended, and to what seems to be a general movement in some sections of society toward the attitude of "any comment directed to me that I disagree with is hate speech".
87 • Solydk is more popular than X (by muthu on 2015-07-23 18:09:08 GMT from Asia)
After I read the Jesse's Review about Solydx, I have downloaded and installed SolydK. It's a nice distro and have no issues so far. Why Jesse has Chosen Solydx instead of Solydk? I don't know. But, I believe Solydk is more popular than Solydx. Anyway thanks for your Review Jesse.
88 • Separating the message from the messenger (by Jason on 2015-07-23 18:24:45 GMT from North America)
Their seems to be more objections to the person who initiated the FreeBSD code of conduct change, rather than the actual code itself. Perhaps she is an dislikable person, but I fail to see anything out from left field on this one. Separating the message from the messenger can be tough.
89 • @87 - SolydXK (by jaws222 on 2015-07-23 18:49:15 GMT from North America)
I believe it's a preference as far as the DE you like. I've used both and they are equally good, I just prefer X over K.
90 • extra security (by M.Z. on 2015-07-23 22:03:40 GMT from Planet Mars)
@83
I personally would take everything #82 says with a grain of salt, mostly because I have never experienced any of the problems he has repeatedly complained about regarding Firefox nor the security issues he describes above. If you like using open source, want more security, & have some extra hardware laying around you might try a dedicated firewall distro. I put a couple of NICs in a junky old PC that I stuck between my switch & modem & installed pfSense & couldn't be happier with my setup from a security perspective. I installed the Snort package & set it to block attackers. Now feel like I can breathe easy knowing I have PF & Snort sitting in front of my Linux PCs & their firewalls. The Snort package in particular does a lot & gets constant updates on possible attacks like new trojans worms etc. Like I said above, there is no perfect security, but if you dig into something like setting up a pfSense box with Snort, you can rest fairly easy. I'd encourage anyone with the extra hardware laying around to run a search & look over options for something similar.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pfsense
91 • Alpine Most Secure Linux (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2015-07-23 22:22:55 GMT from North America)
Everyone should read Oko's comment #95 in the July 6 issue with its review of Alpine Linux. And Oko failed to include that Alpine is built on musl and LibreSSL.
92 • Infections (by imnotrich on 2015-07-24 03:32:34 GMT from North America)
Firefox for Windows with noscript is fairly secure, Firefox for Linux is not primarily because Flash is so outdated and Firefox constantly hangs - there are many websites that are totally unresponsive and basically dead with Firefox on Linux.
So that's why I took Chrome on Mint for another testdrive.
Unfortunately, when I did get an infection earlier this week - whatever trojan/worm it was in addition to popups for Alibaba, it created a profile in my Chrome for a person named Moonbeam. Really? I had just sent a tweet poking fun of California Gov. Moonbeam. I didn't do that, Chrome didn't do that, and I doubt Mint was responsible. So what then? Aliens? Gov. Moonbeam claims to have met some (when he was smoking pot). No folks it was an infection.
Some years ago my ISP began experimenting with pop up ads. I was paying for internet access AND they'd serve me popups. After repeated attempts to block them at my router, by firewall, and reporting them to various malware websites it eventually got resolved. They'd spoof or change their IP periodically so a block by IP was not effective. On Linux, I still had these problems. And now nobody telling the truth can tell me Linux is totally immune from infections and exploits. That's just plain bogus. Especially when there's no viable open source antivirus or firewall available. The only option is to learn code and write your own, and configuring ip tables would be about as complicated as coding anyway so what's the regular casual user to do?
93 • Firefox flash and viruses (by cykodrone on 2015-07-24 03:50:25 GMT from North America)
I am running only Firefox with flash and I'm having no problems (updated and current in PCLOS). Just exactly what sites are you going to? The ones I visit are fairly common.
I've never got a virus in any Linux install ever, AAMOF, the only virus I've ever seen was in a Clamtk scan of old files on storage media from my long past Windows days.
I stay away from Chrome, I don't trust it to not 'phone home' to anybody, that and anything else written by Goggle (the name typo is on purpose).
Your comment reeks of troll. I hope you read this before DW takes it down.
94 • @93 • Firefox flash and viruses (by mandog on 2015-07-24 10:41:09 GMT from South America)
I must agree
I also have never had any virus or malware on Linux using firefox and flash.
and don't use a firewall
@ 92, when was windows as secure as you say I repair windows and know very different, MS does security updates within 48hrs they are breeched so they might of not bothered.
After market virus scanners are there to make money so the more viruses created the more they find don't you get it its not really hard to work out.
There are commercial Linux antivirus all the top names, so where do they find these so called virus that only appear after you install there software again not hard to work out.
95 • Bringing the Social Justice War to the workplace. (by Jon Kettenhofen on 2015-07-24 14:01:33 GMT from North America)
The effect of the FreeBSD Code of Conduct appears to be to extend the purview of the FreeBSD.org to areas outside the work area. It is an attempt to exert control over members "outside of work". In my opion, that is wrong, that is a mistake. Nevermind it is an imitation of what is wrong, what is bad, about government. It is an attempt to own persons by controlling their behavior outside of the organization. It is anti-freedom, it is tyranny of the worst and most destructive kind: social tyranny, the rule of the mob. And it will drive the unwanted behavior underground, into whispers in dark places, into subtle words that cannot be disciplined, where members cannot be legally faulted, where the member social injustice perpetrators - and the warriors - will remain unknown.
So, in order to be somewhat effective, I urge FreeBSD.org to confine their Code of Conduct to the activity within the organization's workplace, within the oranizations web sites, to the work of improving computer code. Let the Social Justice War be fought in public, on social sites. Keep FreeBSD.org unsullied from the world, from social sites. Don't take sides but do keep the peace within the organization. Let the members take their war outside. Don't judge them. Judge the code.
To think or believe or assume that because a person does or says socially unacceptable things that the person will write bad code is itself a mistake, is counter productive, is inhibiting to creativity.
Code matters. We want good, clean code. We want good, clean, elegant and functional architecture. Producing that is the purpose of the organization. Control the code, not the people. Because controlling people is bad, dirty code.
Unfortunately when an organization is brought down by political infighting, it either needs to die or be replaced:
http://www.badgummint.com/index.php?/archives/2-The-First-Law-Pournelles-Iron-Law-of-Bureaucracy.html
96 • Soydx Wine implementation not so 'solyd' (by rufovillosum on 2015-07-24 14:38:45 GMT from North America)
Having used solydx back when it was a rolling distro, and reading Jesse's review, I decided to give it another go. Mostly pretty good, but wine did not work at all. Clicking on an exe install file for irfanview, all I got were errors. Ditto for trying to install with wine commands via the console.
I finally used synaptic to remove all the packages in the wine group, including playonlinux. Then I installed just three packages: wine, wine64, winetricks. Now everything works as expected.
97 • @92 infections (by Jordan on 2015-07-24 15:08:54 GMT from North America)
Can't report any, Windows or linux distros. I've been computing since 1995 through all Windows iterations and now over a hundred distros.
But I don't open links in emails, view attachments in emails, frequent "social media" websites at all, make purchases online, view media online.
We're very boring on our computers at work and at home.
Oh, one other thing: we don't install the big name anti-virus crap.
98 • @95 FreeBSD code of conduct (by Kazlu on 2015-07-24 16:36:44 GMT from Europe)
"To think or believe or assume that because a person does or says socially unacceptable things that the person will write bad code is itself a mistake, is counter productive, is inhibiting to creativity."
I disagree: Granted, the behavior of a person is not linked to the quality of the code he/she produces, but if he/she has bad relations with other coders to the point they do not agree on code commits and overwrite each other's code (or other kind acts), the quality of the overall code might be impacted badly. Moreover, if conflicts between developpers are bad and out in the open and the project lead does not care, it gives a bad impression on other community members. People will be more reluctant to join a community where the ambiance is bad, you might have less testers, less people writing doc or even less coders.
That being said, I do not disagree with your whole post. Your concern about freedom of speech for the project members is valid. I just disagreed on that particular point.
Have a good week-end folks :)
99 • CoC • Code of Conduct (by Kragle on 2015-07-24 21:38:23 GMT from North America)
Re: 98 • @95 FreeBSD code of conduct (by Kazlu from Europe)
See: 29 • item 3.
An open-source meritocratic zone can be an excellent place to mentor better behavior. That said, (if enabled) one troll can turn it into a desolation for all - no matter whether PC-SJW, self-styled-machito, or any other twat. Trolling should not be tolerated in a moderator. If resources are sufficient, a well-insulated sandbox/jail should be available for mentoring brats and trolls.
100 • Linux Malware soon (by KanKam on 2015-07-25 03:25:54 GMT from Oceania)
The popularity of Android phones has led to a rise in android malware - as the surveillance-ware maker Hacking Team expose has shown (Remote Control System Android - a suite of hacking tools unsuspectingly downloaded from web sites, news sites, and email links). That malware even included open source software. So as Linux becomes more popular - as its supporters want - it will just be a short step to port android malware to linux.
# 90: And what do people do who use laptops in public areas, since they can't take a second firewall computer with them?
101 • @93, @94, @97, @100 (by imnotrich on 2015-07-25 06:58:30 GMT from North America)
@93I don't want to say you are ignorant, so let's be polite and say you are uninformed. Trolls are people who claim Linux cannot be infected. I've been speaking the truth about Linux for years, it CAN be infected and that was long before it happened that my machine was infected. Tell me again who is Moonbeam, and why does he have a profile in my Chrome browser?
@94 Yes, I know that there are several commercial anti-virus programs for Linux, for example NOD32 has an excellent Linux version. That's not what I said, please re-read my post. The quandary I had posted earlier was, why is there no decent open source anti-virus for Linux?
@97 I guess you missed my earlier post. It was not a case of clicking on a link or going to some sex website. I simply made a typo entering a url, and zap! I was immediately mousetrapped by an attack site that infiltrated my browser.
@100 is correct to point out there are numerous malware programs in the Android universe, won't be long before they're coming after Linux.
But that's not the least of our problems, if you run Flash, Java or pretty much any browser on the web it doesn't matter what OS you are using. You can be infected. There are no absolutes, no OS designed by humans will be impervious to OS attacks designed by humans. Period.
102 • Linux and viruses, malware, etc. (by tom joad on 2015-07-25 16:01:56 GMT from North America)
First off, I have never had a virus either despite switching to linux about '06.
But this is what I do to protect myself. I do use a firewall. I lock down the permissions in my home folder tight. I think that helps but again hackers gonna hack. I don't know how effective that is but I do it anyway. I mostly use either Tor or tails depending on the day. I also run bleachbit to 'clean' stuff from time to time. I have found one has to be careful with it as one can 'mess' up a computer if one is not careful. I install updates religiously. I will search for them everyday.
Another OS I use is LPS. The USAF writes it. I know, I know but I do use it anyway on occasion and I keep it current. i like it because you can not install it and it runs only in RAM. No, you can not access your HD, all that is locked out. I wished could figure out why Tor will not run using LPS but it won't apparently.
If I use tor, I have installed noscript, ad blocker and ghostery in tor. And I lock those down tight. Doing that causes me some angst when I want to read or see something but I deal with it. (using Tor now.)
I am not running any anti virus programs currently.
Early in my Linux days I was pretty laid back about the 'bad' stuff. I believed that virus writers didn't bother with Linux as there were just not enough of us to mess with. I have long since become very dogmatic about security. I have learned that one can really 'harden' Linux like I never could XP.
Lastly, I have zero doubts that Linux can become infected. It can. Put your 'dukes' up to protect yourself. Hackers gonna hack.
103 • @101 latimes.cm (by mandog on 2015-07-25 20:11:17 GMT from South America)
I just fired up a Arcbang live cd opened firefox no extentions typed latimes.cm got got asked if I meant latimes.com or latimes.cm stayed with my 1st choice after clicking about 5 links came to a page asking about browser choice, at this point i gave up no popups no moonbeams in fact sweet FA. And that is really what I expected + no profile changes
90 • extra security (by M.Z.
I'm starting to agree with your comment "I personally would take everything #82 says with a grain of salt, mostly because I have never experienced any of the problems he has repeatedly complained about regarding Firefox nor the security issues he describes above"
That does not mean there are no attempted browser hi jacks that can't be deal with the correct extension but no more than 1 as with antivirus more than 1 is more dangerous than none.
104 • car hacking (by ManKam on 2015-07-26 03:27:14 GMT from Oceania)
Video of a jeep cherokee hacked wirelessly from 10 miles away - taking control of brakes and steering.
"Chrysler uses the locked-down QNX operating system [Posix compliant], but the extended mobile-phone integration of the Access/Via Mobile system seems to have been key to this attack." The system uses the usual browsers: explorer, chrome, firefox (with popup disablers).
Car makers are also experimenting with Linux to automatically control vehicle driving. Now tell me that Linux is safe - particularly when you need a wireless connection to update the car software. Perhaps OS's used in cars may lead to better software security.
105 • car hacking (by nolinuxguru on 2015-07-26 06:47:51 GMT from Europe)
@104 QNX is effectively a closed source micro-kernel OS which is far removed from Linux, and still got friendly-hacked. You would think that being hacked improves security, but there is little evidence for this.
106 • Code of conduct & Linux Security (by M.Z. on 2015-07-26 06:49:40 GMT from Planet Mars)
@95 - political nonsense
I'd say the only one with the political axe to grind is you. The code of conduct is designed to encourage decent behaviour & hardly seems like a 'social justice war'. It's just a tacit acknowledgement or what all people who work with others should know without saying 'don't be a total jerk & act offensively'. Hardly anything new or shocking. Why should any community not encourage common decency? You can be as offensive & ignorant as you want in your free time when it isn't going to disrupt ongoing projects & isn't reflected on the organization you claim to want to help. It is as simple as that.
@104
Well QNX in as proprietary embedded micro kernel OS, so that has exactly zero to do with Linux security beyond proving that Unix like systems are vulnerable to security issues. That's sort of a 'well duh' situation, & I don't think I see anyone here trying to seriously claim that Linux is inherently invulnerable. We should all take security seriously on Linux or any other OS because there will inevitably be attacks against every OS. Even with the good security track record of Linux I try to keep my PC systems behind a dedicated firewall OS just to be proactive about security. I do see Trojans & other potential attacks being block by Snort on a daily basis & I'm glad I took a few extra steps to protect my network, even if most of the attacks were unlikely to cause me problems.
107 • Android x86 (by tim on 2015-07-26 16:42:33 GMT from Europe)
Has anyone else tried the new Android x86 release? Very slick on an Iconia W500 tablet. Can use Google play same as on Android proper. Not all apps work but most do.
108 • CoC • 106 • 95 • (by Kragle on 2015-07-26 17:51:32 GMT from North America)
A Code of Conduct is only a tool; any tool can be abused. It is a political tool, yes.
From the FreeBSD CoC, "Always strive to present a civil and courteous demeanour in your dealings with other project members; moreso when dealing with third parties from outside the project." and "We will not tolerate any member of the community, either publically or privately giving aid or encouragement to any third party to behave in such a way towards any members of the FreeBSD community." contain unqualified references to interactions with third parties, and thus may be used by a troll (not just an SJW) to harass community members for matters unrelated to community goals, instead of confining such concerns to the scope of the community's purpose and leveraging that scope, as in "Stay focused on the topic at hand." It's dangerous and often destructive to allow trolling (SJW, machito, etc), moreso in a moderator. The concern raised in comment 95 has some validity.
Nevertheless, a normal part of community is regulating behavior. People who have not learned to be civil or polite normally need to be confined to a safe zone for mentoring.
For a more challenging topic, there's the related question of "brand" representation.
Number of Comments: 108
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