DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 623, 17 August 2015 |
Welcome to this year's 33rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the most important freedoms open source software gives its users is the ability to change the course of software development. When the original author of an application, desktop or distribution no longer wishes to continue their work its users are empowered to continue the project. When a project takes a turn its users do not like, they can fork the project and push it in a direction that better suits their needs. This past week we witnessed the freedom and flexibility open source offers. First, Canonical released the source code for their now discontinued Ubuntu One file synchronization and storage service. Then the Bodhi Linux distribution unveiled the project's first release of Moksha, a fork of the Enlightenment desktop. We also saw Gentoo strive to make their Portage tree more open to the developer community while Fedora developers debated which web browsers to include in their repositories. Before we dive into the details of those stories, we take a look at VectorLinux, a branch of the Slackware family that offers users stability and performance. In our Questions and Answers column we quickly cover cloud-based distributions, OpenDNS's sale to Cisco and website encryption. In our Torrent Corner we share the distributions we are seeding and then we provide a list of distributions released last week. In our Opinion Poll we ask whether you dual boot. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Exploring a different direction with VectorLinux 7.1
Often times, when we look out over the sea of Linux distributions, we see a lot of Debian based projects, dozens of Ubuntu spins and a healthy collection of Fedora derivatives. It seems to me that distributions based on Slackware are sighted less and less these days. Maybe Slackware's traditional style just does not appeal to new distribution creators or maybe the distribution's conservative nature has become a liability in today's environment of fast paced development. Whatever the reason, VectorLinux 7.1 (a Slackware derivative) was launched back in June and I, hungry for a taste of Slackware, happily added it to my list of projects to review.
According to the VectorLinux website, the distribution has three key goals: "Speed, performance, stability -- these are attributes that set VectorLinux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions. The creators of VectorLinux had a single credo: keep it simple, keep it small and let the end user decide what their operating system is going to be."
The VectorLinux distribution (hereafter simply referred to as Vector) is offered in one edition that is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. The download for the 64-bit ISO is 720MB in size. Booting from the Vector disc brings up a prompt where we are told we can supply boot parameters to the kernel. Taking the default settings (by simply pressing Enter) launches a graphical environment and opens Vector's graphical system installer. If we move our mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen a window manager panel appears along with an application menu. Browsing the application menu we can find disk partitioning utilities, some system tools and a copy of the game Tetris. The Tetris option offers a nice way to pass the time while the installer is working.

VectorLinux 7.1 -- The Xfce desktop and application menu
(full image size: 865kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Vector's system installer begins by asking if we would like Vector to take over our entire disk, in which case the installer will try to automatically partition our hard drive. Alternatively, we can take the "Advanced" option and partition the hard drive ourselves. Taking the Advanced option launches the GParted partition manager. GParted offers a nice interface that makes dividing up our disk fairly easy. I found ext2/3/4, JFS, XFS and Reiserfs partitions are supported. Once we have finished managing our partitions and have closed GParted, Vector's installer gives us the opportunity to assign mount points to our partitions. The system installer next asks if we would like to install a desktop environment with the sole option being the Xfce desktop. We are then asked to create a user account for ourselves and select our time zone from a list. The following screen asks if we would like to install a boot loader on our hard drive and Vector supports both the Lilo and GRUB boot loaders. The installer then copies its files (while we can indulge in Tetris) and, when it is finished, the installer prompts us to reboot the computer.
When we boot our new copy of Vector we are brought to a dark graphical login screen. Since we did not create a password for the root account during the installation process, I first tried (and failed) to login to the root account. Apparently it is inaccessible from the login screen by default. I later found out we can sign into to our user account and use the su command to switch to the root user account (without requiring a password). We can then set a password on the root account and sign into the root user's account from the graphical login screen. This is an unusual way to handle the root account and it makes me a bit wary not having the root user protected by a password when the system first comes on-line.
Usually I avoid logging into a desktop environment as the root user, but I tried it once this past week just to see if Vector would allow me to do so. Once a password has been set on the root account, we can indeed sign into the Xfce desktop as the root user. The desktop is presented quite differently to root compared to how it looks to other users. When signed into Xfce as root the desktop has a panel at the top of the screen, the application menu is placed in the upper-left corner and the wallpaper is bright. When signed into Xfce as a regular user the desktop's panel is placed at the bottom of the screen, the application menu is positioned in the lower-left corner of the screen and the wallpaper is dark.
One thing that becomes obvious right away is that Vector uses large fonts and large icons. I like this as I feel some distributions reduce font size too far, perhaps in an effort to save space. Vector makes things easy to read and easy to find. Curiously enough, I found when I opened new application windows, the windows themselves tended to be quite small. This meant I usually had to resize each window I opened in order to see its information and controls. The large font and small windows made for an unusual combination, but one I grew to like.

VectorLinux 7.1 -- Xfce desktop settings
(full image size: 563kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I tried running Vector in two test environments. When running in a VirtualBox virtual machine, the distribution performed well. The system booted quickly, the desktop was responsive and everything worked as expected. I found Vector did not automatically integrate with VirtualBox, and VirtualBox add-ons were not available in the project's repositories. I had to add VirtualBox guest additions manually. When running on physical hardware Vector performed well. The distribution worked quickly, all my hardware was properly detected and my screen was set to its maximum resolution. The distribution required approximately 220-240MB of memory to login to the Xfce desktop and, with the default packages installed, used about 4GB of hard drive space.
Vector ships with a useful collection of desktop software. Looking through the application menu we find the Firefox web browser (with Flash support), the HexChat IRC software, the Pidgin messaging software, the Claws Mail e-mail application and the gFTP file transfer utility. The Network Manager utility helps us get on-line. A PDF document viewer is available to us along with the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the Geeqie simple image viewer. The Geany IDE application is installed for us along with the AbiWord and Gnumeric productivity applications. The Orage calendar program is installed for us along with the J-Pilot personal organizer. The distribution further provides us with the Exaile audio player, GNOME MPlayer, SMPlayer, the Grip audio CD ripper and the Brasero disc burning application. Vector ships with multimedia codecs, enabling us to play media files out of the box. Vector offers users a range of configuration tools to customize the Xfce desktop, a calculator app, a text editor, a file archive manager and the Thunar file manager. We can also find such utilities as a bulk file rename program, processor monitors, a printer manager and a simple firewall configuration tool. Vector ships with the GNU Compiler Collection, the SysV init software and version 3.18 of the Linux kernel. By default, Vector runs a number of network services, including NFS shares, a time server and the Internet Printing Protocol (ipp). By default there is no firewall in place to protect these services.

VectorLinux 7.1 -- Enabling the firewall
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All of the software Vector provided worked well for me. I feel the developers have found a nice balance between offering rich functionality and providing applications which perform quickly and efficiently. There were times when I wanted alternative applications (or additional software) and in those instances I turned to Vector's graphical package manager, Gslapt.
The Gslapt application is a simple graphical package manager that is divided into two basic parts. Near the top of the window we find a simple list of software available to us in the Vector repositories. This list is sorted alphabetically and we can filter the packages listed by using a search box placed at the top of the package list. We can mark packages for installation or removal by clicking a box next to each package's name. At the bottom of the window we find an information box. In this box we can see information related to the selected package, including technical data, a brief description of the software and the package's dependencies. Gslapt has a very simple interface and it relies on us knowing (roughly) the name of the software we wish to install, but it performs its tasks quickly and I encountered no problems with Gslapt during my trial. For people who prefer to manage packages from the command line, Vector provides us with slapt-get. The slapt-get program works quite a bit like Debian's APT tools, but slapt-get places all the package handling functionality into one tool rather than using multiple separate utilities.

VectorLinux 7.1 -- The Gslapt package manager
(full image size: 352kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The distribution pulls software packages from Vector's own repositories. During the week I used Vector I checked for software upgrades periodically and the package manager never reported any available upgrades were available. This may be, in part, because Vector provides a fairly small selection of software. According to slapt-get there are just 3,037 packages available to us, a relatively small number when compared next to the repositories of Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.
During my time with Vector most components of the operating system worked well. I generally found Vector performed quickly and with a minimal amount of fuss or distractions. The one notable exception to this rule came about a few days into my trial. Upon logging in a notification appeared on my desktop telling me my network cable was unplugged. I checked and confirmed that while the network cable was connected, my computer had no working network connection. Attempting to re-establish a connection caused vague error messages relating to Network Manager to be displayed. I went into my network settings and swapped out my automated (DHCP) settings for a manually supplied IP address and gateway settings. My network connection was established and I was able to get back to browsing the web and checking e-mail. I found this regression strange as it happened in the middle of the week and without any network settings or packages changing prior to the dropped connection. I also checked other machines on the LAN and found my Vector box was the only one to lose its network connection.

VectorLinux 7.1 -- Running Firefox and Gnumeric
(full image size: 416kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusions
When evaluating a distribution I like to keep in mind not only how well the distribution is working for me, but also how well the distribution is fulfilling its mission. According to the Vector website the distribution strives to provide performance and stability in a small package. I feel Vector excels at delivering these characteristics. The Vector distribution is fairly small (by modern standards), the distribution offers good performance and was generally stable. The Xfce desktop usually stays out of the way and the distribution offers a good collection of software for performing day to day tasks.
My one serious concern with Vector is how the distribution approaches security. I was not comfortable with the root account not being locked or password protected by default. It is up to the administrator to lock down the root account once the distribution has been installed. I would also have preferred that Vector either not run network services or enable a firewall to protect these services. I am of the opinion network ports should not be open to the public by default.
Vector is not as feature rich or as beginner friendly as most of the mainstream distributions and there are not nearly as many packages in Vector's software repositories. But I do not think competing for the most packages or delivering the shiniest, most feature-rich experience is what Vector's developers want to do. Vector offers a relatively low-resource, responsive distribution that can function as either a server or as a desktop platform. The distribution may not have all the bells and whistles of some other distributions, but what Vector does provide is a fast, stable platform that will run on most desktop computers made this century. Vector offers a desktop experience with minimal frills, a good deal of functionality and the tools most people look for in a desktop operating system.
Vector comes across as a solid, dependable, traditional Linux distribution. It's a fairly minimal platform that I found easy to use. The distribution may appear a bit dated (visually), but Vector provides a good deal of useful desktop software, works well and has a friendly installer. I think this distribution would be well suited for rescuing older computers from the trash heap or for giving an older computer a performance boost.
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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) |
Canonical open sources Ubuntu One, Moksha Desktop makes its debut in Bodhi Linux, Gentoo's Portage tree moves to git and Fedora developers discuss Chromium
It has been over a year since Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu distribution, announced they would be shutting down the Ubuntu One file synchronization service. At the time, Canonical promised to release the source code to their then-proprietary file synchronization and storage service. The company has finally followed through and Canonical is now in the process of releasing the code for their Ubuntu One service in stages. In an announcement last week, Canonical provided the first pieces of their source code and licensing details. "Today, we're happy to be open sourcing the biggest piece of our Ubuntu One file syncing service. The code we're releasing is the server side of what desktop clients connected to when syncing local or remote changes. This is code where most of the innovation and hard work went throughout the years, where we faced most of the scaling challenges and the basis on which other components were built upon. We have released it under a AGPLv3 license and hoping it's useful for developers to read through, fork into their own projects or pick out useful bits and pieces. You can get the source code here." Hopefully, the Ubuntu One source code will encourage more competition and solutions in the realm of open source file synchronization and backup services.
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Frustrated by problems with recent versions of the Enlightenment desktop, Bodhi Linux's lead developer, Jeff Hoogland, decided to side-step E19 and create a stable fork of an earlier release of Enlightenment, E17. "After coming back with a breath of fresh air at the start of 2015, I put aside my personal thoughts about E19 and pushed out the Bodhi 3.0.0 release that uses E19 as its `default' desktop today. However, we did not just offer the E19 desktop, our `Legacy' image targeted at old computers still used the E17 desktop. The reason for this is because E19 was no longer as lightweight and it performed very poorly on older hardware. On top of the performance issues, E19 did not allow for me personally to have the same workflow I enjoyed under E17 due to features it no longer had. Because of this I had changed to using the E17 on all of my Bodhi 3 computers -- even my high end ones. This got me to thinking how many of our existing Bodhi users felt the same way, so I opened a discussion about it on our user forums. I found many felt similar to how I did. So that left only one question: What was to be done about it? After much reflection, I came to the same conclusion others had before me that lead to the creation of the MATE and Trinity desktops -- fork it." The new fork is called Moksha Desktop and is included in the newly released Bodhi Linux 3.1.0. Moksha Desktop strives to offer the stability and performance of E17 while backporting some useful features from newer versions of the Enlightenment desktop.
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In an effort to make working on the Gentoo package repository (better known as the Portage tree) easier, the Gentoo team has migrated their work from a CVS repository to git. The git software facilitates distributed development (which is common in open source projects) and is a popular replacement for older tools like CVS and Subversion. A notice of the migration from CVS to git was announced on the Gentoo website last week: "The repository can be checked out from git.gentoo.org and is available via our git web interface. For users of our package repository, nothing changes: Updates continue to be available via the established mechanisms (rsync, webrsync, snapshots). Options to fetch the package tree via git are to be announced later. The migration facilitates the process of new contributors getting involved as proxy maintainers and eventually developers. Alternate places for users to submit pull requests, such as GitHub, can be expected in the future."
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There is a lively debate in progress on the Fedora mailing lists regarding the default web browser to use in the KDE spin of the Fedora distribution. The KDE spin of Fedora tries to maintain KDE/Qt software purity, but this has become difficult when it comes to web browsers as there are relatively few full featured, well maintained web browsers based on the Qt software libraries. All of this raises the question of which web browser the KDE spin of Fedora should use. Firefox is a popular choice, but it is not a Qt-based application. Chromium is another popular choice, but is not included in Fedora's official repositories for a number of reasons. This has lead Gerald Cox to suggest Chromium should be included in Fedora's software repositories. "Things have also changed over the years, and Chrome/Chromium's popularity has continued to grow and is now packaged in Ubuntu, Debian and SUSE. Firefox has exceptions mainly because it is deemed `too popular' to keep out of the distribution. I think it is obvious to everyone that Chrome/Chromium is at least as popular as Firefox. I realize we have our guidelines and we're not Debian, SUSE or Ubuntu, and that's a good thing. But, if we're making exceptions for Firefox because of its popularity shouldn't we do the same for Chromium?"
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Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Rapid fire questions and answers
Interested-in-cloud-distributions asks: As the world is constantly changing I am wondering if/when there would be any entries for cloud based distributions (e.g. Amazon Linux AMI) on DistroWatch?
DistroWatch answers: Whether to include distributions which are tied to a particular platform or not is an interesting question. We are sometimes asked if we will include Linux distributions that are either tied to a particular platform (like Raspbian) or that are designed with mobile devices in mind (Android) or that are tied to a cloud provider (Amazon Linux). Generally speaking, if I can download the distribution and try it out on one of my computers or in a virtual machine, I am open to including it. Cloud-based systems, particularly ones tied to a specific company, pose two problems.
First, people need to pay to access the distribution. This in itself is not a deal breaker, we cover Red Hat and SUSE releases and they are commercial distributions. But the second problem is one cannot simply download a cloud-based distribution, try it out and maybe take a screen shot. These two characteristics, when combined, make me unenthusiastic about including cloud-based distributions in our coverage. I'm not saying it will never happen, but it's unlikely, unless Amazon either releases a demo ISO people can download and try, or they offer a free version users can demo with limited resources on Amazon's servers.
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Interested-in-DNS asks: How does Cisco buying OpenDNS affect Linux and open source?
DistroWatch answers: The short answer is Cisco buying OpenDNS will have zero affect on Linux or open source.
There are plenty of freely available DNS servers out there. OpenDNS is not particularly special in what it does and open source development is not tied to OpenDNS in any way. Some people might decide to switch to another DNS provider like Comodo Secure DNS or Google Public DNS, but Linux development will not be affected.
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Wanting-to-encrypt-everything asks: When Let's Encrypt becomes available will DistroWatch support HTTPS?
DistroWatch answers: It is possible, even likely, DistroWatch will offer an encrypted connection (HTTPS) option in the future. However, it's not near the top of the priority list at the moment. Mostly because DistroWatch does not deal with any sensitive information. We don't make visitors sign in, so there are no passwords, and we don't collect credit card numbers. All the information on this website is publicly available data, just collected in one organized location. Even our commenting system does not require people to sign in or share any identifying information. There is not really any immediate advantage to having encryption enabled on a website where all information is public.
That being said, some people like the idea of encrypting all their network connections to everything which, if nothing else, makes privacy and encryption more common, more normal. Treating privacy and encryption as the default is a concept I, personally, like. Which is why I have been experimenting with Let's Encrypt. At the moment, it's not ready for public use, but I plan to keep checking back and trying out Let's Encrypt on test servers to see how well it works. Hopefully by this time next year it will be a suitable option.
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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.
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: 99
- Total downloads completed: 47,971
- Total data uploaded: 10.3TB
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Released Last Week |
Baruwa Enterprise Edition 6.7
The developers of Baruwa Enterprise Edition (also called BaruwaOS), a commercial distribution created from Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code, have announced the release of Baruwa Enterprise Edition 6.7. BaruwaOS offers users a number of security features designed to protect e-mail and networks from malicious software and spam. The latest edition introduces improved scanning features and protections against data along with several other features and bug fixes. "Today we are issuing update -- BaruwaOS 6.7, this update tracks the upstream OS release 6.7. Packages updated in the upstream have been rolled into BaruwaOS 6.7. The release also includes Baruwa package release 2.0.9. This is an Enhancement and Bugfix release and contains the following changes: Implemented local scanner settings cache to allow the scanner to continue scanning mail while the backend or database server is not available. Added dynamically generated trusted_networks spamassassin configuration built from the relays added under organizations. This will ensure relayed messages are not checked on DNSBL's. Improving outbound functionality. Made improvements to yum plugin to run only when managed packages are changed. Implemented file system based data loss prevention which could happen when SQLite database is locked for writing. Spec and module updated to ensure proper permissions on restoredb directory. Added functionality to prevent duplicates being restored from backup db." A full list of changes and links to the upstream release notes can be found in Baruwa's release announcement.
Tails 1.5
The developers of Tails, a security oriented Linux distribution designed to keep users anonymous while they are on-line, have released a new version. Tails 1.5 features a number of updates and new security features. The Tor Browser will no longer connect to servers on the local network, AppArmor profiles have been altered to better improve security and the network should now be disabled if MAC address spoofing fails. "Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.5, is out. This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible. New features: Disable access to the local network in the Tor Browser. You should now use the Unsafe Browser to access the local network. Upgrades and changes: Install Tor Browser 5.0 (based on Firefox 38esr). Install a 32-bit GRUB EFI boot loader. Tails should now start on some tablets with Intel Bay Trail processors among others. Let the user know when Tails Installer has rejected a device because it is too small. There are numerous other changes that might not be apparent in the daily operation of a typical user. Technical details of all the changes are listed in the Changelog." further information can be found in the release announcement and in the known issues document.

Tails 1.5 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 56kB, resolution: 1600x1200 pixels)
Bodhi Linux 3.1.0
Jeff Hoogland has announced the launch of Bodhi Linux 3.1.0. The new release of Bodhi Linux is significant because it is the first release to feature the Moksha Desktop. "This release is a bigger deal for the Bodhi team than our previous update releases have been in the past. The reason for this is because this release is the first to use the Moksha Desktop which we have forked from E17. Because it is built on the rock solid foundation that E17 provides, even this first release of the Moksha Desktop is stable and is something I feel comfortable using in a production environment. Existing Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 users will not be automatically moved to Moksha via system updates. Folks who want to move from their current Enlightenment desktop to Moksha can do so by following the directions here." Further information and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.

Bodhi Linux 3.1.0 -- Running the Moksha desktop environment
(full image size: 833kB, resoltuion: 1280x1024 pixels)
Kali Linux 2.0
The developers of Kali Linux, a forensics and security distribution based on Debian, have released Kali Linux 2.0. One of the big changes in the latest version of Kali is that the distribution has shifted to a rolling release model. "One of the biggest moves we've taken to keep Kali 2.0 up-to-date in a global, continuous manner, is transforming Kali into a rolling distribution. What this means is that we are pulling our packages continuously from Debian Testing (after making sure that all packages are installable) -- essentially upgrading the Kali core system, while allowing us to take advantage of newer Debian packages as they roll out. This move is where our choice in Debian as a base system really pays off -- we get to enjoy the stability of Debian, while still remaining on the cutting edge." The new release of Kali Linux is available in 32-bit and 64-bit x86 builds as well ARM builds. Further information is available in the project's release announcement.
Univention Corporate Server 4.0-3
The developers of Univention Corporate Server (UCS), an enterprise-class server distribution based on Debian, have announced an update to the UCS 4.0 series. The new release, which carries the version number 4.0-3, ships with a number of important features and enhancements. " The mail server Dovecot has been integrated as standard IMAP/POP3 server into UCS and offers an alternative to the still available Cyrus IMAP server. More information is available in this blog article. The compatibility to Active Directory has been improved with the Samba update to 4.2.3. This includes, among others, improvements in the DRS replication and the printer driver handling. In addition, the join of Huawai storage systems in the Active Directory domain provided by UCS is now also possible. Several enhancements in design and usability of the Univention Management Console have been implemented. For example, it is now possible to use the forward and back buttons of the web browser. This allows a simpler and faster navigation in the management interface. LDAP filters can now be defined for LDAP policies. That means the LDAP policy applies only to the objects that match the LDAP filter. This makes it possible to use LDAP policies in an easy and generic way especially in large environments. The Linux kernel has been updated to the latest stable version of the 3.16 long term kernel. This includes several security updates as well as new and updated drivers for a better hardware support." Further details and upgrade instructions are included in the company's release notes.
Robolinux 8.1 "MATE"
The developers of Robolinux, a desktop distribution based on Debian, have announced the release of a new edition of Robolinux featuring the MATE desktop environment. The new release, Robolinux 8.1 "MATE", requires less memory than Robolinux's Cinnamon edition. "Robolinux is very pleased and excited to announce its brand new lightning fast Robolinux `Mate Raptor' V8.1 LTS 2020 OS which is based on the rock solid Debian 8 stable source code with the 3.16 Linux kernel. It uses 210MB less RAM than our Cinnamon version. Custom scripts can be added to the Caja file Manager to speed up your productivity. It has far better graphics quality, boots up and runs much faster than our Debian 7 versions and is also compatible with newer hardware, drivers and most notably the Intel Haswell chipset. The Robolinux `Mate Raptor' user interface is extremely fast, quite beautiful and very easy to use. A tremendous amount of time and effort went into optimizing and tweaking Robolinux `Mate Raptor' v8.1 so that Linux Beginners and Advanced Users will be very pleased." Further information is available on the project's website.
FreeBSD 10.2
Glen Barber has announced the availability of a new FreeBSD release. The new version, FreeBSD 10.2, is the third release in the 10.x series and offers a number of improvements. Some of the key changes include updated compatibility for Linux applications, ZFS improvements and new versions of the GNOME and KDE desktops. "This is the third release of the stable/10 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: The resolvconf utility has been updated to version 3.7.0, with improvements to protect DNS privacy. The ntp suite has been updated to version 4.2.8p3. A new rc script, growfs, has been added, which will resize the root file system on boot if the /firstboot file exists. The Linux compatibility version has been updated to support CentOS 6 ports. The DRM code has been updated to match Linux version 3.8.13, allowing running multiple X servers simultaneously. Several enhancements and updates for improved FreeBSD/ARM support. Several ZFS performance and reliability improvements. GNOME has been updated to version 3.14.2. KDE has been updated to version 4.14.3." More information is available in the release announcement and the detailed release notes. Errata notes have also been provided.
KaOS 2015.08
The developers of KaOS, a rolling release Linux distribution that focuses on providing up to date KDE desktop software, have announced the availability of a new snapshot. The new ISO snapshot, KaOS 2015.08, offers users the chance to run Plasma 5 in a Wayland session and the distribution has almost fully transitioned from Qt 4 to Qt 5. "KaOS is also approaching a completed switch from Qt 4 to Qt 5 only. This ISO has only one application left that depends on Qt 4, hplip, The repositories have about a dozen left that still need Qt 4. Most notable major updates over the last two months are the Xorg 1.17 stack, Glib2 2.44.2 stack, Qt 5.50, GCC 4.9.3, Linux 4.1.5 and Systemd 224. This ISO KaOS uses the systemd provided systemd-boot for UEFI installs, Gummiboot is depreciated. As for the desktop this ISO brings all the latest of Plasma 5 (Frameworks 5.13.0, Plasma 5.4RC) and KDE Applications 15.07.90. All build on Qt 5.5.0. Plasma-volume-control is now part of the Plasma 5 group, renamed to Plasma-pa (for sound plasmoid). Many more applications are now fully ported to Qt5/Frameworks 5, examples of the recent ports are Megaglest, Tellico, KMahjongg, lmms, smb4k, qmmp, Basket and Lyx." The Calamares system installer and the Octopi package manager have also received enhancements. Please see the release announcement and release notes for further details.

KaOS 2015.08 -- Running the KDE desktop
(full image size: 663kB, resolution:1366x768 pixels)
Linux Mangaka Koe
The developers of Linux Mangaka have released a new version of their Manga and Anime focused distribution. The new release, which is based on Kubuntu 14.04, features the KDE 4 desktop environment. "After the success releasing Nyu with a lot of passion, we decided to start creating Koe witch reached the final stage yesterday! Koe is based on Kubuntu 14.04 with vanilla KDE 4.13.3 core libs containing Manga drawing, viewing, Anime playback and as well subtitle programs out-of-the-box. We beg for your patience at booting, the system has no boot-logo (to look more intuitive with the KDE desktop), but positively it ships some customization to fit the way as a complete beautiful operating system made just for you! Note: We may release an update until end year with a correction at the missed installer `quit' message (it does not affect the installation) and application menu mouse hover closing. " The above information and a screen shot can be found in the release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll |
Dual booting
Many of us run multiple operating systems on our computers, either because we need features exclusive to separate operating systems or because it's fun and interesting to experiment with multiple options. This week we would like to know whether you dual boot multiple operating systems on your primary computer.
In particularly, we're curious as to whether you dual boot multiple open source operating systems or if you switch between proprietary systems and open source distributions. Many people who mostly use Linux also switch back to Windows for gaming or work. Other people use a proprietary system most of the time, but are dipping their toes into the ocean of open source. Let us know what is on your hard disk partitions in the comments.
You can see the results of last week's poll on Adobe Flash here.
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Dual Booting
I boot an open source OS exclusively: | 846 (31%) |
I boot a proprietary OS exclusively: | 115 (4%) |
I dual-boot multiple open source OSes: | 415 (15%) |
I dual-boot open and proprietary systems: | 1333 (49%) |
I dual-boot proprietary systems: | 18 (1%) |
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DistroWatch.com News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 24 August 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 • new distros (by todd on 2015-08-17 00:23:32 GMT from North America)
what has happened with the weekly update the last three I think haven't shown what new distro is added to the list and which ones are on the waiting list i really enjoyed looking forward to seeing what is new each week and now i am disappointed
2 • dual boot (by DJ on 2015-08-17 01:39:35 GMT from North America)
I haven't dual booted in a little over 10 years. I'm considering it since I've never tried a BSD yet.
3 • dual boot (by barnacat on 2015-08-17 03:18:11 GMT from Europe)
In my Acer I have "tetra"-boot 1. Windows 8.1 (required for work) 2. Linux Mint 17.2 (for my wife) 3. Debian 8.1 (for me, stable like a rock) 4. Arch Linux (for me, discovered 2 months ago) And, soon, I delete 2 and 3. ;-)
4 • dual boot (by linuxista on 2015-08-17 04:08:06 GMT from North America)
1. Arch Linux (5 years & counting on the same install) gnome3/openbox/i3 2. Manjaro openbox/i3/spectrwm 3. Mint 17.1 (or whatever's current) cinnamon 4. Manjaro kde plasma5/openbox/i3
And, soon, I delete 2 and 3. ;-) (2 because it's rendundant and 3 because it's a "stable" backup that I found I have never needed.)
5 • Dual Boot (by Mike on 2015-08-17 04:08:14 GMT from Oceania)
Debian 8.1 as my main system Porteus as a tool to image and restore the main system Other distros for review purposes. Currently loaded are pointlinux, antix and Mint 17.2
6 • Dual Boot (by ResetIsComing on 2015-08-17 05:00:11 GMT from North America)
I was for sometime, up till a few months ago dual booting only Linux Distros. Because of the slow coming support of my type of graphic cards, I had to re-start dual booting windows and Linux (Ubuntu-MATE, Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon/Xfce or Kubuntu). Under Windows all my games play flawlessly and under Linux it is kinda of "hit or miss"(50-50). If Linux (and Steam OS) supported my kind of cards at least 9/10 times, I could see finally staying with just Linux (BSD every once in a while, to mix things up.).
7 • no new distros (by KDE Kiwi on 2015-08-17 05:02:27 GMT from Oceania)
#1 it looks like linux expansionism of new distros has come to a natural end. we'll now have to resort to rounds of reviews of the existing several hundred active distros. or we will have to revive the passion for some deserted distros and kick them back into life.
8 • Single Boot (by Mac Taylor on 2015-08-17 06:08:54 GMT from Planet Mars)
Boot Debian from physical machine. All other startups are from VMs.
9 • Dual boot (by Marame on 2015-08-17 06:49:56 GMT from Europe)
On my main computer is only Rosa Desktop Fresh. I had a dual boot PCLinuxOS and Mageia working well with Grub legacy. After unsuccesfull upgrade of Mageia I decided to remove it. On an another computer I have Kubuntu (main) and Linux Mint Mate (secondary) with Grub 2. It works but Grub 2 is clumsy. Every time you update kernel you must reboot and perform update-grub on the other distro and reboot and boot to the other. Grub legacy is far easier.
10 • Dual boot (by Alexandru on 2015-08-17 07:07:46 GMT from Europe)
I keep installed the following systems: 1. OS X 2. OpenIndiana 3. FreeBSD 4. Debian GNU/Linux 5. Haiku I upgrade each when new release appears. My main OS is Debian. I use GRUB legacy as standalone installation in a separate partition. The reason why I need all them is to port my software to all these platforms. The Windows does not play nicely with other OSes, so I was forced to remove it.
11 • Chromium in Fedora (by Patrick on 2015-08-17 07:35:08 GMT from Oceania)
While I agree that Chromium could be included in Fedora's repos I would not want it to be the default in any spin of Fedora. Chromium has been found to download binary blobs in the past without user permissions (which I would think would breach the ethos of vanilla Fedora). While the issue has since been resolved, it could happen again. And while Firefox has been leaning towards some rather sketchy practices and addons as of late it is still the lesser of two evils.
12 • distro-diversity (by nolinuxguru on 2015-08-17 08:11:13 GMT from Europe)
@7 I think we will now enter a period of slow contraction in the diversity of distros. It will be driven by the once noble desire to standardize Linux. Characterized by the take-over of many distros by systemd and its viral properties, the ultimate aim is to transform the very nature of Linux.
I know, for now, there's Slackware, Gentoo and a few other independents and their relatives, but it will be hard to maintain their stance as the infection progresses.
Of course I have been a bit gloomy about the situation, and it may be that the projects now underway to counteract the infection will bring about a New Spring for Linux. Or perhaps the grand unification of Linux will lead to it being more stable and secure. What do you think?
[Sorry if this is a departure from Jesse's question.]
13 • @12 (by Simon on 2015-08-17 09:13:00 GMT from Oceania)
No, it won't be "hard to maintain their stance". Even if 99% of LInux users go along with the "let's see how stupid and Windows-like we can make an OS" crowd, there will always be a few people maintaining sane distributions...if only because they have to, in order to have a sane distribution available to use. Linux From Scratch has done a great job of documenting the basic process of building a GNU/Linux distribution from source code. Anyone who cares enough to do it can do it, and no matter how many idiots want to keep watching their digital lives get more complex and less secure in the name of "progress", none of that is stopping anyone from building a simple, stable, functional operating system that just does what it's told to do. Wow, I feel like building one right now. :)
14 • Vector Linux (by DR.Long on 2015-08-17 09:30:22 GMT from North America)
I too, have found Vector Linux to be stable, fast and reliable. I have been using the OS on and off for over 7 years. Zenwalk is another stable Slackware derivative that is both stable and reliable.
@2 I no longer dual boot and moved to the world of BSD years ago. I personally run OpenBSD in both my business and personal lives. Extremely stable and complete. Make the jump and you will never look back.
15 • Dual boot (by Carlos Felipe on 2015-08-17 09:46:43 GMT from South America)
Ubuntu 15.04 and Android-x86.
16 • Vector Linux etc (by hughetorrance on 2015-08-17 09:56:45 GMT from Europe)
I noticed with Vector Linux that there was no connect button to reconnect eth0 if disconnected,I found it reconnected by unplugging the Ethernet cable and plugging it back in... ! I,m an old fan of Vector so I have installed it and have room for 5 more distros but this time I am in no rush.
ps I always enjoy reading Distrowatch weekly as I always find out stuff that I did not know.
17 • Triple booting (by Bob Anderson on 2015-08-17 10:03:13 GMT from Europe)
One tiny HAIKU install for fun + one medium sized 32-bit Slackware install for compatibility reasons with proprietary applications (skype, wine) + one huge 64-bit OpenBSD install as the default
18 • Dual Boot (by Ron on 2015-08-17 10:50:37 GMT from North America)
(((Odd. I can't make a comment with Firefox, yet Chromium works fine.)))
I at least dual boot Linux and Windows. I have in the past multi-booted several os' such as Linux (A few at once,) Windows, *BSD, etc.
I noticed the decrease in active distros. Still over 281 is a lot. I expect it to keep decreasing for a bit and somewhere down the road it will pick up again for some reason.
19 • Poll (by 4tux on 2015-08-17 11:30:50 GMT from Europe)
Proprietary System? Not now, nor ever, due to the abject corporate governance of their main players, namely Ms.
20 • @7 - at least one newish distro coming... (by Hoos on 2015-08-17 11:38:49 GMT from Asia)
The official release of Solus has been fixed for 1 Oct 2015.
It's in beta currently, and you can also try its desktop environment, Budgie Desktop, in Arch and Arch-based distros via AUR.
Other than this, I have noticed some slow down in new distros, but that might not be a bad thing.
The torrent of Ubuntu derivatives seems to have slowed down. Some of the more popular and longlived derivatives now focus only on the LTS releases of Ubuntu, which reduces even more the derivatives being released.
There was a wave of Arch-based or pacman-based distros (e.g. Arch, Chakra, Archbang, Bridge, Antergos, Manjaro, KaOS). This has stabilised.
The rest? Well, Debian derivatives have generally been a manageable number anyway, and many are familiar names. You don't see many new derivatives popping up.
For the other "families" of Linux based distros, there's never been a huge number of derivatives.
21 • Dual Boot (by Muthu on 2015-08-17 11:39:43 GMT from Asia)
I have installed the following systems(64 Bit): 1.Korora 22 - KDE 2. SolydK 3. Bluestar Linux- KDE 4. Ubuntu 15.04 I always try Distros when new release appears. My main OS is SolydK.Yesterday, only I have installed Korora 22. I have planned to replace Bluestar Linux with Kaos 2015.08(Latest Version)
22 • Dual boot (by fox on 2015-08-17 11:45:58 GMT from North America)
I am a Mac user slowly converting to Linux. My test machine is a 2009 Mac mini set up as a dual boot with Ubuntu 15.04 the default (Unity & gnome) and MacOS X Yosemite as the alternate. The experiment is going well, but I also have to run Microsoft Office 2010 under Play on Linux to get 100% accurate versions of Word documents, which I need for collaboration on academic research papers. LibreOffice is getting better in that regard with every update, but is still not quite there.
23 • Dual Boot (by Kamalakar on 2015-08-17 12:06:08 GMT from Asia)
I have the following systems (64 Bit): 1. Windows 8.1 2. Ubuntu 12.04.3 3. Ubuntu 15.04 4 Debian 8.1 on Mate Desktop Windows is required for filing of income tax return since signing it with Digital Signatures does not work on Linux. I use Ubuntu LTS for general work and Debian when more RAM is needed by applications. The newest stable Ubuntu to test my hardrware (like Bluetooth is not yet working)
24 • Dual Boot Correction (by Kamalakar on 2015-08-17 12:12:14 GMT from Asia)
Sorry my systems are: 1. Windows 8.1 2. Ubuntu 14.04.3 3. Ubuntu 15.04 4 Debian 8.1 on Mate Desktop There is no way to edit comment 23.
25 • Dual Boot (by Niko Z. on 2015-08-17 12:18:34 GMT from Planet Mars)
Only Debian on hardware. However, still daily use Win7 in Virtual Box for proprietary apps.
26 • Dual boot (by Fernando Gracia on 2015-08-17 12:35:31 GMT from North America)
1. Xubuntu 14.04.3. Beautiful, my main OS 2. Mint 17.2 Mate. It was my main but after update some KDE don't work as I wish 3. Win 8.1. It came with the laptop, no really useful My 15 years old Linspire black box (2000 celeron 2.4 mhz, 1 gb RAM and 40 g HD) is running Voyager 12.04 LTS as a charm
27 • VectorLinux review (by Jordan on 2015-08-17 12:36:15 GMT from North America)
Interesting that the network issues came up in that review. Vector routinely dumped my Realtec connection during the weeks I was considering it for my default linux machine.
I always recovered the connection by rebooting instead of messing with things. Finally just got rid of Vector in favor of Mint, which has never dropped the (same) network, or any other network.
28 • vector (by mandog on 2015-08-17 12:36:52 GMT from South America)
I have been trying Vector in both virtual and on real hardware. virtual was fine, on a real install it was a total disaster it did not shut down correctly leaving the fans running Ok i found a fix, updated then it would not boot no file system found fixed that by downgrading grub then it would not find any printers it did on install. I installed Iscan from slackbuilds somewhere but not found so I just gave up. Building a OS on virtual machines is not the way Sorry Vector you were a jewel in the past but not at this moment in time. Plymouth worked well mind you.
Also on a side note I am unable to comment on Firefox for some reason no comments box this is on Dillo sorry for any bad spelling
29 • dual boot (by peer on 2015-08-17 12:43:01 GMT from Europe)
no dual boots here. My main os is linux mint kde. Virtual I do run windows 10, android and sevral live distro's.
strange dat I cannot comment in firefox
30 • Dual boot (by Linux Apocalypsis on 2015-08-17 13:05:50 GMT from Europe)
In machines that are powerful enough I only have one system installed and all the rest are virtualised (mostly Windows 8.1 to ensure compatibility in collaborative work). My main system right now is always Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with LXQt. I migrated from Debian when systemd became the default and I found it to be very difficult to remove on a permanent basis.
Obviously, Ubuntu LTS is just a provisional solution. It will be eventually replaced with Devuan or AntiX or event LMDE, depending on what I find more stable and reliable when the time comes. It would be nice to see some collaboration between all three projects. But, in any case, LXQt will be my DE of choice. 0.9.0 still has a few minor rough edges, but considering the progression in the last releases I have reasonable expectations that 1.0 will be fully mature.
31 • distro-diversity (by nolinuxguru on 2015-08-17 13:56:04 GMT from Europe)
@13 & 30 I like the idea that LFS will provide an ultimate source for people to develop versions of Linux without systemd, but it may not be so simple as that. As software projects [xorg, desktops, web browsers, etc] come to rely on ever growing systemd features, the cost of maintaining clean projects without systemd may exceed the resources available to the likes of Devuan or AntiX. Of course, said projects and applications may maintain pristine versions that are fully portable, but there is little evidence for this so far. I fear it will take more than a Devuan-style init breakaway to break this problem.
32 • Dual boot (by Bushpilot on 2015-08-17 14:05:55 GMT from North America)
I have been multi-booting Debian 8 Xfce, Win XP, Manjaro 8.12 & Fedora 21 as well as others over the past year or so. Debian 8 is my main distro.. Also booting Debian Testing to see how it is progressing. Like all these distros but Debian has been the most rewarding for me as I am able to keep my palm pilot (jpilot) connected to it as well as wireless connect to my Blackberry Playbook.
33 • multi-booting (by michael on 2015-08-17 14:12:53 GMT from North America)
Here's what I have installed today -- spread out over a few hard drives. No Slackware right now, for some reason. I like playing with different desktop environments, initialization systems and package managers. I like Openbox a lot and like to put different panels and conky applications on it. So, even though this list looks repetitive, each setup feels unique. Grub 2.02 has no problems picking all of these up.
After resisting Gnome 3 and Systemd for a long time, I've grown to like both -- my Gentoo Gnome setup with Systemd runs really well and was fun to install. But, you can see from the list that I tend to repeatedly gravitate toward certain linux distributions and desktop environments that appeal to me -- and then I experiment with others.
1 PCLOS - Mate 2 Gentoo - IceWM 3 Q4OS - Trinity 4 Gentoo (Systemd) - Gnome 3.14 5 Arch - XFCE 4.12 6 Gentoo - XFCE 4.10 8 Fedora 23 alpha - Gnome 3.18 9 Gentoo - Openbox (fbpanel) 10 Arch - Openbox (tint2 panel) 11 OpenSUSE 42 - Gnome 3.16 12 Arch - Gnome 3.16 13 Kubuntu 15.10 alpha - Plasma 14 Linux Mint 17.2 - Cinnamon 15 FreeBSD 10.1 - KDE4 (needs an update to 10.2) 15 Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 - Mate 17 Mageia 5 - KDE4
34 • Dual boot (by zhymm on 2015-08-17 14:21:53 GMT from North America)
At the moment, Lubuntu 14.04 and PCLOS LXDE with Lubuntu being most frequent (>90%). I used to distro hop like a jack-rabbit having 5 or 6 distros installed but now I don't want to take the time. I just want to get things done.
35 • Dual boot and multiple external drives (by dbrion on 2015-08-17 14:50:20 GMT from Europe)
As I noticed one can install (at least, Fedora and Mageia can) on external USB drives/sticks, I have a lot of USB sticks with Fedora (13...20) and Mageia5 -before, I was not satisfied with Mageia- installed (i.e one can use the package manager to add software on the same media at a standard place: that is different from unetbootin live images, where one has to mount a RW partition...,. ). For recent versions, I use LXDE as a DE -other DE are too ressource consuming- I seldom use W7, which remains on the hard disk until I break it-. The only trick at install is to put the grub on the external device (some installers, generally older versions of Mageia, put it by default on the internal HD, and could lead to obvious inconsistencies).
36 • Vector (by nightflier on 2015-08-17 15:02:56 GMT from North America)
The Vector installer is designed to offer a user and password creation page. You may have encountered a glitch, or skipped the page. Normal behavior is to set root and user passwords before rebooting.
Otherwise, no arguments.
37 • My version of Dual Booting (by junkman51 on 2015-08-17 15:03:54 GMT from North America)
My main computer for Linux experimentation is a 4 year old SONY VAIO laptop with 8 gigs of RAM,a 2 gigahertz quad core i7 processor, NVIDIA video, and Windows 7 permanently residing on the 1 terabyte internal hard drive (had to replace the original one about a year ago).
I have installed various LINUX distros on USB flash drives to play with, mostly Linux Mint.
The worst thing I have ever had happen was have to reinstall the Windows 7 boot record on the internal hard drive.
My current setup is 64 bit Mint 17.2 Cinnamon running on a 64 gigabyte USB 3.0 flash drive.
I'm posting this from my Windows 7 installation and using the Chrome browser because the option to add a comment didn't appear with Firefox.
38 • Multiple boot (by nightflier on 2015-08-17 15:10:32 GMT from North America)
I keep an old laptop in perpetual testing mode, with several OS's. Since it still has W2K on it, I had to check "open and proprietary", but normal operation is open only.
39 • Multi-boot (by brad on 2015-08-17 15:29:08 GMT from North America)
I multiple-boot open and proprietary systems on the same laptop(s). I have a "test-bed" laptop which is currently running LM 17.2 XFCE, Windows 10, and whatever open-source OS I wish to test.
My Main laptop boots LM 17.2 Cinnamon, LM 17.2 KDE, and Windows 8.1.
The Windows instances allow me to work remotely from home when needed. Windows 8.1 will be "upgraded" to Windows 10 at the end of this month.
40 • Firefox - version? (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-08-17 15:47:30 GMT from North America)
It may help to note the version of Firefox in use …
41 • Dual Boot (by Steve on 2015-08-17 15:59:38 GMT from North America)
Never been a fan of dual boot. primary desktop: windows 7 (work & home) alternate desktop: linux mint w/mate (work & home) servers: centos & rhel (I'm looking to BSD to replace them)(work & home)
42 • Dual Boot (by Jordan on 2015-08-17 16:15:12 GMT from North America)
@41 yeah... I was swapping hard drives in my old laptop for years so I could use various linux distros and not get rid of Windows (XP, 7 then 8.1 and now 10).
Never liked the dual boot concept. Finally just bought a Windows machine (8.1 then, 10 now) and have Mint on this one and Windows on the other one.
Have no viable explanation for not liking dual booting.
43 • DNS, encryption, and dual booting (by a on 2015-08-17 16:28:10 GMT from Europe)
I’ve never found dual booting to be convenient, or even useful most of the time. I select the "less worse" operating system for my computer, set it up so it fits my needs and improve it over time with small tweaks here and there. There is no point in duplicating the effort with another distro. And I hate having to close all my applications and reboot to something else where I will be constrained in what I can do.
Some DNS I have been recommended recently are the ones from OpenNIC: https://www.opennicproject.org/ They are supposed to be consorship-free. I set up pdnsd with the four servers the site recommended, and so far it’s been working well.
I like that distrowatch will "soon" use encryption. I also think encryption must be made the normal way to communicate over the net, especially after the new French law that makes secretly spying on all French ISP customers communications legal (they were already spying on communications going in and out of France). And of course there’s the NSA, and others probably…
44 • @28 Vectorlinux, Salix and Slackel (by Hoos on 2015-08-17 17:34:26 GMT from Asia)
A few weeks ago, I decided to try these 3 Slackware derivatives for the first time.
Vector and Salix both installed and ran well in Virtualbox, but I had problems with actual installation on my hard drive, relating to failure to detect keyboard and mouse input.
Salix seemed to install fine. But once at the login window, it just couldn't detect keyboard or mouse. I hit every key, combo and clicked/moved the mouse around, nothing happened (my computer, keyboard and mouse are less than a year old).
Vector was worse. Whether using live CD or live USB, the installer itself could not detect keyboard or mouse, so I couldn't even install it.
For both these distros, I tried various boot codes at start up, with no success.
So I searched distrowatch and found Slackel Openbox 6.0.2. What do you know, it had no issue with "real life" installation.
Visually it looks quite basic and old-fashioned, but these are minor matters that the user can tweak. It is pleasant to use and I can see it working nicely on older hardware. Gslapt package manager is quite usable, although I had to do some internet research to figure out how to upgrade to the 3.18 kernel because Gslapt locks all kernel upgrades and you have to do it from the command line.
It uses Salix and Slackware-current repos, which makes it a rolling distro from what I've read. So far it has been running fine.
45 • Multiple Subjects (by Chris on 2015-08-17 17:43:46 GMT from North America)
DWW Poll: I selected 'I boot an open source OS exclusively'. Actually, I have never multi-booted OSs. When I first decided to try Linux, as a test, I purchased a day after Christmas discounted laptop cheap, wiped the hard drive, and installed my first Linux distro - never looking back. I figure if you're going to try something go all in! Since then, when I find I need to select a new distro, I try several out or build one up in a VM and if it meets my needs, I install it to metal. To me my OS is a tool to accomplish my work, not a job in itself.
Accessibility OSs: Several weeks back there was some discussion in the DWW comments section about accessibility OSs. I can't remember who was inquiring but I recently found the following article. Hopefully it helps.
https://opensource.com/life/15/8/accessibility-linux-blind-disabled
Future Articles: In last week's DWW comments section a couple of people posted recommendations for future articles comparing DEs and WMs, especially more obscure versions. I agree but would like to offer a couple of additional article ideas as well:
1. A comparison of various DNS services focused on accessibility, stability, security, and anonymity (if possible). Both what each claims vs. what it produces. 2. A comparison of various web browsers, especially more obscure releases.
As always, thanks to the DW team.
46 • sorta kinda new to linux (by spence on 2015-08-17 18:24:21 GMT from North America)
I am currently dual booting W7 and Mint. On my test rig I dual booting Ubuntu Mate and a vareity of different distros. I have messed around with Linux in the past once when W8 was a disaster now even more so in the light of W10, which is by far the WORSE OS ever created..so I am eventually slowly migrating to Linux...any suggestions or help would be appreciated. Thx
47 • @46 (by a on 2015-08-17 18:35:56 GMT from Europe)
Ubuntu MATE and Mint are good choices to discover Linux. Not the fastest or more configurable ones, but amongst the easiest to install and use.
48 • Vector (by a on 2015-08-17 18:37:48 GMT from Europe)
Vector Linux was ok-ish when I tried it, apart from: - no way to set the keyboard layout to something else than qwerty - obsolete kernel (like Slackware and most of its derivatives) - and as Jesse noted, a lack of some packages. I was also told it was not possible to use slackbuilds.org with Vector.
49 • This week's poll (by SilentSam on 2015-08-17 18:37:51 GMT from North America)
Considering how many laptops and desktops I have kicking around, I could have voted for any of the selections... Went with Dual boot proprietary / OSS
50 • Dual-boot (by Chris on 2015-08-17 18:39:01 GMT from North America)
I have not dual-booted since virtualization became viable. And now I use only a real commercial UNIX operating system (OS X) because of the systemd infestation in Linux.
51 • @ 45 • Chris, That would be me... (by Baltazar on 2015-08-17 20:41:10 GMT from North America)
I have been looking in to this little dilemma of accessibility for some time now... thanks for showing interest in it.
This is not an easy subject for most since so few are affected by it or feel it to be out of their reach to even care to address it...
So far, I have focused on Gnome for my friends accessibility needs since it is the most coherent and complete for a user with "low visibility" and should be easier to learn and maintain...
Considering that I have chosen to use Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 since it should be maintainable for a few good years... Though I have had to experiment and test various tools and situations to modify the system so that the user is not lost and that I, the one who will assist, knows what to expect...
One thing of annoyance is that this tools aren't looked at and review in order to highlight usefulness and touch on areas of improvements that are not yet met... leaving a whole population at the mercy of poor tools. Disconnected, forgotten.
Funnily enough, the article you linked has a few of the distros I looked at, and some I have totally discarded. Vinux sounded interesting but I could never get it to download, been it the slowest download I have ever encountered. Sonar was nice but I had inconsistencies with its installation and worries of its maintainability. Debian had good maintainability but is too advance for a noob, and there is more to it that would make me not chose it. Plain Ubuntu was a bit manageable but has problems with its implementation of Orca because of Unity and some unresolved issues that, along with other details, made me not chose it.
As for Mate... from trying Linux Mint with it I just can't use it since its Orca implementation was broken and they themselves say it is an issue upstream relating to Ubuntu or Orca that they themselves won't fix. Seen that I passed Ubuntu Mate entirely. As for Fedora, I consider it to edgy for the need at hand, though I appreciate the effort. Been it supported for a short time as a distro makes me not consider it.
So, here I am... still bugging you here every now and then... just getting some attention on the matter and trying to see what I can do in the mean time.
I have chosen, like I said, Ubuntu Gnome (and I am not a fan of Gnome!!!) since it has been able to fulfill a good number of requirements that I wanted to cover and feel are needed for my friend... So I have been learning of the accessibility and its shortcomings in order to better assist.
It is frustrating... imagine how it is for someone who knows jack of computers and is blind!?!?
Contact me if need be or interested in addressing this better...
52 • https/encryption everywhere (by Guest on 2015-08-17 20:47:19 GMT from South America)
Jesse Smith said: "There is not really any immediate advantage to having encryption enabled on a website where all information is public."
It does not matter if the information is public or not. What does matter is that the information between machines is the real information.
Think about email. You can digital sign it so the receiver knows that its content was not modified in transit. That is independent if you encrypt it (so its content is secret).
Example 1: If you do not use https here, you can not accomplish what you state in Distrowatch's Privacy Policy: "Personal information, such as your name, address or email address that you entrust to DistroWatch will not be shared with any third-party without your explicit permission to do so", beacuse an attacker could sniff the http connection and read that data.
Example 2: An attacker could sniff and modify URLs in Distrowatch pointing to malware sites/torrents. If users get malware after visiting Distrowatch, they could stop visiting it. If the attacker change the URLs of ads, you may never see a cent comming from ads.
I am sure others can think of others and more concrete examples. The Internet and Internet's protocolos were not design with security in mind, so we have to secure them ourselves. Not only in servers reacheable over Internet, but also within datacenters and even in LANs (Local Area Network).
53 • poll, newbie distros & systemd (by M.Z. on 2015-08-17 21:07:01 GMT from Planet Mars)
Well as the poll Q asks about your primary system & I guess my laptop has become my main PC I put dual-boot multiple open source OSes. In addition to booting in for miscellaneous reasons, I tend to use each system for slightly different things.
1) Mint KDE 17.x - for streaming video & general purpose use (because kwin renders better & It was easy to get Chrome installed for netflix only use)
2) Mageia 5 KDE - for games & other random things
3) Mint LMDE 2 Cinnamon - for quick booting because Cinnamon loads so fast & for VMs
@46 - newbie distros Any version of Mint is an excellent choice. I'm not a fan of the Ubuntu's because of privacy issues in their main edition, so I avoid anything with that name altogether in favor of Mint which has the same base system. In general Mint is the most easy to use & has the best tools for all grades of users & uses some of the largest repos. For RPM based distros I recommend PCLinuxOS & Mageia.
@50 - systemd Isn't that like using a pot because the kettle is black? I've heard that systemd is basically a copy of something called launchd in Mac OS X. Also why not save a lot of money by switching to a non systemd distro like PCLinuxOS? I think you just wasted a large sum of cash by switching to the locked down closed source inspiration for systemd rather than using the free & open copy that is systemd itself. Or of course you could have simply used a non systemd Linux distro, or even a BSD for that matter. Of course much of the systemd debate makes no sense to me because as other have stated, if there is a good reason to avoid systemd then there will always be non systemd distros. That ability to fork things is just the nature of open source software.
-------------------
@ Firefox users I had the same problem here on DW last week with Firefox 40 & used the new Opera to comment instead. On the other hand Firefox 38.2 ESR in my Mageia is what I'm posting this comment in. Perhaps it's just Firefox 40? At least if this comment appears anyway.
54 • dual booting is fun... (by tom joad on 2015-08-17 21:19:24 GMT from North America)
I dual boot a lot. I swap OS's pretty frequently. And I have a tower with swappable drive bays so I swap HD's pretty regularly too. I have one drive with Mint and XP dual booting.
But I was looking over the poll. I see 12 folks as of this writing dual boot Proprietary OS's. Really? If those folks are dual booting proprietary OS's why do you suppose they are taking polls on Distrowatch.com?
It would be interesting to know their reasons.
55 • Firefox 40 issue (by M.Z. on 2015-08-17 21:22:32 GMT from Planet Mars)
Yep, just booted into Mint KDE with Firefox 40 & lost the ability to add comments. It was synced with Firefox ESR on Mageia & should have had all the same add ons so I doubt that that is the issue. Comments look like they work in Opera 31 & Firefox ESR though.
56 • Multiple booting (by mikef90000 on 2015-08-17 21:24:32 GMT from North America)
Most of the time I can get away with using a VM, but running on bare metal sometimes is necessary: - Mint 17 (daily driver) - SolydX (testing packages mutually exclusive with some on LM17) - Windows XP (a few local apps without a decent Linux equivalent) - assorted rescue images (Parted Magic, FreeDOS, etc)
Jesse's experience with Vector reminds me of a recent CentOS 7 experiment. Setting it up as a desktop environment wasn't bad, but the number of available packages is quite limited. EPEL is so sad ....
57 • Encryption (by Jesse on 2015-08-17 21:26:22 GMT from North America)
@52: "If you do not use https here, you can not accomplish what you state in Distrowatch's Privacy Policy"
Using https or not does not have any affect on the privacy policy because none of the information you mention is transmitted over http. The paragraph you were quoting deals with e-mail, not data sent over http. Material people e-mail us (encrypted or otherwise) isn't shared with third parties. Obviously if you yourself post your name, address or e-mail address in our comments section (which is over http) then you are making that information public yourself. It is up to you if you want to use encryption when you e-mail us to avoid snooping attacks and that has nothing to do whether we use http or https.
In case you are curious, my public key for e-mail is available on multiple key servers, including keys.gnupg.net, please feel free to use it to protect your correspondence.
As for your second point, dealing with malware sites and man-in-the-middle attacks, that is theoretically possible, but only if the person doing the downloading does not pay attention to the URL they are downloading from. If you download and install whatever your browser sends you without making an attempt to verify the data (or its source) then you could get malware from any website you visit, https protected or not. You should always make attempts to verify that what you are downloading is coming from a good source, whether you are getting the data/link from a https protected website or not. That's one of the reasons we encourage people to use checksums.
58 • @57, man in the middle (by a on 2015-08-17 21:46:14 GMT from Europe)
But with a man in the middle attack it’s possible to change the contents of distrowatch web pages, checksums, and isos. The URLs could stay the same.
59 • Man in the middle attacks (by Jesse on 2015-08-17 21:50:08 GMT from North America)
@58: "But with a man in the middle attack it’s possible to change the contents of distrowatch web pages, checksums, and isos. The URLs could stay the same."
That doesn't really make any sense since we do not host any ISO files or packages and we link to outside sources where you can find checksums. We don't host any distributions ourselves, we just provide links to where people can download them. so, no, the URLs could not stay the same, they would need to be altered to point to a third-party server.
60 • @53 re: systemd (by Chris on 2015-08-17 22:40:59 GMT from North America)
@53 Hi, M.Z. from the Planet Mars! Yes, you are certainly quite right about PCLinuxOS as far as systemd goes... for now. And, yes: I agree: it's one of the very best Desktop distributions, perhaps THE best, and underrated. I guess I am just done wasting my time with FOSS operating systems for the personal Desktop, opting for commercial instead (and now BSDs for my commercial projects). (I would even do Windows over Linux on the Desktop.) It's just about having the best I can get on a Desktop, and I do not mind paying for that even a little bit. The FOSS O/S for Desktops will never approach commercial quality; and, Linux servers have lost their way with systemd. Oh, so many opinions - thanks for your feedback.
61 • BSD (by DJ on 2015-08-18 03:10:52 GMT from North America)
@14 I'm planning on installing freeBSD 10.2 tonight. I think openBSD looks like a good option.
62 • newbie distros. (by me on 2015-08-18 04:49:42 GMT from Oceania)
@46 Linux Oses and desktops are not a "one size fits all". That which works for / suits me may have quirks that bug you no end.
Best suggestion is to try multiple Oses in a VM to see that which works for you. The top 10 on Distrowatch [ 3 month option ] are definitely a great selection to start with, all are pretty much easy to install + are user friendly. Try adding different desktops to go with the distro, add some software that isn't part of the initial install and do updates to get a handle on some of the things you are likely to do regularly.
63 • multiple distros (by Hoos on 2015-08-18 05:19:02 GMT from Asia)
I multi-boot a range of Linux distros, no proprietary OS, on my desktop.
I just like to experience and learn a bit more about the different families of Linux OSes/package management. However, I want to learn at my own sedate pace so I focus on user-friendly derivatives of the parent distros where available. I start by testing a distro in Virtualbox, but if I like the distro, I prefer to install it on my actual machine.
My data are kept/backed-up in a separate partition. My computer usage is also very run of the mill, making it easy for me to switch between distros. Each distro gets used for 1 or 2 days before I reboot into another.
The OSes I have:
1. MX14/SolydX, instead of Debian Wheezy/Jessie 2. Mint 17.2 Cinnamon instead of Ubuntu 3. Solus - budgie desktop, PiSi fork for package management 4. Korora, instead of Fedora Gnome 3 5. Opensuse KDE
Rolling:
6. Semplice instead of Debian Sid 7. Manjaro instead of Arch (XFCE, Budgie) 8. PCLinuxOS (Mate) 9. Slackel Openbox instead of Slackware (new to me)
64 • dual boot (by me2 on 2015-08-18 08:19:41 GMT from Europe)
I have dual booted for years. At one point I had 6 os's on the desktop - open source and windows. These days I have reduced the number. On my desktop machine I have left slackware 14.1 64, LMDE and freebsd 10.2. On the laptop I have siduction, freebsd 10.2, slackware 14.1 64, debian 8.1 and vista. Looks like freebsd will go on both systems. Its a little flakey. Sometimes when booted the sound works, sometimes not. Sometimes you can access partitions, sometimes you cannot. To be honest in todays world it is necessary to have flash working. Sadly on freebsd this does not work. And trying to get a system wide locale setup has been impossible. So freebsd gets the boot in the future. Its about ten years behind linux.
65 • New Distros (by New Distros on 2015-08-18 10:53:42 GMT from North America)
Look at the list. Many have been on there for years with no further development, some have already disappeared. You can easily be burned by a "new" distro that you install only to see it disappear. That will cut down the following of people on new distros, which will cut the development of new distros. Some contraction of distros will probably be a good thing. I will only try a new distro on a USB key because of this fact.
66 • multiboot (by 4tux on 2015-08-18 13:15:20 GMT from Europe)
To the many multibooters out there, an article that you may find useful: Painless Linux Multi-boot Setup "The common wisdom is to have a shared home directory in a multiboot setup" http://www.linuxtoday.com/blog/2009/08/painless-linux.html
67 • Multiboot (by Jessey on 2015-08-18 15:44:59 GMT from North America)
I love GPT as it makes multibooting easier. Here is my current set up: 1. Linux Mint Cinnamon 2. Linux Mint XFCE 3. LMDE 2 4. Linux Deepin 14.04.3 5. Manjaro 6. Android X86 4.4 R3 7. Zorin OS 8. Pepermint OS 9. Zorin OS 10. Q4os 11.Chroiexium 12. Ubuntu Kylin 14.04.3 13. elemenatry os 14. Ghost BSD
Does any one know how to duleboot PC-BSD 10.x series with Linux?
68 • dual boot and other comments (by Corbin Rune on 2015-08-18 18:57:27 GMT from North America)
For the time being, I'm running two systems: 1. Windows 10 Pro (Mainly for my MMOs, or a few titles that work like crap outside of Windows.) 2. Arch Linux (Recently came back after a few months messing with Parrot Security OS. Fun enough distro ... but I like Arch more than Debian, tbh. YMMV)
Anything else, I usually Virtualbox, with the occasional bare-metal install just to see how different OSes operate in their own space.
@67: Might work out for you, if you add a spare ZFS partition. Last time I tried PC-BSD (10.1, IIRC), if defaults its installation onto a ZFS pool. Gives you a point to start from, at least. (Although, I don't currently remember if it defaults to whole-disk installs ...)
Systemd/Launchd: #53 makes a very good point, that at least systemd is open-source (as opposed to proprietary) code.
Moksha as a DE: Well, I won't fault the Bodhi guys for going with a modification of something they felt was more stable than the "newer stuff." E19, while I personally dig it, does still have a few little quirks of its own.
69 • @67 (by DR.LONG on 2015-08-18 22:32:10 GMT from North America)
I agree that Linux Distro's come and go. In fact it's the main reason I switched to BSD some years back.
@67 I'd be willing to help with questions that may arise. Once you get the hang of BSD its actually a pleasure to use.
70 • CORRECTION (by DR.Long on 2015-08-18 22:33:17 GMT from North America)
Comment was intended for @61
71 • Discontinued Distros (by DR.Long on 2015-08-18 22:37:36 GMT from North America)
Does anyone remember Libranet. IMO, debian at its finest.
72 • @6 Dual Boot (by WakeUpDeadman on 2015-08-18 23:23:31 GMT from North America)
I agree. Once Linux w/AMD, support games on a comparable level to Windows. So far Linux is lagging behind on AMD support, compared to Windows. If Linux catches up in support then, I can completely drop windows/proprietary OSs. Hope springs eternal. ;)
73 • Commenting with Firefox 40.0 (by mikef90000 on 2015-08-19 00:45:36 GMT from North America)
I had the same issue yesterday, revisited the site and now the Comment fields show up. When I had the symptom Safe Mode did not 'fix' the missing fields.
The only thing I did today was delete cookies for distrowatch.com, but that might have been coincidental to some other event. Who knows ......
74 • Dual Booting (by ghostdawg on 2015-08-19 03:11:40 GMT from North America)
I currently have Mageia 5 - main os Debian 8 Archlinux Funtoo - having fun with it! Windows 7
75 • Poll vote (by far2fish on 2015-08-19 07:51:17 GMT from Europe)
Went from dual boot OSS/proprietary to single boot OSS about 1.5 year ago. Haven't looked back. Keep a Windows install in VirtualBox for the odd occasion I need to plugin a gadget without Linux support. Happens a few times a year.
Currently rolling on Antergos, and I am surprised how much I love it compared to Fedora and Ubuntu I used previously.
76 • Libranet (by zcatav on 2015-08-19 08:16:13 GMT from Europe)
@DR.Long Yes. It was my favorite distro. CD's are in my collection.
77 • More browsers are better for all Linux distributions. (by Ted on 2015-08-19 10:30:33 GMT from North America)
With the larger mainstream Linux distributions, there should be at least two completely working internet web browsers. Firefox and Chrome are must have browsers. Any and all additional web browsers are greatly appreciated.
Remember that post A.D.2012 multi core (2 x 32bit, 4 x 32bit, 6 x 32bit, 8 x32bit, and 8 x32bit) processors with built in (embedded Intel and AMD) graphic controllers are making smaller web browsers like Midori and Konquerer not compatible on the newer computer systems.
Examples: Intel Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 because of the way the memory managers function natively.
Therefore every release of Linux distributions should include both Firefox and Chrome browsers. Like IceWeasel browser (which happens to be "unbranded" Firefox browser with much less features.)
78 • Re: More browsers are better for all Linux distributions (by zcatav on 2015-08-19 11:39:28 GMT from Europe)
@77 Iceweasel is great and Chromium instead of Chrome, IMO.
79 • Linux ubiquity and quantum support. (by Ted on 2015-08-19 11:57:13 GMT from North America)
Now that we finally have sustained data processing at near the speed of light. Linux operating systems enabled to function with time dilation (beyond static temporal states), with modular constructs that have no circuits and no storage devices make for one epic fast data reckoning pseudo sentient thing.
Some interesting versions of Linux OS are becoming extremely popular...
[Just Browsing Linux, has 32bit and 64bit versions] which is Arch Linux with both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers make simple User internet access very simple. Does not require any storage device to install or run to access the internet. All that is required is a system (either UEFI or BIOS) bootable CD-ROM drive to run the CD-ROM disc with the download and burned ISO image of Just Browsing Linux. The audio support and the WiFi support are easy to setup. User can setup audio output as analog line out or HDMI digital output. If Users want only to access internet this is the most easy. Fast on laptop computers and even faster on desktop computers with AMD and Intel multiple core processors. When the ISO is burned (recorded) to a DVD-ROM disc instead of a CD-ROM disc, the Just Browsing Linux loads much faster. Just Browsing Linux does not have install option.
[EBOS Lightning Linux, has 32bit version for now] which is Ubuntu with the Gnome v2 desktop environment. Plain, but fast performance on laptop computers. Even faster on desktop computers. Audio and WiFi network setup is easy. User can setup audio output as analog line out or HDMI digital output. Lightning Linux does have an install to magnetic hard disk drive option. To access internet without installing anything, User need only to run the download ISO image and burn (record) to DVD disc. Make sure User is able to setup the UEFI and BIOS to boot the DVD-ROM drive first, instead of the internal hard disk drive.
[Madbox v14.04 Linux, 32bit version] which is Debian-Ubuntu with very plain fuschia-red desktop, but it actually loves Intel Core i3 processors because it runs very well. This is the ugliest distribution of Linux found thus far and its simple User interface have nothing to go wrong. Good audio and WiFi support.
Most 64bit versions of Linux are able to recognize and use all the main logic board memory (4 TeraBytes of Micro's DDR-4 SDRAM) inside the lab's test systems. With no storage device to install, and no persistence support means the user have less worries about hackers.
There are many versions of Linux operating systems available today. Remember it is still a very large headache finding the more rare or lessor known versions available.
Many thanks to all.
80 • Thanks Zcatav (by Ted on 2015-08-19 12:33:02 GMT from North America)
Yes IceWeasel is great after a User adds the "Self Destructing Cookie" add on.
Been running the following Linux OSes on Intel 80486, AMD K6-II+, Cyrix C3, Intel 80501, 80552, and Pentium-III:
Chromixium (True Linux OS made to look like Google Chrome Book OS.) (Yes, Chromium is the Google's browser for their Android cellular phones.) (Where are the Mozilla Firefox cellular phones for the North American market?)
Mozillux (True Linux OS made to run Firefox v2.0 browser from 2010)
Simplicity Linux (True 64bit Linux OS made to look like 32bit Puppy Linux)
AntiX Linux is good, but their audio support is not compatible with analog outputs. Works okay with the HDMI socket.
Trisquel Linux is good, but their WiFi support is not compatible with some WiFi adapters.
Voyager Linux is good, good balance between fast and useful features.
Black Lab Linux is good mainstream distribution for general purpose use.
Korora (Australia), Chapeau (England), and FX64 (USA?) are all similar. The Kde desktop usually requires a bit of wrangling to complete the installation. Their Gnome desktop versions are intuitive and already partially configured for the User convenience. Xfce desktop is simple and good compromise.
KaOS is a good Arch Linux distribution but the audio setup is tricky.
Glad to remember some UNIX from 40 years ago or would not survive some of the more technical Linux distributions like Gentoo, Arch Linux, Slackware.
Some great Linux distributions for the Academics:
Emmabuntus (Debian-Ubuntu)
Edubuntu (Debian-Ubuntu)
Ubermix (Ubuntu)
Trisquel Toast (Debian)
81 • Dual boot (by Brahm on 2015-08-19 13:18:34 GMT from North America)
The hardware is a HP laptop with AMD graphics with UEFI and GPT. Windows 8.1 Fedora 22 (most frequently used) Debian 8 Gentoo Arch Linux Windows 10
82 • Chromium (by zcatav on 2015-08-19 13:24:47 GMT from Europe)
@80 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)
83 • no dual boot (by Jason on 2015-08-19 14:49:13 GMT from North America)
I stopped dual booting years ago. If I want multiple operating systems, I'll just have multiple computers, or use a VM.
84 • 80 • … Trisquel Linux … (by Ted … from North America) (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-08-19 17:34:43 GMT from North America)
… is based on Ubuntu (including the Sugar Toast educational environment version), right?
85 • dual booting (by frodopogo on 2015-08-19 18:36:04 GMT from North America)
I started out dual booting with Windows XP and Linux Mint MATE Elyssa (version 5).
That computer finally died last December. Since then, I still have a dual boot arrangement for different Linux versions.
Linux Mint 17.2 MATE is my "daily driver".
The dual boot setup allows me to:
Transition slowly. (I am getting more and more comfortable with Mint Cinnamon)
Allows me to get more familiarity with another Linux version than a Live DVD or USB drive.
Gives me an immediately accessible backup in the unlikely event something goes haywire with Linux Mint MATE. Caution is a habit.
In the rare event a piece of software doesn't run properly with Linux Mint, it gives me another flavor to try it with.
One obscure music program didn't run with Mint MATE, but ran with Ubuntu MATE. Oh yeah... using a different software repository with a different layout caused me to notice and try some different programs.
On the main computer, distros on the other partitions: Ubuntu Studio- due to be replaced because I don't record in the living room Ubuntu MATE - replaced with Cubuntu (tweaked to run in English) which has Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Unity, and Ubuntu with Cinnamon in one distro, allowing me to keep Ubuntu MATE, try Unity, and see what a different spin on Cinnamon looks like.
On my bedroom computer, I have Linux Mint Cinnamon 17.2 and Mint LMDE 2. Trying to decide which will be the one I record on. (I'm not sure I really NEED Ubuntu Studio to do what I need to do) Mint Cinnamon 17.2 is very fast compared to previous iterations of Cinnamon. Also, I wanted to see how much more difficult LMDE is that the main edition... somewhat more difficult- had a video problem I think because the implementation of the nVidia driver is not automatic as it now is in the main edition.
I've never tried a VM. I see enough problems with them in reviews, mostly with video, that it doesn't seem like it gives a distro a fair shake.
86 • firefox And distrowatch duel boot antiX (by mandog on 2015-08-19 19:49:27 GMT from South America)
The comments section just appeared again today and from last week firefox works excellent with pepperflash and fresh-player no need for the google spy browser guys I sort of duel boot but don't as i use separate drives 1 distro per drive Arch Manjaro openRC and at the moment antiX and as one reader said its let down with poor alsa support just type alsa in the Arch Wiki to get the sound working correctly as the defaul settings go no where.
87 • @60 (by M.Z. on 2015-08-19 19:53:01 GMT from Planet Mars)
@60 Well from Florida anyway, but I could see a rocket to Mars from my house. At any rate your reply feels like a contrived rationalization given how anti systemd your first post was. Perhaps that's OK if you were just looking for an excuse anyway, but coming here & telling us Linux users how bad you think our preferred OS is not the high road to justifying your decisions. I'd also say that I feel no quality problems from my Mint 17.x systems relative to any commercial systems I've tried over the years. In fact RHEL for workstations is the definition of a commercial desktop OS, though I think something like one of the Mint 17 editions would be a better fit for most users. Given all the recent security problems with Macs & the ongoing fight to secure Windows, along with the relative speed & ease of using Linux repos to manage software I can't see any good reason to switch. If you pick a stable version of Linux that fits your needs I doubt there really is any quality deficit vs commercial solutions. There are some bugs to be found in all software, but I find the stable big name Linux distros should have as few issues as any competitive desktop OSs.
88 • Duel boot poll (by Walt on 2015-08-19 20:49:28 GMT from North America)
I have windows 10 on the smallest partition it would allow so I can use itunes once in a while. Manjaro KDE is where I do all my work.
89 • Dual Boot Poll (by Farmer Mike on 2015-08-19 22:36:00 GMT from North America)
I currently dual boot Windows7 and Linux Mint 13 on my laptop. With support for Win7 ending and not liking Windows 10, I will install Linux Mint 17.2 Xfce on the whole HD, getting rid of Windows.
However, my wife is getting a new laptop this weekend with Windows 8.1 on it. We plan on making it dual boot with Mint. Mike
90 • dual booting (by cykodrone on 2015-08-19 23:29:47 GMT from North America)
I have PCLinuxOS as my main OS on SSD sda and a custom (all snoopware and spyware removed) mini CD Xubuntu 14.04.x LTS as a backup OS (can't be too prepared is my motto). Although Xubuntu 14.04.x uses Upstart, there is a smidgen of systemd elements, that's why it's just a backup OS. I do keep the Xubuntu up to date but don't use it.
My 2 one hundredths of a dollar.
91 • @67 -- dual-booting PCBSD and Linux (by Ralph on 2015-08-20 01:35:27 GMT from North America)
I managed to do this a few months ago with PCBSD 10. However, I was only ever able to do it by letting PCBSD write GRUB2 to the MBR and then manually edit GRUB with the "chainloading format" in order to chainload Linux. I have never been able to to do the reverse, ie, chainload PCBSD from an MBR that has been written by Linux, though it likely *possible* to do this. All the difficulties seem to arise because PCBSD uses ZFS as it's file system. Iirc, I installed a few Linux distros first and PCBSD last, letting it overwrite the MBR. Then you have to manually add the Linux distros to a custom GRUB file because PCBSD will not automatically find them. (Unless it will with 10.2 which I have not tried yet.)
92 • Dual Boot (by Greg Knowles on 2015-08-20 07:41:36 GMT from Europe)
Main PC dual boot Mint LMDE and win 10 hardly ever use windows its there out of habit. PC used for music LMDE, Win10, Mint (Ubuntu based) and some other distro I am trying out. Has to run Spotify so mostly Debian based systems although often have a Fedora based distro like Korora on it as well. Use windows quite often as it plays well with spotify.
93 • @ 10 Dual boot - Alexandru (by Wse on 2015-08-20 09:27:22 GMT from Europe)
>I keep installed the following systems: 1. OS X 2. OpenIndiana 3. FreeBSD 4. Debian GNU/Linux 5. Haiku <
Do you have OS X installed on a PC or are you using a Mac?
94 • Reviews of distros without DEs (by Wse on 2015-08-20 10:10:49 GMT from Europe)
@ Jessie From your VectorLinux 7.1 review >The system installer next asks if we would like to install a desktop environment with the sole option being the Xfce desktop. <
DEs usually hold the users captive, for example, if you try to uninstall the file manager and install another, you might even break your system. So, how about reviewing distros without fixed DEs, but created over WMs such as Openbox?
You may not put icons on the screen space or set wallpapers through the file manager, but those distros don't keep the users prisoners.
95 • Multiboot (by Vakkotaur on 2015-08-20 10:20:29 GMT from North America)
Dual/multi on the laptops with Mint 17 and Windows (since it was there already... and I never quite feel I won't ever have a use for it, despite experience).
On "desktop" machines, Mint 17 and... whatever else I might be trying (Xubuntu, PCLinuxOS).
Alas, unlike many, I have had NO luck with VMs and seem to find even the more complete guides seem to me like they are missing some critical "obvious" step that is not obvious to me.
96 • @ Jessie (by Wse on 2015-08-20 10:34:31 GMT from Europe)
cont. of # 94
How many of us actually use the "productivity applications" such as the AbiWord and Gnumeric in real life, and also how do we watch a presentation? Don't we usually uninstall those and install LibreOffice? (Sorry for the double post.)
97 • distros without desktops? (by nolinuxguru on 2015-08-20 12:40:41 GMT from Europe)
@94 and @96: currently close to my heart: I just started playing with AntiX 15 [it's a systemd thing]. I wanted pure Openbox as my desktop environment, so I started from the terminal prompt. I used apt-get to install openbox, menu, obconf obmenu and tint2. Then "startx" got me into openbox proper: a blank screen! Wonderful. Right click on the mouse brings up all the [mostly] Debian programs in a set of menus. The key to taming openbox is obmenu [I will not explain this here unless there is demand].
I know this is not for everyone, but it is incredibly empowering and allows a mix-and-match way of creating a custom desktop environment by building on top of [in this case] AntiX.
98 • @ 97 • distros without desktops? nolinuxguru (by Wse on 2015-08-20 14:14:08 GMT from Europe)
Add Compton and the brilliant work of Trizen and some simple text tweaking, you have a great and snappy distro. It could be Arch, Debian or Ubuntu base. And, any apps you like. Not a prisoner any more of someone's DEs.
99 • Multi-boot System (by Lone Gunman on 2015-08-20 18:20:04 GMT from North America)
On my computer I have 7 hard drives in it with 4 or those having 2 partitions. I don't use Grub for obvious reason but instead choose my boot drive in BIOS. OSPROBER is disabled in Ubuntu.
Windows XP 2 partitions on the SATA drive Windows XP x64 2 partitions on the SATA drive Windows Vista x64 2 partitions on the SATA drive Windows Vista x64 IDE Windows 7 x64 2 partitions on the SATA drive Windows 10 x64 IDE Ubuntu 14.04 with Mate SSD
Systems used most are Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows Vista x64 for video editing and games.
100 • Dualboot (by zykoda on 2015-08-20 22:03:45 GMT from Europe)
With the help of GRUB, GRUB2 and PLOP I multiboot 20 or so "retired" MS Windows machines (95 to 7). With 2 or more hard drives in each one can boot Hard drive resident ISOs and install without the need for optical/USB media. That each of these random desktops can multiboot MS, Linux and BSD atests to the richness of the *n[ui]x ecosphere. I have for example on board antiX, Slitaz, Debian (sarge -> Jessie), Mint (7 -> 17.2), Fedora (-0 -> 20), Scientific, CentOS, (open)SuSE (8.0 -> 12.2), Ubuntu (6 -12). Puppy and Knoppix. Linux has revived, what to MS windows is obsolescent hardware, to perfectly responsive performance. Day to day I use Mint LTS versions, but for Nvidia cuda I use Fedora.
101 • Please check the information (by Pepito on 2015-08-21 00:33:57 GMT from South America)
Have you checked the website of cdrkit?
Thanks.
102 • Dual Boot (by GD on 2015-08-21 01:48:19 GMT from North America)
Linux Mint Xfce is what I use while using the Internet and Windows XP Pro' for offline use only due to the security risks now that it is no longer supported by MS.
103 • protect_privacy_with_Tails_State-of-the-art_cryptographic_tools (by k on 2015-08-21 05:02:05 GMT from Europe)
For Guest (comment #52), Jesse (#57, 59), and 'a' (#58). Perhaps most simple at this time to use Tails, as it is equipped with State-of-the-art_cryptographic_tools, as described at https://tails.boum.org/about/index.en.html#index3h1 . Really fine gift from Tails developers. By the way, is xul-ext-https-finder comparable to https-everywhere?
104 • Vector @44 (by Joe on 2015-08-21 11:31:36 GMT from North America)
Quote "Vector and Salix both installed and ran well in Virtualbox, but I had problems with actual installation on my hard drive, relating to failure to detect keyboard and mouse input." I had the same problem with Vector 64(even tried different keyboards), then tried Vector 32 and it worked fine. I have multiple linux distros as well as Win7 and XP(my old Sony camcorder only works on XP).
105 • looking for a distro aimed at cilderen (by novice on 2015-08-21 13:03:55 GMT from North America)
Hi folks i would appreciate if you can reccomnd me a distro for my 11 years old child. I'm new to linux.
106 • @105 • looking for a distro aimed at childeren (by G. Savage on 2015-08-21 13:50:33 GMT from North America)
Try Sugar: www.sugarlabs.org It's for grades K-6
Then Edubuntu for grades 6-12.
Good luck :-)
107 • multi-boot (by Kazlu on 2015-08-21 15:50:11 GMT from Europe)
I multi-boot several open-source OSes.
To be a bit more specific, I run only GNU/Linux. When I switch my main OS from a distro to another, I always keep the previous one just in case I forgot to transfer something, be it software or configuration. I also generally have one or two more OSes for test purposes. There was a time where my "previous OS" was Windows, I always kept it "just in case" and booted it from time to time to get something back or to play a game. But there has been quite some months since I last booted Windows (7) now and everytime I did in the past two years or so, it has only been to be disappointed: It is very slow and the few things that I couldn't get to work on Linux did not work either on Windows. So now Windows is useless to me.
Depending on my needs and my machine, I am using Debian Wheezy, Ubuntu Studio 15.04, Linux Mint MATE 17.1, Lubuntu 14.04 and I recently tested Salix 14.1 with success to be my "no systemd" backup solution. I am currently test driving Mageia 5. Besides, although it is a bit borderline as an "additional boot option", I also always have a Puppy Linux CD and USB drive on the side just in case.
108 • other options (by M.Z. on 2015-08-21 20:17:33 GMT from Planet Mars)
@105 #106 does a good job pointing out the big names in the Linux/ed area, but there are other options out there that either 1) have tools for kids or 2) are designed around education/kids. If you haven’t tried it already you might click on the search link at the top of distrowatch & check the education link. You'll get a list of 18 education related distros. Some are obviously for technical minded adults like Linux From Scratch (or kids that are already surprisingly technical/good programmers). Some of the others could be good options.
As for general purpose disros I always recommend Linux Mint & they do have a domain blocker tool called MintNanny included by default. I don't know if it or any other parental control tools are the best options for a general distro, but I think a general purpose distros could still be a good option. All the new & different things that set Linux apart from other desktops can help peak interest in computers & there are tons of educational gems in many Linux repos like Stellarium. There are also 'meta packages' available in the Mint repos that contain loads of educational software from KDE & the edubuntu folks. Not sure which approach is best for you, but it's something to think about.
109 • Multi-Boot Linux (by Greg on 2015-08-22 05:24:01 GMT from North America)
I used to distro hop a lot, but now I have slowed down significantly
On one machine, I have Debian testing, with Mint 17.1 as sort of a safety net. My second machine has the same 2 distros, with the more recent addition of Kali-Linux 2.0. All except Kali have Cinnamon. I love DistroWatch. Tahnks a lot for all the interesting news.
110 • Are advanced/novice people more distro-hop(p)ing addicts (by dbrion on 2015-08-22 13:12:48 GMT from Europe)
I do not know whether people who distro(s)hop(e) are * novice (is not irrational : one tries before setting), *experts (if a distro they test is broken, they can fix it: they can notice some flaws, even if they do not bite them) or *intermediate linux users (they have a working distribution, and can train to fix it at a reasonable speed, without tweaking every thing everywhere; distro(s)hop(p) would be very irrational ).
I have a priori answers, but perhaps I could be surprised...
111 • @110 distro hopping (by far2fish on 2015-08-22 20:14:27 GMT from Europe)
I've been using Linux on/off since the late 90'ies, and I am probably in the "intermediate linux users" category as I can fix most things, but staying away from the too hardcore stuff. I am often trying out new distros in VirtualBox, but very seldom distro-hopping. Can't recall if I started out with Red Hat way back and jumped to SuSE, or if it was the other way around. Then about 10 years I go I jumped to Fedora, and was loyal until this year when I first jumped to Ubuntu, then a few weeks on Manjaro and now settled on Antergos.
For me it basically boils down to two things: a) being able to get a better reference point on what different distros does well or not. For instance different package managers, rolling versus upgrades versus reinstalls and so on. b) what mood am I in, and how much time do I have tweaking versus taking the easy pre-configured path. I am mostly taking the easy path as I do not have that much spare time.
112 • Dual Booting (by George Borusiewich on 2015-08-22 20:23:51 GMT from North America)
I started 20 years ago with Win 95 (single-booting) and moved to Win 98, Win Xp (dual-booting with linux 12 years ago), and now I have both Win 7 and linux on my computer. For the last 9 - 10 years I have used linux exclusively, but kept Win 7 on my computer for my grandson's games.
113 • @73 && @45 Firefox (by Ron on 2015-08-22 21:31:11 GMT from North America)
I want to second the ideas mentioned in reply 45. The person that made the recommendation to compare DE's and WM's is a great idea, especially for new users who are not quite sure what the differences are between window managers and desktop environments, and the couple that don't exactly fit into either category cleanly.
I also want to add the comparisons between DNS and Web Browsers are excellent ideas as well. The number one thing I would like to hear first would be the comparison between DNS servers. I was using OpenDNS myself but decided to change, for reasons not needed to be mentioned here at this time. I switched over to Yandex DNS and I am liking what I see so far with them. But there are many others out there I would love to learn more about, or even who they are. Plus there may be some that don't know or understand what a dynamic name server is or what it does.
@73 The same thing happened to me. I was able to post with Chrome but not with Firefox. This post however I am making with Firefox 40, same as last time when it didn't work. My guess is what you said. Maybe the cookies needed to be clear, I was also thinking that maybe the security add-ons, or other add-ons, I use didn't have time to update right away when Firefox updated. Not sure, but glad all is working fine now.
114 • Edit the above post of mine please? (by Ron on 2015-08-22 21:37:31 GMT from North America)
Could someone at distrowatch please edit my post above? Post 113.
I wrote,
"understand what a dynamic name server is or what it does."
Should have been,
"understand what a domain name service (DNS) server is or what it does."
It's been a long day...
Thanks.
115 • Multi booting OSs (by Wse on 2015-08-22 21:51:06 GMT from Europe)
When people say, they are multi booting OSs, actually they are multi booting DEs. If you are multi booting for example, Ubuntu Studio 15.04, Linux Mint MATE 17.1, Lubuntu 14.04, you are actually multi booting XFCE, MATE and LXDE with some tweaks of the same OS base. But, if you are using the same DE, but on different OSs, then you are really multi booting, that is experiencing the difference of OSs.
116 • true multi booting (by M.Z. on 2015-08-23 05:31:29 GMT from Planet Mars)
@115 - true multi booting vs loading different DEs As I see it multi-booting always implies loading multiple full OSs using GRUB or a similar boot loader to select which OS you want during boot up. The other thing you are talking about is simply loading a different DE at login, which is quite distinct & involves no actual OS selection during boot up. If you're just loading a different DE via KDM/MDM etc. at the login screen it doesn't count as multi-booting anything. I suppose that some newer users might get confused as to the term, but you have to be able to load 2+ OSs via a boot loader to multi-boot. I personally tend to load different versions of Link with different base OSs, such as LMDE 2 based on Debian along side Mint 17.x KDE based on Ubuntu & the independently derived Mageia 5 KDE. On Mageia I can also log into LXQt in addition to KDE, but that is logging in to a DE not booting into an OS.
You could also multi-boot multile OSs that have are built on the same base system from the boot loader. For instance I had Mint 17.x Cinnamon & Mint 17.x KDE living on separate partitions on my laptop's SSD before I put LMDE 2 & Mageia on my laptop. Each OS was installed on the SSD separately & later connected to the same /data partition on the laptop HDD (see the link in comment #66). While the OSs used an identical base system they were installed & updated separately. From my previous experience with an earlier version of Mint just installing a different DE & logging in can leave odd remnants if you use a single login (flashes of Cinnamon showing up while logging into KDE for instance). I've heard the remedy for that is to create separate login names for each DE, but again that isn't multi-booting. Because my two Mint 17.x systems were on separate root partitions I was able to 'nuke & pave' over Mint 17 Cinnamon by putting Mageia in it's place & I used LMDE 2 for my Cinnamon distro. Just logging into a DE doesn't give you the flexibility to pave over an entire OS that way while leaving another untouched. That is what is meant by multi-booting or dual-booting, even when it is done with systems using identical base distros it is multi-booting so long as they are on separate partitions.
117 • @116 - duh (by M.Z. on 2015-08-23 05:36:40 GMT from Planet Mars)
"I personally tend to load different versions of Link with different base OSs"
Or multiple versions of Linux... what ever you want to call it.
118 • @ 116 • true multi booting - M.Z. (by Wse on 2015-08-23 07:05:21 GMT from Europe)
I used to have Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu in different partitions. So, actually I was experiencing different DEs on a same OS base. Then, I added Debian 8, installed Xfce to another partition. Now I could experience Xfce on 2 different OSs. Even though, some might say Ubuntu base is practically Debian, but that's not exactly true--they are different. A simple matter, you just can't install Firefox and auto upgrade it in Debian, but can be done quite easily on Ubuntu.
It is of course nice to look at, experience the DEs, but I don't want to be a prisoner to a DE, so installed Openbox on Debian and Ubuntu. I could install whatever apps I wanted. There is a difference between Debian and Ubuntu, and that could be felt. The next would be Arch and maybe even Gentoo. Then, I'd really have the experience of multi booting different OSs. I'd try Fedora with Openbox, if it could be done. Maybe even OpenSuse.
119 • OpenDNS (by mandog on 2015-08-23 14:02:19 GMT from South America)
I had lots of problems with openDNS with media filtering I was unable to read the BBC news or UK government sites like the inland revenue which we deal with due to our UK business, the letters I recieved were all from Microsoft deciding that because I did not live in the UK they had decided to use filtering to prevent me from visiting UK sites and any other site they deemed fit my wife could not use facebook etc. The thing openDNS sounds good when in fact it was Microsoft that was regulating it but who for.
120 • dual booting correction (by cykodrone on 2015-08-23 14:27:01 GMT from North America)
Due to a slight disagreement with a PCLOS forum admin, I have now switched to Xubuntu as my primary OS, as have my financial donations as well. I will most likely turn the PCLOS SSD in to a distro 'test drive'.
121 • Korora 22(KDE)-Selina-My Everyday Linux (by muthu on 2015-08-23 17:30:31 GMT from Asia)
Now, Iam using Korora 22 KDE(Selina) Linux for my daily work. My wife also loves Korora 22. Previously, I had Solydk as my Primary distro. I am happy with Korora's nice Looks. It has some update problems. Still I like Korora KDE.
122 • Dual Booting Is Insane (by Robert Pogson on 2015-08-23 19:17:43 GMT from North America)
If you are getting in or out of a boat that has pulled up to the dock, you don't keep a foot on each. It's not a good situation.
Maintaining two operating systems is just silly. I found that maintaining M$'s OS took far more time than maintaining GNU/Linux thanks to package management and a much cleaner design. Then there's malware and re-re-rebooting. It just doesn't pay to have That Other OS around when you have GNU/Linux, dual-booted or not.
If you absolutely need multiple OS, the way to go is through virtualization or thin clients, not dual-booting. Dual-booting may have made sense 15-20 years ago but GNU/Linux can do it all these days and in a much better fashion. If you think you need That Other OS because of some application, it may be worthwhile chucking the application which insists you be M$'s slave. I did years ago and haven't regretted it for a second.
123 • sweeping generalizations are insane (by M.Z. on 2015-08-23 23:39:24 GMT from Planet Mars)
@122 I think overly broad sweeping generalizations are insane. Plenty of users think putting up with MS now & then is worth the extra access to games or other needed software & multi-booting is a good option for many such users. Plus the separation of OSs can let you easily nuke & pave over an old no longer supported distro such as a short term release Ubuntu without losing data in saved games etc. that you may have in Windows. Also some users just feel like running multiple OSs & being as it's free software it seems silly to criticize people for doing what they want with it. I'll admit that I stopped caring about my old copy of Vista on my desktop machine some time ago & never boot into it or maintain it, but it could be useful at some point so I see no need to wipe it out & try a get a copy of MS to run in a VM. That would be an 'insane' needless wasted effort in my mind given the fact that the desktop already has a copy sitting on the hard drive. There are probably lots of similar situations out there where multi-booting just makes sense & there is little point in criticizing people for doing what they feel like with their computers.
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