DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 630, 5 October 2015 |
Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
First impressions count for a lot and small details can make a big difference in people's minds. That is why it is important for system installers to work well and look polished. It is why a desktop's defaults matter, even if it is easy to change the interface's settings. This week, in our News section, we talk about system installers, default configurations and first impressions. We cover how Fedora's package maintainers keep up to date with constantly changing upstream software. We also discuss new designs proposed for Ubuntu's system installer and Raspbian's move to make the Raspberry Pi more attractive to end users. Plus, the Linux Mint team has shared news that their distribution has been bundled on a series of small computers. Our Feature Story this week explores Android-x86 and how well the operating system works on a laptop computer. In our Questions and Answers column we explore ways to keep a home directory clean of unwanted files and then we share the torrents we are seeding. Plus, we list the releases of the past week and, in our Opinion Poll, we ask how our readers prefer to acquire new installation media. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
An Android living in your computer
The Android-x86 project is an on-going effort to make Google's Android operating system, typically run on phones and other mobile devices, run smoothly on laptops, desktop computers and tablets equipped with x86 processors. Android-x86, on paper at least, offers most of the features one would expect from a desktop operating system.
This week I decided to download the project's latest release, version 4.4-r3, and see how well it would work as a desktop operating system. The Android-x86 download page is a bit cluttered, but I eventually found what I was looking for, a 411MB ISO file I could use to install this unusual operating system.
The Android-x86 media boots and presents us with a menu where we can select to run Android from the live media, run Android from the live media in safe graphics mode or install Android on our hard drive. Let's explore what happens when we jump straight into the installer. Android's installer consists of a series of text screens. The first screen asks us to select a partition where Android-x86 will be installed. If no suitable partition is available, we can choose to run a text-based partition manager (cgdisk) to destroy or create partitions on our disk. Once we have navigated the cgdisk partition manager and returned to the installer we can select which partition will hold Android-x86 and proceed to the next step. We are then asked which file system we would like to use with our options including ext2, ext3, NTFS and FAT. Here I ran into a problem. It did not matter which file system I selected from the menu, the installer told me it was unable to mount my partition and returned me back to the previous step. At this point I rebooted, launched the installer again and found I could select any file system to use and the installer would accept it, format the partition and proceed. We are then asked if we would like to install the GRUB boot loader and whether we would also like to install GRUB with EFI support. We are then asked if we would like to set up Android-x86's /system partition to be writeable (the default is to make /system read-only).
The first time I booted Android-x86 I was brought to a graphical configuration screen which asked me to select my preferred language from a list. An error message then popped up, letting me know "Google App" had crashed. Then the screen went blank and the computer did not respond to mouse or keyboard input. I forced the computer to reboot and was again shown the graphical configuration screen. This time when the error message about Google App stopping appeared I was able to dismiss the error and continue through the initial configuration process. We are then asked to select an available wireless network from a list. The next screen asks us to associate our installation with a Google account. We then have the option of syncing our data and settings on-line with Google. The next screen asks us to input credit card information and we can skip this screen if we wish. The final screens ask us to confirm our time zone and enter our name.
Android-x86 4.4-r3 -- The application menu
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
With the configuration steps completed we are brought to a screen which acts as Android's version of a desktop. Near the bottom of the screen we find a button which opens a full-screen application menu. Just below this button are three buttons for navigating the interface. One button moves us back to a previous screen, the middle button brings us to the home screen (or desktop) and the third button displays a list of open applications, allowing us to switch between tasks. The background is green and there is a notification bar at the top of the display letting us know software updates are available. Dragging this notification area down with the mouse pointer allows us to click on the update notification and install new versions of packages available in Google's repositories.
At this point in the process I ran into an interesting problem. Specifically, while Android-x86's interface would respond to mouse clicks and gestures, when running in a VirtualBox virtual machine the mouse pointer was not visible by default. The Android interface does not lend itself to navigating by keyboard after we finish the initial set up and this makes Android-x86 very awkward to navigate in a virtual environment with the default settings. I found I could work around this by disabling VirtualBox's mouse integration. With mouse pointer integration turned off, the mouse became visible in the Android interface.
Android-x86 4.4-r3 -- Viewing system notifications
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Something else I noticed was, when running in a virtual machine, Android-x86's screen resolution was quite low. When I ran Android-x86 on a laptop computer the operating system used my display's full resolution. When running on the laptop computer I found extra icons were visible on the desktop. These icons could be used to launch a messaging app, open Google's YouTube app, launch a web browser or open a music player.
I soon ran into a second problem with running Android in a virtual environment. If left idle for more than a few seconds, the display would go dark and Android-x86 would essentially put itself to sleep, much like a smart phone does. However, there does not appear to be any button or mouse gesture to wake up Android-x86 when it is running in a virtual machine. What I found would wake up Android-x86 was selecting VirtualBox's "ACPI Shutdown" option. Sending this shutdown signal to Android-x86 would, perhaps counter-intuitively, wake up the operating system. I later found an option in Android's Settings panel which would force the display to stay on, avoiding sleep mode altogether.
In the upper-right corner of the screen is a settings menu we can pull down from the top bar. This menu gives us quick access to Android's settings panel, battery charge information, the ability to change screen brightness and a button to power off the device. When running on my laptop there was an option available to lock the screen's orientation which prevents applications from rotating the display. The rotation-lock feature was not available when I ran Android-x86 in a virtual machine.
Android-x86 4.4-r3 -- Installing a new application from the Play Store
(full image size: 126kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Android-x86 provides us with access to a huge collection of software through Android's software manager, called Play Store. Play Store presents us with collections of popular programs and media we can download to our computer. I noticed some items are not listed in Android-x86's version of Play Store that are available when using an Android powered phone. Some games, for instance, are simply not listed. I did some investigating and it seems applications which are known to not work on the Android-x86 platform are automatically filtered out. That's not to say all applications listed in the Play Store always work. Some applications do work, especially smaller, simpler programs. For instance, I got the Jota Text Editor to run and edit text files. Firefox's mobile browser, the Netflix application and most games I tried failed to load when run in a virtual environment. Microsoft's Word application installed and would run, but forced the screen to flip sideways and then wouldn't open or create any documents. Android-x86 ships with a YouTube client and this works. There is also a built in web browser, but it tended to crash while loading complex web pages. When I switched from my virtual machine installation to my Android-x86 installation running on a laptop I found more applications worked. Netflix, for example, would launch and I could browse through available media. No videos would actually play, but I could change my account settings and queue available titles. The Microsoft Word application would load and I could open documents in the Word app. However, the Microsoft Word application did not recognize keyboard input, making it impossible to edit documents on my laptop. YouTube and the default web browser worked well when run on the laptop and my screen's orientation lock kept apps from rotating my screen 90 degrees.
By this point it had become pretty clear that running Android-x86 on a laptop computer produced a much better experience than running the operating system in a virtual machine. When running on the laptop my screen resolution was higher, the graphical interface was more responsive, my screen's orientation could be locked and more applications would run without crashing. Most applications responded well to keyboard and mouse input and the operating system was generally stable (even if some applications were not). There were a few problems I ran into though when running Android-x86 on the laptop. As I mentioned previously, some applications did not respond to keyboard input. Presumably these applications were waiting for input from a software keyboard which was not present. Another issue I ran into was my laptop's fan would run at full speed constantly, even when my CPU was running at under 10% utilization.
Android-x86 4.4-r3 -- The Settings panel
(full image size: 56kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
I use an Android powered smart phone on a daily basis and so I had assumed, going into this review, that it would be fairly easy for me to transition to using Android-x86 as a desktop operating system. I was mistaken. While I knew where settings were, how to navigate features and knew the names of applications I wanted to use, I still found Android-x86 was not easy to navigate. Some of that problem was muscle memory, I think. For instance, on Android (even when running Android-x86 on a laptop) we scroll through content by dragging the visible page up or down. On a touch device this is accomplished with a quick finger gesture, but on a laptop scrolling is accomplished via an awkward click and drag motion. There are no scroll bars. We cannot simply click on a notification or button to navigate, the user must click and drag the icon or screen edge to access more information or to switch desktop work spaces. With a laptop's touch pad these gestures feel alien and it takes longer to explore Android-x86's interface than most other desktop interfaces. Likewise, multitasking is awkward because it takes two clicks and more mouse movement to switch tasks rather than just the one click required on a traditional desktop.
Another feature of Android-x86 I noticed early on was, during the set up phase, I always selected not to synchronize my settings and data between devices. Yet in both my test environments I found my list of installed applications, contacts and calendar had been automatically downloaded. When I went back to my mobile phone I found the items and contacts I had set up in my test environments had been automatically synchronized back to my phone, despite explicitly opting out of this feature during Android-x86's initialization.
I think it is fair to say Android-x86 has a lot of rough edges. Even when we ignore how the operating system performs in a virtual environment and focus on the experience I had using a physical laptop, there are still several problems. The laptop runs hot and needs to run its fan constantly, several applications are not available, won't run or do not work properly. Navigating the interface is a bit awkward when we compare Android-x86's interface with more traditional graphical desktops like Xfce or KDE.
Android-x86 4.4-r3 -- Exploring the YouTube app
(full image size: 500kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Despite the problems I ran into with Android-x86, there were some aspects of the project which impressed me. The fact developers have been able to get Android working on a consumer x86 laptop at all is a feat in itself. I was also happy to note many of Google's applications do run well on Android-x86. For instance, the Maps program, YouTube and other bundled applications usually worked smoothly. As I pointed out above, contacts and my calendar synchronized correctly (even if I didn't want them to do so). What I'm saying is, when we consider the Android-x86 project is taking an operating system and porting it to another platform, getting anything to run at all is quite an accomplishment. Being able to run Android on a laptop computer, install some working software, transfer files between computers, watch YouTube videos and jot down notes in a text editor are all impressive accomplishments by the Android-x86 team. If I were using a tablet device with a x86 processor instead of a laptop, I think Android-x86 would probably be a good operating system to run on the device.
What it comes down to is Android-x86 offers most of the functionality of Android on a desktop or laptop computer. Not everything works and there are some quirks because Android is typically used on small, touch devices. Some programs in the Play Store will not work, or lack some functionality. However, a lot of programs do run, the operating system is stable and most of the functionality of Android is present in the Android-x86 port. If you can grow accustomed to using the mouse pointer to perform finger gestures, running Android-x86 is an interesting experience that mostly works.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
How Fedora tracks software releases, Ubuntu's redesigned installer, Raspbian enables desktop by default and purchasing computers with Linux Mint pre-installed
Modern distributions are made up of thousands of software packages. Since each distribution has more packages in its repositories than it has volunteers to maintain these packages, it is important for distributions to have methods of monitoring upstream projects and to automate parts of the package building process. Fedora Magazine showcased some of the tools Fedora uses to help Fedora's many package maintainers keep up with the latest upstream developments. "Most Fedora package maintainers maintain multiple packages. Often they do their work in their personal, spare time. So the Fedora Infrastructure team does its best to help them easily keep an eye on new upstream releases. The Infrastructure team develops, deploys and maintains all of these apps, including an upstream monitoring application." Information on some of the tools used and details on how package maintainers get update notifications are covered in the Fedora Magazine article.
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The Ubuntu developers are changing the look of their distribution's system installer. The installer's new interface attempts to simplify navigation and provide a common interface across all devices. As one of the designers commented, "One of the major changes we wanted to achieve was to give the user the same experience across all devices, moving us closer to achieving a seamless convergent platform." Commentary on the system installer's new design, along with screen shots, can be found in the design team's blog post.
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Last week the Raspbian project released a major update of its Debian-based operating system for Raspberry Pi computers. The new update brings Raspbian up to date with features and packages from the Debian distribution. There is also another significant change, designed to make Raspbian more accessible to a wider audience: Raspbian boots into a desktop environment by default. Previous releases of Raspbian booted into a minimal command line environment and the user could then choose to launch a graphical interface. By booting into a desktop by default the project hopes to put a friendly face on Raspberry Pi computers. "The first thing anyone starting the new Jessie image from scratch will notice is that the default behaviour is to boot straight to the desktop GUI, not to the Linux command line. This was a decision taken because this is the expected behaviour for all modern computers; the default interface for a personal computer in 2015 is a desktop GUI, not just text on a screen. It is still possible to set the Pi to boot to the command line for people who prefer that - just toggle the relevant setting in the Raspberry Pi Configuration application." More information on the Raspbian "Jessie" release can be found on the Raspberry Pi's website.
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Historically, it has been difficult to purchase a computer with Linux pre-installed on the hard drive. In recent years some retailers have started offering buyers laptop and desktop computers bundled with Ubuntu, but other distribution options have largely been absent. Last week the Linux Mint team shared news that CompuLab is selling small computers, called the Mintbox 2 and Mintbox Mini, with copies of Linux Mint 17.2 pre-installed. Specifications and prices for the Mintbox computers can be found here.
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Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Clearing out dot files from the home directory
Cleaning-my-home asks: Over time the dot files in my home directory have grown out of hand. Is there any tool or application that can clean out old or unwanted dot files?
DistroWatch answers: Cached data, configuration files and history data all get tossed into hidden files in each user's home directory. After a while the amount of data can build up, taking up disk space and slowing down backup processes. Often times the data stored in dot files (files and directories that have names beginning with a "." character) is unnecessary and therefore can be deleted from time to time. The problem is, with most applications leaving behind a steady trail of files, it can be time consuming to clean them up and difficult to even know what can be safely deleted.
One tool you may want to explore is BleachBit, an application designed to clean out old, unwanted or unnecessary files. The BleachBit application's website says: "BleachBit quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy. Free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn't know was there." BleachBit provides users with a nice graphical interface to help explore the jungle of history files, cookies, application preferences and old database files. It is also available in the software repositories of most distributions.
Another possible approach is to use a shell command to search for any files that have not been accessed recently and remove them. This will only work if the "noatime" flag is not set in your /etc/fstab file for your home directory's file system. In other words, if you are not sure if your system tracks the access times of files, it is best not to use this approach.
Assuming your file system does track access times, you can clear out any files not accessed in the past year by using the following commands. These two commands check through the contents of the home directory, looking for any files older than 365 days contained inside hidden directories. A hidden directory is any directory whose name starts with a "." character. Any files in a hidden directory not accessed in the past 365 days are deleted.
cd ~
for i in .[^.]?*; do find "$i" -depth -atime +365 -type f -delete; done
Before running the above commands it is a good idea to back up your files, in case the cleanse wipes out something that might have been useful, or in case a typo is made. If you want to see which files will be deleted without actually removing them, replace the "-delete" flag in the above command with "-print". This will provide a list of stale files that can be removed.
cd ~
for i in .[^.]?*; do find "$i" -depth -atime +365 -type f -print; done
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Past Questions and Answers columns can be found in our Q&A Archive.
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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: 117
- Total data uploaded: 15.4TB
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Released Last Week |
Sabayon 15.10
Joost Ruis has announced the release of Sabayon 15.10, the latest monthly build of the Gentoo-based distribution available in GNOME, KDE, MATE and Xfce desktop flavours. This is Sabayon's first release that features KDE's Plasma 5 desktop, as well as a new system installer. From the release announcement: "As already pre-announced, we switched the default installer. Anaconda served us well, but we decided to embrace the community-baked Calamares, the distribution-independent installer. If you don't know it, check out their website. Also if it is young and some features are missing, it is lighter and more bug-free with respect to our old installer. The KDE edition now ships the new Plasma 5 by default. Since we had to put much effort in making a working release with Calamares, we had to ditch Steam Big Picture mode and Media Center installation options."
Raspbian 2015-09-24
Simon Long has announced the released of the first Debian "Jessie"-based Raspbian, version 2015-09-24, a distribution designed specifically for the Raspberry Pi single-board mini-computer. What's new in this major update? "Many of the changes between Wheezy and Jessie are invisible to the end-user. There are modifications to the underlying system to improve performance and flexibility, particularly as regards the control of system processes, and as with any update, there are numerous bug fixes and tweaks. And at the same time as the upgrade to Jessie, we've added a bunch of changes and improvements to the desktop user interface. The first thing anyone starting the new Jessie image from scratch will notice is that the default behaviour is to boot straight to the desktop GUI, not to the Linux command line. This was a decision taken because this is the expected behaviour for all modern computers; the default interface for a personal computer in 2015 is a desktop GUI, not just text on a screen." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details and screenshots.
Calculate Linux 15
Alexander Tratsevskiy has announced the availability of Calculate Linux 15, a major new release of the project's Gentoo-based distribution for desktops (with a choice of KDE, MATE or Xfce), servers and media centres: "We are happy to announce the release of Calculate Linux 15. Main changes: a new method for packages updates - better reliability, each mirror stores version history, updates are faster, the update tool selects the fastest mirror, update configuration defaults to parallel fetching and installation; common binary repositories - distribution profiles were unified, you are free to choose between three brand-new flavours, each with USE flags adapted to different needs; new Calculate Utilities 3.4 - system build tools were completely rewritten, Calculate Console comes with a GUI mode, Overlayfs support was added for fast deployment...." Here is the complete release announcement.
Calculate Linux 15 -- Running the KDE desktop
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
NixOS 15.09
NixOS 15.09 has been released. NixOS is an independently developed Linux distribution with a unique approach to package and configuration management, Nix package manager, atomic upgrades with rollbacks, and other interesting features. "NixOS 15.09 'Dingo' has been released, the fourth stable release branch. In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights: the Haskell packages infrastructure has been re-designed from the ground up; NixOS now distributes the latest version of every single package registered on Hackage, i.e. well over 8,000 Haskell packages; Nix has been updated to version 1.10 which, among other improvements, enables cryptographic signatures on binary caches for improved security; you can now keep your NixOS system up to date automatically; this release is based on glibc 2.21, GCC 4.9 and Linux kernel 3.18." A brief release announcement has been published on the project's home page and there are more detailed release notes with information on upgrade incompatibilities.
NixOS 15.09 -- Running the KDE 4.14 desktop
(full image size: 535kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Linux From Scratch 7.8
Bruce Dubbs has announced a new release of the Linux From Scratch (LFS) guide to building a Linux distribution from the ground up. The latest edition of the LFS book, version 7.8, and its companion book Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS) explore how to set up a functioning Linux system from individual source packages. While the main edition of LFS guides the user through setting up a system with SysV init, there is an alternative edition of LFS which explores using the systemd init software. "The Linux From Scratch community announces the release of LFS stable version 7.8. It is a major release with toolchain updates to glibc 2.22, Binutils 2.25.1, and GCC 5.2.0. In total, 30 packages were updated and changes to boot scripts and text have been made throughout the book. You can read the book online, or download to read locally. In coordination with this release, a new version of LFS using the systemd package is also being released. This package implements the newer systemd style of system initialization and control and is consistent with LFS in most packages." The release announcement for LFS 7.8 can be found on the project's website.
Qubes OS 3.0
Joanna Rutkowska has announced the availability of a new release of Qubes OS, a Fedora based platform which isolates a user's tasks for improved security. The new release, Qubes OS 3.0, includes a number of important improvements over the 2.0 release. Key among the new features are separating Qubes from the underlying hypervisor (which may allow Qubes to use alternative hypervisors in the future), Debian templates and an upgrade from Xen 4.1 to 4.4. "New features since 2.0: HAL (Hypervisor Abstraction Layer) - based on libvirt, opens a whole new possibilities of using different hypervisors. Currently Qubes OS uses Xen. Xen 4.4 - many new features, but for us the most important is much more mature libxl tool stack. Qrexec 3 - greatly improved performance by using direct VM-VM connections and bigger buffers. Debian templates gets official support. Whonix templates. Build system improvements - especially support for distribution-specific plugins (makes supporting multiple distributions much easier) and building templates using DispVM. Automated tests - makes much easier to find bugs, before its even shipped to users." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement and the release notes.
SparkyLinux 4.1
The developers of SparkyLinux, a desktop distribution based on Debian's testing branch, have released SparkyLinux 4.1 in several editions. The latest release features packages from Debian Stretch, version 5.2.1 of the GNU Compiler Collection, LibreOffice 5.0.1, systemd 226 and version 4.1.6 of the Linux kernel. "New ISO images of SparkyLinux 4.1 are ready to go. SparkyLinux 4 is based on and fully compatible with Debian testing 'Stretch'. It's the first update of SparkyLinux 4.x, which provides a few important changes, such as: full system upgrade from Debian testing repository as of 28 September 2015. Linux kernel 4.1.6, GCC 5.2.1, systemd 226, Plasma Desktop 5, LibreOffice 5.0.1." The new release includes some additional changes, for example the Adobe Flash player has been removed from the default installation, but is still available in the distribution's repositories. Further information on SparkyLinux 4.1 can be found in the project's release announcement.
Network Security Toolkit 22-7248
Ron Henderson has announced the release of a new version of the Network Security Toolkit (NST) distribution. The latest release, NST 22-7248, includes a new geolocation map with the ability to plot IPv4 network addresses on the map. This release also features a new systemd management widget and the NST web service now runs on non-standard ports, freeing up the standard network ports for serving user created websites. "We are pleased to announce the latest NST release: `NST 22 SVN:7248'. This release is based on Fedora 22 using Linux kernel: 4.1.7-200.fc22. This release brings the NST distribution on par with Fedora 22. Here are some of the highlights for this release: Development of a new geolocation map presentation using technology from the WebGL Globe project. This allows for gelocated IPv4 addresses to be rendered on a globe within your browser using WebGL. See the live demo on the NST Wiki site: NST WebGL (View Globe). One can now populate the NST Networking Tools Widgets with results from many of the NST integrated applications...." Additional information on NST 22-7248 can be found in the project's release announcement.
KaOS 2015.10
The developers of KaOS, a rolling release distribution which ships the latest releases of the KDE desktop and the Calligra productivity suite, have announced the availability of a new release. The new version, KaOS 2015.10, offers a number of interesting new features, including better protection in against data corruption enabled in the XFS file system. The new release also features the option of signing into the Plasma desktop running in a Wayland session from the login screen. "Bigger news though is two changes. This ISO image is the first time that the default XFS file system is CRC and finobt enabled. CRCs enable enhanced error detection due to hardware issues, whilst the format changes also improve crash recovery algorithms and the ability of various tools to validate and repair meta-data corruptions when they are found. The free inode btree does not index used inodes, allowing faster, more consistent inode allocation performance as file systems age." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
KaOS 2015.10 -- Running the Plasma 5 desktop
(full image size: 745kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Netrunner 15.09 "Rolling"
The Netrunner development team has announced a new release of the project's Rolling edition. The new release, Netrunner Rolling 2015.09, is based on the Manjaro distribution and features a number of important changes. The most visible is a switch from using KDE4 to KDE's Plasma 5 desktop environment. Netrunner has adopted the Calamares system installer and the new release ships with LibreOffice 5. "The Netrunner team is proud to announce the release of Netrunner Rolling 2015.09 64-bit. Netrunner Rolling 2015.09 has gotten a complete overhaul: The desktop transitioned from KDE4 to Plasma 5 together with KDE Applications 15.08 and hundreds of packages updated to their latest versions. Calamares is now used as the default Installer. LibreOffice and VirtualBox now ship in their 5. versions. Gmusicbrowser has been fine tuned to load and display large music collections in an efficient and easy way, automatically adding album covers from the Internet." Additional information on the new Rolling installation media along with screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.
OpenIndiana 2015.10
Alexander Pyhalov has announced the release of OpenIndiana 2015.10, the latest update of the distribution originally forked from the now-defunct OpenSolaris operating system: "So, after half a year we have a new ISO image. We synced IPS with the Everycity version, which includes Oracle updates and fixes necessary for IPS to work on illumos. Two major changes from previous IPS shipped with OpenIndiana Hipster - now we have Python 2.7 IPS version (in addition to the Python 2.6 one) and the linked image is the default zone type now. IPS knows about the zones and enforces some restrictions - for example, now GZ's publisher list should be subset of NGS's publisher list. Also distribution constructor was updated to use Python 2.7. Other changes include some preparations to support non-GRUB boot loaders. The text installer now creates separate file system for /var. We also included the text installer in the GUI ISO images. The main issue with GUI installer is that it is written in C and there's no one supporting it. The text installer, written in Python, is easier to maintain, so it gets more attention." Read the rest of the release notes for further details.
Slackel 6.0.4 "Openbox"
The developers of Slackel, a Slackware based desktop distribution, have released Slackel 6.0.4 "Openbox". The new release of the Openbox edition features the 4.1.6 version of the Linux kernel, the ability to choose between the GRUB and LILO boot loaders at install time and many package upgrades. "Slackel 6.0.4 Openbox has been released. Slackel is based on Slackware and Salix. Includes the Linux kernel 4.1.6 and latest updates from Slackware's 'Current' tree. The ncurses installer includes the option to install GRUB or LILO boot loader. For users installing on a GPT EFI laptop or desktop PC there is this video for helping them. Changes are: SpaceFm has been replaced by SpaceFM file manager. OpenJRE, Rhino, icedtea-web. Gnumeric has been removed because of ISO image fitting on a 700 MB CD. Slackel 6.0.4 Openbox includes the Midori 0.5.11 web browser, Claws-Mail 3.9.2, Transmission, Pidgin 2.10.11, Gftp 2.0.19, wicd. AbiWord 3.0.1 office application included." Further details and screen shots can be found in the project's release notes.
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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 |
Preferred way to acquire an ISO file
There are several ways one can go about getting installation media to try out a new distribution. Some of us like to download ISO images using bittorrent as it provides automatic data integrity checks and a chance to help others download the same media. Others prefer the tried and true approach of downloading over the HTTP or FTP protocols, some of us are on slower Internet connections and find it easiest to purchase physical installation media.
Our question this week is: What is your preferred method for acquiring installation media?
You can see the results of last week's poll on Steam and gaming here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Preferred way to acquire an ISO file
Bittorrent: | 1073 (44%) |
FTP/HTTP through a web browser: | 1098 (45%) |
FTP/HTTP through a dedicated client: | 207 (8%) |
Purchase physical media: | 27 (1%) |
Physical media from a friend/peer: | 4 (0%) |
Other: | 31 (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, 12 October 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 • iso file (by Bill on 2015-10-05 00:01:28 GMT from North America)
Not sure if my post went through. I use an old Download Manager I bought in Windows XP days. It runs fine in Wine, and gives me accelerated multiple segments. I can get 1.5 gigs iso in 25 or 30 mins.
2 • linux preloaded (by Steanne on 2015-10-05 00:08:08 GMT from North America)
http://linuxpreloaded.com/ keeps a handy list of vendors that sell machines with linux preinstalled, though they seem to be missing compulab.
3 • iso downloads (by SlaxFan on 2015-10-05 01:09:29 GMT from North America)
I prefer using axel and a few mirrors at the same time for accelerated multiple segments. I'd use bittorrent but I tend to find new versions to download before I can find the torrents.
4 • re tip on removing dot-files (by Noobie on 2015-10-05 01:30:13 GMT from North America)
The tip on removing dot files was informative, but the wording re use of noatime was confusing/ambiguous. When you say noatime should NOT be "set" in your /etc/fstab, do you mean the actual word "noatime" SHOULD be present in the line for the relevant mount point, or that the actual word "noatime" should NOT exist on the line for the relevant mount point? I guess it is the use of the word "set" that is ambiguous. My understanding is that if the term noatime is on a line for a relevant mount point, than access times will NOT be tracked. Presumably there may be some advantages for this behaviour, such as faster access times? If I follow the logic properly, your example to clear some dot files depends on time stamps to determine whether or not to remove a given dot file, so "atime" would have to be "enabled" (is THAT what you mean by "set") to make the determination; and to "enable" atime, you don't want the term "noatime" in the line for the relevant mount point? This seems to indicate that atime (ie - no word "atime" or noatime") is the "default", and to turn access time logging "off", you insert the word "noatime" on the line for the relevant mount point"?? I find no manpage for noatime, so being new at this, not sure under what heading the documentation would be covered. English can be sooo confusing and ambiguous at times......
5 • Getting ISO files / OpenIndiana (by Will B on 2015-10-05 02:47:33 GMT from North America)
Thank you DistroWatch team for another fine DistroWatch Weekly.
[ Getting ISOs ] I would use torrents for ISO retrieval, but it often seems it's slower than grabbing an ISO from a web page sometimes. What's more, when I *do* use torrent for downloads, it practically kills my internet connection for other applications (and other users on the LAN) because my connection appears to be saturated. For me, download over http or ftp works best.
[ OpenIndiana ] Nice to see an update for OI after all this while. Almost worth downloading except I have a Radeon card, and they appear to not support that just yet. (sigh)
6 • Poll (by bison on 2015-10-05 02:58:46 GMT from North America)
Other: wget
7 • Searching for torrents: QBITTORRENT (by Greg Zeng on 2015-10-05 03:23:02 GMT from Oceania)
Most Linux distribution creators do not understand how torrents work. If you use normal torrent searching, you will get many evil, bad & false torrents. Using Linux's common tools (Transmission, etc), which forces you to use often dangerous torrents. In the Linux world, the most popular Torrent tool, for searching AND downloads, is Qbittorent. This is unknown to nearly all distro creators. As their website write: "qBittorrent runs and provides the same features on all major platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, Free". This combined search & download tool can be controlled from other sites, so can run easily from a remote (Linux) server. So if you want a fast, reliable download of most Linux distributions (PCLOS, Netrunner, Manjaro, etc), it is so easy, safe & quick, using most common computer operating systems.
8 • @ 4 (by GuntherT on 2015-10-05 03:39:26 GMT from North America)
Read this for more information on 'atime options':
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fstab
9 • Bittorrent or web download (by M.Z. on 2015-10-05 04:46:19 GMT from North America)
I usually try Bittorrent if the option is available, or download directly via my browser. I find the torrent option is usually much better for recently released & big name distros, while less popular distros are just as fast or even faster using a direct download link.
@7 Why bother searching when there is a link for the torrent on the web page? Frankly I've never bothered to search for anything in a torrent downloading program & don't want to as I'm looking for a reputable seed file. I think qBittorrent is installed by default on my Mageia partition, but I've never bothered with the search feature. The fact is you can get a reputable seed file every time if you get it from a reputable website, so why bother searching? I want to do a little homework on a new distro before I download it anyway, so I'm going to be on their website. It is easier & safer just to click the torrent link on the official site & open it in KTorrent (or whatever you prefer). I suppose there could be some advantages to using qBittorrent that way, but I think it's a bit better doing things without the search.
10 • atime options (by Noobie on 2015-10-05 04:47:27 GMT from North America)
8 - GuntherT
Thanks for the tip. THAT manpage answered ALL my questions. Also learned some valuable new things like the relatime option. Interesting that there can be so much difference from one manpage to another for the same topic. Guess the distro, and especially the version number of the manpage would account for that.
11 • Install ISO (by Zork on 2015-10-05 04:53:04 GMT from Oceania)
Prefer downloading using Torrents from the Distro Creator ( Currently using Ubuntu ) and then creating a bootable USB...
Saves the hassle burning a disk and I'll know that I can use it on any computer with "Boot from USB" without having to worry about the integrity of the burn or differences in the DVD drives... Had too many incidents where a burned disc won't read on some machines but will read on others...
12 • ( • 5 • 7 • ) ISO download/use methods (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-10-05 05:03:39 GMT from North America)
Some torrent clients use all available bandwidth and have no obvious way to manage their greed - "trickle" may help, not only with torrents, but with other apps, on Linux/BSD/Solaris.
Sometimes I have to download directly in order to set up a torrent.
I have never been "forced to use" any "dangerous torrents" by a torrent client. (Of course, I don't assume torrent tech is private or secure.) I have found some clients' functionality inconsistent across platforms.
* Some who wish to test or demonstrate may have more challenging expectations from geekdom, as demonstrated by Linux versions of multiboot tools YUMI, MultiBootUSB, and Easy2Boot, which clearly show it's never necessary to bulldoze everything else on a drive just to add one (more) ISO (preferably with a per-ISO persistence option) and that it should be easy for the user.
13 • Download (by lupus on 2015-10-05 05:13:21 GMT from Europe)
Always Torrent if provided.
It is only a little bit slower (much slower if obscure) but time shouldn't be the main factor, giving back to the maintainer should be. Leave the torrent running until nobody downloaded snippets for 2 complete days or the distrbution factor reaches the 100s then I think you can stop the feed. Always check the md5 before using!
I mostly have up to 10 Torrents in my queue (uploading) and it doesn't harm Networking speed at all.
So please use Torrents and you are already giving back beside donations that is
Bye Lupus
14 • Downloading ISOs (by hobbitland on 2015-10-05 05:22:21 GMT from Europe)
I always use web download and sometimes aria2c for parallel downloads. Most of the time I just use single thread download as its fast enough
15 • android (by peer on 2015-10-05 06:32:01 GMT from Europe)
I run android 4.4 on my EEEpc (1000H). It starts quickly and runs good and stable. Not all apps works but may do. The cursor on the screen is small circle instead of a arrow. When I move my finger on the touchpad the cursor moves on the screen. Swiping is done with the left touchpadbutton and moving my finger on the tochpad. Zooming in and out can be done with two fingers on the touchpad. When I plug in a mouse I see the standard arrow. I can move and swipe. Unfortunately I do not know the tric for zooming. I tried several linux distributions om the EEEpc (peppermint, debian xfce) but now I am used to android on my pc. I prefer android for my EEEpc
16 • android (by peer on 2015-10-05 06:40:26 GMT from Europe)
on my pc I have installed Genymotion. It works also with virtualbox but has its own starter. Unfortunately on my pc Genymotion is not stable at all. This has to do with the graphic card (radeon HD 7750).
17 • Android-x86 (by Johannes on 2015-10-05 06:45:17 GMT from Europe)
Thank you for reviewing Android-x86, and as usual for a very interesting DWW issue. The Android-x86 team is apparently working on porting Lollipop (Android 5.1), looking forward to all these improvements. Maybe one day Android-x86 ends up being a really popular distribution...
18 • Dotfiles Gone Wild (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2015-10-05 07:15:21 GMT from North America)
There is so much data breeding in dotfiles that I take an aggressive approach.
First learn the handful of FreeDesktop.org $XDG_ vars. You can set them in profile.d scripts or for that matter pam_env.conf.
Decide if you can throw any XDG's in tmpfs, say $XDG_CACHE_HOME. If you have the RAM and don't mind slight sluggishness on first use of menus in the DE, try it. Cleaning is automatic because tmpfs disappears on reboot. Cache runs faster from RAM anyway.
Persistent files you want to keep -- retain a list or its complement/inverse. Script to save or delete everything indicated by whichever list. It can run at shutdown or logout.
You can massage some keepers, e.g. strip "recent documents" lines but keeping the dotfile. Some apps may have a CLI command equivalent that your script can use.
19 • android-x86 resolution (by peer on 2015-10-05 07:47:47 GMT from Europe)
The resolution of android-x86 in virtualbox can be changed: https://4sysops.com/archives/change-the-screen-resolution-of-an-android-virtualbox-vm/ I just did this. In the text you have to search for a textfragment video=-16 in the first line that starts withe kernel . It was not there. I inserted the line: "video=-16 UVESA_MODE=1280x800" before SRC in that line and it works.
20 • Find old dotfiles (by PePa on 2015-10-05 07:53:36 GMT from Asia)
When using Bash as a shell, I like setting GLOBIGNORE='..' so that * doesn't get resolved to .. (parent directory) as well. A side effect I like, is that it automatically sets dotglob to be on (so that dotfiles are included with *). These Bash shell settings can be reviewed by "shopt".
Then looking for those old dotfiles is just:
find ~ -depth -atime +365 -ctime +365 -type f
(I included -ctime +365 because it found a newly created file that had never been accessed yet!)
If you don't want to always set GLOBIGNORE, you can run:
GLOBIGNORE='..' find ~ -depth -atime +365 -ctime +365 -type f
This avoids the ugly constuction with the for loop.
21 • @20 • Find old dotfiles (by PePa on 2015-10-05 07:57:35 GMT from Asia)
To amend comment #20, ~ finds all files in the home directory... You need to use .* to only find dotfiles:
GLOBIGNORE='..' find ~ -depth -atime +365 -ctime +365 -type f
(To delete what you find, add -delete)
22 • @20 @21 Find old dotfiles (by PePa on 2015-10-05 08:00:36 GMT from Asia)
Sigh... GLOBIGNORE='..' find .* -depth -atime +365 -ctime +365 -type f
23 • Ubuntu installer (by Kurt on 2015-10-05 10:05:23 GMT from Oceania)
It's all very nice to have a consistent UI, but it would be far better to make it more functional.
For one thing Ubuntu's support for RAID installations is effectively non-existent, sure the installer will recognise software RAID if you create it separately.
But it won't copy the required driver packages to the newly created install leaving you with an unbootable system.
24 • RE: purchasing computers with Linux Mint pre-installed (by Guzelaydin on 2015-10-05 10:16:31 GMT from North America)
"Historically, it has been difficult to purchase a computer with Linux pre-installed on the hard drive"
DISTROWATCH's above statement is hardly true, as I recall seeing desktop computers pre-loaded with a distro called Lindows (later renamed Linspire) on sale at a number of stores everywhere, including at Walmart, in the early years of 2000snds ..... However, once they got home; the first thing majority of those people (who bought those comparetively affordable linux desktops) reportedly did, was to replace Linux with a version of Window they had pirated :)
25 • >*.iso (by zykoda on 2015-10-05 11:32:07 GMT from Europe)
I use wget from bash.
26 • Affordable Linux box (by Justiniano on 2015-10-05 12:31:41 GMT from Asia)
An AMD A4 Kabini-5000 mini-ITX board can be ordered for under 60 from NE,... Strong enough for Fedora/Korora. 4M, antiX and Simplicity are just one snap.
27 • Old dotfiles (by a on 2015-10-05 13:40:48 GMT from Europe)
Not sure if finding obsolete dotfiles based on their access time works. Wouldn’t any backup, or search (grep) on the home dir, set the access time to now?
28 • ISO acquisition (by solt87 on 2015-10-05 13:56:52 GMT from Europe)
- Debian discs (my desktop OS): jigdo - everything else via torrent (if available), or wget
29 • Wal-mart PCs and old dot files (by Jesse on 2015-10-05 13:59:37 GMT from North America)
@24: I would like to point out that one store selling computers with Linux does not mean disprove my point. A number of retailers (Wal-Mart, NewEgg, Dell) have tried selling Linux PCs. However, usually these are very low-end machines and hard for the consumer to find. You usually need to specifically search for Linux and then the options are very limited. That is why I mentioned it was difficult to purchase computers with Linux pre-installed. The options are almost always bad and difficult to locate. That the options exist doesn't make them easy or appealing for the consumer.
@27: A grep or backup may update the access time, but that is sort of the point. If you are still grepping through your dot files and/or backing them up, then you probably want to keep them, since you're clearly still accessing them. The check for access time is ideal as it will only remove files that you are no longer using.
30 • No touch sreeen? (by davemci on 2015-10-05 15:39:31 GMT from North America)
Hey Jesse, I thought that laptop of yours has a touch screen. Did it not work with Android-x86 or did you not try it for this review?
31 • @27 access time of dotfiles (by Pearson on 2015-10-05 17:17:07 GMT from North America)
Jesse, I generally agree with your point about access time being viable. However, if I execute:
$ find $HOME -type f -exec grep foo '{}' +
then the access time of my otherwise unused dotfiles would be bumped. It's a corner case, to be sure, but I use that command a *lot*. I don't know whether updatedb (to build the locate command's database) would also bump the access time, but I'd guess that it does.
32 • Android-x86 (by More Gee on 2015-10-05 17:22:04 GMT from North America)
Hello Jesse,
How big was the install size and how large was the VM and how much memory does the VM need?
Can you tell it to not format the partition (in this case VFAT) so that it can be installed on puppy partition or a USB drive?
Can you set the windows key to bring up the on screen keyboard?
Thanks
33 • ISO downloads (by Marco on 2015-10-05 18:42:51 GMT from North America)
Dailies: zsync Otherwise: FTP/HTTP through a web browser
34 • Android x86 on Windows tablet (by J_L on 2015-10-05 19:14:26 GMT from North America)
Bought a Chuwi Vi8 recently that works surprisingly well dual-booting Windows 8.1 and Android 4.4.4 by default... I'm probably not going to upgrade to Windows 10 or Android x86 Lolipop (when it comes out) simply due to how unpredictable it can be, the amount of disk space used up, and lack of incentives to do so.
35 • Android X86 4.4 r3 with USB persistence (by USB Multiboot Light Speed 32 on 2015-10-05 20:04:00 GMT from North America)
You can try Android X86 4.4 r3 via USB without installing to hard disk.
http://www.gooplusplus.com/multiboot-2015-lite-speed-32/
36 • ISO downloading (by mikef90000 on 2015-10-05 21:19:28 GMT from North America)
I would like to use torrents more but I often encounter only one or two slow peers that are seeding. It seems like reputable, bandwidth 'rich' distro mirror sites would gain by hosting torrent seeds, but with the possible side effect that Clueless Large ISPs *cough*comcast*timewarner*at&t*cough* would arbitrarily block them.
Fallback to browser FTP/HTTP download using best available mirror. Oh well.
37 • ISO downloading (by lashley on 2015-10-05 22:25:33 GMT from North America)
I will always use a bittorrent if available, if not I use the web browser download. Have been fortunate that over the last year or so that both bandwidth and successful downloads are consistent.
I do occasionally use wget, a terminal based command-line download, works well with specific hosting sites.
38 • Linux pre-installed (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2015-10-06 00:39:04 GMT from North America)
Don't ThinkPenguin and LinuCity also have mail-order Linux computers? Since Linux is often about choice, one factor to consider is just which distros (and which versions) are supported by the hardware chosen. Location is another …
Some vendors use "bundling with Ubuntu" to dump obsolete/non-competitive inventory - does the vendor actually provide support? Is only one version provided/supported?
For that matter, what will happen to used computers with wi-fi when the FCC makes them all illegal?
39 • Ubuntu UI changes; comment not approved by Canonical, reposted here (by Paul on 2015-10-06 00:57:42 GMT from Europe)
All well and good but there’s something ironic about tarting up first impressions while ignoring all the remaining impressions of Unity. Like a great many others I abandoned Ubuntu for Linux Mint because I hated it. I have used Ubuntu since about 2005; still use the server version.
I have to admire the almost Jobsian chutzpah that underlies the “We know better than you” approach to UI design, and I get the underlying logic of cross-platform consistency. It may have led to Microsoft’s strategic disaster with Windows 8 which could prove a downward inflections point from which it never really recovers.
But even Microsoft corrects its mistakes (and makes new ones).
Canonical’s pig-headedness about Unity, when it has corrected other mistakes (Amazon search, the hopeless app store e.g.) is hard to fathom and it makes the subject of this article fairly “so what” to those who have given up and switched to Mint. This was an entirely avoidable, self-inflicted mistake. I might have stuck it out if it was even possible to put the Unity toolbar at the bottom of the screen on a desktop. But no, we know better than you drove large numbers to Mint. I no longer know anyone using Ubuntu on the desktop (I work in IT; I have known many; we’ve given up).
So… This is all very nice, but… It’s solving the wrong problem. Ubuntu could and should have remained the nr 1 distro on the desktop. This isn’t going to turn that around. Nor is it going to overturn Android.
Bug Nr 1 for a lot of people is Canonical’s approach to Unity. It is simply Stupidity.
Who wants a nice UI for installing that? It’s just being short-changed with a smile.
40 • preinstalls & Ubuntu (by M.Z. on 2015-10-06 04:39:42 GMT from North America)
I think the big names in preinstalled Linux are Zareason (who made my current laptop) & System 76 (who are a bit to stuck on Ubuntu for my tastes). They & ThinkPenguin all seem like decent options; however, all Linux specialty vendors share a common problem in that they are unknown to most potential users & focus on a tiny part of the market. For Linux to come anywhere near true competitiveness with MS & Apple they will need to be presented as genuine alternatives that are available at multiple price points & sold by big name computer companies both in big name stores & online. This is a far cry from the current situation & seems unlikely to change anytime soon, so I have to agree that Linux is rarely presented as a viable alternative. There may be options but few people know that they exist or would go out of their way to look for such alternatives.
@39 - Ubuntu & installers I never like Unity myself, though I do think it is a bit better than Gnome 3 which it was meant to replace, so Ubuntu was somewhat successful in that regard. I prefer to think that the ongoing Amazon/spyware issues in Unity are doing more to drive away Ubuntu users than any basic DE flaws, though it's hard to say what the reality is. I also get the impression that Ubuntu is staying on top, though I personally would far prefer a more ethical distro maker who actually respect users privacy take the top spot. I think the big picture news here is that all the distros down stream of Ubuntu like Mint will either have to switch installers or start to maintain their own fork of the old installer.
41 • Linux Pre-Installed - - Many Options, Choices (by GregA on 2015-10-06 05:24:46 GMT from North America)
Getting ever easier to buy pre-installed Linux desktops, laptops, etc.
Just point your browser to:
http://linuxpreloaded.com/
42 • Linux Boxes (by Someguy on 2015-10-06 06:59:34 GMT from Europe)
Apart from laptops, can't understand why anybody would want to buy a Linux pre-installed desktop. Almost any tin box manufactured in the last decade-&-half will accept a new board. For those frightened of undertaking such a task, either get the kiddie next door to do it for you or buy a completely built and tested bundle from e.g. CCL (UK), NewEgg(US). They will also supply instructions, but scarcely necessary. Only a small electrical screwdriver is needed. Since the Linux .iso comes free, just what IS the problem?! Takes about 15mins, so even busy folks can find the time. Many times, don't even need a new PSU since new kit is more efficient/lower power demands. Need different cables (eg PATA-to-SATA)? Conversion cables cost pennies. Even old HDD s can be accommodated for a few schillings with a little plug-in device. Guys needing the latest video cards, bells, whistles, etc will already have the talents(?!) to implement their desires. Want a psychedelic case with flashing lights? Spray it with car paint, intercept an unused fan header, world = oyster...
43 • @ least 3 reasons (by M.Z. on 2015-10-06 08:58:50 GMT from North America)
@42 - reasons for Linux boxes Well first off I have to acknowledge that a large majority of Linux users are tech savvy types that could easily put together their own PC. That being said there are at least 3 types of reasons ranging from the practical, to the economic, to the philosophical.
1 - the practical Some people just don't fell like they have the time or inclination. If you aren't that into the guts of a PC or are pressed for time, it may just be easier to buy something already built. There could easily be timing issues that make it important to get a good PC sooner rather than later & have it in working condition ASAP. There is also the factor that some people have plenty of money to burn & just find it easier to pay up. Also I'm not buying the whole 'get someone else to do it' thing. There is no guarantee that you have a tech savvy neighbor/friend/etc. who wants to help.
2 - the economic If you have any kind of problem at all with the near monopoly status of the current PC operation system market, you would probably like to see something like Linux become a viable alternative for normal users. Sure you could also get a Mac, but that is just another form of vendor lock in with a hardware specific OS. Only having 2 highly visible options isn't really good for any potentially competitive market.
3 - the philosophical If you care about what free & open software stands for philosophically & the ways it benefits users, then you likely want more users to have free & open software. I would like everyone to know that there are choices & that some options put you in control of your own computer far more than others. Sadly I don't think most people have heard of Linux & the last time I heard it mentioned on the news the guy called it 'line-x'. If the options were sitting there on a shelf in every store that sold similar products then people might realize that there are options & do some homework. I don't know how well the 'free as in speech' philosophy would work as a pitch, but you could get converts if the realized how well Linux could work for them & software freedom would be a big side benefit.
44 • Pre-installed Linux (by nolinuxguru on 2015-10-06 10:13:17 GMT from Europe)
Following on from @42,43 and others: there is a similar thing in the UK. For laptops, there is zero choice for pre-installed Linux, so it is often a matter of guess-work whether it is even possible to install Linux alongside/over Windows 8/10.
For desktop systems, there are a number of companies that will build system the way you want it with either Windows or Linux or nothing pre-installed [eg QuietPC]. But it is more expensive than buying a brand-name Windows box and risking that the BIOS allows non-Microsoft installs. Will the BIOS stick to the rules about making Secure Boot an option?
When distro vendors do get big enough to venture into hardware alliances, little good ever comes out of it [Ubuntu?]. What a mess.
45 • @42 CCL (UK) (by mandog on 2015-10-06 10:27:43 GMT from South America)
CCL (UK) Are a excellent company to deal with every thing next day delivery. not only that the offer a fantastic after sales and help. I used them for years when in the UK
46 • Android on computers -- the exton option (by gnomic on 2015-10-06 10:38:41 GMT from Oceania)
Have a look at the Exton Linux web page for details of many many Android versions even unto 5+. Alas a compulory donation is mainly required. The odd free version. According to Mr Exton his images are the real thing, ie make running an Android on PC pretty close to the phone experience. Whether one would wish that I can't quite say as never had an Android phone so far. One tiny thing, never try to run an external screen wihout acquiring the relevant voodoo first. Freely available on the internet, extra text in the boot stanzas. That's for the version under review anyway. Maybe Exton has fixed it.
I disclaim any association with Arne aside from informing him of wee problems with his distro versions. And unlike him I have never played golf.
47 • 43 rejoinder (by Someguy on 2015-10-06 11:23:18 GMT from Europe)
"1 - the practical Some people just don't feel like they have the time or inclination. - yes, indolence can strike us all if you let it.
If you aren't that into the guts of a PC or are pressed for time, it may just be easier to buy something already built. - no, missed the point, it's never easier, mail order saves dragging round the stores talking to ill-informed youths selling junk. There could easily be timing issues that make it important to get a good PC sooner rather than later & have it in working condition ASAP. - nope, nothing pre-installed I've seen qualifies as 'good', it's the cheapest Chinese-sourced parts inside. Get quality from a knowledgeable supplier. There is also the factor that some people have plenty of money to burn & just find it easier to pay up. - agreed. Ignorance and indolence (again) never won fair lady, paraphrasing. Also I'm not buying the whole 'get someone else to do it' thing. There is no guarantee that you have a tech savvy neighbour/friend/etc. who wants to help. - we hear that they have a special way of dealing with dumbos over there.
2 - the economic" - about the same cost but better parts unless you specify go-faster kit.
48 • @42 Pre-installed Linux (by Ben Myers on 2015-10-06 11:39:49 GMT from North America)
Yes, you and I and probably everyone else commenting here are well capable of installing Linux, in any of its almost infinite flavors, and many are equally proficient at building their own tower or desktop. But the real question here is Linux for the unwashed masses. Every day, I deal with people who do not have the know-how to build a system, or even to install the mainstream Windows, or to install other software, or to get the latest updates. These self-same people would be the ones to whom a pre-built and pre-installed Linux system. They are the same ones who go to Walmart or Best Buy or Frys for their computers. If mass market stores had Linux systems on the floor and available to try out, maybe some folkw would buy them. But Microsoft has brain-washed most of the media and nearly all the sellers of computers. Not quite all. We have Chromebooks making some inroads, and a Chromebook runs nothing more than a highly customized Linux.
49 • @47 Chinese-sourced parts (by Ben Myers on 2015-10-06 11:46:15 GMT from North America)
And where today can you buy parts that are not Chinese-sourced? Apple? No. Lenovo? No. HPaq? No. Motherboards, hard drives, video cards, memory, etc? Well, yes, much of the manufacturing is elsewhere on the Pacific Rim.
Ah, yes, there is a distinction among Chinese manufacturers of parts. Asus, for example, has long produced good quality motherboards, documented well and supported properly with drivers for most operating systems. By contrast, there are the no-name types who make boards with no manufacturer identification and documentation lacking a company name, a web site, a mailing address or a phone number.
50 • Hardware Linux support - the easy route (by far2fish on 2015-10-06 12:22:17 GMT from Europe)
If you search for 'ubuntu certified hardware' you will see that Canonical maintain a page with laptops, desktops and servers that are certified with Ubuntu. If it works with Ubuntu, it is likely it will work - or that you can get it work - with other distros too.That is where I went for inspiration the last time I bought a new laptop, which I then installed Fedora on, and which I later replaced with Ubunto before settling on Antergos.
51 • cf. 49 (by Someguy on 2015-10-06 13:11:43 GMT from Europe)
Nothing wrong with Chinese parts. It's the adjectives in life that define the intention. The box shifters buy cheapest and in bulk - buy cheap, get what you pay for. re.48. My comments were directed specifically at readers of DWW, whom I presumed to be capable, interested and sufficiently adept, since, ispo facto, they took the time to read this column and comment thereupon.
52 • Preinstalled Linux (by Neil on 2015-10-06 13:16:36 GMT from North America)
Has anyone had experience with Currentbuild, a small Southern California Company, offering preinstalled linux computers?
http://currentbuild.com/
53 • preloaded linux (by ezsit on 2015-10-06 17:58:55 GMT from North America)
Am I the only one who does not view the mass availability of Linux in the commercial pre-built computer market as a win-win? Why does it help Linux? I see only detriment as Linux will become a slave to commercial interests even more than it is now.
54 • What to do with a RAW file? (by Oxynewbie on 2015-10-06 20:05:52 GMT from South America)
A certain Linux distro doesn't provide an ISO image, but a RAW image (in reality, a gnuzipped tarball of that file). How should I burn it onto a DVD-RW? No commercial CD/DVD burner can do it directly.
55 • Exactly (by M.Z. on 2015-10-06 20:37:58 GMT from North America)
@48 Those are exactly the sort of issues I was trying to get at. I'd certainly like it if most computer users were fairly competent, but that isn't really the case. It feels like certain parts of the Linux community tend to devolve into elitist little clubs of power users who look down on average people. I'm guilty of getting frustrated with less savvy people on occasion myself, but we would do better as a community if we tried harder to be open to more average users. Such uses could make plenty of non technical contributions & still be a benefit to the community at large.
@54 - corporate interests It's GPL so anyone who has an issue with it can roll their own version of Linux with different components or even fork the whole thing. You know that the GPL has recreated all those old questions that the Native Americans had about 'why do you think you can OWN land?' You seems to be under the mistaken impressions that you don't own most of the code running on your Linux distro every bit as much as the distro developer does. Let me assure you that this isn't the case & that abusive attempts to control open source software only lead to new & better forks. Just look at the LibreOffice situation after Oracle took over OpenOffice.
56 • GPL is a bitter pill (by nolinuxguru on 2015-10-06 22:12:23 GMT from Europe)
@57 I used to think GPL is a great idea, but it is a bit of an illusion. The Linux kernel is 15 million lines of source code [sloc], and all the popular packages together probably exceed that by many times. The first Linux kernel was 10 thousand lines of C, and Linus could manage that essentially alone. Let's face it: bloat along with understandable desire for features has left Linux mostly in the hands of professional software engineers paid by large corporations. How else could you explain the decision by the main distros to use systemd [550,000 sloc] to do a job that can be done by 220 sloc [sinit] or 10,000 sloc [sysvinit or Epoch]. Depressing.
57 • GPL (by M.Z. on 2015-10-06 23:19:31 GMT from North America)
@56 I disagree, though admittedly nothing is perfect. I also don't buy all this systemd talk. I still run PCLinuxOS without systemd as well as Mageia with it. I can't really tell the difference from an init perspective, though there are already forks of systemd meant to fix perceived problems like uselessd & forks of big name distros like the Devuan project. The fact is that that alternatives exist to some degree. I find it hard to argue that the systemd situation proves anything other than the GPL is doing it's job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#Forks_and_alternative_implementations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devuan
58 • @52 Chinese parts are OK (by Ben Myers on 2015-10-06 23:54:42 GMT from North America)
Right. Nothing wrong with Chinese parts. But, as with any other products in this life, there are quality Chinese parts and cheap poor quality Chinese parts. It's just that most all the parts these days are made by Chinese companies, whether in China or elsewhere on the Pacific Rim.
Some box shifters buy junk, some buy quality product. No matter what, they get quantity discounts. Depends on which brand of box shifter we are talking about and whether we are talking about the cheap crap sold by mass market retailers or the well-made stuff bought by the smart enterprises and government agencies. I like Lenovo, HP and Dell BUSINESS-class computers. Their consumer-class hardware is most often junk, along with the kit shifted by Toshiba, Sony (RIP in the computer biz), and Acer-eGateMachinesWay. I'm not convinced that Asus computers are good quality, even though they generally produce good motherboards and graphics cards.
How do I form these opinions. By servicing all brands, fixing them when possible.
59 • 56 • systemd - never just init (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-10-07 01:39:35 GMT from North America)
Not just an init daemon, systemd is process-control/management; as more processes are absorbed under its umbrella, Lines-of-Code grows to suit. (Think of it as, say, standardizing process tracking via XML?)
On Linux-Pre-Loaded computers, hopefully that means they are built with Linux-compatible hardware only. Trying to utilize other hardware is still a dicey 'shoot, with odds loaded against the player by vendor attitude. One useful indicator is evidence (with dates) of robust support in public-readable fora and/or wiki(s).
60 • GPL (by nolinuxguru on 2015-10-07 06:46:04 GMT from Europe)
@57 Forks are normally acts of exasperation, and hard work, especially if there is any attempt to maintain points of contact with the parent. Especially if the parent is undergoing rampant development for dubious reasons.
I have been using Devuan, but from the outside, its development appears slow. Not surprising, given the mammoth task they are undertaking. Forks just to fix a mess created by others are just a [necessary] waste of time.
It is a sad indictment that in the race to build more and more "features" into software, the growth of exploitable bugs and malware has continued unabated. No profit margin in creating reliable, secure code. Projects like "suckless.org" provide a refreshing, if extreme, alternative to the modern trend to bloat-ware.
I didn't want to complicate my concerns at just trusting the GPL to save us from big, bad corporations. I also didn't want to use the "s-word", but just because there are distros without it [Slackware, PClinuxOS and the impenetrable Gentoo], does not mean that people should be forced to migrate to them.
61 • 51,57,58 (by Someguy on 2015-10-07 07:18:52 GMT from Europe)
....as I said "Nothing wrong with Chinese parts" - the problem lies with the purchasers.
In the dayes of yore, any self-respecting guy could change the wheels, tyres, sparking plugs, wiper blades, name-your-car-part-here. Manufacturers have made it more difficult under the guise of all sorts of guises, but few are valid. Westerners have become idle, disinterested, overpaid, w.h.y. There are still parts of the world where the screwdriver and welding torch rule! Well-intentioned folks in the UK (ARM, RISC and all that) have been banging the drum for raising the interest in IT technologies for three decades, culminating (as well as for mobiles, routers & co!) in the release of the RPi s, accompanied by not-for-profit educational activities. Nice to see the bare circuit board, tap in raw code, invent something useful - inspires young folk. As for the great unwashed, I've managed to show many sceptics how to rebuild and upgrade both hardware with old boxes and software using Linux. It is gratifying to see how happy they are in discovering their hidden talents. Well, perhaps not so much talent it's so easy and saves a bunch of dosh. Fixing stuff is good for the planet, good for the wallet and so much more satisfying for the individual. It promotes individual skills. Landfill is bad. In grand canonical terms, it is never cheaper to discard and buy new. Now, what is needed is encourage more of the fairer sex back into this field. In the '60s, most software writers and operators were female - what happened?
62 • Remix OS, Android on the desktop (by BarryK on 2015-10-07 12:52:03 GMT from Oceania)
Remix OS is an alternative, if you want Android on the desktop. Currently only runs on some tablets.
Kickstarter campaign was recently completed, and I put in a pledge for a "mini PC", to be delivered late October:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jidetech/remix-mini-the-worlds-first-true-android-pc
All the feedback so far is that it works remarkably well. This is not for PCs or laptops, only certain hardware, but it is interesting to see an alternative implementation of Android on the desktop.
63 • Various (by Dave Postles on 2015-10-07 13:55:55 GMT from Europe)
1 I don't understand why anyone would want to run Android on a computer - it seems to defeat the purpose - except perhaps as proof of concept. I don't even have Android on my 'phone (prefer FirefoxOS). Google sold out long ago in my mind with its 'tax planning'. 2 Low-end PCs - alleged above that pre-installed Linux was only offered on low-end PCs. It seems to me that Windows is increasingly offered on low-end PCs over here (UK) with merely 2Gb of RAM (aimed at the undergraduate market?). Now, it seems that Linux is only pre-installed on high-end PCs.
64 • is it really out of the box ready? (by philip on 2015-10-07 14:37:47 GMT from Europe)
A few months back I bought a Toshiba laptop and its OS was Windows 8.1. My reasoning was simple, that we had used Toshiba with great success. However all that has changed and it would seem that the normal functions of wifi and bluetooth both of which I would like to use are only partially or totally unsupported. so the question then becomes is there such a thing as an out of the box distro that plays nice with Toshiba...............or am stuck with windows 8.1 and by the way trading in the lap top is not an option. your help would be greatly appreciated. Phil
65 • @64 hardware support (by Kazlu on 2015-10-07 15:57:16 GMT from Europe)
You can never be sure distro X will work with PC model Y from brand Z, unless somebody tested that exact same combination before you. From my experience, the oldest your PC is, the better hardware support it gets. So yes, the situation will probably improve over time, but not in a day. At this point I would recommand you go looking for support from the community of your distro (forums, chatrooms or whatever there is). If you still want to try another distro and you are looking for the best hardware support available with the less work needed, I would recommend, in that order: - wait a few days until the release of the new Ubuntu and pick the derivative with the desktop of your choice (Kubuntu, Xbuntu, etc.) - if that is still not good enough, try a rolling release distro. It's more prone to get you bugs from time to time, but since software is more up-to-date that is your best shot for hardware support. I would suggest PCLinuxOS, Antergos (never tried them though) or Manjaro (easy, works well, but updates are delayed by one or two weeks in comparison to its parent distribution, which might be a concern for security updates).
Several distros maintain a database of hardware that has been tested and runs well with it, try to find your computer in one of those and go for it.
66 • @64 Toshiba (by lupus on 2015-10-07 19:20:24 GMT from Europe)
Try to boot Ubuntu from Stick or Spinning Media. If your WLAN Card is detected you are nearly there. I'll admit there once was a Laptop where after installing the WLAN wasn't working though after booting it was but that was just a minor nuisance.
Is it a Touchscreen? Maybe read the previous DWW for hints to the right Distro (Kubuntu maybe)
Graphics Drivers might be the next trouble but where's Internet there's help at your fingertips!
You can do it all you need is the courage to do so. Best of Luck
Lupus
67 • ISO Downloads (by ScratchInSniff on 2015-10-08 09:32:00 GMT from North America)
Mostly Other=Uget. Otherwise web browser.
68 • ISO Downloads by FIREFOX (by Muthu on 2015-10-08 17:09:13 GMT from Asia)
Always torrents are not available for all ISO Downloads. So, I use mostly Firefox Web Browser to download most of my ISO.
69 • plentiful retail linux boxen (by Tom on 2015-10-08 18:31:28 GMT from North America)
Whoever claimed that it use to be easy to get a computer with Linux from a retail outlet (like Walmart), must have been in a test market or something. Until that comment, I had never heard of Linux being available like that.
I remember when I had to find some obscure part of Dell's website to be able to order a Linux box directly from them. There was no other place to get one. Unfortunately it was a complete disaster. The monitor that came with it wasn't Linux compatible at the time. Dell's troubleshooting software used some sort of Windows environment that claimed the monitor was fine. Dell of course refused to take their crap back.
In the 15 years since that, it hasn't gotten any better. The best you can do now is get a no-OS box from newegg. Not even they will sell something with Linux pre-installed.
70 • 69 • Linux retail (by Kragle on 2015-10-08 19:29:23 GMT from North America)
I wouldn't want to buy a computer from a local department store - it's not a commodity, and I'd want support. There are local computer shops who can make a custom build, but few do the homework needed to assure support for more than one version of one OS. Even Windows doesn't support all hardware components out-of-the-box, likewise Apple products. Hardware component vendors may provide crude drivers, but their support often ends with one or two initial versions, since they'd rather see their products replaced with new ones. Resources for researching OS compatibility of hardware are incomplete and disorganized.
Until the extremism of both proprietary and Freed and Open-Source Software licensing provides producers with some negotiating leverage, I suggest this counter-productive mess will persist.
71 • git not atime 4 dotfiles (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2015-10-09 01:07:22 GMT from North America)
Dredging file system timestamps for dotfiles, icky. Use git. Using atime slows down your system. Git lets you see both changes and last date of use (read: last commit).
72 • acquire an ISO file (by SillyPutty on 2015-10-09 06:29:01 GMT from North America)
Web Browser (vpn).
I would use torrent, but 1.) Not that safe and 2.) zero IP address privacy.
73 • @72 torrents (by Kazlu on 2015-10-09 09:09:43 GMT from Europe)
"I would use torrent, but 1.) Not that safe and 2.) zero IP address privacy."
What do you mean by "not safe"?
74 • Re: torrents (by Tom on 2015-10-09 13:43:17 GMT from North America)
@73
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_poisoning "Torrent poisoning is intentionally sharing corrupt data or data with misleading file names using the BitTorrent protocol. This practice of uploading fake torrents is sometimes carried out by anti-piracy organisations as an attempt to prevent the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of copyrighted content, and to gather the IP addresses of downloaders."
75 • @74 torrent poisoning (by Kazlu on 2015-10-09 13:57:14 GMT from Europe)
This hardly apply to FLOSS operating systems. Just gather the torrent file from the website of the OS you want and you know it's good. You can never be sure if you go looking elsewhere, but why would you anyway? The only reason would be because the website does not offer torrents, this is becoming very rare among GNU/Linux distros. Personnally I always get ISOs from the website of the distro, mostly via torrent, and via direct download if I have no other choice.
76 • hardware support (by M.Z. on 2015-10-09 17:52:38 GMT from North America)
@64 - try a couple of different distros I generally try at least a couple of unrelated or loosely related distros if I have hardware issues. I remember Ubuntu & it's derivatives failing to work on some hardware that other things would work fine on (PCLOS was good there I think). I've definitely had more graphics issues with Mint on my main desktop than PCLOS, but on my laptop Mint & Mageia both work perfectly while PCLOS has wifi issues. I generally say you should try a couple of different live distros from different parts of the Linux family tree & see if one gets you there. I generally alternate between Mint and either PCLinuxOS or Mageia, but try what ever combination works for you.
77 • hardware support (by Jordan on 2015-10-09 22:41:43 GMT from North America)
@76 and 64 .. oh yes well put M.Z. That post (76) answers a lot of the angst many including yours truly have had over the years thinking this or that distro was bad or messed up because this or that function was less than expected on a given machine.
"..try different distros from different parts of the Linux family tree.."
Yep!
78 • 64 • Is it really Toshiba ready? (by Kragle on 2015-10-10 14:35:48 GMT from North America)
(Fixed-Subject-For-You) Did you check with Toshiba about this, first? Research their support system for specifics on your model's components? Did you shop for a model that supports Linux well in the first place?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: Really, nothing is. Not even the Windows 8.1 that came with it! That would require psychic cracking of every component maker's secret code, which would scare everyone silly. Even so, there's a fair chance most can be made to work. Common software tools can detect most hardware. Roll the dice, do your homework - good things can happen.
But realistically, you have to know what you want to do with it first. How do you define "success"?
79 • Toshiba is an anomaly. The rest are easy. (by Ben Myers on 2015-10-11 00:26:01 GMT from North America)
Toshiba laptops are among the most poorly supported in the industry, unfortunately. And Toshiba has been known to provide the oddball setup or two, which explains Toshiba's declining popularity, along with difficulty to repair and product quality.
Other major brands like Lenovo, HP/Compaq and Dell provide good quality information right on their web sites, describing the specs of their computers.
I do not do much with AMD processors, but no matter the brand name these days, the specs, chipsets and drivers of systems with Intel CPUs are pretty much cut and dried for most any brand. Here is a brief rundown covering the last 5 years or so. 1. Motherboard chipset - Intel (Surprise!) 2. Graphics - Intel, AMD (ex-ATI) or nVidia 3. Ethernet - Realtek, Broadcom or Intel 4. Wifi - Intel, Broadcom, Atheros 5. Audio - Intel, Realtek, Analog Devices
Because Broadcom does not release source code for its chips, one must find a distro that still includes the Broadcom drivers. For the rest it's pretty straightforward. I run numerous live distros here, and as long the computers in question have the chips listed above, no problemo.
AMD CPUs? You are on your own.
Number of Comments: 79
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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Random Distribution |
Beehive Linux
Our goal in creating Beehive Linux was to provide a fast, simple, secure i686 optimized Linux distribution without all the cruft and clutter. What we wanted was something that was fast to install and setup, something that didn't by default include 500 megs of stuff we didn't want or need. And something that had native ReiserFS support built in. We just wanted something better. Something tighter. Something cleaner. Beehive Linux was a distribution made by system administrators, for system administrors. It's intent was to provide fast and clean setup of workhorse servers and workstations. If you're looking for wizards and whizbang gizmos, you are in the wrong place. If you want to setup servers with the services you and/or your users need, you are in the right place. Beehive also works well as a workstation and X, E, BlackBox and KDE are included - this was not the primary focus of Beehive but hey, every admin needs a workstation as well right? Beehive Linux was not for the inexperienced, or those new to linux/*nix. Beehive Linux was for people that know what they're doing and want to get the job done as well as possible in the least amount of time.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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