 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 650, 29 February 2016 |
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Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While we mostly talk about GNU/Linux desktop distributions each week, sometimes it is nice to step outside the box and see other areas where Linux thrives and, for that matter, to look at other open source operating systems. This week, in the pursuit of variety, we begin with a review of Haiku, the modern version of BeOS. Haiku has been in development for a long time and strives to provide a friendly, responsive desktop experience. We have details on the latest snapshot of Haiku in our Feature Story. In the News section we talk about cooperation between two Android-based projects which are working to bring Android to desktop computers. We also talk about another project which seeks to get Android applications to run on GNU/Linux systems and a patch to drop Linux support in OpenBSD. Plus, we discuss plans for Fedora's Atomic Workstation, 30 years of MINIX development and a kernel fix for a serious UEFI bug. In our Questions and Answers column we discuss persistent storage and distributions for Psion devices. Then we share the torrents we are seeding and a list of the distributions released last week. In our Opinion Poll we explore useful books for learning how to use Linux. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Haiku in 2016
About once a year I like to put aside Linux distributions, and the various flavours of BSD, to look at Haiku. As the Haiku website tells us, "Haiku is an open source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku is fast, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful."
The Haiku operating system is unusual in that all of the pieces of the system are developed by one team. Linux distributions are usually assembled from a collection of thousands of other projects. The BSD projects generally put together the base operating system (the kernel, documentation and command line utilities), but leave creating desktop environments and graphical applications to third-party projects. The Haiku team not only handles kernel and userspace development, they also work on their own desktop environment and many end-user programs.
The project consists of a single team writing everything from the kernel, drivers, userland services, tool kit, and graphics stack to the included desktop applications and preflets. While numerous open source projects are utilized in Haiku, they are integrated seamlessly. This allows Haiku to achieve a level of consistency that provides many conveniences, and is truly enjoyable to use by both end-users and developers alike.
The most recent version of Haiku, Alpha 4, was released over three years ago, in November of 2012. The project's website suggests people who want to try more recent copies of Haiku should try the development snapshots. Development snapshots are often a good way to try out new features, but they can be prone to breaking and it's probably not a good idea to install them on any computers where reliability is a priority.
I downloaded the most recent development snapshot, which was available as a 283MB ISO file. Booting from this media brings up a graphical screen. A window pops up and asks us to select our preferred language from a list and, optionally, we can pick our keyboard's layout from another list. At this point the system asks if we would like to run a live desktop environment or launch the project's system installer.
Haiku's desktop consists mostly of open, empty space with a soft blue background. At the top of the screen we find icons for accessing the file system and launching the system installer. A panel in the upper-right corner of the screen gives us access to the Applications & Settings menu. The panel also contains a system tray where we can find network settings and a volume control. At the bottom of the panel we find a list of open windows that facilitates switching between tasks and hiding or restoring windows.
Haiku 2016 -- The application menu
(full image size: 114kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Launching Haiku's installer brings up a graphical application window. The installer begins by showing us some important information about the installation process. In particular, we are told we should have a partition set aside for Haiku to use before we begin the installation. While Haiku does feature a partition manager, the developers suggest we might gain better results using another partition manager. The first screen of the installer also includes notes on how to add a Haiku entry to the GRUB boot loader should we have an existing GRUB configuration. The next screen of the installer asks us to select a partition where Haiku may be installed. There is a button on this page that launches a partition manager where we can create and destroy partitions.
The system installer wants us to create at least one partition of the Be File System type. I did this in the partition manager window and then returned to the system installer. At first, the system installer did not seem to recognize the Be partition I had created. After a little experimenting, I discovered the partition must be both set to be of the Be type and then formatted with the Be File System through the partition manager. The system installer does not format the partition automatically and will not allow us to use the partition as an install target until it has been formatted. Once a partition has been properly set up and formatted, the Haiku installer copies its files to our hard drive. This process takes all of about ten seconds. We are then returned to the installer where we can set up a boot loader, if one does not already exist on our computer. If we do have GRUB already installed, we can follow the supplied instructions to add Haiku to our existing boot menu. Then we can reboot the computer to test our new operating system.
The Haiku operating system boots quickly, taking us from the boot menu to a full desktop environment in about five seconds. Haiku is a single user operating system, meaning we have just one user account and there is no password protection in place. This is highly convenient as it means we never need to sign into our account, but it also means anyone can access all of our files simply by booting Haiku.
Haiku is not only quick to boot, but the desktop is also pleasantly responsive. Windows, menus and buttons react almost instantly to input. The operating system, when sitting at the desktop, uses around 180MB of memory and is fairly light on resources when compared next to most Linux distributions running full featured desktops. I tried running Haiku in two test environments, a desktop computer and a VirtualBox virtual machine. Haiku did not boot on the desktop machine, keeping that aspect of my trial quite short. The operating system did run well in VirtualBox. While Haiku was not able to integrate into the VirtualBox environment seamlessly and the default display resolution was low, I was able to increase the operating system's display resolution through one of Haiku's desktop configuration tools.
Haiku 2016 -- Trying to add a printer device
(full image size: 93kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Haiku ships with a collection of desktop applications which seem to be unique to the operating system. While these programs may be slightly different from those which run on Linux distributions, the functionality tends to be very similar. Haiku ships with a functional web browser, package manager and e-mail client. We are also given a handful of desktop configuration apps, a contact manager and text editor. Haiku ships with a sound recorder, media player, IRC client and even a minimal web server. In the background we find an old copy of the GNU Compiler Collection (version 2.95).
One thing I appreciated about my time with Haiku was that it was usually easy to guess what an application would do, based on its name. For example, it wasn't too hard to guess that "People" would offer address book functionality or that "WebPositive" would be a web browser and "MediaPlayer" would be a, well, media player. There were a few programs whose names were less descriptive. I didn't know before trying them what "Poorman" and "Pe" did. (They were a web server and text editor, respectively.)
Haiku offers us a number of desktop widgets for monitoring such things as the time and system resources. These widgets can be spawned and placed around the desktop. At first I was not sure how to remove a widget after it had been created, resulting in a bit of visual clutter. I eventually found unwanted widgets could be dragged into Haiku's trash folder which was represented by an icon at the top of the desktop.
Haiku ships with a graphical software manager, called HaikuDepot. The depot, as I came to think of it, shows us a window divided into two parts. The top section of the window displays a list of available software packages in alphabetical order. Clicking on a package's entry causes the bottom section of the window to display more detailed information and a screen shot of the application we have highlighted. A search box allows us to try to locate items by name. Near the bottom of the window is an Install/Remove button we can click to cause the highlighted package to be added or removed from our system. The software manager worked well for me and I was impressed with how quickly operations were processed. The only issue I ran into was with my own unfamiliarity with the software available to Haiku users. I could browse for what I wanted or maybe get lucky by searching for keywords that described the functionality I wanted. But being a Haiku novice, I did not always know what was available or how best to find it. For example, I spent about five minutes searching for a screen shot utility, only to finally discover there is not one in the depot because Haiku includes one by default. However, the screen shot program is not listed in the application menu (so far as I could tell) and needs to be invoked from the command line.
Haiku 2016 -- The HaikuDepot software manager
(full image size: 125kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I ran into a few technical problems during my trial. For example, while Haiku's default web browser could display most on-line content, including YouTube videos, watching videos on YouTube sometimes caused the operating system to lock-up, requiring a hard reboot. When I tried playing audio files, Haiku's media player would open the file and then produce sound that resembled rapid-fire Morse Code. This meant that my multimedia experience was a bit limited when running Haiku, but all other aspects of the operating system functioned well.
Conclusions
I am of the opinion the Haiku project is doing a good job of creating an operating system in the modern image of BeOS. It took me a while to get used to the way Haiku does window management and to navigate the unfamiliar waters of the software available, but generally speaking I think Haiku performs well.
Haiku is unusual in that all the pieces of the operating system are developed by one team and I was curious to see if that would make a difference in the style of Haiku or in the way it performed. So far as I could tell, there is not a practical difference from the end user's perspective. Having all the developers on one team may make things work smoothly behind the scenes, but for the person sitting in front of the screen, I did not notice any benefit or drawback to the integrated approach to development.
What did stand out for me was that Haiku feels like a 1990s operating system. Specifically, the lack of user accounts and security checks makes Haiku feel like an artefact of the past. The user can explore anywhere, delete anything, install any software without seeing a prompt for credentials. This makes using Haiku very streamlined, but it takes away our safety net and effectively means Haiku will only be useful in situations where there is just one computer user. In short, Haiku tended to feel like a modern representation of how we used to do things. A well engineered, high performance model of what computing used to be like before most of us got concerned about security and abstraction.
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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) |
Android-x86 partners with Remix OS, Shashlik enables running Android apps on GNU/Linux, Fedora plans Atomic Workstation, Tanenbaum looks back on 30 years of MINIX history, and a fix for the UEFI bug
Android-x86 is a port of Google's Android operating system that is designed to run on desktop and laptop computers. Recently, there has been increasing interest in running Android on desktop machines and additional projects have appeared with similar goals. Last week Android-x86's founder Chih-Wei Huang announced a partnership between Android-x86 and Remix OS: "I'm glad to announce an official partnership with Jide Technology, the creators of Remix OS, because I believe they can help accelerate us towards achieving our goals. This partnership is a natural fit since we both strive to make Android PCs a reality. Remix OS seeks to create a familiar experience for Android users in a PC environment, and the Android-x86 Project has laid the foundation for this to happen. Together, Remix OS for PC provides a full Android PC experience." The announcement has further information on the partnership.
In other Android-related news, the Shashlik project reported progress recently. The Shashlik project develops software that allows GNU/Linux distributions to run Android applications on the desktop. The idea is to have Android applications integrate seamlessly into a desktop distribution's environment. The project's website states: "This is our first `we should probably make a release' public release of the Shashlik technology. Having released a teaser video, we wanted to put out some binaries so people can start to test Shashlik for themselves. It's still very much an early prototype snapshot, but it should allow you to run some apps and games on your desktop." Information on how to install and use Shashlik can be found on the project's website.
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Last week the OpenBSD development team decided to drop a little-used feature of their operating system: Linux emulation. OpenBSD was capable of supporting older 32-bit Linux applications, but the feature was not widely used. Of the change, OpenBSD developer Christian Weisgerber wrote: "Support for running Linux binaries under emulation is going away. The patch below removes `option COMPAT_LINUX' and everything directly tied to it (kernel configuration, #ifdef sections, etc.) from the kernel tree and the corresponding man page documentation."
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Fedora fans may soon see a new edition of the popular, Red Hat-sponsored distribution. The Fedora developers have plans in place to create an Atomic Workstation which would separate the base operating system from the applications that run on it. "The idea of an `Atomic Workstation' is to use the ideas of Project Atomic to have a core operating system for a workstation that updates atomically as a whole, and then layer extra software on top of that. This is as opposed to the traditional model, where the operating system is dynamically composed on the end user's system out of individual packages." One of the advantages of the proposal is the ability to rollback broken updates and to avoid conflicting software versions following upgrades. More details on Atomic Workstation can be found on the project's wiki.
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Andrew Tanenbaum started working on MINIX, an open source implementation of UNIX, over 30 years ago. The MINIX operating system features a microkernel, readable code and is often used in educational environments. MINIX was also one of the inspirations for the development of the Linux kernel. Andrew Tanenbaum has published a detailed look back on MINIX's early days and some of the lessons he has taken from working on the operating system. "It took me approximately two years to get [MINIX] running, working on it only evenings and weekends. After the system was basically working, it tended to crash after an hour of operation for no reason at all and in no discernible pattern. Debugging the operating system on the bare metal was well nigh impossible and I came within a hair of abandoning the project. I then made one final effort. I wrote an 8088 simulator on which to run MINIX, so when it crashed I could get a proper dump and stack trace. To my horror, MINIX would run flawlessly for days, even weeks, at a time on the simulator. It never once crashed. I was totally flummoxed. I mentioned this peculiar situation of MINIX running on the simulator but not on the hardware to my student, Robbert van Renesse, who said he heard somewhere that the 8088 generated interrupt 15 when it got hot. I told him there was nothing in the 8088 documentation about that, but he insisted he heard it somewhere. So I inserted code to catch interrupt 15. Within an hour I saw this message on the screen: `Hi. I am interrupt 15. You will never see this message.' I immediately made the required patch to catch interrupt 15. After that MINIX worked flawlessly and was ready for release." The rest of Tanenbaum's reflection can be found here.
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Earlier this month we reported on a serious UEFI bug that may cause computers to stop working if a certain directory is deleted. The bug was exposed from a combination of things: faulty UEFI implementation in the hardware, the kernel allowing userspace applications to harm the hardware and the UEFI data being mounted with editing privileges enabled. After some debate over who was at fault and what should be done to fix the issue, the kernel developers have released a patch which addresses the problem. "This is unusually large, partly due to the EFI fixes that prevent accidental deletion of EFI variables through efivarfs that may brick machines. These fixes are somewhat involved to maintain compatibility with existing install methods and other usage modes, while trying to turn off the 'rm -rf' bricking vector." The patch prevents accidental damage to the computer, but does not prevent a skilled attacker from modifying the UEFI data and rendering the machine unable to boot.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Persistent storage and distributions for Psion devices
Saving-things-from-a-live-USB-environment asks:
One thing I like about Parted Magic on a USB flash drive is that you have an option to save any changes you made when shutting down. Are there any other distros that offer that feature? I know some distros can have persistence and always save any changes or some, like Puppy Linux, will offer to create a persistence file the first time you quit then always save changes after that.
I want to set up my desktop, browser shortcuts, etc. once and then always come back to that. I want an option to save any changes or not.
DistroWatch answers: Several distributions offer the ability to save changes back to a live USB drive while using (or shutting down) the computer. Puppy Linux and Parted Magic were already mentioned as options. Other projects, like openSUSE also support persistent USB thumb drive storage. If you want to have the option to use persistent storage or not, some other distributions like Ubuntu provide a boot-time option to save persistent data. Though I have not found the feature documented, I think PCLinuxOS offers a boot time option as well that allows the user to save persistent data during a live USB session. The Alpine distribution is quite flexible and features several installation and run-time options. Some of them deal with saving data from a live session.
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Working-with-older-equipment asks: Which distro should I use for installing on a Psion 5MX or Psion Revo? My only main requirements would be decent amount of packages and bash and a bit of Internet, maybe Firefox, cause the network connection would not be coming from the Psion.
DistroWatch answers: For those who are not familiar with the Psion series of devices, they were small personal digital assistant devices launched in the 1990s. Given the age of the device, there are not likely to be many of them still operating and not many distributions that will run on them.
I was able to dig up one project, called OpenPsion, which might do the job. The project's website states, "OpenPsion (formerly PsiLinux) is a project to port the Linux operating system to a group of palmtops produced by Psion. At present, working Linux systems can be installed on any of the Series 5, Series 5MX, Series 5MX-Pro, Revo (Revo+, Mako) machines (not the Series 3). All root file systems are based on either Debian or handhelds.org (OpenEmbedded) Linux, since precompiled binary packages (e.g., "*.deb" or "*.ipk" files) for the ARM processors are available. The Debian approach (Sarge) is presently the most developed. Installation of Linux on a Psion requires some prior experience with the Linux operating system."
The OpenPsion website has not been updated since 2006, but the devices they support have not either. I suspect OpenPsion is probably the best, and perhaps the only, option available unless you want to try creating your own distribution for the Psion device.
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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: 167
- Total data uploaded: 30.0TB
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| Released Last Week |
Tiny Core Linux 7.0
Tiny Core Linux 7.0 has been released. This is the first stable build in the minimalist distribution's new 7.x branch, featuring the Linux kernel 4.2.9, glibc 2.22 and GCC 5.2.0. From the release announcement: "Team Tiny Core is proud to announce the release of Core 7.0. Changelog: Linux kernel updated to 4.2.9 with the latest stable patch, with these configuration changes - minstrel enabled for some wireless cards, vmmouse disabled for VMWare + Xvesa, the CPU limit on the 64-bit kernel raised to 64; BusyBox updated to 1.24.1; BusyBox patched to fix 'crontab -e' error; glibc updated to 2.22 and patched for DNS vulnerability; GCC updated to 5.2.0; e2fsprogs base libraries and applications updated to 1.42.13; util-linux base libraries and applications updated to 2.27; tc-config - use full path for hwclock. Notes: there is a drm/i915 kernel driver error pending a fix; the ALSA extensions have been refactored and updated; the X.Org 7.7 extensions have been updated." Here is the brief release announcement.
ROSA R7 "Desktop Fresh GNOME"
Konstantin Kalmykov has announced the release of ROSA R7 "Desktop Fresh GNOME" edition, a desktop Linux distribution featuring a customised GNOME 3.16 desktop: "The ROSA company gladly presents ROSA Desktop Fresh GNOME R7 - a distribution from the ROSA Desktop Fresh family with the GNOME 3 desktop environment. As always, the distribution presents a vast collection of games, emulators and the Steam platform package, along with standard suites of audio and video communications software, including the newest version of Skype. All modern video formats are supported. The distribution includes the fresh LibreOffice version. This distribution contains GNOME 3.16 with new user-friendly notifications and a system tray. In this distribution we have replaced the old ROSA Elementary theme with a new Korora for GNOME Shell and EvoPop for GTK+. We have also replaced the icons. In LibreOffice we starting using new grey icons." Read the release announcement (in Russian) and the release notes (in English) for more details and screenshots.
ROSA R7 "Desktop Fresh GNOME" -- Running GNOME Shell
(full image size: 556kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Netrunner 2016.01 "Rolling"
Clemens Toennies has announced the release Netrunner 2016.01 "Rolling" edition, the latest version of the project's Manjaro-based rolling-release distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop: "Three months in the making, we are happy to announce the release of Netrunner Rolling 2016.01, 64-bit edition. Despite the version number, 2016.01 comes with the latest KDE, including Plasma 5.5.4 and KDE Applications 15.12.2. This release marks one change from previously released pre-packaged ISO image - we've decided not to ship Akonadi and the KDE PIM suite with this release, favouring more lightweight alternatives instead. Due to the power and flexibility of Arch's package management it is easy for people who enjoy using KDE PIM to install it via one single package called 'kde-meta-kdepim'; this will pull in all previously shipped packages again. Everything else is shipped as usual in their latest versions and should run as expected. The Calamares installer has been updated to the latest 2.0 release, bringing enhanced partition detection in BIOS and UEFI environments." Read the rest of the release announcement further information ans screenshots.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Books for learning Linux
One of our readers asked last week which books people find useful for learning Linux, preferably books which are written with newcomers to Linux in mind.
We have covered some popular titles here in the past, and have featured them in this week's poll, but we would also like to hear suggestions from our other readers. What books or on-line guides can you recommend for people who are new to Linux and want a friendly introduction to using Linux distributions?
You can see the results of our previous poll on package managers here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Books for learning Linux
| How Linux Works: | 104 (16%) |
| Linux Bible: | 154 (23%) |
| Linux for Dummies: | 97 (15%) |
| Linux Phrasebook: | 26 (4%) |
| A Practical Guide to Ubuntu/Fedora: | 29 (4%) |
| Ubuntu Made Easy: | 20 (3%) |
| Ubuntu Unleashed: | 39 (6%) |
| Other: | 191 (29%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Contributing page
Occasionally our more generous readers will e-mail and volunteer their services to help us improve DistroWatch. Often times people are not sure how they can help, but want to give back or share their time and energy with the community in some way.
In order to help people find out which tasks we need to tackle and what is involved, we have set up a page which lists ways people can contribute to DistroWatch. Whether you have some spare time and a habit of browsing the websites of up-and-coming distributions, a smooth speaking voice or a way with the written word, we can use your help.
If you have ever wanted to write a review for us or help us prune our waiting list or translate this website, this page can get you started.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 7 March 2016. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Books for learning Linux (by Joe on 2016-02-29 01:40:46 GMT from North Americia)
Years ago I bought a copy of Linux for Dummies that came with a demo CD. It was ok, but due to the time it takes to get a book published and on the shelves, it was already dated. Even the Linux magazines have information that is several months old. That is one of the reasons why I love Distrowatch. I like to try new distros as well as beta versions, but am not sure I have the skill to write a proper review. Maybe I will give it a try. Thanks
2 • Haiku (by Stormtrooper #90,900,91 on 2016-02-29 03:18:27 GMT from Europe)
Thanks for the Haiku coverage. I love reading about and trying different Operating Systems.
3 • Linux newbie books... (by tom joad on 2016-02-29 03:31:00 GMT from Europe)
I voted Ubuntu Unleash though it is an older edition. I liked the heft of the book and there was disks in the back to install Ubuntu. I bought the book a good ten years ago. Over that time it has served its purpose. I hardly crack it any more.
I also bought a book titled "The Linux Toolbox." I don't really know why. Because at the time I knew about the man pages. Also there is gobs of info on the internet about OS's, commands, tips and tricks, etc, etc. I didn't really need that book but I have it.
But I am kind of different. I came over from Windows and had been a help desk tech, etc for quite awhile. At the time I started with Linux I had already been through several Microsoft debacles with a couple of different companies. Sorry...I mean Microsoft OS roll outs with Vista being the absolute last straw. For me learning Linux was not that big of a deal though it did take a bit of time to get where I am now.
What I didn't have was any classes or anyone else to help me. I jumped in on my own and did it. And I think that really is the best way. Install it, break it, fix it, learn and repeat.
4 • Good old BeOS days (by Tran Older on 2016-02-29 05:40:25 GMT from Asia)
1. Had Apple decided to choose BeOS over NextOS, there wouldn't be iMacs, iPods, iPhones and iPads :-)
2. There is not a productivity suite for Haiku OS as Gobe Productive for BeOS ceased to be developed for 17 years. The port of KOffice for Haiku OS is not fully functional. Google Docs work better with the Mozilla Firefox port for Haiku OS than with NetPositive.
3. Of course, we can all use ZevenOS Goodbye Edition which is Sawfish window manager running on top of Xubuntu. It has the BeOS look-and-feel and is fully functional. But it's not "the real thing".
4. Amiga and BeBox may belong to the past but contributions to the AROS project and the Haiku project will always be appreciated.
5 • Another book for learning Linux (by Microlinux on 2016-02-29 07:28:15 GMT from Europe)
In 2009, the french publisher Eyrolles published my 530-page book "Linux aux petits oignons", a cookbook-style book that takes a newbie by the hand and guides him step by step to using Linux, mostly on the command line, without dumbing anything down.
The first edition was based on CentOS 5.3. The upcoming second edition will be based on Slackware 14.2.
http://tinyurl.com/no254g
6 • Linux Newbie books (by Zork on 2016-02-29 08:22:43 GMT from Oceania)
Voted for Linux Unleashed as it was what I learned from when moving to Linux.
I've steered clear of any "... for Dummies" books as they always seem a little condescending, simplistic and out-of-date for computing purposes.
Trouble with pretty much all "Newbie" guides is that they are either too in-depth or too simplistic. It is rare to see one that hits the sweet spot between.
Question is a bit vague though. A complete computer novice or someone migrating from another OS have vastly different "Newbie" requirements for this sort of book.
7 • Linux Newbie books (by kc1di on 2016-02-29 10:02:42 GMT from North America)
Voted for Ubuntu Unleashed, though there are several free on line books that cover much the same material and would be good starting points for a newbie.
8 • Fedora Atomic OMG!! (by Stan on 2016-02-29 10:22:29 GMT from Europe)
I'm excited with Fedora Atomic, sounds promissing.
9 • linux newbie guide (by jonathon on 2016-02-29 10:24:57 GMT from Oceania)
I'd like to thank Daniel Robbins for his guide http://www.funtoo.org/Linux_Fundamentals,_Part_1 and guides http://www.funtoo.org/Category:Articles may need to be a slightly mature newbie as it's fast paced compared to others
I have enjoyed many guides and will continue to do so, differences in delivery and emphasis can help broaden basic knowledge. Examples are great but too.
10 • PSION & Linux (by didier gaumet on 2016-02-29 10:41:01 GMT from Europe)
Concerning PSION and Linux, though NetBSD is not Linux, it has has a port for these machines: https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/epoc32/
11 • Remix os (by peer on 2016-02-29 11:20:32 GMT from Europe)
Remix OS:
"System requirements
A USB 3.0 flash drive that supports FAT32 format, with a minimum capacity of 8GB and a recommended writing speed of 20MB/s.
A CPU with 64-bit compatibility."
I hope that there also will be a 32-bit version. It would be a nice OS for my EEEpc
12 • remix 32 (by peer on 2016-02-29 12:07:40 GMT from Europe)
I just stumbled upon the Remix OS 32 versieon:
http://www.androidplanet.nl/nieuws/remix-os-32-bit/
13 • haiku, etc... (by jc on 2016-02-29 13:04:09 GMT from North America)
keep meaning to set up old box just for the joy of playing w/haiku...
tks for the review -- & reminder!
how about rounding this out by doing the same sort of thing for the anteros project & amiga-os?
seeing that mention of psion was nice nostalgia... LIKED that toy!
linux bible etc will ALWAYS be dated by time of sales -- but -- these days that's true of every non-fiction work out there -- DO read magazines even though the same holds true there... thing is that sort of media makes it easy to delve into the surface of things & almost always better organised & written than web pages covering the same material...
fast word on android news: downloaded last version but 1 & was very disappointed: for an os that is so web dependent it recognised but NEVER connected with my isp... bleh!
14 • Other books (by albinard on 2016-02-29 15:06:05 GMT from North America)
When I started learning Linux (2009) I found the Keir "Thomas Beginning Ubuntu Linux" books the most helpful, but since then I have mostly referred to Mark Sobell's "A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux" or the old "Linux Cookbook" (same title, but one by Carla Schroder and one by Michael Stutz). I know many people love the TLCL book, but I find it awkward to use when you need to look up the details of a particular command.
15 • An option to save any changes to an OS on a USB flash drive (by dhinds on 2016-02-29 15:23:00 GMT from North America)
Porteus may be the best portable OS
16 • Books (by djw on 2016-02-29 16:01:25 GMT from North America)
I bought "Ubuntu Hacks" when I first got into Linux, about 10 years ago. Since then, no books, just search the web when I need something. Anything distro specific becomes obsolete in a short time. Most everything else I need is available on a few bookmarked sites. If Linux was my profession, instead of a hobby, that might be different.
17 • Books (by dbrion on 2016-02-29 16:24:55 GMT from Europe)
First, I much appreciated "Linux aux petits oignons " in 2009 and I am glad there will be another edition.
I already had used Unix for years (did not administrate) and I managed to learn new things.
This year, I was advised to read R. Kerrisk "The Linux Programming Interface" http://man7.org/tlpi/ : it shows examples, in a logical order, of many (it seems comprehenstive) C functions documented in the manual . Programming choices are thoroughly explained, improving my knowledge of C with a lot of useful examples. More complicated (less exercices : more concise with humor), but very easy to find with google is Robert Love's "Linux System Programming" ,https://www.rlove.org/ .
18 • Tiny Core (by Poet Nohit on 2016-02-29 18:19:24 GMT from North America)
It's pretty amazing what you can do with just flwm, wbar, aterm and a few other things.
19 • Unity GUI (by Solar Bay on 2016-02-29 20:14:40 GMT from North America)
All these incessant bashings of Unity or Gnome or Whatever, besides their tiresome redundancy, are premised on the bogus notion that The True Interface exists, that the author knows what it is, and the rest of us are stupid for not using it. All Linux GUI interfaces are much more alike than they are different, and they will remain that way as long as we use keyboards and mice. If someone thinks a row of icons *here* is Correct while a row of icons *there* is Incorrect, or lacks the intellectual elasticity to cope with changes like the position of a windows's Close button, then perhaps they ought to look to themselves first.
20 • Unity GUI (by tdockery97 on 2016-02-29 20:27:15 GMT from North America)
@19: The most sensible statements regarding Linux GUI's I have ever read.
21 • Persistence on USB drive (by Terry Parris on 2016-02-29 20:36:38 GMT from North America)
This comment is directed to Jessie Smith with the Miscellaneous News. Not sure if he answered the question about persistence on a USB "thumb drive" fully. He may have forgot some particular tools for this job. I'd like to remind him about UnetBootin. This application will allow you to install a live USB image to it and set up persistence. I used it just today (February 29, 2016) to test out Peach OS. I was able to set up an 8GB persistent file on a 64GB USB "thumb drive." It works beautifully. Also, Ubuntu still has a package in their repo's for doing just this. This package is usb-creator-gtk or usb-creator-kde depending on what desktop you have you can download either.
22 • Books on learning Linux (by eco2geek on 2016-02-29 21:18:18 GMT from North America)
Now that I'm into Ubuntu-based distributions, I'd probably recommend The Official Ubuntu Book for people wanting a book on learning Linux.
If you're interested in a book that's more distro-agnostic, the "Linux Bible" by Christopher Negus seems like a pretty good choice. New editions come out regularly; it discusses several different Linux distributions, and it's written in a way that goes from "just starting" topics to more complex topics.
(On the other hand, not everyone is good at book learning, and these books are typically on the expensive side.)
23 • Wonderful text by Andrew Tanenbaum (by Carlos on 2016-02-29 21:49:19 GMT from Europe)
That writing from Andrew Tanenbaum of Minix is a must read.
Fantastic.
24 • Ubuntu Unleashed (by Bill S. on 2016-02-29 23:12:01 GMT from North America)
I voted Ubuntu Unleashed because 8 years ago, it came with Ubuntu 9.10.
After playing with that, man I was hooked!! So sorry to see the birth of Unity.
I still have Ubuntu 10.04 on a partition. Ah the old days of Gnome 2.30.
25 • #19 & andrew tanenbaum's minix... (by jcoeli on 2016-02-29 23:38:43 GMT from North America)
tks for this ref...
finally got around to following the link & reading the effort making minix...
a delight!
am reminded of pioneers like tim hartnell, clive sinclair and steve vickers of zx81 fame teaching adults and kids how to program homework and games using basic...
26 • Books (by MC on 2016-03-01 01:20:23 GMT from North America)
I voted "other". It was some time ago, but I found out about "The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts right here on Distrowatch. Very useful for learning how to use the terminal back in my early Linux days.
27 • Opinion Poll (by learning Linux on 2016-03-01 01:22:33 GMT from Europe)
I would recommend Linux Bible to first time Linux readers. It's not a technical book in "latu sensu". It's a passionate approach that just works. It was my first reading and I got sold after reading it.
28 • Books for Linux (by Andy Figueroa on 2016-03-01 04:50:36 GMT from North America)
I was an early adopter of Linux when it first came out and was migrating from Unix. My Unix books continue to be the most useful for working with files and shell programming, in particular "Unix Primer Plus." Some early versions of Red Hat, Slackware, and a few others also came with books, and they have all contributed to my Linux knowledge.
29 • Unity GUI @19 & @20 (by ItShowsObviously on 2016-03-01 05:26:32 GMT from North America)
@19 I like free speech and I don't have an issue with anyone expressing their opinion or likes/dislikes (Then everyone knows where they truly stand.). I definitely don't feel the need to attempt to insult or belittle someone because they have a different opinion, taste or preference. "premised on the bogus notion that The True Interface exists, that the author knows what it is, and the rest of us are stupid for not using it.", purely an assumption or speculation at best. "then perhaps they ought to look to themselves first.", yes they are such a terrible person, because they have a different opinion or preference (sarcasm).
If anyone does have a different opinion, I for one don't jump to the conclusion they are "bashing", of course I am not hypersensitive or easily offended either. ;) Another beauty of Linux: choice, not being stuck in a box or a one DE fits all paradigm. Or that only one opinion is all that matters. (No keyboard warriors required. :))
@20 I could not disagree more. :)
Have a good one.
30 • Linux Books (by EarlyBird on 2016-03-01 06:14:51 GMT from North America)
I learned linux waaay back in the last century (1990's) primarily from 2 books published in 1996:
Redhat linux Unleashed on Sam's Books (came with Redhat 3.0.3)
and
Using Linux Special Edition on Que Books (came with both Slackware and Redhat).
Both books, though dated, still contain useful info usually left out of current books. The "Unleashed books are still around for various distros. Haven't seen Que titles in a while, but if you find a current release for a distro you are interested in, it is probably worth at least having a look at. The Linux Bible is still very much to be recommended.
Another title I found very useful when learning was Linux: The Textbook on Addison-Wesley (2002) - it was the easiest title I came across for getting things done without getting a dedicated "System administration" book (remember, this is supposed to be about titles for newcomers, not experts).
For anyone running Slackware or one of its derivatives, there is always "Slackware Linux Essentials" from slackbook.org.
For everyone, there is tldp.org (the linux documentation project), and too many websites to list here, though the ones featuring cheatsheets and such are especially helpful. Some of the podcasts linked to by this site are helpful, but if you have a local LUG (linux user group), that would be my number one recommended starting point.
Getting back to beginners books, my favourite, How Linux Works was reviewed here maybe about a year ago? Strange that no one has mentioned "Running Linux" on O'Reilly. And of course there's LFS (Linux from Scratch), but the most informative books (ie. -the ones that explain how to use the terminal, and what goes on beneath the gui) are precisely the ones most likely to scare away those transitioning from WinX (unless said user has some familiarity with the DOS prompt, in which case, by now they are probably already using linux.....
31 • linux books (by linuxista on 2016-03-01 07:24:13 GMT from North America)
I don't know why this site full of tech ebooks is free, but it is. It's almost too good to be true, though you can only get pdfs, not epubs. On the other hand it's still an amazing selection of titles. http://it-ebooks.info/
32 • Criticizing GUIs / Linux ebooks (by eco2geek on 2016-03-01 08:05:32 GMT from North America)
@29 wrote:
> If anyone does have a different opinion, I for one don't jump to the conclusion
> they are "bashing",
Personally, I'd be happy to point out everything I think is wrong with GNOME shell. I'd be happy to tell you why I think the developers of that user interface walked right up to the edge and jumped off into wacky world.
Except it wouldn't do a bit of good. My griping won't change anything. It's obvious that the true owners of a particular desktop environment are the community of developers who write it. If you can't influence them, all you can do is vote with your feet. (And I would argue that Unity, MATE, and Cinnamon all exist due to people's discontent over GNOME shell, so maybe it's not such a bad thing after all.)
@31 - That there would be a large collection of what you might call "copyright-challenged" ebooks. From the looks of it, it ain't exactly legal. Usually they want you to pay for those. :-)
33 • @32 Criticizing GUIs (by ItShowsObviously on 2016-03-01 08:42:34 GMT from Europe)
" all you can do is vote with your feet. (And I would argue that Unity, MATE, and Cinnamon all exist due to people's discontent over GNOME shell, so maybe it's not such a bad thing after all.)" Yep... share what you like or don't like about the DE. IMO if a DE changes, where it fits your needs/usage then you can go back to it or stay with it. If not, I am thankful for alternatives. :) Cheers.
34 • linux books (by peer on 2016-03-01 09:52:59 GMT from Europe)
I discovered linux in the nineties with a book on Red Hat wit a cd in it. I forgotten the book title.
I tried it but at that moment I was not ready for it so I stayed with windows.
A few years later I tried opensuse because I stil was interested in linux. From that moment I dit not use books but I gathered my knowledge on forums and I read many articles and magazines.
Now I am a happy mint kde user
35 • 32 • O'Reilly Media ebooks (by eco2geek) (by FOSSilizing Dinosaur on 2016-03-01 14:40:44 GMT from North America)
'…what you might call "copyright-challenged" …' That's libel.
These are try-before-you-buy advertising, with author encouragement.
Direct download only, pay for paper; … for private, personal use only.
.
Yes, some people are sane, even in an insane world.
36 • @35 copyright (by linusista on 2016-03-01 15:49:18 GMT from North America)
Thanks for the clarification. That's the marketing angle I suspected, and why the ebooks are limited to pdf only. Enjoy.
37 • Linux books (by Jordan on 2016-03-01 20:53:45 GMT from North America)
Distrowatch itself is my main "book." The tips list, the reviews. The stuff in here via search. Shell/cli stuff is all over the place in wikis etc. But Distrowatch is where we see functional real world info, imo.
38 • "That's libel" -- heh (by eco2geek on 2016-03-02 03:04:40 GMT from North America)
@35, @36 - So, let's take an example. "Linux in a Nutshell 6e" is right there on O'Reilly Media's site, with the ebook on sale for $41.99 (that's a good book, btw, but you should never pay retail). You can get the Kindle edition at Amazon for the low, low price of $24.09. Strangely, neither of those prices resemble "free".
The pdf, downloaded from your fine and dandy pirate ebook site (which, for some odd reason, fails to link back to the publisher's web site), is watermarked. "Download at WoweBook.Com" -- isn't that exactly what you'd expect to find on a legitimate copy?
That URL leads you to "Wow! eBook - The best eBook site ever!", from which your site apparently downloaded it. (My goodness. Is there no honor among thieves? :-)
So, common sense forces us to conclude that your so-called "try-before-you-buy advertising, with author encouragement" is just plain ol' piracy.
Good luck with that there libel claim, cowboy.
39 • Running Linux on a USB drive... (by tom joad on 2016-03-02 03:35:06 GMT from Europe)
@ 15
I have been happily daily running Anti-x Mx-15 on a 16gig usb drive for several weeks. I can boot it to systemd or sysvinit too. I have tor loaded and it runs fine. It is stable, fast and I use it like anything else. Then I put the drive on my key chain.
A few days ago I loaded Tahrpup, Puppy, on an 8gig usb drive. Again it runs fine too. I think puppy is a bit cranky but I use it. Tarhpup loads in ram making it very fast. Some times it is too fast for us fat fingered folks.
Porteus is one OS that I hadn't considered. But I have it downloaded so I can give it a go in the next few days. Porteus can be loaded into ram as well. Porteus is Slackware so it is off in a different branch of Linux. Slackware is a bit of an enigma to me. I try to stay in the Debian branch.
I do have a couple 4gig drives. I will try them with these distros to see how they do.
None of the three OS's offer whole disk encryption during installation. Encryption would be nice.
40 • Voted Other (by far2fish on 2016-03-02 08:42:06 GMT from Europe)
I feel a book about RHCSA is a good place to start. Even though it focuses on Red Hat, you learn a lot of the basic commands in it, and you could even be ceritfied if you learn it well enough.
41 • remix os (by peer on 2016-03-02 11:26:18 GMT from Europe)
Remix OS for PC beta has arrived yesterday.
The ISO can be run as a live-os. I tried it in Virtualbox as a live os and it runs great without problems.
It also can be installed on a usb-stick or as dual boot on harddisk. Unfortunately the installer is a windows-file so you have to work on a windows pc. Why isn't there a install-function on the live disk??????
I took the installationfiles to a windows-pc and installed Remix on a usb-stick. I booted from the usb-stick and discovered that Remix automatically rebooted during the boot proces. I tried another usbstick and another pc but no luck.
I have not tried dualboot on windows.
42 • Linux books for the new user (by zhymm on 2016-03-02 14:05:55 GMT from North America)
I don't have all the books on the list in the poll and a few that aren't. But the one book that is on my desk and I've used most often is the "Linux Phrasebook, Essential Code and Commands" by Scott Granneman. It's physically small (doesn't take up much desk space) and has a good ToC and index so I can find what I need quickly. A distant second in the book category for me is Mark Sobell's "A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming" 3rd Ed.
However, for me, both of these books fall far behind the various wikis and fora available on the web, especially Arch Wiki, as a resource for learning Linux.
OMZ
43 • @38 pirated books (by linuxista on 2016-03-02 16:09:05 GMT from North America)
I can find nothing that says it-ebooks.info is a pirate site. It has been up for 4 years and with a perfect record of being a reliable no-scam site. There are links to buy paper and other ebook formats. There is no info out there of it being a pirated site aside from your postulations.
There are also other sites that seem to use the same business model, such as http://www.onlineprogrammingbooks.com/
http://www.wowebook.info/book/mastering-windows-server-2012-r2/
http://freecomputerbooks.com/
44 • Misc (ordissimo, plain ol piracy, books, tutorials) (by dbrion on 2016-03-02 17:51:59 GMT from Europe)
First, I would like to thank "cow boy" linuxista : I sometimes use it-ebooks, and I was glad to discover other links.
There is a category of people who never will need books, nor tutorial : very old people know they have little time lefts, and want to e-mail, watch photos without having to learn anything ... and without being bothered with viruses . Ordissimo http://www.ordissimo.com/fr/a-propos/changez-davis/ is debian based, and administrative tasks are made as simple as possible. What is ironical is that they are more expansive that the same hardware with XP/7/10 preinstalled .
Some people prefer tutorials (are quite useful for a given task, can be distribution-specific or version specific ), other prefer books (one can decide to have a working OS , and then, if one has time, to learn theory : it seems less difficult than learning what the inner parts of GNU linux are -without practising with examples .... -, and then installing..)
Most of the books I read -once my favourite GNUlinux distribution was installed and working, giving some time for my old brain- have working examples and one can practice. Often, firtt drafts (not fully proof read) are free, what is expansive is thorough rereading and nice cover) . Even with drafts, I did not find errors (and books are written as to be distribution agnostic, and give enough theory to cope with version changes -may be a 20 lines example, in a 400 pages book, will be out dated ... but one can be very glad of having some kind of understanding of why one's OS works, even with a tiny exception-)
45 • liveboot and toram and persistence (by nessie on 2016-03-03 04:39:31 GMT from North America)
Does unetbootin actually provide a persistence mechanism? AFAIK, unetbootin just asks whether you want a persistence partition & creates a blank holding pen. Then, when booting to ubuntu (or distro derived from ubuntu, and using the "casper" mechanism)... if a partition labeled casper is seen by the ubuntu O/S, the O/S saves persistence file(s) there.
antiX Linux, MX Linux, Porteus and various other distros are capable of optionally persisting changes during liveboot sessions. They use different (non-casper) mechanisms and, compared to casper, offer much more flexible options -- save just changes to your home directory or save all changes throughout the root filesystem.
Regarding the comment "porteus can run from ram": yep, you can do so with many other liveboot distros. Just add the bootline argument "toram" (no quotes)
46 • BeOs (by Gilbert Boisvert on 2016-03-03 11:33:58 GMT from North America)
I remember BeOs being advertised as crash-proof. They could load it down and slow it down, but not crash it. Is that still their goal? It was a nice OS but poor in drivers for peripherals, which was their downfall.
47 • 37 • Linux books. Distrowatch itself is my main "book." (by Greg Zeng on 2016-03-03 12:19:13 GMT from Oceania)
Finally someone has reached the 21st century. Hardcopy (books, magazines and other forms) is dying,
Last century's hardcopy books mentioned in the posts before this . exist in softcopy, except for the Unix books. qBittorrent (Linux, Mac or Windows) tells me this.
Screen copy (softcopy) is preferred because I can change font sizes, viewing brightness, etc to suit different situations. With softcopy, I could also launch text-to-audio applications to speak the text aloud, allowing multi-tasking, like other audio-books and podcasts.
48 • @43 : wowebook.info legit? (by Johan on 2016-03-03 13:39:45 GMT from Europe)
I tried to download something from the wowebook site. Just to test, of course. Result: it spawned two instances of Firefox, one a gambling site, another a porno site, and on the original instance of Firefox it warned me my PC was infected and I needed to call a phone number immediately. Oh, and it tried to generate some 200 pop-up screens but Firefox prevented that. Since a previous distrowatch recommended Firejail and I used that + my linux account is that of a normal user I guess there is no real harm done. But I would advise caution when using some of the links in the user comments...
49 • @47 Can linux be compromised by a wowerine windows server? (by dbrion on 2016-03-03 14:57:58 GMT from Europe)
Well, it is a bad, a very bad idea to try to master windows servers.... (the wowebook link, I spontaneously avoided).
OTOH, freecomputerbooks seems serious :
in the C category, links to sites offering K & R can be found...(I do not know of its official, legal status)
links to every O Reilly books..
and Firefox did not suffer
50 • Bad sites (by Kragle on 2016-03-03 17:57:23 GMT from North America)
I expect evil website operators to use (or imitate) good (and legitimate) things to lure victims.
51 • The Linux Command Line (by anonymoose on 2016-03-03 20:41:21 GMT from North America)
http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php/
I found TLCL quite helpful when I first started using Linux.
52 • wowbooks (by linuxista on 2016-03-03 23:11:59 GMT from North America)
I just tested wowbooks for the first time. Downloaded missing manual for iworks (nothing I need, just a test). Even though a 2 or 3 step process, no pop-ups or porn or whatever and the downloaded ebook was what it was supposed to be and functioned properly.
I'm not standing behind it, but the site didn't seem dicey. it-ebooks.info is more straightforward, though.
53 • Books (by Anonymous on 2016-03-04 02:46:18 GMT from North America)
Is it me or people are forgetting the FreeBSD Handbook. It is very solid book with many chapters covering many topics. There used to be a unix primer, and others but most of the BSDs are very solid in their documentation. The Linux commandline by Shotts is also very good. But for many old timers, learning by experimenting and installing using --help and man nameofprog and of course google and now duckduckgo :)
54 • Another book for learning Linux (by Bill L on 2016-03-05 21:10:10 GMT from North America)
The great books by (one f) Michael Kofler are great. In English from Addison-Wesley. Linux Installation, Configuration and Use.
They are getting larger, over 1,400 pages, with every edition for the past 20 years. He tries to include all the major distributions, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu. The CD/DVD has the text and the distributions.
14th edition in December 2015 from Rheinwerk Computing, formerly Galileo Publishing. kofler.info for more.
55 • Porteus Kiosk & Tor Browser ? (by Tom Tite on 2016-03-06 23:39:08 GMT from Europe)
It would be great if this alternative exists.
4G Mobile Broadband Dongles should also work.
This is just a thought.
Number of Comments: 55
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
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| • Issue 790 (2018-11-19): NetBSD 8.0, Bash tips and short-cuts, Fedora's networking benchmarked with FreeBSD, Ubuntu 18.04 to get ten years of support |
| • Issue 789 (2018-11-12): Fedora 29 Workstation and Silverblue, Haiku recovering from server outage, Fedora turns 15, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 788 (2018-11-05): Clu Linux Live 6.0, examining RAM consumpion, finding support for older CPUs, more Steam support for running Windows games on Linux, update from Solus team |
| • Issue 787 (2018-10-29): Lubuntu 18.10, limiting application access to specific users, Haiku hardware compatibility list, IBM purchasing Red Hat |
| • Issue 786 (2018-10-22): elementary OS 5.0, why init keeps running, DragonFly BSD enables virtual machine memory resizing, KDE neon plans to drop older base |
| • Issue 785 (2018-10-15): Reborn OS 2018.09, Nitrux 1.0.15, swapping hard drives between computers, feren OS tries KDE spin, power savings coming to Linux |
| • Issue 784 (2018-10-08): Hamara 2.1, improving manual pages, UBports gets VoIP app, Fedora testing power saving feature |
| • Issue 783 (2018-10-01): Quirky 8.6, setting up dual booting with Ubuntu and FreeBSD, Lubuntu switching to LXQt, Mint works on performance improvements |
| • Issue 782 (2018-09-24): Bodhi Linux 5.0.0, Elive 3.0.0, Solus publishes ISO refresh, UBports invites feedback, Linux Torvalds plans temporary vacation |
| • Issue 781 (2018-09-17): Linux Mint 3 "Debian Edition", file systems for SSDs, MX makes installing Flatpaks easier, Arch team answers questions, Mageia reaches EOL |
| • Issue 780 (2018-09-10): Netrunner 2018.08 Rolling, Fedora improves language support, how to customize Kali Linux, finding the right video drivers |
| • Issue 779 (2018-09-03): Redcore 1806, keeping ISO downloads safe from tampering, Lubuntu makes Calamares more flexible, Ubuntu improves GNOME performance |
| • Issue 778 (2018-08-27): GuixSD 0.15.0, ReactOS 0.4.9, Steam supports Windows games on Linux, Haiku plans for beta, merging disk partitions |
| • Issue 777 (2018-08-20): YunoHost 3.0.0.1, limiting process resource usage, converting file systems on Fedora, Debian turns 25, Lubuntu migrating to Wayland |
| • Issue 776 (2018-08-13): NomadBSD 1.1, Maximum storage limits on Linux, openSUSE extends life for 42.3, updates to the Librem 5 phone interface |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the Star Lite, Star LabTop and more. Available with a choice of Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Zorin OS pre-installed with many more distributions supported. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
Parted Magic
Parted Magic is a small live CD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives. Although GParted and Parted are the main programs, the CD/USB also offers other applications, such as Partition Image, TestDisk, fdisk, sfdisk, dd, ddrescue, etc. In August 2013 the distribution became a commercial product and is no longer available as a free download.
Status: Active
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| Tips, Tricks, Myths and Q&As | | Myths and misunderstandings: sudo |
| Tips and tricks: Check free disk space, wait for a process, command line spell-check, shutdown PC when CPU gets hot |
| Questions and answers: Frustrated with lack of "polish" |
| Tips and tricks: Using GRUB with XFS |
| Questions and answers: Reading status information from top |
| Questions and answers: Containing user accounts |
| Tips and tricks: Command line weather, ionice, rename files, video preview snapshot, calednar, ls colour settings |
| Questions and answers: The benefits and drawbacks to using a live distro |
| Questions and answers: Tweaking X.Org drivers for better Intel graphics support |
| Tips and tricks: Find common words in text, find high memory processs, cd short-cuts, pushd & popd, record desktop |
| More Tips & Tricks and Questions & Answers |
| Linux Training |
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