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1 • Quick searches (by a on 2016-05-23 01:41:35 GMT from Europe)
Glad to see the new links for searching distros, especially the one for systemd.
It doesn’t show distros that let you choose if you want it or not (like Gentoo), unfortunately.
2 • On Self Hosting Services (by Joe Pseudonym on 2016-05-23 03:37:48 GMT from North America)
Currently I have owncloud, but I am working towards setting up a self hosted email on my raspberry pi later this month. Maybe I will even host a voice server some time down the line.
3 • Self-hosted services (by Stan on 2016-05-23 07:37:10 GMT from Europe)
The idea that I'll be responsible of maintaining a system with such sensitive information for my family on cheap non-business grade hardware, non-fault tolerance hardware is a big NO-NO for me. For this matter I trust more an external USB drive and maybe Syncthing.
I'm also not going to be hypocritical and say that I trust more a Hosting provider than the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. If I'm going to be paranoid, either is in my premises that I own or nowhere at all.
I'm curious to see how people who are committed to this approach handle this maintenance burden.
4 • @3 Self-hosting (by PePa on 2016-05-23 10:33:49 GMT from Asia)
We're handling the maintenance burden of providing our own mail and file sharing services by leveraging Linux.
We're downloading our emails (pop3) from external services, and storing it in maildir format. We deploy a home server to serve this, but we also provide backup by rsyncing the complete maildir to all local machines, so if the local server would be incapacitated, the mails can still be locally accessed.
Similar thing for the file server.
5 • clonezilla (by greg on 2016-05-23 11:47:04 GMT from Europe)
to be honest the user interface could be nicer. mess up a setting you might have to do it all form the start.
RedoBackup has the right idea, and Clonezilla should go into this kind of area, and provide ti's advanced options ot the interface. I mean i was backing up the data to image while browsing the web at the same time looking for informaiton on how to best backup and restore and issues surrounding that.
Clonezilla is a good tool, but it's UI could be better.
6 • self hosting (by SlaxFan on 2016-05-23 13:19:08 GMT from North America)
I self host an https server with a self signed certificate only while exchanging large files with family. I stop and start the server as needed with quick scripts. I don't trust online services anymore.
I won't leave the server up until I figure out how I can use a self-signed certificate and have perfect forward secrecy.
7 • @5 • clonezilla (by mandog on 2016-05-23 13:58:36 GMT from South America)
I must disagree clonezilla is the simplest tool I have used for backup the interface is self explanatory I never had to consult any documentation to use it
8 • "self hosting" (by the card says "consultant" on 2016-05-23 14:28:44 GMT from North America)
When did the Political Officer convince you to say that "self host" was a real thing? Does Ford "self manufacture" trucks? Does FedEx "self deliver" packages? You run things on your computer, or someone else runs things on their computer. You never self run things on your computer, instead of on their computer.
9 • @3 Self-hosted services (by AJ on 2016-05-23 14:44:03 GMT from North America)
I run a small server out of my home to provide ownCloud, emby, the RainLoop webmail interface, and a SOCKS proxy (via openSSH) for myself. I had set up an imap/smtp server, too, but most providers would block outgoing messages as spam because my ISP wouldn't change the reverse DNS lookup address.
I agree with Stan (@3) that it is naive to trust a hosting provider more than most email providers but that is eventually the way I went. I feel fairly confident that DigitalOcean isn't scanning my emails to serve me ads. And while I'm only a couple of months in, maintaining a simple email server on debian-stable has been pretty straightforward so far.
Ultimately, I also pay for a ProtonMail account that I could set up to handle email for my domain if the burden becomes too great.
10 • reinventing the wheel (by BluPhoenyx on 2016-05-23 15:42:10 GMT from North America)
I am a bit confused as to why developers feel the need to reinvent things. For instance, I find that X works quite well and it has served my needs for a very long time. Just because it is old doesn't mean it's useless. I do understand about it being a complex programming environment, but most of the newer programs are developed in systems such as Python and do not require much low-level detail.
I know that Waylon/Weston is coming, but for people like me that run older applications, that don't need or may not get upgrades, it seems like trading one complex system for another. Guess we will see if it is worth the trouble.
Any plans on a review of Chalet?
Cheers,
Mike T
11 • Clonezilla (by Mark D on 2016-05-23 15:43:03 GMT from Europe)
Clonezilla's great and there's a lot you can do to customize it. I routinely use it at work to automatically install 70 Linux desktops from a centrally maintained image. You can PXE boot the Clonezilla image, and pass boot options to run a bash script. In there you run the ocs-sr command to restore the image from server.
12 • Security online (by Poet Nohit on 2016-05-23 18:15:43 GMT from North America)
No amount of encryption or self-hosting can really keep you "safe" online. The only way to achieve that is to use steghide in a way that will fly under the radar for whoever you consider an enemy agent.
13 • Quick searches and bit size options (by Any User on 2016-05-23 19:33:30 GMT from North America)
It would be nice that with the search results, that users could say for example:
Fine if the distro offfers 64 bit, but 64 bit should not be mandatory.
Thank you
14 • Wayland (by M.Z. on 2016-05-23 23:17:31 GMT from North America)
@10
I've done a fair amount of reading on the subject of x & Wayland, & the thing about X is that it is basically an ancient Rube Goldberg machine help together with duck tape & crossed fingers. From my understanding it's not only overly complicated & complex, but it has numerous issues such as an inherently bad security profile caused by the general practice of running as root.
As I recall your assertion that Wayland is equally complicated is totally incorrect, as the people who work with both believe that Wayland is a picture of a clean simple modern design. If I recall correctly the displaying of video on Wayland is actually based on the simplest workaround commonly used to get things displayed on X, which I think involves offloading most displaying to the main toolkit/Desktop used on a given computer & bypassing a lot of redundant & unused parts of X. One of the more complicated bits of Wayland is the fact that it is fully backward compatible with X because it can run X, so you shouldn't lose the ability to use anything for as long as X is still supported.
Anyway, my impression of X is that it is basically like a tired old car from the 1980's that was filled with hot experimental new technology at the time; however, it now has 500 thousand miles on it (or 800k Kilometers)& is loaded with rust & workarounds designed to bypass all those experimental parts that no one has any use for anymore. That old car has done an amazing job, but a replacement is overdue. Meanwhile there are lots of costs behind the scenes & those temperamental old sensors that no one makes anymore are only getting more expensive & harder to come by. Of course in our open source metaphor this is a company car, so you don't notice them being replaced & fiddled with during you regularly scheduled maintenance because your not the one paying to replace them. Remember that old beast of a car fondly, because the guy in charge of buying new ones has found a replacement & is working toward making the final purchase. While the old company car will still be around the replacement can't come too fast.
15 • 10 • 14 • Why Fix X? (by Somewhat Reticent on 2016-05-24 00:56:01 GMT from North America)
X may not be fully broken, yet, true. I'm thankful for that mercy.
Who believes it's so perfect nothing could be better?
Have we made no progress in the decades since it was born?
It was designed in a time when crackers were rare. And now?
16 • Saved my butt many times (by Rufovillosum@yahoo.com on 2016-05-24 01:14:13 GMT from North America)
As a hobbyist running three distros, I make monthly images of each. I am free to experiment, modify, play around with settings, remove 'unnecessary' software -- whatever. If I screw up, it takes 5 min to restore my original system.
17 • Clonezilla (by Charles Burge on 2016-05-24 01:15:24 GMT from North America)
Thanks for the Clonezilla review. I tried it once a few years ago, and decided I preferred just using the partimage program that comes bundled with Knoppix. I might just give Clonezilla a second look.
18 • ddrescue (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2016-05-24 03:44:48 GMT from North America)
ddrescue makes partition images trivially. It's an improved dd with error recovery, badblock handling, etc. Don't know if Clonezilla uses it. I'm glad Clonezilla exists and likewise, every live ISO should bundle ddrescue.
@67 mandog from a week or two ago, re Manjaro OpenRC Status Alert:
Semantics of "community" and "official" aren't so black-n-white. Technically even artoo of OpenRC Team says he's not doing an "official" edition -- by which he means his LXQt spin. But several OpenRC spins use his OpenRC code. When I said "quasi-official" I mean OpenRC proper, not a spin.
Manjaro lead Phil M. regularly submits github issues on OpenRC. He just doesn't personally help make OpenRC spins. So I said "quasi-official" and put the word in quotes, m'kay? The interaction between Core Team and OpenRC Team is far higher than some hands-off "community" concept. And it's a world of difference from hostility from Arch Linux; artoo no longer supports OpenRC on Arch Linux, focusing now EXCLUSIVELY on Manjaro. Thus OpenRC Team is a dedicated one, with regular coordination and bug reports from Core Team. That's official enough in my book. Phil M. just has his hands full with website issues and his own systemd spins.
https://manjaro.github.io/team/
19 • Ego_fear_of_Wayland_change (by k on 2016-05-24 13:35:15 GMT from Europe)
@10 reinventing the wheel (by BluPhoenyx), and 15? Why Fix X? (by Somewhat Reticent)
Wayland is hardly a matter of just "reinventing the wheel".
However, ego will distort reality, so why not study as MZ did (comment 14).
For example, an excellent comprehensive Wikipedia article at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29#Comparison_with_other_window_systems
explains that
"The goal of XWayland is to facilitate the transition from X Window System to Wayland environments, providing a way to run unported applications in the meantime.
Some applications (especially the ones related to accessibility) require privileged capabilities that should work across different Wayland compositors. Currently,[when?] applications under Wayland are generally unable to perform any sensitive tasks such as taking screenshots or injecting input events. Wayland developers are actively looking for feasible ways to handle privileged clients securely and then designing privileged interfaces for them."
As promising as Wayland seems, it is positive to see more developers really rise to the challenge and adapt their distros, THANK YOU.
20 • PClinuxOS 32-bit support dropped (by RollMeAway on 2016-05-24 15:21:42 GMT from North America)
VERY disappointed in this. I really thought this was a team effort distro. I did not realize it is still a ONE MAN SHOW. So, because of personal problems the users suffer.
I have financially supported PClinuxOS for over 10 years, and promoted it to others.
All good things must end.
21 • @18 archwatcher (by mandog on 2016-05-24 16:57:27 GMT from South America)
artoo never did support arch and AUR that was his helper.
All artoos work is converting Gentoo OpenRC to use in Manjaro he does a great job do not get me wrong. and yes Philm removes a few unnecessary systemD hooks to help OpenRC
systemD is the manjaro project remember Manjaro used systemD before Arch.
XFCE4 and KDE are the only officially supported Manjaro editions,
PhilM also makes the Gnome spin from time to time that does not make it quasi-official nor does the work he does to help other spins make them quasi-official they are all unsupported spins
But if you really want to go back to the arch way OpenRC is not the way to go use CRUX.
22 • Just don't like breaking things (by BluPhoenyx on 2016-05-24 19:55:21 GMT from North America)
@14 I like the analogy, but I tend to use some older programs that may not work correctly and I prefer not to break certain systems until I have a functional work-around. My point is that programmers often change things, just for the sake of change. Consider the case of Ubuntu changing to new package installations. This will obsolete most hardware driver packages currently available and, as we know, hardware manufacturers don't like providing new packages for distributions.
I have an example. My wife has a great Canon printer. It was cheap and the ink is budget friendly. It requires an external installation that uses Debian package tools and is created for Ubuntu systems. It currently works fine and will continue to do so for a few years, but I plan to have it for some time and five years from now it may be tough to install the printer. Without the manufacturer provided drivers, the printer is useless, current distributions do not provide any support for it. I cannot justify tossing a perfectly good piece of equipment just because of software changes. Once Linux distro's reach the point where they are no longer consistent, then I'm stuck using older software.
Change for the sake of change is not always an improvement.
@19 Actually, I have done a lot of research. Yes, I will adapt when I need to, but I just don't think that all the time and research into the X system should be wasted. Security issues are being dealt with and X works very well.
Maybe the developers need to consider making a Wayland distro variant so that current Linux operating systems can continue the way they are going. Combine the changes brought by systemd and a new graphics desktop and the whole OS is different. Not that I expect this too happen because distro maintainers like to change things too much. One of them finds something new and the rest follow like Lemmings.
Thankfully, there will be some time for making these decisions. Too bad that all of this effort wasn't put into debugging current software or making better documentation. People seem to like writing the programs, but few of them want to do the polishing work or put out the effort required for maintaining them. And yes, I am guilty of this fault as well.
Of course, this is just my humble opinion. I am still grateful for all the effort and time that goes into open source projects. Just hate to see a working design make such drastic changes.
23 • Breaking things again (by BluPhoenyx on 2016-05-24 20:26:17 GMT from North America)
My apologies for going off on a tangent here. I just want to add that modern adaptations such as Wayland and even systemd affect folks like me who like using older hardware. Every major change such as these affect important subsystems. For example, look at how many ATI/AMD video chips have poor support because of changes to software and manufacturer policies. Should we toss out perfectly fine hardware because of changes to the basic operating system? If that is the case, then Linux will be following the path of MS and I got off that road a long time ago.
FWIW, I'm on a fixed income and can no longer afford to buy something just because it is newer. My current rig is about 6 or 7 years old, but it is still a fairly fast 4 core AMD that does what I require. My wife's system is a bit older and only 2 cores, but it meets her needs @ 2.8 ghz. Personally, I prefer not to buy into the planned obsolescence of computers any more that necessary.
Cheers, all and have a great day :)
24 • @20 32bit support (by Pierre on 2016-05-25 00:28:02 GMT from Europe)
Others on their team were glad to be done with supporting a dying platform for a small group of dwindling people. I hear Opensuse is dropping 32bit in their upcoming release.
25 • Clonezilla (by BobbiJo on 2016-05-25 04:45:07 GMT from North America)
Thank you for the review of Clonezilla. What a handy tool to have in your arsenal.
26 • @24 arrogant much? (by futureluddite on 2016-05-25 09:06:41 GMT from Europe)
"a small group of dwinding people" - thanks for dissing all those who don't want to trash perfectly functional hardware that still has plenty of life in it.
The switch to 64bit was totally unnecessary from a user point of view (not talking about servers). Almost every task the average user performs can be done perfectly well with 3GB RAM. The switch only occurred because new hardware is generally provided with more RAM, not because it is really needed. The new software is then designed to gobble up all that memory (see the requirements of GNOME3, KDE5 or Unity). And the fanbois then immediately believe that any system with less than 8GB is an antique that is only suitable for a museum or landfill.
27 • Clonezilla, fsarchiver and ntfsclone (by john on 2016-05-25 13:13:07 GMT from Europe)
I found this week's article on Clonezilla very interesting. I too tried it several years ago and found the interface rather intimidating.
For many years I have used fsachiver for Linux partition images and ntfsclone for Windows. But this article made me try Clonezilla again, and I must admit I like it, and it seems to do a good job - fast. One thing gave me rather a heart flutter - wne it asked for a name for the image file without first asking for the path. I aborted twice at this stage, at the thought I must have missed something, and unwilling to see a multi-gigabyte file posted I knew not where. Third time round, sure I had NOT missed anything, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, and was relieved to see it then asked for the path. I still think it would be more logical to ask for the path first, but it certainly does a good job.
It would be interesting to see a full comparison of Clonezilla and other partition imaging programs. fsarchiver is very simple to use, for example, with a script, and has the advantage you can restore the image to a partition smaller than the original. In some circumstances this can be useful. With both fsarchiver and ntfsclone you can also get on with using the PC while it is working on the image. Clonezilla certainly seems considerably faster than ntfsclone. I wouldn't say there was much in it with fsarchiver though.
28 • @20 Choices (by Jose on 2016-05-25 17:49:01 GMT from North America)
Actually, only the OFFICIAL 32bit version will no longer be updated, etc. If anyone steps up, they can maintain the 32bit version and keep it alive with Tex's blessing.
No one has stepped up. As Tex now has to care for his brother, he just doesn't have the time to maintain both.
Personally, I am happy to hear the 32 bit version was dropped. Linux will never succeed as a replacement to Windows if it is only seen as a suitable OS for older PC's.
There are suitable Linux distros for older PC's. No need to compete with Linux distros designed to run on "minimum" hardware.
29 • 32bit support (by Bonky on 2016-05-25 23:35:41 GMT from North America)
@24 , 28
So a lot of the poor people of the world in 3rd world type countires who rely soley on Junked Old PCs often donated to them many of which are 32 bit now have to change distro or go without ... thats fantastic ....
sounds very Windows style of ...you do it our way or not at all.
I have run PClinux OS for a long time on an old PC out of memory for Mandrake which was my first ever Linux looks like it will be my Final goodbye to that now
and because of this elitist attitude, devs will stop making 32bit software as a lot of the Main distros have stopped using it......so forcing people out of using Linux at all
30 • @29 -- 32-bit support (by Hoos on 2016-05-26 01:03:14 GMT from Asia)
While it is disappointing that more distros are now putting together and supporting only 64-bit versions of their distros (up until last year I was running a 9+ year old 32-bit PC), it's harsh to criticise the developers of the distros, who are mostly doing this in their spare time as volunteers for the love of Linux. Time is scarce, they have their own lives, and they do have to make a choice on how to use it. It's not just making the distro image, you know. It's time spent supporting the distro on their forums.
If a knowledgeable person was willing to volunteer his/her time to keep 32-bit spins alive for users who cannot afford to buy a new computer, that would be great. But it's quite unfair to heap blame on the distro developers alone and say it is all their fault.
31 • @29 • 32bit support (by mandog on 2016-05-26 01:56:14 GMT from South America)
I think you have got it a bit wrong Most 3rd world countries are catching up fast
I repair many laptops here in Peru and over the past 4 years have not seen a 32bt only laptop please get real.
32 • "Every_new_beginning_comes... (by k on 2016-05-26 05:05:33 GMT from Europe)
... from some other beginning's end" (Closing Time, by Semisonic, 1997)
@20 • PClinuxOS 32-bit support dropped (by RollMeAway)
Your feeling is quite natural, but so too is change and adaptation.
Besides the truth of the song's lyrics, in a zero-point universe as this,
THERE IS ALWAYS A POSITIVE TO BALANCE ANY NEGATIVE (Feynman).
Just wait, it will find you. :)
33 • @31 - 32 bit support (by Hoos on 2016-05-26 05:21:09 GMT from Asia)
With the terrible economy all over, there will be people in every country -- not just in places traditionally known as 3rd world countries -- that are not able to afford new computers. They will still benefit from 32-bit versions of distros. There are still some distros doing 32-bit versions, like MX/antiX, bunsenlabs, Ubuntu derivatives, maybe some of the more user-friendly Slackware derivatives.
However, with Google no longer supporting Google Chrome on 32-bit machines (and thus 32-bit pepperflash, which can be used by both Chromium and Firefox+freshplayer), and with Adobe not supporting Flash beyond security updates on Linux, 32-bit distros will lose some functionality if you need Flash. If you don't need that, for the moment the 32-bit distros I mentioned should be fine.
On the other hand, even if you bought or salvaged an old machine that is 7-8 years old, I think there is every possibility it could be a 64-bit machine.
34 • Obsessive Semantic Absolutism Is Very Soviet Union (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2016-05-26 05:43:37 GMT from North America)
@21 mandog - Read Manjaro Experiments - replacing inits is not as hard as Arch Linux devs or you lead people to believe; esp. with upstream support like Manjaro's. Obarun.org retro-fits runit onto Arch Linux. Artoo DID support Arch Linux via AUR. What he later said is "Due to now clashing name with 3rd party openrc packages on AUR, I will discontinue AUR support, so the manjaro builds will become manjaro exclusive in regard to availability."
https://old.forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=27333.0
OpenRC started at Gentoo; anyone using it by definition converts Gentoo OpenRC. So what? Gentoo builds Alpine in its entirely and it runs swimmingly.
The well-known issue with systemd is an insidious attempt to make Lennartware impossible to detach from Linux. That Manjaro actively supports CHOICE is the key take-home point. Thanks Manjaro! Many people compliment the OpenRC spins on clean, fast functionality.
We disagree on quasi-official. Potaeto, potaato. Knowing how fast artoo and co answer questions and post fixes, I think it silliness to debate. I am aware of which spins come from Phil M. Several spins, not just artoo's, offer both init flavors. You can also git and mod your own custom ISO profile. OpenRC lacks proper PR support, a fact Manjaro knows and shall remedy "real soon now."
35 • 32 bit (by Tim Dowd on 2016-05-26 11:10:52 GMT from North America)
I've been reading the comments and I wanted to echo @29's sentiments.
I'm really bummed about the loss of 32 bit support as well, but the only reason these computers have any life left in them at all was because of free and open-source software. Microsoft and Apple had long abandoned them. Plus, there's still a lot of 32 bit support. Ubuntu MATE 16.04 for example is going to be supported until 2020 and includes this architecture. Debian will probably support it well into the next decade. FreeBSD can be surprisingly nice on the desktop and I was running a 32 bit install of MATE on it before I repurposed my last 32 bit computer as a server.
Those of us who can't do what the developers do for us gratis can be sad when changes are made that affect us negatively, but I don't see how we can be angry at them.
When you want old hardware or software to work, sometimes you just have to be creative. Apparently nobody wants to develop WYSIWYG web editors anymore, and I found myself really needing one for the first time in a decade. You can't install KompoZer on a modern system, but you can run Debian Squeeze inside a VirtualBox. I was annoyed at having to do this, but in the end, someone took the time to write this amazing software and give it to me and everyone else free, and I can't really fault them if they've got other things to do. I'm just glad I can still use it.
36 • X vs Wayland (by Jordan on 2016-05-26 19:25:34 GMT from North America)
I didn't understand what all this was about, having been used to tweaking xorg in the old days and not so much now.
So, I read this: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=x_wayland_situation&num=1
..written a few years ago but came up at the top of google in a search. It's clear and concise. Even for non-techie like me.
Wayland sounds like the next, right step.
37 • Tor_connection_to_DistroWatch_site_not_HTTPS_secure (by k on 2016-05-27 19:14:50 GMT from Europe)
Can someone -- anyone -- explain why the DistroWatch site disables HTTPS protection?
I just upgraded Tails from 2.3 to 2.4~rc1, which includes version 6.0 of the Tor browser that displays if a site is not secure and disables HTTPS protection, as appears to be the case with DistroWatch site pages, but not tails.boum, torproject, nor eff.
38 • HTTPS connections (by Jesse on 2016-05-27 19:37:16 GMT from North America)
>> "Can someone -- anyone -- explain why the DistroWatch site disables HTTPS protection?"
The explanation is simple: we do not disable HTTPS. We do not force connections to use HTTPS, but we definitely offer (and recommend) HTTPS. Perhaps because we don't force HTTPS the browser is defaulting to using plain HTTP connection which we maintain for backward compatibily and clients which do not support HTTPS.
39 • @29 Choices (by Jose on 2016-05-27 21:05:38 GMT from North America)
Yes, people using 32 bit PCLinuxOS will have to change distros. However, they are no where near abandoned by Linux. There are many, many 32 bit distros out there. Many of those 32 bit distros are geared for low powered PC, eliminating the near for massive amounts of RAM or hard drive space.
One man distros are faced with difficult choices. Tex has offered to assit anyone wishing to maintain the 32 bit version. If someone wants the PCLinuxOS 32 bit version to stay alive , they can step up and maintain it. The PCLinuxOS community has always pitched in to help.
However, with 32bit Linux distros like antix, Puppy, Vector, Slax and many, many others, why bother to maintain a 32 bit version of PCLinuxOS?
40 • PCLinuxOS & Wayland (by M.Z. on 2016-05-27 22:47:37 GMT from North America)
@20/PCLinuxOS 32 bit users
I also would prefer to have a 32 bit version of PCLinuxOS available, but while PCLinuxOS is more than a one man show, it's also a relatively small community project that has to make compromises and stay realistic. If a flood of new money & developers came it I think the team would be more than happy to invest the time & money into maintaining more versions, but I don't think that's realistic. Heck, even though Red Hat is rolling in money, they still decided that it wasn't worth the time & effort to keep supporting 32 bit when RHEL 7 came out a couple of years ago. If Red Hat don't find it necessary to support 32 bit, why should Linux users expect all distros to support 32 bit regardless of the resources they have? If you want something very similar in feel to PCLinuxOS but need a 32 bit version you might try Mageia, which is a bigger community project from the same family of distros that have nearly all of of the same admin tools. Of course there are also plenty of other options from other bigger community projects like Debian & Mint. You have plenty of solid choices, though it is unfortunate that PCLOS doesn't think supporting 32 bit is realistic. And like I sad RHEL 7 dropped that years ago, see here:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.0_Release_Notes/chap-Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7.0_Release_Notes-Architectures.html
@36/Wayland watchers
Your link has nice overview of the situation, which I think I may have read before. I think a well informed overview of the situation (probably the very one you linked to) is what lead me to the conclusion that Wayland is likely to be a great way to resolve the problems with X.
41 • Re: lapsing_HTTPS_connection_to_DistroWatch (by k on 2016-05-28 07:31:09 GMT from North America)
@38
Hi Jesse, Thank you for the (prompt) response and explanation.
"Thing (truth) is", because DistroWatch "definitely offer (and recommend) HTTPS", and it was discussed at length earlier, I and many if not most other readers "treat" it very seriously.
That is why we use Tails and Tor, that have "HTTPS everywhere", AND the other observation I omitted from my earlier comment is that yesterday's trial of this latest Tails 2.4~rc1/Tor 6.0 revealed that Wikipedia's site has green/go (certificated and enabled) HTTPS, as recommended by EFF, and surely they accommodate a FAR wider user/reader base than DistroWatch.
You added: "Perhaps because we don't force HTTPS the browser is defaulting to using plain HTTP connection which we maintain for backward compatibily". And perhaps DistroWatch should adapt.
42 • HTTPS connections (by Jesse on 2016-05-28 13:31:19 GMT from North America)
@41: I would like to point out DistroWatch does not collect (or display) any sensitive information. We don't host downloads, ask people to login or deal with private information. There is very little benefit to using HTTPS on this website. We provide the option of HTTPS for people who want it. We are also registered with HTTPS Everywhere, so people using the plugin should get redirected to our secure website automatically if they're using a recent version. But forcing people to use HTTPS would A) no be in the spirit of open source and B) would break client applications that do not support HTTPS.
The spirit of open source is to allow choice and we provide both options (http and https). Feel free to use whichever feels right to you, we are not going to force one or the other on our readers.
43 • Other problems with X (by M.Z. on 2016-05-28 21:19:36 GMT from North America)
In case anyone wants another example of the problems with X, I noticed the following article pointing out how the giant security holes in it are making even newer & supposedly more secure technologies insecure:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-expert-matthew-garrett-ubuntu-16-04s-new-snap-format-is-a-security-risk/
44 • @43 X security (by Jordan on 2016-05-29 16:35:55 GMT from North America)
Interesting article there at zdnet. But I came away from it wondering if perhaps the issues of concern could be resolved within X, and that the Ubuntu folks are... well, I won't say much about what I don't understand fully. ;)
But yes, Wayland is getting attention and it does seem timely, as security is one of the linux bragging points.
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