 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 662, 23 May 2016 |
|
Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the nice aspects of the open source community is people are constantly making new utilities and live discs to simplify common tasks. Whether your interest is in data recovery, penetration testing or web kiosks, there is a distribution (or two or three) out there dedicated to the purpose. This week we look at some of these focused projects, beginning with the Clonezilla disk copying software. Read our Feature Story to find out how this flexible disk cloning distribution works. In our News section we talk about a new third-party software repository for Fedora users and a change to the LPS website. Plus we cover Webconverger's new experiment with commercial features, running Wayland on DragonFlyBSD and a live edition of Slackware. In our Questions and Answers column we discuss the Linux kernel and alternative patches to the kernel. In our Torrent Corner we provide a list of the distributions we are seeding and then we share the new releases of the past week. In our Opinion Poll we talk about self-hosting network services. This past week we added some quick-links for common searches to our Search page and added the Bluestar Linux distribution to our database. All the details are included below. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (28MB) and MP3 (40MB) formats
|
| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Clonezilla Live "Wily"
One of my favourite open source utilities is Clonezilla Live. The Clonezilla project creates tools to assist people in making copies of their hard drives and disk partitions. This can be useful at home for transferring an operating system from one computer to another. It's also a quick way to backup a system's packages and configuration files. In office environments it can be a big time saver to be able to clone one generic operating system onto multiple computers quickly. While installing, configuring and updating an operating system from scratch might take anywhere from half an hour to several hours, Clonezilla can transfer a copy of an operating system across a network in ten to twenty minutes.
The Clonezilla project develops two products, a server edition and a live disc edition. They are described on the project's website as follows:
Clonezilla is a partition and disk imaging/cloning program similar to True Image® or Norton Ghost®. It helps you to do system deployment, bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla Live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla Live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the hard disk. This increases the clone efficiency. With some high-end hardware in a 42-node cluster, a multicast restoring at rate 8GB/minute was reported.
Clonezilla Live is available in two different flavours, one is based on Debian while the other is built from Ubuntu packages. The project's website explains the Ubuntu edition is required when working on computers that feature UEFI/Secure Boot technology. When Secure Boot is disabled, users should be able to get along with the Debian-based flavour of Clonezilla Live.
I downloaded the Ubuntu-based version of Clonezilla Live, which was provided as a 194MB ISO file. Booting from the Clonezilla Live media brings up a series of text-based menus. We are asked to select our preferred language from a list and, optionally, select our keyboard's layout. We are then asked if we would like to run a command line shell session or run the Clonezilla software.
Assuming we decide to run the Clonezilla software, we are then asked if we would like to transfer data directly between disks/partitions. This is a handy option if we have two hard drives plugged into the same computer and want to mirror one onto the other. However, most of the time we will want to take the second option which is to work with image files. An image file is a binary copy of a hard drive or partition which can be saved to another location and then copied (or restored) back to as many other hard drives as we want. I decided to work with disk image files for the duration of this review.
Clonezilla Live "Wily" -- Selecting a storage location for the disk image
(full image size: 11kB, resolution: 800x600 pixels)
The Clonezilla wizard then asks us where disk images should be saved. The software supports a lot of methods of storing disk images, including on a local disk, a server running secure shell, a Samba share, an NFS network share or a WebDAV server. Clonezilla will even attempt to store images in RAM, though it is not a recommended option as disk images are usually large and RAM relatively small. Also, storing an image in RAM means we cannot use it after the computer reboots, so a more permanent storage area is recommended. Once we have selected which storage method to use, we are asked to provide our security credentials for that location. As an example, choosing to save data on a server running OpenSSH causes Clonezilla to prompt us for the remote server's address, our account name and password. We are then asked if Clonezilla should connect to the network using automatic (DHCP) settings or if we would like to manually provide network settings.
Clonezilla then asks if we would like to save a copy of an entire disk or just a single partition. We can then name the copy of the data we are making. Clonezilla wraps up its questions by asking if we would like to check the file system we are backing up for errors and if we would like to encrypt the disk image we are creating. I especially like the availability of the encryption option as it is possible some of our data will be sensitive and I like having an extra layer of protection for anything that will be saved to a network share.
Having collected our input, Clonezilla starts copying our data to a remote image file. We are shown progress bars indicating how much work has been done. There are also "time elapsed" and "time remaining" clocks. In my scenarios I found Clonezilla tended to take from ten to twenty minutes to save a hard drive image. When Clonezilla is finished it asks if we would like to re-run the Clonezilla wizard, reboot, power off the computer or drop to a command line prompt.
The saved image data ends up being placed in a directory, usually on a remote server. The directory carries the name we provided for the image. Inside the directory we find a collection of files, one for each partition we imaged and a few other files containing meta-data. I generally found the image data Clonezilla created was around one-eighth of the size of the original partitions I had cloned.
Clonezilla Live "Wily" -- Saving a disk image to a remote server
(full image size: 10kB, resolution: 800x600 pixels)
One of the nice aspects of Clonezilla is that restoring a disk or partition from an image is virtually the same process as creating an image of a disk. The wizard's steps are almost identical. We boot from the Clonezilla live media, select where Clonezilla can find disk images, connect to the network, provide the Clonezilla wizard with our credentials for the remote server and then, instead of choosing to clone a disk, we ask Clonezilla to restore a disk. We are then shown a list of disk images Clonezilla was able to find on the remote server and we select one. Then we choose which local disk or partition to over-write with the image and Clonezilla goes to work. I found that having the restore process almost identical to the cloning process makes Clonezilla easy to navigate as the steps and their order are the same each time.
Conclusions
There are several things I like about Clonezilla. One positive characteristic is that the project exemplifies doing one task and doing it well. Clonezilla is a very focused project, it clones hard drives and partitions and that is all. It provides many ways to save and restore these images and Clonezilla can work in several different environments, but ultimately it just saves and restores disk images and I like that.
Another thing I like is that Clonezilla fills an important and practical niche. I personally have saved myself hundreds of hours of work by using Clonezilla rather than manually installing operating systems to new computers. This is a utility I highly advise system administrators and computer enthusiasts keep on hand.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, I find Clonezilla easy to use. The concept of imaging disk drives and, often times, the practice of imaging drives can be complex. To save an image of a partition, compress it, encrypt it and send it over the network to a remote server would require several steps from the command line. With Clonezilla's step-by-step wizard and on-screen hints the process is relatively short. The steps are orderly and the prompts usually provide good default options, making it relatively easy to save and restore partition images.
In short, if you need to deploy a lot of machines quickly, or archive hard drive data, Clonezilla is a wonderful, time-saving tool to have. I have been using it for several years now and it is one of my favourite Linux-based utilities.
|
| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
New Fedora community repository, LPS website switches to HTTPS, Webconverger introduces commercial option, DragonFlyBSD runs Wayland and a live edition of Slackware
People who use the Fedora distribution will have an additional way to gain access to third-party software and packages which are not compatible with Fedora's licensing restrictions. The UnitedRPMs project provides a software repository with multimedia packages and other items which are not available through Fedora's official repositories. "What is the purpose of this project? Well, maintain a solution for people with unstable Fedora distributions, increase technical skills, create a Copr-like build system for packages with licensing problems. UnitedRPMs it's not a branch maintenance of other projects, it is only a road to give the user a fast solution without fool bureaucracy where everyone can help." Adding the UnitedRPMs repository to Fedora requires running just a single command which can be found on the project's website.
* * * * *
The Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) distribution, a live CD developed by the United States of America's Department of Defence, has updated its website. The LPS project no longer accepts plain HTTP connections to its website with these connections simply being dropped. People who wish to learn about LPS and download the distribution will need to connect to the website using the HTTPS protocol. (Updated links are available on our LPS information page.) Visitors to the LPS website will note that the Department of Defence is using a security certificate which cannot be verified so the authenticity of the LPS website cannot be confirmed.
* * * * *
The Webconverger project, in an effort to fund continuing development and handle rising costs, is introducing a commercial aspect to the web kiosk distribution. "From yesterday, configuring a device requires payment authorization. The new Stripe based billing system should make it painless for new subscribers who have just one or two machines to purchase a subscription. If you do encounter a problem, please email support. The trial is 30 days and the initial price is 9.99USD a month. Our pricing is flexible and for large deployments and for the likes of non-profits and charities, we ask you please to get in contact with sales@webconverger.com. We are hoping this new revenue stream will give us the resources to tackle our issue list, improve the Raspberry PI & Android versions and grow." The distribution can still be downloaded and tried for free and the source code is still publicly available, the commercial aspect deals with customizing the operating system. The project's announcement has more details.
* * * * *
Support for the Wayland/Weston display server has been moving forward on DragonFlyBSD to the point where several applications will run on the Wayland display software. This mailing list post provides the steps needed to get the software up and running. It's not a smooth, easy process yet, but one developer was able to get the Nautilus file manager, Xfce terminal and Firefox running on Wayland thanks to the XWayland compatibility software. "In summary: I am very much impressed. On this machine, Wayland/Weston feels faster than X. It's stable, or at least so far. With Xorg I can't switch between VT and graphical screen more than twice; the screen hangs after two switches. With Wayland it just works."
* * * * *
Last week Eric Hameleers released version 1.0.0 of his live edition of Slackware, called liveslak. The new live edition will likely form the base of Slackware's official live disc when Slackware 14.2 is released later this year. Hameleers writes, "For demonstration purposes I have generated a new set of ISO images using liveslak version 1.0.0. There are ISO images for a full Slackware (64-bit and 32-bit versions), 64-bit Plasma 5 and MATE variants and the 700MB small Xfce variant (also 64-bit). They are based on Slackware-current dated `Thu May 12 01:50:21 UTC 2016'." Further information on this live edition of the venerable Slackware distribution along with download links can be found in Eric's blog post.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
|
| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
|
Comparing kernel components
Looking-for-a-more-responsive-system asks: I was wondering why CFS/CFQ is used in the main kernel instead of BFS/BFQ, which has advantages overall. Also why the pf-kernel patch is not integrated in the main kernel?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few reasons the BFS process scheduler did not make it into the kernel before now. One was that the CFS process scheduler was in place and worked fairly well. Another was that the kernel developers appeared to not want to include two schedulers in the kernel, preferring, it seems, to let distributions such as Zenwalk and PCLinuxOS patch BFS into their kernels as desired.
Perhaps the most important reason though for BFS not being included in the mainline Linux kernel comes from the BFS developer himself. He wrote the following on the BFS scheduler's frequently asked questions page:
Are you looking at getting this into mainline?
LOL.
No really, are you?
LOL.
Really really, are you?
No. They would be crazy to use this scheduler anyway since it won't scale to
their 4096 CPU machines. The only way is to rewrite it to work that way, or
to have more than one scheduler in the kernel. I don't want to do the former,
and mainline doesn't want to do the latter. Besides, apparently I'm a bad
maintainer, which makes sense since for some reason I seem to want to have
a career, a life, raise a family with kids and have hobbies, all of which
have nothing to do with Linux.
The BFQ I/O scheduler faces a similar issue. CFQ already exists and works fairly well. Rather than have two competing I/O schedulers in the kernel at the same time, it looks as though the kernel developers want to slowly merge BFQ in, replacing CFQ. For people who really want to explore BFQ and its impact on performance, there are a number of distributions which have adopted the BFQ scheduler.
As for why the pf-kernel patches have not been merged, pf-kernel is actually a collection of changes rather than one particular feature. The main benefits to using pf-kernel are the BFS and BFQ scheduler patches, which as we covered above, face their own roadblocks.
* * * * *
Desiring-good-hardware-support-in-other-kernels asks: Why don't other open source projects like Haiku and FreeBSD port Linux kernel drivers to their operating systems?
DistroWatch answers: I hear this question come up semi-frequently in conversations about MINIX, Haiku and FreeBSD. There are two main reasons drivers from the Linux kernel cannot be ported to the kernels of other operating systems.
The first hurdle is the license. Linux kernel code is licensed under the GNU General Public License (version 2), which is a relatively restrictive open source license. Unless a Linux developer is willing to dual-license their code under a more permissive license, their driver code cannot be used by other, more permissively licensed projects.
The second issue is that kernels are designed in different ways and, while they perform similar tasks, their pieces are not interchangeable. Asking why FreeBSD does not use Linux drivers is roughly equivalent to asking why a Volkswagen Beetle owner doesn't put a 18-wheeler engine in their car so it can pull more weight. The idea sounds nice in the abstract, but starts to fall apart when you look at the design of the two items being worked on.
Cooperation can happen between kernel projects. Code, designs and specifications do sometimes flow between various open source kernels. But the situation does not allow code to simply be copy and pasted from one kernel into the other.
* * * * *
Past Questions and Answers columns can be found in our Q&A Archive.
|
| 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: 196
- Total data uploaded: 36.2TB
|
| Released Last Week |
Linuxfx 7.4.2
The Linuxfx team has launched a new version of their Ubuntu-based distribution. The new release, Linuxfx 7.4.2, features mostly improved hardware support, productivity software and media support. An English translation of the project's release announcement (Brazilian Portuguese) reads: "This new version of Linuxfx is the latest 7 series and brings several new features included. Start using the new CTOs interface and all the features of the systems developed by Linuxfx Software for the area of biometrics and access control. This version contains the most current tools for production and even Internet browsing, as well as providing extra security against malicious websites or other content potentially harmful to your computer." This release features support for running in a VirtualBox environment. Download (MD5): linuxfx-ctos-7.4.2.iso (1,776MB).
ChaletOS 16.04
Dejan Petrovic has announced the release of ChaletOS 16.04, a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu and designed for Linux newcomers. The new release focuses mostly on the look and feel of the distribution's desktop environment: "What is new in new release of ChaletOS? New LTS support, new kernel and new Software Center. But beside that, with what is ChaletOS so different from other distributions? Themes are improved so they can work with GTK3 and GTK2 engine. Also, now they are more complete, and include details for many applications. Icons are redesigned. We used Emerald icons and we redesigned them so they are more suitable for ChaletOS style. Style Changer is rewritten and templates are made from scratch. Many community derived Conky styles are rewritten and adapted for ChaletOS. Start Point is new application that can help new users to start using ChaletOS or Linux. It contains collection of video material, articles from websites and recommendations for different applications." The full details and a screen shot can be found in the project's release announcement.
ChaletOS 16.04 -- Displaying the default desktop and application menu
(full image size: 511kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
ReactOS 0.4.1
Ziliang Guo has announced the availability of ReactOS 0.4.1, a minor release of the built-from-scratch operating system which tries to clone the design of the Microsoft Windows NT platform: "The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of version 0.4.1 a mere three months after the release of 0.4.0. The team has long desired an increased release tempo and the hope is that this will be the first of many of faster iterations. Due to the brief period of time between the two releases, 0.4.1 is ultimately a refinement of what was in 0.4.0. That is not to say that there are no new features of course, and a few highlights of both categories are listed below: Activation Context - a fix that came in just a tad too late for 0.4.0, this resolved a problem in the loader that prevented applications depending on various versions of the MSVCRT library from working properly; BTRFS support - initial read and write support introduced via importing of the WinBtrfs driver; shell - general usability improvements such as properly rendering icons and improved folder views...." Here is the complete release announcement.
ExTiX 16.2
The ExTiX project has released a new version of their Ubuntu-based distribution. The new version, ExTiX 16.2, features the KDE desktop and is based on packages from Debian's development branches and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. "ExTiX 16.2 KDE DVD 64-bit is based on Debian 8.4 Jessie/Debian 9 Stretch and Ubuntu 16.04. The original system includes the desktop environment Unity (Ubuntu). After removing Unity I have installed KDE Frameworks 5.15.0 with KDE 4.15. KDE Frameworks are 60 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms." The new version ships with version 4.4 of the Linux kernel. Additional information on ExTiX 16.2 can be found in the project's release announcement.
pfSense 2.3.1
Chris Buechler has announced the release of pfSense 2.3.1, an updated version of the project's FreeBSD-based operating system designed for firewalls and routers. This is minor bug-fix release, although it also includes a number of important security updates: "We are happy to announce the release of pfSense software version 2.3.1. This is a maintenance release in the 2.3.x series, bringing a number of bug fixes, two security fixes in the GUI, as well as security fixes for OpenSSL, OpenVPN and FreeBSD atkbd and sendmsg. This release includes a total of 103 bug fixes. 79 regressions in 2.3 have been fixed, mostly minor issues in the new GUI. Several of these are significant issues, and have resolved nearly all the post-upgrade problems encountered in 2.3-RELEASE. 24 issues affecting 2.2.x and prior versions have also been fixed."" Read the release announcement and check out the features and changes page for further information.
Webconverger 35.1
The Webconverger project has released a new version of its Debian-based web kiosk distribution. The new release, Webconverger 35.1, features better hardware support (courtesy of the Linux 4.5 kernel), Firefox 46 and various security updates. This release also introduces a commercial aspect: "From yesterday, configuring a device requires payment authorization. The new Stripe based billing system should make it painless for new subscribers who have just one or two machines to purchase a subscription. If you do encounter a problem, please email support. The trial is 30 days and the initial price is $9.99USD a month. Our pricing is flexible and for large deployments and for the likes of non-profits and charities, we ask you please to get in contact with sales@webconverger.com. We are hoping this new revenue stream will give us the resources to tackle our issue list, improve the Raspberry PI & Android versions and grow." The Webconverger software is still free to download and try. Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Calculate Linux 15.17
The Calculate Linux project has announced a new version of their Gentoo-based distribution. The new release, Calculate Linux 15.17, features the KDE Plasma 5 desktop, faster compression via XZ and the default Python version is 3.4. "We are happy to announce the release of Calculate Linux 15.17. Calculate Linux Desktop, featuring either the KDE (CLD), the MATE (CLDM) or the Xfce (CLDX) environment, Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS), Calculate Directory Server (CDS), Calculate Scratch Server (CSS), Calculate Media Center (CMC) are all available for download. Main changes: Calculate Linux Desktop was updated to KDE 5. Testing and stable updates now coming separately and labelled as such. Multiple instances, built with different USE flags, are available in a special repository (binpkg-multi-instance). The main Git mirror migrated to Github. Faster XZ compression on multi-core processors. The XZ algorithm will be used from now on for initramfs, the kernel and its modules. File moving and renaming issues fixed for OverlayFS. Defaulting to Python 3.4. More efficient mirror selection for updates..." Additional details and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
|
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
|
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| Opinion Poll |
Self-hosted services
These days more and more people are becoming concerned about their privacy and the implications of large companies having access to their digital information. As a result, some people like to self-host many of the on-line services they find useful.
Projects such as ownCloud make it fairly easy to set up synchronized storage at home, and there are many solutions for running e-mail services, backup storage and websites from home.
This week we would like to find out how many of our readers self-host some or all of their on-line services. Please leave us a comment describing your self-maintained services.
You can see the results of our previous poll on Alpha/Beta testing here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
|
Self-hosted services
| I do not host any of my own on-line services: | 541 (59%) |
| I host one on-line service: | 121 (13%) |
| I host a few services: | 182 (20%) |
| I host all of my own on-line/cloud services: | 70 (8%) |
|
|
| DistroWatch.com News |
Quick access to common searches
We often receive e-mails from people who are trying to find a distribution with a specific set of characteristics. Visitors to our website are frequently looking for beginner friendly distributions, projects which support UEFI or Linux distributions that do not use systemd. To make it easier to find the appropriate projects we have added a box to the top of our Search page. This box contains quick links to commonly searched for features. Clicking a link will take visitors to the appropriate search results without the requirement of filling out a search form. We hope this will speed up the process of performing common searches and make it easier for visitors to find what they need.
Distributions added to the database
Bluestar Linux
Bluestar Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution that is based on Arch Linux. The Bluestar distribution features up to date packages, a full range of desktop and multimedia software in the default installation and a live desktop DVD.
Bluestar Linux 4.5.1 -- Running KDE's Plasma desktop
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
* * * * *
Distributions added to waiting list
- Budgie-Remix. Budgie-Remix is a distribution which combines the Budgie desktop environment (produced by the Solus project) with the base packages from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
- Nelum-Dev1. Nelum-Dev1 offers users a live disc with a desktop environment which is based on the Devuan distribution.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 30 May 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)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
|
|
| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
|
| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
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.
Number of Comments: 44
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
| | |
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Archives |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
| Random Distribution | 
Momonga Linux
Momonga Linux was a Japanese Linux distribution developed in a bazaar-style model by its developer community. The distribution's main features include secure default settings, strong support and usage of Ruby, easy handling and processing of electronic documents, packages for scientific and technical computations, an easily configurable installer, support for a large number of file systems, and selection of newest packages at the time of installation.
Status: Discontinued
|
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
