 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 673, 8 August 2016 |
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Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It can be fun to run a Linux distribution that few people have heard about, let alone installed - at the risk of encountering critical problems while trying out these less-tested development projects. This was the case last week when we attempted to test a distribution called noop linux. Although the installation went fine, the subsequent boot process did not, which halted the attempted evaluation of this Linux-based operating system. Luckily, we had much more success with the next project. EasyNAS, as the name suggests, is a specialist solution catering for Network-Attached Storage (NAS) needs, with an excellent web-based administration interface and a plethora of useful features. Read the Review section below to find out how EasyNAS fared in our test. In the news section, Debian announces a switch to GnuPG's "modern" edition, FreeBSD delays the 11.0 release due to a ZFS and VFS-related bug, Linux Mint prepared to complete its version 18 release process with the upcoming "KDE" edition, and Fedora developers report from the exciting "Flock" conference in Poland. Also in this issue, an extensive Tips and Tricks section covering a variety of subjects from using the "nice" command, recovering a frozen shell session, and evaluating the init system of a Linux installation. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (38MB) and MP3 (55MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Trying two new distributions
I recently decided to do something different and, instead of reviewing one of the distributions in the DistroWatch database, I opted to select two projects at random from the waiting list. I was not sure what I would get when I spun the virtual roulette wheel, but I was eager to try something new.
noop linux 20160308
The first distribution to be selected was noop linux. I suspect the developer named their distribution after the "no operation" (nop or no-op) Assembly command, an instruction which is designed to, in effect, do nothing. However, I prefer to read "noop" as rhyming with "soup". Naming aside, the noop distribution is a hybrid source and binary distribution with a custom package manager. The project's website describes noop as follows:
noop's packages manager and build system are all contained in the shell script 'pkgr'. Packages may be installed from pre-built packages, or with 'bldj' packages (from file, or git) that compile it from source.
The project does not feature much documentation, but there is a brief installation guide and a page which shows us how to use the pkgr command line package manager. The noop distribution is available in four editions: Core, Enlightenment, MATE and Xfce. I decided to try the MATE edition which is available as a 1.6 GB download.
Booting from the live media brought up the MATE 1.10.0 desktop environment. MATE is arranged with a panel at the top of the screen which features the desktop's Applications, Places and System menus. Over on the right side of the panel we find the system tray. At the bottom of the screen there is a second panel which features a list of open windows. The Applications and System menus mostly feature common tools, such as a text editor, system monitor, partition editor and configuration applications for adjusting the look and behaviour of the MATE desktop. I did not find any system installer in the live environment and turned to the noop wiki page on installing the distribution for help.
The first thing we need to do when installing noop is create a partition (and optionally swap space) for the distribution. I tried to launch the GParted partition manager from the distribution's application menu, but was told the application needed to be run as the root user. I then tried launching GParted from the command line (as the root user), but GParted immediately crashed with a segfault. This leaves us with two command line partition managers, fdisk and cfdisk, both of which work well. We can then use the command line programs mkfs and mkswap to format our root partition and initialize swap space. Next, the wiki instructs us to mount our new root partition and run the /root/instlr shell script.
The instlr script asks if we want to install packages from the local live media or over the Internet. I decided to install from local media as it seemed likely to be faster. The system then shows us the name of each package as it is installed. This went on for nearly an hour, with occasional "cannot stat file" errors being thrown by the copy command.
Once the last package has been copied to our hard drive, we are asked to create a password for the root account. We can then run a command to install the GRUB boot loader. The final step gets us to edit noop's /etc/fstab file to make sure the correct mount points are assigned to our partitions. In my case I found the swap and root partitions were reversed in the fstab file and I had to correct them. I then rebooted the computer to start exploring my new copy of noop.
Here is where my trial came to a sudden halt. When booting, immediately after the GRUB menu, the system reported it could not boot as it had encountered an "unknown file system". At first it looked as though GRUB had been misconfigured as the boot loader was trying to access my swap space as the root partition. Booting from the noop live disc, I was able to correct the GRUB configuration and reboot. Once again, despite having the proper location of my root partition, the system still reported it had run into an unknown file system and failed to boot.
While noop looked interesting and has a pleasantly minimal feel to it, I was unable to get the distribution working. Hopefully future releases will offer a more robust experience and additional documentation. For those who are interested in trying noop, it is worth noting the live user's password and the root password are both "noop". This will be useful when it comes time to run a partition manager or the system's installation script.
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EasyNAS 0.6.2
 The second distribution to be selected was EasyNAS. The EasyNAS distribution provides a network attached storage platform which is based on openSUSE's Leap edition. EasyNAS makes use of Btrfs, an advanced file system, to provide flexible storage volumes and file recovery. The project's website summarizes EasyNAS as follows:
EasyNAS advanced features include: file system compression, snapshots, copy on write, online increase/decrease file system, online balancing data between hard drives, online file system check. It also supports file sharing across multiple operating systems through the following protocols: CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, HTTP, SCP, DLNA, TFTP.
The installation media for EasyNAS is 556MB in size. Booting from the disc brings up a menu asking if we wish to boot from the local hard disk or launch the project's system installer. Taking the install option brings up a text screen where we are asked for permission to wipe the computer's hard drive and install the distribution. The response defaults to "Yes", so it pays to be careful when navigating the menu. The system installer requires no further information from us, it wipes our primary drive, copies its packages to our disk and reboots the computer.
Our new copy of EasyNAS boots to a text console where the NAS's IP address is displayed at the top of the screen. The network port of the NAS's web interface is also displayed. We are automatically logged in as the administrator and, instead of a command line, we are shown a menu. This menu provides us with options which allow us to set the NAS's IP address, change the admin password or reset the system to its defaults. Additional menu options give us the ability to shutdown the NAS, reboot or access a command line shell.
The IP address menu option gets us to set a new static network address, provide a netmask, gateway and DNS servers. The password reset option works, but the confirmation (or error) message that appears after we choose a new password is displayed and erased too quickly for me to read it. The other menu options work as expected.
EasyNAS 0.6.2 - changing the NAS's network settings
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While we can perform these configuration changes and access a command line through the NAS's local console, most work will be done remotely - most likely through EasyNAS's web interface. EasyNAS accepts both HTTP and HTTPS connections on network ports 1080 and 1443 respectively. Pointing a web browser to our NAS's IP address first brings up a login screen where we can sign in as the user "admin" using the password we set on the console.
EasyNAS's web interface is divided into two main sections. On the left we find a list of pages we can access, with the pages arranged into categories of settings. On the right side of the page we see the specific controls and settings we can manipulate. What follows is a quick overview of the settings pages and the controls available.
The first group of pages fall under the System category which deal with the NAS, its resources and network connection. Here we find the System Information page which displays information about our CPU, available memory and our kernel version. We also find the General Setting page where we can set our NAS's hostname, configure which network ports to use, change the date & time and upload a security certificate. This page also provides a method for filtering which computers can access EasyNAS's control panel. The System category further includes a Resource Monitor where we can watch our NAS's CPU usage, memory consumption and the number of clients currently connected.
The System category has a few more pages of interest. The Power Management page handles shutting down or rebooting the NAS. The Firmware page allows us to check for newer versions of EasyNAS. Finally, the Scheduler page gives us the chance to perform key tasks at certain times. Tasks we can schedule include creating file system snapshots, running rsync to backup files and performing scrubs of the Btrfs volumes attached to our NAS.
The second group of controls deals with storage - disks, file systems and Btrfs volumes. The first page in the Storage group is the Disk Manager. Here we can see what disks are attached to our NAS, test the disks for problems and set a disk to offer read-only access. Next up is the File System Manager page. Here we can create new file systems on our disks, enable data compression and enable RAID for multi-disk configurations. We can also add a physical disk to a file system. I'll come back to the organization of disks, file systems and volumes later.
Also in the Storage group we find the Volume Manager page where we can manage file system snapshots, change the owner of a storage volume and change file system permissions. The last page in the Storage group is called Sync Volumes. This page gives us the option of using the rsync command to backup our data to a remote server.
The next group, called Users/Groups, has just two pages, one for managing user accounts and the other for managing groups of users. Primarily this category is used for simply creating new user accounts.
EasyNAS 0.6.2 - working with user accounts
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The next category, File Sharing, gives us the option of enabling network access to our NAS. EasyNAS supports working with OpenSSH, Samba, NFS, FTP, Web, AFP and Radius access. Looking through these services, the only one I found running by default was OpenSSH. The secure shell server allows us to login and access a command line shell. If we login as the administrator we are shown the same configuration menu we see on the local console. Each network service can be toggled on/off with a mouse click.
Now that we have covered what EasyNAS offers us on the surface, I would like to explore some characteristics of the operating system and my experiences with setting up and accessing storage. I would like to acknowledge up front that EasyNAS requires very few resources. The distribution used about 50MB of RAM when running a network share and the web interface. The operating system itself requires a mere 800MB of disk space, though our EasyNAS installation does lay claim to the entire main disk. So far as I could tell, there is no way to place both a data partition and the operating system on one physical disk.
EasyNAS treats file systems and volumes a little differently than other NAS platforms I have used and I want to explore the distribution's concepts of volumes, file systems and disks. When we add a physical storage disk to our computer, EasyNAS automatically detects the disk and will display it on the Disk Manager page. Through the Disk Manager page we can test the disk for defects, but there isn't much else we can do with the new storage space at first. We need to format the disk with a file system before we can use the new storage space.
After a disk has been added to our computer and tested for defects, we proceed to the File System Manager page. From here we can format our new disk. Once the disk is formatted, we still cannot do much with it. To create snapshots, grant remote access or perform backups, we need to add the new file system to a volume. This sends us to the Volume Manager page where we create a new volume and add our newly created file system to the volume. Each volume is owned by a user and, for security (and convenience) most of us will want to have our files owned by a non-admin user. This sends us over to the Users Manager page to create a new account before creating our first volume.
If this process sounds complicated it is probably because I am accustomed to working with ZFS volumes which generally have two components (physical disks and the whole storage pool). With ZFS I add a disk to the machine, place the disk into a storage pool and then work out permissions and sub-volumes later as need arises. EasyNAS seems to work better if we organize storage as if we were working with LVM which has three layers (physical disks, file systems and logical storage volumes). EasyNAS with its additional layer seems (to me) to require more steps to set up, but encourages us in the process to plan ahead. With EasyNAS I found myself planning from the top down, rather than simply throwing additional disks into my storage pool on a whim.
While using EasyNAS I found the controls worked well. I do not think I ran into any errors during my trial. Each page has a Help button which offers a little guidance on how things work. I would like to see the Help section expanded a bit to explain how EasyNAS organizes its services, but for now the essentials are available in the documentation.
I did run into a few quirks, though I hesitate to call them bugs exactly. For example, EasyNAS takes an unusually long time to shutdown. The system will turn off cleanly, but it took about a minute during my trail, quite a bit longer than Linux distributions usually require. The web interface tended to be a bit slow to respond compared to other web-based administrative panels I have used. To its credit, the web interface worked and it never locked up or otherwise caused problems. Another quirk I noticed was the System Information page always showed my storage disks as full, even when both my system disk and data disks were nearly empty.
As I mentioned above, EasyNAS runs a secure shell server by default. This is definitely nice to have when setting up a NAS which will be accessed remotely. The one issue I had with connecting to EasyNAS over secure shell was that, when logged in as the admin user, there was no normal way of ending the session. Dropping to a shell from the admin menu and typing "exit" or pressing CTRL-D would simply return me to the menu. I had to either close the terminal window or use the "~." OpenSSH short-cut to drop the connection.
One quirk of EasyNAS I ran into was that I could set up Samba shares and Web (HTTP) shares. But files uploaded to the Samba share were not visible over Web connections. The names of the Web and Samba folders are the same, but they access files in different locations. I found this a bit frustrating as I was hoping to upload files over Samba and share them with people over a Web connection, but this requires some extra work through the command line.
I was pleased to find that manually creating volume snapshots worked flawlessly. I also found scheduled snapshots worked as expected. This gives us an extra (usually read-only) copy of our data in case something is accidentally deleted. While creating snapshots is quite easy through the EasyNAS interface, I found accessing snapshots was a bit more tricky. It is possible to manually create network shares to access snapshots. I also found it possible to access snapshots through the command line. However, the web-based admin panel appears not to have a method for browsing or restoring snapshots. Hopefully this feature will be added in a future release.
EasyNAS 0.6.2 - managing volumes and snapshots
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Conclusions
EasyNAS appears to be a young project and I feel that it deserves to be treated as a promising work in progress. While EasyNAS does not yet have the features and polish that other NAS technologies (such as FreeNAS) have, the developers are off to a good start.
EasyNAS is, as the name suggests, easy to set up. The basic features of setting up file systems, creating snapshots and enabling services are all there. I found EasyNAS made it pleasantly straight forward to schedule snapshots, enable Samba shares, and check on the system's status. The rough edges I encountered tended to be in the areas of documentation and more advanced feature such as restoring files from a snapshot and sharing files between multiple services. EasyNAS certainly makes good use of Btrfs and is one of the few distributions to really leverage the power of Btrfs in a user-friendly way.
I think EasyNAS is off to a good start. There are a few, rare rough edges, but this is a promising project and will likely soon be challenging other NAS distributions in homes and small businesses. Since writing this review I have added the distribution to our database.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8 GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500 GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6 GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
Debian sets up onion sites and announces GnuPG change, FreeBSD delays 11.0, Mint prepares to launch "KDE" edition, Fedora "Flock" reports
 The Debian project is working with the Tor privacy network to set up anonymous access to Debian's infrastructure: "We, the Debian project and the Tor project, are enabling Tor onion services for several of our sites. These sites can now be reached without leaving the Tor network, providing a new option for securely connecting to resources provided by Debian and Tor. The freedom to use open source software may be compromised when access to that software is monitored, logged, limited, prevented, or prohibited. As a community, we acknowledge that users should not feel that their every action is trackable or observable by others. Consequently, we are pleased to announce that we have started making several of the various web services provided by both Debian and Tor available via onion services." A list of Debian services available through the Tor network and how to access them can be found in the announcement.
Still in the Debian land, the distribution has announced an upcoming change in the way it handles the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) package, notably a switch to GnuPG's "modern" branch (currently version 2.1.x). Although the transformation will be transparent to most of us, active GnuPG users as well as developers creating Debian packages that depend on GnuPG will have to pay attention as the switch might affect them: "If you're an end user and you don't use GnuPG directly, you shouldn't notice much of a change once the packages start to move through the rest of the archive. Even if you do use GnuPG regularly, you shouldn't notice too much of a difference. One of the main differences is that all access to your secret key will be handled through gpg-agent, which should be automatically launched as needed. This means that operations like signing and decryption will cause gpg-agent to prompt the user to unlock any locked keys directly, rather than gpg itself prompting the user." See this blog post by Daniel Kahn Gillmor explaining the differences between the three GnuPG branches and also providing a list of features of the "modern" GnuPG.
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 One of the most eagerly anticipated releases of this year will undoubtedly be that of FreeBSD 11.0. The ambitious list of new features includes major architectural changes and tool chain updates with Clang 3.8.0, as well far-reaching networking and vitualisation improvements, among many others. But as with any large-scale community projects, the developers are bound to code in a few bugs from time to time which might delay the final release. Such was the case last week when an unscheduled BETA4 build has pushed the final release back by one week - to 9 September 2016: "As those of you tracking our PR system are probably aware, re@ is aware of an issue related to ZFS and VFS that we feel is urgent enough to have fixed for 11.0-RELEASE. As such, instead of branching releng/11.0 today and starting 11.0-RC1 builds, BETA4 will be added to the 11.0 release schedule, since the level of possible intrusiveness would be extremely difficult to fix with an errata notice after 11.0-RELEASE." Chances are this won't be the only show-stopper bug and further delays cannot be excluded.
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 The generally well-received Linux Mint 18 release, based on the Ubuntu 16.04 with all the benefits of the distribution's long-term security support, is about to complete the release plan with the upcoming Linux Mint 18 "KDE" edition. While the wait will soon be over for the fans of the popular heavy-weight desktop, they might find the new version almost unrecognisable compared to the previous releases. Clement Lefebvre explains in the latest issue of Mint Monthly News: "Unlike other Linux Mint editions, the KDE edition will ship with the SDDM display manager. Bad news for the nostalgic, the KDE edition will also abandon its distinctive blue Linux Mint icon and adopt the same green icon and boot sequence as other editions." Although there is no mention of the KDE version being shipped with Linux Mint 18, chances are it will be the same as in Kubuntu 16.04, i.e. KDE Plasma 5. This will, of course, dwarf any other changes in the edition, as KDE Plasma is still considered too buggy and incomplete by many. Nevertheless, Mint's "KDE" flavour might turn out to be the most interesting of the bunch, especially if the project's usually excellent quality assurance is applied to this edition in the same manner as in its "MATE" and "Cinnamon" variants.
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 The annual gathering of Fedora developers known as Flock to Fedora took place last week in the beautiful city of Kraków, Poland. As expected, the Fedora Planet blogs have been dominated by the reports and photos from the event. A good example of the day's activities at the conference is this blog post by Natalie Ardasevova: "The first session of the day delivered for me the most interesting and alarming idea. The speaker was Radoslaw Krowiak, the co-owner of Akademia Programowania in Kraków. He's been involved in teaching kids programming since 2013. The age of his students is 5 years and higher. He noted that skills like communication, commercial awareness, ability to work in a team, or problem solving, are among the top ten skills missing in college graduates. He went on to say that math, engineering, and the sciences in general have a reputation of being boring, 'too hard,' and 'not cool.' The fact that these subjects are not taught in creative environments is not helping either. Furthermore, the sciences are often taught in isolation from each other, not to mention their isolation from the arts." The article goes on to cover a wide variety of Fedora-related topics discussed at the conference.
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
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Play nicely, drop secure shell sessions cleanly, check init's name
In the past we have talked about changing the priorities of programs running on Linux distributions by using the nice and renice commands. The nice and renice programs are typically used to reduce the scheduling priority of an application. When a program's priority is reduced, it stays out of the way and avoids impacting the performance of other applications we are running.
The nice command tends to be used when we want to run a task in the background. Any task that does not need to be completed in a hurry and which (ideally) will not impact the system's performance can be run using nice. As an example, I run system updates and backup files at scheduled times and use nice to avoid impacting the performance of my desktop applications. In the following example, the nice command is used when launching a backup script to avoid impacting desktop performance.
nice -n 19 my-backup-script
The nice command can change a process's priority from anywhere in the range of -20 to 19. A high nice value makes the process less greedy (nicer) and reduces its impact on the system. A lower nice value makes the program more greedy and increases its impact on system performance. Regular users can set a nice value in the range of 0 (zero) to 19, with most processes running at zero by default. The root user can lower the niceness value to negative numbers, making programs increasingly aggressive.
Sometimes we want to reduce the impact of a program after we have launched it. For those situations there is the renice command. Let's say I have decided to perform a big clean-up of my Thunderbird mailbox and the e-mail client will be working for a long time, archiving old e-mails. To prevent Thunderbird from slowing down my system, I can run:
renice -n 19 $(pgrep thunderbird)
The above command searches for processes named thunderbird and assigns them a nice value of 19. The 19 value prevents Thunderbird from working unless the system is otherwise idle.
There are days when a process on my computer starts taking up more resource than it should and impacting performance. When this happens, and I do not know which process to blame, I will run the top system monitor. This will show a list of running programs with the ones using the most CPU resources at the top of the list. While running top we can press the "r" key to renice any process. By default, top renices the process using the most CPU resources, but we can specify any process we like. I often find myself running top, seeing a greedy process and pressing the "r" key to assign it a lower priority.
Also on the topic of keeping processes out of the way, have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted all the programs you ran to be kept out of the way? Perhaps while sharing a server with other users at school, or a laptop at home where you were logged in at the same time as someone else? It can be a hassle to prefix every command with "nice". We do not want to type "nice apt-get update", "nice apt-get upgrade", "nice my-backup-script"... that would get tedious.
I have good news, the nice value of a program is passed along to any child processes. For example, if your command line shell has a nice value of 10, then every program you run from the shell will also have a niceness of 10. This means if we assign our running shell a high nice value, every command we run will have a reduced impact on the operating system. A quick way to assign our Bash shell a nice value is to refer to the shell using the "$$" identifier. The following command assigns the nice value 15 to our running Bash shell and any program we run afterwards:
renice -n 15 $$
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Moving away from process priorities for a moment, have you ever been logged into a remote computer using secure shell and found the connection had broken, but your session had not disconnected? Perhaps the remote server locked up or your session froze. Whatever the cause, now your terminal is stuck in a non-responsive secure shell session. Often times it seems the only thing you can do is force the virtual terminal to close, killing your secure shell session and losing any shell history in the process.
Alternatively, if you are using OpenSSH (as most of us do), there is a quick shortcut you can use to drop the frozen session and return you to your local shell. The key combination is "~." at the start of a line. Or "Enter ~." if you have started typing already on the current line. The ~ symbol is made by pressing the Shift key and the ` key. So it might be easier to think of the short-cut as:
Enter Shift ` .
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Some readers have asked if there is a quick and easy way to tell if their distribution runs systemd or another implementation of init. This can be difficult to tell at a glance as the distribution's package list may contain pieces of multiple init technologies installed on the same operating system. One way to tell if systemd is running as init is to perform the following on the command line:
cat /proc/1/comm
The systemd software will cause the above command to output "systemd" while other init technologies will usually display "init". To figure out which specific implementation displayed "init" following the above command, we can run:
man init
This will bring up the manual page for the version of init installed on your system, usually with the implementation's name displayed at the top of the page.
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Additional Tips and Tricks articles can be found in our archive.
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| Released Last Week |
ROSA R8
ROSA R8 has been released. ROSA is a Russian Linux company, previously cooperating with Mandriva and now building various Linux solutions for individual users and enterprises alike. Unlike the previous versions of ROSA, this one is delivered in four separate variants featuring, the GNOME 3.16, KDE 4.14, KDE Plasma 5.7 and MATE 1.12 desktop environments: "ROSA Desktop Fresh R8 is a distribution for enthusiasts in a constantly changing Linux world. It's the last release based on the ROSA 2014.1 platform. R8 is a stable release with two years of extended support (security updates will be provided until the third quarter of 2018). ROSA Desktop Fresh R8 features four desktop environments: KDE 4 - stable, recommended for home users; GNOME 3 - simple and easy to use; Plasma 5 - a new version of KDE, recommended only for Linux enthusiasts because it's not as stable as KDE 4; MATE - fast and lightweight for older hardware." The release announcement is provided in Russian only, but the project's English language Wiki pages have an brief overview as well as detailed release notes with a changelog.
Linux Mint 18 "Xfce"
Clement Lefebvre has announced the availability of Linux Mint 18 "Xfce" edition. Linux Mint 18 is a long term support release which will receive security updates through to the year 2021. The Xfce edition is a lightweight alternative to Linux Mint's Cinnamon and MATE editions. The new release offers users access to Mint's X-Apps, forks of GNOME applications which are designed to look and work the same across multiple desktop environments. The new version of Mint also features improvements to the update manager: "Linux Mint no longer ships lists of fixes and lists of regressions specific to particular kernels. With so many kernel revisions, so many fixes and so many regressions happening sometimes on a daily basis, this information was quickly outdated. Instead, it was replaced with links to relevant sources of information. For instance, if you select a particular kernel you can now quickly access its changelog and see all the bug reports marked against it. The update manager was already configurable but it wasn't clear how to configure it, and why. In particular, the concepts of regressions, stability and security weren't clearly explained. To raise awareness around these concepts and to show more information, a new screen is there to welcome you to the update manager and to ask you to select an update policy." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and release notes.
Linux Mint 18 - running the Xfce desktop
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Tails 2.5
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Linux distribution which is designed to route Internet traffic through the Tor network. The Tails distribution also provides users with a number of privacy tools which help to secure files and strip meta data from documents. the latest version of the distribution, Tails 2.5, ships with Tor Browser 6.0.3, and the Icedove e-mail client (version 45.1). "The automatic account configuration of Icedove used to freeze when connecting to some email providers. In some cases sending an email with Icedove used to result in the error: "The message could not be sent using Outgoing server (SMTP) mail.riseup.net for an unknown reason." A spurious error message used to sometimes appear when creating an account in Icedove and providing its password. Fix some time synchronization problems, by replacing obsolete and unreliable servers, and decreasing a timeout. KVM virtual machines with QXL video: vastly improve graphics performance and fix visual artifacts in Tor Browser." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement.
DragonFly BSD 4.6.0
The DragonFly BSD project, a former fork of FreeBSD which is now independently developed, has released a new version: DragonFlyBSD 4.6.0. this new release offers a series of incremental updates, including improved accelerated video, better SMP performance and enhanced networking performance under heavy loads. "DragonFly version 4.6 brings more updates to accelerated video for both i915 and Radeon users, home-grown support for NVMe controllers, preliminary EFI support, improvements in SMP and networking performance under heavy load, and a full range of binary packages." This release of DragonFly BSD also features over 24,000 third-party ports and introduces EFI support for 64-bit x86 hardware. The release notes offer a complete list of improvements and changes since the previous stable release of DragonFly BSD 4.4.
Guix System Distribution 0.11.0
Ludovic Courtes has announced the launch of version 0.11.0 of the Guix System Distribution (GuixSD). The distribution is based on the Linux-libre kernel and uses the Guix software manager. The new release features a number of new support services and over 480 new packages. "It is a pleasure to announce the new beta release of GNU Guix and GuixSD, version 0.11.0! The release comes with USB installation images to install the standalone GuixSD, and with tarballs to install the package manager on top of your GNU/Linux distro, either from source or from binaries. It's been four months since the previous release, during which 70 people contributed code and packages. The highlights include: New GuixSD system services, including an mcron service, a Dropbear SSH service, and a Dico dictionary service. Infrastructure for whole-system tests. Compression support for guix publish. An Emacs mode to browse package definition locations. GuixSD support for RAID devices. 484 new packages, 678 package updates notably glibc 2.23 and linux-libre 4.7, as well as several bit-reproducibility issues fixed Assorted improvements to all the tool set, many bug fixes and improvements to the manual!" The release announcement has more information.
Ubuntu 14.04.5
Adam Conrad has announced the release of Ubuntu 14.04.5, code-named "Trusty Tahr", the fifth maintenance update of the distribution's long-term support version originally released in April 2014 and supported with security updates until April 2019: "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, Cloud and Core products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support. As usual, this point release includes many updates, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation." Here is the full release announcement.
Wifislax 4.12
Wifislax is a specialist a Slackware-based Linux distribution with a set of tools and utilities for performing wireless connection analyses and related security tests. The brand-new version 4.12, the first stable release in 12 months and based on the recently-released Slackware Linux 14.2, comes with numerous improvements and new tools. It continues the tradition of offering a choice of two kernels (a standard i486 kernel as well as one with support for symmetric multiprocessing systems). As was the case with previous Wifislax releases, this version also offers two desktops - Xfce 4.12 and KDE 4.14.3. There has been a change in web browsing software where Firefox replaces Chrome, as the latter no longer supports 32-bit processors. Several new software packages, such as Python 3, Qt 5 and Java, are now included on the live DVD. The distribution ships with Linux kernel 4.4.16, currently the highest version among the kernels with long-term support. Much more information is available in the Spanish-only release announcement.
blackPanther OS 16.1
Károly Barcza has announced the release of blackPanther OS 16.1, a major new version of the project's distribution originally forked from Mandriva Linux, but which is now under independent development. This new release is the project's first that uses the KDE Plasma 5 desktop: "blackPanther OS release 16.1 (Silent Killer) is out. It was just a year ago that I was able to announce release 14.1 and now I m happy to do the same again. After months of hard work, version 16.1 (Silent Killer) of blackPanther OS has been released. In keeping with tradition and due to a good number of optimisations, we are still able to fit it on a 700 MB CD-R(W) (you need to enable overburn before writing the ISO image to the disc). Several major components: Linux kernel 4.7.0; Qt 5.6.1; Plasma 5.7.1 + components; Python 3.5.1; Calamares installer." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and a good number of screenshots together with a screencast presenting the distribution's latest version.
Apricity OS 07.2016
Alex Gajewski has announced the release of Apricity OS 07.2016, the first stable build of the project's Arch Linux-based distribution offering a choice of GNOME and Cinnamon desktops: "The Apricity OS team is incredibly happy to announce the release of Apricity OS 07.2016 'Aspen', the first-ever stable release of Apricity OS. Apricity OS 07.2016 Dev, another monthly development snapshot, is also released. Many changes have been implemented since the last release, most notable of which is certainly Apricity Freezedry, a system configuration tool that has been integrated into the development build system for Apricity OS. With a simple TOML configuration file, many aspects of a system may be configured, including GNOME and Cinnamon themes and settings, installed packages, enabled systemd services, and enabled Vim plugins (installed through Pathogen). Freezedry is built with modules, each in charge of controlling a specific aspect of a user's system. Other changes to the OS include LUKS encryption support...." Here is the brief release announcement.
Apricity OS 07.2016 - running the GNOME 3.20 desktop
(full image size: 1,502kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Distributions added to waiting list
- Thorn Linux. Thorn Linux is a Debian-based distribution with tools for penetration testing and with an additional focus on being a daily-driver with anonymity features.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 15 August 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)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • KDE (by erinis on 2016-08-08 08:17:51 GMT from Europe)
Nooooooo please keep the blue KDE gear logo blue Clem. Times change but this is not a ripe time considering the converts from windows 10 who may have dabbled a bit in the past. Thanks
2 • Great tips (by Andrew on 2016-08-08 09:06:59 GMT from North America)
Really liked the tips on nice and renice this week.
3 • ~ (by a on 2016-08-08 09:10:05 GMT from Europe)
You can type ~ by pressing ALT and k.
4 • Weekly updates (by Andy Mender on 2016-08-08 09:19:43 GMT from Europe)
It's nice to see things coming along. I'm already testing FreeBSD 11.0-BETA4 since it was released. Cannot wait to get my hands on RC and -RELEASE. Obviously, things will not change majorly, but I'm already happy that Haswell graphics support is there.
5 • How to get ~ (by SuperOscar on 2016-08-08 09:23:40 GMT from Europe)
You shouldn’t assume too much on how to get different characters on the keyboard since the keystrokes are of course layout-dependent. On the Finnish keyboard, ~ is quite tricky to get: first you press AltGr and the [~ " ^] key (those three characters on top of each other), then the spacebar because the [~ " ^] is a dead key.
6 • noop seems to be an accurate description (by curious on 2016-08-08 10:07:08 GMT from Europe)
So this distro fails to install and - after the installation was corrected manually - fails to boot: No operation.
But what is the idea or misssion behind this distro? Someone apparently wrote a shell script that works(?) as yet another package manager (there are more than 20 - that definitely do work - described on the "Package Management" page alone). Why is that needed and what are its claimed advantages (besides the inherent slowness of such a script)?
7 • noop (by Joe P on 2016-08-08 11:12:43 GMT from North America)
My first thought was that noop might be the default ioscheduler on that distro.
8 • Mint KDE (by Grzegorz W on 2016-08-08 13:03:52 GMT from North America)
@1 - New KDE semem to be abandoning Blue in charge of more colorfull theme or in some cases to more violet-like, so maybe color KDE Mint logo in violet ;).
More serious - Plasma shipped with ubuntu 16.04 is too buggy and feature-less. I tried newer version shipped by KDE Neon project (5.7) and it is MUCH BETTER. E.g. session management (restoring apps to thier state after re-start) finally start more-less working, there is Weather plasmoid added, and many more other fixes and improvements important for desktop and present in old-good KDE4.
I dream KDE Mint would ship with this newer Plasma or at least consider upgrading to Plasma 5.7 or newer with 18.1. Of course I know this may be diffucult as Mint shares repositories with Ubuntu with I doubt will upgrade KDE in its LTS branch.
9 • noop (by Jordan on 2016-08-08 13:10:20 GMT from North America)
So we have a prank distro in the archives. Cool.
No poll this week. Durn it.
10 • Opinion Poll (by Jesse on 2016-08-08 13:25:47 GMT from North America)
Hi all. The reason there is no poll and no torrents this week is I was really sick the past couple of days. Didn't have the time/energy to add those features. They will be back next week assuming all goes well. In the mean time, feel free to send me poll ideas. They often come from reader suggestions.
11 • 'man init' alternative or additional command (by Pearson on 2016-08-08 13:45:20 GMT from North America)
In case the "man init" command isn't obvious about which init system, most package mangers provide a "whatprovides" type command. So, on my RHEL6 computer, I can use the following commands:
$ cat /proc/1/comm
init
$ type init
init is /sbin/init
$ rpmquery --whatprovides /sbin/init
upstart-0.6.5-16.el6.x86_64
This show that RHEL6 uses the upstart package to supply init. Of course, "man init' also shows
init(8) init(8)
NAME
init - Upstart process management daemon
12 • @11 (by simple on 2016-08-08 14:32:33 GMT from Europe)
Rhel6 is not a very interesting distro for us normal users, correct?
13 • @ 10 Get well! (by Alex on 2016-08-08 14:36:16 GMT from Europe)
Get well, Jessie!
Regarding opinion polls and reviews, how about doing a poll of Devuan based distros and a review of the few Devuan based live installable distros, available at the moment in the internet? True, Devuan is still beta, but it would be interesting.
14 • ionice is nice too; Get will soon (by A guy has no name on 2016-08-08 15:09:53 GMT from North America)
For processes more limited by disk I/O than processor, ionice and iotop can be useful tools.
15 • @12 re: RHEL6 (by Pearson on 2016-08-08 15:42:48 GMT from North America)
I suspect there are at least a few who find REHL6 relevant, sine it's still well supported by Red Hat (ergo its derivatives like CentOS) and still used in corporate environments.
However, the relevance of RHEL6 wasn't my point. I was just giving an example of how to use the package manager to find which package provides the init executable, and RHEL6 happens to be what I'm using at work. I'm sure that apt, zypper(?), pacman, and others have a similar capability.
16 • noop (by OhioJoe on 2016-08-08 21:51:08 GMT from North America)
I decided to try the Noop Xfce edition, hoping for better results. The GParted partition manager did not work there either. I was also unable to use fdisc. Following the directions on the wiki, I made and formatted a partition, but when attempting to mount the partition was told there was no partition found. I was also unable to get the distribution working.
Wishing them luck.
17 • @3 @5 Tilde and Backquote on Italian Keyboard (by Alessandro di Roma on 2016-08-09 07:12:10 GMT from Europe)
For instance on my Italian Keyboard I can get "`" (Backquote) by hitting AltGr + "'" (Single Quote), and "~" (Tilde) by hitting AltGr + "ì" (Stressed "i"). By the way, this works on Linux but not on Windows.
If somebody cares (Danish/German/Icelandic/Polish/Spanish people with Italian Keyboard?!) by AltGr (with or without Shift) I can get all the following characters:
¦ ¡ ˝ ~ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞ ™ ± ˛ ¿ ^
¬ ¹ ² ³ ¼ ½ ¬ { [ ] } ` ~
Ω Ł ¢ ® Ŧ ¥ ↑ ı Ø Þ { }
@ ł € ¶ ŧ ← ↓ → ø þ [ ]
Æ § Ð ª Ŋ Ħ Ł ¸ ° ˘
æ ß ð đ ŋ ħ ł @ # `
© ‘ ’ Ñ º × ¨ ÷ »
« » ¢ “ ” ñ µ ´ · ¯ «
18 • Well? Well what? (by Europe)
How much would I have to donate in order for OpenBSD to release an official LiveCD?
19 • @18 OpenBSD (by imnotrich on 2016-08-09 07:25:28 GMT from North America)
Um, does OpenBSD even support CD-ROMs? I thought BSD was still using floppies.
20 • @19 OpenBSD (by curious on 2016-08-09 08:04:11 GMT from Europe)
Oh, they support CD-ROMs allright. But only root may use them, since CDs are a security risk.
21 • @18 @19 OpenBSD (by Andy Mender on 2016-08-09 08:10:47 GMT from Europe)
OpenBSD has live images for both CD/DVD-ROMs (*.iso images) and USB or SD flash drives (*.fs images).
There was a tool for mounting media by the user, but I think it was removed due to potential security risks in version 5.9.
22 • German keyboard used in English (by Alexi on 2016-08-09 09:55:40 GMT from North America)
There are 2 ways to use the German keyboard in English, to paste signs on the keyboard, or remember the place. After a while, I remember the places and typing becomes automatic
23 • @3 (by Scrumtime on 2016-08-09 11:26:39 GMT from North America)
I have a Swedish keyboard using a spanish OS, in English GB language
i can get ~ in 2 places none where you said ALT +K gives me nothing at all
NOOP i can confirm all of the above failures to get it running......do people even check whether the distro works before releasing it.....
24 • @11 (by ashnazg on 2016-08-09 20:18:48 GMT from North America)
I tested the following command on CentOS 7.2.1511:
$ rpm -qf "/sbin/init"
systemd-219-19.el7.x86_64
Presumably it should work on all RPM-based distributions. Likewise, the following command (tested on Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela) should work on all Debian-based distributions:
$ dpkg -S /sbin/init
upstart: /sbin/init
This command works for Void Linux 4.5.2:
$ xbps-query -o "*/init"
runit-void-20160419_1: /usr/bin/init -> /usr/bin/runit-init (link)
Slackware doesn't have a comparable command that I am aware of, but you can find the same information using the following command (tested on Slackware 14.2):
$ grep "sbin/init" /var/log/scripts/*
/var/log/scripts/sysvinit-2.88dsf-x86_64-4:if [ -r sbin/init ]; then
/var/log/scripts/sysvinit-2.88dsf-x86_64-4: mv sbin/init sbin/init.old
/var/log/scripts/sysvinit-2.88dsf-x86_64-4:mv sbin/init.new sbin/init
/var/log/scripts/sysvinit-2.88dsf-x86_64-4: /sbin/init u
/var/log/scripts/sysvinit-2.88dsf-x86_64-4:rm -f sbin/init.old
I don't currently have an Arch-based or Gentoo-based distribution, but Arch provides a table comparing package management commands at the following URL:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Rosetta
Lastly, OpenBSD provides a command with similar functionality, yet when I tried it out on OpenBSD 5.9, I got no output:
$ pkg_info -qE /sbin/init
$
Why that is so is left as an exercise for the reader.
(Note: most of these commands assume that "init" or a link thereto is located at /sbin/init. This is usually the case on Unix & clones, but not always, as can be seen from the Void Linux example above. Also, on CentOS /sbin/init and /usr/sbin/init are symbolic links to systemd.)
25 • Great review of the ubuntu phone last week... too good??? (by Larry De Coste on 2016-08-09 23:46:07 GMT from South America)
The Meizu Pro 5 ubuntu edition is out of stock everywhere I looked today!!
I especially liked the depth of the review and how it stood up as a phone,
26 • noop linux (by Ronald Buckman on 2016-08-10 02:32:25 GMT from North America)
I tryed noop linux KDE back in 2013. It, did run well for me at the time, except the sleep button didn't work for suspend to RAM. noop linux is a small independent distro. It's tough to maintain an independent distro without a large staff of several contributors.
27 • @26 noop linux (by Andy Mender on 2016-08-10 08:19:47 GMT from Europe)
While I understand it's tough running an independent GNU/Linux distribution, I don't understand why yet another distribution is necessary. We already have hundreds of projects and some of them are in dire need of help to keep the quality constant. I'm sorry to come across as a prick, but excessive forking and spawning distributions merely dilutes human effort and nothing else.
28 • Excessive forking? (by Poet Nohit on 2016-08-10 13:13:06 GMT from North America)
How much forking is too much? If anything, I think there aren't enough distributions.
The only "benefit" of monoculture is that it makes life more convenient for those prone to groupthink and tribalism. If you want a disaster to happen for certain, then you are headed the right direction.
29 • @28 You may be right, but... (by curious on 2016-08-10 13:35:36 GMT from Europe)
... noop seems to be a particularly useless distro. Yet another package manager (when there already is a large choice of working ones available) IS questionable - I really would like to know what its supposed advantages are, especially since it must be rather slow (shell script). And considering the other "qualities" of this distro, there is considerable doubt as to whether would work at all.
30 • @27 (by Alex on 2016-08-10 14:52:36 GMT from North America)
Well, you are!
Why don't you eat the same food given as a baby today?
The guy tried, and maybe trying again to create a distro or an operating system, but he didn't ask anyone to make a review. Let him keep on trying. Maybe, you would create one too?
31 • @27, 28 (by Justin on 2016-08-10 15:08:49 GMT from North America)
In a sense, you're both right. Let's use the human body as an analogy. My body is made up of millions of cells. I need enough of those cells working together in order to make up my organs, muscles, blood, and other innards. At the same time, I need a diversity of organs to survive, and even with that diversity, they all still need to work together to keep me alive.
Too many cells dividing up to become a hoard of little kidneys (for example) will lead to none of them working well at all. However, having one giant kidney at the expense of other organs (e.g., my lungs) will lead to dysfunction in a different way. Not to mention, all of these organs have to work together to have a healthy body. My heart can't revolt against my brain; the "civil war" would literally kill me. The same is true for many other combinations.
I see the Linux community much the same way. We need enough people working on major projects to have what is necessary for Linux, etc., survive, grow, and be healthy. Too many "mutations" become a distraction, although evolution requires the experimenting at times. At the same time, having one monolithic project that covers everything that everyone belongs too is just like a giant single-cell organism--there's a reason why multi-cell ones are dominant.
So, I'm happy that we have so many distributions to choose from and the ability to do so. Yet, we should check to see if there is more value in collaborating to build something bigger with others rather than always going our separate ways. At the end of the day, I'm happy to have that choice, and I respect the choice of those to chose differently from me.
32 • @28 @31 Linux ecosystems as... (by Andy Mender on 2016-08-10 16:01:09 GMT from Europe)
I think an analogy to organism populations is a bit more fitting than the human body. In the latter we assume the organism (GNU/Linux) requires all of the individual parts (distributions), which it doesn't. Ubuntu (kidney? heart?) does not require Fedora or openSUSE to work properly, since it anyhow uses a large subset of its own, home-brewed tools. Individual open-source projects are of course a different matter - the blood of the whole ecosystem.
When we think of the GNU/Linux ecosystem as a real, biological ecosystem, this makes more sense to me. Each distribution is a population, which gives rise to new populations (distributions, spins) or individuals (open-source projects). New individuals with potentially beneficial traits (interesting tools, programs, etc.) appear and per their fitness advantage stay (or not) in the population and in the ecosystem.
'How much forking is too much?' When it becomes subjectively, painfully obvious that the new distributions don't offer anything that would let them remain in the ecosystem.
33 • @32 (by Yand on 2016-08-10 20:01:52 GMT from Europe)
Interchange some same-name libraries (/usr/lib) from Fedora to Ubuntu and vice versa and see, if the Fedora and Ubuntu would boot up and the given application would boot up. Only, it should be of the same architecture 32 bit or 64 bit. It might surprise you!
Its just a case of different package managers, rather than the files and folders themselves.
34 • Forks, distros & Distrowatch: MIDDLEWARE. (by Greg Zeng on 2016-08-11 08:04:21 GMT from Oceania)
MIDDLEWARE:
"Anything between the kernel and user applications is considered middleware." [detailed diagram shown]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middleware
The "kernel" used could be Linux or Windows, 32 or 64 bit, but not Mac for the (application) mentioned below. The Linux version of (application) allows use of many CPU's not available to Windows.
In use, (application) is something to read, write and view the Internet, regardless of CPU, operating system, or time. Every operating system, other than "kernel" and (application), is Middleware.
My (application) of choice is Slimjet web browser (http://www.slimjet.com/en/dlpage.php). Slimjet auto-synchronizes my add-ons (64 enabled add-ons, of 159 total) and Chrome-based settings each time I boot into it, no matter what CPU, which operating system and which version of (application) I had last used the (application).
Eventually this (application) will fit into Canonical's Snappy, or Red Hats or other package managers, and allow the truly transportable: WORM that application writers want: "Write-Once, Run-Many".
35 • @34 Middleware (by OstroL on 2016-08-14 04:59:43 GMT from Europe)
How true!
Like i wrote few weeks ago, it is time for stand-alone and/or self-contained apps, rather than distros. Practically all web browsers are stand-alone applications. LibreOffice is too, and many other applications straight from the developer's web site. No need of a dedicated package manager to "install" these apps.
Most probably, if not already there'd be a AppWatch, alongside Distrowatch regarding Linux kernel based distros/operating systems. In Windows, it was always app watch in all kinds of web pages.
36 • @23 - noop not alone! (by Basil Fernie on 2016-08-14 07:41:51 GMT from Africa)
I have been trying now all sorts of gyrations to get Robolinux to boot on a variety of machines, with or without live internet connection, and am becoming obsessive about this! I've probably tried the last half dozen releases...
Is there a live soul out there who has accomplished this Herculean task? If so, please share the secret, I want to try it out!
Robolinux seem to pride themselves on the level of security of their distro. Well, I suppose if no one can boot it, there's no way of ever producing or accessing content that could be hacked.
Number of Comments: 36
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| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
Bayanihan Linux
Bayanihan Linux was a complete open source-based desktop solution for office and school use. It was a package that includes an operating system, a word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation software, email facility, an internet browser, and a graphics editor. This complete system was packaged in a single easy-to-install CD. The word "Bayanihan" relates to a Filipino tradition where people in a community help their neighbour in physically moving their house to a different place. The most recent versions of Bayanihan Linux are based on Debian GNU/Linux; previous releases (3.1 and earlier) were based on Fedora Core and Red Hat Linux.
Status: Discontinued
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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!
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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