 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 694, 9 January 2017 |
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Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Good software design is often an effort in finding the proper balance between two or more desired characteristics. Features are balanced against performance, ease of use against flexibility, minimal system requirements against a pleasing appearance. This week we begin with a look at MX Linux, a distribution which tries to find the sweet spot in each of these balancing acts, delivering a lightweight, flexible distribution in an attractive package. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about the sudo command and the reason behind its password prompts. Plus, in our News section, we talk about security features Fedora is considering adopting from systemd and DragonFly BSD's new swap space capacity. Plus we share a roadmap for Ubuntu Touch and a newsletter dedicated to Puppy Linux. We also cover the distribution releases of the past week and share the torrents we are seeding. Our Opinion Poll this week opens the discussion on what kind of processors people are most commonly using. Last week we made some changes, improving our Article Search page and adding two new distributions (Clear Linux and DRBL Live) to our database. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: MX Linux 16
- News: Fedora considers systemd security features, DragonFly BSD to support large swap spaces, Ubuntu Touch to use Snap packages, Puppy Linux gets a newsletter
- Questions and answers: Removing sudo's password requirement
- Released last week: Solus 2017.01.01.0, Netrunner 17.01, BlankOn 10.0
- Torrent corner: Antergos, KaOS, Netrunner, Solus
- Opinion poll: Commonly used processor architectures
- DistroWatch.com news: Improved article search and release model information
- New additions: Clear Linux, DRBL Live
- New distributions: Debian+PIXEL, DietPi
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (50MB) and MP3 (32MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
MX Linux 16
MX Linux is a Debian-based Linux distribution which grew out of a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS Linux communities. The MX distribution strives to provide a fast, friendly desktop environment on the solid base provided by Debian's Stable branch. The distribution includes several utilities to make administering the operating system easier and its installation media is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds.
I downloaded the project's 64-bit build which is 1.1GB in size. Booting from the distribution's media brings up the Xfce desktop environment. There is an icon for launching the project's system installer on the desktop. The desktop panel is placed vertically down the left side of the screen with the application menu and system tray located at the bottom. The desktop background shows off a pleasant ocean-side view.
Shortly after the desktop environment loads, a welcome window appears. This window provides us with links to the project's on-line forum, documentation and a local copy of the user manual. The manual contains, among other things, the default passwords for the live environment. There are also launchers on the welcome screen which provide access to the MX tools, an application manager and system settings. I will talk about the various MX tools and configuration options later.
MX Linux 16 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
MX uses a graphical system installer that begins by showing us a brief description of the distribution and its licensing information. The second screen of the installer asks us which local disk will be used to hold our installation of MX. Once we have picked a disk we can optionally click a button to launch the GParted partition manager. GParted will then help us arrange our disk partitions. Closing GParted and returning to the installer, we can choose to let MX take over our entire hard drive or we can manually select how our partitions will be matched with mount points. The following screen gets us to select which disk partition will be used for the root file system and for swap space. We have the option of setting aside a separate partition for users' home directories or placing home folders on the root partition.
We are then asked if we would like to install the GRUB boot loader and, if so, where. We are asked to provide our computer with a name and given the option of enabling Samba shares. The installer then asks us to select our keyboard's layout and locale from long, cryptic lists of language options. We are then given the chance to select whether to display time in 12 hour or 24 hour clock styles as well as set our time zone. The installer gives us a chance to enable/disable background services such as OpenSSH, Cron, CUPS and Bluetooth. Finally, the installer asks us to create a user account for ourselves and create a password for the administrator's account. The installer has several screens and takes a while to get through, but I feel the prompts are well organized and clear in their meaning. I also like that MX's installer asks before performing any destructive actions.
I tried running MX Linux in two test environments, a physical desktop computer and in VirtualBox. When running on the desktop computer, MX Linux booted quickly, the desktop was responsive and programs opened quickly. All my hardware was detected and properly utilized. Things went similarly well when running MX inside VirtualBox. The distribution automatically integrates with VirtualBox and can display the Xfce desktop using the host computer's full screen resolution. The distribution worked quickly in the virtual environment and was pleasantly stable in both test environments. MX used about 4.4GB of hard drive space and, when first logging into the Xfce desktop, required about 240MB of RAM.
MX Linux 16 -- The MX application menu, moved to the top of the display
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The freshly installed MX distribution boots to a graphical login screen. From there we can sign into our account which launches the Xfce desktop. When we sign in the first time we are greeted by the welcome window we saw in the live environment.
When I first signed into my account I noticed a green box icon in the system tray which indicated there were software updates available. Clicking this icon brought up a window which listed the available updates and gave me the option of running apt-get's dist-upgrade or upgrade commands. The first time I tried to run the upgrade command the process failed, saying files on the remote server could not be found. I re-ran the update application and clicked a button to refresh my local software repository information. Then I ran the upgrade process again and, this time, the update manager installed the waiting packages. There were eight upgrades available on my first day with MX, totalling 58MB in size. Over the week a few more upgrades tickled in, each of them fairly small.
Apart from the welcome window and the subtle update indicator, the MX distribution largely stays out of the way. I was not distracted by notifications and I found the Xfce environment to be very responsive. This made for a snappy, clutter-free desktop experience.
MX ships with a fairly standard set of popular open source applications. We are given the Firefox web browser with Flash support. The Filezilla file transfer application is included along with the Thunderbird e-mail client and the Transmission bittorrent software. Network Manager and the GNOME PPP dial-up client are included to help us get on-line. The LibreOffice (version 5) productivity suite is featured along with a dictionary and the FBReader e-book reader. The Orage calendar application and a PDF viewer are included. MX ships with several multimedia applications, including the VLC media player, the Clementine audio player, the Xfburn disc burner and the Asunder audio disc ripper. The distribution features a collection of media codecs, enabling us to play most media formats out of the box. MX provides users with a few games, the Mirage image viewer, the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the Shotwell image manager. The luckyBackup utility is available to help us make archives of our files. MX ships with Java and the GNU Compiler Collection. In the background, MX runs on version 4.7 of the Linux kernel.
MX Linux 16 -- Watching YouTube videos using SMPlayer
(full image size: 958kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
MX runs the SysV init software by default. However, the systemd init software is also installed by default. If we run "man init" to learn about the init service, the manual page for systemd is displayed. The systemctl service manager is present too, but fails to work properly due to a missing dependency.
Apart from the systemd service manager, I found the software which shipped with MX worked well. I like that the application menu has a search box we can use to hunt for applications. Finding the correct desktop application is made even easier as the menu displays a brief description of each application along with the program's name and icon.
MX Linux ships with two package managers. The first is a custom package manager called Popular Apps. The Popular Apps program displays a window with a tree view of programs, grouped by category. Each category has just a few popular open source applications inside it. Each application entry includes a brief description explaining what the application does. We can select an item from the list and install it with a click.
While the Popular Apps software manager gives us quick and easy access to some of open source's greatest hits, it does not provide access to a large pool of software. The Synaptic package manager provides us with full access to the software available to MX, including low-level packages. Synaptic shows us a list of categories and filters down the left side of the window and an alphabetical list of packages down the right side. We can check boxes next to the items we want to install or remove and Synaptic will work on the selected packages in batches. MX pulls in software from its own repositories as well as the antiX repositories, Debian's repositories and a VirtualBox repository. This gives us access to Debian's massive collection of packages, plus a handful of convenient add-ons and more modern versions of packages.
One thing that stood out early in my time with MX was that the distribution uses an unusual command line prompt. The prompt in virtual terminals is displayed with multiple colours and is spread across two lines. I find this combination jarring, but it can be adjusted by editing the prompt variable in the user's .bashrc file in their home directory.
MX Linux 16 -- Creating backups with luckyBackup
(full image size: 133kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
One tool I appreciated having was luckyBackup. This utility helps us set up backup procedures, with multiple backup jobs per user if we want. luckyBackup will synchronize or archive files and place them in the directory of our choosing. The backup utility has many options, but they are presented in a fairly straight forward manner and I like the utility's flexibility.
There are two launchers in the application menu which relate to printers. The first opens Firefox and displays the local CUPS web admin panel. The second printer menu entry launches the CUPS configuration application. Using the latter I was able to successfully detect and connect to my wireless HP printer.
One of the strengths of MX Linux, and what sets the distribution apart from its Debian base, is the collection of MX utilities. The MX administration tools can be found in the desktop's application menu and through the MX Tools control panel. Each tool typically does one specific task. For example, there is one MX utility which just installs NVIDIA drivers and another which installs AMD/ATI drivers. Another tool helps us enable or disable login/logout event sounds and another tool exists to help us create and work with user accounts. One MX tool manages software repositories while two others install packages from a Testing repository and a Backports repository. One MX utility installs media support, including DVD playback support, and another manages the system's Adobe Flash packages. These tools may not be necessary for more experienced users who know how to handle separate repositories and hunt down codecs, but for less experienced users these MX-brand tools can be big time savers.
MX Linux 16 -- The MX Tools panel
(full image size: 842kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
One of MX's configuration utilities assists the user in changing the location of the desktop panel, with options basically being the bottom of the screen or the left side of the display. This tool also lets us change the colour theme of the desktop. Changing the colour theme from dark to light, or light to dark, causes a pop-up to appear letting us know we may need to restart Firefox in order for the change to take effect. This seems odd as the theme updates immediately and the Firefox browser was not running while I was changing the theme.
Another aspect of the distribution I found odd was there were three different configuration tools for changing the position of the desktop panel: Panel, MX Default Look and Panel Orientation. Each of these utilities has different restrictions on where the panel goes -- one lets us switch between the bottom of the screen or left side, another switches between the top of the screen and the left side. There are also multiple tools for changing the look of the desktop, including Desktop Settings, Appearance and MX Default Look. When we factor in the two CUPS menu entries, four package managers (Popular Apps, Synaptic, MX Test Repo Installer and Debian Backports Installer) and two repository managers, we begin to see a pattern of duplication. Some people may look at these tools and think it is good the distribution provides multiple paths to perform similar tasks. Personally, I found the duplication cluttered up the menus a bit without much benefit to me.
On the topic of duplication, there is some additional overlap with adjusting settings. Apart from the panel which gives us quick access to the MX collection of configuration tools, there is also a settings panel for the Xfce desktop. This second settings panel gives us quick access to modules which will help us to configure the screen saver, set up the firewall, create Samba network shares and change the behaviour of the file manager, along with a few other tweaks to the desktop environment.
MX Linux 16 -- Desktop settings panel
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusions
Taken as a whole, I like MX Linux 16. The distribution is fairly lightweight by modern standards and the project provides both 32-bit and 64-bit support, a characteristic which is increasingly rare. The desktop is light and responsive, but still provides a nice, modern look.
I like that while MX is light on resources, it provides a lot of popular software for us to use. We are treated to good multimedia support, a full featured productivity suite and web browser. The software included in MX is more modern than Debian Stable and we have access to a Backports repository if we want to access up to date applications.
I ran into just a few rough edges, like the theme changer asking me to restart Firefox and the update manager not refreshing its package information before downloading new updates. Earlier I mentioned some frustration with the many overlapping configuration tools, but I acknowledge what I see as clutter could be another person's convenience.
All in all, MX Linux provided me with a good experience. The distribution walks a fine line between providing conveniences (like the welcome window and update notification) and staying out of the way. I think the developers have struck a good balance and I definitely see MX as a good option, especially for people running older computers. I'm not sure I would recommend MX Linux to first time Linux users, MX does expect more technical knowledge than some more mainstream distributions, but I think MX would make a fine second distribution for someone comfortable with Linux concepts, but who also wants performance and convenience.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora considers systemd security features, DragonFly BSD to support large swap spaces, Ubuntu Touch to use Snap packages, Puppy Linux gets a newsletter
Following reports of a local privilege exploit in early December, the Fedora developers are looking at ways to use systemd's security features to mitigate attacks against the distribution's software. The idea is to use systemd to limit the damage a misbehaving (or hijacked) program can do. LWN reports: "The AF_PACKET local privilege escalation (also known as CVE-2016-8655) has been fixed by most distributions at this point; stable kernels addressing the problem were released on December 10. But, as a discussion on the fedora-devel mailing list shows, systemd now provides options that could help mitigate CVE-2016-8655 and, more importantly, other vulnerabilities that remain undiscovered or have yet to be introduced. The genesis for the discussion was a blog post from Lennart Poettering about the RestrictAddressFamilies directive, but recent systemd versions have other sandboxing features that could be used to head off the next vulnerability. Fedora project leader Matthew Miller noted the blog post and wondered if the RestrictAddressFamilies directive could be more widely applied in Fedora. That directive allows administrators to restrict access to the network address families a service can use." The work Fedora is planning to do to secure services will likely be transferable to other Linux distributions which also run systemd.
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The DragonFly BSD project, which is famous for its HAMMER file system and performance, will soon be able to handle vast amounts of swap space. Swap space is an area of the disk where data is placed when it is not currently needed in memory, freeing up the computer's RAM. According to the DragonFly BSD Digest website, the operating system may soon be capable of handling 32TB of swap space. "Matthew Dillon has made some changes to DragonFly's swap handling, and his explanation notes that the theoretical max swap space is now 32 terabytes. He even had to change field sizes to accommodate the new, bigger numbers."
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People who are using Ubuntu on mobile devices will need to wait a while to receive new features and significant updates. According to a mailing list post from Pat McGowan, the developers of Ubuntu Touch are in the process of transitioning the operating system from using Click packages to Snap packages. The team is also putting a pause on new features while developers work to transition Ubuntu Touch from the Ubuntu 15.04 base to Ubuntu 16.04. "There are new milestones defined on Launchpad, you can see the main focus is now on Xenial (which is the basis for Ubuntu Core 16 that we will use), and there are milestones assigned to Ubuntu Personal images which also encompasses the work for the Unity8 session on classic Ubuntu. How you can help is an excellent question, we certainly want to transition
the Click apps to Snaps hence the earlier message to app developers. We
will have more stable test images soon (for amd64 VMs and PC, and arm64
M10, we also have kiosk images for Dragonboard and R-Pi in progress)
which should allow us to pick up the pace of the transition. There is also
the Unity8 session on classic desktop available now but it also needs to
stabilize. In short visit snapcraft.io, and start using and creating snaps in the standard desktop and in the Unity8 session and provide all the feedback you
can."
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Fans of the Puppy Linux distribution may be happy to know there is a new publication dedicated to the distribution. Puppy Linux Newsletter is intended to be a monthly publication featuring Puppy news and tips. The first issue of the newsletter can be found on the editor's website.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Removing sudo's password requirement
Stop-asking-me asks: Since I switched from Windows to Linux I keep getting prompts for my password whenever I want to change anything. On Windows I sometimes got the confirmation window, but I could just click through it. Why does Linux always demand my password and how can I get it to just let me click to confirm like on Windows?
DistroWatch answers: First, welcome to Linux! When moving to a new operating system there are always some bumps in the road and some new experiences to get accustomed to. Hang in there, the road gets smoother.
When comparing the Windows User Account Control (UAC) feature with Linux's sudo (and BSD's doas) I think it is important to note that the two technologies (UAC and sudo) are designed to do different things which is a large part of why they have different behaviours. Both UAC and sudo show up when the user wants to make changes to the system, but for different reasons.
On Windows, the UAC feature is basically there to prevent the system administrator (or users running as the administrator) from shooting themselves in the foot. When the admin is logged into their account, programs effectively run with limited access. When a program needs to perform an admin action, the system asks the user for confirmation. What is important to note here is the administrator is already logged in and running programs as the administrator (or power user or other privileged account). The "Do you want to allow..." prompt on Windows is basically just a way of asking someone already logged in as the administrator if they are really sure they want to proceed. It's a warning that a program or action is about to do something serious and it gives the user a chance to block that action.
By contrast, on Linux the sudo command is run by regular user accounts that wish to perform actions usually reserved for the administrator. When a regular (unprivileged) user account wants to update a software package or change the system clock, they go through the sudo service to elevate their access and perform a one-time admin action. Here, the user is not already the admin, they are temporarily becoming an admin to run one program. This is why the password prompt is there, it's to confirm the person performing the action really is the person they claim to be and should be allowed to perform administrator actions even though they are not logged in as the administrator.
In addition, the sudo command can divide up different admin tasks to different users and perform logging which can leave an audit trail in case something goes wrong.
If a person were to log into a Linux system as root (the name of the system administrator's account) and run their programs that way, there would be no prompt for passwords and usually no confirmation screen to warn the user before they did something potentially dangerous. Linux distributions tend to assume the administrator knows what they are doing and stays out of the way. This does not mean it is a good idea to login as the administrator, the amount of power the admin has on a Linux system means it is usually a better idea to login as a regular user and perform system configuration using the sudo command.
There is a difference in philosophy here. On Linux, it is assumed people will generally perform tasks as a regular user and only perform potentially damaging admin functions rarely. This can be done through sudo and the password protection is in place to make sure you really are who you claim to be. But if you logged in as the admin to begin with, there are virtually no checks on your power on Linux. On Windows, there is an assumption that people will often run with admin access when they do not need to and people with admin access are likely to accidentally change things on the system. The UAC is in place to protect the administrator from themselves or malicious programs running as the admin.
Some Linux distributions lock the admin account by default and this has lead to the myth that distributions which set up sudo automatically do not have an administrator account. However, these distributions do still have a root account and it can still be used.
It is possible to disable the sudo password prompt by editing the utility's configuration file. This allows the administrator to grant any or all access to the system to an unprivileged account without requiring a password. This is generally seen as a bad idea as it means there is no protection between the user (or anyone else who gains access to your account) and unlimited access to the operating system. However, if convenience is a higher priority than security, the sudoers manual page explains how to set up passwordless access to a user who has sudo access. The details can be read by running "man sudoers" in a terminal.
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For more questions and answers, visit our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Solus 2017.01.01.0
Joshua Strobl has announced the release of a new Solus snapshot. Solus is an independent Linux distribution which uses the eopkg package manager (a fork of the PiSi package manager). The new snapshot, Solus 2017.01.01.0, is available in two editions (Budgie and MATE) and features support for mounting more devices over MTP, the VLC multimedia player can now play files over Samba and SFTP connections, and the distribution ships with version 4.8.15 of the Linux kernel. "We're happy to be kicking off the new year with the release of our first ISO snapshot, 2017.01.01.0, across our Budgie and MATE editions. The out-of-the-box experience for shipped applications in Solus has improved, as we've worked towards enabling a larger set of features for them. A larger set of devices are now supported for MTP mounting, thanks to an upgraded libmtp. Evince can now handle PS and XPS files. Our package manager, eopkg, has received performance improvements as well as a fix to statelessness that'd cause the Software Center to hang. Instances where a corrupted cursor would appear while using Firefox have been resolved. VLC can now play content from SMB shares and SFTP locations. We've also done work on enabling subtitles for certain content played via MKV files." Further information and a detailed list of changes can be found in the project's release announcement.
Netrunner 17.01
Clemens Toennies has announced a new version of the desktop-oriented Netrunner Linux distribution. Netrunner is available in a few different flavours, with one branch based on Debian and the other on Manjaro Linux. The latest release, Netrunner 17.01, is based on Debian Stretch and features KDE's Plasma 5.8.2 desktop environment. "The Netrunner Team is happy to announce the immediate availability of Netrunner Desktop 17.01 64-bit ISO. Netrunner Desktop 17.01 'Baryon' has jumped from Debian Jessie to snapshot '20161211' of the upcoming Debian Stretch. This means the system can be kept on a certain version stack, while it is also easy to enable the corresponding repositories for continuously tested updates. Netrunner Desktop adds the usual selection of software applications like KDEnlive, Gimp, VLC, LibreOffice, Audacious, Steam, Skype, Transmission, VirtualBox, Krita, Inkscape and many more." Further information and key package versions can be found in the project's release announcement.
Netrunner 17.01 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 375kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
BlankOn 10.0
Rania el-Amina has announced the release of BlankOn 10.0, an Indonesian Linux distribution based on Debian and featuring a custom GNOME Shell-based desktop called "Manokwari": "After several years of development, the BlankOn development team proudly present the 10th release of BlankOn, code-named 'Tambora'. There are many changes in this release which provides its own colors and support for new hardware. The development team has also added new features to some of the native BlankOn packages. Manokwari is a desktop environment based on GNOME Shell 3. It combines GTK+ with the HTML 5 frontend; it is an evolution from a shell called blankon-panel. In this release, Manokwari gets many updates and several new features, including updated search function, right-hand side panel, weather widget, music player and beautiful icons. Manokwari on BlankOn 'Tambora' supports higher screen resolutions, such as the Retina display and can also be used on 4K screens." Continue to the release announcement (in Indonesian, scroll down for the English version) for further details.
KaOS 2017.01
Anke Boersma has announced the release of KaOS 2017.01, a new stable build of the project's rolling-release, desktop-oriented Linux distribution featuring KDE Plasma 5.8.5: "It is with great pleasure to present to you a first KaOS ISO image for 2017. Starting the new year with a fresh new look. All parts of the Midna artwork have been updated, most notably a new sddm theme that uses a layered QML model. This makes selecting between the default regular Plasma session or optional Wayland much clearer. There is also a new move to the right vertical panel as the default. As always with this rolling distribution, you will find the very latest packages for the Plasma desktop, this includes Frameworks 5.29.0, Plasma 5.8.5, KDE Applications 16.12.0 and not-yet-released ports of KDE Applications. All built on Qt 5.7.1. Linux 4.8.15 has a change as to how the kernel image is created. Instead of using an install file that only gets called on kernel updates, a new hook file is used." Continue to the release announcement for more information and screenshots.
KaOS 2017.01 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 461kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not 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: 272
- Total data uploaded: 52.0TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Commonly used processor architectures
One of our readers asked if we would run a poll to find out what kind of CPUs people are running on their main computers. Are you sticking with old, tried and true 32-bit x86 processors, or running the latest and greatest 64-bit multi-core processors? Or perhaps you are going in a different direction and using an ARM or PowerPC processor under the hood?
If you're running multiple computers at home, leave us a comment with a run down of your hardware.
You can see the results of our previous poll on preferred video cards and drivers here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Commonly used processor architectures
| i386: | 44 (2%) |
| i486: | 12 (0%) |
| i586: | 31 (1%) |
| i686: | 148 (5%) |
| x86_64 (single core): | 75 (3%) |
| x86_64 (multi-core): | 2308 (86%) |
| ARM: | 36 (1%) |
| PowerPC: | 12 (0%) |
| Sparc: | 15 (1%) |
| Other/Unknown: | 13 (0%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Improved article search and release model information
In December we launched a new search feature which makes it easier to find past reviews, Questions and Answers columns and tutorials. The Article Search page has been expanded to include an "Other/Misc" category of searches. When the "Other/Misc" category is selected, the Article Search page will try to find articles in any past DistroWatch Weekly in any category. We hope this will make it easier to locate past news items, tutorials and reviews.
Another change we have made is, on each distribution's information page, there is now a new field in the About section. The new field is called Release Model and it is sandwiched between the distribution's Category and Status fields. The Release Model field indicates whether a distribution uses a fixed, rolling or semi-rolling approach to releases and software updates. We have typically supplied this information in the distribution's description, but having it presented in point form should make it easier to quickly see what type of release model a project uses at a glance. As with the other data fields, clicking a project's listed Release Model will bring up our Search page with other distributions that use the same model.
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New distributions added to database
Clear Linux
Clear Linux is a minimal distribution primarily designed with performance and cloud use-cases in mind. The operating system upgrades as a whole rather than using individual packages. Extra software can be added to the system (along with associated dependencies) using pre-compiled bundles which can be accessed through the distribution's swupd software manager.
DRBL Live
DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) is server software to boot and operate remote desktop clients. The DRBL software allows client machines to run as stateless, thin-client style computers which are managed by the DRBL server. DRBL Live is a Debian-based, live disc distribution of the DRBL server software which can be run from a USB drive or CD/DVD. It includes a desktop environment to assist users in configuring the server.
DRBL Live -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 281kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Distributions added to waiting list
- Debian+PIXEL. Debian+PIXEL is a minimal desktop operating system featuring the PIXEL desktop. It is a live distribution developed by the Raspberry Pi foundation for x86 computers.
- DietPi. DietPi is a lightweight, Debian-based Linux distribution for Raspberry Pi and other single board computers.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 16 January 2017. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. 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 • Poll - Hardware (by Bill S. on 2017-01-09 00:18:24 GMT from United States)
I guess I am sort of the sys-admin for my home. I myself have a desktop computer that has 16 gigs of RAM and the processor is Intel® Core™ i7-4771 CPU @ 3.50GHz × 8.
My graphics card is a Nvidia GK107 Geforce GT 640. And I have a 27" flat screen monitor and 1 SSD Hard Drive and 4 internal Hard Drives and 3 external Hard Drives. My laptop is a new Acer Nitro 17.3" i7-4720HQ 16GB 2TB Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M. My wife has a new Quad core with 16 gigs of ram I bought her for Christmas. My kids have a quad core i7 that they use to play SIMS and get online. All computers in my house DUAL BOOT to Windows 7 and Mint 18. Some with Cinnamon, some with Mate. Then there is my Notepad, and the kinds Ipads and kindles. Then there is the teenagers smart phones and mp3 players and ipods. Everyone looks to me to keep things up and running and keep the all important router working. Hey, it's a job that someone has to do, and I LOVE IT!!
2 • processors (by wolsonjr on 2017-01-09 00:43:00 GMT from United States)
other - ie.
1 i686 and 3 x86_64_multi
3 • MX Linux 16 (by Michael Whell on 2017-01-09 01:14:33 GMT from United States)
This has been my "daily driver" for quite a while now, and I was a long time user of Mepis. MX Linux 16 has a lot of "Mepis DNA" and the creators intent is to continue the Mepis ease of use, "everything works" objectives with MX Linux 16.
One critical (for me) aspect the MX Linux user experience are the user forums. The develops (as well as many advanced users) frequent the forums and provide timely support for users with questions or needs.
The other critical part of the user experience is the documentation for this distro. The developers have taken great pains to provide documentation - both in wiki style and video tutorials - which are very well done and incredibly handy.
4 • Commonly used processor architectures (by Gordon Gibson on 2017-01-09 01:26:51 GMT from Canada)
Hi, I have two computers. One is a x86_64 (multi-core) with Slackware64 and that is what I am posting with now. My other one is a little netbook with an i686 release of Puppy Slacko64
5 • This is a hard to answer poll (by BeGo on 2017-01-09 01:40:10 GMT from Indonesia)
I want a powerful arm computer, but,
that just not yet exist in my vicinity. :(
6 • processors (by Bobbie Sellers on 2017-01-09 01:41:04 GMT from United States)
In my HP Pavilion 15 workhorse, an AMD A10 2.2 GHz
In my test bed, a salvaged Dell e6420,. an i7 2.7 GHz
The Amiga 2000 an 68060 50 MHz
and I don't know how fast the ARM is in my
Transformer Pad.
I don't know what is in my TV but it is slow.
bliss
7 • Hardware (by bigbenaugust on 2017-01-09 02:02:12 GMT from United States)
1 - MacBookPro 1,1 (i686, Core Duo)
1 - Lenovo W530 (x86-64, Core i7)
1 - Acer Aspire AO722 (x86-64, AMD dual-core)
1 - Raspberry Pi 3B (ARM)
8 • (intel+amd) vs ARM (by Ravi on 2017-01-09 03:05:37 GMT from India)
I have 3 computers
1. intel xeon 1245 v3 with 16gb ram (debian jessie)
2. AMD FX 8350 with 16gb ram, Nvidia gt210 (debian jessie) for running 4 to 5 virtual machines which is one of the strong points of FX8350.
3. Raspberry pi 1B running minibian(as DHCP server)
2 AMD64, 1 ARM
I have one Asus zenfone with Qualcomm(ARM) which is mightier than Raspberry pi but doesn't come under PC category.If every equipment in any home that has a processor is counted for architecture then ARM will comfortably outscore x86 and amd64. My induction stove has a bigger cooler fan than any fan in my PC casing!.
9 • Poll Question (by cykodrone on 2017-01-09 03:15:00 GMT from Canada)
Pah ha, my home used to look like a used computer parts store, but I got fed up with it and just stick to one machine now. I build a new machine about every 5 years, but high-end enough to sell the old one for cheap (or just give it away) to somebody that can get some use from it. Last time around, I decided I needed a processor that's good and encryption, compression, decompression, transcoding, etc, the AMD FX-8350 fit the bill, decent performance at the right price point (I got sick of overpaying for CPUs). I research to death everything I buy now, I hate buyers remorse.
10 • Poll (by Greenpossum on 2017-01-09 03:36:10 GMT from Australia)
Surely this poll, and many others, should be a multiple choice question?
11 • Poll (by Zork on 2017-01-09 03:38:08 GMT from Australia)
Pretty much own the whole Intel series from i386 to i3-5005...
Pretty much everything has only Linux except the Laptop which Dual-Boots Windows..
12 • Is MEPIS Dead? (by Jack on 2017-01-09 03:57:51 GMT from United States)
I just read the review of MX16 and saw something about "former MEPIS community." I used to use MEPIS regularly, and have thought of going back to it. Is MEPIS now dead?
13 • @12 Mepis (by cykodrone on 2017-01-09 04:10:24 GMT from Canada)
Dormant! I'm in shock too, I used it years ago myself.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mepis
14 • Processors (by JDNSW on 2017-01-09 05:11:03 GMT from Australia)
Desktop - Pentium E6500 dual core (Mint 17.3)
Laptop - Celeron N2840 dual core (Mint 18)
Netbook - Atom N450 (Bodhi)
15 • MEPIS (by Hoos on 2017-01-09 05:30:12 GMT from Singapore)
Development by the original developer stopped on the MEPIS distro stopped a few years ago, with the last official release being MEPIS 12 Beta, which was Debian Wheezy-based.
However, the MEPIS Community has never gone away, as it continued to support earlier versions of Mepis and even the 12 Beta, which has a fair number of users.
In collaboration with the antiX developers (antiX was based on Mepis originally -- see the shared DNA of the installer), the MEPIS community released MX14, which was a 32-bit Wheezy distro using XFCE. That was in 2014. There has been a new release of MX yearly since then. MX15 and MX16 are Jessie-based and have 32 and 64 bit versions.
The community has now been renamed MX Community, but MEPIS support continues because people are still using it. Obviously the officially-supported DE has moved from KDE to XFCE now but there is a community spin of MX using KDE4.
16 • Poll (by marame on 2017-01-09 06:13:13 GMT from Finland)
This computer has Asus P5E-VM SE mainboard with dualcore E5500 processor and 4Gt DDR2 memory. Most other computers (10+) I have are with same or equivalent configuration.
There is some single core versions (Asus P5LD2-SE, Intel P4 630 CPU, 4Gt DDR2). One 2xquadcore Intel Xeon X5355 (HP XW8400) 12Gt memory.
A couple AMDs with AM2 CPUs (one running WIN 10).
Laptops are mainly with i915 chipsets with single core and some newer dual core(Lenovo T60+, Acer Aspire One ZG5 dual Atom).
17 • MX Linux (by Jason Hsu on 2017-01-09 06:31:57 GMT from United States)
MX Linux is my favorite distro by far. In the past several years, my "daily driver" distros have included antiX Linux, Crunchbang Linux (albeit with LXDE added), Linux Mint Debian Edition, and Snowlinux.
MX Linux basically combines everything I want in a Linux distro:
1. It's based on Debian stable. This means that it requires less maintenance and is lighter and faster than Ubuntu-based distros, such as Linux Mint. It also has a MUCH larger software repository than Puppy Linux. The Debian base also has the usual advantages of being more widely used, such as superior support from the parent distro's vast community.
2. It's user-friendly and well-polished. In my opinion, MX Linux is so well-polished that it outshines antiX Linux. (To be fair, MX Linux and antiX Linux come from the same people. Which of the two you prefer is largely a matter of personal taste.) In fact, I regard MX Linux as the unofficial Linux Mint Debian Edition.
3. MX Linux has better support than Linux Mint Debian Edition. The last time LMDE made a release was March 2015, nearly 2 years ago. The Linux Mint team does quality work, but their Ubuntu-based editions are clearly their main priority. In contrast, the Debian Stable base is the main priority of the antiX/MX/MEPIS team. (As a general rule, you get much better support from the development team AND the wider community when you use any distro's main edition than when you use any of its oddball editions.)
4. The antiX/MX/MEPIS team is well-established and has been around for years. Because they have this built-in advantage in my eyes, it's hard for "competing" distros (like Robolinux, HandyLinux, SalentOS, and others based on Debian Stable) to win me over.
They say that Linux Mint killed distro-hopping. I think that MX Linux is one more nail in that coffin, because it's hard for any other lightweight distro to top its support, user-friendliness, vast software repository, and polish.
18 • Re:_Opinion_Poll:_Knoppix_771_dual_processors_single_architecture (by k on 2017-01-09 06:46:34 GMT from France)
The effort and commitment Klaus Knopper put into one of the first live distros
of its kind really shines.
It will drive off either 32-bit or 64-bit processor hardware, but keeps to 32-bit
application software.
A marvel, thank you Klaus.
19 • Hardware (by Bill on 2017-01-09 07:04:04 GMT from United States)
4 pc's:
1. Asus M5A88-M, FX8350, 32GB ram, AMD video R7-240; 64bit Arch-Linux/Xfce (+5 VirtualBox guests: Arch, XP, Win7pro64, Ubuntu14.04LTS, Fedora latest release)
2. Dell O755, duo-core E4500, 8GB ram, Win10pro64
3. Dell D2400, (vintage 2002), 2GB ram, dual boot Ubuntu 11.04/WindowsXP
4. . SurfacePro4, Win10pro64
20 • x86 netbook Atom N270 XP host; many VBox guests CLI (by jjanel on 2017-01-09 07:05:03 GMT from United States)
I voted i386 but I think -i686 all ok for me. NO 64bit sorry.
I love trying 'small' distros; but just CLI because netbook is 2G ram;
1024x600! screen and VBox ... (thus video ?slow? & ram limited)
I'd try some from "Waiting List" IF I could find the *small* one.
21 • Atomic distros (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-09 08:04:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
@20 You would be surprised how 2gb is plenty of RAM if you avoid bloat-.ware. For example, I run Devuan and Void with sensible choices for Desktop Environment [Openbox, LXDE or XFCE4] and init system [Void uses Runit; on Devuan I use Sinit]. Starting memory use is 2-300mb, but "heavy" use of things like Firefox seldom reaches 1gb. Of course, the "cache" will grow to use as much memory as it can find.
The choice of init system and having control over the numbers of daemon programs during startup plays a big part in how much memory is used by the Desktop [and how much is free for "real" work].
The main limitation may be the speed of the Atom N270, so maybe try the Live version of Void Linux with XFCE4 [on real hardware!], and install it on hard disk if it looks good.
22 • CPU (by zykoda on 2017-01-09 08:12:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
All but powerPC and Sparc are used. Win 98 to 10, Macbook air, celeron notebook. All machines are wired or wireless networked (imperfectly!). XP for older games, all multi-boot with too many Linux distros to name here. I use graphics hardware that came with the machine unless I find a handy upgrade enhancement. Be aware of capacitor failures in power supplies, graphics cards and motherboards.... and have a soldering iron ready. Sufficient memory required for adequate response of graphical user interfaces. Python, C and Fortran used via CLI. Cuda useful (when it works) on two more modern setups but keeping it in step with X and kernel can be tiresome.
23 • Hardware (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-09 08:20:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
All from PCSpecialist to compiled specification on its website. I prefer my older laptop/notebook kit because it's more modular (which makes it heavier, of course). With that, I can easily get at the RAM module and battery. Newer kit means having to remove the whole back panel. I think that is a retrograde step. From PCSpecialist, I can obtain kit with 8Gb RAM for about £330. In the notebook I'm using right now, I added another 8Gb module (because you can!). The newer models just have a single RAM slot - another retrograde step. I don't need these complications of non-modular design. It's bad enough with secure boot and EFI.
24 • MX Linux (by Aneesh on 2017-01-09 08:39:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have been using MX Linux since MX 14 version and with every version, the distro is becoming more polished and more user-friendly. MX offers updated versions of few popular applications in its own repositories, installations via backports and we can also access the range and might of the Debian repos. This is a mighty little distro that rivals the likes of Mint and Ubuntus in terms of usability and customization.
While the installation might not be beginner-friendly, MX's excellent documentation and videos would come in handy. Certainly one of the best features of MX is the ability to save live-desktop changes into the final distribution which means that we can start customizing right from the live sesion. It comes with an assortment of useful / beginner friendly GUI utilities like lucky backup, Gtk Hash, Grub Customizer, Unetbootin and such. Add to that the capability to install Skype, Teamviewer, Steam and such software with a few clicks, it really is so much easy to use.
Top notch Hardware support (drivers pre-installed), availability of software, superb documentation (that is available offline), excellent community and forum makes it one of the distros that are worth recommending to beginners. There are also monthly rebuilds so that we need not update all the software. While total novices will be uncomfortable, a few changes (like panel orientation and theme) would make them at home.
Thanks for the excellent review, this sure is a fantastic distribution.
25 • MX-16 review (by Chris Whelan on 2017-01-09 08:45:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
I help out at the MX user community, and would like to thank you for the generally positive review. I realise that it is not possible to mention every aspect of a distribution in the limited time and space available, so hope you won't mine me mentioning a couple of things.
In addition to supporting both 32 and 64 bit machines, the 32 bit ISO ships with a non-PAE kernel for those with very old hardware. It has been tested on a P3 machine, and provides acceptable performance. Very few distros cover such a broad spectrum of hardware.
There are a couple of tools that were not mentioned that set MX apart. One is the ability to create a live remaster. This allows you to boot live, make any changes or additions wanted, and then create a bootable version of your own making, with various options for persistence. It's so simple, even I can manage it!
The other very useful tool is Snapshot. This enables the creation of an ISO of a currently installed system that can then be used for backup purposes, or to install on other machines.
26 • Poll - as requested (by Someguy on 2017-01-09 09:14:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
All x86 varieties + ARMs
27 • @17 - MX Linux and antiX (by Hoos on 2017-01-09 10:19:07 GMT from Singapore)
"...MX Linux is so well-polished that it outshines antiX Linux. (To be fair, MX Linux and antiX Linux come from the same people. Which of the two you prefer is largely a matter of personal taste.) ..."
And also a matter of hardware. If you have an old machine with less than 500MB RAM and a very weak CPU, you're going to need antiX, not MX.
Let's not forget that the live USB/snapshot tools that MX uses are developed by the antiX developers.
28 • Hardware (by Andy Mender on 2017-01-09 10:55:26 GMT from Austria)
Most of my PCs are from the Core Duo/Core 2 Duo vintage, though I do have a Dell Latitude E5500 with an Intel M processor. Although I cannot really upgrade the processor (due to motherboard), it runs vanilla Debian and OpenBSD quite smoothly :). Only Firefox seems slow, though I can live with that.
29 • MX 16 (by Romane on 2017-01-09 11:10:02 GMT from Australia)
Good to read this review. Yesterday installed MX 16 to an ooold Acer laptop, and dual boot on the primary PC.
Overall, very much like MX 16. Have been running Debian Testing for some years, and XFCE for about a year. With MX 16, apart from rearranging the panel (considerably) to suit my taste and a few other small things, feel very comfortable with the distribution. It runs well on both the ancient laptop and the desktop. Like stepping into a comfortable pair of shoes :)
30 • MX15 (by Jan on 2017-01-09 12:14:23 GMT from Netherlands)
When I used the previous version ov MX, so MX15, installing the language module (Dutch) of LibreOffice failed systematically. So I could not get LibreOffice in Dutch, which proved to be very annoying.
Apart from this, MX had the fairly perfect possibilities.
31 • hardware (by Mark D on 2017-01-09 12:19:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
Got a Acer3810TZ (Intel 'Pentium' mobile processor x64) which is a few years old now, but which I like using and it runs Mint/XFCE really well. It's the applications that make it feel old. Firefox especially, is really slooooooow now. I'd use Midori, but it doesn't work well for some websites, and it doesn't work with Fastmail at all.
32 • Hardware (by slacker.kb on 2017-01-09 12:19:17 GMT from United States)
Main family machine is Dell Precision T5400 with dual Intel Xeon E5420s (2.5GHz x 8). It runs xubuntu 16.04 pretty well, start up is slow but does what it needs to.
33 • Processors (by jymm on 2017-01-09 12:20:24 GMT from United States)
I use a X86_64 multi-core on my main laptop and desktop, but still have a single core on an old desktop that I use as a media center. It started out as a later model Windows XP just before Vista came out. I had ran x32 Zorin on it, but now have Ubuntu Mate x64 on it. It had only 1 gig of memory, but I added anotehr gig. A bit slow for the internet, but works great as a media center.
34 • MX (by noar on 2017-01-09 13:11:32 GMT from United States)
I started with MX 14 when it first hit the streets. The 2 big draws were Debian and XFCE, a long time favorite DE as my computers have generally been old and weak. MX 14 was the cat's meow. Saw and used my old hardware to the best it could do, and gave me a powerful OS that pretty much stayed out of the way. Didn't see much new with MX 15 (my computing habits are pretty mundane on the day to day). Last year saw a new, yet still lower-end computer, so I finally got to try some of those 'other distros' now. MX is still on the new box, but I don't currrently default to it. Need to update to MX 16 and give it a shot.
My only beef with MX (and antiX) from a user standpoint, is their locking down sudo. You are forced to go to su or gksu to do maintenance tasks. Granted, a small thing, but if you are used to sudo, you end up having to enter paswords twice.
35 • gonna try m (by dmacleo on 2017-01-09 13:14:09 GMT from United States)
looks interesting, goona try it in VM first then maybe replace mint on laptop with it.
I lik mint, but laptop is pretty much used just for playing with distros so replacing it no big deal
36 • Poll (by a on 2017-01-09 13:23:37 GMT from France)
My main computers have 4 cores x86-64 CPUs (one expensive and fast, one cheap and slow :) ), but I still have a 32 bit Atom netbook (currently with Mint 17, but it’s a bit bugged so I want to try something else, maybe AntiX or Gentoo).
It would be stupid to throw away a working computer, both financially and ecologically, so the anti-32 bit crusade by some people really annoys me.
Anyway I voted x86-64 because I don’t use the netbook often.
37 • CPUs (by Jordan on 2017-01-09 13:59:42 GMT from United States)
It looks like 9 out of 10 linux users who frequent this site, and answered the poll, are using x86_64 (multi-core) processors.
No surprise. Makes me wonder about all the effort to make lightweight distros, though. Of the 100 on the PHR list here many of them are aimed at older, slower machines.
38 • @30 - Jan (by Chris Whelan on 2017-01-09 14:09:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Jan, when you had trouble installing the Dutch language module of LO in MX-15, did you ask for help on the MX Forum?
The reason I ask is that one of the Admins is based in the Netherlands.
39 • 32/64-bit (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-09 14:16:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
I didn't vote. I have two legacy items from my wife which are 32-bit: a Gateway and a Samsung netbook (she likes to buy off the shelf). I use them from time to time. As discussed before, however, there are now increasingly notebooks with 32-bit EFI on 64-bit with 2 Gb RAM ('social'). So far, I've only found TAILS and Sparky which will run natively on that sort of kit.
40 • @37 (by a on 2017-01-09 14:26:40 GMT from France)
The polls asks about the main machines, and doesn’t let you give several answers as usual… Maybe 50% of the people who answered are still using an old 32 bit computer and you couldn’t know about it.
Besides I have a slow 4 core x86-64 computer and a lightweight distro makes sense on it. Heck, I even use LXQt on my Core i5.
41 • CPU (by greg on 2017-01-09 14:30:25 GMT from Slovenia)
got stuck on a single core AMD64. the plan was to get the cheap single core then later when i had the money upgrade to Phenom. but when i had the money, they didn't sell Phenoms anymore. upgraded the PC to 4 GB ram and last year GPu went to hell so it got a new GT730 2 GB. it all takes a while to boot but when it is up it runs well. plenty of older games (2005-2008) run well on it.
wife has a dual core celeron (e3300). at work i have 6th Gen i3, home laptop is a nice but low powered AMD E450. i just do not have any money to spend on PCs these days, so whatever kind of works is OK. i am saving for a nice upgrade but there is always something that needs to be taken care of with higher priority. :-(
42 • CPUs (by Jordan on 2017-01-09 14:46:37 GMT from United States)
@40 Yeah I was just surprised at the actual (so far as of only one day of the poll being out) percentage of modern CPUs being used by linux people. About 90% now. I'd have thought the older and/or slower stuff was a higher percentage, say 33 or 40 percent or so, but not just 10%.
But, as you say, more than one machine is in the hands of many linux users and with different architectures owned and used by one person.
43 • mx linux sudo (by dolphin_oracle on 2017-01-09 15:37:14 GMT from United States)
sudo is setup to be used (I use it all the time). The graphical management tools do default to asking for the root password, but if you want to use sudo from the cli, you are empowered to do so.
44 • sudo in MX-16 (by Jerry on 2017-01-09 15:39:43 GMT from United States)
@34: Noar, I am not sure what you mean, since sudo is enabled OOTB by default and AFAIK we have never had a report like yours.
45 • Processor Poll (by Chris on 2017-01-09 16:21:29 GMT from United States)
I have three computers, but they're all x86-64 multi-core processors. My main desktop runs an AMD FX-8120 8-core, while my other desktop has an older LGA 775 Pentium dual core, and my laptop has a low power AMD mobile processor. All of them handle 64-bit Linux like a dream, even the low power mobile processor. That computer strained badly with 64-bit Windows 7, which is what came preinstalled.
46 • Removing sudo's password requirement (by Fox on 2017-01-09 16:39:12 GMT from France)
@Jesse Smith : You say in Question and Answers "It is possible to disable the sudo password prompt by editing the utility's configuration file". Can you explain please ?
47 • Best Ubuntu based ! (by Damian on 2017-01-09 16:40:15 GMT from Romania)
I recomand Maui Linux as a ubuntu & kde neon based distro with kde,its the best distro with kde and has no crash kde plasma until today,also netrunner 17.01 debian based woks great!!!
48 • @17: Jason Hsu MX16 (by dragonmouth on 2017-01-09 16:42:49 GMT from United States)
"They say that Linux Mint killed distro-hopping."
Whenever "they" make a categorical statement like that, "they" are usually wrong.
Distro-hopping is alive and well. Not everybody distro-hops until they find THE distro. For some (many?) the thrill of discovering and trying different distros is an end in itself.
For me, Linux Mint leaves a lot to be desired. MX is more flexible than Mint. However, Mepis was better and more polished than MX is.
49 • Poll (by David on 2017-01-09 16:43:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
Two computers, both i686: home-built desktop and original IBM Thinkpad. In my home, if it still works, you don't replace it.
50 • Processor Poll (by argent on 2017-01-09 16:53:46 GMT from United States)
Starting using AMD processors from the very beginning about 1997, old slot A and simply considered it a strong work processor. Moved along with AMD over the years and tried to always keep up with technology. Right now running an Asus mobo M5A97 rv2, and AMD FX 8320 Octo core. Plenty fast and can handle everything I throw it.
Do miss using the SOYO mobo's, thought they were the best and most dependable ever.
Guess I'm a AMD die hard fan, just that they are trouble free and never received a bad processor when I ordered them. Just trust AMD, and try to keep as much as possible compatible in my PC's that I build.
51 • @46 noen password sudo (by far2fish on 2017-01-09 17:02:26 GMT from Denmark)
I would not recommend disable sudo password.
Though here is how to do it.
In /etc/sudoers add
Yourusername ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL
52 • Processors (by windupbird on 2017-01-09 19:44:17 GMT from Norway)
I voted X86_64, but I also enjoy ARM, PowerPC and Motorola 68k. I use X86_64 multicore on my main machine (ThinkPad W520), ARM on my mediacenter RPi3, on my Sony Xperia phone and BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu tablet, PowerPC G3 300 MHz on my iBook (Debian, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger triple boot) and MC68040 on my Macintosh Quadra 700 (25 MHz, single core, but with FPU running Mac OS 7.6.1).
I just sold off an iBook G4 1.2 GHz (PowerPC G4) that used to run Debian, Tiger and Mac OS 9, a MacBook mid 2007 2.1 GHz Core 2 Duo X86_64 2 core that used to run Snow Leopard and Ubuntu, and I am in the process of selling a ThinkPad X201 with X86_64 i5 2.53 GHz that used to run Arch and Ubuntu and was my former main machine.
Even if I have never owned an i386 or i686, I think it makes sense for especially distros like Debian that wants to be "the universal operating system" to support other architectures for as long as there are maintainers willing to do the work. It is probably also worth it for lightweight distros like Lubuntu, AntiX, Puppy... More mainstream distros might not find it worth the effort considering using i386..686 is starting to become less mainstream, but as long as lightweight distros and base distros like Debian and Slackware support 32 bit Intel, users still have many good options to keep the old hardware alive.
The recent discussion about dropping PowerPC support from Debian (not PPC64, but little endian PowerPC) has upset many in the PowerPC Mac community that has gone Ubuntu, Lubuntu, MintPPC and Debian since the end of security support for PowerPC-native Mac OS X. This is a small niche within a niche in the Linux community and even if there are some cool blogs like ppcluddicte and powerofpowerpc, this community is shrinking fast and most people in it find using PowerPC Macs a cool past-time, but actually use newer Intel/AMD hardware for day to day use by now (with Mac OS X or Linux or both), so even if I will miss Debian from my 300 MHz G3, I didn't really use it enough to voluntare time and effort towards the continuation of the Debian PowerPC architecture. After ten-fifteen years, you sort of have to move on.
Same with 32 bit Intel, except that they were discontinued much later. In community based distros, it is up to the users if they want to do the work to support 32 bit Intel. Even if Ubuntu is contemplating dropping it and Arch no longer makes 32 bit install media, Debian and the lightweight distros will support the architecture for as long as anyone bothers to contribute time and effort towards it.
53 • Maui (by havenchaz on 2017-01-09 19:46:44 GMT from United States)
@47 I second the best up and coming Distros, Maui, a semi rolling distro.
By far the fastest, peasnt Plasma distros out there.
Solus has a great future but has a lack of software, but for a rolling distro, it is rock solid.
54 • Processors (by sherman jerrold on 2017-01-09 19:49:13 GMT from United States)
As I've commented before, I use and rejuvenate older computers for low income and older people. Our household and my workshop have 9 computers (desktops and laptops and some are candidates for adoption) only three of those have 64bit capability, all the rest are 1998-2006 vintage. All work fine. I have rebuilt/rejuvenated over 2 dozen computers for people in the last ~3 years. They are all 32bit machines and my goal is prevent people from throwing away a computer that they are happy and productive with and to get them comfortable with dual booting WinXP and linux (there are many popular and efficient 32bit distros for older hardware. I feel this approach is responsible and should be supported by all. I thank Distrowatch and the many distros that do not abandon older hardware that is still quite usable.
55 • Poll (by Steve on 2017-01-09 20:00:59 GMT from United States)
Since you asked about the "main" computer used I answered the poll for that but there are other choices I could have used as well...
primary - home built quad core AMD x86_64 (win7)
secondary - home built dual core AMD x86_64 (pclinuxos)
"server" - raspberry pi 2B quad core ARM 32bit (freebsd)
laptop - sony vaio pcg-9211 i386 (tiny core linux)
The laptop is getting a bit long in the tooth (it originally came with win98SE installed) but it still works.
about sudo - if you are using it you do NOT want to disable the password, you'll have no security at all (kinda like windows for consumers and most small businesses) and that really is a bad thing.
56 • I'm glad for "small" distros (by Eli on 2017-01-09 21:05:29 GMT from United States)
Even though 3/7 of my computers are x86_64 and capable of running almost all modern software. I do have 2 ARMs, one m68k, and a PowerPC. I imagine, unless you people throw away your old computers, you all probably still have at least one device which has an old processor.
57 • minimal distributions' man pages are online (by Julian on 2017-01-09 21:30:49 GMT from United States)
Leaving out the man pages seems sensible enough to me when you want to make a distro tiny. I dunno about the rest of you but I always have a smart phone around (sometimes I can't just browse the internet from my minimal distribution ... times when I was trying to set up a minimal distribution... and setting up seems to be what I did with those, more so than actually using them)
...so if I need a man page I know how to look for it in a web browser
58 • Hardware (by nightflier on 2017-01-09 22:20:46 GMT from United States)
Desktop: x86_64, 4 cores
Laptop 1: x86_64, 2 cores
Laptop 2: i686, single core
Server 1: x86_64, 4 cores
Server 2: i686, single core
HTPC: ARM v7, 4 cores
59 • Holy smokes (by bigsky on 2017-01-09 22:35:17 GMT from Canada)
Me thinks people have to many computers ? Gigabyte Brix 19 watts. Try and save some energy !!!!!!!....... MX 16 rocks Have a nice day sweetheart. Thanks
60 • i386 really ? (by aka_mgr on 2017-01-09 23:26:45 GMT from France)
I can't believe hat 2% of people would still use 386 while nobody would use 486 ! These are not correct answers...
I already have problems running something useful on a i586 90 Mhz with 40 MB RAM, i can't believe one can find usability on an earlier architecture (anyone with 486DX66, 16 MB ?)
61 • disable sudo password - WHEN (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-10 01:36:21 GMT from Australia)
@51, @46, etc
> In /etc/sudoers add
Yourusername ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL
Thank you for this. In virtual machines, it might be OK. Otherwise create another user, which requires no password, but at the same time, cannot use the System Administrator's need for upsetting or changing the operating system.
If the user is a child, or child-like noob, then they don't want to be bothered by passwords. Sometimes heavy distro testers like myself, don't want to bothered by password rubbish.
When the distro is being installed, some operating systems allow the avoidance of password-free use. Most of the Linux distros allow the use of a single key-press password. Rarely will a Linux distro demand instead a dual-click password. If you change this initial installation password from single or dual-digits, the operating system usually demands other (silly) restrictions: six or more clicks; alphanumerics only, mixed-cases only, etc.
Choice of Password is another topic. Formula-based (algorithm) seems OK to me. For example: "Dw-1a2B3c", where the first two clicks identify the web-site, then the others are your secret code "x", which has both numbers, & mixed-case letters, but is longer than six clicks. Often you might be forced to change it. So the planned change might be: "DwDw-x", or "Dw-xx". Other codes might be "Dw-y" and Dw-yy", etc.
62 • MX Linux & Poll (by Einstein III on 2017-01-10 02:33:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd like to echo all the positive comments about MX Linux. It's a perfect fit for me... Debian Stable, XFCE, sensible default app selections and cool re-spin utilities - with just a few dips in to the repos it does everything I could expect from a distro.
Regarding the poll - all 3rd Gen Intel x86_64 (multi-core) here i3 to i7 except whatever's powering Android in my phone ;-)
63 • Distro justification (by edked on 2017-01-10 02:52:12 GMT from Canada)
So I guess the latest trend in answers to the old "why get excited about yet another Debian stable distro?" question is "this one has a vertical panel on the side! Nifty, huh?"
64 • Legacy hardware? (by Andy Mender on 2017-01-10 10:01:16 GMT from Austria)
@52,
I also tried running GNU/Linux and BSDs on little endian PowerPC Macs and anything prior to the last-gen G4 is quite painful. The major problem are applications which keep growing (bloating?) and target only the x86_64 and smartphone ARMv* markets. However, G5 PowerPC (still little endian!) Macs and Intel's i686-driven PCs are still perfectly viable in my opinion. Both are 64-bit capable, though, so perhaps 32-bit software will eventually disappear.
Until then, we're fine with whatever pool of out-of-production computers we can get our geeky hands on :).
65 • poll (by Tim Dowd on 2017-01-10 13:25:51 GMT from United States)
With the exception of an iMac G4,(which I'll discuss below) all of my other computers are 64 bit at this point.
Maybe someone can shed light on this for me, but my experience was that 2015 killed the viability of a 32 bit computer for regular use on the web.
I entered that year fully committed to continuing running my two, but started to give up as the year went on. What was frustrating was that I don't feel like anything useful changed on news websites or anything I go to, but but that the ads got so bloated with little videos and graphics that they overwhelmed the machines. They were still perfectly useful for non web stuff, and I kept using them until they died (motherboard on a laptop, and a cat spilling soda in the other.)
I have 6 computers
1 Celeron N3050 in a cheap laptop (LMDE 2)
1 Core Duo in my home media server (Mint 18.1)
2 Core Duos in my physics classroom computers (a version of Debian testing from last summer, Debian 8) [these aren't on a network]
1 Pentium 4 in a file server (FreeBSD 10.3)
1 iMac G4 to display pdf files in my kitchen (recipes) (Debian 6) [not on a network]
@64 What killed me with keeping the iMac current was not that it didn't run well, it was that when the open source nouveau drivers replaced the old nv driver, it didn't play nice with the iMac's graphics. There was like 5 of us in the world who wanted this fixed, so, it clearly wasn't a priority.
@63
The reason we all like the combo of Debian stable with updated packages is that there's been some advances in desktop applications like LibreOffice 5 and Kodi that add important functionality but we want the stable system. I'll give MX a try the next time I'm looking for a new distro for a computer that needs a reinstall
66 • @61 disable sudo password (by far2fish on 2017-01-10 14:50:18 GMT from Europe)
You said: "If the user is a child, or child-like noob, then they don't want to be bothered by passwords"
I would argue if a person fits that category they should not have access to sudo at all - nor know the root password.
One possibility for these cases could be to setup a file of allowed commands to run through sudo for that particular user. For instance the ability to install software with the package manager.
67 • MX (by OhioJoe on 2017-01-10 14:55:12 GMT from United States)
Quote "this one has a vertical panel on the side! Nifty, huh?"
The first thing I do is put the panel back on the bottom. MX runs well, looks good, and can be put on a USB drive with persistence. Great to keep around for travel or as a repair tool. Never tried a full hard disk install yet.
Like Sherman @54 I rebuild and refurb older computers, mostly Core2Quad and newer.
68 • @63 - MX (by Hoos on 2017-01-10 15:56:27 GMT from Singapore)
Here is just one of its nifty features:
In my opinion MX/antiX have the best live USB and snapshot tools in Debian-land or any other family of distros.
https://mxlinux.org/user_manual_mx16/mxum.html#toc-Subsection-6.6
There is a lot more to MX Linux than just skin-level customisation. I won't say it's the best distro around because YMMV, but it's very good and worthy of more than just being dismissed as Debian Stable with a vertical panel.
69 • Poll: Hardware (by Marc Draco on 2017-01-10 16:24:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
My daily driver is an i3 running Solus Mate (which is really nice lightweight distro and a credit to its creators. Lighter than Budgie of course but almost as beautiful.)
My workhorse is a Z620 running 2x8 core Intel Xeon E5s.
My servers, since I'm only a little outfit, are based on ARM 7 - primarily (but not exclusively) Raspberry Pis running the wonderful DietPi. My music system (fed from a DietPi/DLNA) is running ARM7 with LibreElec.
Other systems lying about the place are mostly Core 2 or similar. Anything older is really too inefficient to justify use - particularly when compared to ARM.
70 • computer CPUs (by M.Z. on 2017-01-10 16:29:11 GMT from United States)
I have 4 computers, not counting my ARM powered Droid:
1 Intel 4 core x64, 1 AMD 4 core x64, and two old Intel single core x32 systems
71 • comps (by Billary on 2017-01-10 19:42:50 GMT from Canada)
64bit Pentium 8GB RAM, 15" touch screen - Windows 10, KDE Neon
32bit Atom 2 in 1, 2GB - Windows 10
64bit i3 4GB Ram, Linux only
All 3 laptops
72 • MX Linux and the Brazilian standard keyboard (by Diehard Ubuntu Hater on 2017-01-11 01:22:30 GMT from Brazil)
In the comments section of DWW 685 (31 October 2016), post #88 (MX Linux as an "independent" distro), the author made a terrible mistake. He stated MX Linux is not capable of recognizing the ABNT2 keyboard's "accented vowels". But I use the very same distro, and my "br-abnt2" keymap easily assigns the correct symbol to each and every key press out of my Logitech K120, a typical Brazilian standard keyboard (with "Ç").
The guy who wrote that long post is a newbie. And he said "__ So you major geeks have patience and try to help one more n00b struggling to learn a little bit about the intricacies of Linux." (Well, doesn't it tell something about his "knowledge" and "skills" about how to set up a keyboard? :)
At least he's totally right about this: There should be one, and ONLY one, "universal keyboard" for all Western languages that use the Latin alphabet (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian, English, etc). It would be perfectly viable if the world authorities in standardization just wanted to do a better job. As we ironically say in Brazil: "__ Se podemos complicar, por que simplificar?" (If we can complicate, why simplify?)
By the way, the fantastic MX Linux simplifies any task a lot more than other similar distros. It is so easy to install/configure/use, that I think anticapitalista and collaborators follow Leonardo da Vinci's philosophy: "__ La semplicità è la sofisticatezza finale." (Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.)
73 • Hardware, MX (by Gary W on 2017-01-11 02:11:55 GMT from Australia)
I have several computers up to 26 years old running Linux (maybe a couple dual boot another OS, I forget), but the one I use every day, and the other one I use every week or so, are 64-bit dual core.
I'm very impressed with antiX (I disdain systemd pollution, I think it is at best a solution in search of a problem), and I'm greatly looking forward to trying the new MX.
74 • Purchase only Linux distro ? They don't work. (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-11 02:43:30 GMT from Australia)
Distribution Release: Parted Magic 2017_01_08. Pay $9.00
In these past comments, we discussed financial rewards for the Linux coders. The newest, just released distro https://partedmagic.com/ does not offer any kind of trialware; just promises.
Examining the promise of "Clone a computer’s entire disk or a single partition", the coder does not mention if this is a byte-by-byte copy, including hidden and otherwise "unreadable" bytes. True cloning programs offer this. Does he know what he is really doing?
The author claims that he did offer a free "student" version, which some then put for torrent downloads. Yes, I can see that has happened, on is latest offering. Whether other coding authors should offer Paid-Distros only?
Judging by the numbers of torrents on other Paid-only programs, this way of funding the coders does not work. Microsoft itself has given up on this method, because not even fully paid-licence holders like myself can handle their stupid licence hassles.
Clonezilla Live is the freeware equivalent of this commercial version of Linux. Most other commercial operating systems also offer a trialware version, even Microsoft. If factory-guaranteed trialware is not offered, then the malware criminals make their own malware versions of the authorized software.
So if other coders publish their software, please give it as freeware or trialware. Commercial software can be dangerous for everyone.
75 • Freed is not (cost) Free (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2017-01-11 04:48:57 GMT from United States)
Is there no demand for a well-maintained ToolBox like PartEd_Magic, which includes Many more tools than just gPartEd or CloneZilla?
Would leeches take undue advantage (out of habit), and neglect to support that work? How many even think of contributing when this 'first-aid kit' "saves their bacon"?
Is support easily available through the provided forum, email, or IRC?
Has the developer contributed to the community's code, or economy?
Is there no other distro with paid support? How many fail without it?
76 • CPU Future Is Ours (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2017-01-11 05:03:23 GMT from United States)
I use CPUs without intel backdoors inside. Older ones and 32-bitters are fine. Most people don't need half the CPU power they got. They just need faster video for Grand Theft Auto. For that, AMD/ATI/radeon all the way; as Mr. Torvalds says, %$#^*)# nVidia.
The future of CPUs is headed where no one expects. The old school x86 dodo birds will go the way of Wang Computers. Think of FPGAs for which we can download CPU designs under GPL. And with cross-architecture projects like LLVM and Yeppp going strong the idea of tying code to one hardwired chip will seem archaic. Remember, C was supposed to be "portable" assembly. We're finally getting to the reality with better libraries and languages.
77 • MX16 (by bigsky on 2017-01-11 05:47:02 GMT from Canada)
MX16 installed on a cheap Intell NUC Celeron 3050 ( bought it for 180.00$) is amazing and topples my 10 year 0ld Amd box. Change is a good thing. Thanks
78 • CPUs, FPGAs and backdoors (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-11 11:04:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
@76 I prefer AMD back-doors myself. But seriously, there are so many attack vectors that are available to malware, be it state sponsored ["ours" or theirs] or otherwise, that it is difficult to start to address them. The big three chip shops [Intel, AMD and ARM] are all susceptible to state sponsored tampering, and there is little we can do about it, other than stop using them. We only talk about Intel because it has been written about.
One possible future is Open Hardware, with projects like OpenRISC developing an instruction set and chip hardware from the ground up. But to be sure, you have to design ALL of the different chips that go to make up a computer, not just the CPU! Many of these are bought from generic suppliers, to save on time and cost. A lot of work.
I guess that you could use FPGAs [field programmable gate arrays] for ALL of the chips to build a computer system. However, by being programmable FPGAs are susceptable to tampering prior to loading [unless precautions are taken].
Myself, I would be happy if my computers used open source for the firmware [eg LibreBoot]. Even then, I would have to trust SOMEONE. The ultimate barrier to open source is the eye-watering size of these modern projects.
79 • @72 latin keyboard (by far2fish on 2017-01-11 15:47:58 GMT from Denmark)
I'm not sure if you mean keyboard mapping or the physical keyboard when you wish for a common keyboard for all West European languages?
But at least for the physical keyboard it would not make sense to me for basically two reasons:
1. Not all Western European languages shares the same alphabet. Sure the first 26 letters are probably the same one, but beyond that there are extra letters at least in German, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. These are so commonly used that they should not stay hidden behind a CTRL or ALT.
2. Shared symbols like $,&# and so on are not located under the same key on keyboards in different West European countries. Which current layout should be forced on the other 30+ countries using a Latin inspired alphabet?
80 • @72 latin keyboard continued (by far2fish on 2017-01-11 15:54:35 GMT from Denmark)
By the way, when I wrote 30+ countries I meant in Europe alone. World wide I guess the number of countries using a Latin inspired alphabet is 2-3 times as many.
81 • @74 - Purchase Only Linux Distro . . (by G.Geoffrey on 2017-01-11 18:28:31 GMT from United States)
Greg Zeng . . . do you even have a CLUE as to what you are talking about?
The programs on this disk are "coded" by others and are Open Source (generally FOSS). Those folks that put Parted Magic together go through a LOT of work and time to do it. Wanting to get something tangible for that work and effort is normal.
Many in the Linux community regularly contribute to our main distro or two, and even for specific software. All these things take a lot of work - - IF you don't want the convenience of a Live rescue system that looks and behaves a lot better than the competition (with the exception of Knoppix), then don't get it.
I'll gladly pay $9.00 a year for a decent product like this . . . . no Problem at all.
82 • Hardware (by sneekylinux on 2017-01-11 21:21:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
My god i have to many pc's (components) to mention, but my latest driver is a i7 5960x, and it does me well for video editing and rendering, but i still use puppy on an old eee pc and run a few raspberry pi's for different stuff, and thats with out all the old stuff that i can not bear to get rid of to my wifes distaste...lol
83 • @48 (by Linuxunderdog on 2017-01-11 23:54:44 GMT from New Zealand)
" For me, Linux Mint leaves a lot to be desired."
Could not agree more. I have tried various versions over the years to see what is so great about it and I just cannot get to like it.
My goto Linux OS just "works" for me, and has done for years.
84 • Computer processors (by RollMeAway on 2017-01-12 05:34:19 GMT from United States)
At home I use 5 desktops and 2 laptops all 32-bit. About 7 or 8 spares are stored in the garage for backup and / or parts.
At work I use 11 desktops all but 1 of those are 32-bit. The single 64-bit is running all 32-bit operating systems. I built it and installed software I already owned.
Also have dozens more in storage at work, all 32-bit.
When one breaks, I repair it. Usually without cost, but occasionally $25 - $30.
All these computer do what I need them to do.
Why would I (or anyone like me) trash hardware that works and spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to buy new hardware?
I fear the future of computers, as we know them, will dwindle to nothing.
In a few years support for x64-bit will start dropping as it is for 32-bit now.
"Smart" phones and Raspberry Pi clones will take over the next generation.
Why type something on a desktop computer? Just talk to your phone, it will do whatever you request. Answers will return from the cloud. Your won't have to think, your phone will take care of everything. Then .... of what use are YOU ? !
85 • Hardware (by Systemnat@protonmail.com on 2017-01-12 05:54:31 GMT from United States)
12 computers: Geode 600 MHz running Gentoo Linux, 32 bit Ideapad i-7 + SSD running WIN 8.1 and Virtual Box, 32 bit Ideapad I-3 + SSD WIN 7 PRO + Virtual Box, Core 2 Duo Mini -32 bit + SSD running Linux Lite 3.0, Samsung S2 running Android + Puppy Linux, 7 tower desktops running 64 bit i-7 + SSD bays. All desktops running various Linux distros as well as Virtual Box. Too many to count. Average 4 non virtual Linux or BSD operating systems per PC. I know there are more computers floating around here all are in running condition. favorites are Puppy OS, Peppermint, Mint, Zorin, Manjaro Cup Of Linux.
86 • Windows UAC (by Corentin on 2017-01-12 15:05:45 GMT from France)
> "What is important to note here is the administrator is already logged in and running programs as the administrator (or power user or other privileged account). The "Do you want to allow..." prompt on Windows is basically just a way of asking someone already logged in as the administrator if they are really sure they want to proceed. "
Sorry but this is not quite true. I made administrator actions in Windows from an user account, not administrator, several times without problem. The system, UAC, ask you the password of the administrator then run the task. I had no need to log in the administrator account...
87 • UAC (by Ben on 2017-01-12 15:25:49 GMT from Canada)
>> "Sorry but this is not quite true. I made administrator actions in Windows from an user account, not administrator, several times without problem. The system, UAC, ask you the password of the administrator then run the task. "
That is not the situation being discussed in the article. The OP asked about situations where the user is prompted with an OK/Cancel window vs Linux's sudo password prompt. What you are describing is the Windows equivalent of the sudo password prompt. As you said yourself, you're not shown the OK/Cancel box, you're prompted for a password, different situation.
88 • @87 RE: Windows UAC (by Andy Mender on 2017-01-12 17:41:44 GMT from Austria)
I too might be wrong, but as far as I understood, when you buy a Windows computer (OEM version) and register yourself as a new user, you're by default a poweruser and can perform certain actions with/without the requirement for a password. No admin (root) account is involved and the password you enter is your own password. Perhaps this is different for the various Windows editions (Home, Premium, Pro, Ultimate, etc.) and when you install Windows from a CD/DVD/USB stick onto a hard drive. Someone else can elaborate on that? :)
89 • Windows UAC (by M.Z. on 2017-01-12 19:25:18 GMT from United States)
@88
I know the last Window PC I got new/administered had Vista on it & it had the described UAC feature pop up every time I attempted to perform an admin related action with a simple button based dialog. I put PCLinuxOS on it & never bothered to upgrade Windows, so I don't have much recent admin experience on MS machines with Windows 7+, but in Vista the UAC works very much as described in DW.
I believe that the UAC was scaled back a bit after a fair amount of customer complaints from people that put convenience ahead of security; however, I'm not sure the extent to which the UAC was actually scaled back and just what degree of freedom the admin has before the UAC 'are you sure' dialog pops up. The tool certainly exists in all post Vista versions of Windows & was considered by many average users to be one of the most annoying features of Vista. For typical users who run their own PCs it seems to be a case of 'give me convince or give me death' as far as security goes, but how far Microsoft felt obliged to honor their request is something I'm not sure of.
90 • @89 (by Corentin on 2017-01-12 22:45:07 GMT from France)
Personally, I have UAC on the highest level.
91 • FOSHW (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2017-01-13 11:04:52 GMT from United States)
@78 FOSHW is the natural migration path of FOSS. The minor chips are the easiest to make. Once upon a time they were discrete parts. Even CPUs are now fair game. Video is the hard part.
The ultimate barrier is overpriced design software (5-6 figures) and expertise in high-speed signal simulation. That's about it. I've met the yahoos and bozos who supply chipmakers with wafer ovens and other whatzits and thingys. The industry is graft, shams, cons, and greasy palms plus monopoly. Look objectively at the ridiculous cruft in x86; there's lots to chop out. Just start afresh with a willingness to recompile.
Of course one needs to "trust" in the sense you trust a restaurant kitchen you can see more than one you can't. State actors obey law and we have a say in making it. If they don't they belong in jail. I'm more concerned about monopoly. Without it states can only herd cats.
All of which is my long way around to saying that the poll is off target. The corporates will change CPUs in a flash if they want, and will mind-trick (advertise) the defeatist lemmings to follow the cult corporation. Apple dumped PowerPC just like that after so many years telling us what a wonderful improvement it was, and why don't we buy now while supplies last. If they can do it, so can we. Imagine a DIY motherboard you can simply reprogram from PowerPC to x86 while telling the local Apple Store to stuff it. Imagine a CPU design that NOBODY OWNS but us. Maybe then we can start telling them what we're interested to buy, if they care to make it.
92 • @89, @90 (by Andy Mender on 2017-01-13 12:04:37 GMT from Austria)
I think there were several things wrong with Vista's UAC implementation, including:
1. Privilege granting existed before, though had to be controlled manually and was never 'in your face'. Vista's UAC was annoying with it's constant nagging.
2. Sometimes Vista would do what you can enforce in GNU/Linux - behind the scenes no-access to specific folders and files. This in turn crashed too many programs and people got even more annoyed. Why should something that previously worked suddenly stop working?
Windows per its original design was an operating system for the user not for the administrator. Leveraging security features tips the balance and suddenly 'average Joes' have to learn how to manage their own machines and take responsibility. They don't want that responsibility :).
93 • privacy (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-13 13:14:18 GMT from Canada)
I've changed from using TAILS on a usb stick to installed Parrot for everyday use, just for one in the eye for IP Act over here. I note, however, that MOFO is not in the DW listing. Why? (I am reluctant to use a Ubuntu derivative, however).
94 • privacy and "MOFO" (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-13 18:32:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
@93 The idea of using TAILS from a CD [not USB key] is that it is not writable, and you always get a fresh copy. However, if the ParrotOS distro is well protected, then it is probably afe enough if your life or finger nails do not depend on it. Does ParrotOS add things like a proper Firewall [beyond gufw] and intrusion detection?
What the is "MOFO"? The urban dictionary is not helpful.
95 • typo (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-13 18:38:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
@93 "afe enough" = "safe enough" [new keyboard]
96 • TAILS/MOFO (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-13 21:18:36 GMT from Germany)
http://mofolinux.com/
I gave up running TAILS from DVD - too slow. The people at TAILS have no issues with using a usb stick.
97 • Parrot/TAILS/Mofo (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-13 21:24:29 GMT from Germany)
BTW, you'll notice that I'm using TOR from within Parrot - and yes, it has all the penetration testing (that's really its purpose) but I like it because it has Tor, penetration testing and all the apps from Debian repos. It gets me a TOR connection more rapidly than TAILS.
98 • I'm Sorry Dave I Can't Do That (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2017-01-13 22:13:59 GMT from United States)
Dave Postles, the purpose of tor is staying anonymous online. Posting your home page and real name from tor is comedy opsec.
99 • Used processor architecture (by Kazlu on 2017-01-13 23:03:53 GMT from France)
Well, I have several machines and they represent quite a variety of architectures:
- a recent tower computer with a x86_64 octo-core processor
- a legacy 2007 laptop with i686 dual core processor
- a netbook with a i686 dual core atom processor
- a Raspberry Pi, so ARM processor
I voted i686 since I have two of them and the one I use the most is the laptop.
Each has its pros:
- x86_64 -> recent powerful machines
- x86 -> cheap computers (eventually old ones recycled)
- ARM -> low power consumption, ideal for servers
100 • Universal Latin Keyboard (by Diehard Ubuntu Hater on 2017-01-14 01:16:47 GMT from Brazil)
@79
far2fish, I know that some European languages have a particular set of characters not present in other European keyboards. For instance, Danish has the "O slash", German has a "beta" symbol replacing "SS", Spanish has "N tilde", Portuguese has "C cedilla", and so on. But the whole pack of "extra symbols" is not much bigger than a dozen and a half. Therefore, a UNIFIED keyboard layout for ALL European languages that use the Latin alphabet is perfectly feasible, what would simplify the task of choosing a specific keymap for each and every physical layout.
Did you know the only difference between an American and a Brazilian keyboard is a f***ing "Ç" (C cedilla), a letter created in Spain and also used in France? In Europe, the only idioms that demand a special keyboard layout are Greek and Russian (Cyrillic alphabet). Don't you agree?
In my opinion, this situation is a bloody mess, since there are different keymaps for languages that use the very same set of characters (say, Danish/Norwegian/Icelandic). By the way, it doesn't matter that symbols like "@#$%&*..." are not located under the same keys on different Western keyboard layouts. Obviously, a NEW layout should be forced on all countries using a Latin style alphabet if a NEW "standard" were created. Either way, I'm pretty sure such a "Universal Latin Keyboard" will never exist just because the people who take decisions on technical norms are a bunch of senseless POLITICIANS with Engineering diplomes.
101 • 81 • @74 - Purchase Only Linux Distro . . "Parted Magic" (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-14 01:43:56 GMT from Australia)
Another noob to Distrowatch does not know that commercial software is rarely mentioned in this site. "I'll gladly pay $9.00 a year for a decent product like this . . . . no Problem at all."
Most stolen or poorly acknowledged software is available as freeware, shareware or trialware. "Parted Magic" is not available, unless the necessary commercial fee is paid. Or you use the torrents to "illegally" download this "commercial" open-source-based creaton. Open-source creations are not allowed to be sold as unacknowledged, unexplained commercial derivatives imho.
The angry fanboy of "Parted Magic" is very unaware of the many superior freeware products, much better than the commercial "Parted Magic". Most of the five below, in my personal archival storage, are inux-based.
1) SystemRescueCd https://www.system-rescue-cd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage
2) Partclone http://partclone.org/
3) OSFClone http://osforensics.com/tools/create-disk-images.html
4) HDClone Free Edition https://www.miray.de/products/applications/hdclone6.html
5) DataNumen Disk Image https://www.datanumen.com/disk-image/
> "OSFClone creates a forensic image of a disk, preserving any unused sectors, slack space, file fragmentation and undeleted file records from the original hard disk."
or:
"DataNumen Disk Image is powerful enough to clone a disk either byte by byte or using its raw data."
102 • @101 (by Hoos on 2017-01-14 02:14:47 GMT from Singapore)
Has the developer of Parted Magic ever said the tools in his toolbox are not open source or available elsewhere in separate components? I don't think so.
You pay for the time and effort in him putting it all together in a iso that can run live from RAM once booted up, enabling you to remove the USB stick and free up that port.
Is the price right? The market will decide if his model is sustainable. If you think it's too much, that's your right. But to go on a tirade against it is weird.
I'm speaking as an objective person here: I have the last free version of Parted Magic and haven't seen the need to upgrade (MX Linux is great on USB and the MEPIS/antiX/MX Boot Repair tool has been around for a long time and reliable).
However, I did make a voluntary contribution to him at that time. And I don't rant at other people if they are willing to pay for it.
103 • @91 • FOSHW; @78 • CPUs ... (by nolinuxguru ... (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-14 02:38:58 GMT from Australia)
Could "Arch Watcher" explain what is the message he meant to give us?
"91 • FOSHW (by Arch Watcher" ... is a follow-on of the above thread. This Dw-triggered weekly thread is started by the industries "non-commercial" software site, with its "innocent" weekly poll, on CPU choices (hardware).
"Arch Watcher" writes: "@78 FOSHW is the natural migration path of FOSS. The minor chips are the easiest to make. Once upon a time they were discrete parts. Even CPUs are now fair game. Video is the hard part." Seems "Arch Watcher" is an Arch-operating-system (Linux) person with strong hardware interests.
All industry hardware chat, on a software site that dared to try a poll about hardware. Will the hardware & software specialists find a forum where the "heavies" can discuss things? Google seems ignorant on FOSHW FOSSW & FOSSHW. To computer users who are not confined to ONLY hardware OR software, this thread could have be interesting. After this week disappears, so will the thread, as usual.
104 • off off topic (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-14 08:34:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
@103 True, Arch Watcher and Nolinuxguru daring to talk about the "future of CPUs" is a bit off-topic on a site dedicated to FOSS [linux and bsd] Distros. However, I am surprised that you have not also criticised the thread about Windows UACs. Is there anything else that should be banned?
105 • English Is English (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2017-01-14 08:39:06 GMT from United States)
Kindly ignore "me," "Greg" if programmable hardware possibilities confuse you. I'm aware that you love corporations. Such types belong on fluff blogs selling ads for IntelAgencyInside, MicroCruft, and Crapple, not open-source advocacy sites like DistroWatch.
106 • TOR @98 (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-14 09:37:44 GMT from France)
No, my purpose is to compound the IP Act in the UK. I want the authorities to know that I am using TOR to indicate that the IP Act is a nonsense. They can investigate me if they wish.
107 • TOR use (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-14 09:57:17 GMT from Hungary)
BTW, that's also why I don't use a bridge into TOR. I want my ISP to know that I am using TOR. when it is asked to provide the year of logs to the UK government. I urge everyone to use TOR, I2P etc to defeat this unnecessary intrusion.
108 • Processors (by Herold on 2017-01-14 12:26:47 GMT from Germany)
6800 Atari ST Runs TOS
Apple 2 Runs on original Apple OS.
I386, I586, Some AMD some Intel.
I686 Intel core 64 bit I5 Desktop and Laptop.
All now running Manjaro. Brilliant Arch based System, Boots and runs fast
even on the older hardware.
Laptop in Vietnam Pentium Dual running on Mint. Will migrate to Manjaro on next visit.
Raspi B3 with Debian system.
Tablet Samsung Exynos.
Smartphone is Arm base runs on Lenovo Chinese Android 6.
Some hardware saved from the dump. Unfortunately here in central Germany it is difficult to prevent good older computers from being destroyed.
109 • Ultimate Linux (by slick on 2017-01-14 20:36:33 GMT from United States)
Ultimate Linux is one of the first distribution I tried while in the process of dumping Windows, liked the K DE desktop and everything worked for a short while and the distro became basically unusable after a day or so. It was a large distribution and believe perhaps it being Ubuntu was probably the cause plus the shear size of the image. Have gone back several times over the years with the same results. Something causes the install to become corrupt easily with applications just failing.
Maybe if the developer went straight Debian and drop the Ubuntu portion as many already have it would function a lot better. Perhaps cut it down to a size under 800mb and allow the user choose what they would like to have on their build regarding apps. That would most likely allow the build to be more stable.
Really like the look however, nice themes and icons, and some interesting apps, but really just too big and bloated.
110 • Ultimate (by Jordan on 2017-01-14 21:05:40 GMT from United States)
@109 Yes same here. Got tired of wondering if I had bad downloads even after checking hash, so purchased disc and installed. Same results; no stability after just four days. I agree about purifying it to Debian, weeding off the Ubuntu influence.
More work for devs, but better distro in long run?
111 • Poll (by Jay Speed on 2017-01-15 02:05:28 GMT from Belgium)
I still use old Athlon MP CPU for Windows 2000 Sp4.
4 motherboards with Dual socket 462, 2 Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466), 1 MSI K7D Master and 1 Gigabyte 7DPXDW, each with 4 gig Registered DDr
There is a Tyan board with two dual core Opterons and 8 gig Registered DDR.
Also Athlon+ for game PC for my godchildren who like to play Settlers3 which runs best on Win2K, with 2gig DDR that go's well.
Old PC's and CPU are a hobby of mine and I like to test of modern Linux is running on them.
My music PC for MP3's is a 486 Intel with Windows 95, they don't need more.
Currently I have around 120 PC and 20 laptops, even an Atari with screen still in they're box.
Now planning to by an 5 year old server with 2 Xeon's and 128 ram to run VMware, they go for around 1000€
112 • Debian vs Ubuntu (by M.Z. on 2017-01-15 06:18:45 GMT from United States)
@109 & 110
I think there are some good reasons to prefer & trust Debian over Ubuntu, though I'm not sure if what you describe is one of them. Of course my view may be biased by the fact that my Ubuntu related experience comes via Mint which includes a system to hold potentially destabilizing packages. At any rate my first guess would be changes made by Ultimate Edition that weren't as thoroughly tested as needed, though those packages held by Mint would come in a close second. Of course when I compared held packages in Mint KDE to those in Mint Debian Edition there were far fewer in LMDE indicating that Debian is indeed more stable/conservative than Ubuntu if you define the parameters the same way the Mint team does.
At any rate the Main edition of Mint ran for years for me in the KDE 17.x series & I think I even upgraded all the held packages between .x upgrades. My impression from Mint is that the Ubuntu LTS releases are almost as stable as Debian, but mistakes at the level of those that remake the baby distros could easily muck that up especially of they don't control upgrades as proactively as Mint does. Of course there are lots of factors that we users can't account for from our relatively limited perspective.
113 • Ultimate Linux (by slick on 2017-01-15 06:27:33 GMT from United States)
@10 & 12: For the longest time thought it was my hard drive and replaced it, but not the case and believe that any large build will have dependency problems. Not really sure what Ubuntu adds to Debian but seems to corrupt a DE when upgrade, have pondered this issue for a while but really happy with Debian, but found Devuan really to be quite stable and an excellent replacement for Debian although they are not quite at a final release.
LMDE2 is a far superior distribution over Linux Mint with Ubuntu, so are the SolydXK distributions.
There is a lot of extra bloat with Ubuntu and perhaps Linux folks don't really want a Windows look alike.
114 • RE: Debian vs Ubuntu (by Andy Mender on 2017-01-15 08:14:41 GMT from Austria)
@112, @113
My personal experience is that any LTS will likely suck at release time, because some bugs just need to be field-tested with the general audience. Therefore, whenever working with Ubuntu, I wait a few months on the old LTS before upgrading to the next LTS.
The things that Ubuntu and its flavors add to Debian have mostly to do with userland configurations to make the system more approachable to the user. Bare-bones Debian can be quite stark and because it emphasizes the use of Free Software and needs to cater to server scenarios as well, it will lack user-friendliness outside the default setup of popular desktops like KDE or GNOME3. That's why we have SolydXK, MX, Bunsen Labs and other Debian-based spins :).
I personally prefer vanilla Debian, because I don't mind the starkness and I want to be closer to the main distro to avoid issues due to distro over-engineering.
115 • Hardware (by Somewhat Reticent on 2017-01-15 14:10:19 GMT from United States)
Current - Proprietary (Intel, ARM, etc) as affordable and trainable
Future - Open (EOMA68, etc) as do-able
116 • Ultimate/Ubuntu/Debian.. then: (by Jordan on 2017-01-15 14:41:39 GMT from United States)
Korora. The conversation coming out of the reaction to the Ultimate Linux review turns to Korora for me because it's the one that has no such issues (the washing out of bugs by general users after release, etc). I've stuck with it for quite some time now and can't let it go even as a shameless distro hopper. It's just too good to give up.
There are temptations out there, of course (MX, Manjaro, PCLOS, etc) but Korora is just too solid to cover with another distro.
117 • Rare Creativity in Whining (by Kragle on 2017-01-15 15:05:55 GMT from United States)
Freed Open-Source Software is rarely "stolen".
Using bittorrent sharing to download a FOSS OS image is rarely "illegal".
Reading DistroWatch rarely fails to entertain.
118 • @92 (by Corentin on 2017-01-15 15:09:46 GMT from France)
This didn't exist in Windows now (in 7/8/8.1/10) Nothing "stop working"...
Vista was just crap...
119 • Stability Issues (by M.Z. on 2017-01-15 17:35:00 GMT from United States)
@116
Well by that token I think Mageia and both the main edition & Debian edition of Mint are excellent & very stable distros with almost no issues. I'm not sure about Korora, but the upstream distro Fedora has a few annoying issues in the XFCE version 24 that make it a bit of a let down for me on the desktop. It's mainly that the GUI package manager seems to stumble a lot, so I ended up doing every update via DNF on the command line. That is all fine & very easy if you know how the up arrow/history tool works to let you rerun the same commands; however, it's far from what I want for a polished & easy to use desktop distro. Given their goal of extra desktop polish I may have actually considered Korora as an alternative to upgrading straight to Fedora 25 if they offered a 32-bit option for the old machine I have it on now, but that isn't available.
Anyway, I've never experienced the level of troubles that others commented on Ultimate Edition having in my several years of running numerous distros. I've certainly had live distros not detect hardware correctly, or distros fail to install correctly during installation/fail to boot the first time, or major version upgrades fail; however, falling apart in less than a week due to update issues is something I have never seen.
I have had issues related to nVidia video drivers changing names & not being able to roll gracefully/automatically in PCLinuxOS, but that was an upstream issue caused by nVidia. I've also seen pfSense not boot after a point update, but that was related to some very old & presumably rare hardware on a 32 bit machine I was using as a firewall. In both those cases I'm fairly certain I had well over a year of very stable & reliable updates prior to the failures & I know I've had years of stable & reliable updates with both OSs since.
I guess that's all a long descriptive way of saying the problems described with Ultimate Edition dying quick & fast are something I've never seen & wouldn't expect from any Linux distro big & sorted out enough to be listed here on DW. I guess I could easily be wrong about that, but I have to believe it's very rare among listed projects & certainly an exception rather than the rule that can only be avoided with some set group of distros. In fact the only disros that fail for me as a rule are desktop oriented BSDs. pfSense will go for months on end doing it's firewall thing with barely a hiccup in operation, but try to use BSD as a desktop instead of a firewall or a server to stream Netflix from & it dies on me every time. That mostly seems to be related to limited hardware support, but it is an annoying thing that can be avoided if you want something that just works then avoid BSD on the desktop.
@Corentin/118
There were things that were annoying about Vista like driver issues that some had, a fair amount of bloat, new UAC functions that annoyed some etc., but I think the transition was necessary to set the stage fro Windows 7+. I have the impression they are relatively decent for Windows & are very much built upon the foundation of Vista, because it's all Windows NT 6.x right? When I was young & naive enough to think well of MS I installed a new copy of Windows ME & tried for a long time to forgive the constant crashes & other issues; however, looking back on it ME was truly the most crap OS I ever put up with for any great length of time. A crash here & a DLL error there start to really add up to a lot of wasted time & hassle after a while. I'd say Vista had a few issues that annoyed a fair number of people, Windows 8 had a really bad UI design, but Windows ME was truly crap. I'm glad to avoid any such future issues by picking any Linux Distro I feel like, & with the bigger ones I seem to be guaranteed of a great & functional OS.
Number of Comments: 119
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| • Issue 1176 (2026-06-08): Redcore Linux 2601, the problem with minimal system requirements, Red Hat account linked to compromised npm repositories, COSMIC to get frosted glass effect, openSUSE shows off system extension manager, Origami merges with RakuOS |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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