 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 695, 16 January 2017 |
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Welcome to this year's 3rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
People are always on the lookout for an improved computing experience. Some of us want our computers to make things easier for us, others want better performance, some of us crave stability and there are people who long to try out new features. This week we touch on each of these categories, beginning with a newcomer friendly distribution called Zorin OS. The Zorin project creates a distribution which is designed to make former Windows users feel at home and we explore Zorin OS 12 in our Feature Story. In the News section we talk about the Peppermint OS team fixing a bug in their system installer and Debian releasing new installation media along with driver changes coming to Fedora 26. Plus we discuss work going into making Unity 7 a better performing desktop on low-end video cards. Finally, we round out the News with a look back on distributions in 2016, courtesy of the Everyday Linux User website. Meanwhile, in our Questions and Answers column, we look ahead to developments and advancements coming in 2017. Plus we share the releases of the past week and provide a list of the torrents we are seeding. Speaking of torrents, our Opinion Poll opens a discussion on which bittorrent client our readers like to use. In addition, we are happy to welcome Subgraph OS and Fatdog64 Linux to our database. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: Zorin OS 12 "Core"
- News: Peppermint team fixes installer bug, Debian releases new installation media, Fedora changes Intel video driver, Ubuntu improves low graphics mode, Everyday Linux User reviews distros of 2016
- Questions and answers: Exciting things coming in 2017
- Released last week: Parted Magic 2017_01_08, AryaLinux 2017, Ultimate Edition 5.1
- Torrent corner: BlankOn, Raspbian, Ultimate Edition
- Upcoming releases: Ubuntu 16.04.2
- Opinion poll: Favourite torrent client
- DistroWatch.com donation: Armbian
- New additions: Subgraph OS, Fatdog64 Linux
- New distributions: SharkLinux, Liri OS
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (57MB) and MP3 (38MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Zorin OS 12 "Core"
Zorin OS is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. The Zorin distribution is designed to be beginner friendly and is geared toward providing a familiar desktop environment for people who are transitioning to Linux from Windows. Zorin ships with the WINE compatibility software which allows the distribution to run many applications built for Windows.
The latest version, Zorin OS 12, is (at the time of writing) available in two editions: Core and Ultimate. The Core edition can be downloaded for free and ships with lots of useful open source applications, the WINE compatibility software and a somewhat Windows-like desktop theme. The Ultimate edition costs 15 Euros, offers additional games, desktop layouts and technical support. Both editions of Zorin 12 ship with GNOME Shell and GNOME's Universal Search bar. This search bar can be accessed by pressing the meta key and, through the search bar, we can look up time zone information, weather reports, available software in Zorin's repositories and solve simple math problems.
Further, Zorin 12 ships with interactive notifications, which is one of my favourite features in Ubuntu's Unity 8 desktop. Zorin ships with a high contrast theme by default and the distribution has replaced the Zorin Theme Changer and Zorin Look Changer utilities with one unified application called Zorin Appearance. The distribution now uses GNOME Software as the graphical software front-end for package management and I will talk more about these changes later.
Zorin 12 Core is available in 32-bit and 64-bit x86 builds and the ISO we download is 1.5GB in size. Booting from this downloaded image launches a graphical environment. A window appears and asks if we would like to try Zorin's live desktop environment or launch the project's system installer. We can select our preferred language at this time from a list of languages on the left side of the window. At the bottom of the window is a link to the project's release notes and clicking this link opens a web browser to display the on-line document.
Something I found odd was that when I clicked the link to display Zorin's release notes, the web browser worked. It opened as expected and brought up the desired information. However, when I opted to try exploring Zorin's live desktop environment, I found the one application which did not launch was the Chromium web browser. When attempting to open the browser from the application menu, nothing would happen. When trying to launch Chromium from a virtual terminal, the terminal would hang, neither opening the browser nor returning me to a command prompt and no errors were displayed.
Zorin OS 12 -- The Zorin application menu
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Zorin uses the Ubiquity system installer, a graphical application which it inherits from Ubuntu. Ubiquity begins by asking if we would like to download software updates while the installation is in progress. We are also given the option of downloading third-party software packages, such as Flash, wi-fi drivers and multimedia codecs. I stuck with the defaults, ignoring software updates and installing the third-party items. Next we are asked if we would like to have the installer set up disk partitions for us or if we would like to manually divide up our disk. I like Ubiquity's partition manager, I find it easy to navigate with just a few clicks and I like how Ubiquity shows us a graphical representation of our partitions. The installer supports working with a wide range of file systems, including Btrfs, ZFS, JFS, LVM volumes and ext2/3/4. Next, the installer gets us to confirm our time zone and asks us to select our keyboard layout from a list. The last step in the installation process gets us to create a user account for ourselves and we have the option of setting up encryption on our user's home directory. Once the installation completes we can restart the computer and Zorin boots to a graphical login screen.
Signing into our account brings up the GNOME desktop. At the bottom of the screen we find an application menu, a few quick-launch buttons and the system tray. The application menu and desktop layout have a Windows-like quality in their positioning and organization, though the colour theme is distinct to Zorin.
Zorin OS 12 -- The settings panel
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I experimented with Zorin in two test environments, a VirtualBox virtual machine and a physical desktop computer. When running on the desktop machine, I ran into two problems. The first came when using the live disc. When selecting to try the distribution's live desktop environment from the greeter window, I was dropped to a text console and shown a login prompt. I was able to sign into a user account with the user name zorin without a password. From there, I could run the startx command to access the GNOME-powered desktop environment. I am uncertain as to why the live disc was unable to perform this transition to the live desktop automatically.
Once Zorin was up and running I ran into a couple of instances, in both test environments, where the desktop would no longer respond to mouse clicks or keyboard input. I could move the mouse around the screen, but the system gave no response to keyboard or mouse button presses. The only way I could find to restore the system to working order was a soft reset.
When running in VirtualBox, I found Zorin automatically integrated with the virtual environment, allowing me to make use of my screen's full display resolution. The GNOME desktop was a little sluggish at times when running in VirtualBox, but was snappy when running on the physical desktop computer. In either environment, Zorin tended to use about 800MB of memory when signed into GNOME.
One final word on hardware: I have an HP OfficeJet 6600 printer which I can connect to over wi-fi. Using Zorin's settings panel, I was able to connect to the printer using the device's IP address. Zorin supplies many printer drivers and some of them are similar to the 6600, but there were no exact driver matches for my printer. Most other desktop distributions I have used recently have had drivers specific to the 6600 model.
Earlier I mentioned one of Zorin's features is an advanced search bar which can be used to do all sorts things, from simple math problems to checking the weather to looking for available software. In the desktop's settings panel there is a configuration module which allows us to toggle on/off specific features of the search bar. This means we can use it specifically to find software in the repositories or the current time in a given city and we can disable the features we do not want.
Zorin OS 12 -- Performing a search
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I experimented with the search bar quite a bit and, while the concept is good, the implementation is still very rough. For example, searching for software only returns desktop applications, not any/all packages. This kind of makes sense, but not all desktop software returns results either, even when a specific name is provided. For example, searching for "gnumeric", the name of a spreadsheet application, does not return any usable results, but searching for "gwenview" does return a link to the desired image viewer. When we do get the result we wanted, clicking the displayed entry opens the software manager and gives us the option of installing the package.
When looking for time zones, the search bar only recognizes city names in the United States. Searches for Toronto or London do not return anything. Oddly enough, some American cities do not return results either. Searching for "Seattle" worked, but searching for "New York" did not return any useful results.
I was pleased with the search bar's calculator functionality. Typing in problems such as "6 + 9 =" produces accurate results and the calculator function can handle slightly more complicated math questions such as "87 + (87 * 0.15) =". The search bar can also find and run installed desktop applications.
After a while I realized I had not received any notice as to whether there were security updates available for Zorin. I found there are three ways to check for and install available software updates. One is to launch the Software Updater utility from the application menu. This graphical program checks for updates, presents them in a simple list format and waits for our confirmation the new packages can be installed. This is probably the most straight forward method. A second way is to open a terminal and use the underlying APT utilities to grab software updates. The third method is to launch the GNOME Software graphical software manager. GNOME Software has three tabs, one for browsing available applications, one for listing and removing installed programs and one for checking for updates. New updates are listed in the third tab and can be installed with a button click. Zorin pulls in software from the Ubuntu 16.04 repositories. The first day I was running Zorin, there were a little over a dozen updates available, 104MB in size.
The GNOME Software tab which shows available software begins by showing us popular and recommended applications at the top of the page. Toward the bottom of the window we find a list of software categories. Clicking on a category brings up a list of sub-categories on the left and specific applications on the right. For example, if we selected the Office category, we could then select Spreadsheet as our sub-category and LibreOffice Calc will be displayed as an available application. Clicking on a specific desktop application brings up a full page description of the software with screen shots. We can click a button to install the selected item.
Zorin OS 12 -- GNOME Software
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Digging through Zorin's application menu we find a fairly standard collection of open source applications. The Chromium web browser is present, along with the Empathy messaging software, the Geary e-mail client and LibreOffice. There is a calendar application and an address book. The GNU Image Manipulation Program is available along with a scanner utility and the Brasero disc burning software. I found the Cheese webcam manager, the PiTiVi video editor application, the Rhythmbox audio player and the Videos (Totem) video player. Zorin gives us the option of installing media codecs at install time and I was able to play all the media formats in my collection. Zorin ships with an application for managing third-party drivers, a file archive manager and a utility for performing backups. An on-line account manager helps us integrate our local account with on-line services like Google. Zorin provides us with a few small games, a clock application, calculator, text editor and a desktop maps application. The distribution ships with WINE for running Windows applications and the PlayOnLinux utility which helps users install Windows applications. In addition, there is a utility to help us make use of Windows wireless drivers. Network Manager is present to help us connect to the Internet. In the background, I found the GNU Compiler Collection, systemd 229 and version 4.4.0 of the Linux kernel.
One tool I was eager to try was the new Zorin Appearance application. The Appearance application helps the user adjust the layout of the desktop, change the colour theme and adjust fonts. We can change the position, size and look of the desktop's panel too. Zorin Appearance offers a fair degree of functionality with an interface I found easy to navigate. I like the layout of the new Appearance application and I found it worked as expected.
Zorin OS 12 -- The Zorin Appearance application
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One of the few disappointments I experienced with Zorin was trying to get Flash working in any web browser. At install time I had opted to install codecs, Flash and third-party drivers. When I launched Chromium and visited websites featuring Flash content, the plugin was missing. I checked the GNOME Software package manager and Flash was not listed. Instead I installed Firefox to see if a different browser would make a difference and Firefox was also unable to display Flash content. Later, I installed Flash via the APT command line package manager. I actually tried two different versions of Adobe's Flash along with the Gnash free software implementation. None of the three plugins worked in either browser. When using Firefox I found the Flash plugin would display a list of missing dependency files, but not a useful error message.
Zorin OS 12 -- Running Firefox and LibreOffice
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Another problem I faced was GNOME Shell tended to run into problems. Sometimes a pop-up would appear to report GNOME Shell had encountered a problem. Other times the desktop would simply stop responding to input from the mouse and keyboard, but continue to display the desktop. A third issue I ran into is, after an application window had been closed, the program's icon would remain on the panel as if the application were still running. I could click the icon to re-launch the application, so it wasn't simply a matter of the display not refreshing, the button was still interactive. Usually the icon for the closed application would disappear within a minute, clearing the space on the desktop's panel.
A few weeks back I mentioned when I was running openSUSE I spent more time than I would have liked disabling audio notifications. Zorin also plays notifications often, but I like how easy it is to disable notification sounds through Zorin's settings panel as all notifications can be muted at once.
One of the configuration modules in the settings panel helps the user create and manage user accounts. I noticed the first time I created a new account, after I supplied a new user name and password, the "Add" button to create the account was not active. With some experimenting I found the "Add" button would only activate after I had supplied a complex password (with letters, numbers and symbols) or if I chose to provide no password at all.
The PlayOnLinux software worked fairly well for me and I was able to use it to install a few free Windows applications. These tended to install and run properly. I think PlayOnLinux will be a big help to people transitioning from Microsoft's operating system as it makes setting up and configuring WINE to work with Windows applications much easier.
Zorin OS 12 -- Using PlayOnLinux to install Windows applications
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Conclusions
I like what Zorin is trying to do - making Linux more accessible for people transitioning from Windows. The general design of the distribution, from the system installer to desktop theme, should make it relatively easy for new users to settle into Linux. The WINE and PlayOnLinux software helps a lot with setting up applications which would otherwise only work on Windows and I think this is a nice touch.
While I appreciated the design of Zorin OS 12, there were a few issues I ran into. One was that for some reason Flash did not work properly out of the box on my system and attempts to install Flash (while successful in getting the plugin recognized by my browsers) ultimately failed to properly display Flash content. A second problem I had was that, in both test environments, GNOME Shell tended to either stop responding or display crash reports. This was frustrating for me and I suspect it would be similarly off putting to newcomers.
A third thing which concerned me, though I do not think it could be considered a bug, was the lack of notifications about available security updates when I logged in. Windows users tend to either assume updates happen automatically (which does not appear to be the case on Zorin) or they are accustomed to seeing a notification telling them whether the system is up to date in the system tray. I think having a similar status indicator on Zorin would be helpful for newcomers.
All in all, I like the concepts and look of Zorin. I like the work done to create and polish Zorin Appearance, I think it's a well put together configuration tool. There were a few rough patches in my experience, but I suspect those will get sorted out in future updates.
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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) |
Peppermint team fixes installer bug, Fedora changing Intel video driver, Ubuntu improves low graphics mode, Everyday Linux User reviews distros of 2016
The Peppermint OS team has discovered a bug in the system installer of version 7 of the Peppermint distribution. The bug can cause the system installer to crash when certain keyboard and language settings are selected during the install process. "Team Peppermint have discovered a bug in the 16.04 version of APT (1.2.15) which causes the installer to crash with certain locale/keyboard combinations during installation of Peppermint 7 Respin. As this could result in an unbootable system for a small number of users we've taken down the Peppermint 7 Respin ISOs whilst a fix is applied. For those already trying to install the Peppermint 7 Respin and getting a crash during the install process, there is a workaround here." A fix has been applied and new ISO images have been published which correct the issue.
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The Debian project has announced the availability of new installation media for Debian 8 "Jessie". The new media, labelled Debian 8.7, is not a new version of the distribution, but presents users with up to date media for fresh installs. The project's website states: "The Debian project is pleased to announce the seventh update of its stable distribution Debian 8 (codename Jessie). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian 8 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old Jessie CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated."
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Hans de Geode has announced the Fedora distribution will be making changes to its Xorg driver for Intel CPUs, starting with the upcoming release of Fedora 26. "A while back Debian had switched to using the modesetting Xorg driver rather then the Intel Xorg driver for Intel GPUs. There are several good reasons for this, rather then repeating them I'm just going to point to the Debian announcement. This mail is to let all Fedora users know that starting with Fedora 26/Rawhide as of today, we are making the same change. Note that the xorg-x11-drv-intel package has already been carrying a Fedora patch to not bind to the GPU on Skylake or newer, even before Debian announced this, this just makes the same change for older Intel GPUs." People who are using the default Wayland session on Fedora Workstation will not be affected by this change as the adjustment only affects people using the Xorg display server.
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The Ubuntu team has been working to improve the performance of the Unity 7 desktop environment. Unity uses visual effects which cause the desktop to perform sluggishly on low-end video cards and in virtual machines. "Unity 7 has had a low graphics mode for a long time now but recently we've decided to improve it because it was reported to be slow in very old GPUs and machines that use software rendering like VMs in the cloud. That slow performance was kind of expected. Most visual effects that are widely used in the modern desktop environments due to the performance of the modern high end GPUs, can slow down the desktop to the point that it becomes unusable in software rendering." Improvements to Unity's low graphics mode have greatly improved the desktop's performance and Ubuntu users will soon be able to toggle low graphics mode on/off through the desktop's setting's panel. This blog post explains how to enable the low graphics mode and features a video showing the feature in action.
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Finally, last week the Everyday Linux User site posted an article containing short reviews of the top ten Linux distributions, according to our page hit ranking. The article quickly touches on the strengths and weaknesses of Linux Mint, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Manjaro Linux, Fedora, Zorin OS, elementary OS, CentOS and Arch Linux. The reviews explore each distribution from the point of view of a desktop user looking for a system which is easy to set up and use.
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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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Exciting things coming in 2017
Looking-ahead asks: What new or exciting developments are you looking forward to in 2017? Any new distributions on the horizon that we should know about?
Jesse Smith answers: This year I am less excited about brand new technologies and happier about young technologies which I suspect will mature and/or become mainstream in 2017. Both Wayland and Mir/Unity 8 have been slowly maturing over the past few years. Wayland recently became the default display software in Fedora and I suspect Wayland will be more widely adopted in other cutting-edge distributions. Efforts to port Wayland to FreeBSD have also been making progress, so I think we will see more use of Wayland by the end of 2017. Likewise, Unity 8 on Mir has been improving. I think that Ubuntu 17.10 or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will attempt to use Unity 8 as the distribution's default desktop environment. As someone who enjoys Unity 8 on mobile devices, I'm hopeful about the interface's future on desktop computers.
On a similar note, I suspect both Flatpak and Snap packages will mature and start to be adopted by more projects. I don't think either technology is going to replace standard Linux-style packages any time soon, but I think they might be popular as an alternative to backports and PPAs.
This past year or so there have been a few distributions which have made security a top priority. Qubes OS, for example, isolates groups of tasks or processes from each other. Subgraph OS is another distribution which focuses on security and it also uses Tor for anonymous Internet access. I think both of these projects, and other distributions which prioritize security and anonymity, will be interesting to watch.
As a general rule, I usually do not focus on hardware or get enthusiastic about new devices, but I have some thoughts on Linux and various devices. For example, last month we talked about efforts to improve printing support on IPP Everywhere and Apple AirPrint printers and I am hoping this expands the range of printers that work with Linux distributions. I noticed the Canadian branch of NewEgg has started using Linux/SteamOS as an operating system quick filter for desktop computers and I hope this means we will see more Steam boxes and gaming rigs with Linux pre-installed. In recent years we have seen a lot more games ported to Linux, partly thanks to GOG and Steam and I'm looking forward to seeing more gaming titles on Linux.
For me personally, 2016 was the year I switched from Android to using a phone running Ubuntu Touch. I'm quite happy with the platform and I think it is unfortunate no companies are selling phones bundled with Ubuntu at the moment. It would be nice to see more Ubuntu-powered phones in 2017. If no new phones are coming, then hopefully efforts to port Ubuntu to more devices will be successful.
I have been using ZFS for several years now, but support for the file system has been unenthusiastic in the Linux community until recently. I suspect, now that Debian and Ubuntu are offering ZFS support, we will see more projects, particularly Linux-based NAS distributions, providing ZFS as a built-in option.
How about you? What new developments or features are you looking forward to in 2017? Please leave us a comment with your ideas.
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For more questions and answers, visit our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Parted Magic 2017_01_08
Parted Magic is a live CD/DVD Linux distribution for working with disk partitions and rescuing data. The latest version of the commercial distribution is Parted Magic 2017_01_08 and has been updated to use Xorg Server 1.19.0 and the kernel has been upgraded to Linux 4.9.1 with various video card fixes. The distribution now ships with support for working with ZFS volumes thanks to the ZFS on Linux kernel modules. "This version of Parted Magic comes with Xorg Server 1.19.0 and the latest open source drivers. The kernel has been updated to Linux 4.9.1 with many video card fixes. We also added a few programs and made a few minor nitpicks most people didn’t even notice. I thought the 2016_10_18 release was going to be a problem because of all the updates. It was actually the best release ever and Parted Magic 2017_01_08 builds on that. Parted Magic now ships with ZFS on Linux kernel drivers! Yay! Added Programs: grub-customizer-5.0.6, x11vnc-0.9.13, fslint-2.44, zerofree-1.0.4, spl-solaris-0.7.0-git12172016, zfs-on-linux-0.7.0-git12172016, and bleachbit-1.12." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement. The latest version of Parted Magic can be purchased for US$9.00 from the project's Downloads page.
Ultimate Edition 5.1
A new version of Ultimate Edition is out and ready for download. Version 5.1 is still based on Ubuntu 16.04, but it comes with the KDE Plasma desktop and, as usual, plenty of customisations and eye candy: "Ultimate Edition 5.1 was built from the Ubuntu 16.04 'Xenial Xerus' tree using a combination of Tmosb (TheeMahn's Operating System Builder) and work by hand. Tmosb is also included in this release (1.9.7), allowing you to do the same. Tmosb 1.9.8 has also been uploaded allowing you to build up to Zesty over 3,000 operating systems. This release is a long-term supported (LTS) release, supported until the year 2019. It is most certainly worthy of the Ultimate Edition title. I hate KDE. No news there, but I believe I spent a ton of time refining it to make our users happy. Did I mention I hate KDE? Looks too much like that other operating system." See the release announcement for more information.
AryaLinux 2017
Chandrakant Singh has announced the launch of AryaLinux 2017. The AryaLinux distribution is source-based and uses ports style of package management. The project's front page announcement reads: "AryaLinux 2017 released with package updates and a new set of scripts to assist you in building from scratch. This is a 64 bit only release and would remain like this going forward. Complete support in the build scripts for KDE plasma environment and GNOME desktop environment has been provided in this release. Amongst the few things that missed out this release are the graphical front-end to alps. This would be released as a package in due course of time." With this release, the 32-bit installation media for AryaLinux has been dropped in favour of 64-bit images. A list of changes and the version numbers of key packages can be found in the project's release notes for AryaLinux 2017.
AryaLinux 2017 -- Running the MATE desktop
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Quirky 8.1.6
Barry Kauler has announced the availability of an update to Quirky, a sister distribution to the lightweight Puppy Linux project. The new release, Quirky 8.1.6, updates the project's 8.1.x series and is compatible with binary packages built for Ubuntu 16.04. "Quirky Linux 8.1.6 x86_64 is codenamed "Xerus" and is built using the woofQ Quirky Linux build system, with the help of Ubuntu 16.04 binary packages. Thus, Xerus has compatibility with all of the Ubuntu repositories. The Linux kernel is version 4.4.40 and SeaMonkey is upgraded to version 2.46. Quirky is a fork of Puppy Linux, and is mainly differentiated by being a "full installation" only, with special snapshot and recovery features, and Service Pack upgrades." The release announcement and release notes for Quirky 8.1.6 offer further details and a list of known issues. "There are some known issues: 1. There is Bluetooth support, but it needs work. 2. SeaMonkey has a few problems. It is stuck on DuckDuckGo for starters. 3. CLI VLC only. A full GUI video player needs to be installed."
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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: 276
- Total data uploaded: 52.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Favourite torrent client
Bittorrent is a commonly used method of moving large files or archives around the Internet. Bittorrent enables people who have downloaded parts of a file to share it with others. The peer-to-peer nature of bittorrent takes the load off the original distributor and helps speed up more popular downloads. These characteristics make bittorrent a good option for open source projects that wish to distribute installation media.
This week we would like to know, from those of you who use bittorrent, what is your preferred bittorrent program? Do you use popular desktop bittorrent clients such as Transmission and KTorrent, or are you more inclined to use a command line client such as rTorrent? If we missed your torrent software in the list, please let us know about it in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on CPU architectures here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Favourite torrent client
| ABC: | 5 (0%) |
| Deluge: | 308 (14%) |
| FrostWire: | 18 (1%) |
| KTorrent: | 189 (8%) |
| qBittorrent: | 509 (23%) |
| rTorrent: | 69 (3%) |
| Transmission: | 989 (44%) |
| Other: | 141 (6%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
January 2017 DistroWatch.com donation: Armbian
We are pleased to announce the recipient of the January 2017 DistroWatch.com donation is Armbian. The project receives US$308.00 in cash.
Armbian is a lightweight distribution based on Debian or Ubuntu for ARM computer boards. The distribution is compiled from scratch and helps users create a custom distribution for their single-board, ARM powered devices.
Launched in 2004, this monthly donations programme is a DistroWatch initiative to support free and open-source software projects and operating systems with cash contributions. Readers are welcome to nominate their favourite project for future donations. Those readers who wish to contribute towards these donations, please use our advertising page to make a payment (PayPal, credit cards, Yandex Money and crypto currencies are accepted). Here is the list of the projects that have received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NDISwrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a Powerpack competition), Digikam ($408) and Sabayon Linux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
- 2008: VLC ($350), Frugalware Linux ($340), cURL ($300), GSPCA ($400), FileZilla ($400), MythDora ($500), Linux Mint ($400), Parsix GNU/Linux ($300), Miro ($300), GoblinX ($250), Dillo ($150), LXDE ($250)
- 2009: Openbox ($250), Wolvix GNU/Linux ($200), smxi ($200), Python ($300), SliTaz GNU/Linux ($200), LiVES ($300), Osmo ($300), LMMS ($250), KompoZer ($360), OpenSSH ($350), Parted Magic ($350) and Krita ($285)
- 2010: Qimo 4 Kids ($250), Squid ($250), Libre Graphics Meeting ($300), Bacula ($250), FileZilla ($300), GCompris ($352), Xiph.org ($250), Clonezilla ($250), Debian Multimedia ($280), Geany ($300), Mageia ($470), gtkpod ($300)
- 2011: CGSecurity ($300), OpenShot ($300), Imagination ($250), Calibre ($300), RIPLinuX ($300), Midori ($310), vsftpd ($300), OpenShot ($350), Trinity Desktop Environment ($300), LibreCAD ($300), LiVES ($300), Transmission ($250)
- 2012: GnuPG ($350), ImageMagick ($350), GNU ddrescue ($350), Slackware Linux ($500), MATE ($250), LibreCAD ($250), BleachBit ($350), cherrytree ($260), Zim ($335), nginx ($250), LFTP ($250), Remastersys ($300)
- 2013: MariaDB ($300), Linux From Scratch ($350), GhostBSD ($340), DHCP ($300), DOSBox ($250), awesome ($300), DVDStyler ($280), Tor ($350), Tiny Tiny RSS ($350), FreeType ($300), GNU Octave ($300), Linux Voice ($510)
- 2014: QupZilla ($250), Pitivi ($370), MediaGoblin ($350), TrueCrypt ($300), Krita ($340), SME Server ($350), OpenStreetMap ($350), iTALC ($350), KDE ($400), The Document Foundation ($400), Tails ($350)
- 2015: AWStats ($300), Haiku ($300), Xiph.Org ($300), GIMP ($350), Kodi ($300), Devuan ($300), hdparm ($350), HardenedBSD ($400), TestDisk ($450)
- 2016: KeePass ($400), Slackware Live Edition ($406), Devil-Linux ($400), FFmpeg ($300), UBports ($300)
- 2017: Armbian ($308)
Since the launch of the Donations Program in March 2004, DistroWatch has made 147 donations for a total of US$46,689 to various open-source software projects.
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
Subgraph OS
Subgraph OS is a Debian-based Linux distribution which provides several security, anonymous web browsing and hardening features. Subgraph OS uses a hardened Linux kernel, application firewall to block specific executables from accessing the network and forces all Internet traffic through the Tor network. The distribution's file manager features tools to remove meta-data from files and integrates with the OnionShare file sharing application. The Icedove e-mail client is set up to automatically work with Enigmail for encrypting e-mails.
Subgraph OS 2016.12.30 -- The Activities menu
(full image size: 433kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Fatdog64 Linux
Fatdog64 Linux is a small, desktop, 64-bit Linux distribution. Originally created as a derivative of Puppy Linux with additional applications, Fatdog64 has grown to become an independent, Linux distribution while still keeping the style of Puppy Linux.
Fatdog64 Linux -- Browsing the application menu
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
* * * * *
Distributions added to waiting list
- SharkLinux. SharkLinux is built on Ubuntu Xenial and uses MATE as the default desktop. The distribution ships with a full range of desktop software, including multimedia support out of the box.
- Liri OS. Liri OS is a Linux distribution which has grown out of the merger between the Hawaii distribution and Papyros project.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 23 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 • Zorin OS 12 "Core" (by carc1n0gen on 2017-01-16 00:45:15 GMT from Canada)
IMO Zorin has only *just* become a pretty polished distro. But now that they switched to gnome they need to polish it all over again.
Usually I prefer gnome to kde/plasma, but I actually liked using Xorin when it was kde based
2 • #1 (by SlackCliMax on 2017-01-16 01:11:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Zorin has never been KDE based. LXDE or GNOME yes KDE NO. All the best.
3 • Torrent Client (by ConnieH on 2017-01-16 02:20:26 GMT from United States)
Uget is a feature rich torrent client as well as a download accelerator.It has a multitude of features and i have used Uget as my main downloader for a while now.
4 • ZorinOS 12 Review (by snowdust on 2017-01-16 02:38:52 GMT from Canada)
@Jesse : I have been using Zorin 12 since its release in early December-16. With regard to your comments re: browser/missing Flash, well I found a quick and simple solution - I installed Slimjet and .. voilà! Problem solved. Hope this helps other users interested in trying out Zorin.
5 • ZorinOS (by TC on 2017-01-16 02:45:56 GMT from United States)
Zorin has nice wallpapers, but otherwise I've generally thought their themes were/are ugly. And it's getting worse, since they seem to be taking the Windows approach by giving users less & less theming options. In the latest version, from what I could tell they've even removed the option for a Gnome2 look in the new app that replaced the Look Changer. Rapidly losing interest in this distro.
6 • Torrent Client Poll (by cykodrone on 2017-01-16 02:48:40 GMT from Canada)
I was a long time Transmission user but then I discovered qBittorrent, which has more settings and a search function (enable the search engine tab via the View menu). Searching via the client is easier than surfing ad, bot, and script infested torrent file download sites (I don't like being redirected to p0rn sites against my will).
7 • RISC-V in 2017 (by DMT on 2017-01-16 03:36:41 GMT from United States)
I'm most excited about the RISC-V hardware being developed in 2017 and all the software being ported to the architecture.
8 • Torrent Client Poll (by argent on 2017-01-16 04:13:50 GMT from United States)
Prefer Deluge because it is simple and just works. Renders well with GTK too! Only use a torrent client for torrents and not for anything else.
Transmission is something I used to use and very good torrent client. Have used many others and find Deluge simply the best for my needs.
9 • what about Google's Material Design project ?? (by Nemrut on 2017-01-16 05:29:13 GMT from Canada)
Hey Jesse i truly enjoyed reading your column (Exciting things coming in 2017) !
So so much so i decided to drop off a comment, which i, normally, barely do.
I hope in a few months you can write a sequel, or a followup .... and also add a few words for us about Google's Material Design project/ guidelines ....
You see, I'm a big fan of Slax -- while Slax was actively being updated until few yrs ago.
Over three years ago Slax's developer announced his exciting plan to code the next version of Slax based on/ according to Material Design project/ guidelines ..... However, in a recent post, the Slax's dev sounds unsure about his grand plan ......
For more details; you are welcome to check out Slax's blog for November 24, 2014, February 5, 2014 and and afterward read December 10, 2016, the most recent entry, and even better; interview the Slax coder for us !
10 • bittorrent alternative (by rick on 2017-01-16 08:44:23 GMT from United States)
Our ISP seems to throttle my traffic when I use bittorrent clients, so I use amule (similar client app for windows is "emule") and p2p share via eDonkey/kademlia.
11 • Torrent client (by Gary on 2017-01-16 08:56:53 GMT from Finland)
aria2 on the command line is my favorite.
12 • Zorin Good But... (by on 2017-01-16 10:07:44 GMT from Portugal)
Since the old Zorin 3, i see Zorin falling. Problems behind problems. But it's the day of a non expert on linux problems resolution. I like Zorin but sometimes it stop, crash. The last y enjoy for long time was Zorin 9 that i've remasterd with remastersys. Since remastesys was banned for non experts i lost interest in ubuntu and derivateds.
Last three years i became first a Korora user and then Fedora user. That's the System i prefer.
It's Not out of the box but, with some web help, we get it working as we wish as possivel. I try Ubuntu, Mint, Sabayon once a year and sometines other distribution but nothing better at present than fedora. Always in the top of the wave. All in all i noted some regression in programs like Kolour Paint. But it happend in all the systems i've tried.
All in all thanks, to the developers and comunity linux. They do a great job presenting us with so many choices software for the masses.
Cheers.
13 • flash sucks (by boredguy234 on 2017-01-16 13:06:58 GMT from Spain)
Flash not installing on a distro should be considered a feature rather than a bug. You should really not need that junk anymore.
14 • Torrent client (by BrianG on 2017-01-16 13:08:37 GMT from United States)
Tixati is my favorite.
15 • Games on Linux (by a on 2017-01-16 13:57:24 GMT from France)
"In recent years we have seen a lot more games ported to Linux, partly thanks to GOG and Steam"
This is not false of course, but in my opinion it is HumbleBundle who started the new wave of Linux gaming in 2010 and they should be mentionned. Valve picked up the idea later but yes they certainly did a lot to convince many developers and publishers not to ignore Linux. GOG did little apart from a few bad DOSbox wraps and fewer good Wine wraps (and The Witcher 2).
16 • BitTorrent clients (by a on 2017-01-16 14:03:18 GMT from France)
I have installed Transmission with its Qt GUI (thanks to Gentoo I can choose not to use Gtk) which is a very good client, but rarely use it due to the very low upload bw offered by ADSL connections. Instead I use a web-based BitTorrent client on a server with high connection speeds.
17 • Search for a distribution (by Saleem Khan on 2017-01-16 15:38:06 GMT from Pakistan)
Hi, this is an un-related question to this week DW. But I am looking for a distribution I happened to notice here on Distrowatch couple of months back , it wasnt Arch Linux based but could simulate pacman and few other package managers as well. Did anyone know about this distro as well?
18 • Flash (by khanh on 2017-01-16 16:54:52 GMT from United States)
I also don't get the reviewer's obsession with Flash during his reviews. It's buggy and insecure and most websites are onto HTML5 anyway. I haven't installed Flash in a couple of years.
19 • #1 (by carc1n0gen on 2017-01-16 17:04:46 GMT from Canada)
What the heck did they do to version 12 then? It feels so odd compared to 11.
20 • Flash (by Dave Postles on 2017-01-16 17:43:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sadly can't watch any TV in the UK without Flash - and I watch Match of the Day (MoTD) on my desktop so as not to disturb my wife.
21 • Zorin OS + Google = not me (by any mouse on 2017-01-16 17:51:41 GMT from United States)
Jesse Smith forgot to mention its Google integration. From the Zorin OS blog: "Linking your Google account lets you do so much more in Zorin OS 12. You can now browse your Google Drive files from the File Browser and view your synced Google Photos in the Photos app. Simply open the “Online Accounts” panel from Settings to log into your Google account and you’re ready to go."
This was a logical extension of its move to Chromium from Firefox, but Zorin OS is now making it easier for Google to hoover personal data to make money on. I don't understand the motivations of people who left Microsoft for Linux, only to jump into another corporate nest. No, thanks.
22 • @17 (by snowdust on 2017-01-16 18:02:42 GMT from Canada)
KaOS is probably the distribution you are looking for. Excellent distro by the way. Good luck and enjoy!
23 • @20 - UK TV needing Flash (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-01-16 18:59:33 GMT from France)
I presume you're talking about the BBC iPlayer - it's possible to fool it into providing HTML5 instead of Flash by changing the user agent identifier in the browser (look for "user agent switcher" addons) to make it think you're using an iPad.
24 • KDE (by havenchaz on 2017-01-16 19:39:27 GMT from United States)
@1 If you want a fast, light KDE/Plasma experience, check out Maui.
It has become my favorite Distro, replacing Mint and Solus.
25 • Zorin and Google (by sherman jerrold on 2017-01-16 22:31:03 GMT from United States)
I've used earlier Zorin releases and they were good, not great. However, I won't use the new google infested release. I agree with 'any mouse', Linux, duckduckgo, bleachbit and the secure distros allow us to prevent our entire personal life being stolen by Google's obsessive tracking and acquisition of people's private info. I hear (on EFF?) Facebook is running every face visible in photos (innocent bystanders included) through their facial recognition software. The gov't is doing the same with everyone driver license photo. Soon there will be almost no privacy anywhere. We're not paranoid, they're really after us.
26 • @sherman jerrold (by any mouse on 2017-01-16 22:54:47 GMT from United States)
I'm not sure what the proper word is -- ironic, tragic, paradoxical, etc. - regarding "Facebook is running every face visible in photos," but I'll wager no science fiction writer ever imagined that Big Brother would arrive, neither by the government nor a charismatically evil person, but by a website/app that people embraced of their own free will.
And the flip side is that companies routinely run applicants through an Internet search and background check, which naturally includes Facebook, Twitter, Google, and the rest. If someone is not participating in social media, that person will not be hired. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
27 • Linux as an option! (by win2linconvert on 2017-01-17 01:04:45 GMT from United States)
I am looking forward to/hoping for more options for pcs, tablets, and phones, from the big names of the makers of these products. It would nice to at least see options for x86 based tablets from current Ubuntu/Linux pc vendors. It would also be nice to see the distributors of the largest, most widely used Linux distros join together in a coordinated effort to get the major computer, tablet, and phone makers to add one of the major distros as an option for their customers. And I mean an option on the same products as they offer Windows, Android, and iOS/MacOS. Not on their limited, outdated, second and third tier products that no-one really wants. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but that's what I'm looking forward to / hoping for in 2017.
win2linconvert
P.S. Anyone with suggestions on how to get Ubuntu onto a Latitude 10 st2, please email me.
28 • Time to reflect (by bigsky on 2017-01-17 03:12:37 GMT from Canada)
@25 You are right but it's time to reflect and figure out what to do about this situation. We are with you and always have been. This is not the time to give up. We will never surrender and neither will you. OK . Thanks
29 • @ Comment # 9 -- Google Good Material Design & Slax Linux (by Szulejmán on 2017-01-17 03:41:36 GMT from Canada)
Once upon a time i too was a highly excited fan of Slax ….
As a distro-hopper, I can fondly recall Slax as being (versatile, speedy, innovative, user-friendly, and cutting-edge) best distro I had ever used, despite it was (and still is) a small project run by a struggling one good man (Tomas Matejicek).
Really pity that Slax has to be dormant for such a long time.
I think the idea of interviewing Tom here on DW is great. Let’s give him all the publicity and support he needs in order to, hopefully, attract some generous donors and few good coders to revive this undeniably promising Linux project.
In the meantime, let’s, at least, give him some moral support by visiting his blog at slax.org/en/blog to drop a comment saying “hello”, or send him a postcard from your country or hometown as Tom loves to receive postcards from linux fans everywhere.
30 • Flash / GStreamer Plugins / Zorin OS (by Winchester on 2017-01-17 05:44:58 GMT from United States)
Almost everything works in Solus Linux without installing flash. YouTube , ESPN.com videos etc. . Videos where they say that you need flash under other operating systems work without it under Solus. I think that the new GStreamer plugins are used instead.
The only thing that I could not get to work without flash on Solus was the PicMonkey online photo editor .... which makes sense because it can modify local files.
The most recent ROSA with KDE4 comes with the flash plug-in but,I think that I set it to "Never Allow to Run" under Firefox and,if I recall,correctly the same content works without it.
If you do need flash though,it's easy enough to install. Download the latest archive file from Adobe and copy the libflashplayer.so , manifest.json and maybe another file or two into /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and - or into /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins or /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin.
For Chromium based browsers copy libpepflashplayer.so and maybe the other included files into /opt/chromium/PepperFlash ( /opt/slimjet/PepperFlash ) and into /usr/lib/pepperflashplugin-nonfree depending on if you have that package in your repository.
Zorin OS 9 educational was a pretty good Ubuntu based beginner distribution. Being based on Ubuntu 14.04 , it should still be supported until some point in 2019. It was a themed Gnome based Ubuntu beginner distro if that's what people were / are looking for . 3d effects were automatic if it detected 3D capable hardware and it had some pretty decent themes and menus.
31 • Torrent client (by Linux Apocalypse on 2017-01-17 06:29:17 GMT from Ireland)
A happy qBitTorrent user for years, I have recently switched to Tixati.
32 • @20 - UK TV needing Flash (by sam on 2017-01-17 08:36:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
BBC iplayer has worked fine without flash for years. (however if you have flash installed it will use it.)
33 • RE: Zorin 12 Review (by Andy Mender on 2017-01-17 09:42:53 GMT from Austria)
I think we should stop considering Flash a key factor in deciding whether a distribution is good or not. It was never a secure technology and right now is being actively substituted with HTML5. We should not prompt website designers that we still need Flash :).
Also, Zorin is fighting against the tide a bit. When switching from Windows/OS X to GNU/Linux or *BSD, one should immediately change their attitude to "Linux is not Windows/OS X". It pays off in the long-run. WINE and PlayonLinux are just stop-gaps, not definite solutions. Any compat we have with Windows and OS X is to make Linux and BSD matter more in personal computing.
What I like about some distributions is that they can make a product that is equally or even more easier-friendly than Windows/OS X and yet not mimicking any of their features.
34 • 31 • Torrent client: TIXATI (with reservations) (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-17 11:27:49 GMT from Australia)
Thanks to Dw & the above comment. Switching to Tixati instead of qBitTorrent was a skilled, tedious job. Worthwhile for experts only. Both are high-powered torrent tools, available interchanging easily, for all Linux & Windows distributions that the user-name is running, at the time, on any internet system.
Linux has only these two torrent engines designed for power users. Windows has a few more, but not as powerful. All operating systems have underpowered, stifled torrent download applications, the worst being the "default" one for each operating system. Only one operating system has qBitTorrent as the default torrent application.
No torrent searches are possible with Tixati, until you tediously select and load the "correct channels". Even then, it failed to find torrents for Zorin or PCLOS (any version). This compares with ease of ready-to-search-run status of qBitTorrent.
On qBitTorrent, Zorin 12 has five ready to use torrent seeds; PCLOS64-kde has only two seeds. If you dare use the PCLOS suggested torrent, it will be a very slow, one-seed for people in Australia. So I choose the local PCLOS server from the several available around the planet; very fast & quick.
This week's Distrowatch alerted me to: https://twitter.com/iluvpclinuxos
PCLOS used to be a slow, homely operating system, using old, old Linux kernels. Like the Ubuntu-based operating systems, they seem to try to be better than the Arch-based systems now, with Linux kernels, including the very latest (4.9.4).
No Linux operating system can yet match the Ubuntu-based (yet), for easily, quickly running ANY Linux kernel, from a multi-choice menu, from a wide selection of ready-to-run installed kernels. Including the many alpha & beta Linux kernels, past, present or future.
On the reserved comments here of the freeware version of Zorin, I agree that it is not for advanced users, who need customization and flexibility..
35 • @ Jessie (by Jake on 2017-01-17 11:30:04 GMT from United States)
"I like what Zorin is trying to do - making Linux more accessible for people transitioning from Windows."
Actually, this argument doesn't hold water any more as the last Zorin-looking Windows, e.g, Windows 7 support ended on January, 2015. So, there doesn't appear to be any Linux base distro looking like Windows 10 for the "people" to make a transition from Windows.
Maybe, when Gnome would make its icons into live tiles, it might look like Windows.
36 • Zorin (by Jymm on 2017-01-17 12:00:33 GMT from United States)
I agree with TC. I started with Zorin 5 and then ran Zorin 6 LTS which ends support soon. I switched to Ubuntu Mate. Zorin has become a huge disappointment in my opinion. Linux hidden and locked down is not Linux. The new themes are ugly and hard on the eyes. Yes there are work a rounds, but with Ubuntu Mate there is no need. Love the Mate desktop which can be easily made to look like Windows or Classic Gnome.
37 • Zorin (by Jordan on 2017-01-17 13:43:45 GMT from United States)
Well, no matter the joy or angst at what they're doing with that distro, it is remaining high on the PHR list, and moving up now that it's been featured in a review.
It's always been popular. My efforts with it were pretty positive. I just wanted to be more into Linux with little reminder of Windows. Which begs the question; is Zorin meant to be a starter distro to get Windows users to wet their beak, then move on to something less Windows-like? That's not what happened to me, as I was into Linux long before Zorin came along.
38 • What I'd like to see in 2017 - Persistence (by Ted H in minnesota on 2017-01-17 15:54:43 GMT from United States)
Jesse, you mentioned what you would like to see in 2017. I would like to see more Linux OS's include the ability to create a persistent live USB to a USB stick, drive, even during when the OS is run live on a booted-up CD/DVD! If Point Linux people are reading this, I particularly would like Point Linux to do so!! Thank you so much!
39 • Zorin, MX16, Maui, and others. (by hotdiggettydog on 2017-01-17 18:20:15 GMT from Canada)
I follow distrowatch and the comments closely. Often I try out recommended/reviewed distros in VBox.
I have not tried out Zorin for a while. Older versions did not turn my crank. MX16 which was highly recommended last week failed to impress me. Mx-update was buggy. Had other issues too but the worst was starting up to NO internet connection. That was a fail.
I had high hopes for Maui but it was another fail. Little things but aggravating.
I'm getting cranky in my old age with little tolerance for hiccups.
These run ins with other distros make me love Peppermint more. Still the best light weight distro available.
40 • re. 32 & 20 (by Someguy on 2017-01-17 19:46:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
32 is wrong, 20 is correct. Requirement for Flash on BBC iPlayer has been deliberately holding back that option for years. So annoying to see that overlay to install Adobe Flash whenever I'm testing new distros.
41 • Torrent client (by Matheus Barreto on 2017-01-17 21:30:06 GMT from Brazil)
I am using Tixati,the best in my opinion.
42 • @35 (by Corentin on 2017-01-17 23:59:38 GMT from France)
> "Windows 7 support ended on January, 2015"
Not at all. The end of support for Windows 7 ends in three years, exactly january, 14 2020.
43 • @20_MOTD (by gee7 on 2017-01-18 01:56:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi Dave
I can't speak for ITV as I don't watch it, but re BBC iPlayer - & Match of the Day is available on iPlayer from midnight of the Sunday after it airs, to quote - you can watch MOTD2 using HTML5 rather than Flash by opting in to HTML5 at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5
It's just a pity that the BBC doesn't publicise this on their iPlayer site but then the BBC has always been slow to take up new technologies.
44 • @38@9@29 GoogleMaterialDesign,Slax & Papyros (by Szulejmán on 2017-01-18 12:05:44 GMT from Canada)
i want to second Comment # 38's suggestion as the persistent live USB feature is, indeed, very useful and should be built into distros as an option. Pity that currently only few distros give you this option. And Slax (http://www.slax.org/en/blog) is one of those distros. And, while still on the subject, i should mention that Slax has,unfortunately, been dormant since few years. Please see comment #29 for details Despite its being dormant; Slax still is a very promising linux project now that its developer is trying to release new Slax with Papyros desktop (http://papyros.io/) instead of the mammoth KDE. This is truly exciting because Papyros, the distro, is based on Google Material Design project which is uncluttered, extremely light, highly polished, very beautiful, concretely stable and cutting edged.
45 • Alpha considerations (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2017-01-18 18:44:37 GMT from United States)
Words like streamlined, light, simplified, and uncluttered carry favorable connotations. Minimal is more neutral, so is 'lean'. Semantics.
Other terms with favorable intent include "gets out of the way" and 'convergence' (consistency).
Of course, without provision for "advanced options", other adjectives may also be applied, like 'dumbed-down', hamstrung, puerile or 'just plain lazy'.
Good Design requires good implementation, of course. Otherwise the repetition of (classic) bad mistakes is likely.
46 • RE: slax & papyros, and "Alpha considerations" (by Dingo on 2017-01-19 01:37:32 GMT from Canada)
@44:
it's Papyros that is keeping Slax dormant. You see, Slax wants to port Google Material Design guided Papyros desktop to get rid of KDE and go forward. However, Slax cannot do so at this time because Papyros itself has been dormant and failed to release even an Alpha candidate so far.
I came to this conclusion by the info i just gathered on the stated distros' blogs. And that's a real pity because i, too, think a distro created by following Google Material Design standard(s) would do much better like it did for Google when it used Material Design standard(s) to create well-crafted and well-loved Android OS and numerous successful web apps and more.
@45:
What you stated is true. But, nevertheless, i think one should be allowed to be biased by "carrying favorable connotations" on informal forums like Distrowatch and Trumpwatch :)
Meanwhile hope you would forgive me in case i have committed the sinful "repetition of (classic) bad mistakes" :):)
47 • plasma 5 / kde5 working on a 32-bit distro ? (by RollMeAway on 2017-01-19 03:17:07 GMT from United States)
Does anyone have the subject line ?
I play with multiple distros CONSTANTLY, it is my hobby.
I have yet to find a 32-bit distro with a working, ( USABLE FOR DAILY WORK ) kde5.
Several work intermittently then, after an update, fails miserably.
Kubuntu 16.04 was perhaps the best I've experienced, but a recent upgrade left me with a black screen with a mouse cursor. Many functions were missing even before that.
All debian versions mix / match kde4x and kde5x apps, and the mix changes with each upgrade. I've quit even trying on debian.
Possibly it is developer neglect for the cast away 32-bit versions?
Guess it is about time I scratch kde5 from my list, as I did gnome3. Both appear to require a gamer computer with $600 graphics for all the animations, just to open an app. Even with all the animations turned off, many traditional functions fail or are missing.
Curious too, anyone happy with kde5 / plasma5 on a 64-bit system?
48 • Linux Options re @27 (by RO on 2017-01-19 05:28:23 GMT from United States)
Actually, you can put linux on a number of the current x86 tablet/2-in-1 PC' if they are 64-bit. These usually have 4GB, or more, RAM and 64GB, or more, disk space. I have Linux Mint 18.1 running fairly well on a Dell Venue Pro 11 (the one with a Core M processor, not the earlier i5 CPU, and 256 GB SSD upgrade from original 64GB). It sort of worked on Mint 17/Ubuntu 14.04/15.10, but the sound and touch screen were only partial. Ubuntu 16.04 as used by Mint 18 with some more recent kernel updates has greatly improved the sound and touch support. About the only thing still needed is screen rotation.
However, the cheaper tablets/2-in-1's that are Atom-based are sadly neglected by most Linux distros in that they ignore the weird 32-bit UEFI typical of this PC class, so even getting it to boot a distro is a big roadblock. Then if you do find a few distros such as recent Knoppix and Tails with the 32-bit UEFI (along with more "normal" 64-bit) support, they usually fall down with support for the graphics, touch, wifi, audio, and power management. A big disappointment for me at least.
There is a bit of consolation with a few more powerful Atom's with 2GB of RAM that can handle running a lightweight distro in a Virtual Box vm, but that is still not optimal.
49 • DOCKER category of Linux operating systems: MINIMALS. @45 (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-19 09:28:14 GMT from Australia)
RancherOS. Last Update: 2017-01-19 04:30 UTC
now has a partner http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Docker Unknown still is its Linux heritage. Is it source-based, or secretly commercial? Even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RancherOS has great doubts about it.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=rancheros seems not yet to know much, so I tried to find more. http://rancher.com/rancher-os/ https://forums.rancher.com/ https://forums.rancher.com/t/rancher-1-2-issues/5106/2
Google https://www.google.com.au/search?q=DOCKER&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#newwindow=1&q=LINUX+DOCKER
pointed to:
https://www.inovex.de/blog/docker-a-comparison-of-minimalistic-operating-systems/ which chats about five (5) Linux operating systems, compared to the two mentioned in the above Distrowatch url above.
"Compared to traditional operating systems, there are some benefits when using such a Linux distribution." (< 251MB in "size" ?)
"@45 • Alpha considerations" comment above is about MINIMAL Linux operating systems. Remember the days when so many Linux systems claimed to be "MINIMAL"? They lacked speed, applications, easy upgrades, GUI, help, tutorials, feedback, & safety considerations.
50 • Kernel 4.8.17 EOL, & the anti-Linux fanboys (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-19 10:25:41 GMT from Australia)
Kernel 4.8.17 EOL
Very important is "EOL". Already the FUD fanboys from Apple & Microsoft are writing that Linux is bad, unstable, because it is End Of Life, so extremely easily and frequently. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). I had to correct these idiots already. Others: please do you bit now.
The Linux Foundation, and its employees (including Linus) will not be adding further updates to "Linux Kernel 4.8.17 EOL". Instead these updates will be done by profit-centered, commercial organizations; not the non-profit Linux Foundation. The top members of these commercial companies are contributors in very big ways (not just $$) to the Linux Foundation. The other role they serve is to supply updates to "Linux Kernel 4.8.17 EOL", but under their company name. Especially RedHat and Canonical. The Ubuntu community (not Canonical) itself MIGHT also have updates to "Linux Kernel 4.8.17 EOL", on their web-outlet: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.8.17/
Other "unsupported" Linux kernels are unsupported by the Linux Foundation, only. However, there are other groups, individuals and organizations who also update these other "unsupported" Linux kernels. Google is one of your friends in finding these updates. No need for anti-Linux Fanboys.
51 • Kernel 4.8.17 EOL, & the anti-Linux fanboys (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-19 11:52:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
@50 Greg Zeng: where did you see this stuff? What does it mean?
52 • @50 EOL, etc. (by cykodrone on 2017-01-19 16:12:52 GMT from Canada)
Let them keep drinking the Kool-Aid, it's good the NSA knows their systems are vulnerable and need updates before they do, lol. ;D
51 is a troll.
53 • KDE 5 & Kernels (by M.Z. on 2017-01-19 17:37:56 GMT from United States)
@47 - KDE 5
I've been waiting for a good long while myself for a good KDE 5 Distro, but my first choice (Mint 18) has some sot of installer issues with my laptop regardless of whether I use KDE or XFCE desktops. I've also been waiting for Mageia 6 & a new meta package for KDE 5 in PCLinuxOS. It seems to be taking forever, but I prefer to wait until it's really ready for stable distros. My impressions is that there are a fair amount of minor issues, though I'm not sure if I'm just waiting for my preferred distros or there are still issues. Given what I've seen from Mageia since version 5 came out & got put on my laptop, I'd bet the long delayed version 6 would be a great bet for for a stable KDE focused distro. They certainly seem to be taking their time smoothing out the rough edges in various parts of their distro, & I'm hoping Mageia 6 + KDE 5 will be a great combo when it finally arrives.
Actually I'd say a great stable KDE 5 distro is my voted for anticipated tech from the Q&A section.
@51 - Kernels
There are a fair number of posts here that I don't totally get (as in what did you really mean & is that really relevant beyond being Linux related?); however, there is a kernel of truth in the situation described if you can forgive the pun. There are both long term & short term releases of the Linux Kernel & to my understanding short term releases tend to end up in places like Arch & other cutting edge distros, while LTS kernels go in things like Debian & Red Hat/CentOS. Those long term kernels can also be heavily patched by downstream projects who want to maintain a stable kernel for a longer term than LTS kernels are by default. The existence of short term versions of the kernel may be an opening for the dissemination of FUD as the other poster describes; however, I don't think there is any reason to worry about that here when most on DW would spot such an attack as FUD anyway.
54 • (Week)old news? (by Kragle on 2017-01-19 17:38:53 GMT from United States)
Perhaps on the Linux Foundation mailing list?
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1701.1/00356.html
…
Likely what it means is you should have upgraded to the stable 4.9 series by now, unless you're locked into the 4.8 series or prefer paid support.
55 • Re Kernel Support (by M.Z. on 2017-01-19 18:01:48 GMT from United States)
Also relevant to the topic of kernels:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Maintenance
There is some info in the drop down boxes on the 3.x & 4.x kernels on that section of Wikipedia. I've apparently been hopping to the next short term kernel in PCLinuxOS for some time now, though they maintain some of the LTS kernels in the PCLOS repos as well. It's all a simple matter of picking your preferred track on Linux as kernel updates are fairly trivial on lots of distros from PCLOS & Debian. The difference is PCLOS lets you chose you path & gives you tools to go to another kernel if there is an issue, whereas with Debian you get the heavily patched LTS kernel with your regular updates. In PCLOS I had to switch to another kernel a couple of times over the years due to stability on my hardware. Going back to another kernel was only a handful of minutes I had to pay as a price for the cutting edge feeling of running a fairly fresh kernel.
Anyway kernel updates on Linux seem trivial to me on both the cutting edge & with LTS distros; however, I have heard some brain dead FUD from some Linux haters on other sites about how hard it was to update the kernel. Linux just goes for me & is very easy to fix when the cutting edge stuff doesn't go right.
56 • KDE Plasma 5 on 64bit system (by snowdust on 2017-01-19 18:10:54 GMT from Canada)
@47 & @53 : I have been running KaOS (KDE 5 + 64bit system) for almost a year on HP 4xIntel core i5 with Skylake chipset with no issue. This is a EFI + GPT partition table installation. For more on KaOS click this link https://kaosx.us/ Like you guys I did a lot of distro-hopping and finally found a home. Good luck!
57 • @52 (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-19 22:06:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
@52 I was simply seeking references. Promlem?
58 • 50 • the anti-Linux fanboys (by Greg Zeng on 2017-01-20 01:20:33 GMT from Australia)
@57, @52, @51. "I was simply seeking references. Promlem?"
Yes, but not from me. Distrowatch might object to urls that point to non-Dw urls, especially sites competitive to Dw. YouTube is sort-of OK. But as the saying goes: Don't feed the trolls, including anonymous & crazy-pen-names.
Some of the Dw competitors include some YouTubers. Https://m.youtube.com/user/ChrisWereDigital https://m.youtube.com/user/quidsup
Nearly every Linux operating system has been reviewed also on YouTube. Including many that never appear on Dw, and many that exist only for the purpose of YouTube illustration. An example of the last is the purposely re-compiled version of the latest DE onto a system normally not available in that DE. Trolls, anti-Linux comments, crazy pen-names appear all over the internet, including in Dw & YouTube comments.
Some internet publishers, including YouTube, have sound, sensible reasons for loving or hating Linux. Haters of Linux are unfashionable, not-liked on Distrowatch, it seems. Open, reasoned & detailed discussion is however allowed and possible on other internet sites. If you want further information, use Google, etc.
59 • RE: Various stuff (by Andy Mender on 2017-01-20 09:01:33 GMT from Austria)
@53, @55,
I cannot comment on every project, but as far as I understand, the oldest kernel versions are present in Red Hat, CentOS and post-stable editions of Debian (old-stable) and OpenSUSE (Evergreen). Still, the Kernel Foundation hosts a huge list of kernels, even from the 3.2.x pedigree. Even Arch Linux does offer the latest LTS kernel as a linux-lts package for those of us who don't want the most bleeding-edge there is :).
@KDE,
I'm not a huge fan of either KDE or GNOME3, though I did find OpenMandriva Lx's KDE setup appealing. Same goes for KaOS and OpenSUSE. The latter especially offers an almost enterprise-grade KDE experience. Decent enough if one has a moderately powerful PC :).
60 • Trolls (by nolinuxguru on 2017-01-20 12:43:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
@58 Thanks for your detailed description of Trolls. However, I am at a loss to understand why "cykodrone" accused ME of being one, without explaining. Jesse is aware of my identity, and should have access to my ip address.
I was going to write about my wishes for the direction of Linux and Distros in 2017, but I will defer until whenever. Maybe the the Troll has won!
61 • lost here (by Tim Dowd on 2017-01-20 14:13:45 GMT from United States)
Hey all
I'm lost at the direction of this discussion. Can someone back up and explain why anyone would want to stay with a 4.8 kernel? Did some major drivers get changed or something? I've always felt that they're pretty clear that some kernels are LTS and others aren't, and I can't think of why someone would want to continue running one that isn't for a long time. I also don't see what's wrong about paying someone to do so if there's a real need for it!
@60 . I'd like to hear your thoughts on the future
62 • LTS - how L? (by Kragle on 2017-01-20 20:07:11 GMT from United States)
Some enterprises prefer to defer the workload of changing (and re-testing) dozens of installations. From that point of view, 2 years may not be very L (as in Long); there's a market for support services providing extended maintenance. Of course, there's always differing opinions about pricing. Sometimes the public also benefits from such maintenance.
.
Does that help?
63 • trolls (by sydneyj on 2017-01-20 21:33:11 GMT from United States)
@60 nolinuxguru I've enjoyed your informed comments for a while now, and you're the last DW poster I would describe as a troll. Cykodrone, on the other hand...
64 • thanks (by Tim Dowd on 2017-01-20 21:38:46 GMT from United States)
@ 62, that does, thank you.
I think this is one of the places where Linux gives us free speech but not necessarily free beer. In such a case hopefully the enterprise would be paying folks (either their own or a vendor) for the work of maintaining
65 • Facebook ID Policy for DistroWatch (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2017-01-21 07:21:15 GMT from United States)
So everyone submit a government-issued ID scan to Jesse. "Greg," post your home address, telephone, and personal resume. As a retired salesman, surely you get that a brand name like mine can be specially designed to streamline Google searches. Myself, I use StartPage. Anyway, with all us nameless trolls, why are you here? There's the door out, help yourself.
YouTube indeed has good Linux reviews and I've tapped Linux4UnMe in comments past. That guy is not a "coder" but a normal Joe working retail jobs. He rakes Ubuntu as harshly as I do. It's a horrible distro and always was, for "coders" or anyone else. If anything it shows the bad influence of money on FOSS. Debian was bad and Ubuntu made it worse. Manjaro OpenRC and Void offer more kernels, too.
66 • Drop Facebook & Google - Take Back the Web! (by Marc Draco on 2017-01-21 11:54:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
This should be our rallying cry. Not only have we sleepwalked into allowing the CIA, FBI and god knows who else read our private thoughts, we encourage our friends to do it to.
This is the REAL meaning of a meme... but I won't discuss that now, there are some great books on the subject including The Selfish Gene where Dawkins coined the phrase (the idea wasn't new).
I'm happy to run a small server in my living room - ARM ideally, but even Intel is OK, if that goes some way to bringing the web back under the control of individuals - and hurts greedy, self-interested corporations like Google [has become] and Facebook [always was].
I've tried to run a Diaspora pod on Debian and failed miserably as there isn't a finished installer and try as I might, I couldn't get past the last stage where Ruby just broke down with a Syntax error.
Something like Diaspora (where nodes connect) is desperately overdue. Similarly, there are a couple of alternative, distributed search engines and even a Twitter-like clone (GNU Social).
If we spent more time looking at these than fighting over who has the best alternative distro, we could help everyday users take back the web for everyone. Right now, we're all losing as a tiny number of US-based private corporations control access to most of the word's information.
So maybe not so much a-n-other distro is what's needed, what we need are Appliances to do these jobs.
I just installed a DietPi/PiHole appliance at an elderly friend's house. It runs comfortably on an original Raspberry Pi 256Mb and blocks add and trackers from all over the place. We could give away a pre-configured image ready to run with ease or even sell SD cards pre-loaded with the OS ready to work.
This is a small start, but every storm starts with a single drop of rain.
67 • @66 (by Jake on 2017-01-21 16:40:19 GMT from United States)
Who cares about CIA or FBI?
There's enough web browsers available to use without showing where one is from.
68 • @67 Identifying browsing computer (by Somewhat Reticent on 2017-01-22 01:13:34 GMT from United States)
Earlier this week there were stories about using data from(nearly) any browser sufficient to identify the computer it's running from, noting that only one browser provides a measure of anonymity (which isn't privacy, but helps). Much of their work depended on JavaScript.
69 • Wait, what? (by cykodrone on 2017-01-22 06:23:21 GMT from Canada)
In 52 I was referring to users of NON Linux operating systems. MS and Goggle's cooperation with the government has been well documented, any uber nerd worth their salt would have got the joke.
51 was asking the silly questions, which appeared out of context and ambiguous, if I was mistaken, i apologize.
I will never apologize for not liking to big to fail corporations abusing their monopolies, spying on their customers and releasing insecure and second rate software (at a hefty price and notoriously unfair license agreements), and then taking forever to release patches for security flaws that the general public have found.
I'm a HUGE fan of the Mr. Robot series, for a reason.
70 • Bittorrent (by Vic on 2017-01-22 07:15:30 GMT from Canada)
I've been using Qbittorrent since forever now, its got the best options, but remains pretty lightweight. I'm curious, why is anyone using frostwire? It sounds like Shareazaa, wich is garbage. I used frostwire back in like 04 or something back when limewire was still a thing, why would anyone use it now?
71 • ugh! (by Jordan on 2017-01-22 17:34:31 GMT from United States)
Hey folks, the arguments as to who is or is not a "troll" are tiresome idiocy that belong elsewhere (maybe nowhere). I come here for info and opinion as to LINUX, not for childish drama. Please!
Number of Comments: 71
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