DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 706, 3 April 2017 |
Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The open source community is rich with small utilities to help us use, fix or customize our operating systems. There are thousands of tools out there to navigate meta data, manipulate text, adjust images and rescue damaged files. This week we begin with an overview of one such tool, Super Grub2 Disk, a utility which boots off a CD and enables the user to boot into an operating system, even if the boot loader has been damaged or removed from their computer. In this week's issue we also explore tips concerning advanced file systems, measuring network traffic and automating the clean-up of files. We also talk about methods for cleaning up old files in our Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss some desktop applications becoming more widely available through Snap packages and the Subgraph OS project testing routing traffic differently depending on which application is running. Plus we share a couple of announcements from the Linux Mint team concerning buying computers with Mint pre-installed and the distribution's evolving update manager. We also share the project releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Super Grub2 Disk
- News: Snap packages of deepin applications, Subgraph OS routes a single application's traffic through VPN, Linux Mint announcements
- Tips and tricks: Advanced file systems, network traffic, running a script at login/logout
- Released last week: DragonFly BSD 4.8.0, NixOS 17.03, Linux Lite 3.4
- Torrent corner: blackPanther, DragonFly BSD, Linux Lite, Oracle Linux, NAS4Free, Netrunner, NixOS
- Upcoming releases: Fedora 26 Alpha, Black Lab Linux 8.2
- Opinion poll: Removing old temporary files
- New additions: TalkingArch
- New distributions: heads, PureOS, DesaOS
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (49MB) and MP3 (38MB) formats.
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Super Grub2 Disk
Super Grub2 Disk is not a Linux distribution and, in fact, I do not think it entirely qualifies as an operating system. Yet, I believe Super Grub2 Disk (SGD) is one of the more useful projects I have encountered recently, especially for distro-hoppers such as myself. Almost everyone who tries out new operating systems, especially people who switch distributions a lot, has eventually run into a situation where installing a new operating system causes problems with their boot loader. Perhaps the new distribution does not properly detect the old one, excluding it from the boot menu, perhaps a new operating system takes over the system with its own boot loader, maybe we accidentally wipe out the directory where our boot loader was installed. Whatever the cause, installing a new operating system can leave many people in a situation where their system no longer boots properly.
SGD offers a solution for people who have (usually by accident) caused their boot loader to stop working or to no longer recognize their operating system. SGD basically acts like a portable copy of the GRUB boot loader which we can copy to a CD or USB thumb drive. When we encounter a system where the boot loader is not working, we can boot from the SGD media and ask it to detect all the operating systems on our computer. SGD scans our hard drive and presents us with a list of operating systems it has found and can boot. Then we can simply select the operating system we want to load. The operating system boots, just as it normally would, and we can then get work done or go about repairing the damage to our system.
All of this may seem a little abstract so I will walk through an example, recreating a situation I read about recently on a support forum. Someone had been cleaning up files on their hard drive and accidentally deleted their /boot/grub directory. This is the directory which stores the boot loader and its settings; without the files in /boot/grub the operating system will not boot.
In order to recreate the situation to see if SGD could help me recover, I booted into a copy of Ubuntu I had installed and ran a command to wipe out the boot loader configuration. (Note: I do not recommend doing this on your own systems.)
sudo rm -rf /boot/grub
At this point, rebooting the computer caused the system to show me a black, mostly blank screen with an error saying part of GRUB could not be found. In short, my system was no longer able to boot and had to be repaired or Ubuntu would need to be re-installed.
Normally, when something like this happens, the recovery process is relatively long. We would need to get a copy of our operating system's installation media, boot from it, figure out which hard drive partition contained the root file system, mount the partition, isolate the partition using chroot and re-install the boot loader. Then exit the chroot, unmount the partition, reboot and hope everything worked. That's the typical way of recovering from a destroyed boot loader. SGD makes the process quite a bit easier.
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s7 -- The main detect and recover menu
(full image size: 7kB, resolution: 640x480 pixels)
When we boot from the SGD disc we are shown an options menu where we can run various tests, switch the language being used or print a list of the partitions on the local hard drive. The default option is to detect and display the available operating systems on our computer. Taking this option quickly brings up a menu where each operating system (sometimes with secondary recovery or failsafe options) is shown. The list of systems should look a lot like our system's normal boot menu, though perhaps a bit more verbose. We can then select our normal operating system from the list and SGD will boot it.
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s7 -- Listing available boot options
(full image size: 11kB, resolution: 640x480 pixels)
In my case, I selected the first Linux option available and this caused my copy of Ubuntu to load, bringing me to the usual graphical login screen. I was then able to sign in and go about re-installing my boot loader. In my case, since my copy of GRUB's configuration had been wiped out, I was able to set everything right with just two commands, re-installing GRUB and recreating my configuration:
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
When the second command had completed, saving my boot loader's configuration in its usual location, I was able to restart my computer (without the SGD disc in the drive) and my regular boot menu appeared, letting me load the distribution of my choice.
I am impressed with SGD and what it can do. The disc turns what is usually a complex recovery process (especially if the recovery is done over a phone) into essentially putting the disc in the computer, pressing Enter twice and then running the two GRUB commands I listed above. I had no need to check which partition was my root, no need to mount any partitions or use chroot. I was quite happy with the recovery process SGD provides. The SGD project offers a number of options for looking up information or working with LVM or RAID installations, but for most people we can put the disc in and just press Enter to bring up a list of distributions we can boot into. The project's website states SGD is able to boot not only Linux distributions, but also FreeBSD, Windows and macOS in case we are working in a more varied environment.
If you distro-hop or run multiple operating systems on the same computer, I recommend having a copy of SGD on hand. It makes recovering from unexpected boot loader problems a lot easier.
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Visitor supplied rating
Super Grub2 Disk has a visitor supplied average rating of: 10/10 from 5 review(s).
Have you used Super Grub2 Disk? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Snap packages of deepin applications, Subgraph OS routes a single application's traffic through VPN, Linux Mint announcements
It can be frustrating when a person is running one distribution, but the software they want to use is only packaged for another Linux distribution. While it is often possible to work around the situation by compiling the desired application or connecting to additional repositories, these solutions are not ideal and can introduce new problems. Distribution agnostic package formats, like Flatpak and Snap, help the situation and make it easier to get programs created for one platform to run on another. The OMG Ubuntu website gives an example: "deepin envy is a condition afflicting Linux users who like the look of deepin Linux's apps, but don't want to switch their entire distro to use them. And there's finally a cure: Snaps. Snap apps allow applications to bundle in all of their dependencies, which makes it easy for apps that typically rely on a certain set of libraries to run on distributions where those libraries are not normally available (or are, but only through additional repos and installing all sorts of junk that conflicts with your current system)." The article shows off the Deepin Music application and shares the steps to install the music player on Ubuntu-based distributions.
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Sometimes routing traffic through a VPN provider is desirable for privacy or for redirecting network traffic. However, at other times we may want to access our Internet connection normally. The Subgraph OS team has introduced a method which allows one application to use a VPN while all the other applications on the system continue to use the regular network connection to the outside world. "Have you ever wanted to have just a single app use an OpenVPN based VPN, exclusively? Including for DNS resolutions? Subgraph Oz with multi-bridge support brings (experimental) support for OpenVPN sandbox network transports to Subgraph OS. This means that you can configure specific sandboxed applications so that all traffic from the sandboxed process exits through a specific OpenVPN-based VPN. This guide will explain how to do that for Chromium, while keeping the "regular" Chromium configured for clearnet. All other traffic will continue to exit over Tor. To accomplish this we rely on bridges and policy routing, both great features supported by the Linux kernel. Bridges can be configured for any sandbox, and Oz will dynamically create a new sandbox-specific routing table and create routing policy rules when OpenVPN brings the tun interface up. System firewall rules also get dynamically reloaded to enable forwarding between the interfaces." Instructions on how to test the new feature can be found in the project's documentation.
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The Linux Mint newsletter at the end of March shared several interesting announcements. One was that the MintBox Pro and Airtop, both small computers shipped with Linux Mint as the default operating system, are now available. These are small, silent computers which should handle most general purpose computing needs. The newsletter also mentioned new improvements coming to the distribution's update manager: "We're improving the Update Manager again. It still has the same mission and tackles the same issues (keeping your computer safe, providing bug fixes and protecting you from regressions) but it will present things differently. Levels will be refined to better filter updates depending on their level of impact on the operating system and without worrying about their origin. Most updates will be level 2. Application updates which do not impact the OS will be level 1. Toolkits and desktop environments or libraries which affect multiple applications will be level 3. Kernels and sensitive system updates will be level 4. As for level 5 it will be very rare (no updates qualify in there yet and none should unless something goes very wrong upstream) and it will be dedicated to non-recommended broken/dangerous updates. The Manager will insist on staging and reviewing updates depending on their level. The notion of updates vs regression is central and these core concepts need to be understood by users, but presenting them without enough guidance leads to indecision and incomprehension. We've seen bloggers and Debian developers alike completely miss the point on this, so we had to present things differently and make things simpler by adding explicit recommendations here and there for users to make an actual strategy." These and other changes to Linux Mint can be found in their March newsletter.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Advanced file systems, network traffic, running a script at login/logout
This week I would like to share some quick tips that I ended up sharing recently in response to questions we received. They are, in no particular order:
Protecting-my-data asks: I am performing a new install. Are advanced file systems like Btrfs and ZFS safe to use now on Linux? Is there any benefit to using them over ext4?
DistroWatch answers: These days both Btrfs and ZFS are generally considered safe for most scenarios. Not many distributions have really embraced either file system (ZFS for licensing reasons and Btrfs because of its ongoing development). Usually you can set up and use either file system on Linux, but most distributions do not include tools for managing snapshots, automatically taking snapshots before configuration changes or otherwise taking advantage of the features these systems offer. (openSUSE is an exception and includes YaST modules for working with Btrfs.)
While either file system will probably work well for you, it is still a good idea to keep regular backups, regardless of what file system you use. Hard drive failure, data corruption or a stolen laptop will all destroy your access to your files. For this reason I like to have both on-site and off-site backups of anything important, no matter what file system I am using to store my data.
The main benefits of Btrfs and ZFS for a home user include easy volume management across multiple devices, snapshots of files in case something gets deleted, deduplication of identical files, boot environments in case an update breaks the operating system and mirroring data across drives to guard against hardware failure.
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How-much-data asks: How can I find out how much data my computer is downloading so I know if I'm near my ISP cap?
DistroWatch answers: If you are only concerned with getting the network traffic statistics from one computer (or one computer at a time) then you can use either the ifconfig or ip commands to check your system's network traffic. Running the ifconfig command without any parameters will display a list of all your computer's network interfaces. At the bottom of each entry there will be a line with two fields (RX bytes and TX bytes). These two fields show us the amount of traffic that has been received and transmitted by each network interface.
The ip command works much the same way. Running the command
ip -s link
will show us all our system's network interfaces. Near the bottom of the information for each interface are the fields RX: bytes and TX: bytes. Personally, I prefer the output of the ifconfig command as it will show the amount of data transmitted in gigabytes (GB) which is easier to read than the number of individual bytes.
While ip and ifconfig are useful for tracking network traffic while the operating system is running, a reboot will reset the counters on each interface. Plus the traffic records are only for the local computer, not any other devices on your network. If you have other computers on the network or want better long-term accounting, then usually the ISP's router will have a page which shows network traffic usage. Some service providers also offer a status page on their website you can log into in order to check day-to-day usage and bookmarking it may be easier than trying to track your network traffic across multiple devices and reboots.
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Tidying-up-my-account asks: Is there a way to run commands automatically when I login/logout to do things like clear browser history or erase temporary files?
DistroWatch answers: There are a couple of ways to run a command or script when the user logs in or logs out. If you are using a graphical desktop environment, then most desktops have a settings option called Startup Applications, Autostart or Startup Services. Check your desktop's Preferences menu or control panel and it will probably have a module for running commands when you login.
If you are running in a command line environment then your shell will have its own scripts it will run when you sign in or logout. Most Linux distributions use the bash shell and if you look at the bottom of the bash manual page you can find a list of files the shell looks at when a user logs in or out. In particular you will probably want to use the .bash_profile file to execute commands when you login and .bash_logout to run clean-up scripts when you logout. If these files already exist, add whichever command you would like to run to the bottom of the existing script.
One other thing to consider is, if you are specifically concerned with your web browser's history, most browsers have a private browsing mode. Enabling private mode will cause the browser's history for the private tab/window to be forgotten when the window is closed.
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These and other tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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Released Last Week |
DragonFly BSD 4.8.0
The DragonFly BSD operating system is a former fork of FreeBSD which is now independently developed. DragonFly BSD is well known for its performance and advanced HAMMER file system. The project's latest release, DragonFly BSD 4.8.0, supports booting on UEFI-enabled computers, improves kernel performance and includes updated Intel video drivers. "The installer can now create an EFI or legacy installation. Numerous adjustments have been made to userland utilities and the kernel to support EFI as a mainstream boot environment. The /boot filesystem may now be placed either in its own GPT slice, or in a DragonFly disklabel inside a GPT slice. DragonFly, by default, creates a GPT slice for all of DragonFly and places a DragonFly disklabel inside it with all the standard DFly partitions, such that the disk names are roughly the same as they would be in a legacy system. The i915 driver has been updated to match the version found with the Linux 4.6 kernel. Broadwell and Skylake processor users will see improvements." Further information can be found in the project's release notes.
Oracle Linux 6.9
Oracle has announced the release of an update to the company's Oracle Linux 6 distribution. The new version, Oracle Linux 6 Update 9, includes multiple updated kernels, including two new "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" packages and a "Red Hat Compatible Kernel" package. The new update to the 6.x series also includes a number of significant bug fixes. "Oracle Linux 6 Update 9 fixes a regression introduced in glibc in the upstream release that could cause Oracle Database to fail to start in certain circumstances. This regression was found and fixed during Oracle's extensive testing of Oracle Linux with Oracle products. Customers using other Linux distributions with Oracle Database are encouraged to talk to their Linux provider about whether they also have a patch available." Further information on the new release can be found in the company's release announcement and release notes.
Linux Lite 3.4
Jerry Bezencon has announced the release of a new version of Linux Lite, a beginner friendly distribution based on Ubuntu. The new version, Linux Lite 3.4, makes it easier to schedule software updates, install third-party drivers and create a restore point for the operating system. "Linux Lite 3.4 Final is now available for download. Linux Lite continues its focus on Security by providing our latest application, Lite Updates Notify. This application is a desktop notification that informs the user of all available updates. You can set Update reminders anywhere from once every hour to once every 3 weeks. Continuing our focus on Security, Lite Welcome has a fresh new look, reminding you after a fresh install of Linux Lite to - install updates, install drivers and set a restore point. This release also brings 4 new features to Lite Tweaks, Hibernate and Suspend, Login and Logout Options, Manage Save Sessions and zRam. With Hibernate and Suspend, you can select whether or not to show these options on the Logout screen. The Login and Logout Options feature allows the administrator to enable or disable Login and Logout window options. These 2 new features are particularly useful for multi-user set ups. zRam is a compressed RAM block device for faster I/O and is perfect for older computers." Additional details and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.
Linux Lite 3.4 -- The welcome screen
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
NixOS 17.03
NixOS is an independently developed Linux distribution which uses the Nix package manager to handle packages and system configuration. NixOS offers many advanced package management features, including roll backs and atomic package operations. The project's latest release, NixOS 17.03, ships with the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment which replaces KDE 4. The PHP packages have been updated to version 7 and the Nix package manager includes a number of new features. "In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights: Nixpkgs is now extensible through overlays. See the Nixpkgs manual for more information. This release is based on Glibc 2.25, GCC 5.4.0 and systemd 232. The default Linux kernel is 4.9 and Nix is at 1.11.8. The default desktop environment now is KDE's Plasma 5. KDE 4 has been removed. The setuid wrapper functionality now supports setting capabilities. X.org server uses branch 1.19. Due to ABI incompatibilities, ati_unfree keeps forcing 1.17 and amdgpu-pro starts forcing 1.18. Cross compilation has been rewritten. See the nixpkgs manual for details. The most obvious breaking change is that in derivations there is no .nativeDrv nor .crossDrv are now cross by default, not native. The overridePackages function has been rewritten to be replaced by overlays." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release notes.
Netrunner 17.03
Netrunner is a Debian-based Linux distribution which features a customized KDE Plasma desktop environment. The Netrunner project has announced the release of an update to their distribution, Netrunner 17.03 "Cyclotron". The new release features KDE's Plasma 5.9 desktop, version 4.9.0 of the Linux kernel and the extended support release of Firefox 52. "Netrunner 17.03 'Cyclotron' ships with an upgraded stack of KDE Software plus its usual selection of applications like LibreOffice, Kdenlive, Gimp, Audacious, Steam, Skype, Transmission, VirtualBox, Krita, Inkscape and many more. Here are some versions of what is shipped in Netrunner Desktop 17.03: Linux Kernel 4.9.0-1, Plasma 5.9.3, Frameworks 5.31, Qt 5.7.1, KDE Applications 16.12.2, Firefox 52-ESR, Thunderbird 45. With Cyclotron, we took the chance and switched some parts in while replacing others: Firefox-Plasma 52.0.1 has been updated to the Firefox ESR release channel, meaning it will keep receiving security fixes, but stay stable as to not break kmozillahelper as easily." Further information on Netrunner 17.03, along with screen shots, can be found in the project's release announcement.
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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 in our Torrent Archive. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 353
- Total data uploaded: 60.6TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll |
Removing old temporary files
One of the tips we covered this week looked at ways to perform tasks at login, including cleaning up old files. Removing old temporary files, cached data and unused configuration files is a common house cleaning task most of us need to perform eventually to prevent the unused data from ballooning out of control. This week we would like to find out what method you use for clearing out old temporary and configuration files from your home directory.
You can see the results of our previous poll on gaining elevated access for administrator tasks in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Removing old temporary files
I use an application like BleachBit: | 507 (34%) |
I run a custom command/script to remove old files: | 133 (9%) |
I rely on applications to clean up after themselves: | 177 (12%) |
I regularly discard my old home directory and start fresh: | 68 (5%) |
I do not perform any disk cleaning: | 486 (32%) |
Other: | 134 (9%) |
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DistroWatch.com News |
New projects added to database
TalkingArch
TalkingArch is a respin of the Arch Linux live ISO, modified to include speech and Braille output for blind and visually impaired users. Arch Linux is designed to be simple, lightweight and flexible. TalkingArch retains all the features of the Arch Linux live image, but adds speech and Braille packages to make it possible for blind and visually impaired users to install Arch Linux eyes-free.
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Distributions added to waiting list
- heads. The heads distribution is a GNU/Linux distribution which features 100% free/libre software. heads is based on Devuan and runs a Linux kernel with the binary blobs removed. The distribution is designed to protect users' privacy on-line and features Tor integration.
- PureOS. PureOS is a Debian-based Linux distribution which features tools for helping the user remain anonymous and avoid tracking when browsing the web.
- DesaOS. DesaOS is an Ubuntu-based distribution developed to support the application of information technology in rural areas. DesaOS able to run on computers with lower specifications.
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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, 10 April 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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Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip. (Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
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Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Grub2 Disk (by DaveW on 2017-04-03 00:28:27 GMT from United States)
I happened to need it just a week ago. The situation was similar to Jesse's simulation. It did exactly what I needed, and booted into the required OS, where I fixed my problem.
2 • About Super Grub2 Disk being an Operating System (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 01:24:53 GMT from Spain)
> Super Grub2 Disk is not a Linux distribution and, in fact, I do not think it entirely qualifies as an operating system.
That would be a good question.
I consider it myself a GNU/GRUB distribution because GRUB code is being built. GNU GRUB consider themselves a Multiboot boot loader. I, sometimes, see the Grub scripts (they are bash alike in case you are asking yourself) as programs because, somehow, Grub runs or interprets them.
And programs are run in an Operating System, isn't it? Well, it isn't. The BIOS or now UEFI are programs that run on our computer RAM and we don't consider them operating systems.
Finally as an offtopic I once considered adding up Super Grub2 Disk, a bunch of kernels and initrds in a single disk so that you could boot your distribution even if you deleted your /boot directory (where kernel resides) completely.
That Kernel box disk idea ( https://adrian15sgd.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/kernel-box-disk-idea/ ) seemed not to be feasible because it seems each initrd is tailored to each machine needs. But... Would it be a GNU/Linux distribution because it provided Kernels ? Or the fact that no userland (besides initrd) was provided meant it was not a distribution?
You can also check similar ideas I came up when I was inspired:
* Super Kexec Disk mockup: https://adrian15sgd.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/super-kexec-disk-mockup/ for another idea.
* Kernel boot parametres option for Super Grub2 Disk mockup : https://adrian15sgd.wordpress.com/2014/11/28/kernel-boot-parametres-option-for-super-grub2-disk-mockup/
3 • Multiple (by Chris on 2017-04-03 02:29:20 GMT from United States)
Super Grub2 Disk ("SGD"): #Knock-on-Wood, I have never had my bootloader fail and need to repair it; however, it pays to be prepared.
A question for any who know the answer: Will SGD help to access a distro on a drive's LVM partition using full disk encryption, with a non-encrypted /boot partition either on the otherwise encrypted disk or on a separate drive (i.e., USB)?
Based upon Jesse's statement, "The SGD project offers a number of options for looking up information or working with LVM...," I suspect the answer is it is possible, but I would like to know more.
Poll: For purposes of system cleanup, I chose, "I use an application like Bleachbit." lMO, Bleachbit is too good of an application to not use, from GUI or CLI.
Plus, it is HRC endorsed!
Waiting List: Two more anonimity (security?) distros added to the list, one 32-bit capable with lightweight WM (heads)! Hmm, I must check it out; has my repeated DWW Comments "tilting at windmills" about a lighter, more secure alternative to Tails, etc. finally paid off?
4 • ZFS (by Andre on 2017-04-03 02:30:30 GMT from Canada)
I'm a huge fan of ZFS and use it on all of my PCs. It's unfortunate that licensing issues make using it as a root filesystem on linux such a pain: distros don't ship with ZFS support on install/rescue media; besides GRUB, most linux boot loaders don't really know how to deal with boot environments; and apart from the venerable zfs/zpool utilities--which are miles ahead of what btrfs currently has, in my opinion--there are few userspace programs that really take advantage of it. But if you don't mind playing sysadmin, it can be worth the hassle. It is for me.
5 • @4 • ZFS BTRFS, ZFS, EXT4, NTFS ... ? (by Greg Zeng on 2017-04-03 03:59:25 GMT from Australia)
Interesting thread this DWW. "Protecting-my-data asks:" Discussed for many years in many forums now. Googled: "2017 zfs btrfs cpu use performance", led me to:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=zfs_linux_062&num=1 "ZFS Still Trying To Compete With EXT4 & Btrfs On Linux", Michael Larabel,27 August 2013. " ... ZFS didn't beat out EXT4 and Btrfs from the testing done today with a high-end System76 laptop running Ubuntu with the Linux 3.11 kernel ... " Michael then linked to an older study he did: "10-Way Linux File-System Comparison On Linux 3.10".
Linux kernel ("stable") is now at version 4.10.8, and changing EVERY week! http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.10.8/ Each "point" release of the Linux kernel often includes changes relevant to the partition systems: EXTx, BTRFS, ZFS, etc. Getting the latest performance & stability results changes almost every week as well.
Partition type was important in the days of slow spinning disks, low memory, slow CPU, slow Input-Output & expensive-unreliable hardware. My four-year-old Dell notebook computer has reliable storage of a HDD & SSD of a terabyte each, inbuilt UPS, i7 CPU, but "only" 16 GB of DDR3 memory (not yet DDR4).
Linux has many "folders": ROOT, HOME, ... and these may sometimes be on/within different partitions and different partition types. For example SWAP is often a partition. But now many avoid the need for this in a few ways (swap-file, etc). My "HOME" partitions are on a separate NTFS-compressed partition, so has the most of benefits of the Linux BTRFS partition-type (defrag, encryption, speed, compression, undelete), but with more stability, and read-write by all 13 of my notebook's multi-booting operating systems.
http://www.virtualtothecore.com/en/2016-btrfs-really-next-filesystem/ " ... BTRFS is not perfect. For example, it suffers when there are heavy write activities in the middle of an existing files, so probably it’s not the best candidate for virtualization (the virtual disks are updated in-place at each write). But as always, you have to decide if the features available in a given technology are worth the migration to it, and if the (few) limits are going to affect you. "
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/4r1r2b/whats_the_stance_these_days_on_btrfs_vs_zfs_for/ " ... A few ZFS advantages over BTRFS: ... Some advantages of BTRFS over ZFS: ... "
https://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=117414 [last comment of many, from: "techguy, Gerbil Team Leader", Sun Feb 28, 2016] " ... In fact, *most* test results from the paper (all file server tests, single disk, RAID 10, write performance, random read/write) show Btrfs out-performing ZFS. OLTP performance was the one area where ZFS consistently out-performed Btrfs. Stability is another matter, though."
6 • Poll (by bison on 2017-04-03 04:23:11 GMT from United States)
Other: I randomly rm -rf dot files that I don't recognize and hope it wasn't something important. :|
I probably need come up with a better plan...
7 • Grub2 (by dp on 2017-04-03 04:48:55 GMT from Greece)
I have a multiboot usb with all rescue *.iso I need, grub2 disk is one of them. After booting into an installed linux distro
sudo grub-install /dev/sda sudo update-grub
That;s all. I do not use sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
complicated for me :)
8 • Temp files (by argent on 2017-04-03 06:14:47 GMT from United States)
Tidying up a Linux install can be an easy task or a daunting one for a seasoned or a new comer to Linux. Recommend anyone who uses any clean-up application to become familiar with it's capabilities. Use both Debian and Devuan as my main installed images.
BleachBit is an excellent tool, frankly very good at what it does, also reclaims disk space. Use this frequently in build environments.
CLI commands are great tools, rely on "debfoster" to rid of partially removed apps, obsolete, orphaned and their dependencies. sudo for "clean" and "--purge" is also recommended.
Another great tool is FSLint, capable of finding and removing duplicates, empty directories, bad syslinks and other capabilities.
Enjoy running minimalist installs, same with creating builds. Keeping a clean, and lean working distribution greatly enhances the Linux experience.
Once again, recommend that whatever you choose, become familiar with it's capabilities and possible loss of information if not correctly used.
9 • Security/privacy distros (by Dave Postles on 2017-04-03 09:03:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
@3 Mostly (all?) based on Debian, so thanks again for Debian.
10 • Bootloader problems (by Maarten on 2017-04-03 09:20:26 GMT from Belgium)
I have had problems with my bootloader and config in the past but most problems can be fixed with any live distro. I do not mind SGD being reviewed. I screwed up things before and I am lucky to always have another computer nearby to search how to fix it.
11 • How to boot USB stick from grub? (by John on 2017-04-03 09:52:54 GMT from United States)
Hi All,
So I have an older laptop. No BIOS support for booting from USB memory stick, but with a USB port.
Can I plug in my bootable memory stick, run some GRUB like program and boot that memory stick.
It MUST be possible. It would be REALLY nice to figure out how.
Suggestions please :).
John
12 • Poll (by BuckM on 2017-04-03 10:01:00 GMT from Australia)
I mainly use BleachBit. It does the job. I am also keeping my eye on Stacer, it looks very promising. Stacer is an Electron app, so hopefully the RAM usage will be kept in check. There is a AppImage for Stacer, pretty cool. Looking forward to when this tool makes it into the main repositories. :) https://github.com/oguzhaninan/Stacer
13 • usb stick boot (by peer on 2017-04-03 10:10:53 GMT from Netherlands)
#11: You can download plop manager and burn the iso to a cd. With plop managar you can boot from usb when this is not supported on your laptop/desktop. The easiest way is to run plop manager from cd but is is possible to install plop manager an the harddisk too.
14 • SuperGrub2 (by excollier on 2017-04-03 10:24:02 GMT from Ireland)
Supergrub2 is a superb utility and I have used it a few times when grub has been corrupted or just refuses to work, lets me boot a Linux OS and re-install from there. Simple and effective.
15 • Removing old temporary files (by Misalf on 2017-04-03 11:31:21 GMT from Germany)
Since I'm using Tiny Core Linux, where the root filesystem is in RAM, I pretty much don't care about temporary files and junk in my home dir. Only after performing a so called "backup" of the files in my users home dir and certain additional files, the system will be able to restore my files from the "backup file" on the next boot. The system "cleans itself" and restores only the junk I have explicitly chosen to keep. Without too much random stuff in my home dir, it's also not much of a hassle to remove a few things by hand if something slipped in there.
16 • SuperGRUB2 (by Bob Hayden on 2017-04-03 12:00:37 GMT from United States)
I wish the test had been on a system with half a dozen OSs installed!-) A problem I have seen with GRUB is that some Linux distributions are shown as "Linux" while many distributions derived from Debian are shown as Debian. So maybe I get to choose from six generic choices just marked "Linux" and four just marked "Debian". I also have seen any Microsoft file system listed as a boot option, even if it is a non-bootable data partition. Not real helpful. Perhaps it is up to the distros to label themselves -- I do not know if GRUB can do much about this, but it's certainly been a problem for me.
17 • Super Grub2 Disk on encrypted devices (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 12:52:55 GMT from Spain)
@3 > Will SGD help to access a distro on a drive's LVM partition using full disk encryption, with a non-encrypted /boot partition either on the otherwise encrypted disk or on a separate drive (i.e., USB)?
@3 : Under 'Extra Grub2 functionality' menu you can choose: 'Mount encrypted volumes (LUKS and geli)' which I guess should detect your encrypted devices and ask you for passwords to unlock them.
Once unlocked Super Grub2 Disk should find what's inside using normal options. If that functionality does not suit your specific encryption setup you can always try to use grub cli. Or suggest us how to improve Super Grub2 Disk with what you already have on your grub.cfg.
18 • Disk cleaning (by Kazlu on 2017-04-03 13:01:41 GMT from France)
I do not perform any disk cleaning operation. However, my /tmp is mounted in RAM, so it is mecanically emptied at every shutdown. In the occasional situation where my root partition is nearly full, I use baobab or an equivalent to identify the most space-cunsuming directory and I take actions accordingly. Recently I found out that about 30 old kernels were installed on my Xubuntu 14.04, removing all of them minus the last 2 gave me quite some space!
19 • Super Grub2 Disk with many OSes (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 13:05:51 GMT from Spain)
@16 > A problem I have seen with GRUB is that some Linux distributions are shown as "Linux" while many distributions derived from Debian are shown as Debian. So maybe I get to choose from six generic choices just marked "Linux" and four just marked "Debian". I also have seen any Microsoft file system listed as a boot option, even if it is a non-bootable data partition. Not real helpful.
@16 : Yeah, that's grub-mkconfig or update-grub relying on os-prober info to guess what the other OSes are. Sometimes it's not quite accurate.
@16 > Perhaps it is up to the distros to label themselves -- I do not know if GRUB can do much about this, but it's certainly been a problem for me.
@16 : Things should be improved in the UEFI era but I guess there will be problems around like the ones you describe.
@16 > I wish the test had been on a system with half a dozen OSs installed!-)
@16 : Super Grub2 Disk in its main 'Detect and show boot methods' option shows at the same time: kernel based options where distro name is not seen, entries inside of grub.cfg file and options to open grub.cfg.
For distro-hoppers that know what they are doing (Where they installed each distribution) I recommend to use the options: 1) Boot manually . 2) grub.cfg - (GRUB2 configuration files).
Given three distributions, each one of them with their own /boot directory you will get a menu like this:
(hd0,msdos5)/boot/grub/grub.cfg (hd0,msdos6)/boot/grub/grub.cfg (hd0,msdos7)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
Once you select an specific grub.cfg entry you get the distro specific menu which should boot ok in most of the cases.
I invite you to test Super Grub2 Disk on your 'half a dozen OSes' system and give us feedback.
20 • update-grub is a Debian grub-mkconfig wrapper (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 13:15:01 GMT from Spain)
@7 > That;s all. I do not use sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
complicated for me :)
@7 : update-grub was an specific Debian system script that let you update your menu.lst back in the day. When GRUB2 appeared they tailored it to use the upstream grub-mkconfig tool which, in the end, runs: grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg .
So, using GRUB legacy or GRUB2 in Debian the same update-grub command updates your kernel entries on your Grub menu. That was a really neat idea.
I had to deal with this while coding the 'Update Grub Menues' option from Rescatux. If you take a look at the source code: https://github.com/rescatux/rescatux/blob/master/rescapp/update-grub/run#L55-L62 you will notice that the code needed to be adapted to match special case of Red Hat derivative distributions (E.g. Fedora) where binaries and paths have a 2 on them ( grub2-mkconfig versus grub-config, /boot/grub2/ versus /boot/grub/ ).
21 • @9 and @17 (by Chris on 2017-04-03 13:44:02 GMT from United States)
@9: True about Debian, but it looks like heads is Devuan based - so close enough.
@17: Excellent. I will look to test it this week on my currently functional setups. If all goes well, I will have another tool at my disposal; otherwise, I will report my findings.
BTW, will SGD boot on older 32-bit BIOS systems?
22 • SGD on 32-bit systems (by brad on 2017-04-03 15:27:18 GMT from United States)
@21 - yes, I have tested it, and it works on my 32-bit Pentium M laptop. A welcome addition to my toolkit!
23 • @ "but the software they want to use is only packaged for another" (by OS2_user on 2017-04-03 15:41:45 GMT from United States)
Seriously, why isn't source code enough to be easily downloaded and installed? Just for simple programs that have only standard features, say a very basic, minimal, text editor having MS-DOS like key commands so that I could USE it instead of flailing with "vi". Even "edlin" is marvelous in comparison. Are all so cluttered requiring vast libraries that are effectively unique?
Back in the golden age of promises, we were told that it'd soon be possible to port programs practically anywhere by way of source code. Clearly, that's only true for experts and after major changes, even though we have vast GUIs and fast CPUs.
Either BASIC or preferably REXX should be made standard because a systems "glue" language is essential, and there is no such in Linux -- batch programming is not a language.
24 • Talking Arch (by some guy on 2017-04-03 15:51:28 GMT from Romania)
Darn! I thought you were adding a new column about Arch.
25 • BleachBit (by Jordan on 2017-04-03 16:49:16 GMT from United States)
Dat's the one. ;)
26 • @22 (by Chris on 2017-04-03 17:27:42 GMT from United States)
@22: Thank you. When I do my testing I will be sure to try SGD on a 32-bit Atom netbook I have keep around for the last eight years. It too has FDE, so it will serve as a double test.
27 • Easy way to delete old-kernels? (by dick on 2017-04-03 17:30:36 GMT from Canada)
Is there a program that has replaced Ubuntu Tweak? Easy way to delete old-kernels... is what I seek.
28 • kernel handling (by M.Z. on 2017-04-03 18:29:58 GMT from United States)
@27 Well I never use Ubuntu & only use the tools to handle kernels in Mint on rare occasions, but I do a lot of stuff with the kernel in PCLinuxOS via synaptic. The first few times I dug through the default categories, but that was a lot of work, so I stated using the search function, which works okay, but isn't particularly great or convenient. Then I set a custom filter & never looked back, because all I have to do is click the 'Custom' button @ the bottom of Synaptic & then select kernels.
In my case In Synaptic I went to 'Settings' > 'Filters' & then added a new category called 'Kernels' using the 'New' button on the bottom left. All I did then was select to filter the kernels & hardware (probably something with a similar name in your distro) in the 'Section' tab & go to the 'Properties' tab & use the new button to create a filter for 'package name' 'includes' 'kernel'.
After that all kernel handling is easy. Today I just removed all the 4.10.x kernels (they seem buggy on my hardware) & installed the latest 4.9 kernel. Of course I always keep at least a couple of extra kernels around in case I need to move backward for better stability like I did today. There's not much worse for you PC than being stuck with a shiney new kernel that didn't work & not having something good to fall back on.
29 • distro hopping (by Will Senn on 2017-04-03 19:27:39 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the grub2 disk review. On my MacBook Pro, I use Refind as the boot loader (it detects OS-es and temp media as well).
30 • USB stick boot (by John on 2017-04-03 19:32:07 GMT from United States)
Hi All,
Thanks to 'peer' for the plop manager hint.
Burned a plop CD. Booted it. Plugged in Knoppix 7.6.1 live USB stick.
That USB stick now boots on the old laptop :) :).
Life is good :).
Now I am wondering whether plop could become a regular Linux program. Plug in a live memory stick. Run plop. Boot off the recently plugged in memory stick. One Linux dist. starts another :).
The documentation seems to imply that this can be done. How?
More fun to follow....
Thanks to this site and to peer. John
31 • @27 - Purge old kernels (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-04-03 19:45:50 GMT from France)
The best way to clear out old kernels seems to be the "purge-old-kernels" command, from the "byobu" and/or "bikeshed" packages - see for example: http://www.webupd8.org/2016/07/how-to-safely-remove-old-linux-kernels.html
32 • SGD (by pengxiun on 2017-04-03 20:00:45 GMT from New Zealand)
Do not the "top 10" DW HPD distros include a system rescue toolbox in the installation media boot menu?
Mageia does, and I have had to use the "re-install bootloader" utility on occasion. It also supports UEFI, Grub2 and Grub legacy re-install.
There are other utilities available in the toolbox.
So for me, as Mageia includes such a toolbox, SGD is something I am unlikely to use.
33 • Multiple Distros on SD card (by John on 2017-04-03 20:07:11 GMT from United States)
Hi All,
I suppose this is maybe a good place to comment that instead of 'installing' distributions, I have been running them as live distributions off a fast SD or microSD plugged into a USB2 adapter.
I then boot to SD->USB. Works well. Seems reliable so far and runs quickly. Trying to run of a plain USB 2.0 memory stick is VERY slow for whatever reason. It is easy to change from Knoppix 7.2.0 that I am typing this on to Debian Stretch and run the latest compiled version of Kicad by just unplugging one and putting in another. I can also move files easily by plugging both into USB ports after boot.
The only problem I have had is that compiling Kicad seems to cause thermal shutdown on this laptop?? With unpredictable compilation results. Ugh. Not sure if there is any work easy around for this problem.
Lots of fun. John
34 • Easy way to delete old-kernels? (by Christopher on 2017-04-03 20:21:42 GMT from Guatemala)
@27: purge-old-kernels command was in bikeshed package (installed --without-recommends) in 14.04, and is still on my system after upgrade to 16.04. Maybe you can pin old version of bikeshed (temporarily?).
35 • Easy way to delete old-kernels? (by Christopher on 2017-04-03 20:30:18 GMT from Guatemala)
@27: my bad, seems that purge-old-kernels command has moved to byobu package christopher@water:~$ dpkg -L byobu | grep purge /usr/bin/purge-old-kernels /usr/share/man/man1/purge-old-kernels.1.gz
36 • Grub rescue (by lenn on 2017-04-03 20:44:43 GMT from Canada)
Say you have lot of distros installed, and one day you got a problem with Grub not working and your computer not booting. Most probably you have at least one live Linux iso with you. (Most of us have one.) You know that a Linux live iso boots in the root mode. That is, you can look inside your computer through the Linux live iso.
1) Boot your computer with the Linux live iso. 2) Open the Terminal and sudo su (or su depending on the live iso you have). Consider we have a Ubuntu live iso. 3) "fdisk -l" would show you all the installed distros. Say you want the distro in sda5 as your main distro. 4) mount dev/sda5 /mnt 5) grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda 6) update-grub And reboot. You should boot into the distro in sda5.
Its always better to have at least one live Linux iso, the best of all is Puppy Linux.
37 • @27 (by kc1di on 2017-04-03 20:59:54 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu-Cleaner Replace the cleaner in Tweak if that's what your looking for it's found here: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/12/free-space-ubuntu-cleaner-janitor-app
38 • Super Grub2 Disk and grub rescue use case (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 21:41:09 GMT from Spain)
@32 > Mageia does, and I have had to use the "re-install bootloader" utility on occasion. It also supports UEFI, Grub2 and Grub legacy re-install. (...) So for me, as Mageia includes such a toolbox, SGD is something I am unlikely to use.
@32: Jesse has presented an use case of Super Grub2 Disk where you can use your own distro commands to reinstall your system. That's one of the use cases for Super Grub2 Disk.
The main use case for Super Grub2 Disk is just simply being able to boot into your system. E.g. you might not have handy that Mageia disk and you can download Super Grub2 Disk which weights only 20 MB in a few seconds compared to the Mageia disk download.
Anyways it's always nice to have many tools for doing similar actions. I develop myself Rescatux to make the Grub rescue even easier.
39 • Super Grub2 Disk's Jesse article possible mistake (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 21:48:47 GMT from Spain)
So Jesse has stated that he run: sudo rm -rf /boot/grub to get rid of his grub files.
Then once he manages to boot into system thanks to Super Grub2 Disk he claims to fix everything back to normal thanks to only these two commands:
sudo grub-install /dev/sda sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
I am assuming he has a BIOS system else he would have generated the grub.cfg file into an EFI path. In such scenario given that /boot/grub/ has been deleted that means that core.img and many other needed files from GRUB2 are no longer there.
I can assume that a minimal GRUB2 would boot because it would use block lists in order to find its core. But, then finding its modules thanks to filesystem makes no sense.
Anyways, if it's a BIOS system and it actually booted it does not guaranteed to work in the next reboot. What you are advised to do is to reinstall grub package so that all the GRUB2 binaries are in place.
40 • You can also use Rescatux for grub rescue (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 21:55:30 GMT from Spain)
@36 > Most probably you have at least one live Linux iso with you. (Most of us have one.) You know that a Linux live iso boots in the root mode.
@36: Your commands imply you can run: grub-install command. That means that the live cd has to have the GRUB2 binaries on it. That's not the case in all of the live cds.
More than this, in the future, running grub-install in such way does not guarantee it's going to work with newer GRUB2 versions on your distro. In such case you could use the 'chroot' method that Jesse mentioned on his article.
Back in the day when Super Grub Disk was based on GRUB Legacy it could restore grub installs. I developed Rescatux ( http://www.supergrubdisk.org/rescatux/ ) in order to supply that need. It presents you a graphical wizard where you can select your distro, your boot hard disk and you are done.
Rescatux works in graphical mode so it's not suitable for everybody though.
41 • Re: Super Grub2 Disk's Jesse article possible mistake (by adrian15 on 2017-04-03 23:20:11 GMT from Spain)
My bad. A quick look at grub-install makes clear that binary files that need to be put into /boot/grub are read copied from /usr/lib/grub/ . So, yes, there's no mistake at all as I implied.
42 • Super Grub2 (by SlackerForLife on 2017-04-04 00:48:28 GMT from United States)
What functionality is provided by Super Grub2 Disk that wasn't already provided by SystemRescueCD?
43 • 31 • @27 - Purge old kernels (by Greg Zeng on 2017-04-04 02:24:00 GMT from Australia)
"Synaptic Package Manager" and similar GUI applications allow purging all unwanted files, including old Linux kernels. Use the "Search" option. Select & delete.
44 • #Poll (by anticapitalista on 2017-04-04 08:49:18 GMT from Greece)
smxi tools can remove cruft including old kernels.
http://smxi.org/
Run smxi -G in a rot terminal.
45 • network traffic statistics (by sebas on 2017-04-04 10:15:34 GMT from Romania)
> How-much-data asks: How can I find out how much data my computer > is downloading so I know if I'm near my ISP cap?
vnstat (included in debian repos) is a great (and light) CLI tool for surveying your traffic, it is probably what you need.
46 • Purge old kernels (by Marcos on 2017-04-04 11:52:53 GMT from Brazil)
It's very simple:
$ dpkg-query -l | awk '/linux-image-*/ {print $2}' (List installed kernels)
$ uname -a (Shows the kernel in use. Make sure it's what you want to keep.)
$ sudo dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge (Remove and purge unused kernels)
47 • Security Oriented Distributions (by Winchester on 2017-04-04 14:47:05 GMT from United States)
As far as post # 9 goes,there is Qubes OS and Alpine Linux which are both security oriented but with different methods of approach.
48 • Re: Super Grub2 (SystemRescueCD) (by bfree on 2017-04-04 15:36:20 GMT from Ireland)
@42 SystemRescueCD is a 500MB download live system which boots you into it's own full OS and then hopefully gives you access to the tools you might need to fix things up. If you know how to chroot correctly (and there isn't some horrible mismatch between SystemRescueCD and the OS you want to chroot into) you can use it just fine to fix up a Linux OS bootloader.
Super Grub2 Disk is "just a bootloader" in about 20MB (for the multiboot iso which supports bios and both 32bit and 64bit UEFI, smaller versions including standalone UEFI files are available) which instead should get you in to your own system which is certain to have the tools you need to fix it. I very much doubt System Rescue CD is going to be a lot of help for booting into Windows/BSD/OSX but sg2d should let you back in there also.
Super Grub2 Disk is built using a very recent grub and has options to do things like load experimental usb support (it's not very experimental really but some machines might have problems if it was automatically loaded) which can enable even Linux boot methods that are generally tougher (boot a usb stick on a machine with no usb booting) or often troublesome (full disk encryption with no unencrypted /boot).
And then there's the ability for it to go and do things like show you which grub.cfg files it can find and load them so it can discover some bizarre boot options you need because you have created your own zany custom initrd, and let you edit those options before booting if you need to tweak them ;) Of course you can use any grub you can get to boot with the modules you need available and start typing, but with no copy/paste I hope you have a pen and paper ready to write down things like UUID's you might need.
Fundamentally Super Grub2 Disk is a pretty smart bootloader while SystemRescueCD is a pretty useful recovery OS and there's really not a lot of point comparing them.
49 • kernels (by Jordan on 2017-04-04 20:05:01 GMT from United States)
It seems that new kernels are being released and made as part of updates to Korora (and presumably Fedora) each week now. It was not that often before and I'm wondering what this is leading to.
50 • SuperGrub2Disk observation (by sherman jerrold on 2017-04-04 21:09:17 GMT from United States)
Just an observation. I have an old gx270 Dell with winXP and Tahrpup 6.0.5. I used grub4dos in the tahrpup distro to setup the dual boot bootloader and they dual boot fine. I tried supergrub2 from CD on it just a few min. ago. It started up fine, but only found the winxp os on HD 0. It couldn't see the tahrpup at all. I suspect (but don't know) maybe grub4dos may not be compatible with supergrub2. I guess that's part of the computer 'tower of babel' world we live in - older systems and programs get overlooked. And, I understand (and accept) that it would be impractical if not impossible to include every old program in the compatibility scheme.
51 • SuperGrub2Disk FURTHER observation (by sherman jerrold on 2017-04-04 21:13:44 GMT from United States)
I also noted that supergrub2 found no grub.cfg file of any type. That reinforces that the grub4dos config file is probably invisible to supergrub2.
52 • Tarhrpup SuperGrub2Disk Debugging (by adrian15 on 2017-04-04 21:24:14 GMT from Spain)
@50 @51 Feel free to come around #sgrub on freenode to debug your problem.
Even if you use grub4dos (which I'm not sure we could support) you should use some kind of kernels in order to your Tarhrpup distro to boot.
Maybe its kernel filenames are non standard (like the gentoo or arch ones) and we can just add them for future releases.
Taking a look at your grub4dos filename and contents, and to your /boot folder in a pastebin would be great.
Offtopic: For very old systems (as in very old GNU/Linux systems, not old hardware systems) you could use Super Grub Disk (it's very hidden in a torrent download) which can read menu.lst in a more native way than GRUB2's interpreter for them.
53 • @50, @48 about booting (by alex on 2017-04-04 21:27:07 GMT from Canada)
@50. If you have Tahrpup live iso, you won't need another boot loading iso, I believe. Tahrpup is small and not only would boot, but also can be used as a rescue cd.
@48 System Rescue CD being a recovery OS, is a boot loader too.
Btw, the most simple way to do a boot rescue is stated in #36 by lenn using any live iso.
54 • about booting (by bfree on 2017-04-04 21:51:51 GMT from Ireland)
@53 Simply being/having a boot loader is an awful long way from being comparable to super grub2 disk
#36 is far from the simplest way and is an appalling idea unless your live iso just happens to have an identical grub to your installed system (or even has grub, let alone os-prober). Even if it does work for whatever combination of live and installed system states you have you still have to go back in and clean it up afterwards.
And what if you want to boot into OSX or Windows? Are you meant to install grub on to your disk to do so? Or what if you don't have your entire OS in one partition, but use full disk encryption? Or "just" lvm in crypt in lvm.
Usually much simpler to actually boot into your installed OS, not boot an OS to install a random grub to boot into your OS, pray it worked and then try to clean up the mess.
Now I've been told System Rescue CD might actually include supergrubdisk but without checking I suspect it's unlikely that version would boot and work in all the scenarios the clean 20MB Super Grub2 Disk will
55 • privacy/'monetization' (by d on 2017-04-04 21:52:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
Soon, then, ISPs will be allowed to sell personal, data. First, I don't understand why they will be allowed so to do, since, unless it is a free service, you have already paid, so they are effectively charging twice. Second, what is the position for UK citizens who use, say, an international ISP with HQ in the US: are those users protected by the UK Data Protection Act against the transfer of data about them? Third, then, I wish to know which distros are serviceable for privacy. I'm currently testing Tails 3 rc, but it seems to have stuff to iron out (slow), so most of the time I use the stable version. I haven't tried Kodachi because of comments about its base (and VPN) in Oman. I used Parrot with TOR, but that's mainly a penetration testing distro. From time to time, I use TOR on my PCLinuxOS desktop, but that is hit and miss in terms of speed. TAILS stable is the fastest for me, but I would appreciate some thoughts on Kodachi. I see that on the 7-day downloads, TAILS is still ahead of Kodachi, but that there is a not insignificant downloading of the latter.
56 • @54 (by kaczor on 2017-04-04 22:21:06 GMT from Germany)
How about trying the method than attacking it? Break your booting system and try it. That's the best way. A Puppy Linux is the best rescue iso.
Btw, who cares, if you use OXs or Windows? This is the Linux world.
57 • @56 (by bfree on 2017-04-04 22:40:12 GMT from Ireland)
@56 I won't argue about what the best rescue iso is, lots to choose from and we each have our own favourites.
I "attack" the method because it is a flawed bad hack that might not even work, at least chroot and try to use the right grub if you want to use a Live CD to recover a broken grub. That of course is a more complicated process again. Even if it does "work" (and what about efi Vs bios booting which is another thing omitted from the "instructions") it depends on you wanting to install grub in the first place which not everyone does!
I also hate to say it (look at the name I use) but the reality is that few people who could use a Linux system do, if you count Android as Linux (and Linux as an OS) then maybe Linux is the most popular OS by internet traffic, but good luck booting GNU/Linux on 9x% of those devices :(
Also this site isn't Linux world, how about BSD?
58 • Purge old kernels (by stefano on 2017-04-05 09:04:23 GMT from Italy)
On Ubuntu and Debian, just running:
apt-get autoremove
will purge all kernels except the more recent two, as well as other obsolete unneded packages.
59 • Super GRUB2 disk (by Bob Hayden on 2017-04-05 10:32:25 GMT from United States)
Thanks for all the comments on rescuing non-booting Linux computers. Back when Windows was my main OS I kept a DOS boot floppy handy in the early days. Later, it was a Puppy Linux CD (and I see I am not alone there;-) Puppy used the old version of GRUB and it did a very good job of finding stuff and labeling it. If it erred, it was on the side of listing non-bootable data partitions. But you could just edit menu.lst to remove those, and to give your own names to the bootable items. But as time went on, more and more GRUB2 distros would show up in the Puppy menu but not actually boot. Distros that used GRUB2 OTOH would often not see Puppy. So for me the situation has been going downhill since the advent of GRUB2.
60 • Unwanted files and boot repair (by jymm on 2017-04-05 11:01:23 GMT from United States)
I use bleachbit to remove unwanted files.
I also use boot repair disk if I have grub issues. It is for Ubuntu, so I am not sure if it works for all Linux distros. It looks like the last update was in 11-2014. https://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/files/
61 • Grub rescue... (@57 too..) (by kaczor on 2017-04-05 12:44:33 GMT from Germany)
Sometimes, you switch on your computer and you see "Entering rescue mode... grub rescue > _ "
What should you do with what you have at hand? And you have only one computer, so no way to download any "rescue disk."
Normally we have a Linux live iso with us. It could be an Ubuntu or Mint, or even a Puppy Linux. You also know how many distros installed and most probably where they are situated. (If not you can use fdisk -l and find out the amount of distros, and which distro you want to boot.)
Boot your computer with your Ubuntu live iso (or Mint, or Manjaro or ...). You are now in a live session, meaning you are in a root session. Open the Terminal and do "sudo su" and you are in root mode. You can look inside your computer and change or repair it.
Do fdisk -l to see all your partitions. (or gdisk -l) You'd see a * in the partition you had usually booted from. Maybe, you'd want to boot from another installed iso. What you don't have is a working Grub. Say you want to have the distro installed in sda3 as your main distro.
So you mount sda3 to /mnt. (of course, you can mount it to any place, even home, but mnt is the usual one we use.)
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
Now everything in sda3 is in the live iso's root's mnt folder. You can do whatever you want with it. What you want is to get the computer to boot. So, you (re)install grub.
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda (Its dev/sda, not dev/sda3)
If the result is without errors, then the grub is (re) installed. You can do a grub update by going into /mnt, that is cd /mnt and update-grub. Now you poweroff the computer, restart it without the live iso. You are booted into your computer and to the distro installed in sda3.
You can use this method to change the main distro.
Now, you don't have to believe me, just because I wrote this. Just google "grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda."
62 • boot repair topic (by sherman jerrold on 2017-04-05 23:23:06 GMT from United States)
Thanks to all that made helpful suggestions. @52, thx for the invite, I've solved the problem. @53 Yes, you're right @56 Yes, It think it's a Linux world, too. But, I have some media creation pgms that won't run under WINE so I need to dual boot WinXP.
SOLVED: I used the Tahrpup ISO cd to boot and got grub4dos reinstalled and that restored dual booting from the puppy partition and the winXP ntfs partition. Tahrpup is so small if I can 'remaster' or image it as installed, I think that might provide a quick restore method. Our electric utility is unreliable and I've gone through 3 UPS systems. Luckily, I backup all data frequently. So, an OS restore might be the best solution.
63 • apt autoremove not remove old kernels (by Marcos on 2017-04-06 08:38:29 GMT from Brazil)
$ Sudo apt autoremove (it is no longer necessary to include "-get") does not remove old kernels. For complete removal of files see item 46.
64 • WOW! Unity, Mir, and Ubuntu Phone are dead! (by Chris on 2017-04-06 15:01:51 GMT from United States)
Note: I am not linking to any articles because I am unsure if linking to a DW competitor's site would be appropriate. I am sure we will see something soon on DW. However, in the meantime, for those interested there are many articles available via a ddg search.
In short, Canonical/Mark Shuttleworth has announced that development of Unity, Mir, and Ubuntu phone are over, Ubuntu will return to Gnome as the default desktop environment (now Gnome 3).
My initial reactions (subject to change): 1. Unity: Not a major problem. I personally never liked it; however, others are sure to appropriately disagree. DW currently shows only eight distros where Unity is a potential desktop interface. This is not a major amount amongst the hundreds of other distros and dozens of available DEs/WMs; however, if enough demand exists I am sure some group will fork Unity. 2. Mir: I am uncertain if this is a problem or not. Mir development was slow, we still have X, and Wayland is rolling out now. My problem is a lack of competition for the next generation display servers. 3. Ubuntu Phone: This is a big deal! While I am no lover of Ubuntu (YMMV), Ubuntu Phone may have been the last FOSS chance to compete against the proprietary iOS and semi-proprietary and privacy intruding Android.
Overall, I think this is Canonical's surrender to Red Hat and Google. I am personally not a fan of Canonical, Google, or Red Hat, but competition is good and now we have less. A sad day.
65 • Ubuntu news (by Jesse on 2017-04-06 15:23:40 GMT from Canada)
@64: We covered this story yesterday on our Headlines page with links to the original announcement and some related projects: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=showheadline&story=3110
66 • @64 missing alternatives (by curious on 2017-04-06 15:36:15 GMT from Germany)
Your points 2. and 3. could become real problems for open source conscious people.
Mir wasn't anywhere near general usability, but it was the only competition to Wayland and therefore important. Choice is always a good thing, and I was hoping that the introduction of future display servers would be managed differently than e.g. Pulseaudio and systemd. That has now become much less likely.
The death of Ubuntu Phone, if true, is also a problem. I had high hopes for "Firefox OS"/Mozilla Phone (or whatever it was actually called), but since that never took off, Ubuntu Phone is/was the only alternative with sufficiently powerful backing so that it could potentially stand on its own. And although I never tried it, the reviews (including DW!) were generally favourable.
Now the only true alternatives in the phone market are self-installed stuff like Cyanogenmod etc. - only useful for nerds. The general public will have to remain with Apple (if they can afford it) or Google...
67 • Ubuntu kit (by Dave Postles on 2017-04-06 16:54:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
@64, @66 I have an Aquaris M10 Ubuntu tablet (not because I like Ubuntu) - I suspect that that will become obsolete too. People don't care about: Apple markup; Apple working conditions in the Far East; Apple and Google tracking; Apple and Google gross tax avoidance.
68 • @65 and @66 (by Chris on 2017-04-06 17:23:16 GMT from United States)
@65: Thanks Jesse. DW is great, I should have known and looked, but I caught this story first in my daily general news feed elsewhere.
Note to Self: Check DW's Headlines page more often.
@66: curious, you and I appear to be like-minded on this issue. Competition in a free market is a good thing!
I guess it could be said that technically Canonical, Mozilla (Firefox OS), and Sailfish did all compete with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Red Hat on applicable projects but failed, even if with premature withdrawals. I just wonder what could have been?
The initial lesson I take from this and previous market choices is that to truely compete in the open market, even if only within the FOSS market, one must have vast resources. Canonical is big in comparison to most FOSS organizations, but it is still tiny compared to Red Hat.
69 • @67 (by Chris on 2017-04-06 17:49:24 GMT from United States)
Yes, your Aquaris M10 will likely become obsolete soon, but there may be a personal silver-lining for you. Hold onto it, set it to factory defaults, and store it safely. In twenty years it will likely fetch a good price on some furure version of today's eBay. I mean, have you seen some of the prices old-tech (i.e., Soundblaster sound cards) fetch today?!?
70 • Unity DOA (by M.Z. on 2017-04-06 18:09:43 GMT from United States)
The thing that surprised me most is that Unity is dead everywhere. I could easily see the phone thing coming from a mile away. There is some decent competition in that space between the completely closed iOS/iPhone on the high end & various forms of Android across the high end & the rest of the landscape. The current mobile space is one where it's very tough to break in, or even stay competitive in if your Blackberry who has taken a beating or Microsoft who can't gain any traction.
Even though I could see the mobile problems coming, I never guessed that they would be killing Unity on the desktop. I never liked it & was fairly outraged by some of their privacy defaults with the shopping lens. That being said Unity always looked like a fairly attractive alternative to Gnome 3, which to this day doesn't look like it does the basics as well as Unity or any other desktop. It's just my perspective as a KDE/Cinnamon user who converted from Windows some years back, but I still see Gnome as the least intuitive & least competitive of all the major desktops. From my vantage point 80 to 90% of PC users learn things the Windows way & a majority don't really want to re-learn everything to the extent that something like vanilla Gnome would require. I really don't see Ubuntu gaining much traction by switching from Unity to Gnome, unless they come up with an overhauled default shell.
@64 It seems to me that DW does a lot to post links to other reviews on their Distro pages, so they don't seem to mind at all. I think the Ars Technica article gave a nice picture with the depth that a DW headline kind of lacks by it design as a qick & simple headline. Both are very useful, but it's nice to go to the DW links or something like Ars when you want the extra detail. The link in case anyone is interested:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead...
71 • @70 (by Chris on 2017-04-06 22:05:12 GMT from United States)
Agreed, with two already entrenched goliaths in the mobile OS market Ubuntu Phone, Firefox OS, Sailfish OS, and even MS's mobile offerings had an extremely high barrier to success. But for FOSS afficianados, Ubuntu may have been our last hope. Now I am left wishing for a Red Hat, Blackberry, and modern design firm merger. Anyone know people and want to make some calls?
Funny, that ARS article is how I learned about Canonical's plans and is what I considered posting here; however, as a DWW guest I try to be respectful in my comments, even if I am overcareful.
72 • @64 @70 (by edcoolio on 2017-04-07 00:45:06 GMT from United States)
Well, I have to agree with a lot that has been said here.
1. Canonical made this inevitable the day they forced the Unity desktop and related advertising lense on a FOSS release. Little to no simple out-of-the-box customization with an attempt at forced marketing, but attractive. No thank you. I do not like having default customization taken away and I suspect that many others do not as well.
2. Gnome 3, to a certain extent, seemed to be slowly drifting towards the same end as Unity. Now it is a certainty. Higher requirements with more hassle to take care of the basics. Once Canonical really begins to put their "mark" on it, I suspect it will be easier to call it Unity 2, but I have been wrong before.
3. Mir development was indeed slow. Too slow. An answer to a question where no one really knew what the question was. Yeah, it's unfair and harsh to say that and competition is nice, but it is not an end unto itself.
4. Ubuntu Phone can die the death it deserved. They copied the Microsoft model and they paid the price. A connection to a desktop that was problematic at best cannot keep a phone OS afloat.
Look at Windows 10. Windows 10 is everywhere and, like Apple, should be able to leverage this into a mobile OS. A successful desktop cannot automatically translate into a successful mobile OS.
Ubuntu dropped the ball on this and squandered untold capital on this dead in the cradle project. I have not met one person in the industry that said upon release that "Ubuntu Phone will be the future because of its usefulness and upcoming giant application base!". Writers, maybe. Actual humans I have interacted with in the real world? Not a one.
5. There will be another FOSS mobile ARM competitor, but thanks to Ubuntu phone, it will take a while. Programmers and developers need to eat and those with the money to fast-track such a large project tend to be gun-shy.
I truly feel bad. Not for Canonical, mind you, but for the end users of their product. These true end users, which had to invest a fair amount of time re-learning how to do the most simple of things in order to use this desktop, now find themselves adrift. Nothing is more maddening than knowing you are booting into a dead-end distro/desktop. New distro selection and full format coming up! What a hassle... been there, done that.
A couple of quotes that I agree with that require no comment:
@64: "I am personally not a fan of Canonical, Google, or Red Hat, but competition is good and now we have less. A sad day."
@70: "From my vantage point 80 to 90% of PC users learn things the Windows way & a majority don't really want to re-learn everything to the extent that something like vanilla Gnome would require. I really don't see Ubuntu gaining much traction by switching from Unity to Gnome, unless they come up with an overhauled default shell."
73 • Windows (by Dave Postles on 2017-04-07 08:51:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
'From my vantage point 80 to 90% of PC users learn things the Windows way' Sure, and they never change their cars.
74 • @ 72 and 73 and others... (by lenn on 2017-04-07 11:50:50 GMT from Canada)
'From my vantage point 80 to 90% of PC users learn things the Windows way'
A user is the one, who wants to use the computer. You buy a computer and it comes with an OS and is ready to start. You fill in the initial questions and the computer works. You browse the internet, play, work etc. After a while you don't even remember the "OS" that runs it. You get your things done with apps that you use. If the OS updates itself and doesn't get stuck, you don't have a headache. With Windows Ten going in a rolling way, troubles are practically stopped.
Linux on the other hand is still for the geeks or semi-geeks. The installed OS needs your (geeky) attention. And, most users don't know how to give that attention. All they want is to use the computer, not to meddle with it. And, that could be even 90%.
75 • Post # 74 (by Winchester on 2017-04-07 12:36:25 GMT from United States)
Windows problems are far from "practically stopped".
The exact reason I switched from Windows to Linux is because I want to use my computer when I need to use the machine and not meddle with it (except for in my spare time .... when I feel like it and the meddling is optional).
Solus,as an example,requires far less meddling than any version of Windows,is more secure,and boots faster. There are other beginner friendly distributions out there as well. Maybe not as fool-proof as Solus but those which REQUIRE minimal adjustments. PClinuxOS , Peppermint OS , Mageia , MX Linux , FatDog64 , certain versions of Simplicity Linux etc. .
76 • @75 (by lenn on 2017-04-07 15:40:11 GMT from Canada)
I know that, pal. But, that doesn't change anything. More or less 90% of desktops are of "that" OS.
77 • @75 (by kaczor on 2017-04-07 20:12:27 GMT from Germany)
"Maybe not as fool-proof as Solus but..."
Well, what happens, if Ikey suddenly finds that developing/maintaining Solus is not feasible financially?
78 • old kernel delete (by dick on 2017-04-07 20:34:12 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for the tips on old-kernel delete, went with Byobu; worked... simple & neat.
79 • User Interfaces (by M.Z. on 2017-04-07 21:37:18 GMT from United States)
@73 "Sure, and they never change their cars."
Sorry but I don't think that is even a little valid as a comparison. New cars come with shiny new paint, better power/economy, & best of all the biggest change in the 'user interface' is probably that the shiftier may be on the floor vs the steering column. That's like going from Win XP to Win 7, which seems to have been a popular way to upgrade. Switching to something as foreign as Gnome 3 is more like taking someone accustomed to & very content with an automatic & trying to get them to drive the 18 speed manual in a big rig truck. It's also a bit like the UI changes from Win 7 to Win 8, which of course was among the worst selling versions of Windows.
As another automotive comparison look at what is going on with all those little buttons in cars. Some folks got the bright idea to get as close as possible to eliminating all the buttons in favor of things like BMW iDrive & Cadillac CUE. People hate that & now many car makers are putting more buttons back into their vehicles.
Similarly from what I can tell from Linux user polls it looks like Gnome went from the #1 desktop in the Gnome 2 era, to being well behind both KDE & XFCE. That can of course be taking with a grain of salt because it's really hard to get an accurate poll of Linux users. Nevertheless I think Unity looks more appealing for typical users than Gnome 3, & Cinnamon, KDE, & XFCE all look even better. Some users really do want something totally different like Gnome 3, but it doesn't seem like it would appeal to most people. Other desktops are more inside the comfort zone of the typical user.
80 • Linux gnome etc. (by mandog on 2017-04-07 22:42:03 GMT from Peru)
This week has been the worst week in a long time for so called Linux users writing their own biased views. Gnome is one of the easiest desktops to use + its not a windows clone, Comparing a new car well real drivers learn to use the changes they don't dump it now do they or am i missing something. Ubuntu shot its self in the foot they thought they could bully gnome into changing its release schedule gnome held its ground, so Ubuntu thought we will show you how its done gnome must of thought yeh yeh. Well a few years down the line millions of dollars they had to admit they were wrong and going back to their roots Gnome GTK, Also Solus will be releasing its gnome version soon I hope they keep Budgie its the new lxde but then lxde is fighting back and moving to gtk3 so its not all doom and gloom for anybody.
81 • Linux (by bigsky on 2017-04-07 23:30:19 GMT from Canada)
Holy smokes. Has it ever occurred to some of you that Linux is free and you don't have to use it. Stop complaining, you sound like whinny children. If you don,t like it then create your own operating system. The old fart has spoken. Merci
82 • Gnome (by M.Z. on 2017-04-08 00:26:13 GMT from United States)
@80 If you like Gnome 3 more power to you, I know there are people who like the Gnome 3 way & I'm glad there is an option like that for you. On the car subject the question becomes ' do I want the vehicle with the big easy volume knob, or the one where I have to dig into the sub menus on the screen?', meaning design choices have consequences on consumer choices. If all else were equal & you had the choice of a few vehicles you were looking at, wouldn't you be less likely to pick the had that had extra steps required to adjust the radio volume? Aren't driving distractions like a steep learning cure for an infotainment system an impediment to sales when you have other car options?
Now given that, look at the position of Windows 8 & it's radical UI changes compared to Windows 7. Didn't it seem like Windows 7 was far more familiar & easy to learn for XP & Vista users compared to Win 8? Doesn't it seen like the UI changes that defined Win 8 drove its relatively poor sales & uptake?
Now compare Windows 7 to the DEs for Linux & ask your self which learning curve is closer to Win 8. It looks to me like Gnome isn't what most people want.
83 • FOSS, spyware & engineering MISUNDERSTANDINGS, ... (by Greg Zeng on 2017-04-08 01:09:17 GMT from Australia)
Comments so far this week show much ignorance. "Spyware" is often voluntary, & easily removed or stopped. Third party developers of many kinds bypass these "user-assistance" devices. Some people actually like "spyware". It detects my time-zone, habits, crashes, location, interests, hates (advertisements), etc.
Most good alpha & beta releases have manufacturer-included engineering feedback mechanisms. In Linux, the "point releases", are often based on the error-logs from the "spyware".
@64 @66 @70 @72 Death of Canonical's adventurism is normal business practice. About 90% of new ventures die before maturity. All ventures have a death-date. Estimating the death-date requires engineering-smarts (MBA, etc). So when Canonical kills Unity, it cannot pretend that its break-away offspring (Mint & its "Cinnamon") are better than the "parent". So GNOME is the equally bad alternative to Unity imho.
@68 @82 Diversity can waste time & resources. In Linux engineering, there are still be the death-duals between: (Red Hat & Debian), (CLI vs. GUI), (GNOME vs. Cinnamon), (GTK vs. qt). X.org is dying, Mir is dead, to be replaced soon by Wayland and KDE-Plasma?
Will the BSD & Android-type operating systems follow Linux in these patterns too? With all these video-display software wars, how will they handle the changes demanded by the hardware manufacturers: Nivida, Intel, AMD, ... ?
@80 Low-powered Desktop Environments are still battling. XFCE is the benchmark: stable & capable. Others are trying to fit at about the same level, or lighter: LXDE, LXqT, Elementary, budgie, ...
@70 @71 Linux has Distrowatch, as basically a sole proprietor business afaik. The other publications listed are much bigger team efforts. Like all human efforts, they have the usual standard engineering abilities & limits. But this part of the Linux world needs rationalizing; listings into market niches to guide everyone: novices, educators, publishers of many types, sellers & buyers of many types, ... . Perhaps we must use Wikipedia to organize this mess.
FOSS in Linux is normal. Any person or organization can publish closed-source software based on Linux as well. When Google, Canonical, etc add proprietary code to their FOSS-dependencies (Chrome, Android, Ubuntu. ... ), they also have non-proprietary FOSS versions (Chromium, Cyanogen, Mint, LMDE, ... ).
All closed source software has however unknown, untraceable bugs, spyware, malware & poor optimizations of many kinds, known & unknown. These are predictable calculations; engineering facts are part of any university studies. Ask anyone in manufacturing or engineering. The Microsoft & Apple gods, etc are "perfect", outside of DW.
@73 @74 @75 @76 @77 @79 Many arrogants Linux are so proud to not use graphics, icons, etc. They look down on "children" who don't like alpha-numerics. "RTFM" !!! that tell us. Children-only need GUI. "Mature" Linux users stay with CLI (Arch, Gentoo, LFS, ... ). Hopefully these CLI-only men might learn that GUI users can still drive on roads without lane-markings & picture-signs, just as the CLI-men can do. Most (all?) "auto-GUI" systems can be used in "manual-CLI" driving.
Many engineering fights yet to be solved in Linux. Most are following Windows big mistake: having the minimize-maximize-close icons on the TOP-RIGHT corner. Apple-Mac & Unity know that we English-language people start with our major icons being on the TOP-LEFT corner. Some Linux coders call this the "MODERN" theme.
Another temporary fashion-craze are dark backgrounds. Thin scratchings on a total-black background allows the glass (black) mirror to show the pretty face of the user and surroundings. The child's face is so beautiful! Other children that they are also "different", try imitating Mint's pale whitish scratches on a near-white background. Equally anti-human. Black-san-serif text on a whitish background is usually best for visual acuity, but don't let the kid's know this.
84 • @77 - Solus (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-04-08 11:17:57 GMT from France)
It may have escaped your notice, but Solus is now much more a team operation, not dependent on Ikey.
85 • 80 • gnome etc. (by mandog from Peru) (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2017-04-08 14:39:17 GMT from United States)
" lxde is fighting back and moving to gtk3" Really? Not Qt?
86 • @85 gnome etc (by mandog on 2017-04-08 23:02:13 GMT from Peru)
Yes seems so. Its both in GTK and in GTK3 in the ARCH repros while QT is not really progressing much.
87 • @80, @85, & @86 - LXDE (by Chris on 2017-04-09 01:59:38 GMT from United States)
Currently, Debian Sid has all core packages which are directly part of LXDE still depending on gtk2 libraries, not gtk3.
I am not certain what is going on with LXDE. Some time ago it was announced they were moving to qt, with a name change to LXQT; however, LXQT development has been very slow and LXDE continues to exist, possibly with additional development (not confirmed). I have never seen a difinitive statement as to if LXDE was being discarded, forked, or if it will be developed concurrenly with LXQT. Anyone have any official word?
88 • LXDE to LXQt (by M.Z. on 2017-04-09 07:46:17 GMT from United States)
@87 The plan has always been to move from Gtk to Qt before Gtk2 became unsupported & unsustainable as a basis for LXDE. That was hatched a number of years ago & the team working on the LXDE Qt transition has combined forces with the old razor-Qt team. Both are supported & will be for some time to come, but from what I gather Gtk2 is slowly fading away & the old LXDE will fade away in favour of LXQt. Anyone with any good reason to think Gtk3 is on the table should indicate why. Other projects have chosen Gtk3, but LXDE was one of the ones going to Qt according to everything I've heard.
https://github.com/lxde/lxqt/wiki/History
http://lxqt.org/about/
Anyone got a good reason to think there is serious work on a Gtk3 LXDE? Otherwise I don't see it happening.
89 • LXDE (by Winchester on 2017-04-09 09:40:54 GMT from United States)
LxPupSC has LXDE from Arch Linux (see post # 86) while everything else in the OS is based on Slackware current.
90 • @88 - LXDE/LXQT (by Chris on 2017-04-09 11:52:06 GMT from United States)
Thanks. Your memory is about the same as mine on the subject. However, I had previously also seen some online rumors (sorry, cannot find the links now) about LXDE and LXQT being developed concurrently, with LXDE transitioning to gtk3. I discounted the rumors as baseless due to there being no official announcement (then or now); however, the alleged transition from LXDE to LXQT has been extremely slow, and now I see @80, @85, and @86 with comments about LXDE being available in Arch repos with gtk3 dependencies. If Arch really contains gtk3 builds of LXDE the rumors may be true.
To me, this transition appears as clear as mud. I know that LXQT is active and the "future" of the project, but I would just like some official, trustworthy announcement on if LXDE is to remain (direct or as a fork) with a transition to gtk3. Anyone?
91 • @90 - LXDE/LXQT (by Drew on 2017-04-09 18:55:16 GMT from Qatar)
I believe the rumour regarding LXDE port to GTK3 could be true. I checked Arch repo and I found the LXDE GTK3 build.
https://www.archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/lxde-gtk3/
Personally, I prefer GTK3 over Qt and the development of LXQT is taking forever to mature. Let's see what the future holds for LXDE users.
92 • Super Grub Disk (by dp on 2017-04-09 20:16:02 GMT from Greece)
@61
OK you have only one computer and you also have a Live cd
Strange I usually cant find live cd/dvd, some 12,5" laptops don;t even have cd/dvd
I have a smartphone and a dual usb in my keys, so dowloading SGD (20MB) and copy it to usb is not a problem
I usually have a rescue usb with everything (almost) I need in there, even a live cd
93 • @91 90 89 88 lxde gtk3 (by mandog on 2017-04-09 21:08:58 GMT from Peru)
This from the wiki In 2013, LXDE developers launched a side project for a Qt port and try cooperate with razor-qt. The two projects later decided to merge and form LXDE-Qt. See LXDE-Qt page for details I think users got the message they announced at some point this will be the last LXDE gtk release I think they meant gtk2 release This is the latest release date Release date and age November 21, 2016 I presume relates to GTK3
94 • LXQt (by M.Z. on 2017-04-09 21:22:42 GMT from United States)
@91 I did a little web searching & from what I can tell there are a few little independent attempts to make the existing version of LXDE more compatible with Gtk3; however, the main developer of LXDE was sold on the idea of creating LXQt years ago. It's possible that those playing with Gtk3 in LXDE could decide to make a full fledged fork, but it seems very unlikely. The one certain thing is that the main LXDE guy (called PCMan) is for Qt & is working with the former razor-Qt team on the combined project. He feels strongly that in his testing Qt is as light or lighter than Gtk3 & is easier for him to work with.
95 • @94 • LXQt (by mandog on 2017-04-09 21:39:04 GMT from Peru)
So why was Pcmanfm the 1st to be ported to GTK3 over a year ago. and the whole lot ported to GTK3 Nov 2016 and I know for sure Lxterminal is also wayland complaint. So did tUbuntu try to port to QT and they gave up. LXQT has not made progress in the last 12 months and it was started as a side project in 2013 that's 4 years ago. And now solus porting to QT is including gnome3 in its line up its reported,
96 • @91, @93, @94, and @95 - LXDE (by Chris on 2017-04-10 00:10:33 GMT from United States)
Thank you for you research and comments on this subject. Due to the late nature of this DWW Comments, this will likely need to carry over into future comments sections.
However, I think it is still a muddy picture. Maybe Arch's gtk3 builds of LXDE are official or maybe they are a quasi-fork. Has anyone seen any other distro offer LXDE in a gtk3 build? I know Debian has not.
Number of Comments: 96
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• Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
• Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
• Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
• Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
• Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
• Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
• Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
• Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
• Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
• Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
• Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
• Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
• Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
• Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
• Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
• Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
• Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
• Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
• Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
• Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
• Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
• Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
• Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
• Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
• Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
• Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
• Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
• Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
• Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
• Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
• Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
• Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
• Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
• Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
• Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
• Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
• Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
• Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
• Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
• Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
• Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
• Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
• Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
• Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
• Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
• Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
• Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
• Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
• Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
• Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
• Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
• Full list of all issues |
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Random Distribution |
Polar Bear Linux
Polar Bear Linux was a source-based GNU/Linux distribution derived from Linux From Scratch. All software packages are provided in the form of source code, which are compiled during installation. This has many advantages, as well as a major drawback in the time it takes to install the system (approximately 9 hours for a base system). Polar Bear Linux uses a simple package manager called Tarball Package Manager (TBPKG).
Status: Discontinued
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Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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