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1 • Artix review (by mandog on 2017-11-27 02:13:16 GMT from Peru)
Nice review Jesse Artix is a very new project and install gets better every update to the installer.
2 • Artix & others new distros (by SofiaSmith on 2017-11-27 02:41:34 GMT from Spain)
Is really necessary a complete "Feature Story" for a new distro like Artix instead a little article with premises and conclusions?
I would like to suggest to Distrowatch and Jesse to do comparatives between distros. For example, ram usage Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian/Manjaro. Time to boot Arch/Slackware. What distro es more secure "out of the box" Mint/Fedora/Debian/Arch.
In my very humble opinion, the exotic and minority distros deserve no more than an article.
3 • Artix & Others (by c00ter on 2017-11-27 03:10:23 GMT from United States)
Completely disagreeing with #2 poster. Who wants to continuously regurgitate the same distributions? And who better than Jesse to go through the pains and suffering for us and deliver the news? Thank you, Jesse.
4 • The Review (by kernelKurtz on 2017-11-27 03:40:51 GMT from France)
I appreciate reading about Artix. Thanks. Seeing it here made me think about giving it a go finally, but it would have to have been a base version, since I'd want XFCE (like Manjaro OpenRC was). However, studying the mirrors, the base version hasn't been updated since early August (which in this context means updated never, since genesis). So I'll wait a little longer still, for ripeness, before giving it a spin.
5 • Battery Life? (by Andy Figueroa on 2017-11-27 03:48:33 GMT from United States)
What kind of question is this: "... how much battery life you typically get on your Linux laptop?" More than anything else, battery life is dependent upon the hardware being used. It's the ultimate bad question with only meaningless answers. (Sorry for the criticism.)
6 • Battery Life (by Solace Solomann on 2017-11-27 04:11:14 GMT from Canada)
My solar powered batteries last more than 24 hrs. I have two sets.
7 • Be nice (by Scott James on 2017-11-27 04:38:50 GMT from United States)
Let's be nice here, please. If you disagree with someone, please try to convey your point in a more friendly way. Some of us have totally different view on issues, and think that some people who think differently deserve to get flamed. Please, reconsider. After all, it is quite possible that is it you that is wrong. I used to come by here weekly to see the flames. Now, I see how sad it is. Let's all try to be more friendly towards each other.
8 • Battery Life (by Rev_Don on 2017-11-27 04:51:58 GMT from United States)
The battery life on my Thinkpads running Linux is within a couple of minutes of Windows 8.1 or 10. My Toshiba's are a different story as they get about 15% better life under Win 8.1 or 10 than Linux.
9 • Tips (by Bill S on 2017-11-27 05:27:13 GMT from United States)
"Tips this week: 1, value: US$1,011.87" - Wow, I'm in the wrong business. lol Congrats Distrowatch!
10 • Artix and others (by argent on 2017-11-27 05:47:09 GMT from United States)
@2 & 3: The big headliners are just boring and a disaster to install nowadays, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and others are falling over each other to produce a new release that doesn't work, neither was their previous one.
Artix, Devuan and many others are offering alternatives which so far is quite refreshing if you are simply tired of reformatting and reinstalling.
What all the King's men and horses can't do it seems what smaller teams being on the same page are producing...the better distribution.
11 • RE: 9 Tips (by ladislav on 2017-11-27 06:21:25 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, it was a huge surprise this morning - somebody sent us 0.105 BTC! It's the largest donation/tip ever, by some distance! No idea who the kind soul was, but whoever you are, thank you very much! it's much appreciated :-)
12 • TLP (by Fernando on 2017-11-27 07:21:11 GMT from Spain)
Just to warn you that TLP kills performance on my Dell XPS 13 with fedora.It causes a lot of lag in GNOME and the battery saving, if any with current kernels and a 7th generation Intel, is definitely not worth.
13 • Do you have tips on how to get the most out of your laptop's battery? (by Slan on 2017-11-27 08:18:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
The lifetime and availability for almost all batteries can be maximised by keeping them as close to top-of-charge as possible. This means keeping them plugged in whenever possible (many modern trains & buses as well as aircraft have a USB 5V socket under or alongside the seats for mobiles; check whether your laptop cable carries a power line and not just the signal connections, but don't exceed its current rating!) Try not to operate below ~50% of charge. Carry a spare battery, if feasible, to distribute use between the two. Keep them warm, capacity drops alarmingly in cold weather/climates. The watchword is charge, charge, charge, but ensure there is over-charging protection circuitry - most have it. There is one exception: Ni-Cd cells, almost obsolete now in consumer durables, need to be fully discharged occasionally to prevent 'memory effect' which causes them, otherwise, to operate within a restricted capacity range. The advice is general for batteries, including SLT units in vehicles, electric shavers and heated rollers (probably!). Especially keep them charged in Winter!
14 • Battery Life (by speedytux on 2017-11-27 08:27:18 GMT from Romania)
I had more than 10 hours with Lenovo Thinkpad T450s both on Archlinux and on Pop!_OS (Ubuntu GNOME).
15 • Battery life (by XuTie on 2017-11-27 09:08:33 GMT from Switzerland)
From my experience batery consumption is not good as it can be. Luckily we are on linux world, so tlp precise setup + with powertop hints made it working smoothly.
16 • Artix review and comments (by aguador on 2017-11-27 10:09:05 GMT from Spain)
I am quite pleased to see Artix being reviewed as it is an alternative rather than yet another remix. I have only looked at it Artix in live version and seen it is a bit rough around the edges. However, having an OpenRC alternative is important in an era where, as someone has observed, we are increasingly systemd users rather than Linux users.
The one area where I would like to know more is in the interaction between Artix and Arch repositories. As I understand it one reason for forking to a separate distribution was the need to have separate repositories for packages not dependent on systemd. It would be nice to hear from those who may already have adopted Artix how well this is working.
17 • SLT (by Jon Keens on 2017-11-27 10:54:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
@13
If I search for SLT, I get "speech and language therapy"
18 • re.17 SLT (by Slan on 2017-11-27 11:08:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
a.k.a SLI in the UK: starting, lighting & ignition.
19 • Tips for battery life (by Kazlu on 2017-11-27 11:11:10 GMT from France)
Experience of a family member: he dual booted Linux (Xubuntu) and Windows 7 from the first weeks of use of his laptop bought in 2011. At first, battery life was way lower with Linux than with Windows and the fans made much more noise under Linux (related !). But as Xubuntu releases came one after the other, situation improved and battery life even became higher with Linux than with Windows.
Tips:
- Hardware support is very important. The younger the computer, the harder it will be to find a distro that supports your hardware well. If your computer is less than 6 months old, you need a very recent kernel -> consider a rolling-release distro. Between 6 months and 2 years, try short term release distros, like Xubuntu. Any distro released 2 years or more after the date your computer hit the stores should be okay.
- Check processor governors, sometimes these are set to "maximum performance" and lock the processor's speed governor to the highest one, even if you are not doing anything. That consumes more power and since the processor gets hotter, the fan needs to turn faster, consuming even more power. Set it to "on demand" at least, consider the "low power" setting (or something like that) which locks the processor's speed governor to the lowest one. The way of changing this setting may vary depending on your distro and desktop environment.
20 • battery life (by MikeOh Shark on 2017-11-27 13:42:38 GMT from France)
Aside from TLP or following powertop hints, make sure you have a cpufreq utility handy. I usually use ondemand for frequency scaling but if power consumption is an issue, you can switch to powersave for the CPU.
21 • @2: (by dragonmouth on 2017-11-27 14:01:45 GMT from United States)
I totally disagree. It is the major, well-known distributions that require no more than a short article. Information about them is easily found on the Web. The exotic, esoteric and minor distributions are the ones that very much need exposure and publicity. I appreciate and find useful DistroWatch's reviews of the minor distros.
22 • Unity7sl (by Marc Visscher on 2017-11-27 14:19:37 GMT from Netherlands)
Although I was a "Unity-hater" since it's startoff in 2011 (it made me run to Linux Mint back in the days), later I reconcidered my opinion to Unity and installed Ubuntu 15.10 on one of my machines back in early november 2015. At that time I was experimenting a lot with all kinds of desktops, and that included Unity. I worked on it and I even got used to it. And later I found out it works rather nicely.
In that same period I was giving GNOME 3 a break too, since that was - for me - the least interesting desktop. I thought GNOME was boring, heavy for your hardware and just a pain to configure without using a lot of extensions. Tried it again, and my earlier experience with GNOME 3 was - again - the same. I didn't like it them, and I'm pretty sure I don't like it now either.
I was a bit dissapointed that Mark Shuttleworth and his team decided to adopt GNOME 3 as the default desktop and drop Unity. Really too bad, because (like I pointed out earlier) I don't really like GNOME 3. And to customize GNOME 3 in a way that resembles and to pretend like it is Unity doesn't do it for me. I'd rather saw Ubuntu switching back to the early days and adopted Mate as their default desktop, hence the look and feel of Mate is practically the same as GNOME 2 back in the days. Mate became a wonderful replacement for GNOME 2, matured very well and is here to stay.
Anyway... the bottom line of my story is: I hope the people behind Unity7sl will succeed in their efforts, and I'll hope that distro will attract enough users to keep the Unity desktop alive.
P.S. Yes, I know Unity is build right on top of GNOME 3.
23 • Gnome Makes Sense For Ubuntu & Nitrux Does Not Boot (by buzzrobot on 2017-11-27 14:39:25 GMT from United States)
1. Turns out a lot of people use and like the HUD/Scopes/Lenses parts of Unity. Seems to be a strong impetus for keeping it going. Dwelling on the visual aspects ignores this.
2. Ubuntu's move to a slightly tweaked (2 default extenstions) Gnome Shell makes sense. Unity's been using Gnome apps all along, with considerable effort made to allow them to work in Unity. Gnome now has the good offices and support of Red Hat and Canonical.
3. Moving to stock Gnome in 17.10 only requires the installation of one package.
4. Nitrux: 1.0.6 image does not boot here, after repeated dd'ing onto 3 USB sticks using iso's from various sites and verifying checksums. Succumbed to using (the awful) unetbootin and it boots into a white logo screen and locks the machine.
24 • @ 22 • Unity7sl (by OstroL on 2017-11-27 14:40:35 GMT from Poland)
"Anyway... the bottom line of my story is: I hope the people behind Unity7sl will succeed in their efforts, and I'll hope that distro will attract enough users to keep the Unity desktop alive."
Yes, we shouldn't just throw away really working DEs.
"P.S. Yes, I know Unity is build right on top of GNOME 3."
Unity is actually a plugin to Compiz - one of the reasons, why it is so pretty. Compiz is still the most effective compositing window manager out there. Unity DE uses some Gnome apps, but is not built over Gnome 3.
25 • artix (by dogma on 2017-11-27 15:32:04 GMT from United States)
Ah, was just reading about artix the other day. I’m glad it exists, and I’m glad to see it get a little attention, which should help it grow and mature.
26 • Gobuntu (by Adhik on 2017-11-27 15:45:28 GMT from India)
Interesting Concept. Gonna download and check it out.
27 • Artix (by a on 2017-11-27 16:28:23 GMT from France)
Glad to see a review of a non-systemd distro. I might try Artix on my netbook…
28 • Artix… (by a on 2017-11-27 16:40:09 GMT from France)
Oh, Artix is 64 bit only… so no…
29 • 6-8 hours battery life... (by Jordan on 2017-11-27 17:10:27 GMT from United States)
...on MX-16. My older of two HP laptops, this one has the older generation "core i7" chip.
I don't take any special battery saving measures; just run it as I please.
30 • Battery Life (by CS on 2017-11-27 18:00:34 GMT from United States)
Running Mint on an old MBP that couldn't support the latest OSX any longer. Battery life dropped at least 30%, maybe more. 3 hours is my best case scenario, 2.5 is more likely. On OSX I could pull between 4 and 5 hours (it is an old laptop).
Tried TLP but out-of-the-box settings didn't make any difference. A bit of searching / hacking and I gave up as not worth my time.
IMO distros could do a much better job at bringing battery life to parity with the mainstream OSes, installing power management tools by default and adapting them as needed based on hardware profile. Battery life is in the top 3 key benchmarks for any laptop user.
31 • @27 - 32-bit non-systemd (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-11-27 19:21:26 GMT from France)
If you want a 32-bit rolling release without systemd, you might like Void:
https://www.voidlinux.eu/download/#download-installable-base-live-images-x86
32 • Artix: got to love the irony (by Brenton Horne on 2017-11-27 20:49:43 GMT from Australia)
Funny as its name is so similar to antiX and like antiX it originates from Greece, is designed to be lightweight, is based on a popular distro(s) and doesn't use systemd. Must admit I kind of think only supporting x86-64 kind of defeats a large part of the purpose of being lightweight, that is, working well on older hardware. But I suppose there are some somewhat older PCs running x86-64.
As for power consumption 'twas surprised switching to LXDE and other lightweight desktop environments / window managers / Wayland compositors weren't mentioned as ways of cutting down battery usage.
33 • Battery life: package 'tlp' vs package 'laptop-mode-tools' (by Boruch on 2017-11-27 23:35:54 GMT from United States)
Jesse, after reading your answer to this week's question I checked my debian laptop, and see that it has a package that conflicts with 'tlp', namely 'laptop-mode-tools'. zgrepping through /var/log/apt/history.log.* indicates that the package was part of the original install.
What prompted you to choose 'tlp' over 'laptop-mode-tools'?
The debian description for 'laptop-mode-tools' is:
Description-en: Tools for Power Savings based on battery/AC status
Laptop mode is a Linux kernel feature that allows your laptop to save
considerable power, by allowing the hard drive to spin down for longer
periods of time. This package contains the userland scripts that are
needed to enable laptop mode.
.
It includes support for automatically enabling laptop mode when the
computer is working on batteries. It also supports various other power
management features, such as starting and stopping daemons depending on
power mode, automatically hibernating if battery levels are too low, and
adjusting terminal blanking and X11 screen blanking
.
laptop-mode-tools uses the Linux kernel's Laptop Mode feature and thus
is also used on Desktops and Servers to conserve power
Homepage: http://www.samwel.tk/laptop_mode/
* Don't bother with the homepage: it 404's
* The debian changelog indicates that the package was receiving active support as of May 2017
34 • Google and Batt Life (by Sherman Jerrold on 2017-11-27 23:52:11 GMT from United States)
First of all, I STRONGLY recommend to all my clients, DON'T USE GOOGLE, it tracks you and censors your searches. Use duckduckgo, it doesn't track you and you can select its filtering. And, there are reports on Schneier on security and elsewhere that shortened URLs are frequently fraudulent.
Second, Regarding Batt. life. I have two old laptops, and I work on laptops for people. I have found that battery life is dependent on:
1) hardware demand for current
2) battery capacity
3) age of battery
4) Operating System options and settings
35 • @33 - TLP & laptop_mode_tools (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-11-28 08:46:32 GMT from France)
From the TLP FAQ (http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-faq.html):
"Does TLP conflict with other power management tools like laptop-mode-tools etc.?
Yes. Using another tool simultaneously means that TLP's settings get overwritten by the other tools settings (and vice versa), so actual power saving gets unpredictable."
You might try TLP for a while to compare its performance with LMT.
36 • NVIDIA laptop graphics drains power (by Dxvid on 2017-11-28 13:11:47 GMT from Sweden)
If a laptop has Nvidia Geforce graphics it can consume a lot of battery power. On my laptop battery life goes from 8h to 2h with Nvidia graphics turned on. Nvidia came up with something called Nvidia Optimus a few years ago, and the intention was to use the Intel GPU built in to the CPU most of the time and only use the energy consuming Nvidia GPU when there was a need for it (games, CAD) and they created drivers for this in Windows. However as far as I know Nvidia still doesn't support this in their Linux drivers several years after the introduction of this technology.
https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/optimus
It's possible to make the Nvidia GPU only run when playing games and being switched off otherwise even in Linux. An open-source project created a solution for this problem as Nvidia had no intention to make Nvidia Optimus compatible with Linux. The solution is to use the package bumblebee, and for optimal game graphics also nvidia-bumblebee. There might be a need for various other packages (dkms related) and tools (like bbswitch, optirun or primusrun, OpenGL stuff, powertop, graphics demo or game for testing purposes) depending on your configuration and Linux distro. See your distro's documentation or search for "bumblebee and distroname" for the correct installation on your system.
https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/FAQ#i-have-a-laptop-with-nvidia-card-and-an-integrated-graphics-card-how-can-bumblebee-help-me
37 • Battery Life (by zarathustra on 2017-11-29 08:38:25 GMT from United States)
I have two rather old laptops, one has an AMD 140 single core. The other an ULW dual core intel celeron or pentium, I can't remember, Passmark scores the intel laptop as faster, although clocked at 1.4CHZ compared to 2.3 GHZ for the amd. The amd has a brand new battery, while the intel charges to about 98%. I've used powertop on both to check things and get reports. But no matter the governor used, I use conservative on both. The intel always lasts and lasts, and thats with a zillion apps open. (added ram to 6GB. The intell also has a very cheap 120GB SSD which used to be in the amd. Nevertheless, I get at least 6 maybe 8 hours of regular use like web browsing, tonight while using Gimp, Libredraw, Librewriter, Gwenview, Chrome, and I can't remember what else, oh a couple dolphin file managers opened one connected to my home server. It lasted at least 5 hours under heavy load at times, I keep an eye on cpu and temps.. And it runs KDE.
The amd gets a tad better life under windows 7 or 10. But I'd rather get less battery life than run either of those.. The intel actually gets better life than either windows version. This is after me tweaking the hell out of every tweak I can find.
So for some battery life might be better, for others it may not, I'd say he depends heavily on drivers, and the power functionality that's built in, especially with discrete graphics.. I hear that's quite a big deal...
Anyway, Just thought I'd post an old geezers two cents... Been using Linux since I had to pay for a stupid linux driver for a stupid winmodem I had to get 56k under linux.. The driver was cheaper than buying a hardware modem.. WINMODEMS suck donkey testicles..
38 • Run in RAM for Battery Life (by Winchester on 2017-11-29 13:37:42 GMT from United States)
Porteus Linux Desktop run in RAM seems to produce very good battery life on an old-school netbook.
WattOS r8 LXDE very good as well (battery life-wise) from what I remember,experimenting with it a couple of years ago.
SUSE Tumbleweed i586 with Enlightenment and TLP outlasting noticeably ArchLinux 32 Fluxbox (transitioned from Manjaro Fluxbox i686)... for battery life.
39 • WattOs? (by Paolo on 2017-11-29 13:48:56 GMT from Italy)
As always Distrowatch Weekly is a great interesting reading.
About the battery life: someone use WattOs Linux? I have read is a distro focused about energy saving.
I give a try in the next days on a old eeepc 1001px with a 6000 mah battery
40 • How battery works? (by Danny D'offermann on 2017-11-29 16:36:02 GMT from Canada)
If neone ask me How does linux work? I could probably explain in every details right from partition, boot sectors, boot loaders, kernel, kernel modules, processes, alien processes or hidden processes till shutdown.
neone here can explain how battery works? 0% --> 100% --> 0% recycle over and over. pls.
41 • Battery Life (by Dan on 2017-11-29 21:27:52 GMT from United States)
Running Linux Mint Cinnamon on a an older Dell Latitude, the battery life is OK, but not great. It also runs a little hotter too, but not too bad. But man, it is A LOT faster than Windows machine I've ever used. Maybe I'm missing something, but why should I expect great gas mileage out of a Corvette.
42 • laptop battery (by steveo314 on 2017-11-29 21:52:50 GMT from United States)
I get about 2 to 3 hours running Debian Testing or the newest Ubuntu on a 10 year old compaq c714nr.
43 • Battery Life (by Ron on 2017-11-29 22:53:08 GMT from United States)
Of course longer battery life is good, but every laptop will be different and cannot be referenced to your particular setup.
If you are so concerned about battery life for your needs, its easy to just buy a spare battery for your unit. I suppose most laptops have easily plug in batterys. Give yourself a break, or you deserve a brick today!
44 • Battery Life (by edcoolio on 2017-11-29 23:19:43 GMT from United States)
All things equal, battery life seems to be heavily dependant on (drum roll please): The Battery.
I personally will not purchase a laptop without a removable battery for this reason. This rule applies for phones as well. Unfortunately, this is getting harder and harder to find, with Mophie to the rescue. I abhore external battery packs if I can help it.
Typically, I will select both phones and laptops by the quality, and availability of the highest capacity replacement batteries I can find. I don't care about the weight or size of the battery attached to the device. I am perfectly capable of lugging the few extra ounces or pound.
The tiny OEM battery is carried for rare social or quick use where I don't care about battery life.
To summarize, I have come to the conclusion that I care A LOT about battery life, weight be damned.
Now, I combine my giant battery laptops with Lubuntu and I easily get more than 8 hours. I have tried a lot of distros and the only ones who even come close are Peppermint, AntiX, Puppy, LXLE, and Bodhi. In my universe, the rest of the functional distros are only suitable for the desktop.
REVIEWS:
Regarding reviews, @2 does make a good point. However, I would say that although RAM use is an important measure, I would LOVE to see comparisons of CPU and GPU use for various operations (including web browsing) in both 32 and 64 bit flavors for different distros.
45 • Google (by Private on 2017-11-30 07:33:53 GMT from Liberia)
Nobody privacy-conscious uses google these days, and things like this messing with search results are more reason to avoid it.
46 • Post # 44 : Distributions for Laptops (by Winchester on 2017-11-30 12:35:34 GMT from United States)
5 of the 6 distributions mentioned in post # 44 are basically the same thing .... some with different desktop interfaces. They are all Debian via Ubuntu except for AntiX (which is Debian without Ubuntu) and except for Puppy.
Believe it or not,there are distributions outside of the Debian / Ubuntu world which function extremely well on laptops.
See post # 38 for a few distributions (only 1 of which is Debian based) which work well on a crappy NetBook with 1 GB of RAM and with a crappy Atom CPU , small low-res screen , and with not the best battery ever manufactured.
47 • Artix and Nitrux (by Kartik on 2017-11-30 12:57:33 GMT from India)
Good to see more and more distros attempting to make Arch available to the masses. I downloaded the Nitrux release via the torrent option on their website and strangely there is no boot partition in the downloaded iso image. I use 'Etcher' to make live USB's for my Mac Mini and am presently running Solus OS on it, but while writing the Nitrux image to usb etcher promptly says that the image does not have a boot partition. Any suggestions.
48 • @47 Nitrux (by curious on 2017-11-30 13:30:53 GMT from Germany)
Just to prevent any misunderstanding: Nitrux is based on Ubuntu, not Arch.
Considering the findings in the Distrowatch review (http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20170904#nitrux) I would recommend avoiding the projectfor now - at least until it has matured some more. Even those parts that do work seem somewhat limited.
If you are looking for a Mac-like distro that has similarly fixed, non-configurable ways of doing things, you might try "elementary OS" instead (also Ubuntu-based). It is absolutely not to my taste, but there are people who are very enthusiastic about it.
49 • battery life (by Simon Wainscott-Plaistowe on 2017-11-30 20:41:47 GMT from New Zealand)
Battery life on both my laptops is virtually identical under either Linux Mint or Windows (7 & 10). Although to be fair I never use Windows for long enough to be certain the estimated time remaining is accurate. It's accurate under Linux though and whenever I do log into Windows the reading is similar.
50 • @46 (by edcoolio on 2017-11-30 21:01:15 GMT from United States)
Obviously they are similar and I agree.
I consider LXLE and Peppermint essentially the same thing: Lubuntu with extra bloat and an Icon/Desktop gloss. I spent far too much time uninstalling the stuff I didn't want, so not bad, but not my favorites.
AntiX I put in a different class, regardless of its underpinnings. The desktop(s) is not LXDE and it does not use systemd. Excellent distro for both 32 and 64 bit computers that is painfully light on resources
Same goes for Bodhi. It is significantly different enough in my book to put into a class of its own because of the Moksha (finished Enlightenment) desktop. It also is a distro that has not abandoned full 32 bit support for non-PAE processors, which brings it up a notch in my book. Very modern look for old boxes.
... and Puppy is, well, Puppy!
Lubuntu and Bodhi are by far my favorites and the most useful for me, with AntiX not far behind.
Frankly, I consider the Ubuntu/Debian world to be the most useful. Support, information, software, packages, and familiarity are all very important to me.
As for Porteus and WattOS, it is not that they are bad, but for one reason or another there were some issues on my older equipment with WiFi, NIC, and touchpad.
SUSE Tumbleweed i586 with Enlightenment? I'm going to try it now. Thanks for the suggestion!
51 • 34 and 45... and FUD (by tim on 2017-11-30 22:20:08 GMT from United States)
Wait, you're implying that "reports" (comments posted on Schneier blogsite) mention that "shortened URLs are frequently fraudulent" are matterfactual... yet you're damning google for noticing such instances and proactively intervening by presenting an intersititial warning page?
How do you know (you can't) why do you believe that duckduckgo is benevolent and doesn't track you? Because you read so in the echo chamber of comments posted to each others' blogs? Has duckduckgo received a formal security/privacy audit... or is your echo chamber simply parroting a duckduckgo marketing narrative, one designed to mask its true goal -- to serve as a honeypot, by coercing you to self-select, fingerprint yourself, as a hide-from-eyes webseeker?
Interstitial warning pages, flags/callouts displayed adjacent to "suspect" websearch result links, those do not amount to "censorship". False positives are regrettable, yet I'm thankful to see a search provider attempting to provide an automated "best effort" toward defending its users against pondscum site operators, or links containing NSFW content.
52 • @51 (by edcoolio on 2017-11-30 22:47:37 GMT from United States)
Agreed.
Personally, I use Startpage. Not perfect, but better than nothing...
https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/714/0/how-can-your-privacy-policies-be-verified-can-users-trust-startpage-to-do-what-it-says
53 • FUD? (by Private on 2017-11-30 22:52:41 GMT from Sweden)
It has been long established that Google is an enemy of privacy, they don't even try to hide it, DDG offers an onion service if you wish to be really safe and there are other alternatives like searx, so no need for evil Google that requires things like your phone number to use their services.
54 • @52 - Privacy-respecting search engines (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-12-01 11:18:36 GMT from France)
There's also Qwant (https://www.qwant.com, "lite" version at https://lite.qwant.com), which is European and also respects privacy:
https://help.qwant.com/help/overview/security/how-does-qwant-ensure-my-security/#help_details
"What you are doing with Qwant is your business and yours only. To protect your privacy, Qwant makes every effort to ensure the security and confidentiality of its users personal data. We collect as little data as possible. Therefore, we forbid ourselves to use any cookie or any other tracking device that may help build your profile for advertising purposes. Moreover, your queries are anonymized by dissociating them and the IP address you used, in accordance with recommandations by the French data protection office, CNIL.
When we do need to memorize information, Qwant uses the “local storage” on your device. It allows to make your user experience smoother by enabling you to save your preferences (langages, activation ou deactivation of news trends, filtering of adult content, favicon display…)."
55 • @51 FUD? Also another privacy-respecting search engine (by curious on 2017-12-01 11:36:03 GMT from Germany)
Please provide proof for your accusation that DuckDuckGo is a "honeypot" with the mission to identify people who have something to hide - and an explanation of how that works in spite of their privacy policy.
Another recommended privacy-respecting search engine, which might be even more secure, is https://www.ixquick.eu/ . Their privacy policy (https://www.ixquick.eu/eng/protect-privacy.html) shows that they have been formally audited by relevant European authorities.
56 • Post # 50 (by Winchester on 2017-12-01 15:40:20 GMT from United States)
There is not an official SUSE Tumbleweed Enlightenment .iso.
I used the official i586 installation media and selected LXDE for installation,then I installed Enlightenment (through the official OpenSUSE one click install .... select other architecture ..... i586) after the operating system was initially installed.
Be aware though,OpenSUSE's GRUB bootloader may be installed into the MBR even if you tell the installer to just install it into the partition. Not a problem if that's alright with you or not a problem if you know how to re-install your previous or preferred bootloader back into the MBR.
Also,the most foolproof option for an OpenSUSE installation on a multi-boot system seems to be to install it to a pre-formatted ext3 partition. Otherwise,if you want to use BTRFS for the main operating system,I would still use a seperate /boot partition formatted to ext2 or to ext3. This seems to make it easier for other OS GRUB's and bootloaders to be able to boot OpenSUSE.
57 • Univention Corporate Server and other home server or small business user (by tuxuser95 on 2017-12-02 03:01:49 GMT from Canada)
Univention Corporate Server out another iso today. It's a real joke ! Alway constant same problem with community edition release after release. Login doesn't work with * Administrator * but when you log with no secure user *root* it work. App software nothing at all alway the message * App center is not available or currently unreachable * I
I don't understand this project. Why would you want to take out a community iso that doesn't work out of the box pretention ? One quickly understands by visiting the website that they want to sell only enterprise versions. Please be honest and say it !
It's the same for other projects that offer pseudo server solution out of the box for home.
After a few weeks of installation, testing etc... Nothing to put under the hand. The Mini superb server exception whose result corresponds to these claims. But for everyone else, there's nothing to match the claim.
For those interested, Don't lost your time. Install Debian server and couple software with Webmin. 2-4 hours for configuation with some doc over the web. In the end it's a lot simpler.
best regard at all
58 • laptop battery (by slipslide on 2017-12-02 05:12:38 GMT from United States)
My laptop battery never runs out, keep it plugged in and it stays fully charged or a percentage of 90%.
Only times I have a problem is when the power goes out or forget to pay the electric bill, other than that does real fine.
Hope this helps someone! : )
59 • poor proofreading (by tim on 2017-12-02 17:27:22 GMT from United States)
55, I'm sorry that came across as adding to the FUD and thank you for calling it out. No, I don't have reason to suspect duckduckgo is intended as a honeypot. I should have chosen better wording.
60 • Snap server side issues (by mikef90000 on 2017-12-02 21:35:39 GMT from United States)
Reference the Nitrix project backing off from snaps:
"As we continued to update the software center we came across another problem: We couldn't create a Snap store of our own. What does that mean? It means that the only official way to get a Snap is through the Ubuntu Store (read: repository). Say we wanted to create our own platform to serve Snaps, well we can't because the server-side software needed to do that is not publicly available to use by third parties (like us)."
Not being able to create a snap repository of your own is very troubling. Can anyone else verify this? Seeing the shenanigans of Google, Apple, et al in their 'curating' of owned stores, why should we expect Canonical to do any better?
BTW I've had no issues with using appimages. A GUI front end to keep track of them in local storage and to create .desktop files for them would be nice.
61 • Snap repo (by Jesse on 2017-12-02 21:46:03 GMT from Canada)
@60:
The claim made by the Nitrux team is true, by default there is just one Snap store/repository. In theory, anyone could make one of their own if they wanted to, but they would need to reverse engineer it based on the Snap client. The Snap client is open source, but so far as I know the server side is not, which means people who want their own Snap repo need to implement their own Snap server too. This has always been seen as one of the big hurdles of Snap adoption because it relies on Canonical to be the gatekeeper. And Canonical tends to drop their projects after a few years (such as Upstart, Unity, Ubuntu One Storage, and Ubuntu Touch). There is a tutorial on the Ubuntu website which describes how to set up a Snap store of your own, but it relies on old code which no longer works with the latest version of Snap.
62 • There should be Only One … Store? (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2017-12-03 05:27:18 GMT from United States)
"…because it relies on to be the gatekeeper. …"
Canonical … Snaps?
RedHat … Flatpaks?
What happened when dirty little Billy pwned the Gates?
63 • @27,28 Atrix... @39 wattos.. (by drizzt on 2017-12-03 11:15:27 GMT from Australia)
@27 & 28
Same here... which was one of the main reasons i went for wattos instead of some others that only provided 64 versions.
@39 : using wattos10 with i3 on two old notebooks, one being EeePC 1015PEM - but did not take notice of battery life as i keep it plugged in after removing the battery. However, i get the feeling the other one seems to last longer than Vista, but did not do a 'real' comparison - i also keep it plugged in without the battery attached and use the battery "once in blue moon".
64 • Battery life (by John S on 2017-12-03 22:18:23 GMT from United States)
Using a Lenovo IdealPad 110 with core i3 a 32 watt hour battery I got around 4 with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 17.10 I get maybe 3 1/2 at best with TLP installed. I expect less battery with Linux, the drivers just are not tweaked for every possible hardware setup. I always wondered if System 76 laptops got better battery life? They apparently have better drivers for their systems so I am told.
Number of Comments: 64
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