 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 740, 27 November 2017 |
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Welcome to this year's 48th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Often times when developers disagree on the best way forward, forks are created with two separate versions of a program or distribution being developed. This approach offers more diversity in the software ecosystem, but may spread resources thin due to duplication of effort. Sometimes we see the opposite scenario happen when two similar projects will merge into one, sharing resources. Artix Linux is an example of the latter situation where two projects, Arch-OpenRC and Manjaro-OpenRC, have come together to develop a desktop-oriented distribution based on Arch Linux and featuring the OpenRC init software. The rolling Artix Linux distribution is the subject of this week's Feature Story. In our News section we talk about Korora working with a new ISO tool and Nitrux removing Snap support from the distribution's software centre. Plus we cover an upgrade path for users of Ubuntu's Unity desktop and we link to a guide for running an early version of Unix in a Docker container. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about how to gain longer battery life on Linux and our Opinion Poll asks how many hours of battery time you get with Linux. Plus we are happy to provide a list of the week's distribution releases and the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Artix Linux
- News: Korora works toward version 27, upgrade option for Ubuntu's Unity users, Nitrux shifting from Snaps to AppImage, running early Unix in a container
- Questions and answers: Gaining longer battery life
- Released last week: LibreELEC 8.2.1, LXLE 16.04.3, OpenMandriva Lx 3.03
- Torrent corner: Berry, BlackArch, ExTiX, Kali, LibreELEC, LXLE, Nitrux, OpenMandriva, pfSense, Raspberry Slideshow
- Opinion poll: Laptop battery life on Linux
- DistroWatch.com news: Google search results
- New distributions: Guntu, Gobuntu, Unity7sl
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (27MB) and MP3 (34MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Artix Linux
One of the most recent additions to the DistroWatch database is Artix Linux. The distribution grew out of two other projects, Arch-OpenRC and Manjaro-OpenRC, which provided rolling release packages with the OpenRC init software instead of the systemd init software used by Arch Linux and Manjaro. The project's website explains:
After more than two years of maintaining repositories with OpenRC packages, the maintainers of separate but closely or loosely related projects (Arch-OpenRC, Manjaro-OpenRC) decided to join forces and create a project that would be systemd-free and unaffected from upstream changes and updates. That required what might technically be considered as a mini-fork.
The result of this mini-fork is Artix Linux. The distribution is available in three editions: a minimal Base edition (385MB), an edition featuring the i3 window manager (697MB) and an edition running the LXQt desktop (646MB). Each edition is available for the 64-bit x86 architecture exclusively. I opted to try the LXQt flavour of Artix.
Booting from the Artix media brings up a menu where we can set boot options. We can then tell the boot loader whether we are running from optical media or a USB thumb drive. The distribution quickly starts up and presents us with the LXQt desktop, version 0.11.0. LXQt runs on top of the Openbox window manager. The interface is snappy and presents the desktop with a dark theme. At the top of the screen we find a panel hosting the application menu, quick-start buttons, the task manager and the system tray.
Artix Linux 2017.08.08 -- The LXQt desktop
(full image size: 541kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Installing
At first there did not appear to be any obvious way to install Artix, but a little browsing of the distribution's application menu turned up an entry for the Calamares system installer. When we try to run Calamares the system prompts for a username and password. The project has very little documentation and I found, through guessing, that "artix" is the required user account and password.
Calamares is a graphical installer which walks us through the usual steps of selecting our time zone, confirming our keyboard's layout, partitioning the hard drive and creating a user account for ourselves. It's a fairly easy to navigate and, in my opinion, well designed system installer. One customization I found added to Artix's version of Calamares is the final option screen where we are asked to select groups of software to be installed. Most of the software groups are fairly low-level items. We are not choosing our preferred productivity suite or media player here, but rather whether to install the X display software, desktop, a compiler and various drivers or firmware modules. Most packages are not selected by default, leaving us without printer support, graphical desktop or volume control.
When our selection is completed, Calamares downloads and installs the selected packages and offers to reboot the computer. The first time I set up Artix I opted for a lightweight system, choosing to just install the LXQt desktop, audio volume control and little else. When I launched my new copy of Artix, I was brought to a text login screen. I found that while the X display software had been installed along with LXQt, I was missing a login manager, the startx command and, it seemed, some necessary video drivers to launch a graphical environment. After unsuccessfully following a Manjaro guide to try to get a working desktop, I decided the faster route to getting a desktop environment working was to re-install. From then on, each time I installed Artix I made sure to select virtually every software package, with the exception of the extra desktop environments. I found with all the optional components installed, Artix would boot to a graphical login screen and allow me to sign into the LXQt session.
Software
Artix ships with a minimal collection of software and the specific items available to us will vary depending on the packages we select at install time. I found the distribution shipped with the QupZilla web browser, an archive manager and the KWrite text editor and the PCManFM file manager. A process monitor, called qps is included along with the VLC media player. There are two entries in the application menu for QTerminal, one of them runs in a drop-down window which can be accessed using a short-cut key.
Artix Linux 2017.08.08 -- Running the QupZilla web browser
(full image size: 526kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The distribution includes a settings panel which gives us control over the look & feel of the desktop. When I selected all available software packages at install time the distribution included two launchers for managing printers. The first one opened QupZilla and displayed the CUPS web-based management interface. The second launcher opened the system-config-printer desktop utility for setting up printers. The Network Manager utility is available to help us get on-line. In the background Artix uses the OpenRC init software and, at the time of writing, the distribution ships with version 4.9 of the Linux kernel. Though, as the distribution provides a rolling release model, version numbers will gradually increase over time.
I found when I first started using Artix the VLC media player would not open, whether launched from the desktop's application menu or from the command line. After a little trouble-shooting, I installed the phonon-qt4-vlc package from the distribution's software repository and this fixed VLC so that I could play audio and video files.
Artix Linux 2017.08.08 -- Trying to launch VLC
(full image size: 559kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Another bug I encountered involved the folder icon next to the application menu. Clicking on the folder icon opens a menu where we can select a folder in our home directory to quickly open. Clicking any of the folders or selecting my home directory itself had no effect and the file manager would not open. I could work around this issue by opening PCManFM from the application menu and browsing to the folder I wanted.
Package management
Artix does not ship with any graphical package manager. To handle installing and upgrading software we can use the pacman command line utility. I find pacman's syntax to be terse and unintuitive, but the package manager does work very quickly and I did not encounter any problems using it during my trial. This reliability proved most welcome as Artix ships with very little software and I had to install several items in order to get any work done. pacman is set up, by default, to pull software primarily from custom Artix repositories, though there are some Arch Linux repositories available.
Artix Linux 2017.08.08 -- Using the pacman package manager
(full image size: 652kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Hardware
I tried running Artix in two test environments, starting with a VirtualBox virtual machine and then trying the distribution on a desktop computer. The distribution performed well in both environments. When running in VirtualBox, Artix worked quickly and integrated with my host environment. Artix provides support for VirtualBox and can use the host computer's full screen resolution. When running on my desktop computer, the distribution performed well again. Artix booted quickly, properly detected all my computer's hardware and the LXQt desktop was pleasantly responsive. In either environment, the distribution used just 190MB of RAM when signed into a desktop session. With virtually all software packages installed (apart from extra desktop environments), Artix started out using about 3.5GB of disk space.
Conclusions
At the start of my trial, in fact for the first day or two, I was not a fan of Artix Linux. I'm not, generally speaking, in favour of installers that download packages over the Internet, especially when I plan to perform multiple installs. And the first time through my attempt to start with a minimal desktop environment resulted in me not having a working desktop at all. This is probably my fault as I must have missed a necessary package somewhere in the selection, but I think (since I was installing the LXQt edition) it would have made sense for the distribution to automatically install all the components necessary to run a minimal graphical environment.
Once the distribution was installed and running, I ran into a few bugs, such as the folder icon not opening the file manager and the VLC media player failing to run. These are relatively minor bugs in the big picture, but with such a minimal distribution any malfunctioning applications stand out. I also ran into a bug early on where the QTerminal window would open partly off the screen and could not be moved. I had to disable the "remember window position" option in QTerminal to get the window to open entirely on my display.
Artix Linux 2017.08.08 -- The settings panel
(full image size: 870kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Toward the end of the week I grew to appreciate Artix more. The performance of the LXQt desktop was top notch and a breath of fresh air after the performance I received from some distributions I used back in September. I also appreciate that the developers have joined forces from multiple projects to make a separate distribution with the OpenRC init software. I think OpenRC is under appreciated and I enjoy its speed and relatively simplicity.
I will also say that Artix does a pretty good job of offering us a minimal base from which we can build. There was very little software on the system I did not want. This meant I spent more time downloading new packages, but it also meant I had a very uncluttered application menu and a leaner system.
I do think there are a handful of bugs which could be squashed to make the initial experience smoother, but none of the issues I ran into were insurmountable. Artix is working with a good idea, in my opinion. It's minimal, it is rolling and it offers a little-used init system. All of these I think make the project worthwhile.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Artix Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.3/10 from 185 review(s).
Have you used Artix Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Korora works toward version 27, upgrade option for Ubuntu's Unity users, Nitrux shifting from Snaps to AppImage, running early Unix in a container
Korora is a desktop distribution based on Fedora which provides more software repositories and media support out of the box. The Korora team has started working on Korora 27, which will carry the code name "Marlin". "For our next release, Korora 27, we have decided that the codename will be Marlin which continues the tradition of having codenames based on characters from Finding Nemo. The development on Korora 27 is in full progress, this involves fixing the layouts on a couple of our spins and of course building and testing ISOs which is done by the team. Once we are satisfied and everything works as it should the final ISOs will be built, tested and released." Korora is using a tool called Canvas to help with building and working with installation ISOs. Information on the Canvas utility can be found in Korora's roadmap and on the distribution's GitHub page.
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Earlier this year the Ubuntu distribution switched from using Unity 7 as the default desktop environment to using a modified GNOME Shell. This has left fans of the Unity desktop environment, and users planning to upgrade existing installations, wondering about their best options for the future. One project which aims to help is Ubuntu Unity (aka Unity7sl). The project is an unofficial spin of Ubuntu which plans to provide a smooth upgrade path for existing Ubuntu users. If successful, Ubuntu Unity will make it possible for Ubuntu 16.04 users to upgrade to 18.04 while still using the same Unity desktop environment. The project's current plans can be found in this Ubuntu Community Hub post.
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While most mainstream distributions are adding support for Flatpak and Snap portable packages to their respective software managers, the Nitrux team is pulling back from working with Snaps. The project's latest release, Nitrux 1.0.6, removes Snap support from the distribution's software centre. "The NX Software Center was created with the intention of serving portable apps such as Snaps, however it hasn't gone without its fair share of difficulties. At first were the libraries that we had used: libsnapd-glib and libsnapd-qt, which at the time had very early support for Qt so in order for us to use them and create a Qt front-end we had to patch them. Eventually our changes made their way into upstream and both libraries were available in the Ubuntu repositories with the updated code.
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). In the future, NX Software Centre will be adjusted to work with AppImage portable packages in place of Snaps. A post on Medium offers further details.
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Most of the operating systems we talk about here on DistroWatch have their roots in Unix. The multi-user, multi-process approach taken by Unix, while not unique at the time of its creation, ended up being the starting point for many future operating systems, including the BSDs, GNU/Linux distributions, macOS and Android. For people who are curious as to what it was like to run one of the original versions of Unix back in 1972, it is now possible to run an early version of Unix in a Docker container. Nick Janetakis explains: "The PDP-11 was a computer sold back in the early 1970s to 1990s. You can read the original PDF brochure if you'd like, or if you want to research it in detail here's a 300+ page manual. It's labeled as a 'minicomputer' but it weighed about 100 pounds (45kg) and cost $10,800 back in the early 1970s. If you account for inflation that would be like spending $63,246 today. But instead of having of buy one, we've ran a simulator. This is somewhat comparable to running an NES or game system emulator. It will give us the experience of using it, without needing the hardware." Janetakis explores a few classic Unix commands and shows some of them have not changed much in the past 45 years.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Gaining longer battery life
Running-out-of-power asks: When I moved from Windows to Linux my laptop battery's life dropped by half. Is there a way to make Linux more efficient? I want my seven hours of battery power back.
DistroWatch answers: There are a few approaches we can take to reduce power consumption and increase a laptop's time on battery. One easy approach is to install the TLP package. Linux distributions generally do not install TLP by default, but most of the mainstream Linux distributions have it packaged in their repositories. The TLP package is described as follows: "TLP brings you the benefits of advanced power management for Linux without the need to understand every technical detail. TLP comes with a default configuration already optimized for battery life, so you may just install and forget it." Most people can install TLP, start the service and forget about it, hopefully increasing battery life. Even without making manual adjustments, having TLP may be worth an extra 25% of battery time, based on my experiences with the software.
Another approach is to try to identify devices our laptop may be using which could be disabled or used less. One of the bigger power draws will be the laptop's screen. Going into your settings panel and into the power settings module should give you the option of lowering screen brightness. I usually do not notice a big difference between 100% brightness and 80% brightness, but my laptop's battery does. The power setting module of your distribution may also be able to turn off keyboard backlighting to further preserve your battery.
If you do not need to be on-line you can shut down connection features. In the settings panels of most mainstream distributions and desktop environments you can find a module for enabling and disabling Bluetooth. Turning off Bluetooth can save some power. Likewise, on most distributions you can right-click on your network icon and uncheck the box labelled "Enable wi-fi" if you do not currently need network access.
Last, but not least, check to see if there are any services or programs running you do not need. Do you have a system monitor on the desktop which is always updating? Do you have a synchronization service like Nextcloud running in the background? Is your e-mail client checking for new mail messages every two minutes? All of these are little things which can add up over time. Closing these applications (or disabling the services) can give your CPU a bit of a break and save you power.
Do you have tips on how to get the most out of your laptop's battery? Let us know about it in the comments.
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More answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Raspberry Slideshow 10.0
Raspberry Slideshow (RSS) is a operating system for Raspberry Pi computers which provides a system which displays a series of images or videos in sequence. Marco Buratto has announced the release of Raspberry Slideshow 10.0 which is based on Raspbian Stretch. "Marco Buratto has just released Raspberry Slideshow 10.0, which features an upgrade of its underlying Raspbian base operating system from Jessie to Stretch. As of now, all the range of Pi micro-computers is supported. Full version 10.0 changelog: the underlying operating system has been moved to Raspbian Stretch; the overall performance is sensibly better; a systemd unit file now replaces the older SysV init-script for launching the slideshow; smoother transitions between images and videos; some minor improvements on code." More information can be found in the project's release announcement.
LibreELEC 8.2.1
LibreELEC is a minimal operating system dedicated to running the Kodi media centre. LibreELEC runs on x86 personal computers and ARM-based computers, such as the Raspberry Pi. The project has released LibreELEC 8.2.1 which features time zone fixes and security improvements to Samba network shares. "LibreELEC 8.2.1 is a maintenance release that includes Kodi 17.6. It also resolves a minor time-zone issue after recent daylight saving changes, a resume from suspend issue with the Apple IR driver, and it provides two new SMB client configuration options in Kodi settings. You can now set a minimum SMB protocol version to prevent prevent SMB1 from ever being used, and a 'legacy security' option forces weak authentication to resolve issues seen with the USB sharing functions on some older router/NAS devices. If updating to LibreELEC 8.2 for the first time please read the release notes below here before posting issues in the forums as there are disruptive changes to Lirc, Samba, and Tvheadend." Further information can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
LXLE 16.04.3
The LXLE distribution is an Ubuntu-based project which is designed to be lightweight and run on lower-end computers. The LXLE project has released a new version, LXLE 16.04.3, which is supported through to the year 2021 and includes several bug fixes. "LXLE 16.04.3 is built upon Ubuntu Mini LTS. Lubuntu-core is used as a starting point. What's New? LXhotkey replaced obkey for better ease of use. Addressed menu clutter, layout and organization. Tweaked theme for consistency throughout system. Further integration of MATE/LXQt/Mint desktop components. Removed Pithos as it's regional and requires a user account. Slimmed game section and focused solely on desktop games. Streamlined default PPAs and repositories to avoid redundancies. Lock screen has better blur and indicator of what happened and what to do. Qt + GTK - forced GTK theme adaptation for stubborn Qt based default applications. GRUB/Login - backgrounds set to default wallpaper for overall theme consistency. Updates - update notifier checks unattended-upgrades log for non automatic updates. Window effects such as shadows, fading, transparency, tear free video provided by Compton." More information can be found in the project's release announcement.
LXLE 16.04.3 -- Running the LXQt desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1024x827 pixels)
OpenMandriva Lx 3.03
OpenMandriva Lx, a desktop-oriented Linux distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop, has been updated to version 3.03. This version marks the end of the 3.0 series and also end of life for OpenMandriva 2014.x: "This release of OpenMandriva Lx is an enhancement and upgrade to the previous Lx 3 releases. With it you'll get even faster booting than before, so fast in fact that it's sometimes quicker than the BIOS. Even the live image boots faster than before. At the hardware level there is an up-to-date kernel 4.13.12, systemd 234 and, for your graphics stack, MESA 17.2.3 with a S3TC support enabled and X.Org 1.19.5. Our main desktop environment, KDE Plasma, is updated to 5.10.5 and Frameworks are at 5.39. Everything with this release, including the new Firefox Quantum 57, is compiled with LLVM/Clang 5.0.0. This release will be the last in the 3.x series and also the last to support i586. In the next release applications, such as wine32, will be supported by providing i586 libraries. This marks the end of support for OpenMandriva 2014 and for some, this will be a sad day as it was a fine release." See the release announcement and release notes for further information and screenshots.
Kali Linux 2017.3
Kali Linux 2017.3 has been released. Kali Linux, maintained and funded by Offensive Security Ltd, is a Debian-derived Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. This version delivers an updated kernel and a number of new tools: "We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Kali Linux 2017.3, which includes all patches, fixes, updates and improvements since our last release. In this release, the kernel has been updated to 4.13.10 and it includes some notable improvements: CIFS now uses SMB 3.0 by default; ext4 directories can now contain 2 billion entries instead of the old 10 million limit; TLS support is now built into the kernel itself. In addition to the new kernel and all of the updates and fixes we pull from Debian, we have also updated our packages for Reaver, PixieWPS, Burp Suite, Cuckoo...." Read the full release announcement for further details and screenshots.
ExTiX 18.0
The ExTiX project creates Ubuntu-based distribution spins with alternative desktop environments. The latest ExTiX version is 18.0 and it features the Deepin desktop environment. ExTiX 18.0 is based on Ubuntu 17.10 and is compatible with its parent's software repositories. The project's release announcement states: "About ExTiX 18.0 with the Deepin 15.5 desktop: I've made a new extra version of ExTiX with Deepin 15.5 Desktop (made in China!). Deepin is devoted to providing a beautiful, easy to use, safe and reliable system for global users. Only a minimum of packages are installed in ExTiX Deepin. You can of course install all packages you want. Even while running ExTiX Deepin live. i.e. from a DVD or USB stick." ExTiX 18.0 ships with Refracta Tools, a desktop utility which helps the user to create their own spin of the distribution, allowing for additional customization.
ExTiX 18.0 -- The application menu
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
BlackArch Linux 2017.11.24
BlackArch Linux is an Arch Linux-based distribution designed for penetration testers and security researchers. The project has released a new snapshot, BlackArch Linux 2017.11.24, which contains several updates and more than 50 new packages. The project's blog page lists recent changes: "Today we released new BlackArch Linux ISOs. For details see the change log below. Here's the change log: added more than 50 new tools; various clean-ups and tweaks; updated BlackArch installer to version 0.6; included kernel 4.13.12; updated all BlackArch tools and packages; updated all system packages; update all window manager menus (Awesome, Fluxbox, Openbox). We wish to thank all of BlackArch's users, mirrors, and supporters. Thanks for your help." This is the first version of BlackArch to drop support for 32-bit x86 packages. 64-bit builds for x86 computers and ARM images are still available.
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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. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 654
- Total data uploaded: 16.6TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Laptop battery life on Linux
In our Questions and Answers column we discussed some ways to try to prolong battery life. This week in our opinion poll we would like to find out how much battery life you typically get on your Linux laptop. Do you feel you get enough battery time when running Linux? Let us know in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using ARM-powered computers as desktop or laptop machines in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Laptop battery life on Linux
| I get less than 1 hour: | 52 (4%) |
| I get 1-2 hours: | 233 (16%) |
| I get 2-4 hours: | 410 (28%) |
| I get 4-6 hours: | 244 (17%) |
| I get 6-8 hours: | 88 (6%) |
| I get more than 8 hours: | 49 (3%) |
| I do not know: | 135 (9%) |
| I do not run Linux on a laptop: | 238 (16%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Google search results
One feature of the DistroWatch website is that we allow people to use shortened versions of URLs to access distribution information pages and news. For example, we do not make our readers type https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora to see the information page for Fedora, you can simply type https://distrowatch.com/fedora. Likewise, when linking to a specific announcement on our front page, you do not need to specify the whole URL, you can use https://distrowatch.com/9900 instead of https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=09900. It's easier to type and to read.
Unfortunately, we learned this past week that Google flags short URLs where the page is represented by just numbers, like https://distrowatch.com/9900, as evidence of hacking. Recently people searching for Linux distributions on Google have found links to DistroWatch have included a warning saying this site may have been hacked. The warning is inaccurate, DistroWatch is fine, we are just being flagged because of our built-in URL shortener.
A report has been filed with Google, letting them know the short URLs are a feature of DistroWatch and not evidence of a security breach. At the time of writing, we are waiting to hear back.
Thank you to the readers who let us know about the warning in Google's search results. We hope to have it resolved shortly.
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Distributions added to waiting list
- Guntu. Guntu is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with the desktop panel placed at the bottom of the screen. The standard Ubuntu application menu has been replaced with GnoMenu.
- Gobuntu. Gobuntu is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Budgie desktop. The distribution's website claims Gobuntu will run Windows applications using WINE as well as Android apps using ChromeOS's ARC.
- Unity7sl. Unity7sl is an unofficial spin of the Ubuntu distribution which features the Unity 7 desktop environment. Unity7sl aims to provide a smooth upgrade experience for people who will be migrating from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS.
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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, 4 December 2017. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • 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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