 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 752, 26 February 2018 |
Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Most of us have a lot of data - documents, family photos, movies, e-mail archives and maybe a collection of Linux installation disc images. In order to keep all this data, and preferably backups of it, we need a place to store all of these files. This week we begin with a look at OviOS, a Linux-based storage system which includes support for ZFS volumes. Our Feature Story takes a look at setting up OviOS and exploring its options. In our News section we talk about elementary OS developers working to make disk encryption a safe, default option. We also talk about UBports getting more Ubuntu Phone devices to test and Redcore Linux working to improve their security features. Plus we cover Mageia's reaction to a breach of one of their user databases and link to a tool for testing distributions through a web browser. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about options for off-line upgrades. We then supply a list of the distributions released last week and share the torrents we are seeding. In our Opinion Poll we talk about where people like to find helpful documentation or technical assistance. Finally, we are pleased to welcome the ArchMerge distribution to our database. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (21MB) and MP3 (30MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
OviOS 2.31
OviOS is a Linux-based distribution which is designed to act as a storage appliance. OviOS can be thought of along similar lines as a network attached storage (NAS) device, a box dedicated to holding and sharing files over a network. Where OviOS differs from most NAS solutions is OviOS does not feature a graphical or web-based interface. Everything on OviOS is managed from a command line shell, typically over a secure shell (OpenSSH) connection. The OviOS distribution ships with its own, custom shell which should streamline administration. The central idea behind the project appears to be making file storage and sharing as minimal as possible, without any unnecessary features such as web-based control panels.
OviOS ships with ZFS support, giving us the ability to create multi-disk storage volumes, compress files at the file system level and create snapshots of our data. The distribution currently does not support booting on UEFI-enabled computers and runs on 64-bit x86 machines which support booting in legacy BIOS mode only.
Installing
I download OviOS 2.31 which is available as a 430MB ISO file. Booting from the project's media brings up a text console where we can sign in using one of two accounts. There is a root account and a regular user account called ovios. Both accounts are protected by the password ovios. To run the system installer we need to login as the root user and then run the setup command.
OviOS's system installer runs in a curses text environment and contains just two significant steps. In the first step we are given the option of setting our system clock and selecting our time zone from a list. The second step asks us to select which hard drive will be used to hold the operating system. Once we have selected a disk, the installer creates a partition, formats it with the ext4 file system and copies its files into place. The installer takes over the entire drive, wiping anything else we had on the disk. The installation takes just a few minutes and, when it is over, we can reboot the computer to try out our new copy of OviOS.
Early impressions
Launching our new install of OviOS brings us to a text console. The root and ovios accounts which existed on the installation disc are still in place, protected with the same password. Once we get signed in, we can create new passwords using the passwd command. OviOS is a minimal operating system, using about 1.5GB of disk space and 30MB of RAM with the default configuration. The system includes version 4.9 of the Linux kernel, SysV init, the standard collection of GNU userland tools and the Pacman package manager. Pacman is not configured with any repositories, meaning we cannot, with the default settings, install any new packages or upgrade existing software.
When we sign into OviOS's root account, the custom OviOS command line shell starts up. This shell is minimal and just grants us access to a few dozen commands which deal with storage, networking and sharing files. We can type "?" to see a full list of the available commands or run linuxcmd to switch to a Bash command line shell. A quick overview of key OviOS shell commands can be found in the project's documentation.
Using OviOS shell
I started out by setting up my OviOS system with a static IP address so I could use secure shell to access the server and later backup my files to a known address. Running the netsetup command walks us through configuring the network card with an address, network mask and gateway. However, there is no option in netsetup to choose a DNS server. The netsetup command assumes our gateway will also act as a DNS server, incorrectly in my case. This meant I was unable to connect to remote systems using hostnames (like google.com) at first. I was able to work around this problem by running a Bash shell and adding my real DNS servers to the /etc/resolv.conf file.
Since OviOS takes over an entire disk with its root partition we are left to set up data volumes on our remaining hard drives. From the OviOS shell we can set up new ZFS storage pools using the pool create command. This command basically acts as a wrapper for the zpool command line tool. It takes the names of devices we want to use (such as /dev/sdb), gets us to select the RAID layout of the disks and asks us to provide a name for the pool. Newly created pools are mounted under the /ovios directory.
There is an OviOS shell command called zfs-admin which I had assumed would act as a wrapper for the zfs command. However, I found zfs-admin would only enable and disable the ZFS module, more or less turning ZFS support on/off, and display the status of mounted file systems. A separate shell command, snap, manages ZFS snapshots on our mounted volumes.
Two of the more useful commands in the OviOS shell are options and services. The options command displays (and can alter) variables the system recognizes. For example, there is an option to determine which port the OpenSSH service listens on, another option controls whether we set the system clock using NTP, a third option determines whether we send logs to a remote server. There are several of these options the shell gives us quick access to. The only problem I had with the options command was there were so many options some would scroll off the screen if I was using a local terminal. When logged into the server remotely, I could use my virtual terminal's scroll function to scan through options.
The services command works almost exactly like other distributions' service or systemctl commands. OviOS's services shows us the status of daemons (ie whether they are running or not) and gives us the option of starting or stopping background services. By default, most services are disabled with just OpenSSH running. While using the OpenSSH service to login remotely I found I could sign in as the ovios user, but root logins are blocked. Once we sign in as ovios we can switch over to the root account using the su command. I like this feature as it gives us an extra layer of security against brute force attacks.
While the services, pool and options commands worked fairly well for me, many other built-in shell commands did not. For example, when I tried to create a Samba user to share my files, the OviOS shell reported the volume where I wanted to make my user's home directory did not exist. I confirmed the directory did exist, and tried a few alternative locations, but each time the user creation command failed.
Later, when I tried to create anonymous Samba shares to browse over the network, the OviOS shell gave me the unhelpful error: "DIALOG: command not found" and then the screen was wiped clean.
I ran into a similar problem when I tried to enable the FTP service. The FTP daemon doesn't work because it is configured to share files in the /home/ftp directory, which does not exist. The shared location not even in the same directory tree where storage volumes get mounted. We need to exit the shell and manually adjust the FTP services's configuration to get it working.
The OviOS documentation mentions a command called autosnap which will take scheduled snapshots of a ZFS volume. This seems like a good idea as having regular snapshots will help users avoid accidental data loss. However, the autosnap command is not recognized by the shell. There is a snap command for manually creating file system snapshots and it works in a similar matter to using zfs snapshot from the Bash command line.
Conclusions
I generally like appliance style distributions which focus on doing one thing well and streamlining the process. When I first started using OviOS things looked promising. The distribution has a small ISO, a very simple system installer and a dedicated shell for working with (and sharing) storage volumes. Having ZFS support built into a Linux distribution was another nice touch.
However, once I got OviOS installed I ran into one frustration after another. Many of the custom shell commands presented to the root user simply did not work, or were configured in ways which made it necessary to dig through configuration files to get things working properly. I don't mind doing away with the typical NAS web-based control panel, but the trade-off should be a system where the few controls presented work without fuss and that is not what I got with OviOS. I had to manually tweak DNS settings, manually set up network shares, and manually configure FTP access to use the proper directory.
What I found most odd though was that OviOS's custom shell tended not to simplify administrative tasks. Using the shell's built-in zfs-admin, pool and snap commands are not, in my opinion, easier and more streamlined than using the standard zpool and zfs programs, but OviOS's method provides less documentation.
OviOS's minimalism and easy setup are to be commended, but I think the project trades away too much functionality in its shell. I found most of the time I had to exit the OviOS shell and switch to Bash to get things working and it's not a great sign when the user is working around the provided features rather than using them. I was also concerned that there doesn't appear to be any way to apply security updates to the operating system. The Pacman package manager does not connect to any remote servers and I did not find any documentation on the project's website addressing this issue. The project's website claims, "OviOS Linux excels in its simplicity and packages can be installed or upgraded easily with pacman," but Pacman is disabled with the default setup. The website's FAQ, Documentation, Features and forum do not discuss which, if any, Pacman repositories OviOS can use. This is likely to be a significant security risk for systems which are designed to run network services and share files.
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Visitor supplied rating
OviOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used OviOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
elementary OS team plans disk encryption by default, UBports gets more test devices, Redcore team working to harden their distro, Mageia reacts to user database breach, testing distributions in a web browser
The elementary OS team is working with System76 to come up with a better, more user friendly way to protect user data with disk encryption on OEM installs. "The problem in the past has been that, as a desktop Linux OEM, you cannot encrypt the installation before it's in the user's hands because then there is no guarantee that the encryption key is unique to that user. So customers would reinstall the entire OS from scratch immediately after receiving their computer - downloading the latest release of the OS, digging up a USB drive, flashing the drive, rebooting their computer, walking through the installer, and finally rebooting to finally use the computer. That's not ideal." The blog post goes on to discuss ways of enabling secure encryption by default while giving people the ability to opt-out of using encryption. Additional information on elementary OS's upcoming installer changes can be found in another blog post.
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The UBports team, which is continuing the development of Canonical's Ubuntu Touch operating system for mobile devices, has received a gift from Canonical. The UBports developers received a collection of mobile devices which already run Ubuntu Touch which should make it easier for the UBports team to port, improve and support their software on a wider range of devices. A tweet from the UBports team reads: "Look at what we found in the mail today! Ubuntu Legacy devices, fresh from the Canonical vault. We are extremely happy that they gave us this gift. We are going to port, crack and flash the heck out of these devices. Stay tuned!"
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Redcore Linux is a Gentoo-based rolling release distribution featuring the LXQt desktop. The Redcore team is working to improve the security of their distribution, carrying forward the work done by the Gentoo Hardened project. Redcore users will benefit from position independent executables (PIE), stack smash protection (SSP) and address space layout randomization (ASLR), among other security enhancements. "Additionally, we will move the kernel to the hardened patchset for much improved ASLR. And while at it we will bump the toolchain to GCC 7.3.0, Glibc 2.27, and Binutils 2.30 in order to become fully protected against all Spectre/Meltdown variants. Upgrading older installations will be possible. However the process will replace all installed packages and it will take, depending on Internet speed and machine configuration, a few hours." Further details can be found in the project's blog post.
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The Mageia project has reported that someone was able to gain access to their LDAP database and the information the project had on users for the identity.mageia.org website. The information accessed includes names, e-mail addresses and hashed passwords. Mageia has reset the passwords of users of their identity.mageia.org service and are advising anyone who has reused their password on another website to change their password. "The passwords stored by the Mageia LDAP server are hashed and salted, meaning that the full decryption of the password, if they have actually been leaked into a human-usable format, would require significant computing power for safe and complex passwords. Despite the leaked data only appearing to be names and e-mail addresses of identity.mageia.org users, we strongly urge users to be cautious if the password used for their Mageia account is used elsewhere, and we recommend changing passwords wherever else it is used."
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People wanting to get an idea of what a distribution is like without downloading it now have a new tool they can use to test drive operating systems. DistroTest is a website which allows visitors to run Linux distributions in a virtual machine, remotely through a web browser. This allows DistroTest users to try out open source operating systems without downloading the live disc. While performance through the remote desktop session is slow, it allows the visitor to explore the system's desktop, included packages and features. At the moment 54 operating systems are available for testing, plus there are several extra editions with alternative desktop environments.
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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) |
Performing off-line upgrades
Installing-new-packages-differently asks: Are there any distributions which only let the user perform upgrades when they are off-line?
DistroWatch answers: There may be a few different distributions that will suit your needs, depending on why you want to install upgrades when you are off-line. For instance, if you want to have software updates installed atomically (in a way which avoids corrupting software in case of power outage or hardware failure), then there are several options. NixOS uses the Nix package manager which places upgrades in snapshots and allows the user to instantly switch between snapshots (or "generations") of package versions. The openSUSE distribution, along with FreeBSD and other FreeBSD-based systems, use a file system feature called snapshots to do approximately the same thing. On these operating systems we can take a snapshot of the operating system, saving its state. We can then upgrade it and, if anything goes wrong, simply reboot to restore the snapshot, rescuing the operating system.
The Fedora Workstation distribution has a software manager which, when new upgrades are installed, will reboot the system, taking it off-line, to complete the upgrade. This insures that all services, the kernel and running programs are upgraded to their latest versions and no old software is kicking around in the computer's memory.
If you are looking for improved security, rather than atomic upgrades, and wish to prevent users from changing packages on a running system then you could look at running a regular distribution in read-only mode. If you set up your system carefully, placing /etc and /usr on the root partition with /home and /var on another partition, you could mount your root partition in read-only mode. This would prevent software upgrades. It might also cause some other unexpected side-effects, but it would mean the administrator would need to remount the operating system in read-write mode before upgrades were performed. Though for the purposes of security, it would be easier to limit the access of user accounts on the system so they cannot use the package manager rather than completely locking down the file system. To restrict access I recommend looking into how to configure access-granting tools, such as sudo.
On the other hand, if what you are looking for is the option of installing packages after downloading them, possibly using another computer to perform the download, then most package managers will allow this. Most package managers have an option which will just download new packages without installing them and the new packages will be stored somewhere under either your current directory or the /var directory. You can then copy these files to a USB drive or DVD and install them on other computers which are running the same distribution.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Calculate Linux 17.12.2
Calculate Linux is a Gentoo-based rolling release distribution which is available in several desktop and server editions. The project's latest version, Calculate Linux 17.12.2, features fixes for the Spectre and Meltdown CPU bugs, restores functionality for LXC containers, permits renaming of network interfaces and makes it possible to use a file for swap space in place of a disk partition. "We are pleased to announce the release of Calculate Linux 17.12.2, based on Gentoo 17.0. Therefore, the whole of the packages were rebuilt and some fixes done. Eight flavors are now available for download: Calculate Linux Desktop supplied with the KDE (CLD), Cinnamon (CLDC), Mate (CLDM) or else Xfce (CLDX) environment, Calculate Directory Server (CDS), Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS), Calculate Scratch Server (CSS) an Calculate Container Scratch (CCS). We moved to the new Gentoo 17.0 profile. All binary packages were rebuilt, in the repo as well as on Live DVDs/USBs. All currently available Meltdown and Spectre patches were included. grub.d privileges are safe now. Restore functionality supported for LXC containers file capabilities. Network interfaces can be once again renamed and saved..." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. 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: 746
- Total data uploaded: 18.0TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Documentation sources
We all get stuck eventually while trying to use an application or command line program. When this happens there are many helpful resources available to assist us. This week we would like to find out where our readers turn first to get help. Do you automatically turn to the local manual pages, search on-line for whatever comes up first, ask on a forum, or check your favourite wiki?
You can see the results of our previous poll on sources for third-party applications in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Documentation sources
| I use local man(ual) pages: | 511 (27%) |
| I use local info pages: | 21 (1%) |
| I use other local documentation: | 35 (2%) |
| I use a web search: | 964 (52%) |
| I use a wiki: | 157 (8%) |
| I ask for examples on forums: | 51 (3%) |
| I ask for help in IRC chat rooms: | 12 (1%) |
| I use other on-line documentation: | 30 (2%) |
| I ask for help using other on-line resources: | 2 (0%) |
| I use paid technical support: | 9 (0%) |
| I use free technical support: | 2 (0%) |
| Other: | 68 (4%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New projects added to database
ArchMerge
ArchMerge is a distribution based on Arch Linux. The ArchMerge project features two editions, one includes the Xfce, Openbox and i3 user interfaces. The second edition is a minimal, command line platform. ArchMerge features video tutorials on its website and places a strong focus on learning how to use and customize the operating system.
ArchMerge 6.4.1 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Distributions added to waiting list
- Pegasus OS GNU/Linux. Pegasus OS GNU/Linux is a 32-bit, Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Xfce desktop.
- Delta Linux. Delta Linux is a portable distribution, designed to run as simply as possible by default, aimed both at beginner users, and users that wish to get the most out of limited hardware.
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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, 5 March 2018. 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Issue 984 (2022-09-05): deepin 23 Preview, watching for changing to directories, Mint team tests Steam Deck, Devuan posts fix for repository key expiry |
| • Issue 983 (2022-08-29): Qubes OS 4.1.1, Alchg Linux, immutable operating systems, Debian considers stance on non-free firmware, Arch-based projects suffer boot issue |
| • Issue 982 (2022-08-22): Peropesis 1.6.2, KaOS strips out Python 2 and PulseAudio, deepin becomes independent, getting security update notifications |
| • Issue 981 (2022-08-15): Linux Lite 6.0, defining desktop environments and window managers, Mint releases upgrade tool, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 980 (2022-08-08): Linux Mint 21, Pledge on Linux, SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan base |
| • Issue 979 (2022-08-01): KaOS 2022.06 and KDE Plasma 5.25, terminating processes after a set time, GNOME plans Secure Boot check |
| • Issue 978 (2022-07-25): EndeavourOS 22.6, Slax explores a return to Slackware, Ubuntu certified with Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 |
| • Issue 977 (2022-07-18): EasyOS 4.2, transferring desktop themes between distros, Tails publishes list of updates, Zevenet automates Let's Encrypt renewals |
| • Issue 976 (2022-07-11): NixOS 22.05, making a fake webcam, exploring the Linux scheduler, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 975 (2022-07-04): Murena One running /e/OS, where are all the openSUSE distributions, Fedora to offer unfiltered Flathub access |
| • Issue 974 (2022-06-27): AlmaLinux 9.0, the changing data of DistroWatch's database, UBports on the Pixel 3a, Tails and GhostBSD publish hot fixes |
| • Issue 973 (2022-06-20): openSUSE 15.4, collecting distro media, FreeBSD status report, Ubuntu Core with optional real-time kernel |
| • Issue 972 (2022-06-13): Rolling Rhino Remix, SambaBox 4.1, SUSE team considers future of SUSE and openSUSE Leap, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant |
| • Issue 971 (2022-06-06): ChimeraOS 2022.01.03, Lilidog 22.04, NixOS gains graphical installer, Mint replaces Bluetooth stack and adopts Timeshift, how to change a MAC address |
| • Issue 970 (2022-05-30): Tails 5.0, taking apart a Linux distro, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop |
| • Issue 969 (2022-05-23): Fedora 36, a return to Unity, Canonical seeks to improve gaming on Ubuntu, HP plans to ship laptops with Pop!_OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Free Tech Guides |
NEW! Learn Linux in 5 Days
In this FREE ebook, you will learn the most important concepts and commands and be guided step-by-step through several practical and real-world examples (a free 212-page ebook).
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Shells.com |
Your own personal Linux computer in the cloud, available on any device. Supported operating systems include Android, Debian, Fedora, KDE neon, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Manjaro and Ubuntu, ready in minutes.
Starting at US$4.95 per month, 7-day money-back guarantee
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| Random Distribution | 
Zenwalk GNU Linux
Zenwalk Linux (formerly Minislack) is a Slackware-based GNU/Linux operating system with a goal of being slim and fast by using only one application per task and with a focus on graphical desktop and multimedia usage. Zenwalk features the latest Linux technology along with a complete programming environment and libraries to provide an ideal platform for application programmers. Zenwalk's modular approach also provides a simple way to convert Zenwalk Linux into a finely-tuned modern server (e.g. LAMP, messaging, file sharing).
Status: Active
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| Free Tech Guides |
NEW! Learn Linux in 5 Days
In this FREE ebook, you will learn the most important concepts and commands and be guided step-by-step through several practical and real-world examples (a free 212-page ebook).
|
| MALIBAL |
MALIBAL: Linux Laptops Custom Built for YouMALIBAL is an innovative computer manufacturer that produces high-performance, custom laptops for Linux. If your MALIBAL laptop is not the best Linux laptop you have ever used, you can return it for a full 100% refund. We will even pay the return shipping fees! For more info, visit: https://www.malibal.com
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
| Free Tech Guides |
NEW! Learn Linux in 5 Days
In this FREE ebook, you will learn the most important concepts and commands and be guided step-by-step through several practical and real-world examples (a free 212-page ebook).
|
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