 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 754, 12 March 2018 |
Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Two of the world's most famous rolling release distributions are Gentoo and Arch Linux. These projects tend to be well regarded for their cutting edge software, extensive ports/packages systems and flexibility. This week we begin by checking in on two popular children of the Arch and Gentoo families: Sabayon and Antergos. Then, in our News section, we discuss a new fork of Container Linux featuring commercial support and changes to the Solus software manager. We also talk about the OpenBSD, FreeBSD and the Clang compiler projects getting fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws. Plus we talk about Fedora getting an IoT edition, Manjaro's new ARM builds and fresh installation media from Debian. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about the growing size of the Linux kernel over time and whether its expansion is a cause for concern. In our Opinion Poll we check in to see how our readers feel about the resource usage of their distributions. Plus we are pleased to list the releases of the past week and share the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Sabayon and Antergos
- News: Kinvolk announces fork of Container, improvements to the Solus software manager, OpenBSD and Clang patch CPU bugs, Fedora's IoT edition, Manjaro builds for ARM devices, Debian updates install media
- Questions and answers: The size of the Linux kernel
- Released last week: KaOS 2018.03, siduction 18.2.0, SparkyLinux 5.3
- Torrent corner: Android-x86, Archman, HardenedBSD, KaOS, Neptune, Netrunner, OSMC, Plop, Robolinux, siduction, Sparky, Zenwalk
- Upcoming releases: Tails 3.6
- Opinion poll: The size of your distribution
- New distributions: TinyPaw-Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (25MB) and MP3 (32MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Sabayon "MATE"
Sabayon is a Gentoo-based distribution which is available in many desktop editions as well as a server edition. Sabayon strives to provide a working system out-of-the-box, saving the user a lot of time when it comes to configuring the operating system. Sabayon provides several categories of installation media. The project uses a rolling release model and the distribution's many editions are provided in Stable, Monthly and Daily snapshots. It has been about a year since the last Stable set of installation media was produced and so I decided to explore one of the monthly snapshots.
I began with the MATE edition of Sabayon's Monthly snapshot, a 2GB download which I confirmed downloaded properly using the distribution's checksums. Booting from the live media brought up a menu asking if we would like to start a live desktop environment, launch a text-based installer, start in safe mode or launch a live text console. I was surprised when taking the live desktop option booted the distribution to a text console and showed me a login prompt.
From the login prompt I was able to sign in as the root user without a password (I was unable to find another login username). I then tried running the startx command to launch a live copy of the MATE desktop, but this action did not go as planned. I ended up with a minimal graphical environment and a virtual terminal, but no desktop. This surprised me as past versions of Sabayon I have used did supply a working desktop environment on the installation media and the project's documentation suggests this should still be the case.
I then tried booting the Sabayon MATE media into a safe graphics mode and tried the text installation option. Both boot options brought me back to the text console and a login prompt. There was no clear way to get from there to running the installer.
* * * * *
Sabayon "LXQt"
I next downloaded the LXQt edition of Sabayon's Monthly snapshot. The download for the LXQt flavour is 1.8GB in size. After verifying the media's checksum, I tried booting into the live desktop mode, the safe graphics mode and the text installer. All three options brought me to the same text console with a login prompt, just as the MATE edition had. This prevented me from exploring the live desktop and the system installer. It appears this inability to launch the live desktop affected all editions of the Sabayon Monthly snapshot.
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Antergos
Giving up on Sabayon for the moment, I next turned my attention to Antergos, a rolling release, Arch-based distribution. Antergos takes a different approach to providing desktop flavours than Sabayon. Where Sabayon has many different installation images, one for each desktop flavour, Antergos offers just Minimal and Full install discs. The Antergos installer then provides us with an install time choice of which desktop to use.
I first tried downloading the Antergos torrent file, but the speed was quite slow, well under 100kB/s and I switched over to the direct download which provided me with speeds over 2MB/s. The full sized ISO is 1.9GB in size and booting from the provided media asks us if we'd like to boot from the local hard drive, start a live desktop environment or boot to a text console. Taking the desktop option loads the GNOME desktop.
Antergos 18.2 -- The Cnchi installer
(full image size: 863kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The live GNOME desktop has a panel placed at the top of the screen which holds the GNOME Activities menu, a clock and the system tray. There is a dock down the left side of the screen. The dock features launchers for commonly used applications and the system installer. The bottom icon on the dock opens a full screen grid of application launchers. I did not spend much time with the GNOME desktop, deciding to jump right into the installer.
Installing
Antergos uses a custom graphical installer called Cnchi. This installer updates itself when the live desktop first launches, insuring we always have the latest version of Cnchi. The installer, for the most part, is a lot like Ubuntu's Ubiquity installer or the distro-neutral Calamares installer. We are walked through selecting our preferred language, region of the world and time zone. We are asked to select which desktop environment we want to use with options including Cinnamon, Deepin, GNOME, KDE Plasma, MATE and Xfce. We can also go with the Openbox window manager or a text console with no graphical interface. Unfortunately we cannot select multiple desktops at install time in order to try out different environments. I decided to try the Deepin desktop.
The next screen of the installer asks us to customize which applications and features are added to Antergos. On this page we can choose to install such optional packages as the Chromium and Firefox web browsers, the OpenSSH service, Steam, PlayOnLinux, printing support, Bluetooth and accessibility packages. I kept things pretty light, installing Firefox, LibreOffice and a firewall manager. The installer then asks if we would like to sort the priority of package mirrors or let the system do it for us.
One of the last screens of the installer deals with disk partitioning. The installer offers us guided options where we can have LVM or ZFS volumes set up for us and choose whether our /home directory should be kept on its own volume. Alternatively we can use the manual partitioning approach which offers a very easy, streamlined approach to creating file systems. I found it worth noting that while the guided partitioning options include a ZFS option, the manual partitioning screen does not. Most other file systems can be accessed manually, including Btrfs, ext4, f2fs and XFS.
The first time I tried to set up Antergos, I went with the automated ZFS partitioning option as I am a big fan of ZFS snapshots. Unfortunately, halfway through the install process, Cnchi crashed and was unable to recover. I then went through the installer's steps again, taking the same desktop and package options, but using the ext4 file system. The second time through the installer completed successfully.
Early impressions
When I got Antergos installed, the system booted to a graphical login screen where a pop-up greeted me saying: "An error was detected in the current theme that could interfere with the system login process." We are then asked to select an action: load the default theme, load a fallback theme or cancel. Trying to take the fallback theme just caused the same error to appear over and over again. Taking the default theme made my screen go blank for a few seconds and then I was shown a clock I could click on to start the login process. The theme error returned each time I booted the system, so apparently the default theme does not stick across reboots.
Antergos 18.2 -- Running Deepin Music and the Deepin File Manager
(full image size: 398kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The first time I logged into my account a full screen message appeared which announced: "Welcome, system updated successfully. Current edition: rolling." Clicking an Enter button under the text completed the login process and brought me to the Deepin desktop. The update message did not return during later logins.
Once signed in, the Deepin desktop appeared with a dock at the bottom of the screen. The desktop is otherwise empty most of the time. One button on the dock opens a full screen display of application icons. Another button opens the Deepin settings and notification panel which is displayed down the right side of the screen. The desktop was responsive, stable and worked well in my test environments. For readers interested in the Deepin desktop's special features, I covered it in more detail in another review earlier this year.
Antergos 18.2 -- The Deepin application menu
(full image size: 226kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Hardware
While playing with Antergos, I ran the distribution on two test systems. When run in a VirtualBox environment Antergos worked well and automatically integrated with the virtual environment. This allowed the distribution to make full use of my host computer's screen resolution. The distribution also performed well on my desktop computer, running quickly and smoothly. Antergos running Deepin without extra background services (such as Bluetooth or OpenSSH) used about 500MB of memory. My relatively minimal collection of add-on packages (Firefox, LibreOffice and GUFW) took up about 6.5GB of disk space.
Applications
Unless we choose to include a lot of add-on packages during the install process, Antergos offers a pretty small collection of applications. Deepin applications, such as Deepin Movie, Deepin Music, Deepin file Manager and the Deepin Terminal, are included. We also have access to a text editor, system monitor, calendar and image viewer. Network Manager is present to help us get on-line and the GNU Compiler Collection is present to help us build software. Antergos uses the systemd init implementation and runs on Linux 4.15, though newer kernels will become available through the distribution's rolling release model.
Antergos 18.2 -- Using LibreOffice and configuring the firewall
(full image size: 182kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Of course we have the option of installing additional applications and here I ran into an unusual quirk of the distribution. In the application menu there are three entries for managing software: Software Update (which launches Pamac), Software (which opens GNOME Software), and Add/Remove Software (which again opens Pamac). Either Pamac launcher would work, opening the package manager and giving us easy access to new packages, categories of software we can browse and new updates.
The GNOME Software application would launch, but it was unable to work with the Antergos repositories and all categories displayed in GNOME Software (and all searches) showed only blank screens. I am uncertain why GNOME Software was included, but it was useless on this system. As an alternative to both GNOME Software and Pamac we can use the Pacman command line package manager which is well known for its speed and short command line parameters.
Antergos 18.2 -- Pamac (foreground) and GNOME Software (in the background)
(full image size: 639kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Other observations
For the most part, using Antergos went smoothly. I have been finding the Pamac package manager increasingly pleasant to use lately. I like its speed and the organization of files strikes a pretty good balance between making things easy to find and giving the user direct access to low-level packages.
I very much like the Deepin settings panel. The way it makes the settings options one big, long page where we can jump to a specific section is great. Especially early on this layout is excellent because I do not need to jump into a series of modules. I can simply scroll through everything and tweak any settings I want to adjust in one, quick browse through the settings. This makes customizing Deepin faster than customizing GNOME or KDE's Plasma.
Antergos 18.2 -- The Deepin settings panel
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
My time with Antergos was not all great. I did run into situations where the window manager would lock up. This meant applications continued to work, but I could not move windows, click on anything or open new desktop programs. Killing the runaway window manager process from a terminal would fix the issue.
Conclusions
This was a rough week for me testing distributions and a reminder that while rolling release distributions can be useful and convenient for those who want to stay up to date with the latest software, periodic snapshots is not an ideal way to maintain quality control. The user ends up getting whatever packages are in the repository at the time the installation media is created, for better or worse. And, in this case, I ended up facing some serious bugs.
The two Sabayon Monthly images I tried were pretty much useless, failing to provide access to an installer or live desktop environment. The Antergos image was better, but still featured a number of issues, such as crashing when trying to use ZFS, displaying theme errors on the login screen and I ran into instability issues with the window manager. The inclusion of a non-functional copy of GNOME Software in the distribution may be a simple oversight, the result of the Deepin desktop package pulling in an extra software manager. However, that would suggest to me that the current version of the Deepin desktop hasn't been thoroughly tested by the Antergos community.
Both of these distributions have a lot to offer - lots of convenient desktops, up to date packages and, in theory at least, Antergos offers ZFS support out of the box. I especially like that Antergos lets us customize so much of our software up front. However, in practise, the monthly snapshots of both distributions had some flaws I think will turn away casually curious users.
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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
Antergos has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used Antergos? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Kinvolk announces fork of Container, improvements to the Solus software manager, OpenBSD and Clang patch CPU bugs, Fedora's IoT edition, Manjaro builds for ARM devices
Container Linux is a minimal server distribution which includes specialized tools to keep the system up to date. Container Linux was recently acquired by Red Hat. Following the acquisition, a company called Kinvolk has announced they will be releasing a fork of Container Linux called Flatcar Linux. The Flatcar Linux website states: "We do not foresee Flatcar Linux significantly diverging from the upstream Container Linux project in the near-term. Changes mostly consist of a set of patches to remove trademarked terms. Ideally, this would continue to be the only changes. Flatcar Linux will only diverge from the upstream project if fundamental changes are made to it. In this respect, one can view Flatcar Linux as a guaranteer of the Container Linux project as it is today."
* * * * *
The Solus team has announced changes are coming to the distribution's software manager. The overhaul to the software manager includes faster start times and more responsive controls. The interface is more flexible, allowing the user to navigate with mouse, keyboard or touch. "As a result of the redesign, the Software Center starts very quickly, and feels good to use. Users are not left waiting ages for content to appear, and can instead focus on discovering software to help them, rather than navigating arbitrary lists of packages. We've also been having discussions on improving the integration of the Third Party repository. Instead of a dedicated Third Party section, we'll be leveraging the upcoming Software Center's plugin-based architecture, making a Third Party repo plugin and enable Third Party items to be surfaced alongside native repo items throughout the browsing experience, so you could expect to see Google Chrome in the Web Browsers category, Slack and Skype for Linux in Instant Messaging, and so on. Like we'll be doing with snaps in a future release of the Software Center (post Solus 4), we'll visually differentiate Third Party items to communicate to the user where the software is coming from." Details on current and planned changes can be found in the project's news post.
* * * * *
At the beginning of the year we discussed two significant flaws in commonly used CPUs which could cause malicious programs to steal data from other processes. These CPU bugs were commonly referred to as Meltdown and Spectre. While developers of popular operating systems such as Linux, Windows and macOS were quietly told about the CPU bugs and given time to work around them before news of the exploits went public, developers of other open source operating systems, like the BSDs, were not given this courtesy. This left BSD and compiler developers to scramble to catch up with fixes for these two classes of hardware flaws.
OpenBSD lead the pack in publishing patches to deal with the CPU bugs, and other projects have been quick to follow. FreeBSD is currently working on patches which should be available soon and the Clang compiler team has also included Spectre fixes in the compiler's 6.0.0 release.
* * * * *
The Fedora project will soon be getting a new edition designed to work on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. IoT operating systems are generally lightweight, virtually always on-line and need to be both stable and able to handle updates without user interaction. According to this blog post, the new IoT branch will be an official edition of the Fedora project and be supported by its own Working Group. "So the Fedora Council has approved my proposal of IoT as a Council Objective. I did a presentation on my IoT proposal to the council a few weeks ago and we had an interesting and wide ranging discussion on IoT and what it means to Fedora. I was actually expecting IoT to be a Spin with a SIG to cover it but the Council decided it would be best to go the whole way and make it an Official Edition with a Working Group to back it! Amazing! One of the side effects of IoT being an accepted Objective is that the Objective Lead has a seat on the Council." Information on the IoT edition's mission and goals can be found on the Fedora wiki.
* * * * *
The Manjaro Linux project is working towards providing ARM builds for single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi. In a forum post titled Manjaro-ARM relaunch, one of the developers talked about what components are in place for Manjaro's ARM branch and what work is left to do: "I am proud to announce, that we are almost there. What we have ready now: Build server to build the Manjaro specific packages. Repo server to sync packages from Arch Linux ARM and putting our own in. A couple of mirrors doing daily syncs. A test minimal image of Manjaro-ARM 18.022 to get started. Only Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 are supported at the moment. A couple of package managers. Website is getting rebuilt. What we still need to really get going: Image/Edition maintainers, willing to produce install images for various devices. More package maintainers, mainly kernel maintainers. Image testers. We need testers with RPI 2/3s, Odroids and Beaglebones. More mirrors are always welcome. The mirror would need about 50GB of space. (repo is around 30GB now)."
* * * * *
The Debian project is updating the distribution's installation media. While the new media does not feature a new version of Debian, it does offer packages containing bug fixes and security patches that have become available since the release of Debian 9 "Stretch". The new installation images carry the version number 9.4.0. A list of bug fixes and download links can be found in the project's announcement.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
The size of the Linux kernel
Watching-things-grow asks: With all the drivers being added to Linux, I wonder how big the kernel will get in the future. How much bloat does the kernel add?
DistroWatch answers: Relative to the hardware resources (disk space and memory) available on most modern computers, the Linux kernel, despite its many available drivers, is not very large. When measuring the size of the kernel we can mostly focus on two aspects: the size of the core kernel that gets loaded into memory, and the total size of the optional drivers which are only loaded into memory as needed. Most hardware support is provided through modules which are stored on our disk and only loaded when needed. This means our system's memory usage does not need to expand as the kernel gains additional hardware support as unused drivers are simply left on the disk.
So, how big is the Linux kernel? On my MX Linux system the kernel itself is about 4MB and there is about another 187MB of optional, loadable modules. In all, the whole kernel with all its optional hardware support takes up a little less than 200MB of disk space. On the minimal OviOS distribution the kernel's total on-disk size comes to about 62MB. Enso OS, which is built using Ubuntu packages, has a core kernel of about 7MB and 209MB of modules on the disk.
Around 216MB of disk space on the upper end may seem like a lot of storage for a kernel, but very little of those modules are loaded into memory when the kernel is running. Usually Linux just requires the core kernel and a small selection of modules to handle the video card, printer and other add-ons. If you are wondering just how much space your kernel takes up in memory you can run the following command to get a rough overview:
dmesg | grep Memory
The kernel's size in memory will likely be a little under 10MB. When we consider that even low-end laptops, modern smart phones and most single board computers (such as the Raspberry Pi) have at least 1,000MB of memory, we can see the kernel is not using a significant amount of space.
The kernel does grow over time. If we look back about 14 years, there was an informal poll on LinuxQuestions which shows the core Linux kernel tended to range from just under 1MB in size, up to about 2MB. So the kernel does gradually get larger over time, but most of that growth is in the optional modules which sit on disk and do not use up our system's memory. And all those optional modules, even on heavier distributions like Ubuntu, are still only using about 200MB of disk space.
* * * * *
More answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
KaOS 2018.03
KaOS is an independent, rolling release distribution which focuses on providing polished desktop experience using KDE and Qt-based software. The latest snapshot of the project's installation media includes many rebuilt packages, KDE Plasma 5.12 LTS and includes the Falkon web browser. "A GCC 7.3.0, Glibc 2.26 and Binutils 2.30 based new toolchain has moved to all users. This new toolchain required a rather large rebuild of many packages. Since this also includes new systemd, Filesystem and Mkinitcpio. it is fair to say the whole base of your system will be replaced. Upstream has combined all the tiny, fully mature proto packages into one, Xorgproto package, which for KaOS users means replacing some twenty five proto packages with Xorgproto. There was also a move to Qt 5.10.1 and Plasma 5.12, thus it will be clear a new ISO is due. Falkon has replaced QupZilla as the default web browser. Falkon is a continuation of QupZilla, now developed on KDE development infrastructure." Further information cen be found in the project's release announcement.
siduction 18.2.0
Ferdinand Thommes has announced the release of siduction 18.2.0, a set of rolling-release distributions based on Debian's "unstable" branch and featuring the latest versions of a number of popular desktop environments: "Today we are proud to release siduction 2018.2.0 with the KDE, LXQt, GNOME, Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, LXDE, X.Org and noX flavours. The released images are a snapshot of Debian 'unstable' from 2018-03-04. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, an installer based on Calamares and a custom-patched version of the Linux kernel 4.15.7, accompanied by X.Org Server 1.19.5 and systemd 237. KDE Plasma stands at version 5.12.2, while GNOME comes in at 3.26 with some packages still at 3.24. LXQt ships at 0.12.0 and Xfce at 4.12.4, while Cinnamon comes in at 3.4.6 and MATE at 1.20.0." Here are the full release notes.
SparkyLinux 5.3
SparkyLinux is a Debian-based distribution featuring many editions and desktop flavours. The project's latest release is SparkyLinux 5.3, which is a rolling release platform based on Debian's Testing branch. "Changes: Full system upgrade from Debian Testing repos as of March 7, 2018. Linux kernel 4.15.4 as default (4.15.8-sparky is available in Sparky 'unstable' repo). The default system installer, Calamares, updated up to version 3.1.12. Added packages to support Btrfs and XFS file systems. Cleaning out old files configs. Added new tool for cleaning your system from old files and configs: BleachBit. Missing language package installer (a part of APTus) has gotten GNOME, KDE and Qt language package installation option. gdebi has been removed; local-stored debs can be installed via APTus-> Install-> Install package. CLI edition has been re-configured; it uses sudo as default after installing it on a hard drive as well." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Neptune 5.0
Neptune is a Linux distribution based on Debian's Stable branch. The project's latest release, Neptune 5.0 "Refresh", is based on Debian 9 Stretch and includes KDE's Plasma 5.12 LTS desktop. Version 4.14 of the Linux kernel has been backported to provide additional hardware support: "This version marks a new iteration within the Neptune universe. It switches its base to the current Debian Stable "Stretch" version and also changes slightly the way we will provide updates for Neptune. We will no longer strive to bring in more recent versions of Plasma, kernel or other software on our own. With Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages being more and more popular and mature these days we strongly believe these are the ways to go if you want to try out bleeding edge software. We on the other hand strive to provide the most stable and best desktop user experience out there. This is why we decided you to provide the latest LTS release of Plasma version 5.12 together with KDE Applications 17.12 as well as KDE Frameworks 5.43. For good hardware support we provide Linux Kernel 4.14 from the Debian Stretch Backports repository. This ensures also up to date kernel updates in the future for improved security. " Further information and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.
Neptune 5.0 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 380kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Netrunner 18.03
Netrunner is a Debian-based Linux distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop. The project has launched a new version, Netrunner 18.03, which builds on Debian's Testing branch and includes the Plasma 5.12 LTS desktop, version 4.14 of the Linux kernel, LibreOffice 6 and Firefox 58. "Netrunner 18.03 ships the latest packages from Debian's Testing snapshot repository. From 18.03 onwards, we also decided to include even more packages directly from upstream, so it will be most compatible when enabling the continously updating testing repo. Compared to the previous 17.10 release, 18.03 comes with the following updates: KDE Plasma 5.12.2, KDE Frameworks 5.42, KDE Applications 17.08.3, Qt 5.9.2, Linux Kernel 4.14, Firefox Quantum 58.0.1, Thunderbird 52.6.0, LibreOffice 6.0.2" Additional details and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
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: 767
- Total data uploaded: 18.3TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
The size of your distribution
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about the size of the Linux kernel and how it, like most software, grows in size over time. Now, we would like to find out how you feel about the size of your operating system. When you look at the amount of resources (disk space, memory, CPU usage) your operating system is consuming, do you think lean enough or is it too heavy for your needs and hardware?
You can see the results of our previous poll on KDE Plasma's best new features in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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The size of your distribution
| My OS is too heavy for my needs/hardware: | 268 (14%) |
| My OS is very lean and fast on my hardware: | 769 (40%) |
| My OS is about average for my hardware: | 892 (46%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Distributions added to waiting list
- TinyPaw-Linux. TinyPaw-Linux is a penetration testing distribution for networking and wireless auditing. TinyPaw-Linux is based on Tiny Core Linux.
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DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 19 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 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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