 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 762, 7 May 2018 |
Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There is a lot going on in the open source community at the moment with several projects making important changes. This past week we saw the release of Fedora 28, which may be the first Fedora version to release on schedule and also the first to make it easy to add third-party and proprietary software. We have some information on Fedora 28 in this issue and plan to have a full review of the project's new release next week. In other news, the Linux Mint team has been planning their next series of releases based on Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 9. We have more information on Mint's roadmap in our News section. We also link to a fix for an error SolydXK users may be experiencing when attempting to upgrade the distribution. One common problem which came up a lot this past week was missing or unavailable developers. The Void project mentioned they are working around problems caused by one member of their team being out of contact and we cover what they are doing to deal with the missing developer. Then we talk about both Ubuntu Budgie and Ubuntu MATE planning to drop 32-bit support for future releases of their distribution. The Korora and Ubuntu Studio projects have had to scale back due to a lack of volunteers and HardenedBSD is switching from using LibreSSL to using OpenSSL largely due to lacking resources necessary to keep pace with LibreSSL's development. The GhostBSD project is also making changes, switching from using FreeBSD as its base to using TrueOS in order to share improvements. Speaking of TrueOS, it is the focus of our Feature Story this week as Jesse Smith takes the rolling release, FreeBSD-based system for a test drive. Also in this issue we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and the torrents we are seeding. In our Opinion Poll we ask whether our readers prefer the vanilla GNOME desktop environment provided by Fedora or the more customized look and feel of Ubuntu's GNOME desktop. Plus we are happy to welcome the All In One - System Rescue Toolkit project to our database. Finally, we are happy to share some custom DistroWatch wallpaper provided by one of our readers. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: TrueOS 18.03
- News: Mint team plans future releases, HardenedBSD switching back to OpenSSL, SolydXK fixes repository error, Fedora's updated file manager, Void team working around missing developer, Korora team takes time off, Ubuntu Studio discontinues LTS support, GhostBSD plans to use TrueOS as a base, Ubuntu flavours dropping 32-bit support
- Tips and tricks: Live upgrading Raspbian
- Released last week: Fedora 28, IPFire 2.19 Core 120, Kali 2018.2
- Torrent corner: Archman, BlankOn, Bluestar, BunsenLabs, Fedora, IPFire, Kali, KaOS, KDE neon, Pop!_OS, Porteus, Robolinux
- Upcoming releases: Tails 3.7
- Opinion poll: Customized GNOME vs vanilla GNOME
- DistroWatch.com news: Wallpaper for DistroWatch fans
- New additions: All In One - System Rescue Toolkit
- New distributions: Flatcar Linux, rareOS
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
TrueOS 18.03
TrueOS is a rolling release operating system based on FreeBSD's development (-CURRENT) branch. The TrueOS operating system is available in two editions: a Desktop flavour and a Server flavour. The Desktop edition ships with the Lumina desktop environment, a graphical package manager and other graphical tools for managing the operating system. The Desktop edition is an approximately 2.4GB download and the Server edition is 884MB in size. I downloaded the Desktop edition for my TrueOS trial.
Installing
Booting from the Desktop edition's media brings up a graphical system installer. At the bottom of the installer there is a collection of buttons for launching tools to help us set up the system. One button opens a hardware compatibility checker so we can confirm devices such as our video card and network connection are recognized by TrueOS. Another button opens a window where we can configure our keyboard, a third button opens the system's network settings and another launches a terminal emulator, giving us access to the command line. I quite like having these options, especially the hardware compatibility tool as it largely makes up for TrueOS not having a live desktop environment for us to test drive.
The installer only has a few screens. We are asked to select our preferred language from a list and then choose whether to set up the Desktop or Server edition of TrueOS. We can also restore old copies of TrueOS that have been archived using the project's Life Preserver backup tool. Finally, we are given the opportunity to customize the storage options. TrueOS uses ZFS for handling storage and we can optionally name the ZFS storage pool, select which disk or partition to use and tweak options for sub-volumes. People who are not familiar with ZFS can probably take the default options offered.
The installer then sets up the operating system and, the first time we boot into the new copy of TrueOS, we are asked to complete a few more customisations. A graphical first-run wizard asks us to confirm which video driver it should use, select our time zone and create a password for the administrator account. We are also asked to provide a username and password for our regular account. The last screen gives us a chance to enable/disable some services, such as IPv6 support and the OpenSSH secure shell.
TrueOS 18.03 -- The default application menu
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Early impressions
With all of those steps completed we are presented with a graphical login screen. From here we can sign into the Lumina 1.4 desktop environment. Lumina presents us with icons on the desktop which open popular applications such as Firefox and the VLC media player. There are also icons for opening the project's detailed Handbook, accessing system settings and launching the AppCafe software manager. A panel is placed at the bottom of the screen and is home to the application menu and a system tray. The project's Handbook is unusually detailed. It is presented as a collection of local web pages which are opened in Firefox and which cover many aspects of managing TrueOS and using the system.
One of the first things I noticed when exploring the Lumina desktop was that the icons (both on the desktop and in the application menu) were an odd mixture of two different styles. Most of the native Lumina tools and configuration modules use black & white icons while third-party applications, such as Firefox, are in colour. However, there are some exceptions where application icons are in black & white and TrueOS tools have colour icons. This makes for an unusual and visually inconsistent experience.
On the subject of icons, desktop icons cannot be simply clicked and dragged to a new location on Lumina. We can right-click on icons and select a move action from the context menu which appears.
TrueOS 18.03 -- Adjusting the theme
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The default application menu has an unusual layout. The menu takes up relatively little screen space, but includes several sections. There is a search bar at the top of the menu. Under the search bar is a window where we can scroll through installed applications, but we can only see one application at a time. Next there is a button to open the Lumina file manager and, below that, is a button which opens a slightly larger window where we can browse through installed applications four at a time. Another button opens the control panel and the last button in the menu opens the desktop settings panel.
I found the application menu to be small and a bit awkward to use. There doesn't appear to be a way to customize it to make it larger or rearrange its elements. However, we can swap out the default menu for alternative application menus. This is achieved by going into the desktop settings and selecting the Panels module. The Panels module makes it easy to reorganize the panel's items and swap them out for alternative widgets.
TrueOS 18.03 -- The Handbook and an alternative application menu
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Applications
Exploring the application menu, I found TrueOS ships with a relatively small number of desktop programs. Firefox and Thunderbird are included along with the Trojita IMAP e-mail client. The VLC media player is included along with the Phototonic image viewer. The QTerminal virtual terminal is available along with the CUPS web-based printer manager tool. The operating system includes standard items such as an archive manager, text editor and PDF viewer with most of these being custom Lumina applications. The Clang compiler and OpenRC service manager are included too. The operating system runs on the FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT kernel which should provide the latest drivers available in the FreeBSD community. However, as -CURRENT is a development branch, we may also encounter unexpected changes from time to time.
TrueOS 18.03 -- The Insight file manager
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The few programs which were included in TrueOS generally worked well for me. Some of them required a little re-learning on my part, especially the native Lumina applications as I had not used some of them before. However, Firefox, VLC and Thunderbird performed the same as they do on Linux. One of the few application issues I ran into was with QTerminal, the virtual terminal. QTerminal's window could not be moved and pop-up boxes would not be displayed, the application would simply stop responding with a dialog box was supposed to be displayed. The application acted as though it had no communication with the window manager. Switching to another terminal application, such as Konsole, worked around this problem.
AppCafe
Since the operating system does not bundle many desktop applications, I made regular use of the AppCafe software manager. AppCafe features three tabs: Browse, Installed and Pending. The Installed tab shows us a list of applications already on the system. We can check boxes next to items we no longer want and click a button to remove them. The Pending tab shows a list of queued actions. We can click on a listed action to see a log of the underlying pkg package manager's actions and progress.
Most of the action happens in the Browse tab which lets us scroll through categories of applications and search for items by name. The category browsing option is a bit cluttered as items may be low level packages or desktop programs. This means we could end up browsing through a dozen Python modules in the middle of a group of multimedia applications. Items are displayed with their name, often an icon and a short description. Clicking on an item brings up a more detailed description and other information such as the package's dependencies.
TrueOS 18.03 -- Browsing through packages with AppCafe
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New packages can be installed by clicking a button next to the item's description. When a new application is installed, its icon is added to the desktop. This is convenient, but since some packages are installed only as dependencies (and they may have icons of their own) it caused my desktop to fill up quickly with new icons.
Software updates are not handled by AppCafe, but by a separate utility found in the control panel. While there were no updates available during my trial, the update tool did present me with some useful options. We can schedule updates, set the system to optionally reboot after an upgrade and use alternative repositories. TrueOS provides two official sets of repositories: Stable and Unstable. The latter is a rolling collection of packages. We also have the option of specifying our own, custom repository if we do not like the two official choices.
Settings
TrueOS ships with two settings panels, the control panel which handles the configuration of the underlying operating system and the Lumina desktop settings panel. Lumina's settings were fairly straight forward and the customisations we can perform are similar to those found in other desktop environments. I think what sets Lumina apart, especially from other Qt-based desktops like KDE's Plasma, is that Lumina tends to handle configuration from its settings panel. Plasma, by contrast, often makes it possible to right-click or unlock and then manipulate widgets directly. I think this makes tweaking Plasma a more direct activity, but Lumina's central management approach makes all the desktop options easy to locate with less exploration. I didn't need to go hunting for things I could click on or move around, everything was handled in one place.
TrueOS 18.03 -- The two settings panels
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The control panel focuses on lower level items. From the control panel we can launch AppCafe, the update manager and a module for working with user accounts. There are also tools available for managing boot environments, the firewall and background services. These all worked well for me and were straight forward to use.
Earlier I mentioned there is a inconsistency in the appearance of the Lumina icons, some displaying in colour and others in black & white. Something I picked up while using the control panel is desktop icons had to be double-clicked to be activated, but control panel modules would open with a single click. Personally, I do not have a strong preference for single- vs double-clicking, but switching back and forth between the two made it harder to get into a natural rhythm when using Lumina.
Something I noticed while using the TrueOS tools, and particularly AppCafe, was my regular user account could perform administrator actions without a password. I could add or remove software, start or stop services and change the firewall without being asked for my credentials. This seems to come from the first user on the system being added to two special user groups: wheel and operator. I created a second user account and tried adding and removing it from these groups. I found any user, even without special groups, could add and remove software packages and enable/disable services. A user with no special access could also edit the firewall. However, users with no special access or only operator (not wheel) access could not manage other users' accounts.
This approach seems oddly permissive and a potential security threat. It's not often unprivileged users are given so much free access to manipulate the system, especially without providing a password.
ZFS snapshots and boot environments
One of the tools I mentioned finding in the control panel allows the user to work with boot environments. This is a special feature not found in many other open source operating systems (other than openSUSE), at least by default, as it generally requires the use of an advanced file system such as ZFS or Btrfs. Before committing to any change of the operating system, such as installing a new package or applying a fresh batch of upgrades, we can create a new boot environment. This takes a snapshot of the operating system at a fixed point in time. Whenever we reboot the computer we have the option of selecting which boot environment we wish to load. This allows us to jump back in time and use the operating system as it was at the time the snapshot was created. This almost instantly undoes any damaged caused by a broken update or a misconfigured service.
TrueOS 18.03 -- Managing boot environments
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I tested this feature and found it worked perfectly and I was very glad to see it presented, especially on a rolling release platform using a development kernel. Any new wave of updates could break functionality, but almost anything can be fixed by rebooting and selecting the previous boot environment snapshot.
Hardware
I tested TrueOS in a VirtualBox virtual machine and on a desktop computer. When running in VirtualBox the operating system performed well. It was quick to boot, the Lumina desktop was responsive and the operating system integrated nicely with my host environment. When I tried running TrueOS on the desktop computer I found it would not boot in Legacy BIOS mode, only in UEFI mode. I also could not boot the system with the default settings and drivers. I had to run the operating in safe mode with the generic vesa graphics driver in order to get TrueOS to boot. Once the operating system was up and running, it performed well. In either environment, TrueOS tended to use around 240MB of active RAM and 260MB of wired memory. A fresh install consumed about 2.2GB of disk space.
Something that I feel is worth mentioning is TrueOS provides different downloads for DVD and USB thumb drives. Unlike most Linux distributions, we cannot simply download the DVD ISO file of TrueOS and write it to a USB thumb drive, we need to specifically download the USB image file.
Conclusions
I think TrueOS offers a lot of good features and a lot of power, but I also think there are several issues with the operating system. Hardware support appears to be getting better, but I still had trouble getting TrueOS to boot on my desktop computer. Lumina offers good performance and lots of flexibility, but also several inconsistencies and it took me a while to adapt to them. The default application menu is cluttered and the scrollable window that shows one application entry at a time is an unusual approach I have not seen elsewhere. I preferred using the alternative, tree-style menu.
The ease with which non-admin users can adjust settings, without even a password, concerns me. Usually the BSD family is strict with security and TrueOS's control panel appears to be an exception to this rule. Otherwise, I very much like the power and straight forward approach used by TrueOS's many configuration modules. They tend to be useful and easy to manage.
The ZFS features and boot environments alone make me tempted to switch to using this operating system on a daily basis. The ability to stay on the cutting edge of development and almost instantly roll back any problems from the boot menu is a great ability to have.
TrueOS is missing some third-party software available to Linux users (Steam and Chrome come to mind), but otherwise the software selection on TrueOS seems to be on par with Linux. And I think most Linux users would feel fairly at home on a TrueOS system as the file system layout and applications are mostly the same.
On the whole, I think this project offers a lot of interesting and powerful features, but also has some rough points which may come from its cutting edge nature. There are some bumps in the road, but I really like the tools and performance on display with TrueOS.
* * * * *
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
TrueOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used TrueOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Mint team plans future releases, HardenedBSD switching back to OpenSSL, SolydXK fixes repository error, Fedora's updated file manager, Void team working around missing developer, Korora team takes time off, Ubuntu Studio discontinues LTS support, GhostBSD plans to use TrueOS as a base, Ubuntu flavours dropping 32-bit support
Linux Mint's monthly newsletter for April has been published and it includes some important details on the upcoming releases of Linux Mint 19 (which will be based on Ubuntu 18.04) and Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 (LMDE 3). "We're often asked when Linux Mint 19 or LMDE 3 will be released, what editions will be supported, and whether such or such changes affecting Ubuntu will also affect us. Here are a few elements of response: We will release in this order: Cinnamon 3.8, Linux Mint 19, LMDE 3. Linux Mint 19.x releases (19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3) will be available in 3 editions (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce), both in 32- and 64-bit. LMDE 3 will be available in a single edition (Cinnamon), both in 32- and 64-bit. Ubuntu ships with ubuntu-report, which collects metrics and usage data. This package won't be present in Linux Mint, no data will be collected or sent. In Ubuntu 18.04, support for home directory encryption was removed in the installer. Although it's to soon to confirm whether or not this feature will stay, we're working on it at the moment and we're hoping to keep it. The LMDE 3 installer will not get support for disk or home directory encryption." More information on the upcoming Mint releases can be found in the project's news letter.
* * * * *
HardenedBSD is a security-focused fork of FreeBSD and was an early adopter of the LibreSSL security library, which is designed to replace OpenSSL and be more proactive towards security fixes. Lately the maintenance cost of running the quickly changing LibreSSL library has become too much of a burden and HardenedBSD is switching back to using OpenSSL by default. "After recently updating 12-CURRENT to LibreSSL 2.7.2 from 2.6.4, it has become increasingly clear to us that performing major upgrades requires a team larger than a single person. Upgrading to 2.7.2 caused a lot of fallout in our ports tree. As of 28 April 2018, several ports we consider high priority are still broken. As it stands right now, it would take Bernard a significant amount of his spare personal time to fix these issues. Until we have a multi-person team dedicated to maintaining LibreSSL in base along with the patches required in ports, HardenedBSD will use OpenSSL going forward as the default crypographic library in base." More details on this migration back to OpenSSL can be found in the project's news post.
* * * * *
Users of the SolydXK distribution may encounter errors when attempting to install or update software this week. A recent update changed the address for the project's package repositories and, for people who installed this update, they will need to edit the repository information manually. A post on the SolydXK blog explains: "I had to update some packages to prepare them to the server migration I’m currently working on. Most of the changes are made in the solydxk-system package which will change the SolydXK repository URL in /etc/apt/sources.list to use the new server. Unfortunately, the rewrite did not go well with the previous adaptation of solydxk-system. Some users reported that the URL contained 'http://https://' which, of course, will not function. It is fixed in the solydxk-system version I uploaded today. However, users that already have that wrong URL need to adjust their sources.list file manually. If you get 404 errors while updating your system you can follow these steps in a terminal..." The instructions are presented in the blog post.
* * * * *
In preparation for the release of Fedora 28, Fedora Magazine put together some information to help users make the most of the distribution's Workstation edition. The Workstation edition runs the GNOME desktop and users may notice some significant changes, such as a lack of desktop icons and speed improvements in GNOME Files. "The roadmap of new features and improvements also includes significant architectural rewrites. Notably, these changes will improve search performance, so a heavy search does not cause the application to lock up. This new 'backend' to Files has other benefits too, including the ability to pause copy and move operations. Along with performance improvements, new file views are under development. This includes a 'flow view' that dynamically adjusts icon spacing when you resize a window. All these improvements are the result of difficult decisions and hard work by developers over the past few months." The article also talks about how to restore desktop icons using extensions or the Nemo file manager.
* * * * *
The developers of Void, an independent, rolling release distribution, are facing a common problem in the open source community: how to handle the project leader disappearing. "We have a problem. In the last few months people have been complaining about the lack of management capabilities in the Void Core Team. We have been aware of the problem, and it's time to explain the situation. The current project leader has disappeared. We have had no contact with him since the end of January, and no meaningful contact for well over a year. This itself would be concerning on its own, but no threat to the project." The project's blog post goes on to discuss how the remaining members of the Void team are migrating to new resources to keep the project active.
* * * * *
Earlier this year we discussed the Korora team slowing their distribution's release cycle. In the time since then, the Korora project has decided to take a break largely due to a lack of time and resources: "We're not one for many words and so we'll get straight to the point: Korora for the foreseeable future is not going to be able to march in cadence with the Fedora releases. In addition to that, for the immediate future there will be no updates to the Korora distribution. Our team is infinitesimal (currently one developer and two community managers) compared to many other distributions, we don't have the luxury of being able to dedicate the amount of time we would like to spend on the project and still satisfy our real life obligations. So we are taking a little sabbatical to avoid complete burn out and rejuvenate ourselves and our passion for Korora/Fedora and wider open source efforts.
What does that mean from here, well the servers will stay up so repos don't break but there will be no updates applied. We can't say how long this break will be, but sincerely hope you have enjoyed your time around here."
* * * * *
Last week, when we covered the release of Ubuntu 18.04 and its many community editions, one community flavour stood out. While most Ubuntu editions offer three to five years of support under the long term support (LTS) banner, Ubuntu Studio 18.04 only provides nine months of support. The reason is practically the theme of this week's news stories: a lack of volunteers. "For everyone who is asking why 18.04 is not an LTS, we want to be clear: we are very much in need of volunteers to help with development. We especially need help with packaging and documentation. This entire project is run by volunteers. Nobody on the Ubuntu Studio team is employed by Canonical. We do this out of passion for the project. That said, we simply do not currently have the manpower that it takes to support a long-term support version. If you would like to change that for future releases, please help!" The project's future plans are discussed in this blog post.
* * * * *
The GhostBSD project develops a desktop-friendly operating system based on FreeBSD. The GhostBSD team is looking at switching to a new base, possibly using TrueOS's rolling release as a future foundation. The project's website reports: "For some time we have discussed problems that GhostBSD is facing in the long run. Some of our community have asked for improvements including a better rc such as OpenRC. We all have thought of OpenRC, but for a small team, it is a hard thing to do on our own as a project. After a lot of discussions, we decided to join TrueOS's effort. Since then it is now making more sense as both of the main developers of GhostBSD work for iXsystems." iXsystems also sponsors work on TrueOS.
* * * * *
Both Ubuntu Budgie and Ubuntu MATE have announced that they will be dropping support for 32-bit x86 computers in future releases. The announcements (Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu MATE) point out that 32-bit support is still available through the distributions' 18.04 LTS releases and these versions will continue to receive updates for the next three years. The Ubuntu MATE team mentions that it is estimated fewer than 10% of their users install the 32-bit build of their distribution and, of those, many are actually running 64-bit hardware: "Why drop i386 (32-bit Intel) as a release architecture? Less than 10% of Ubuntu MATE users are running the i386 (32-bit Intel) images. Of those who do, thanks to the recent introduction of installation telemetry reports, many are choosing to install the i386 images on AMD64 (64-bit Intel) capable hardware."
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Live upgrading Raspbian
Like many technology enthusiasts, I have a Raspberry Pi single board computer. And, if you are like me, then the Pi is running Raspbian, a Debian-based distribution specifically built to work with the Pi's hardware. You may even, like me, want to upgrade the Raspbian operating system without taking the computer off-line. The good news is, if you have another computer on hand running the OpenSSH service, it is fairly easy to perform a backup and upgrade of the Pi without taking it off-line. Let's explore how this can be done.
In this example, I am going to be running commands on a system running Raspbian 8 Jessie and performing the steps necessary to upgrade to Raspbian 9 Stretch. In my case, I will be backing up an image (or snapshot) of the Pi's main drive, an SD card, to another computer on my network. This remote computer is called Workstation and it will hold an image of my Pi's file system for safe keeping in case something goes wrong.
Before we begin it is a good idea to make sure we know the network name or IP address of our remote computer. We should also make sure we have lots of free space on our Raspberry Pi's SD card. I have a fairly minimal installation of Raspbian and the upgrade process requires about 1GB of extra disk space. If you are running a desktop environment on the Pi or have several services installed, you will probably want at least 2GB of free space before beginning. We can check the available free space by running the "df -h" command on the Pi and checking the amount of available space on the /dev/root device.
The first thing I recommend doing, from Rasbpian's command line, is running a command in order to find out which version of the operating system you are using:
cat /etc/debian_version
If you are running Raspbian Jessie, the command will display "8.0", if you are running Raspbian Wheezy, it should show "7.0". If you have already upgraded to the latest version, Stretch, then the command will show "9.0". This example focuses on upgrading from Jessie to Stretch, but the steps are the same for migrating from Wheezy to Jessie.
Before we perform the upgrade, we should take a snapshot of our Pi's SD card so we can rollback the upgrade if anything goes wrong. To do this we first need to find out what name Raspbian calls the SD card. Running the command
mount
should display several lines. At least one (probably the first line) should have an entry that starts with text similar to "/dev/mmcblk0p7 on / type ext4" or "/dev/mmcblk0p6 on / type ext4". This lets us know that the SD card is called /dev/mmcblk0 and the root file system is on partition 6 or 7. The first part of the name, /dev/mmcblk0, is what we need to copy the entire device.
The next step is to copy the contents of the SD card to our remote computer. In this example, I backup the SD card named mmcblk0 to my computer named workstation.
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 | ssh workstation dd of=raspberry-backup.img
You can use the IP address or name of your remote computer in place of workstation in the above command. The backup process is likely to take several minutes, maybe even an hour, depending on the speed of the local network. When the Pi has finished transferring an image of its hard drive we should make sure we are running the latest versions of our operating system's packages to ease the upgrade process. This can be done with a string of apt commands.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade
With the operating system up to date, we need to tell the package manager to switch over from using its old package repositories to using the repositories for the new version. In short, we will be migrating from the Raspbian Jessie packages over to Raspbian Stretch. We can accomplish this by exploring the /etc/apt directory and using a text editor to update each file manually, changing each occurrence of the word "jessie" to "stretch". Personally, I prefer to automate the process using the find command:
find /etc/apt -name "*.list" -print | xargs sed -i 's/jessie/stretch/g'
Now everything is in place and we can run the commands necessary to upgrade Raspbian. This process is likely to take over an hour as many packages will need to be downloaded and installed. The upgrade process will likely stop occasionally to ask us if we want to keep our old configuration files or install new versions. This means we should check on the upgrade process every few minutes until it finishes. Personally, I usually keep old versions of configuration files, which is the default action. Here are the three commands we need to run to upgrade all the packages on our system:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade
When the above three commands finally complete, all there is left to do is clean up packages which are no longer required and reboot the system:
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt-get clean
sudo reboot
Assuming everything went smoothly, the Raspberry Pi will reboot and be running the new version of the operating system. We can run
cat /etc/debian_version
to confirm the version number has been bumped up from 8.0 to 9.0.
In the rare case where something goes wrong and the new version of Raspbian does not boot as expected, then we can fix the situation fairly easily. Take the SD card out of the Pi and plug it into the remote computer (Workstation in the above example). We can then use the dd command to write the raspberry-backup.img file back to our SD card. With that done, plugging the SD card back into the Pi and power cycling the Pi will restore its operating system back to its previous state when we began the upgrade.
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More tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus 4.0
Jay Flood has announced the release of Porteus 4.0, a set of small, portable Linux distributions based on Slackware Linux (and an indirect continuation of the original Slax project which has since switched to the Debian base). Porteus provides separate live media for its seven desktops, all of which are available for both x86_64 and i586 architectures: "Team Porteus is immensely gratified to announce the immediate availability of Porteus 4.0 final in seven desktop flavours. Major changes include: Linux kernel 4.16.3; core is based on Slackware 'current'; seven desktop options to choose from; new configuration file which replaces the .sgn file and can hold cheatcodes, one per line; new update-browser feature to update or download your preferred browser (available in GUI); support for EFI (using syslinux for both BIOS and EFI boots); new Porteus update feature built in to update the base modules; Intel microcode available in boot folder." Here is the brief release announcement as published on the project's user forums.
IPFire 2.19 Core 120
IPFire is a Linux distribution which focuses on security and is suited for being used as a firewall. Administration is handled through a web interface. The project has released a new update to its 2.19 series: IPFire 2.19 Core Update 120. The new version removes old and broken cryptography functions and introduces new security requirements: "Cryptography is one of the foundations to a secure system. We have updated the distribution to use the latest version of the OpenSSL cryptography library (version 1.1.0). This comes with a number of new ciphers and major refacturing of the code base has been conducted. With this change, we have decided to entirely deprecate SSLv3 and the web user interface will require TLSv1.2 which is also the default for many other services. We have configured a hardened list of ciphers which only uses recent algorithms and entirely removes broken or weak algorithms like RC4, MD5 and so on. Please check before this update if you are relying on any of those, and upgrade your dependent systems." A complete list of changes can be found in the project's release announcement.
Kali Linux 2018.2
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security, penetration testing and forensics tools. The project's latest release is Kali Linux 2018.2, which includes kernel updates and fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre CPU bugs. "This Kali release is the first to include the Linux 4.15 kernel, which includes the x86 and x64 fixes for the much-hyped Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. It also includes much better support for AMD GPUs and support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization, which allows for encrypting virtual machine memory such that even the hypervisor can't access it." There have also been updates to the Bloodhound, Reaver, PixieWPS, Burp Suite and Hashcat packages. Further details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the Change Log.
BunsenLabs Linux Helium
BunsenLabs Linux is a Debian-based distribution which features the Openbox window manager as the default graphical user interface. The project has released BunsenLabs Linux Helium, which is based on Debian 9 Stretch. "The visual appearance has been worked over with new GTK themes (including hdpi, thanks to forum member vinzv!), the Paper icon theme with a few custom additions, and new wallpaper images based on "Beam" by Rashad Mohammed. We also have new default Conky and Geany themes. There are some preset graphic theming collections accessible via the BLOB accessory. The menu has been worked over and improved in some places. Under the hood, many small improvements have been made: Calls to gksu, which is insecure, are replaced with pkexec. The default package list has been adjusted and some useful system tools added. The former CrunchBang audio mixer, pnmixer, has returned. PulseAudio configuration tweaks previously needed have been removed. Qt5 GTK2 theme support has been added. The boot menu now has "boot in cli" and "Rescue" options." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
BunsenLabs Linux Helium -- Running the Openbox window manager
(full image size: 537kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Fedora 28
The Fedora team has launched a new release of their popular, Red Hat sponsored distribution. The new version, Fedora 28, introduces some important changes, including the ability to more easily add third-party software to the operating system's Workstation edition. "The headline feature for Fedora 28 Server is the inclusion of the new Modular repository. This lets you select between different versions of software like NodeJS or Django, so you can chose the stack you need for your software. Interested? Check out the documentation for using modules. Also of note: 64-bit ARM (Aarch64) is now a primary architecture for Fedora Server. Fedora 28 Workstation has big news too. For the first time, we're making it easy for users to enable certain third-party software sources, including proprietary NVIDIA drivers. We've worked for a long time to figure out the right way to do this without compromising our ideals, and I think the opt-in approach we're trying now does it well. Read more in the Magazine article on third-party repos, and also check out other F28 Workstation news." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement. Fedora is available in three main flavours (Workstation, Server and Atomic), as well as multiple community spins.
Robolinux 9.2
Robolinux is an Ubuntu-based, desktop distribution available in Cinnamon and MATE editions. The project has published a new release, Robolinux 9.2, which brings the distribution up to date with important bug fixes. There have also been a number of updates to the distribution's desktop applications: "Robolinux is very pleased to announce its newly upgraded Cinnamon & MATE 3D 9.2 LTS 2021 versions release. The main focus on this significant upgrade was to improve speed, security and stability. Both of the new Robolinux 9.2 versions have newer Linux kernels that run much faster as well as fixes for the recent x86 and x64 Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Users should be aware that since January 1st 2018 all Robolinux operating systems come with free expert tech support. It should also be noted that both of the Robolinux 9.2 versions provide optional UEFI support and have the newest VirtualBox version 5.2.10, the newest Firefox version 59.0.2, the newest Thunderbird version 52.7.0 and quite a significant number of very important upstream security and application updates." Further information is provided in the project's release announcement.
BlankOn 11.0
Estu Fardani has announced the release of BlankOn 11.0, a Debian-based Indonesian distribution with a custom desktop environment called "Manokwari" (based on GNOME Shell). Code-named "Uluwatu", the new release brings improved hardware support along with a new theme inspired by the colours and culture of the Indonesian island of Bali. Other new features include: improved system installer written in HTML 5, JavaScript and Vala with a hard disk partition manager; LibreOffice 6; GNOME 3.26.1 with improvements in network management and new language translations; support for Flatpak, a universal application packaging framework; inclusion of several popular graphics and multimedia applications, such as GIMP, Inkscape, EOG, Audacious and VLC; new documentation available on the project's wiki pages. The support for 32-bit systems has been discontinued in this release. Read the full release announcement (in Indonesian and English).
BlankOn 11.0 -- Running the Manokwari desktop
(full image size: 772kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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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: 838
- Total data uploaded: 19.2TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Customized GNOME vs vanilla GNOME
Last week we talked about Ubuntu and its highly customized GNOME Shell desktop environment. This week we reported on the launch of Fedora 28 and its more vanilla approach to GNOME. We would like to hear which approach you prefer. Do you want to experience GNOME Shell the way its developers envisioned as presented in Fedora? Or do you like the more customized version of GNOME available in Ubuntu?
You can see the results of our previous poll on Ubuntu running Unity versus Ubuntu running GNOME Shell in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Customized GNOME vs vanilla GNOME
| I like vanilla GNOME (Fedora): | 287 (13%) |
| I like customized GNOME (Ubuntu): | 211 (10%) |
| I am fine with either: | 185 (9%) |
| I do not use GNOME: | 1277 (60%) |
| I like GNOME but on a different distro: | 168 (8%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Wallpaper for DistroWatch fans
One of our readers sent us a very nice note of appreciation this week and included some their artwork. One of the images was desktop wallpaper featuring our logo and slogan. We'd like to thank Pedro Paulo for sending this in and we're happy to share it for anyone else who would like to decorate their desktop background with a reminder to keep computing fun.
DistroWatch desktop wallpaper
(full image size: 587kB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
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New projects added to database
All In One - System Rescue Toolkit
All In One - System Rescue Toolkit (AIO) is a live desktop distribution designed to rescue systems, recover files and reset Windows passwords. AIO is based on Lubuntu and ships with several rescue utilities for use by repair technicians and system administrations.
All In One - System Rescue Toolkit -- Running the LXDE desktop
(full image size: 780kB, resolution: 1232x940 pixels)
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Distributions added to waiting list
- Flatcar Linux. Flatcar Linux is an immutable Linux distribution for running containers. It is a fork of CoreOS's Container Linux and compatible with it.
- rareOS. rareOS is a fork of Pop!_OS featuring the Cinnamon desktop environment.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 14 May 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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If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 1, value: US$15.52) |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • LinuxMint (by sofiasmith on 2018-05-07 00:15:30 GMT from Spain)
The king is dead. Long live the king.
A new sheriff in town: Manjaro.
2 • Vanilla Gnome (by linuxista on 2018-05-07 00:21:23 GMT from United States)
Gnome is vanilla on every other distro I am aware of other than Ubuntu, so the first and last choices on the survey could have been collapsed into one.
3 • TrueOS review (by Jordan on 2018-05-07 00:24:52 GMT from United States)
It's a good review. I tried TrueOS last year and it was one of those distro tries that just had too many things cropping up in too many different areas for me to be able to justify messing with it, let alone keeping it as a regular os on one of my machines.
It felt like a work in progress and I was supposed to do all the work.
4 • @ "perform administrator actions without a password" (by OS2_user on 2018-05-07 01:23:39 GMT from United States)
> "... seems oddly permissive ... It's not often unprivileged users are given so much free access to manipulate the system"
Only on about a billion Windows systems! Users "given" access is large part of why Windows took over, and why Linux today is still "not ready for the desktop".
> "The ease with which non-admin users can adjust settings, without even a password, concerns me."
Just DROP that 1970's multi-user idea: I have a PERSONAL computer!
However, just when the review got me interested in TrueOS, I read that on real hardware: "it would not boot in Legacy BIOS mode, only in UEFI mode. I also could not boot the system with the default settings and drivers. I had to run the operating in safe mode with the generic vesa graphics". -- Better than my own experience last year: TrueOS put up a text spinner and nothing else, ever.
I WISH there were a rational alternative to Windows, but there is not.
5 • Gnome Survey (by Andy Figueroa on 2018-05-07 03:50:09 GMT from United States)
Developers could take a hint. Most users don't care for Gnome. If we wanted bloat and feature creep, we would use Windows. :-)
6 • Gnome (by George on 2018-05-07 04:19:00 GMT from United States)
Unclear why Ubuntu chooses, again/still, a relatively unpopular DE. Even more unclear that even one Ubuntu variant doesn't grab the opportunity and support for 5 years... but maybe that's when corporate funding would be helpful.
Not sure about "feature creep". I haven't found easy ways in Gnome-Ubuntu to duplicate some features that other, more trim, DEs include. Using XFE file manager and text editor in place of Gnome-Ubuntu's corresponding apps does ease the pain and doesn't seem to confuse the system. (One click and you get a tree in the left panel and two more panels to manipulate files.)
===
Thanks for the thorough review of TrueOS.
7 • KDE Plasma (by Andy Prough on 2018-05-07 04:24:15 GMT from United States)
The better Gnome
8 • Live upgrading Raspbian (by rk on 2018-05-07 05:11:38 GMT from Germany)
Is it really a good idea to copy the sd-card while the filesystem on it is live?
Did I miss something?
9 • Gnome? (by lupus on 2018-05-07 05:31:56 GMT from Germany)
Gnome is beautiful and well thought out but sluggish on older Hardware and I'm more of a keyboard less of a touchscreen Type. The only Desktop Environment that is even worse is KDE. (K onfigure yourself to DE ath) I hate it because it lacks of sane choices and therefor I want to endorse: (Drumroll)
Manjaro Deepin
Liked the Deepin Desktop from the start, had my doubts cause of the origin, been trying it out for a week, simply loving it (sane choices)
Only quibble: Energy Management is simply nonexisting anymore (Deepin 15.5) but to be honest doesn't work very well on most Distros so I have learned my way around it so I will put up with just switching off the Monitor.
Bye Lupus
PS Tiling the windows (left half/right half) only works with the Mouse/Touchpad no Keyboard shortcut by default but I can work around that one too I learned
10 • Dying (by lupus on 2018-05-07 05:38:59 GMT from Germany)
The commen denominator of this issue seems to be Distributions dying or not getting enough support!
Void, Korora, Ubuntu Studio etc.
I fear herein lies a trend so I will up my donations to the Projects I would really miss. Hope you guys do the same!
Bye Lupus
11 • @2,5,6,7,9... GNOME liked? (by Greg Zeng on 2018-05-07 05:56:30 GMT from Australia)
Very good question, again. Agree with the comments so far. Gnome(3) is the heaviest of all the Desktop Environments, by deliberate design. Most us prefer less heavy eye-candy. Gnome(3), like KDE Plasma, is still far from being settled into steady maturity. Everything is rapidly evolving, including bugs, bug-fixes and add-ons.
Which do I prefer- customized. However, in the multiple choice alternatives, I also prefer others, to the unstable feature-deprived heaviest two Desktop-environments. Most others are lighter weight, stable, and more feature rich.
12 • Gnome...? (by OstroL on 2018-05-07 06:11:43 GMT from Poland)
I voted no. Atm its 61% nos. Cannonical had taken the wrong decision by choosing the gnome shell as default. Gnome shell is the most unpopular DE today. The idling memory at 1.2GB and memory leaks, which need never ending fixes, etc would not bring in users. Once sluggish KDE is now idling at 370MB! Gnome devs had not learned a lesson. They still think that they dictate how the users must use a DE.
13 • Distrowatch wallpaper (by Chris on 2018-05-07 06:25:41 GMT from Australia)
The Distrowatch wallpaper by Pedro is good.
14 • TrueOS.... (by ed on 2018-05-07 07:02:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
I tried the TrueOS and looks like buggy... main terminal app crashes due to lumina desktop -known bug since a couple of years... pending to be fixed sometime in the future (No comment here), BTW not so 'rolling' release, TrueOS's repos (repo in fact. just hosted on one site IIRC) are lagging behind the FreeBSD's
15 • GNOME (by Felix on 2018-05-07 07:05:20 GMT from Germany)
I use ls, cd, cp, mv. Why would I need something like GNOME? As an application menu I use dmenu and yes I have a status bar displaying the date, time, battery state, cpu load, network state and giving me quick access to wifi settings. Most people watching me work say: "oh my god this is so inconvenient" but I tend to be faster then they are. Even the many clicks they need to unmount a flash drive is slower than typing umount /mnt/usb.
16 • TrueOS (by jadecat on 2018-05-07 07:33:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
TrueOS (sorry the name is still stupid) use their own CDN as a repo. You do have the option to get later packages within the AppCafe. Come back PC-BSD - when KDE was default - all is forgiven.
17 • Gnome, vanilla or otherwise (by Romane on 2018-05-07 08:22:38 GMT from Australia)
In my very first foray into Linux a couple or few decades ago (not sure, think it was very early Red Hat, well pre-commercial) the desktop was Gnome. I was very impressed. Very.
I ended up moving away, primarily to KDE (now dumped roughly about a year ago thanks to a particular developers attitude) but on occasion went back and tried the evolving Gnome desktop. It finally reached the point where it had, quite frankly, started telling me how I was allowed to run MY computer. My last look at Gnome was on Fedora about a year ago, and I hated it. Don't think I'll bother again - it really has departed from how I wish to use my computer.
This does *not* mean that Gnome is a bad system for the desktop. I know many like it and are very happy with it. But for me - I really don't care if it is vanilla or customised. They lost me long ago.
18 • @1 Long live the king (by kc1di on 2018-05-07 08:31:47 GMT from United States)
Still using Mint here :) think it will come back to retake manjaro? I Don't know but still like Mint better.
19 • Gnome (by Jim on 2018-05-07 10:20:17 GMT from United States)
I loved Gnome right up until Gnome3. Now I only run OS's that offer the Mate desktop.
20 • From PC-BSD to TrueOS (by Microlinux on 2018-05-07 10:40:41 GMT from France)
PC-BSD was a nice system. Based on stable FreeBSD, with a no-nonsense KDE desktop. Then came TrueOS, based on Lumina (basically a toy), and with the switch to a rolling release model the whole thing became a moving target. I lost interest at that point.
21 • #20 (by jadecat on 2018-05-07 11:18:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
You are basically right, but, then came PC-BSD with a multitude of DE's. That is where it went down hill fast. Still there is always GhostBSD... But wait! (check the news stories above)
22 • GNOME and Canonical (by dragonmouth on 2018-05-07 12:11:52 GMT from United States)
Looks like Canonical is following Microsoft's example in creating their own versions of existing software. (Mir, Unity, snaps, now GNOME) Are they doing their iteration of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? It didn't work for MS and it is not working for Canonical. They had to give up on Mir. They gave up on Unity. Will they be forced to give up on their heavily customized version of GNOME? While users like Ubuntu, they are not particularly thrilled with Canonical's proprietary software.
23 • proprietary (by Tim Dowd on 2018-05-07 13:15:28 GMT from United States)
@ 22
None of the projects you just mentioned are proprietary software. They're all free and open source.
24 • Poll (by zfoo on 2018-05-07 13:30:47 GMT from United States)
I find it interesting that the poll shows a large amount of the distrowatch visitors do not prefer Gnome but many of the most visited/popular distros are Gnome focused.
25 • Raspbian upgrade and GNOME (by Jesse on 2018-05-07 14:09:18 GMT from Canada)
@8: >> "Is it really a good idea to copy the sd-card while the filesystem on it is live?
It may not be ideal, but it's not exactly a bad idea. Worst case scenario in this situation is probably that when you restore the old image and boot your Pi off it, the system will perform a fsck. It takes a few seconds and then you're back to normal. It's no worse than having the power interrupted.
If you're really worried, you could re-mount your file system in read-only mode before doing the snapshot and then remount in read-write mode to do the upgrade.
@24 "I find it interesting that the poll shows a large amount of the distrowatch visitors do not prefer Gnome but many of the most visited/popular distros are Gnome focused."
Are they though? Of the top 13 projects on our PHR only two are really focused on GNOME (Ubuntu and Fedora). Maybe three if you count Debian, but it's so open to customization I think it's difficult to think of it as GNOME-focused. And of those three, Ubuntu is a very recent convert to GNOME 3, most of its popularity was gained during its GNOME 2 and Unity years. So, really, only one project (Fedora) in the top 13 PHR is truly a long-term, GNOME 3 focused project.
The rest are either new to running GNOME 3 or simply offer GNOME as one of many options.
26 • Gaak - Not again. (by davej on 2018-05-07 14:31:26 GMT from United States)
I'm a longtime user of FreeBSD and OpenBSD, twenty plus years. I use multiple FreeBSD servers in a production environment. I was tired of hand building graphical environments for my servers each time and thought that a PC-BSD install could take over the drudgery. I rarely need a graphical environment, but the need is still a requirement. I tested PC-BSD for awhile. It had its quirks and I found that it was doing things differently than the way I wanted them done. I went back to doing things by hand. Gee, then they went 64bit only... Okay, PC-BSD, out the door. TrueOS evolves out of PC-BSD. I experimented with it for 6 months or so on a half dozen machines. It wasn't wasn't right for me. Too many deviations from FreeBSD and was inconsistent and unreliable. If what you want to do is work on the OS instead of using the OS to do work, then TrueOS might be for you. OpenRC? <- this doesn't fly with me. I tried GhostBSD and it was good and it was configured like I would configure my systems. I was about to fully embrace it as my "base system" and now I'm hearing that they are changing to the TrueOS setup. Damn it, I'm rolling snake eyes every time.
27 • Distro's dropping 32-bits support... (by Marc Visscher on 2018-05-07 14:41:02 GMT from Netherlands)
I see a strange paradox going on in Linux land. Lots of distro's aim at old computers, which are mostly 32-bits machines. But the choice to install these distro's is getting smaller and smaller. Am I the only one who finds that a strange thing?
Another thing: Lately I wanted to install Bohdi Linux on a very old laptop with only 256MB of RAM. Bodhi only needs 128MB's of RAM to run smoothly, and many people out here advice Bodhi on very old hardware because it runs pretty smooth on old computers. But (and here's the catch): to install Bodhi I need an image on a USB-stick or... a DVD! Bodhi is just a few MB's too big for a normal CD-R. Big problem, because the laptop was only equipped with a CD-ROM drive. So Bodhi intents to be a perfect distro for old hardware, but when you try to install it on old hardware you find out there is no way to write an image on CD-R. Lots of old computers don't have a DVD-drive or are able to start a distro from USB. Eventually I had to install AntiX. Which is fine too, but is just a bit slow on only 256MB's of RAM.
But back to the subject again: if distro's decide to drop 32-bits images, don't advertise with "perfect for older hardware". Because that ain't entirely true. To me 64-bits computers aren't considered "old hardware". Just in the recent years 64-bits became common.
I have 11 computers at home (I know, way too much!), but 8 machines are 32-bits machines. Some laptops are like new, have lots of "juice" to run a decent 32-bits distro (Xubuntu, Mint MATE, BunsenLabs, Debian). But if this trend goes on, I feel like I'm forced to buy new hardware. Which I don't want, because these machines run fine! Really!
I said it before a short time ago: at this moment it's too soon to drop the 32-bits architecture. Wait 'till 2020 and they might have a point.
28 • GNOME (by Roy Davies on 2018-05-07 14:45:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
I will use Gnome if that is the default for the distro I am using. However, my prefernce is for xfce
Also, I totally agree with comment 27. THe loss of 32 bit support from developers is a travesty. There are still many,many, 32 bit computers out there with years of usable life.
29 • Congratulations to Manjaro.... (by Marc Visscher on 2018-05-07 14:55:34 GMT from Netherlands)
And my congratulations go to Manjaro! Mint just lost it's number one ranking on Distrowatch, and to be honest: I'm not surprised at all. Mint is a great distro, but Manjaro is, at this point, the most user friendly Linux distro around. I mean: since I got Manjaro installed on two computers, I NEVER had to use the terminal. Not even once! I really think that's impressive. For me the terminal is no problem at all (I like doing things in the terminal sometimes), but see it from the new Linux introducees for instance. If people want to try Linux for the first time, Manjaro is "thee" distro to advice.
Besides of being user friendly it looks wonderful. The theme looks very slick, the icons are top notch, and... maybe the most important of them all: the eye candy in Manjaro looks very consistent. Not a lot of distro's can say that. I really love Linux, I use a lot of distro's, but on the eyecandy-side lots of distro's still look like an inconsistent mess (just like TrueOS, see the review). On linux sometimes it's not different: inconsistent window borders, mixed use of different sorts of icons, ugly use of color palets.... awful sometimes.
I despise Windows and MacOS (for different and/of particular reasons), but they managed to be consistent in the way it looks. There's no denying that. It should be the same on Linux.
30 • @27 - You couldn't be more right (by davej on 2018-05-07 15:14:56 GMT from United States)
Last week I downloaded and burned a dvd from the Bodhi iso file to use on a 32 bit machine. Yeah, I had to temporarily add a dvd drive to the system in order to boot the OS. The kernel crashed every time on this computer (Compaq deskpro EN 1Ghz Pentium 3 with 512MB). I chose Bodhi because it was said to run well on older computers. Hmm... Didn't work on this Compaq.
31 • Manjaro...Mint...etc (by OstroL on 2018-05-07 15:18:42 GMT from Poland)
Manjaro is not Arch, Mint is not Ubuntu, but...you can use Ubuntu packages in Mint, while you can't use Arch packages in Manjaro. If you mix Arch repos in Manjaro, the poor pacman would go haywire...
32 • Gnome (by Jordan on 2018-05-07 15:20:52 GMT from United States)
Gnome is so much about more than just the desktop/wm. It's deep. Just like KDE you need so many libraries and other supportive software in there that it makes me wonder why it's still included as an alternative in so many distros, let alone as the main wm. I admit to not understanding why it's even still out there in its present form.
Still, if you want this or that game or other app that you loved when KDE or Gnome were smaller/faster, and you're running XFCE etc you'll often be downloading dependencies galore.
33 • Gnome on OpenBSD (by fred on 2018-05-07 15:56:03 GMT from United States)
I use Gnome3 on OpenBSD. It's simple to install, works consistently, and is performant on my $200 thinkpad. It's a beautiful thing.
34 • KDEfied Bodhi Moksha User Here + @6, why not? (by BeGo on 2018-05-07 16:14:31 GMT from Indonesia)
@6,
"Unclear why Ubuntu chooses, again / still, a relatively unpopular DE."
Ubuntu is a "Mother OS", so its presence foster "child OS" that specialised for its intended market.
And of course, Mother should be happy if the child became popular. :P
And Gnome is the most mature DE environment currently, compared to KDE and others.
I prefer my Moksha off course, coupled with several KDE apps. :)
35 • GNOME, Rankings (by c00ter on 2018-05-07 16:18:24 GMT from United States)
Two years ago the GNOME Shell DE's popularity exceeded KDE Plasma's by quite some bit. GNOME was THE desktop, as KDE was struggling to get users to stop bemoaning the loss of KDE4 and accept KDE5. I don't know what went on in development circles, but Plasma got a lot better while GNOME.org's developers seemingly rested on their laurels or--what grates on me personally--started removing popular features while implementing applications like GNOME Recipes. This smacks of Marie Antoinette's reputed statement to the starving French people to "Let them eat cake." But never fear, fellow Penguininstas! In the rapidly changing Linuxworld, what goes around comes around. Again. And again. ;)
Congrats to all of the developers, team leaders, moderators, and especially the nifty Manjaro Community for the new #1 Distrowatch Ranking. Now is not the time to rest. Press on. :D
36 • Gnome 3.. (by Bill S on 2018-05-07 17:41:55 GMT from United States)
I find it interesting that 62% of us here do not use Gnome 3.
And I wonder to myself if Gnome's developers even care.
Ah - nope.
37 • Manjaro-Arch repositories (@31) (by brad on 2018-05-07 17:50:05 GMT from United States)
yaourt works fine for building AUR source code for packages that are usable in Manjaro. It's the only way I can get my Canon PIXMA printer running properly in Manjaro.
Pacman is for pre-built packages only.
38 • gnome shell (by MALsPa on 2018-05-07 18:06:44 GMT from United States)
I'd be careful about jumping to any conclusions based on any poll results here. I enjoy using GNOME Shell ("vanilla," in Debian Stable) as well as other DEs and WMs. I wasn't a big fan of the old GNOME 2, but no big deal, I used that sometimes, too. To me, GNOME Shell is a lot better than the old GNOME, but whatever, opinions are like [you know], everybody has one.
39 • Releases with engineering tools already installed (by John on 2018-05-07 18:19:50 GMT from United States)
Hi Jesse and all,
Great issue as always.
I would like to find 'live' distributions with recent versions of engineering tools like Kicad, LibreCAD and other design tools installed and running. Maybe you could add that to your search terms? Installed and known to work.
I finally got the recent version of Kicad to compile and install on this dist. which is now an older live version of AntiX 16bit. It runs on an SD plugged into a USB2 adapter.
I had to compile it on using a desktop machine. This laptop kept getting half way through and shutting down due to getting too hot!!
I also found the same problem while trying to compile wsjt.
John - Concord, NH
40 • Engineering tools (by John on 2018-05-07 18:25:18 GMT from United States)
I should have said 32 bits!!
41 • GNOME? You see the result within the opinion poll above! (by Gerhard Goetzhaber on 2018-05-07 18:25:23 GMT from Austria)
KDE (which I would mostly use all through my first years with Linux), as described by another poster, never and never gets mature. It's about pretty one year now I've been setting all distributions (mostly turning around between Sparky, Fedora and OpenSUSE) up with Xfce only, and I'm getting excitingly happy with it more and more ...
42 • Save Ubuntu Studib, help musicians and multimedia gents ! (by rey on 2018-05-07 18:54:16 GMT from Canada)
Hi,very disappointed to see Ubuntu Studio struggling to keep afloat.If you do music outside Microsoft and Apple expensive apps you only have UbuntuStudio.This has been my distro of choice for yrs now..
GNOME -
I have stooped using it yrs ago including KDE Plasma- LXDE,XFCE,etc much better choices and less recurrent historical bugs.
43 • KDE Fanboyism (by linuxista on 2018-05-07 20:26:16 GMT from United States)
This thread is a perfect example of the KDE fanboy hate that arises every time Gnome is mentioned. 61% don't use Gnome according to this non-scientific survey, but ... 39% apparently do. Not bad that a single desktop is apparently the preference of almost 40% of users, probably a clear plurality (so maybe developers do know what they're doing). Gnome is the default on most major distros: Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Antergos; or the basis for most of the rest, like Solus, Mint, and Elementary. Lots of users simply prefer Gnome3, and it's not because we're unfamiliar with KDE (quite the contrary), and weeping and gnashing your teeth every time Gnome is mentioned will not change that.
44 • @23 Tim Dowd: (by dragonmouth on 2018-05-07 20:51:17 GMT from United States)
I am aware that the Canonical projects are free and open source. However, many of them are still "proprietary" in the meaning of "belonging to or controlled by". Many of the projects were created just so that Canonical could have a final say in their development. Something similar to what Microsoft did with "J". They wanted their own version of Java. IIRC, Mark Shuttleworth admitted in so many words that Mir was created just so Canonical can control it. Unfortunately for him and Canonical, other Linux developers were perfectly happy collaborating on preexisting projects such as Wayland.
45 • Gnome? Windows 8... (by Kazan on 2018-05-07 21:15:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Gnome-shell is Linux world's Windows 8.
Windows learned from its mistake and moved to Windows 10, while Gnome devs don't learn. Microsoft listens to its users, while Gnome devs want you to listen...
46 • @31 Manjaro is not to Arch what Mint is to Ubuntu (by edked on 2018-05-07 22:49:06 GMT from Canada)
Your analogy is not an apt one; Manjaro relationship to Arch more resembles what Ubuntu is to Debian, not what Mint is to Ubuntu, and you don't see people getting annoyed at not being able to directly install from Debian repos in Ubuntu.
43: a large chunk of this thread is also people dumping on KDE, so you're just showing the usual "everybody's picking on my side" blinkered-perspective of any DE fanboy.
47 • Re: Distro's dropping 32-bits support (by John on 2018-05-08 00:00:01 GMT from Canada)
Well to be honest, Linux on 32 bit systems has a limited life time, approx 20 years left. That is due to the year 2038 issue.
But for old 32 bit, I would recommend either NetBSD and OpenBSD. Both converted over to a 64 bit time_t, this no 2038 Issue. I tried both on very old hardware and both seemed to run fine and I think either can make for a nice alternative.
48 • Gnome? (by seacat on 2018-05-08 00:35:38 GMT from Argentina)
No, MATE.
49 • "I like GNOME but on a different distro" (by malcolm on 2018-05-08 01:32:27 GMT from United States)
I like Gnome, but on a different distro. I swap between many different window managers/desktops on my Arch daily driver, and always come back to Gnome as my top choice. Sure it's had a lot of changes, but I like how straightforward and "modern" it looks. I have a lot of RAM, so the resource usage doesn't bother me... and I haven't experienced any memory leaks that caused any "major" problems. I haven't really ever tried Ubuntu save for one time in a vm, but I didn't use it long enough to become familiar with their gnome stylings and wasn't a fan.
I think vanilla Gnome looks great out of the box, but may not be the best choice for minimal hardware
50 • Gnome 3 workflow (by Nathan on 2018-05-08 02:21:12 GMT from United States)
I don't have any strong opinions regarding Gnome 3 itself, but rather the workflow. It just makes sense to me to CTRL-ALT-DOWN to push a new window onto my task-stack, and then CTRL-ALT-UP to pop, never having more than one window open on a single workspace. I currently use Gnome 3 on my systems that can handle it, and XFCE or Fluxbox on the others, but my workflow on all of them has converged to the Gnome 3 workflow simply because I like it the best. Makes Fluxbox rather silly when I don't use its tabs, though.
51 • gnomell (by Osrana Kurwa on 2018-05-08 03:54:31 GMT from Netherlands)
>"never having more than one window open on a single workspace"
L0L. yeah, because the crippled cell phone interface is the UI ideal. L0L
>CTRL-ALT-DOWN
>CTRL-ALT-UP
The gnome 3 finger salutes... bacause CTRL-ALT-DEL was already taken. L0L
bork bork pork
52 • Trueos (by proxy on 2018-05-08 08:15:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
I was wiling to give trueos a try, just to see if it was any better at handling drives that have ext2/3/4 filesystems. I was able to install but it borked the first partition, which trueos was not being installed on and should not have touched. Lucky for me I had a fairly recent backup of what was on the first partition. This happened on a GPT formated HD. I am back to freebsd on a msdos formatted HD. Didnt work for me to well.
53 • @29 MANJARO (by frisbee on 2018-05-08 09:24:25 GMT from Switzerland)
Mint just lost it's number one ranking on Distrowatch ... and that's rely sad.
Mint is a great distro, but Manjaro is, at this point, a distro ... that needs a lot of work done to achieve the reliability of Mint.
I mean: since I got Manjaro installed on two computers, I NEVER had to use the terminal ... except all of the time ... to get printer or scanner working, to repair the broken icons or themes, to install from AUR ...
I really think that's impressive ... that one can use Mint without the need for Terminal since there is a .deb for virtually everything.
If people want to try Linux for the first time, Manjaro is "thee" distro to ... avoid since it has some issues all of the time. From one day to another, Samba stops working, printer doesn't print, scanner gets suddenly "not found" ...
Besides of being user friendly it looks wonderful ... after one replace or repair missing or hardcoded icons, after some theme editing to fix inconsistencies, after one fixes the nonsense on the taskbar and in the menue ...
The theme looks very slick, the icons are top notch, and... one could put them on just about every other system out there if one really likes them that much.
Maybe the most important of them all: the eye candy in Manjaro looks very consistent ... after the user him-/herself makes the "finishing touch".
Sorry, it just had to be.
I use Manjaro too, beside Mint, Springdale and a couple of others. Manjaro is a very fine distro but it has a VERY, VERY, VERY LONG WAY TO GO to become a replacement for Mint.
54 • GNOME (by Brenton Horne on 2018-05-08 09:44:32 GMT from Australia)
I prefer distros that ship with a vanilla version of GNOME, mostly because it's easier for me to customize it from a vanilla starting point than from a distro-customized starting point. I like to install several extensions (e.g. dash to panel, clock override, system monitor, uptime monitor, etc.), change the theme (e.g. I like the obsidian icon theme, along with the United shell theme and Azure GTK theme) and make it look more like Windows but with some GNOME-only charm. Like this is my present GNOME desktop on openSUSE Tumbleweed: https://imgur.com/bscUqVy.png.
55 • Gnome3 (by Mark on 2018-05-08 11:05:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
Vanilla Gnome is weird to use without customization. I can't believe you still can't minimize windows by default. Like others I find it annoying that the Gnome developers think they know better than me how I should work on my computer. It is possible, however, to do a lot of modifications yourself using Tweak tool and gsettings.
I find Ubuntu's Gnome generally easy and pleasant to use. Ubuntu have always got the important things right, in terms of usability, and I think that's a major reason why it's been so popular.
Centos's Gnome desktop is very good too, but I wouldn't generally run Centos as a desktop OS.
56 • Gnome (by Linux on 2018-05-08 12:00:30 GMT from Portugal)
A suggestion: swap Gdm to Lightdm. No clue why, but there'll be a noticeable change in Gshell performance, for better.
About pools: Mostly misleading. They reflect DW user's preferences, just that. Not Linux wise preferences.
Comments is about the same. The happy ones (on what they use) don't give a 2cent. about the unhappiness of those who don't use what they use :))))))
57 • @50 "never having more than one window open on a single workspace" (by curious on 2018-05-08 12:30:48 GMT from Germany)
Because that *really* makes sense on a large modern widescreen display (at least 16:9 aspect ratio - some are even wider!), especially when actually trying to get any real work done...
Btw, I think it is significant that over 60% do not use Gnome 3. I doubt that the same would be true for the other well-known desktop environments. They probably have less people each who *prefer* them, but more who will at least use them now and then (not surprising, since they don't force the users to reorganize their workflow).
On the point of 32bit support, the bigger, better funded distros seem to support 32bit systems longest: Linux is developer-driven. Things happen if developers want to do them. If the developers are no longer interested in old systems, they will be dropped. This is natural for a free ecosystem. Only developers who are themselves interested in old computers will continue to develop (and test!!!) for these - and perhaps some who have corporate backing and get paid for it. The corporations might still want 32bit software for embedded devices (there was such a discussion in Ubuntu a while ago).
58 • Manjaro (by Harry on 2018-05-08 15:27:22 GMT from United States)
Just downloaded and installed Manjaro XFCE. It got to 93% and stopped. Rebooted and it came up as installed, but no internet. This is my second try of Manjaro, and it still does not compare to Linux Mint.
59 • Manjaro (by vern on 2018-05-08 15:35:09 GMT from United States)
My install of Manjaro XFCE was flawless. Works better than any distro so far. Several major updates since forst install.
60 • proprietary (by Tim Dowd on 2018-05-08 18:13:32 GMT from United States)
@ 44
I think the word you're looking for is custom. Proprietary has a very specific meaning- closed source, send the FBI after you for redistributing, etc.
The distinction matters, because Canonical gets smeared an unbelievable amount in this forum and many others. It almost makes you forget that they provide a quality product free of charge to anyone who wants it, and that a lot of our lives have been measurably improved by them.
None of the software you cited had any evil origin or was an attempt to shut anyone out. They were trying to develop an OS that worked on everything from phones to desktops. So they paid to develop software they thought would accomplish this... and then gave it to everyone for free. When they decided to change business models, they stopped developing the software they didn't need any more. No one was ever given anything but what they thought was the best.
61 • I do not use Gnome (by denpes on 2018-05-08 18:25:13 GMT from Belgium)
Gnome has been dreadful since version3.xx.
I guess all the work on Gnome is under the hood. Probably with the trackers, and making data available to the user by indexing everything from every application. This is very useful for those who like this feature.
However the interface itself is just terrible. It fails with the lack of the option to easy customize the desktop to your needs. You need separate tools for even the most basal modifications. You have gnome-tweak, which is indeed easy, but has very little features. then there is dconf, which has a lot of options, but a terrible interface, and probably too hard to use for the non technical people.
Compare that to for example Mate. Wanna add an app, indicator or plugin to your panel? Well just right-click on that panel. Wanna configure the panel, well, just right click the panel and go to preferences. Easy and logical. And so is the rest of Mate compared to Gnome.
No one at Gnome has been reviewing their interface since april 2011??, because it still sucks, and it's 2018 now.
62 • Arch Then Manjaro... (by brad on 2018-05-08 19:09:12 GMT from United States)
I recommend that everyone that wants to "use" Manjaro.. learn ArchLinux inside & out as much as possible.. then after you learn arch itself, if you have to reinstall for any reason or install on a new computer/laptop, then use Manjaro.. it has "some" hiccups.. but if you know arch first.. you can deal with all issues for the most part.. and Arch Wiki is impressive as they come.. that's my .02 YMMV
I use Arch KDE plasma w/ all lightweight apps.. (like the plasma shell only and the tweakability)
I use Gedit, Thunderbird, Clementine, Hexchat... and more..
enjoy!
63 • LMDE 3 (by Carson on 2018-05-08 20:04:11 GMT from Canada)
I didn't even know there was going to be a LMDE 3, and I never understood why there was a LMDE 2. I thought that since it was rolling there were not version numbers
64 • Gratitude (by GlassofJuice on 2018-05-08 20:09:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
As someone who uses Windows 10 at work and at home, and pays for Office 365 (at home), I am grateful to the Linux community for providing an excellent alternative.
I first tried Slackware 3.0, quickly replaced by 3.1 which I seem to recall was much better. In recent times as Windows 10 moves to becoming SaS and is annoyingly intrusive I have begun using Linux Mint (and Raspbian) as my daily home drivers for personal use.
It is gratifying to see how far the Desktop has come.
The DE wars seem irrelevant to me. I've used Redhat, Debian (six floppy disks seldom installed without error), Suse and early flavours of Ubuntu.
Here in 2018 most major Linux distros just work for us home users with a slightly geeky bent.
It seems that a huge amount of effort from capable developers is wasted in creating vast quantities of alternative distributions.
I wonder if the bazaar or the cathedral will win in the end.
65 • GNOME (by ivan on 2018-05-08 20:18:28 GMT from United States)
I don't use GNOME but I like it quite a bit. Default configuration is better. It improves even more with Dash to Dock and Workspaces to Dock. Even if GNOME was better in its Ubuntu configuration, Ubuntu should still use default, as configurations can break things and confuse new users.
This comment section has really devolved into a debate about whether GNOME is awesome and KDE sucks or the other way around. I like both - GNOME is more easy to use and has marginally better apps, KDE (which I use) is a better desktop that is "simple by default but powerful when needed."
66 • @53 linuxmint (by pengxuin on 2018-05-08 20:33:43 GMT from New Zealand)
"Manjaro is a very fine distro but it has a VERY, VERY, VERY LONG WAY TO GO to become a replacement for Mint."
As a longtime Linux user, I recently tried Mint18.3 Cinnamon in a virtual machine to see if the "hype" about Mint is all its cracked up to be.
Where should I start?
Created a standard Virtual system ( 1proc/4G ram/20G VHdrive) and restarted with live.iso in virtual optical drive.
Live boot up was problematic, retried in compatibility mode and managed (eventually) to get to a slug for a desktop i.e click an icon and wait (and wait some more) oh -look, somethings happening, wait for it..... ok, application has opened -yay.
Ok, lets check the version of the application- 2 or 3 versions old(!) so sometimes not even the not latest release!
Ok lets install onto virtual drive.
Seemed ok until restart - cannot get to desktop in either normal or compatibility mode -oh dear. looks like a great recommendation for Mint.
Should I have to tinker with drivers just to trial the system? I dont think so - sorry, cant recommend Linux Mint.
Do Mint developers actually QA their product?
For the record I have over 30 distros in virtual box systems, running on the latest Virtual box, Debian to Zorin, including Windows. (No tinkering with drivers to install any of them)
On the host machine, clicking an application launcher presents the app window in less than a second, so not hardware, me thinks.
Have yet to had a look at Manjaro, but how could it be worse than my Mint experience?
67 • @60 Tim Dowd: (by dragonmouth on 2018-05-08 21:21:31 GMT from United States)
The word I was looking for and found is 'proprietary', not 'custom'. 'Belonging to or controlled by' is part of the dictionary definition of proprietary and that is exactly what Canonical wants to do with these projects.
As for the rest, that is your interpretation of the facts. If you like Ubuntu, that's your choice. However, AFAIAC, there are too many parallels between Windows and Ubuntu for my taste.
68 • TrueOS review and DW wallpaper (by cykodrone on 2018-05-08 22:26:24 GMT from Canada)
Your TrueOS review was my exact experience (and opinions) as well, spot on.
Thanks for the nifty wallpaper. :)
69 • @58 • Manjaro (by Goe Savage on 2018-05-08 23:06:24 GMT from Canada)
I'm pretty baffled too. Mint is more mature and still seems more reliable and better served than Manjaro. I saw no speed advantage with Manjaro. I wonder if it is just being voted up like PCLinuxOS was.
70 • LMDE 3 (by Jesse on 2018-05-08 23:09:18 GMT from Canada)
@63: "I didn't even know there was going to be a LMDE 3, and I never understood why there was a LMDE 2. I thought that since it was rolling there were not version numbers"
Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 and 3 are not rolling releases. The former is based on Debian 8 Jessie (Stable) and the latter will be based on Debian 9 Stretch (Stable).
71 • Manjaro>Mint (by lupus on 2018-05-09 04:14:25 GMT from Germany)
Well deserved No 1
When some time ago I had to install a Linux on a computer for my father in law I chose Mint and it's been working fine except 2019 I will have to go there and install another Linux beacause of EOL.
The Manjaro Machine that I gave my wife runs flawlessly since 2016. I will not have to change anything hopefully till my EOL. So Manjaro is doing a great job keep it up Philip Müller Some Donation is coming your way!
Lupus
72 • @70 LMDE (by Jyrki on 2018-05-09 04:19:36 GMT from Czech Republic)
I also had an impression LMDE was a rolling release distro, in fact it was a semi-rolling release. Obviously they have changed their mind between LMDE and LMDE2 https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=247865&start=60
Manjaro is fine (I was using it until they had OpenRC community edition, now I use Artix and DragonFlyBSD) but when a colleague of mine asks me if I can install Linux for him/her, I use Mint because it's more suited for someone who just want to use it without the need of deeper Linux knowledge.
As for GNOME3, in many cases it's default DE and some people stick with it just because of this. But Antergos shows my opinion on GNOME3 the best, their install media uses GNOME3, I think it's good just for installing other DE, in my case Xfce. People don't like GNOME3, that's why we have Cinnamon, Budgie and others.
73 • @66 (by frisbee on 2018-05-09 05:14:05 GMT from Switzerland)
Don't mix installing the systems on a real HW with virtual machines. It's not the same.
I have also very many systems in VirtualBox. One way or the other, you'll have to install VirtualBox extensions manually to all of your operating systems, otherwise no network shares, no copy & paste, no usb ... and, they need different settings to.
I usualy install the current extensions from virtualbox.org and not the ones available over the repos. The last ones are usually too old versions or some non-proprietary, "community versions" offering less functions.
The difference on how different systems are "reacting" on VirtualBox is, that some will not even let you install the extensions easy way, on some you'll have to start with installing the Vagrant first (because of dependencies) and some others will get killed by simple, normal installation process, without some workarrounds.
However, to test an operating system properly, you must install it on a real HW and that HW should also not be some old junk that gets Linux just because it's not good enough for the Windows anymore (which is very popular thing to do).
And so: "... sorry, cant recommend Linux Mint." -- is NOT ACCEPTED. ;)
Not because I am an Mint fanboy, I don't really care what operating system it is, as long as it can make my job done, but because I've tried many systems in a long run, over the years and on real HW and VM and there is nothing more reliable than Mint -- in the long run.
74 • Nope, have to agree with #60 (by Garon on 2018-05-09 12:32:12 GMT from United States)
@67
You have misinterpreted the meaning of proprietary. Whatever it is you are trying to say just doesn't make sense the way you are presenting it. #60 had the most logical opinion and used facts to backup his statements. If you don't like Ubuntu or Canonical that's fine. Don't use it or support Canonical in any way. There's nothing wrong with that. Remember it's not nice to bash people all the time. The fire that comes out of a dragon's mouth can burn anyone for no good reason.
75 • @74: (by dragonmouth on 2018-05-09 12:53:49 GMT from United States)
Argue with the dictionary as to the definition of "proprietary".
76 • @ 74 proprietary... (by OstroL on 2018-05-09 12:57:57 GMT from Poland)
adjective: proprietary
1.
1.1 relating to an owner or ownership.
"the company has a proprietary right to the property"
1.2 behaving as if one owned something or someone.
"he looked about him with a proprietary air"
2.
(of a product) marketed under and protected by a registered trade name.
"proprietary brand of a ........"
77 • proprietary software (by Tim Dowd on 2018-05-09 13:36:30 GMT from United States)
@74
"Proprietary Software" has a specific meaning. It implies closed source and non-free licenses. I'm aware that proprietary is an adjective that can be used for many things- but not with software.
The distinction is very important here. You're trying to claim that Canonical is "like Microsoft." That's an unfair charge.
Lets take Unity and Mir as a specific example. Canonical stopped supporting them because they were no longer part of their business model. But they're not gone. A community of people has continued to maintain Unity 7 and not only is this ok, Canonical even puts their work in the Ubuntu repositories. A few months back Ubuntu MATE was considering continuing Mir in some capacity. That would also be perfectly ok.
Could you imagine what Microsoft would do if someone decided that the Windows 98 desktop was the best thing ever and just started working on the source code and redistributing it?
Hence the reason this distinction matters. It's very unfair to accuse someone of abusing their power when they (out of no obligation) made their work available under a free license.
78 • Mint split (by corktowner on 2018-05-09 14:52:53 GMT from United States)
It's true...Mint is dead to me. I am moving towards Kubuntu or Fedora. Both of their recent releases are very impressive.
79 • Ubuntu Studio (by cobb on 2018-05-09 17:10:40 GMT from France)
@42 : I've always found KXStudio to be far more interesting than Ubuntu Studio, which is nothing more than a collection of software pre-installed on top of Ubuntu. KXStudio has the best repos for audio software as well as great default settings.
80 • Linux Mint (by M.Z. on 2018-05-09 17:46:15 GMT from United States)
@63, 72
I've been running LMDE 2 on my laptop since it came out & I'm looking forward to LMDE 3. There are a few minor things it lacks compared to Mint 18.x & I'm hoping that LMDE 3 move back toward the cutting edge. They have had smooth automatic desktop upgrades & newer Mint tools for most of the time it was around, but I guess it got a bit old & was upgraded with less urgency. It's still super stable & easy to use, and I'm hoping it gets a little extra attention.
@79
Funny, Ubuntu has been dead to me since Unity started looking in on users & they certainly aren’t impressing me with their move back to Gnome for their main edition. As for Fedora, I want to like it, but it keeps falling over on its self & eating it's copy of grub. It's also far from appealing as an easy to use desktop, even if delta RPMs are neat. I'll stay with Mint & perhaps try PCLinuxOS again for a good KDE distro.
I think Mint 18 has done some great things with flatpak & has by far the most promising combination of easy of use, great new features & possibilities for cutting edge software. I recognize the allure of a full rolling/cutting edge system that Majaro provides; however, Mint looks like a far better solution to me & combined with a bigger selection of Flatpaks it can provide both a more stable & reliable base as well as cutting edge software.
81 • DW page hit rankings (one more time...) (by brad on 2018-05-09 17:47:43 GMT from United States)
"They (the rankings) simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."
That's all folks - for instance, when crowds of cars slow down to rubberneck a car accident, are people thinking, "Wow, that's great! I should do that!".
When people gather at the scene of a murder, are they telling themselves, "Wow, I wish that was me!"
Nothing to see here folks, move along...
: - )
82 • flatpak (by tim on 2018-05-09 17:54:47 GMT from United States)
@81 flatpak is flatpak. If mint and manjaro both support use of flatpak packaged applications, mint having "a bigger selection of" flatpaks seems like an impossible statement.
83 • Dpkg, and also Korora (by bgstack15 on 2018-05-10 01:05:59 GMT from United States)
Rant about debian:
Why does the upgrade command pause to ask questions? This seems like a show-stopper for a package manager. If I tell a system to upgrade packages, I want it to be DONE when I return, not paused at 8% asking if I'd like to keep my customized sshd_config! I like the rpm-based methodology of dropping in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.rpmnew and letting the admin sort it out!
About Korora:
If firnsy, csmart, ozjd, or any of you other awesome Korora people read this, I want to thank you for facilitating my adoption of GNU/Linux into my personal life! In my original research in late 2015, I settled on Korora as a desktop distribution. It was rpm-based and provided various media configs built-in that made it the ideal choice for me. I have since migrated to upstream Fedora due to the exact customizations for my DE workstations, but I still choose Korora for the regular users' workstations because it makes it so easy to get the applications a non-techie wants.
84 • Poll Results (by win2linconvert on 2018-05-10 01:28:47 GMT from United States)
@24 24 • Poll (by zfoo on 2018-05-07 13:30:47 GMT from United States)
I find it interesting that the poll shows a large amount of the distrowatch visitors do not prefer Gnome but many of the most visited/popular distros are Gnome focused.
Actually, the poll results show that DistroWatch Weekly readers who participated in the poll do not prefer the current iteration of Gnome. I suspect though, that if Mate DE (Gnome 2.x) would have been an option, it would probably have garnered a fair number, possibly a majority, of the votes.
Nice job on the True OS review Jesse.
I also agree with comment 27 that the loss of support for 32bit is a travesty. Or at least a sad turn of events. There are still a lot of perfectly usable 32 bit computers out there with years of life left in them. There are also still a lot of people out there who can't afford to upgrade to a newer computer. Not even an older, newer computer. Besides, dropping support of perfectly good hardware and forcing users to upgrade to the latest & greatest hardware in order to have a secure, modern OS and usable, up to date applications, is so Apple and Goggle. Does the Linux community really want to be tarnished with that kind of tainted image. I hope not. It certainly doesn't seem the best way to attract more people to Linux and grow the user base.
85 • Gnome (by win2linconvert on 2018-05-10 02:19:27 GMT from United States)
@45 45 • Gnome? Windows 8... (by Kazan on 2018-05-07 21:15:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Gnome-shell is Linux world's Windows 8.
Windows learned from its mistake and moved to Windows 10, while Gnome devs don't learn. Microsoft listens to its users, while Gnome devs want you to listen...
Microsoft only listened because a satisfied user base is in their best interest financially. I suspect that the vast majority of Gnome users never contribute to gnome in any way, financially or otherwise, that's probably why Gnome developers don't seem to feel any urgency to placate their user base. That being said, I don't like Gnome 3 at all.
Gnome2... People don't know what a good thing they have until it's gone.
86 • Gripes and comments (by Anthony Pereia on 2018-05-10 13:30:56 GMT from United States)
One person appears to be a troll. I won't answer his comments directly since it's a waste of energy. Let's put it this way, I personally went Micro$illy WinSux free in October of 2003. I never looked back. I never paid for another operating system or anti-virus program. I have and continue to be productive on a daily basis in a professional IT environment in education. I even earn extra cash on the side repairing or performing data recoveries for WinSux users who've hosed their systems. I'm an old-timer who started back in the day before nice and shiny desktop environments. Those who argue about one DE or another are really just wasting their time unless they are giving feedback to the developers who are doing the heavy lifting for the projects.
87 • Gnome (by Voncloft on 2018-05-10 17:25:33 GMT from United States)
Gnome lost me when they switched to unity on Ubuntu - ununiformed windows, the close and max/min buttons were no longer apart of the application. A touch screen os was used as a desktop - I said "F" this and went to kde!
Never looked back.
They tainted themselves with the madness of a mess.
88 • TrueOS (by Dave Postles on 2018-05-10 17:29:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
You can still use the XFCE desktop instead of Lumina.
89 • @87 Re: Gnome (by Rev_Don on 2018-05-10 20:21:42 GMT from United States)
"Those who argue about one DE or another are really just wasting their time unless they are giving feedback to the developers who are doing the heavy lifting for the projects."
The problem with that is the Gnome team doesn't want or appreciate feedback from users unless it is telling them how good of a job they are doing (and I seriously doubt they get much of that). They attack anyone who offers useful suggestions or constructive criticism of their so called vision of what a DE should be. That makes it impossible to actively assist them in making Gnome 3 a viable or useful DE for the masses.
Now compare that to Martin Wimpress and the Mate team concerning the excellent Gnome 2 fork. They not only invite feedback, suggestions, and constructive criticism, they embrace it. While not all suggestions can be utilized, but they do listen to their users and endeavor to make Mate a better DE. That's what's missing at Gnome and why your comment simply isn't practical when the DE developers don't want to listen to what anyone has to say.
90 • @89 Gnome... (by OstroL on 2018-05-10 21:31:33 GMT from Poland)
You are right about Gnome devs trying to tell the users how to use our own computer. Now that Ubuntu had embraced Gnome as their default, the once friendly Ubuntu Forums had gone crazy, jumping on anyone who might say something against Gnome.
91 • Manjaro (by Jordan on 2018-05-10 22:07:56 GMT from United States)
@53 I never had ANY of your listed issues with Manjaro. Flawless from install to regular use every day for months on end.
I now run MX on my main machine out of preference.. and must confess that I found MX and Manjaro on par with one another. XFCE or Mate, both run wonderful on both of those distros.
Mint? Feh.. have fun.
92 • Ease + Stability + Cuting Edge Software (by M.Z. on 2018-05-10 22:53:17 GMT from United States)
@82
If that was directed at me, then I've got to say for me the allure of Mint + flatpak comes back to the stable base + cutting edge apps thing I said above. I mean for a fair portion of users the main allure of a cutting edge rolling distro is the apps right? If you can get all the cutting edge apps you want from an improved version of Mint Software Manager & you get the ease & stability of Mint, then it's a better solution than Manjro from my POV. It's about combining many cutting edge apps with the ease of use that no other distros seem to do as well as Mint. I might well try Manjaro, but I wouldn't bet on something Arch based being anywhere near as reliable as say LMDE & I'd guess that PCLOS was a better & more stable rolling daily driver for my main PC.
I'm talking about something with the ease of Mint being able to eventually match any rolling distro around in terms of cutting edge apps & to do it in an easier & more reliable way. I really like PCLinuxOS & the combo of stability & freshness it provides, but I've had to roll back to old kernels on it more than a couple of times, which is something I can't really say about Mint. Fedora also has lots of fresh software, but is even less stable/reliable than PCLOS in my experience. Given how big Fedora is & how big & competent it's backers at Red Hat are I have my doubts that Majaro car really provide anything better in terms of stability.
If you look on the other hand at how easy flatpaks are in Mint Software Manger & think that there is a decent possibility that not only will the Software Manger improve, but the flatpaks & their selection may as well, then you have a killer feature. I'm already very impressed by what I've seen over the past few months running faltpaks for LibreOffice, GIMP, & various games on Mint. I think with just a little bit more polish & a bigger selection Mint will have the biggest, best, most reliable, & easy to get to selection of open source software anywhere period. Yes they've done it in a more open way that benefits other distros, but that's part of the allure compared to Ubuntu + Snaps. They may share faltpaks across all distros, but everything is easier in Mint right now & only getting better. They seem to be the leader in easy desktop distros right now & have been for a good while now. They can potentially keep & improve on that ease of use while matching anyone in cutting edge software. To me that looks like a hard combination to beat.
93 • @91 (by frisbee on 2018-05-11 07:42:40 GMT from Switzerland)
And you know what? I beleive you! Most distro hoppers are not geting that kind of issues since they are not using their systems long enough.
MX is fine but, also not fully suitable for everybody since it‘s unfinished.
The Devil is in details... If I set up 4 different users / 3 languages + english, how exactly do I setup 3 different languages for those accounts? Yes, I know, the Debian way ... manually add the Location file in the Home folder.
It works but it’s Not Professional, it‘s just not what it‘s supposed to be in 21st century. Mint can do that easily - under XFCE, Mate or Cinnamon.
94 • @27 (by Fantomas on 2018-05-11 10:31:31 GMT from France)
@27
ANTIX RAM USUAGE
antiX is idling after my fresh install on Ancient 32bit machiene using only 60MB of RAM, out of 256 / 800MhZ Pentium Proc. It is snappy and very fast. (Am not using the Internet Browser)
PLOP BOOT M
Use / Plop Boot Manager 5.0.15 / In order to Install your Distro to some ancient PC via USB Stick. Sometimes it works out of the box, somethies you have to select another boot Manager from the Plop List.
Yes you are right about the 32bit Support, but lets take it for what it is. Thanks antiX, for giving us the basic option that fits on to the CD in 2018.
OBSERVATION
Also, something interesting;
In my opinion antiX surpassed Slitaz in productivity, as Slitaz is perhas way smaller,and faster to Install, but uses the same amount of RAM ideling, like antiX.
Thank you
95 • Debian (by Tim Dowd on 2018-05-11 19:33:43 GMT from United States)
@93
Please remember that when you're using Mint, you're using Debian. Mint is able to smoothly finish the rough edges because Ubuntu and Debian have supplied the stable base.
These distros are part of the same family and they grow together, not in competition.
96 • GNOMer (by edcoolio on 2018-05-11 23:49:00 GMT from United States)
I love GNOME... when it is called MATE.
97 • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (by Gibbs Gonzalez on 2018-05-12 05:00:52 GMT from Canada)
Just wiped-out new installation of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS which shipped with Linux kernel version 4.15, which indeed reached EOL - End of Life.
rest remained traces of few iNodes and gb-O|Ob-lick-c.so. I have fews Qs.
1) Will Ubuntu 18.04 LTS support Linux kernel version 4.15 until 2023 for next five years?
2) What is the best course of action for remainder iNodes and gb-O|Ob-lick-c.so?
98 • @95 (by frisbee on 2018-05-12 06:13:11 GMT from Switzerland)
"Please remember that when you're using Mint, you're using Debian. Mint is able to smoothly finish the rough edges because Ubuntu and Debian have supplied the stable base."
Yes, I'm very much aware of the fact that Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian or that Mint (LMDE) is based on Debian.
We have 300+ distros out there and not even a half dozen that one can seriously use -- we need more "finished" and "polished" products like Mint if Linux is to become any kind of competition to Apple & Microsoft.
"Smoothing the rough edges" is what makes one product "professional".
The huge majority of computer users out there are non-techy and all they want is a working system and not a one more thing to take care of or to repair.
"It just works" is the secret. Nobody cares how or why.
Mint did the best job so far in Linux world.
99 • Giving feedback to developers (by Ted H in Minnesota on 2018-05-12 14:10:11 GMT from United States)
@86 "...giving feedback to the developers who are doing the heavy lifting for the projects."
It would be nice if all the developers would post an email address so that we could send them suggestions for features and improvements etc. But it seems that many-to-most of them are afraid of being inundated/swamped with lots and lots of emails, so they don't post an email address to reach them at! And so they lose out on feedback: suggestions to add features and observations on features that don't work well, and which features that don't work - to lose... They could have an email switchboard that reads the emails and then posts them to the appropriate distro area (an idea I have floated before, but with no takers.) Too many distros have a formal proceedure to follow and hoops to jump through (on their terms only) to tell them about anything! I won't do that overly-complicated game, and they lose my input and that of others. Have an email address and a switchboard to re-direct input...
100 • @97 Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Kernel 4.15 (by Rev_Don on 2018-05-12 19:57:49 GMT from United States)
"1) Will Ubuntu 18.04 LTS support Linux kernel version 4.15 until 2023 for next five years?
2) What is the best course of action for remainder iNodes and gb-O|Ob-lick-c.so?"
Wouldn't it make more sense to ask Ubuntu about that in the Ubuntu Forums?
101 • Korora (by Winchester on 2018-05-13 11:43:20 GMT from United States)
I have to say that Korora Linux was a nearly complete ,ready to use "out of the box" distribution.
Also with a very smooth looking themed XFCE , MATE , and Cinnamon. (Although Cinnamon version in Korora did crash every once in a while.)
102 • GNOME (by Ariel on 2018-05-13 13:45:42 GMT from Argentina)
don't let statistic play tricks on you, while, 60% don't use gnome, means quite a lot people still use it, because those 60% is spread on KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, Mate, fluxbox, lxde, Unity, Budgie or whatever DE you say, and I don't think any of them would take that 40% alone within that 60% remaining. Cheers...
103 • @99: (by dragonmouth on 2018-05-13 16:52:41 GMT from United States)
Developers are convinced that they know better what the users want/need. Why should they bother to listen to the users?!
104 • Questionable polling (by M.Z. on 2018-05-13 20:25:23 GMT from United States)
@102
"...while, 60% don't use gnome, means quite a lot people still use it... ...I don't think any of them would take that 40% alone within that 60% remaining..."
It looks like you are making a deeply misleading & misinformed assertion based on one questionable data point. Polls are notoriously unreliable unless you get a really good cross section of people & do it in a very specific way. You seem to be relying on rather questionable polling to make your assertion. The last polls I saw that seemed halfway reliable indicated that XFCE as most popular, followed by KDE. I think there were a couple of decent looking polls in the same year that said that, while the DW poll is one data point that is unlikely to get an accurate sample of users.
One could also easily question how the DW poll was worded & if many of the answers were from multibooters who preferred another DE better than GNOME, while still liking one implementation of of GNOME better than other versions of GNOME. At any rate, GNOME certainly seems to have lost more than a few users since it transitioned to version 3. Perhaps efforts like the one by Ubuntu to make GNOME more palatable to it's users are having an effect though. It will of course take more than one DW poll to say with any certainty what's going on there.
105 • desktop popularity (by Jesse on 2018-05-13 20:47:40 GMT from Canada)
@104: Our very first poll was about desktop environments and it showed KDE and Xfce approximately tied for first place. GNOME was about in the middle of the pack at the time: https://distrowatch.com/polls.php?poll=1
This week's poll wasn't about how popular GNOME was, it was more focused on whether people like customization vs vanilla desktop software. We shouldn't draw any conclusions about any desktop's usage based on this week's poll.
106 • That's better (by M.Z. on 2018-05-13 23:00:32 GMT from United States)
@105
Yes, that's more to the point of what @102 was trying to infer. I think if you add that together with another poll or two from other websites that Linux desktop users are likely to frequent you could say 'yes that probably about where things stand on Linux desktop share'. Of course that would still be a ways off from anything scientific or statistically accurate. It would just a reasonable indicator, a bit like DW hit page rankings are for Distro interest.
Number of Comments: 106
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