 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 766, 4 June 2018 |
Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A little over a week ago the openSUSE project released a new version of the distribution's Leap edition. The launch of openSUSE 15 Leap brings the community run openSUSE project more in line with its commercial counterpart, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and introduces some interesting new features. openSUSE 15 is the subject of our main story this week and we also discuss some of openSUSE's key features, and ask which of them appeal to you, in our Opinion Poll. Plus, in this issue, we talk about file system links, what they are and how they can be useful. In our News section we talk about Fedora 26, MX Linux 14 and Debian 7 all reaching the end of their supported life spans. We then talk about new features coming to KDE Connect, a tool which helps Android devices communicate with desktop Linux systems. The Manjaro team unveiled new features in the Pamac package manager and we provide a summary of those changes below. We also share tips on how to streamline the GNOME desktop to make it lighter, talk about Bodhi's forum gong off-line and ReactOS reaching a new milestone. Plus we share the releases of the past week and provide a list of the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: openSUSE 15
- News: Fedora 26 reaches its end of life, MX Linux 14 and Debian 7 reach end of life, KDE Connect gaining more features, trimming down GNOME, updates to the Pamac package manager, Bodhi closes forums, ReactOS can build itself
- Tips and tricks: An overview of hard and soft links
- Released last week: BlackArch 2018.06.01, Linux Lite 4.0, Q4OS 2.5
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Antergos, AcroLinux, ArchLabs, BlackArch, Bluestar, ExTiX, FreeNAS, Lite, Live Raizo, Q4OS, Runtu, Sparky, SwagArch
- Opinion poll: openSUSE's key features
- DistroWatch.com news: Added search option for OEM installs
- New distributions: Isotop
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE 15
openSUSE is a community run distribution with close ties to SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE). The latest version of the distribution is openSUSE 15 which, oddly enough, follows version 42, which followed version 13. Part of the reason for the unusual change in version numbers is openSUSE 15 is designed to share a lot of its code with SLE 15. In fact, the release announcement mentions that there is now a supported path to migrate from openSUSE 15 to the commercially supported SLE 15, for people who want the official support of an enterprise distribution.
Other key features of this release include improved disk and partition handling in the system installer and three years of security updates. This release also offers transactional updates, a form of atomic updates while I will touch on later.
openSUSE 15 is available in four main editions for 64-bit x86 computers. There is a full sized installation DVD (3.7GB) which does not offer a live desktop environment. There is also a smaller net-install disc (120MB) for people wanting to install over the network. There are live editions for GNOME (909MB) and KDE (859MB) for people who want to test run the distribution before installing it. The GNOME edition defaults to running the desktop in a Wayland session. I tested the live KDE disc to confirm it works and provides a usable desktop environment, with the option to install the distribution. However, most of my time was spent with a copy of the distribution provided by the full installation disc.
opensuse 15 -- The Plasma desktop and application menu
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Installing
Booting from the openSUSE DVD brings up a menu giving us the options of loading an existing operating system from our hard drive, installing openSUSE or upgrading an existing copy of the distribution. openSUSE's installer is a graphical application which begins by showing us the project's license agreement. This initial screen provides drop-down menus for changing the keyboard's layout and selecting our preferred language. The next screen asks us which role the distribution should take with options including running the KDE Plasma desktop, running the GNOME desktop, setting up a server with a command line interface or setting up a transactional server. There is also an option for customizing which software gets installed. This last option brings up a screen where we can select bundles of software to, for instance, run a file server, install the Xfce desktop, run a print server or install 32-bit support.
Partitioning comes next. By default, openSUSE offers to automatically set up a Btrfs file system and swap space. We can either tweak this recommended set of defaults or manually partition our disk. openSUSE offers a lot of partitioning options and is quite flexible. I opted to stay fairly close to the default recommendation and set up a Btrfs volume. The last few screens get us to pick our time zone and enter a username and password for ourselves. Creating a new user account is an optional step.
The last screen of the installer shows us a summary of actions which will be taken and we are given a chance to click on items to change them. For example, we are shown that a firewall will be set up and that the OpenSSH service will be installed, but disabled. Clicking links next to these items lets us toggle them on/off or further customize the operating system. Once we agree to proceed, the installer installs its packages and reboots the computer, automatically booting us into openSUSE 15.
I like openSUSE's installer. It's streamlined and makes setting up the system fairly easy. Many users will probably be able to get through by clicking Next a few times and taking the defaults. That being said, if we want to, the installer gives us a lot of power to customize the system. I feel openSUSE offers a great balance by making things quick and straight forward while providing, under the surface, the ability to tweak everything from installed packages, to partitions to where the boot loader is installed.
Early impressions
openSUSE boots to a graphical login screen where we are presented with four different session options. The default option is to sign into the KDE Plasma desktop running on X.Org. There is also an option to run the Plasma desktop on a Wayland session. I tried the Wayland option, but it failed to load and would simply return me to the login screen. The other two session options are for the TWM and IceWM window managers. These sessions both provide very minimal, light graphical interfaces. The IceWM option is usable as a desktop, with a panel and application menu. It's not pretty, but certainly functional. The TWM option just presents us with an empty screen with a context menu to help us navigate and will not be practical for most people.
I focused on using the default Plasma 5.12 session. The Plasma desktop features a panel at the bottom of the screen that holds our application menu, task switcher and system tray. The application menu has a classic tree-style layout, which I tend to prefer over other application launchers. There are icons on the desktop for opening the file manager. The default theme is fairly neutral in terms of colour and brightness with a minimal icon set.
Hardware
I experimented with openSUSE 15 in a VirtualBox environment and on a desktop computer. When running in VirtualBox, the distribution automatically integrated with the host system and tended to run smoothly. When running on the physical desktop computer, the operating system worked well, recognizing all of my computer's hardware. In either environment, openSUSE used about 420MB of memory. A fresh install of the operating system, with the Plasma desktop, used about 6.5GB of disk space. This amount of disk usage makes openSUSE larger than most other distributions I have used recently.
opensuse 15 -- Running Firefox and LibreOffice
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The performance of openSUSE, at least when signed into the Plasma desktop, was varied. The operating system was unusually slow to start up and shut down. Booting always took over a minute, about twice as long as (for example) Debian. And shutting down almost always took around 15 to 20 seconds, which is unusually slow in my experience. Most of the time the Plasma desktop was responsive, but sometimes it would lag quite a bit. Even with file indexing and most visual effects turned off, the desktop tended to noticeably lag. The poor performance came and went, and I think it was caused by different issues. For example, sometimes I would check the system monitor and find the Snapper daemon (snapperd) was using around 25% of my CPU, though Snapper wasn't being actively used. Other times the Kwin window manager would show unusually high load. These issues tended to resolve themselves on their own after a few minutes. Another, seemingly unrelated issue I ran into was openSUSE would use a lot of my host computer's CPU when running in VirtualBox. Host CPU usage varied a lot, but it ranged anywhere from 25% to 100% even when the openSUSE guest was sitting almost entirely idle. This made running openSUSE much more pleasant on physical hardware than in VirtualBox.
Applications
openSUSE ships with a fairly standard collection of open source applications. While there seems to be a slight preference to use KDE/Qt software with the KDE Plasma desktop, there are applications built with other toolkits. This means we have such KDE-related items as KMail, the Konversation IRC client, and the Akregator feed reader, but we also start with the GNU Image Manipulation Program. openSUSE also ships with the Firefox web browser, the TigerVNC Viewer, LibreOffice and the KOrganizer personal organizer. The K3b disc burning software is available along with the Mutt console e-mail client, the Marble Globe and Dolphin file manager.
There are a few encryption and security key programs, including KGpg and Kleopatra. I also found desktop accessibility tools, the Okular document viewer and a few small games. Java is installed for us too. openSUSE uses systemd for its init implementation and runs on version 4.12 of the Linux kernel.
The distribution has a little something for just about everyone, but its one weak point for me was multimedia support. Dragon Player is the only media player and, by default, it was unable to play any media I threw at it. Unfortunately Dragon Player does not tell us why it cannot play the file (openSUSE does not ship most media codecs), it just silently fails to open media files. We can try to work around this by going into the YaST control panel and adding the Pacman community repository through the software module. I did this and then installed the VLC multimedia player. Afterwards, I still could not play videos through VLC as the player reported it was still missing the necessary codecs. I was able to track down a VLC codecs package and install it, and from then on I could play video and audio files. Other codec bundles may be required if we want to use alternative media players.
Software management
When it comes to managing software, openSUSE gives us several options. There are two graphical software managers, accessible from the application menu. One is labelled Add/Remove Software and launches the YaST package manager. The YaST tool is very flexible, offering several options for searching for items, organizing available packages by category and narrowing down options using filters. From the YaST tool we can also add or remove community repositories with a few clicks. The YaST tool is very capable and offers a lot of options, but it is geared toward administrators. The many tabs and options will probably turn away newer users who just want to browse through desktop applications.
opensuse 15 -- The Discover software manager
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For the more casual user there is the Discover software manager. Discover lets us browse through categories of applications, perform basic searches and see what items are already installed. There is a separate screen where we can check for package updates.
While Discover has the more simple, friendlier interface, I ran into two problems while using it. The first was Discover can sometimes lock up and stop responding, necessitating that we forcibly terminate the software manager. The second issue I noticed was that not all desktop applications which show up in the YaST tool would appear in Discover. Earlier I mentioned installing VLC, a common desktop program. This had to be done from within YaST as searches in Discover returned no results for VLC.
opensuse 15 -- Trying to find VLC
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Also on the topic of software management, when new updates become available, a notification appears letting us know. Clicking the update icon in Plasma's system tray opens a small widget which lists available updates. We can select the ones we want and click a button to download them. The update widget worked well for me and I like that it provides progress updates while it works.
Finally, we have the option of managing software using openSUSE's zypper command line utility. I find zypper to be fast and its syntax fairly easy to remember. Mostly though I focused on using the graphical front-ends for package management.
YaST
Earlier I mentioned YaST and I think it deserves more discussion. YaST is a settings panel and collection of system administration tools. The YaST panel gives us quick access to many user friendly tools which make it straight forward to control most aspects of the underlying operating system. Through YaST we can access modules for managing software packages, updates and repositories. There are other modules for adding printers and scanners to the system. There are more modules for setting up and changing network connections. We can also perform disk partitioning, manage background services, set up network shares and edit the firewall rules. There are also modules for editing user accounts and browsing hardware information.
opensuse 15 -- Managing background services
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I found all the YaST modules worked well and I encountered no problems. When I first opened the firewall module, YaST paused to download some additional packages not included by default. Adding these necessary packages was handled automatically. On the whole, I found YaST's administration modules to be easy to use and they cover such a wide range of functions that I never had to use the command line to adjust an operating system setting.
KDE System Settings
There is a second settings panel for customizing the desktop environment. The KDE System Settings panel is included to help us change the look and feel of the desktop. Unlike other distributions shipping Plasma 5.12, openSUSE has decided to stick with the classic icon grid to navigate Plasma's settings. Other projects are moving to a split-pane, sidebar view, which I find less efficient. I also appreciate that openSUSE's implementation still asks before discarding changes we have made so new settings are not lost when switching between modules. This is something other distributions have not done, to my frustration.
opensuse 15 -- YaST and KDE System Settings
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I found the desktop settings panel was easy to navigate and I had no trouble tweaking the desktop to my preferences. There are a lot of options to navigate, but the panel has a search feature to help us find the right module. The only problem I ran into was when it came to setting up a printer. The KDE panel asked for my sudo password twice, then said my access to browse/add printers was forbidden. I switched over to the YaST panel and used its printer module, which worked for me without any problem.
Snapshots and boot environments
One of the key features which sets openSUSE apart from most other distributions is the use of Btrfs and file system snapshots. Each time we make a change to the operating system via the YaST collection of tools, the system takes a snapshot. We can then see snapshots of our file system in a YaST tool called Snapper. The Snapper tool shows a list of snapshots and tries to indicate which YaST tool triggered the snapshot's creation. This means the snapshots are often listed with a comment like "yast users" or "yast software". We can select a snapshot to see which files were changed between two snapshots. We can even see a line-by-line comparison of any two text files to find out how they were changed. We can then rollback changes, either for an entire snapshot or one specific file.
opensuse 15 -- Using Snapper to compare changes between snapshots
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This ability to automatically take Btrfs snapshots and rollback any changes that caused problems is a fantastic feature. What makes it even more compelling is that when openSUSE boots we can go into the Advanced options menu and select which snapshot we want to boot. This means if an update or configuration change breaks the operating system, we can often fix it by booting an older snapshot and rolling back any problems. As far as I know, openSUSE (and SLE) are the only mainstream Linux distributions which set up snapshots and boot environments by default.
openSUSE 15 has a related feature called transactional updates (sometimes called atomic updates). On openSUSE, when we set up a server which uses transactional updates, the running root file system is not directly affected by software updates. Changes are made in a separate file system snapshot. Then, the next time the system boots, we are automatically transitioned to the new snapshot. If something goes wrong, we can switch back to the previous snapshot. This should insure that the operating system always has a working state and that anything which interrupts the update process will not harm the running system. A news post on the openSUSE blog offers more details on this process. I have not yet had a chance to try transactional updates, but I have used a similar feature on FreeBSD and found it to be useful at protecting the system during upgrades.
Conclusions
openSUSE is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting distributions to watch and use. The YaST administration tools are, in my opinion, second to none. I also like that openSUSE tends to offer modern software, but often with a slightly conservative style. Plasma 5.12 is a cutting edge desktop, but its application menu and settings panel reflect an older style. Personally, this combination of new technology with a conservative look is an approach I like a lot. This week it was nice to use an interface on my desktop computer that looks like it was designed to be run on a desktop and not on a tablet or smart phone.
The move to line openSUSE up with SUSE Linux Enterprise is an interesting one. I assume this was mostly done to make maintaining the two distributions easier. It also has a nice effect of making it possible migrate from openSUSE to the commercially supported SLE. This makes openSUSE's relationship to SLE an even closer parallel to CentOS's relationship to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I suspect businesses will like this as it gives them a chance to test drive openSUSE before investing in SLE support.
I like the work that has gone into the system installer. It is getting better and more streamlined. openSUSE's installer has always been powerful, but now it is also simplified for less experienced users. I think this version is more accessible to new users than past releases have been.
I think it is worth mentioning openSUSE has a rolling release edition, called Tumbleweed. I was using openSUSE's main edition (Leap) this week, but for people who want to stay on the bleeding edge, there is a rolling release option.
I had two main complaints with openSUSE 15. The first was the lack of media support. This is not a new issue, openSUSE has always shied away from providing media codecs that may be restricted by patents or licensing. What I found frustrating was the default media player does not tell the user why it cannot play a file, it simply does nothing. Also, once I had found and enabled the community repository with media support, I still had to manually track down codec packages. Now, to be fair, there are guides and options out there which will simplify adding codecs to openSUSE. Which is great, if the user knows about them. My complaint is not that codecs cannot be easily added to openSUSE, but that the user needs to know why their media player is not working before they can find the available solutions. Right now, the reason for media files failing to play is not clear unless the user is already familiar with openSUSE's policies.
My second issue was with performance. The Plasma desktop was usually responsive, but every once in a while (a couple of times per day), something would go wrong (snapperd would take up too much CPU, files would be indexed, or Kwin would get bogged down) and it would have a big impact on the desktop experience. openSUSE was also oddly slow to boot and shutdown compared to most other distributions.
Something I noticed when reading the project's release announcement is openSUSE claims to be one of the world's most tested distributions: "openSUSE Leap has become the best and most tested Linux distribution." To the project's credit, most of openSUSE does come across as being well tested and stable. I say "most" because there seems to be a divide in quality between the core openSUSE technology and third-party items. For example, the YaST package manager was fast, flexible and stable. The Discover software manager was slower, failed to find an available package and crashed a couple of times. The YaST printer manager worked with no problems while the printer tool in KDE System Settings refused to give me access to add a printer. There are other minor examples, but my point is openSUSE's in-house development seems to be producing excellent software. But, stepping outside that bubble, things are not always as rock solid.
What I think makes openSUSE stand out, and makes it more appealing than most distributions, is the excellent Btrfs support which makes use of snapshots. Being able to snapshot the file system and recover the system (or a specific configuration file) with a few clicks is a fantastic feature. Snapshots make openSUSE nearly bullet proof and, if Btrfs is used properly, they can also make it possible for users to recover files. These features alone make me inclined to recommend openSUSE to most users. There are plenty of other reasons I would recommend openSUSE: three years of support, great administration tools and a friendly installer. As a whole, I think openSUSE 15 is turning out to be one of my favourite releases of 2018.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
openSUSE has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.7/10 from 365 review(s).
Have you used openSUSE? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora 26 reaches its end of life, MX Linux 14 and Debian 7 reach end of life, KDE Connect gaining more features, trimming down GNOME, updates to the Pamac package manager, Bodhi closes forums, ReactOS can build itself
Paul Frields has published an announcement, reminding Fedora users that Fedora 26 reaches the end of its supported life this week. The Fedora project recommends people still running Fedora 26 upgrade to either version 27 or 28 to continue receiving security updates. "After June 1, packages in the Fedora 26 repositories no longer receive any security, bug-fix, or enhancement updates. Furthermore, at that point the community adds no new packages to the F26 collection. The Fedora Project highly recommends you upgrade all systems to Fedora 28 or Fedora 27 before the EOL date." The announcement includes some highlights from the Fedora 26 release.
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The MX Linux team has posted a reminder that MX Linux 14, which was based on Debian 7 Wheezy, has reached the end of its supported life. Debian 7 received approximately five years of security updates, which concluded at the end of May 2018. "Long Term Support for Debian Wheezy ends today. As MX-14 is based on Wheezy, its official support also ends as planned. The MX-14 repositories will remain available indefinitely (and for the near term at mxrepo.com and it.mxrepo.com) but they will soon no longer be officially mirrored elsewhere. We encourage any remaining MX-14 users to update to MX-17 so they can continue receiving regular & security updates." This means MX Linux, and other distributions still based on Debian 7, will no longer receive security updates and bug fixes.
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KDE Connect is a tool which allows an Adroid device to communicate with a Linux desktop computer over the network. Using this connection, information and commands can be easily passed back and forth between the two devices. In a development sprint last week the KDE team worked on improving sending and receiving SMS texts from the desktop side. The team also worked on a plug-in for the GNOME Nautilus file manager to allow it to communicate with Android devices the same way KDE's Dolphin file manager does. "Matthijs improved the functionality of multimedia controls - now it's possible to display the album art from your desktop on your Android devices (both on the lock screen and in the new multimedia notification). Meanwhile, Aleix and Nico started paving the way towards better integration with PulseAudio control, sharing some code between KDE Connect and the Plasma volume control. A less visible but crucial part of what makes KDE Connect so useful is its integration with the system. Albert Vaca worked on a KDE Connect plugin for Nautilus, so people who don't use Plasma and Dolphin can also have a great user experience." More information on the work done during the development sprint can be found in this blog post.
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In other desktop-related news, Evan Klitzke has published a series of steps to make GNOME more streamlined. Klitzke refers to this process as "lobotomizing GNOME", making the case that GNOME Shell has some great features, but the GNOME environment as a whole is overly large and wastes resources. "I think that GNOME Shell is the most attractive and useful window manager for any operating system out there. And GNOME has really good integration with the other parts of my system, which makes sense because it's the default desktop environment on my distro (Fedora) and most others, including Debian and Ubuntu. GNOME is also light-years ahead of everything else in terms of Wayland support. Fedora has been shipping Wayland as the default GNOME display backend since Fedora 25 (2016), and it works incredibly well. The most compelling user-visible feature that has come out of this is GNOME's 'fractional scaling' feature, which is a quantum leap in terms of how content is scaled on high-DPI screens. But I'll be honest: GNOME is huge and kind of bloated, and it's hard to disable various unwanted components. GNOME Shell is amazing, but a lot of the other components of GNOME are simply unwanted. This is what turns a lot of power users away from GNOME, which I think is a shame given all of the other amazing things about GNOME." The rest of the blog post provides instructions for removing optional GNOME features.
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The Manjaro Linux team has introduced a few changes to the distribution's graphical package manager, Pamac. The latest version, Pamac 6.4, introduces the ability to automatically download software updates and initiate searches from the command line. A tweet from the developers reads: "With Pamac v6.4 we added an option to auto download updates (disabled by default). With '--search' added to cli you can start pamac-manager with a search. Also we support Pacman v5.1 now." The tweet includes a screen shot, showing where the automatic download feature can be enabled.
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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union law which addresses the collection, processing and distribution of personal information. The law, which came into affect on May 25th, is designed to protect the personal information of European Union residents. The new law, while generally regarded as being well intendtioned, has also received criticism for its broad definition of personal information and its potential impact on open source and non-profit organizations. The Bodhi Linux project, concerned by potential fines, has shut down the distribution's forums. "From my understanding even though Bodhi and all of its services operate out of the US, Bodhi (and thus myself) could be held legally responsible for the data people in the EU provide to us. I am not willing to risk the financial security of my family over a project that effectively makes no money after operating costs. I do not have the bandwidth or legal background to understand what is needed to make us compliant with these new laws. Our user forums and all associated data with them have been deleted. We have also deleted all comments and e-mails / names associated with them on this WordPress page and disabled comments moving forward to not collect data here either." Bodhi users seeking help can visit the project's Discord and Reddit pages.
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The ReactOS project develops a open source operating system which attempts to be binary compatible with Microsoft Windows, allowing ReactOS users to run Windows programs. The ReactOS project recently updated their build insructions to indicate ReactOS is able to build itself without the aid of another operating system. This is a significant milestone for operating systems as it allows developers to work on a system while running the system. A related tweet reads: "Now, ReactOS can fully build ReactOS, even with the USB stack. Be it a LiveCD or a BootCD!"
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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) |
An overview of hard and soft links
A link is a special kind of file which, in essence, points to another file or location in your computer's file system. Links are often used as short-cuts that make it easier to jump from one directory to another or to more easily access files. At first glance, a link looks like any other file or directory, but links are special and this week I want to give a quick overview on how they work.
There are two main types of links on Linux: symbolic links and regular links. Symbolic links are sometimes referred to as "soft" links while regular links are called "hard" links. I think symbolic links are easier to understand, so let's start with those.
A symbolic link is basically just a file which acts as a short-cut to another part of the file system. A symbolic link is a little like a web browser bookmark or a desktop short-cut; a quick way to get to a frequently accessed resource. It is not a copy of the resource, just a short-cut to it. You may have spotted a symbolic link in your file manager, they stand out because their icons look like regular files, but with an arrow at the bottom of the icon. When working from a command line, you can identify symbolic links by the "l" at the beginning of a line of "ls -l" output:
$ ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jesse jesse 8 May 22 15:46 link.jpg -> view.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 jesse jesse 394847 May 22 15:46 view.jpg
In the above example we see two files, view.jpg and link.jpg. At the beginning of the first line you can see the lower-case L which tells us link.jpg is a symbolic link. At the end of the line we can see where our link (or short-cut) points. The link.jpg link points to a real location, the other file (view.jpg).
The above example is not particularly useful because it is just as easy for us to access view.jpg directly as it is for us to open link.jpg. Where symbolic links come in handy is when they provide us with a short-cut to another location. Here is another example where we have a link in the current directory, called me.jpg, which points to a file in my Pictures folder.
$ ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jesse jesse 8 May 22 15:46 link.jpg -> view.jpg
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jesse jesse 33 May 22 15:51 me.jpg -> /home/jesse/Pictures/portrait.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 jesse jesse 394847 May 22 15:46 view.jpg
Now, without leaving the current directory, I can use the me.jpg link to access the portrait.jpg photo in another directory. Anything I do to the me.jpg image, whether that is opening it, resizing it or copying it, will actually happen to the original portrait.jpg image. The system knows that whenever I reference me.jpg, I really want to open portrait.jpg.
We can create a symbolic link in most file managers by right-clicking and choosing to create a new link to a file or directory. In the Dolphin file manager, for instance, I can right-click in a directory, select Create New from the pop-up menu and then select Basic link to file or directory. I then get to name the link and select the file or folder where I want the link to go.
From the command line a symbolic link can be created using the ln program and passing it the -s parameter. For example, here is how I created the me.jpg short-cut to an image in my Pictures folder:
ln -s /home/jesse/Pictures/portrait.jpg me.jpg
After the -s flag, we just need to specify the original location of the file and the name of the link.
A symbolic link can also point to a directory. This can be helpful if we frequently want to access a folder that is buried deep in the file system. For example, in my home directory I could create a short-cut to where my Apache log files are stored:
ln -s /var/log/apache2 logs
Then, whenever I want to access log files, I don't need to browse from my home folder, up to the top level of the file system and then down into /var/log/apache2. I can just click on the logs short-cut in my home directory and I'm instantly in the directory where I need to be.
When we remove a symbolic link, either in a file manager or from the command line, it only destroys the link, not the original file or folder. This makes deleting symbolic links fairly safe.
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A hard link also makes it possible to quickly access a resource from an alternative location, or under a different name. However, a hard link is a little different. A hard link to a file acts just like the file itself. A hard link makes it possible to have the same file in multiple locations.
This may sound a little strange, but a hard link means we have access to the same file in two (or more) locations. A link is not a separate copy of a file, it is the same file which shows up in two different places.
One important thing which separates hard links from symbolic links is that, with a symbolic link, if the original file is deleted, then the file is gone. The symbolic link will still exist, but it will not point to anything. The link is then broken and trying to access it will result in an error because the original file or directory has been removed. This is different from a hard link. If we were to create a hard link to a file and then delete the original, the file still exists in the link's location.
This might make hard links seems a little confusing, so let's look at some ways we can play with links. I am going to set up a directory containing a file called original containing the words "Hello World!". Then I will create a symbolic link and a hard link to the text file.
echo "Hello World!" > original
ln original hard-link
ln -s original soft-link
At this point we have an original text file, with a hard link and a symbolic link pointing to it. The output of "ls -l" looks like this:
-rw-r--r-- 2 jesse jesse 14 May 22 18:59 hard-link
-rw-r--r-- 2 jesse jesse 14 May 22 18:59 original
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jesse jesse 8 May 22 18:59 soft-link -> original
Note the number just to the left of my username. Here it says "2", which means there are two instances of the original file. Both original and hard-link have the number 2 in their listing because they are each a link or instance of the same file. If I add a new hard link to original, then the count will rise to 3. The file will remain on the disk so long as there are links to it. When the instance counter gets down to 0 then the file is removed.
Right now, with these three files and links, if I print the contents of any of them, I will get the same output: "Hello World!". I could do this by running "cat soft-link" or "cat hard-link", the result will be the same.
Next, let's look at what happens if I remove the original file and then try to access both the soft-link and the hard-link instances:
$ rm original
$ cat soft-link
cat: soft-link: No such file or directory
$ cat hard-link
Hello World!
The symbolic link, soft-link, is now broken because it was just pointing to where the original file was. The hard-link file continues to work because it is the original file, just under a different name.
As you might imagine, this makes hard links very useful because they give us direct, redundant access to a file. However, hard links have some limitations. A hard link must point to a file, we cannot hard link a directory. A soft link can point to a directory or a file, it works either way because it is only a bookmark. Another limitation of a hard link is it cannot point to a file on another device, or partition. This means if I try to make a hard link between a file on my root partition and on my /home partition, the action will fail. Since a hard link is just the same file under a different name, and not a copy, it cannot span across physical devices. For cross-device linking we can use a symbolic link.
Links, hard and soft, are typically used to provide quick access to commonly used resources. They act much like a web bookmark or short-cuts from one part of the file system to another. Hard links are especially useful when we want a file to appear in two different places without taking up additional disk space the way an extra copy would.
* * * * *
More tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Linux Lite 4.0
Jerry Bezencon has announced the release of Linux Lite, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Xfce desktop environment. Some key changes in the newly launched Linux Lite 4.0 include a new backup utility, replacing home directory encryption with full disk encryption and dropping 32-bit support. "The main changes in Linux Lite Series 4.x include a new icon and system theme, Timeshift for system backups, Shotwell to manage and perform basic edits on images, MenuLibre to manage menu entries, new Lite applications including Lite Desktop that manages common icons on the desktop, Lite Sounds to manage system wide sounds, and many of our existing applications have been updated. See below for all the changes: Minimum recommended specs have been raised slightly to more realistic levels (RAM, CPU). There are no more 32-bit ISO releases. If you still require a 32-bit OS due to hardware limitations, series 3.x is supported through to April 2021. Xfce PulseAudio plugin, has been added to the system tray for highly customizable options regarding volume management. Full disk encryption now replaces home encryption in the installer (an Ubuntu implementation). The new boot splash also shows you the password field in GUI for encrypted partitions. Ubuntu no longer offers an opportunity to set a swap partition. A swap file is now automatically created for you which is a maximum of 2GB or 5% of free disk space (an Ubuntu implementation). Compositing is now enabled out-of-the-box." Further details and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 183kB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
BlackArch Linux 2018.06.01
BlackArch Linux is an Arch Linux-based distribution designed for penetration testers and security researchers. The project's latest snapshot, BlackArch 2018.06.01, introduces many new tools, replaces the Midori web browser with Chromium and includes several bug fixes. "Today we released the new BlackArch Linux ISOs and OVA image. This is a high quality release! For details see the ChangeLog below. Here's the ChangeLog: added more than 60 new tools; added config files for i3-wm (BlackArch compatible); network stack tunings (sysctl + tuning.sh); added system/pacman clean-up script (consistency++); switched to terminus font (console, LXDM, WMs, x-terminals); replaced second browser Midori with Chromium; really, a lot of clean-ups and many tweaks!" Further information can be found on the project's blog page.
Q4OS 2.5
Q4OS is a lightweight, Debian-based distribution which features the Trinity desktop (a continuation of the KDE 3 desktop environment). The project's latest release, Q4OS 2.5, introduces several package updates and also makes it possible to install the KDE Plasma 5 desktop alongside Trinity. "A significant update to the Q4OS 2 Scorpion stable LTS is immediately available for download. The new 2.5 series brings an essential change adding KDE Plasma to be an equal option to the Trinity desktop, as Q4OS is now pre-configured for both desktops to coexist alongside each other. System installer configures the system the usual way, but decides afterwards to offer additional installation of the KDE Plasma desktop, if sufficient hardware resources are detected. So a user can login and switch forth and back between lightweight efficient Trinity desktop and more advanced KDE Plasma desktop environment according to his choice. Other changes include PulseAudio with better system integration for easier audio management, Q4OS installer improvements, Firefox 60 and LibreOffice 6 installers, important security and bug fixes as well as cumulative upgrade covering all changes since the previous Q4OS 2 Scorpion stable release." Further details can be found on the project's blog.
4MLinux 25.0
4MLinux is a small, 32-bit Linux distribution focusing on four capabilities: maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and mystery (providing several small Linux games). The project's latest release, 4MLinux 25.0, smooths out handling CA certificates, offers an option to disable the login screen and uses mpv as the default media player. The release announcement reads: "As always, a new major release comes with some new features: better handling of CA certificates (no need to accept them manually), full support for Zstandard data compression algorithm (4MLinux Backup Scripts), login screen can now be disabled (it's a response to user requests), GIMP 2.10 with full support for scanners and digital cameras, Python3 with Meson and Ninja (this is now, de facto, the main build system in GNOME/GTK+ ecosystem). The default media player in 4MLinux is now mpv (with GNOME MPV). Other players (MPlayer, SMPlayer, Xine and VLC) are available as downloadable extensions. Good news for modern computers: all these applications are now able to make use of hardware video acceleration (via VA-API and VDPAU). Good news for old computers: MPlayer, Xine and VLC can play videos without X Window System (use Midnight Commander to select files to play)."
* * * * *
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: 878
- Total data uploaded: 19.9TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
openSUSE's key features
In this week's review of openSUSE we touched on several of the distribution's key features. Some of these includes three years of security updates, the ability to migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE), Btrfs snapshots, transactional updates and the YaST control centre. This week we would like to find out which of openSUSE's key features most appeals to you. If it is not listed here, let us know what feature you find most useful in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on OEMs bundling their own distributions with new computers in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Favourite feature of openSUSE
| 3 years of support: | 108 (12%) |
| Migration path to SLE: | 14 (2%) |
| Btrfs snapshots/boot environments: | 168 (18%) |
| Transactional updates: | 21 (2%) |
| YaST control centre: | 232 (25%) |
| Choice of fixed or rolling release: | 136 (15%) |
| Flexible installer: | 38 (4%) |
| Another feature not listed here: | 24 (3%) |
| None of the above: | 183 (20%) |
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|
| DistroWatch.com News |
Added search option for OEM installs
Based on requests we have received, a new option has been added to our Search page. It is now possible to search for distributions which offer an OEM install option. The OEM option can be selected under the Install method field.
Right now the list of distributions in our database which support OEM style installs is fairly short, mostly limited to Ubuntu and its community editions. If you are aware of projects not on our OEM list, please let us know.
* * * * *
Distributions added to waiting list
- Isotop. Isotop is a customized version of OpenBSD which is designed to simplify setting up OpenBSD as a desktop operating system. French and English translations are available.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 11 June 2018. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Toutou Linux
Toutou Linux was an open-source Linux operating system based on the tiny, yet powerful and popular Puppy Linux distribution, specially designed to be compatible with old hardware. The system uses the lightweight Openbox as its default window manager and LXPanel as its main taskbar. It features various customisation options. Toutou Linux uses OCI, a custom-built application that automates the installation, a first-boot assistant for configuring several aspects of the desktop, and Opera as the default web browser. Toutou Linux was distributed as a single live CD image supporting the 32-bit architecture only. Its default language was French, but other languages can be added.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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