 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 771, 9 July 2018 |
Welcome to this year's 28th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Many of the world's Linux distributions are based on Ubuntu. Following the release of Ubuntu long term support (LTS) releases there is always a cascade of new releases which use the stable base and large collection of software in Ubuntu's repositories to form custom distributions and new spins. This week we begin with a look at Linux Lite, a distribution which tries to balance user friendliness with low resource usage and a collection of convenient software. In our News section we discuss SUSE being acquired by EQT Partners and openSUSE's response to this change in its primary sponsor. We also talk about Ubuntu 17.10 reaching the end of its supported life along with one of Gentoo's source mirrors being attacked and the team's response to the incident. Plus we link to upgrade instructions for people who want to update older copies of Linux Mint. In our Questions and Answers column we share how to check your computer's CPU for known flaws and change which operating system gets launched at boot time on multi-boot systems. Our Opinion Poll this week asks how our readers are responding to the growing number of CPU-related bugs. We are happy to share the releases of the past week and provide a list of torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are pleased to welcome Secure-K OS, a live desktop distribution for secure and anonymous on-line communication, to our database. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Linux Lite 4.0
- News: SUSE being acquired by EQT, upgrade instructions for Mint, Gentoo responds to mirror breach, Ubuntu 17.10 reaching end of life
- Questions and answers: Checking for CPU bugs and configuring GRUB
- Released last week: SolydXK 201807, Pinguy OS 18.04, CentOS 6.10
- Torrent corner: Antergos, AryaLinux, CentOS, DuZeru, GuixSD, NST, Pardus, SolydXK
- Opinion poll: Reacting to CPU security flaws
- New additions: Secure-K OS
- New distributions: Septor Linux
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Lite 4.0
Linux Lite is a desktop distribution built from Ubuntu packages that features the Xfce desktop environment and some custom tools. The project's latest version is Linux Lite 4.0 which is based on Ubuntu 18.04, a long term support release offering five years of security updates.
There are a number of key changes in Lite 4.0, several of them inherited from its parent distribution. Home directory encryption has been replaced with full disk encryption and 32-bit x86 support has been dropped in this release. The LXTerminal virtual terminal has been replaced with Xfce Terminal and the Systemback backup software has been replaced by Timeshift. I will talk more about Timeshift later. The Lite help manual has been updated and users can now manage session sounds through a new utility called Lite Sounds. In addition, Lite branded utilities now show up in the distribution's control panel with a black background to separate them from Xfce settings modules.
Lite 4.0 is available for 64-bit x86 machines and its ISO file is 1.3GB in size. Booting from install media brings up a menu offering to start a live desktop session, start the desktop with safe settings or perform a media check on the DVD. Loading the desktop session brings up Xfce with its panel placed at the bottom of the screen. The panel holds the application menu, a few quick-launch icons and the system tray. Icons on the desktop launch the project's system installer, open a local copy of the help manual and launch a file manager.
Shortly after the desktop loads, a welcome screen appears. The welcome screen provides links to documentation, the support forum and some useful utilities. I will refer to some of the welcome screen's features later as they are more useful after we install the distribution. The live desktop seemed fairly standard, though one little thing which did stand out was that my mouse pointer was displayed backward, pointing from left-to-right instead of the typical right-to-left.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- The Whisker application menu
(full image size: 138kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Installing
Linux Lite uses the Ubiquity system installer, which it inherits from Ubuntu. Setting up the operating system is quite straight forward. We confirm our preferred language, get a chance to change our keyboard's layout and have the option of installing multimedia support. Lite's installer offers to automatically set up partitions for us, or we can use its very straight forward, built-in partition manager. Ubiquity supports setting up Btrfs, JFS, XFS and ext2/3/4 file systems and I decided to set up Lite on ext4. The last two screens of the installer ask us to select a time zone from a map and then create a username and password for ourselves. The whole process is quite fast and about as simple as installing an operating system gets.
Early impressions
A fresh copy of Lite boots to a graphical login screen. Signing in brings up the Xfce desktop again. The desktop is responsive and uses a mostly dark theme, with detailed, colourful icons. I say the theme is "mostly" dark because panels and window borders are dark, but the application menu, control panel background and application menu bars are bright. I also noticed that after installing Lite, the mouse pointer reversed its look and resumed its usual right-to-left orientation.
Welcome screen
When we first sign in, the welcome window greets us. The welcome screen provides us with links to on-line resources and support, but the more interesting buttons in the welcome window launch tasks we should perform immediately after setting up the operating system. There are buttons for opening an update manager, managing hardware drivers, creating a restore point and installing support for additional languages. Clicking one of these buttons launches the corresponding tool.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- The welcome screen
(full image size: 154kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The update manager is a fairly simple program that lists available updates and downloads them for us. A simple progress bar is shown while new packages are downloaded and applied. The driver manager and language pack tools were similarly straight forward, though I did not give them a proper test as I already had all the language support and drivers I needed.
Timeshift
The restore point option intrigued me and I found clicking its button opens the Timeshift application. Timeshift begins by walking us through a configuration wizard that offers to create either rsync or Btrfs snapshots. I didn't set up Lite on a Btrfs volume so that option should probably have been disabled in the wizard. I went with the other option, making a snapshot with rsync. We can then schedule when snapshots will be taken and decide how often future snapshots will be created. Unfortunately, Timeshift appears to only be able to save snapshots on the local disk, not in a remote location. This means if something harms our root file system, the snapshot may be destroyed too.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- Creating restore point with Timeshift
(full image size: 122kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Timeshift jobs run periodically in the background and can automatically clear out old snapshots. This is great, though I occasionally wished it were possible to tell Timeshift to run with a reduced priority as having it run in the background can degrade the system's overall performance and the rsync snapshot jobs take around twenty minutes to complete on my machine.
I don't want to dive too deeply into the Timeshift topic, but since many users may see it as a way to rescue their systems in case something goes wrong, I want to share a few more thoughts on it. The first is that Timeshift's rsync snapshots do not make it possible to simply reboot the operating system and roll back to a previous snapshot, the way openSUSE's boot environments work. Timeshift can provide us with a good copy of our operating system, but restoring a snapshot after a serious system failure requires a bit of manual work. If the operating system is damaged enough that it cannot boot, we need to either get into recovery mode (more notes on that later) or use a live CD to boot the computer.
Assuming we can boot into a live CD then we can mount the root file system and locate our snapshot in the /timeshift directory, using it to copy programs and configuration files where they need to go. This is an awkward manual process, but does give us a shot at successful recovery. I tested this process, after wiping out about 10% of my /usr/bin directory, and managed to make a full recovery using the snapshot. While Btrfs snapshots are relatively light, the rsync snapshots at least double the space the operating system uses on disk and users should plan accordingly, making their root file system double or triple the usual size.
One last note on Timeshift: when running the Timeshift application, which has a nice, simple interface and a friendly configuration wizard, clicking the Delete button immediate removes the selected snapshot without confirmation. So be careful when navigating the Timeshift interface.
Hardware
When running in a VirtualBox environment, Lite worked very well. The operating system automatically integrated with the host operating system and could use my full screen resolution. When I tried running Lite on a desktop computer, the system booted quickly, performed tasks smoothly and properly utilized all my hardware. The Xfce desktop was unusually responsive and I encountered no issues with performance or stability.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- A local copy of the help manual
(full image size: 246kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
When logged into Xfce, Lite required about 300MB of RAM to run. A fresh install took about 5GB of disk space, but this amount doubled as soon as I created a Timeshift snapshot. In hindsight, I probably should have used Btrfs as my root file system as it makes snapshots that require very little space and are created almost instantly.
Applications
Lite ships with a fairly small collection of desktop applications. Users are given Firefox, the Thunderbird e-mail client and LibreOffice. There is a PDF viewer, the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the Shotwell image viewer. The Deja Dup backup utility is included for making backups of users' files. Network Manager is included to help people connect to the Internet. Lite ships with the VLC media player, which is capable of playing virtually any multimedia file. I did not find any dedicated audio player installed by default, but we can install all sorts of additional software from Ubuntu's massive software repositories (more on software management in a moment). In the background we find Lite runs the systemd init software and version 4.15 of the Linux kernel.
At one point, when I was testing the Timeshift recovery options, I rebooted the computer and, from GRUB's menu, selected the advanced boot options. I noticed that some of Lite's boot options included launching the system using the Upstart init software. The Upstart boot entries did not work and quickly caused the boot process to hang. Although Upstart has been replaced by systemd, some relics from the GRUB configuration files have lingered - ghosts of init software past.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- Creating backups and adjusting the window manager
(full image size: 124kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Also on the subject of advanced boot options, I tried loading Lite's recovery mode. This worked, to a point, but I was unable to access a recovery shell. The recovery prompt asks for the root password and, since we do not have a root password (Lite uses sudo for administrative tasks) I was unable to get root access to repair the system. This is where having a live CD on hand helps a lot.
Settings and Lite tools
Lite includes many configuration tools to adjust the appearance of the desktop, tweak window manager settings, set up printers and create user accounts. There are also tools for cleaning up files to free disk space, upgrade to a new version of Lite and toggle desktop icons on/off. These tools can be accessed from the application menu or from the control centre. As mentioned previously, the icons for Lite's custom tools have black backgrounds and this helps separate the Xfce desktop settings from the lower level operating system controls. All in all, the settings modules worked well for me and I encountered no problems.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- The settings panel
(full image size: 161kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Software management
Lite ships with two graphical package managers. The first is Synaptic (listed in the application menu as Add/Remove Software). Synaptic is a powerful, flexible package manager which can perform installs, removals, upgrades and even configure repositories. It's a great, all-in-one package manager. If we want to deal exclusively with desktop software and not wade through the tens of thousands of packages Synaptic can access, then we can run a utility called Lite Software. Lite Software shows us a limited list of popular desktop software we might want to install or remove. It is a short list, with just a few items per category, but makes installing new desktop items very straight forward. We can highlight the item (or items) we want and click a button to install them. The process went smoothly for me each time I used Lite Software.
Linux Lite 4.0 -- Installing desktop applications
(full image size: 181kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I did not spot a more feature rich software manager such as GNOME Software or mintInstall, at least not in the default installation. Behind the scenes we can use the APT suite of command line package managers if we want to work from a terminal.
Conclusions
I think some people might, upon glancing at Linux Lite's description, pass it off as just another one of the many Ubuntu derivatives. After all, one may wonder what separates Linux Lite from another flavour of Ubuntu running the Xfce desktop, such as Xubuntu.
While Lite does share a lot in common with other members of the Ubuntu family, the project has a lot of little features and special tweaks which left me impressed this week. The distribution includes a very nice and detailed help manual that is easy to navigate and provides a lot of useful information. The manual not only explains how we can do things, but also offers some alternatives and trouble-shooting tips, which I think new users will appreciate. Lite is also very easy to install, it can be set up by basically clicking "Next" a bunch of times in the Ubiquity installer.
While I ran into a few limitations while using Timeshift, I think the idea behind including it is good. I would like to see Timeshift run at a lower priority and offer a way to save snapshots on a remote computer, but otherwise the technology is off to a good start. I'd love to see Lite take Timeshift a step further and integrate it with boot environments.
Mostly though what impressed me with Lite was a combination of the performance and the visual style. Lite is one of the faster, smoother, more responsive distributions I have used this year. I also liked that there was a minimal amount of visual effects, but a maximum amount of detailed, colourful icons, high contrast buttons and fonts I could read without a trip to the settings panel. I get frustrated with minimal, stick-figure icons and buttons that are indistinguishable from labels. Lite looks nice. Not in a flashy way, but in a clear, easy to read, pleasant to navigate way.
As an example of Lite's visual style, I have used Xfce a lot recently. I run it on one computer or another almost every day. And, on an intellectual level, I knew it was possible to adjust the size and dimensions of the Xfce Whisker application menu. But I'd never thought to do it because on every other distribution I have used the menu's resize button is so muted and low-contrast I'd never noticed it before. But on Lite, the resize button stands out and I clicked and dragged the menu to the size I wanted without even thinking about it. This is a very little feature, but one I had never noticed on other distributions, even though it was always there. In my opinion, all of Lite is like that: offering well defined controls that are clear about what they do.
Lite's value, in my opinion, is not in any one big feature or unique offering, but in the way Lite polishes many little things which make it so much more pleasant to use day-to-day than most other distributions. Lite is an operating system I can use consistently without thinking about it, without distractions, without hiccups and without searching for features I suspect are there, but are tucked away. I've used some powerful distributions this year, and some with really neat, unique features; but probably not any that have offered such a smooth experience as I've had this week. That's why the next friend who asks me to come over and fix their messed up laptop is going to get a fresh copy of Linux Lite.
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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
Linux Lite has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.1/10 from 122 review(s).
Have you used Linux Lite? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
SUSE being acquired by EQT, upgrade instructions for Mint, Gentoo responds to mirror breach, Ubuntu 17.10 reaching end of life
Richard Brown, openSUSE's Chairman, sent out an e-mail on July 2 letting people know that openSUSE's main sponsor, SUSE, is being acquired by an organization called EQT Partners. While the impact this purchase will have on SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE is unknown, Brown reports the openSUSE project plans to continue as before. "Nils Brauckmann (CEO of SUSE) personally called me this morning to assure me this news will have no negative impacts on openSUSE. This will be the third acquisition of SUSE since the creation of openSUSE, the second under the leadership of Nils and his team. Just as happened in that case, SUSE will be making no changes in its relationship between the company and the openSUSE Project. SUSE remains committed to supporting the openSUSE community, who play a key role in helping SUSEs success, which is expected to continue under their new partnership with EQT."
* * * * *
The Linux Mint team recently released Linux Mint 19, a new long term support release based on Ubuntu 18.04. Existing Mint users can now upgrade to the new version without performing a fresh install. The Mint team published upgrade instructions which walk the user through backing up their existing system, testing the new release and upgrading to version 19 from the command line. The guide points out that Mint 17 will continue to receive support for another year and Mint 18 will be supported through to 2021, giving users plenty of time to prepare and test their upgrade path.
* * * * *
A mirror of the Gentoo distribution's source code, which is hosted on GitHub, was compromised a little over a week ago. While the master copies of information were stored in a safe location on Gentoo servers, an attacker managed to access the GitHub account and alter information. The Gentoo team has published a wiki page which discusses the incident, how it was handled, and what was affected by the attack. "An unknown entity gained control of an admin account for the Gentoo GitHub Organization and removed all access to the organization (and its repositories) from Gentoo developers. They then proceeded to make various changes to content. Gentoo Developers & Infrastructure escalated to GitHub support and the Gentoo Organization was frozen by GitHub staff. Gentoo has regained control of the Gentoo GitHub Organization and has reverted the bad commits and defaced content." The page also includes an analysis of what the team feels was handled well and what could have been handled better in order to improve procedures for future incidents.
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Adam Conrad has sent out an e-mail reminding Ubuntu users that Ubuntu 17.10, and its community editions, will reach the end of their support cycle on July 19, 2018. After that date 17.10 will no longer receive security fixes. "Ubuntu announced its 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) release almost 9 months ago, on October 19, 2017. As a non-LTS release, 17.10 has a 9-month support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 17.10 will reach end of life on Thursday, July 19th. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 17.10."
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Checking for CPU bugs and configuring GRUB
Checking-for-bugs asks: With all the CPU bugs being discovered this year is there any way to tell which ones affect me?
DistroWatch answers: One way, which will work on most distribution and computer combinations is to run the following command:
grep "^bugs" /proc/cpuinfo
The above command will give a short-hand list of any known bugs found on your CPU(s). As far as I know, the command does not work on ARM-powered machines and older kernels, like the one shipped with CentOS 7.
Finding out whether your kernel has been patched to handle the flaws is another matter. Usually this information can be found via your distribution's security mailing list (if it has one) or its parent distro's mailing list. You can also check our Security Notices page to learn when major projects publish updates.
* * * * *
Adjusting-GRUB asks: I have a triple boot setup with Xubuntu 16.04, Xubuntu 18.04, and Lubuntu 18.04. They were installed in the order listed, so Lubuntu is first in the list to boot automatically. I would like to change the default to one of the other installed choices.
A search of the web on this subject is quite frustrating since the most common results are based on Windows/Linux dual boot configurations. (I've read pro and con information about third-party tools, like GRUB Customizer, and would like to avoid installing something that may do more harm than good.) So, I'd like to know if it can be done without installing a third-party tool.
DistroWatch answers: The good news is you do not need to install a third-party tool. You will need to edit a line in GRUB's configuration file and run an update command. You should be able to use any text editor to change GRUB's configuration.
This is a fairly straight forward fix. Sign into whichever distro is responsible for managing GRUB (probably the most recent distro you installed) and edit its GRUB configuration file (/etc/default/grub should be its path in Lubuntu and Xubuntu) to change the default entry. You will be looking for a line near the top of the GRUB configuration file which reads
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
Change the zero to the menu entry index you want to boot. The first boot menu item is zero, the second is one, the third will be two, etc. Save the file with the new default and then run
sudo update-grub
The next time your system boots, the alternative boot option should be used by default. If you get stuck, check out the GRUB2 wiki page for Ubuntu-based distributions.
Lastly, before doing any work to edit GRUB's settings, make sure you have backups of your data. It's not likely things will go wrong, but there is always a chance. I also recommend having a copy of the Super Grub2 Disk on hand. This utility runs from a CD or USB drive and can boot operating systems from your hard drive if your GRUB configuration is broken.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
SolydXK 201807
SolydXK is a Debian-based desktop distribution which is available in KDE Plasma and Xfce editions. The project's latest release, SolydXK 201807, features a number of security enhancements, including the activation of AppArmor in the default configuration. The distribution's release announcement reads: "The new 201807 ISOs were released. These are some of the highlights: Firefox's default configuration has been further restricted and the provided plugins Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere and uBlock Origin help to improve your privacy. These restrictions were also implemented for Thunderbird. AppArmor is now installed by default. This will improve security by binding access control attributes to programs rather than to users. All SolydXK applications now use pkexec to get elevated permissions. Many new features and bugs were solved in our SolydXK applications."
Network Security Toolkit 28-10234
Network Security Toolkit (NST) is a bootable live disc based on the Fedora distribution. The toolkit was designed to provide easy access to best-of-breed open source network security applications. The project has released NST 28-10234 which is based on Fedora 28. The new version includes Bluetooth improvements and proactive security testing and scanning tools. "Here are some of the highlights and new tools added for this release: Sguil - The Analyst Console for Network Security Monitoring has been integrated into NST for access and display of realtime IDS events and raw packet captures. A new NST WUI page for Snort IDS Management is shown below with Sguil access. The new web-based Sguil RealTime Console is also depicted below using Proofpoint ET (Emerging Threats) Pro Rulesets. A new Bluetooth Scan page was added to the NST WUI to help find nearby discoverable Bluetooth and BLE devices. You can use the Bluetooth Scan page under the Network|Wireless and Security|Active Scanners menus. The high-speed network authentication cracking tool Ncrack is used to help companies secure their networks by proactively testing all their hosts and networking devices for poor passwords is now part of the NST distribution." More information on this release can be found on the project's home page.
Pinguy OS 18.04
Pinguy OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution which offers a customized GNOME desktop environment intended to be easy to use for new Linux users. The project's latest release, Pinguy OS is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and includes GNOME 3.28. Support for 32-bit computer has been dropped from this release. The project's release announcement lists several new changes: "Tweaked Gnome 3.28.2. OpenGL version string: 3.1. Mesa 18.1.1. File Manager: Nemo 3.8.3. Kernel 4.15.0-20. Downgraded the DRI driver for Xorg to DRI2, this fixes RetroArch. Included Winepak's repo so it will be easy to install Window games. Enabled exFAT support. Removed Docky and replaced it with Simple Dock & Places Status Indicator. Audio levels can go past 100% by default. Fixed Shutter but will only works under Xorg. Some of the default Gnome apps have been replaced with MATE versions. I really did not like the new Gedit so replaced it with Pluma. If you use the Gedit command it will open Pluma. That is so all the guides on the forum and other sites that use Gedit in their guides will work fine." Pinguy OS is available in Full and Mini editions.
Pinguy OS 18.04 -- Running GNOME Shell
(full image size: 998kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
CentOS 6.10
CentOS is a Linux distribution based on the source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The project's latest version, CentOS 6.10, offers an update to the project's 6.x series and includes mostly bug fixes along with a few minor upgrades. "There are various changes in this release, compared with the past CentOS Linux 6 releases, and we highly recommend everyone study the upstream Release Notes as well as the upstream Technical Notes about the changes and how they might impact your installation. All updates since the upstream 6.10 release are also on the CentOS mirrors as zero day updates. When installing CentOS-6.10 (or any other version) from any of our media, you should always run 'yum update' after the install to apply these." More information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
AryaLinux 1.0
Chandrakant Singh has announced the release of AryaLinux 1.0, a source-based distribution built using the Linux From Scratch book, but with a Python-based package management utility, graphical installation tool and a customised GNOME 3.28 desktop: "We are proud to present AryaLinux 1.0 'Aranya'. This is the first release of our built-from-scratch GNOME spin and also the first release using a new versioning system. This release features the GNOME 3.28 desktop environment, a new alps package installer scripts rewritten from scratch to be more flexible with dependencies, the latest stable kernel and a bunch of package upgrades. Also going forward, the default desktop environment that will be shipped with AryaLinux will be GNOME 3. We spent the last year and half in prefecting the build scripts that build a GNOME 3 desktop with ease and perfection. We have also made a lot of changes to the builder scripts so that more flexible options are presented before the build process starts and packages that are a part of the base system have also been updated." Visit the project's home page to read the brief release announcement and see also the release notes for further details.
Guix System Distribution 0.15.0
Guix System Distribution (GuixSD) is a Linux-based, stateless operating system that is built around the GNU Guix package manager. The project's latest release, version 0.15.0, includes improvements to the Guix package manager and expands support for ARM-powered devices, though ARM ports will need to be built by the user; installation images for ARM are not provided. "The unloved guix pull command, which allows users to upgrade Guix and its package collection, has been overhauled and we hope you will like it. We'll discuss these enhancements in another post soon but suffice to say that the new guix pull now supports rollbacks (just like guix package) and that the new --list-generations option allows you to visualize past upgrades. It's also faster, not as fast as we'd like though, so we plan to optimize it further in the near future. guix pack can now produce relocatable binaries. With -f squashfs it can now produce images stored as SquashFS file systems. These images can then be executed by Singularity, a “container engine” deployed on some high-performance computing clusters. GuixSD now runs on ARMv7 and AArch64 boxes! We do not provide an installation image though because the details depend on the board you're targeting, so you'll have to build the image yourself following the instructions." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 927
- Total data uploaded: 20.5TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Reacting to CPU security flaws
This year we have heard about a number of security flaws in popular CPU chips. Earlier this year the Meltdown and Spectre CPU issues were widely publicized and, more recently, projects like OpenBSD have been patching against potential CPU flaws.
We would like to know how you are reacting to these CPU bugs and the security concerns they raise. Are you patching with new kernel updates & firmware as they become available, are you switching to using a different CPU brand or architecture, are you unconcerned by potential CPU attacks? Let us know your thoughts on CPU security in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on the MintBox Mini 2 FreeBSD in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Reacting to CPU security flaws
| I am switching to a different CPU model/architecture: | 57 (4%) |
| I am applying firmware/kernel updates: | 743 (49%) |
| I am disabling attack vectors (apps/services): | 15 (1%) |
| All of the above: | 80 (5%) |
| Some of the above: | 267 (18%) |
| I am unconcerned about CPU attacks: | 312 (21%) |
| Other: | 37 (2%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New projects added to database
Secure-K OS
Secure-K OS is a Debian-based distribution which runs from a live USB. The distribution is designed to provide secure communication and anonymous web browsing using applications such as the Tox messaging client and Tor Web Browser. Secure-K features the GNOME Shell desktop environment and is developed by the Mon-K organization.
Secure-K OS 18.5 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 572kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
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Distributions added to waiting list
- Septor Linux. Septor Linux is a Debian-based distribution which features the KDE Plasma desktop and tools for browsing the web anonymously.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 16 July 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 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Armbian
Armbian is a Linux distribution designed for ARM development boards. It is usually based on one of the stable or development versions of Debian or Ubuntu and it supports a wide variety of popular ARM-based devices, including Banana Pi, Cubieboard, Olimex, Orange Pi, Odroid, Pine64 and others. Armbian includes a menu-driven configuration tool along with stock Debian utilities, the Bash shell, and a choice of Cinnamon or Xfce desktop.
Status: Active
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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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