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1 • SSD's (by Vern on 2018-09-17 00:25:23 GMT from United States)
Its good to know the reliability of newer SSD's. I've put off buying one for that same reason.
2 • SSD (by TuxRaider on 2018-09-17 00:35:26 GMT from United States)
i bought my first SSD about 2012 and the speed Linux booted and the response of apps launching and the read & write speeds of SSD made a believer out of me, i use SSD for all my desktops & laptops operating systems, i do keep a few old spinning platter type drives around for data storage just because they are large capacity (one is a terabyte and two more 500 gig drives) but my SSDs are 250 megabites and that is plenty for an OS and a separate /home partition.
yup SSD was a big improvement in performance for any OS and the apps and tasks you put on it, after i made the switch i never looked back
3 • @1 Re: Reliability of SSD's (by Rev_Don on 2018-09-17 00:39:44 GMT from United States)
Reliabilty of SSDs has improved quite a lot as long as you don't buy some of the cheap junk that is out there. Some of the brands to avoid are Silicon Power, KingDion, and Patriot and the economy models from most brands especially Sandisk and Adata. This is not only due to lower quality/reliability, but poor performance as well. TeamGroup L5 3D ssds are some of the good economy SSDs at the moment as they rival the better Samsung and Crucial drives performance wise and seem to be holding up quite well reliabilty wise.
4 • SSD usage (by Rufovillosum on 2018-09-17 00:45:49 GMT from United States)
I use an SSD for my three OS's (Mint, LMDE3, Arch), and a spinning disk for data and clonezilla backup images of the thee OS's.
5 • SSD (by John on 2018-09-17 00:50:41 GMT from United States)
I use an SD plugged into a USB2 adapter. Easy to swap OSs. Works great. Easy REALLY back up.
John
6 • File system on SSD (by JeauBleau on 2018-09-17 01:06:17 GMT from United States)
Since you asked, until I am provided with some persuasive evidence to do otherwise, I am sticking with the default file system for Linux Mint: ext4
7 • SSD's (by Earlybird on 2018-09-17 01:07:57 GMT from Canada)
@3 Rev_Don Thanks for the clarification re brands of SSD's. Have seen some great bargains on 500 Gig Western Digital SSD's. Due to their reputation for quality with older style spinning drives, would imagine this brand would be reliable. However, they (to my knowledge) do NOT manufacture memory chips. One would guess that someone actually IN the memory business (eg - Samsung, Kingston, Crucial) would have an advantage producing a product with a superior MTBF/MTTF. This may sound like a niggling concern, but if you are dealing with financial, legal, medical, or government records, this IS a concern (yes, you should have multiple backup methods in place, but add this additional factor in as well).
That brings up a related factor - reliability of filing systems. Just what ARE the issues with BTRFS? Aside from issues with RAID, have seen posts about no proper recovery tool for btrfs files (different issue than system snapshots). Can anyone point to a recent comparison table or article comparing trade-offs for btrfs, xfs, and zfs? Also, any scientific discussions about dealing with "bit-rot" on filing systems?
And finally, reiserfs. Yes it has fallen in disfavour due to a certain heinous act by the author, but performance-wise, for a small home system with limited resources where something like zfs might be "overkill", it seems to perform really well. Is there a developer team out there still working on it, and what is present status; or is it for all intents and purposes "defunct"?
Using a search engine for answers brings up a staggering number of results. Who are the "experts" for answers to filing system questions (aside from the file-system websites themselves, who MAY be a teeny bit biased in favour of their own file system).
Lots of questions, but related to this weeks column, and of concern to everyone.
8 • Linux Mint 3 (by Carson on 2018-09-17 01:08:34 GMT from Canada)
Could someone explain to me why there is a 2nd and now 3rd major version of Linux Mint debian edition? I thought rolling release was supposed to prevent that.
9 • Linux Mint Debian Edition (by Jesse on 2018-09-17 01:11:24 GMT from Canada)
@8: Linux Mint Debian Edition is not a rolling release. As mentioned in the review, it's based on Debian Stable and uses a fixed release model.
10 • SSD Drives (by Mike on 2018-09-17 02:02:13 GMT from Australia)
I have been running my SSD drives (Hitachi amnd OCZ) for 6 years on ext4 partitions. Never any problem!
11 • SSDs (by pccobbler on 2018-09-17 02:08:37 GMT from United States)
There's only a small number of companies that actually manufacture NAND flash: Samsung, SK Hynix, Toshiba, SanDisk (which WDC now owns), Micron, and Intel. Toshiba and SanDisk (WDC) have been working together for years. Intel and Micron used to be full partners in NAND flash manufacture, but that relationship is fading. Soon we will see Chinese suppliers, first Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) and then Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (XMC). All other companies buy leftover NAND flash chips, throw in a controller and maybe some DRAM to serve as a buffer, and sell it under their name, with the better ones doing some qualification.
12 • LMDE 2 & 3 (by M.Z. on 2018-09-17 02:29:06 GMT from United States)
@8
The whole point of LMDE 2 was that they were shifting away from a rolling model to a fixed release model. That's also why there is a LMDE 3, because 2 was getting old & 3 comes after 2. They were fairly clear on this a few years ago before LMDE 2 came out. The Mint team didn't believe that maintaining a separate rolling system was worthwhile any more & based LMDE on straight Debian stable from 2 onward. It's all going mostly according to plan & I plan to use LMDE 3 as my default version of Mint & will be replacing LMDE 2 soon. I really liked the previous release & the only thing I won't miss from LMDE 2 is the very old version of LibreOffice, but now there are flatpaks so that will never be a problem again.
13 • of Drives and file systems. (by tom joad on 2018-09-17 02:52:56 GMT from United States)
Have my tower with an SSD and two spinning WD hard drives using EXT4. In fact all of the computers in the house but one are Linux and EXT4. My tor relay has a spinning WD hard drive. Both our laptops have SSD's.
SSD's cost more but are way faster than spinning hard drives.
I have not had any issues at all with my SSD's in any way. I will be transitioning to them in the future.
14 • Elive 3.0 appears highly good! (by OS2_user on 2018-09-17 02:53:32 GMT from United States)
Any regular here knows how dim is my view of current Linux esp GUIs, and I don't say that lightly. It'll take some getting used to its cartoonish ways and tiny blank white buttons for window control, but after several minutes now, I think may be worth it.
First, to get it, are asked to use torrents! He's had 4000 downloads and those appear to cost 10-12 cents each, which adds up. This again raises my dire prediction on funding from a couple weeks ago.
https://forum.elivelinux.org/t/urgent-switch-to-donation-based-downloads/446
The torrent worked fine for me, but note that has both versions; I unchecked the USB version and finished in less than half hour at near 2MB/s, full speed of my connection.
But it's not without annoyance, starting with changing desktop background every 15 seconds or so. Man, that's ANNOYING. No obvious setting, but it stopped after a few minutes.
Appears to be using my 1600x900 monitor at full res (unlike nearly all others).
Applications menu pops up with right-click on desktop; left-click opens up confusing Settings, and has no obvious way to "Close", but right-click on desktop did.
I can get used to wacky and the cartoon size icons expanding to ridiculous. So long as works same way every time. It's already lasted longer than recent KDE or Mate did without losing all ability to open or even shut down from GUI.
For speed test (this is Live CD, 1.6GHz dual-core Celeron, 2G RAM), LibreOffice loaded in about a minute, opened a PDF fine, good speed, and went away soon as found the right button: the one on right turns red indicating "Close". Also, about a dozen more icons appear in title bar, no hints, and since it's doing things on own, is even more unpredictable than most GUIs. We'll see.
Comes with Virtual Box and Wine installed, most of usual apps, several versions of browsers and players. -- Even has the Links browser that I mentioned not long ago!
SO, I'll again HOPE. Been a LONG time since prior version, that I looked at too, but seems the time wasn't wasted -- hasn't even changed much! Hope just FIXES, NOT FEATURES, it already had plenty of those!
15 • Drives and file systems (by TheTKS on 2018-09-17 04:14:56 GMT from Canada)
In our house:
1) Tower, spinning disk, multi boot Linuxes + Win 10, ext4 + NTFS 2) Tower, spinner, Linux, ext4. Moving to OpenBSD, FFS. 3) Tower, SSD, Win 10, NTFS 4) Tower, no disk, OpenBSD, FFS on an SD card (yeah, slow), will inherit a spinner from one of the laptops below -> Win 10, NTFS 5), 6), 7) Laptops, spinners, Win 10, NTFS. One is about to have its spinner switched out for an SSD, and the spinner moved to the tower with no disk 8) Laptop, SSD, Win 10, NTFS 9) Chromebook, eMMC, ChromeOS, fs?
Plus iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerry OS 10, Xboxes, Wiis, Nintendos, BlackBerry PlayBook, Commodore VIC 20... (OK, the last two aren't getting used)
We have too many devices.
Never a problem with the SSDs, and, yeah, way faster than spinners.
TKS
16 • Btrfs Downside (by SteveK on 2018-09-17 04:20:18 GMT from United States)
My experience is that Btrfs does not play nice with Grub2 in a multi-boot system. I typically have a dozen or more linux distros running on ext4 partitions on a mult-boot system using Grub2. I downloaded and installed Linux Mint Mate 19 with ext4. I paid attention to Mint's recommendation of using Timeshift backup utility. However, since I was running on ext4 I had to use rsync. This turned out to not be practical because I had to create a separate partition for the rsync backups that was equal to or greater than the size of the original partition! This was unacceptable to me. I then decided to try installing Linix Mint Mate 19 with Btrfs. Btrfs was much more efficient and required far less backup space. However, when I rebooted the computer the Linix Mint Mate19 Btrfs partition did not show up on the Grub2 multi-boot menu. I googled this problem and found that this is a common problem, that the Grub os-prober has problems detecting Btrfs partitions. There is a workaround but it's more trouble than it's worth to me. I went back to ext4.
17 • Drives and file systems (by pin on 2018-09-17 06:31:33 GMT from Sweden)
SSD on all my machines, linux on ext4 and NetBSD on ffsv2
18 • SSD+HDD (by zykoda on 2018-09-17 06:53:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
On Desktop I have 120GB Sandisk SSD with mint 17.3 cost same as 1TB P300. SSD prices are still too high. The Sandisk 120GB boots in recovery mode but not in normal mode: a solution for which I have not yet found. To mitigate slow boot using hard drive, suspend works well, nulling the faster boot advantage of SSD. I do not have a laptop as they suffer in too many ways to enumerate here.
19 • @ Jesse - link to reddit on Arch and also about Feliz (by OstroL on 2018-09-17 07:09:55 GMT from Poland)
Thank you for the link to Reddit on Arch. Never knew about the memes, until I read that thread. Once you have Arch going, you don't really go looking for advice (or memes, he, hi) on the net, except the Arch wiki and/or the forums. I have 2 Arch installs in 2 laptops, one direct Arch install and one from an excellent installer from Elizabeth Mills, Feliz. She was ~73, when I installed Arch from Feliz. Now, she is 75 and is retired from maintaining Feliz.
Still, it'd be interesting to read the story behind creating Feliz at such an age. https://github.com/angeltoast/goodbye-feliz/blob/master/FarewellFeliz.pdf Would be an inspiration to all Linux users. It'd be interesting to read the readme here too, https://github.com/angeltoast/feliz2
20 • SSD vs spinning Hard Drive (by Roy Davies on 2018-09-17 07:12:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have been using a SSD drive in an old Acer Aspire laptop for about 18 months. I have had absolutely no problems. Boot-up speeds have been faster than with the conventional HDD.
As a Linux user who likes to try out newer distro releases, this SSD has been over-written many times. Some concerns have been made about longevity of SSD's, as they are similar in many ways to a usb drive / sd card. To date I have had no problems. If I get any hard drive failures in other laptops, I will be happy to replace it with a SSD.
21 • LMDE 3 (by alotov on 2018-09-17 07:44:28 GMT from United States)
I backed up LMDE 2 and then installed LMDE 3. However, very shortly after I deleted LMDE 3 and put back in place LMDE 2. Just like Jesse I do miss Mate, nee dislike cinnamon. I did install Mate on LMDE 3, it was not the same as it misses the smoothness and configuration that Mint brings to Mate. But oh well I also have installed Devuan with the Mate desktop, and really if the bells and whistles that Mint brings to the desktop are removed - which they are for myself - then I may as well just use a Debian based distro proper.
22 • LMDE (by Guy Everaert on 2018-09-17 07:57:45 GMT from Belgium)
I agreed with "it just doesn't feel like the optimal choice for people who want to run the lighter, more conservative Debian branch of Mint". I would use LMDE if Mate where integrated in LMDE.
23 • SSD / spinning disks (by Romane on 2018-09-17 08:14:15 GMT from Australia)
I use both.
The SSD is the main drive, with Operating System and my home drive (well, OK, Operating Systems - I boot between 4 systems currently).
The spinning disk has my swap partition, a local backup (mirror) of my home partition (for those times I decide to format the SSD and start afresh; just because I can), and a largish partition for my /tmp directory.
I use the XFS file system on all partitions, simply because I found that it appears to allow faster operations than Ext4 - note: subjective, not objective assessment.
24 • HDD here. (by Torin on 2018-09-17 08:28:16 GMT from Ireland)
I still use a HDD on my computer (2TB Seagate). Ext4 is the file system. The only slow parts for me are booting up and initially launching apps. Other than that - it's very zippy.
25 • Drives and Chrome in MX (by cykodrone on 2018-09-17 08:28:49 GMT from Canada)
I use SSDs for OS performance and HDDs for storage. The machine 'sees' SSDs just like it would an HDD, the file system makes no difference, unless you're an enthusiast speed junky, but fiddling with a new-ish file system can be risky, good luck having some live rescues disks or utilities recognize it. Even if some 'drive' cells burn out after 15 to 20 years of constant use, they're supposedly marked as bad by the drive and are ignored, I use the disks utility to check their health occasionally, not one problem or warning yet, but I bought big name higher end drives, the cheaper budget brands tend to be buggy, less compatible, and less reliable, you get what you pay for. This is the second machine (PC build) the same SSDs have been installed in, and they still work like I bought them yesterday. Research before you buy, it will save a lot of headaches, and possibly your data. SSDs are not a magic cure for aging hardware, don't get me wrong, they do improve performance somewhat, but if the host hardware is really aging, how it handles modern bloated software (OSes and apps) won't change much, you will still get lag and periods of freezing.
Who in their right mind uses anything that has base code from that NSA friendly data mining giant? When I found out what they REALLY do (documented, no tinfoil hat), I did an across the board boycott (including other entities they have swallowed up, they are the new MS), and never looked backed. That dual farm animal search engine works just fine, and they don't keep your search history filed under your IP address on their servers. Have a nice day. :)
26 • Is BTRFS even ready for prime time yet? (by AlbinoAlligator on 2018-09-17 09:16:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
Every time I've tried a distro with BTRFS I have run into problems, usually in the form of periodic freezes or lag whilst the BTRFS file worker threads consume 100% of a CPU core.
I would suggest the reason it is not the default yet is because it can't be trusted yet unless you are running a very well specced PC.
27 • Kingston SSD and Kingston RAM (by Roy on 2018-09-17 09:40:44 GMT from United States)
I got the 240 GB SSD for the operating system and two 2 TB plus the one 1 TB for storage space on the older types spinning hard drives. Sticking with EXT 4 file system for the Ubuntu MATE. I like the SSD better.
28 • Persistent Myth about Timeshift being only for System Files (by Michael on 2018-09-17 10:04:41 GMT from India)
It is simple to use Timeshift to backup all files, both system and user files. I can't understand why people keep saying you need a different program for backing up user files. What a PITA that would be. I use Timeshift for all files.
29 • SSDs vs spinning disks (by Shaun on 2018-09-17 10:31:47 GMT from United States)
As long as a 250 GB SSD costs more than a 1000 GB, good-quality spinning disk, I'm simply unwilling to waste the money on an SSD. I understand it's the speed that's supposed to cost, but it ain't worth it for me. (Especially with the limited number of write cycles... Seriously?!)
30 • SSD Feedback... (by brain_death on 2018-09-17 10:38:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
A happy BTRFS user on my SSD, including a swap partition, for years...
31 • @ 19 Elizabeth Mills and Feliz (by Kazan on 2018-09-17 10:43:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thanks for the inks. Incredible woman! Like you said, an inspiration to us Linux users. Why there was no mention of Feliz in DWW before is a mystery.
32 • SSD (by Pat Huff on 2018-09-17 10:57:32 GMT from United States)
I have a Kingston SSD of 96gb that is 10 years old and works fine. It is on a laptop running Arcolinux with a btrfs file system and no swap.
33 • Drives and file systems (by Angel on 2018-09-17 10:59:58 GMT from Philippines)
Asus laptop- 240 KingDian SSD Gigabyte Brix- 240 Kingston SSD Acer laptop- 120 Kingston SSD and 1TB HDD in the DVD drive bay.
All perform well. Haven't found any compelling need to switch from EXT 4. All three PCs dual-boot with (Children cover your eyes.) Windows. Multiple Linuxes on bay HDD and on USB hard-drives and sticks.
34 • RE 14 EliveCD (by Michael on 2018-09-17 11:55:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Nice to see EliveCD 3.00 out, at last, I have enjoyed playing with it again, Lots of extras hidden in the distro as usual, it was my main distro back in 2010 on an X20 Thinkpad. Sam has been working alone on this project for a long time, always a fantastic Distro for older hardware and has been trying to make it freely available while still finding a way to fund the development, His earlier attempts at funding his work were not that popular though he always had a free option it was sometimes convoluted to get the main edition, For version 3 he has taken on board feedback and has tried other ways. Ethics and economics not always easy, Reading the post @14 His current problem is the bandwidth/Hosting cost of the downloads Not sure whether its something Distrowatch or Distrowatch users can help with? or maybe a review or Interview with Sam?
35 • SSD Poll (by Mike Turnbull on 2018-09-17 12:15:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
The SSD poll, I feel, was missing MY option. Although my laptop and desktop both have spinning hard drives, I make greater use of bootable pendrives - with persistence - using XenialPuppy Linux and Elive3.0 as my two prefered OS's at present. So easy to work with on the move - and faster!
36 • LMDE (by Mike Johnston on 2018-09-17 12:43:44 GMT from Canada)
Personally, I don't see why they didn't include an easy method to install graphics drivers for those using LMDE. If distros like MX Linux can include one to make the users life easier, I don't see why Mint couldn't.
37 • @14 -- Elive 3.0 appears highly good! (by OS2_user) (by frisbee on 2018-09-17 13:52:19 GMT from Switzerland)
I don't want to spoil you the pleasure, since you finaly found something (at least partially) working but, please read the announcement one more time.
"Samuel F. Baggen has announced the release of Elive 3.0.0, a major update of the project's Debian-based distribution with a customised Enlightenment 17 desktop user interface. This version is based on the 32-bit variant of Debian 7 "Wheezy" and, unlike the previous stable version (2.0, released more than eight years ago), Elive 3 is free of charge and unlimited in any way."
Based on the 32-bit variant of Debian 7 "Wheezy".
Debian 7 "Wheezy".
https://www.debian.org/News/2018/20180601.en.html
You could also easily continue using OS/2 since, they are both deprecated.
38 • LMDE vs. SparkyLinux and MX Linux (by Jason Hsu on 2018-09-17 14:51:10 GMT from United States)
In my opinion, people who want something like Linux Mint that's much lighter and faster should try SparkyLinux or MX Linux. Both of these distros can claim to be the unofficial LMDE.
I prefer SparkyLinux. When Debian Stretch became stable, it took SparkyLinux just 5 days to provide a release based on it. It took MX Linux about 6 months and LMDE over a year to do the same thing (SparkyLinux has the unfair advantage of producing releases based on Debian Testing. By the time a Debian branch becomes stable, the SparkyLinux developers already have plenty of experience with it.)
Most of the LInux community prefers MX Linux over SparkyLinux. If you're new to Linux or new to distros based on Debian but not Ubuntu, you'd probably prefer MX Linux because of its much larger community. (And you know it must be doing something right when it keeps attracting more and more users.)
I admire the Linux Mint team's efforts at LMDE, but SparkyLinux and MX Linux are better. The SparkyLinux and MX Linux developers have the unfair advantage of not being responsible for MATE, Cinnamon, and Ubuntu-based editions.
39 • Drauger OS (by Hooten on 2018-09-17 15:35:38 GMT from Norway)
Drauger OS with no info at all. What is based on? What init uses? Nothing about actual information in their website.
40 • @15 Too Many Devices (by tman on 2018-09-17 15:37:31 GMT from United States)
Damn dude! I thought I was bad. Plenty of charities to choose from...they would love you. ;-)
41 • Drauger OS (by Hooten on 2018-09-17 15:40:30 GMT from Norway)
It's Xubuntu actually, i found infos deep burried in their site.
42 • @40 Too Many Devices (by TheTKS on 2018-09-17 16:24:30 GMT from United States)
You're right, tman. Thanks, I needed the prompt! Several older devices are still solid, perfectly usable and fast for basic home use with the right Linux on them. They're now on the list to give to a charity or recipients whom they can most benefit.
TKS
43 • SSD vs HDD (by KernelSanders on 2018-09-17 17:12:25 GMT from Canada)
6-yr old Acer desktop: HDD 5-yr old Asus/HP desktop: HDD 2-yr old HP laptop: HDD Always ext4 for /root and xfs for /home unless recommended otherwise by distros devs. (Ex: KaOS /root & /home defaults: xfs)
44 • HDD vs SSD vs NVME (by Tech in San Diego on 2018-09-17 17:37:19 GMT from United States)
Call me an old fart, but I don't see the need for SSD drives. They are undoubtedly faster than HDD's, but the cost vs performance just doesn't make economical sense. I'll stay with my 12 year old 7200RPM Barracuda drives that run all day and have never given me any trouble.
The best performance gain for me was switching to Linux.
All the Best! Tech in San Diego
45 • discs (by dmacleo on 2018-09-17 17:42:40 GMT from United States)
use ssd for main drive and multiple 2-3tb drives for video stuff in 3 systems. use mint and windows here. good and bad with each, no perfect fit. play around with lot of vms too (stored on spinning drive) for different distros
46 • SSD vs Mechanical HDD (by JimB on 2018-09-17 18:09:42 GMT from United States)
I replace the mechanical HDD in any new system that comes into the house. Before I retired, the servers I worked with all had Crucial SSDs in them and I never saw one die, so I stick with Crucial on my systems. The mechanicl drives go into decent USB adapters and are used for backups and such. File systems are NTFS and/or EXT4. The response and performance of SSDs makes them more than worth what they cost. I have a couple of them that are going on 7+ years old and they are still running perfectly fine.
47 • @37 So "deprecated" means working fine? (by OS2_user on 2018-09-17 18:27:33 GMT from United States)
> You could also easily continue using OS/2 since, they are both deprecated.
I'll look for the "deprecated" label, then! 32 bits is all I need. I'll even dare state that it's all any home user needs. -- Or even gamer: last time I played games much was an Amiga (a way cut down Unix clone OS, by the way), and its 8MHz 68000 with only one megabyte total was too much for me. The Amiga had real co-processors though, was in many ways far more advanced than its contemporary hardware and software.
Anyhoo, I try to be upbeat about a distro that actually works well enough that I've HOPE again, and you try to deprecate me -- evidently for my prior simply telling facts about what didn't work! Typical Linux type. You don't help Linux much at all. Indeed, I'd say less than I do!
48 • Drives and Filesystems (by Joe User on 2018-09-17 19:21:27 GMT from Germany)
I use HDDs (Servers) and SSDs (Laptops) with UFS2 (Servers) and NTFS (Laptops).
49 • ssd's (by jeffrydada on 2018-09-17 22:23:16 GMT from United States)
I use a 200gb ssd on my recording studio desktop system for my OS, Ubuntu Studio with KX studio repos. Its BTRFS and has been working great. I also still use large capacity storage drives of the spinning type, 2 two 4tb and one 3tb. Tracktion Waveform 9 loves the ssd, it's very snappy!
50 • Solid state drives (by Jay on 2018-09-17 22:50:21 GMT from Belgium)
I have switched every PC and laptop to cheap Chinese solid state drives. Normal HD's for saving data, so only the OS and prog's our on the SSD's. Yes cheap ones because when the fail I simply put a new one in.
51 • linux mint (by jeffrydada on 2018-09-18 00:24:17 GMT from United States)
Both my wife and sister-in-law are currently running Mint 18. It was a great alternative to MacOS they were previously using. For myself however I found LMDE to not as freindly as Sparky Linux. I guess that having a "minimal" install feature and allowing me to load my personal favorite dexktop makes Sparky my favorite Debian spin.
52 • @38 - Sparky Linux & LMDE (by brad on 2018-09-18 00:27:52 GMT from United States)
Sparky is a great distro - a little better (for me) than MX. There is a Sparky Rescue edition which has helped me out of a couple of tight situations. Sparky is my go-to XFCE distro.
LMDE is a great distro for Cinnamon, better (again, for me) than Mint. Lighter, snappier, and the fact that it's based on Debian (rather than Ubuntu) are the reasons that I like it.
53 • LMDE 2 -----> 3 (by brad on 2018-09-18 00:34:21 GMT from United States)
BTW, I did a fresh install of LMDE on one laptop, and an upgrade from 2 to 3 on another. The upgrade worked perfectly, following the step-by-step upgrade instructions from Clem. Clem and crew are to be congratulated for making Cinnamon/Mint/LMDE available to the Linux community. Although the desktop and distros are no longer my "daily drivers", they are the best "gateway" from Windows to Linux. Most folks would need no more.
54 • B+tree file systems (by Kregle von Schnitzelbank on 2018-09-18 05:04:07 GMT from United States)
@7 • Earlybird - while at least one version of these projects survives at SourceForge (Freed Open-Source Software is seldom lost), the indisputable advantages haven't attracted persistent commercial enthusiasm, and the challenges and required rigor have discouraged many. In other words, not currently recommended in production, but great for academia.
55 • File systems (by Earlybird on 2018-09-18 06:46:01 GMT from Canada)
@54 Kregle von Scnitzelbank - Thanks for the information. Between that Sourceforge connection you pointed out, and followup on Wikipedia (search terms: B+ tree filesystem, Reiserfs, Reiser4, and file system comparison), found a goldmine of info. Greatly appreciated.
The Wikipedia info on BTRfs indicates SuSe is continuing support, but Redhat is dropping support for btrfs, but no explanation given. Not clear what Redhat plans to support in future (zfs?). The info given on Reiser4 and BTRfs would seem to indicate the importance of commercial support for the success of any file system. (eg - developers need financial support to come up with a file recovery tool for these systems). Seems to be a rather specialized area of software with a limited number of developers.
56 • LMDE3 (by penguinx64 on 2018-09-18 08:17:37 GMT from United States)
I switched from Linux Mint Mate to LMDE3 a few weeks ago. So far, it's faster and has less glitches. The only problem I ran into is the LMDE packages don't have everything the Ubuntu packages had. VirtualBox wasn't there for example. I had to download it from the Oracle website instead. No big deal.
About SSDs. I dumped most of my mechanical hard drives years ago. All of my computers have SSD's now, with the exception of one 4tb hard drive installed in a desktop for archiving stuff. I use the ext4 filesystem for everything on my SSDs. All of my SSDs are Samsung, except for whatever came in my two Chromebooks.
57 • SSDs and Swap (by penguinx64 on 2018-09-18 09:01:02 GMT from United States)
I've never had a problem putting a swap partition on an SSD. I have plenty of RAM, so my OS almost never uses swap anyway. I've been using ext4 with a swap partition on various computers for almost 10 years now. Never had a problem had a problem with Samsung drives, but I have seen a few unreliable brands like OCZ fail. I'm not sure if you can 'wear out' an SSD, but I have seen the available storage decrease over time with some used SSD's I picked up on eBay. I've seen way more mechanical hard drives fail than SSD's.
58 • @47 So "deprecated" means working fine? (by OS2_user) (by frisbee on 2018-09-18 09:01:40 GMT from Switzerland)
"OS/2_user ... last time I played games ... 8MHz 68000 with only one megabyte total was too much for me ... you try to deprecate me ... "
Neither I, or nobody else for that matter, has to TRY to deprecate you -- YOU ARE deprecated! That's the simple fact.
59 • Linux Mint 3 (by Carson on 2018-09-18 12:26:57 GMT from Canada)
@9 Oh my mistake. I thought Debian edition was rolling release based on testing for some reason
60 • Linux Mint 3 (by Carson on 2018-09-18 12:29:21 GMT from Canada)
@12 ah, I somehow totally missed the news back when they shifted away from rolling release I guess
61 • SSDs are not cost-effective for me (by curious on 2018-09-18 14:37:54 GMT from Germany)
The computers at my workplace have SSDs, and I like the performance.
But decent-sized (minimum 1 TB) SSD are still much too expensive for me to use at home. And I have no use for drives that are smaller than 256 GB.
I certainly can live with slightly longer boot times.
62 • SSD and filesystems (by CommonUser on 2018-09-18 14:50:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Starting to use SSD's since five years now. Used filesystems are ext4 and XFS (and ntfs) . Never experienced any problems sofar. Reliability over 5 years is better than with spinning disks. However, the oldest one I have seems to become slower. So my expectation is that spinning disks will last longer. (Have working spinning disks which are more than 10 years old, though only used for backup purposes the last couple of years)
63 • LMDE (by Cholo on 2018-09-18 17:06:49 GMT from Canada)
I think lmde would be great, if it used xfce. Sorry but cinnamon, just isn't quite polished enough as of yet anyway. I used to be a BIG fan of kde, until they messed it up with version 5, which isn't as configurable as 4 was. Though I still use kde on my favorite de, PCLOS! But on the rest I've gone over to XFCE.
64 • @63 LMDE XFCE (by brad on 2018-09-18 18:06:26 GMT from United States)
It's not an "official" flavor, but there is a "community" edition of LMDE:
<https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=14>
65 • Re: LMDE3 (by silent on 2018-09-18 18:08:07 GMT from Hungary)
I cannot but agree that LMDE3 calls for a light DE, like Mate or LXQt..
66 • Arch Linux contributors (by silent on 2018-09-18 18:17:44 GMT from Hungary)
It is really unfortunate that some well known packages have been tossed into AUR and then soon orphaned (like TORCS) due to the lack of resources at Arch Linux. Especially because AUR is without warranty, packages can be compromised. I really wonder if it would be possible to completely automate building binary packages and place them into an official "untested" repo or letting upstream open source communities contribute binary packages to an "upstream" binary Arch Linux repository.
67 • Cinnamon DE (by M.Z. on 2018-09-18 20:23:21 GMT from United States)
Funny, I for one find that Cinnamon hits a great spot in the DE pantheon. I admit that my Mint 19/cinnamon 3.8 desktop feels a bit heavier & slower than my laptop with LMDE 2, though that could be hardware related. On my laptop LMDE 2 has always felt very snappy regardless of Cinnamon upgrades.
Anyway, from what I've read Cinnamon seems to be lighter than Gnome 3 or Unity ever were & it has nearly all the configuration options you could want. It seems like a big step up from the direction most Gtk3 DEs were going before it came along & has continuously improved in most ways.
Also the external monitor handling in LMDE 2 Cinnamon puts Mint 19 XFCE to shame. With LMDE Cinnamon I get either of my streaming TVs auto configured at plug in time & I can't remember the last time I had to play with the resolution. The same can't be said for XFCE, which can't seem to remember 2 different TVs to save it's life. Don't get me wrong there is a lot to like about XFCE & it actually handles my laptops onboard graphics a bit better than Cinnamon; however, it just isn't as nice as Cinnamon in my opinion.
To me LMDE 3 + Cinnamon makes perfect sense. It doesn't just provide a second home for Mint's in house DE, it also helps keep LMDE more distinct from all the other Debain based distros around while providing a great DE. Also LMDE 2 Cinnamon is snappy as hell on a 5+ year old SSD. Cinnamon my not be the lightest, but it's easily among the best DEs available. I like KDE just a bit more overall, but Cinnamon is still great.
68 • Very last Elive3 release based on Wheezy (by Sebastien on 2018-09-18 21:19:00 GMT from France)
I must admit that releasing an brand new distro version based on a deprecated source is quiet unusual. The web site mentions entreprise as market place for Elive. I guess it would be quiet hard top convince any company to sign for this... Hope this is just a poc and Elive Will move to Stretch very soon
69 • SSDs (by edcoolio on 2018-09-18 22:03:38 GMT from United States)
I've been using SSDs exclusively for almost 10 years and never had 1 failure.
This includes KingDian and Silicon Power cheapo drives. The cheap drives range from 32gb to 120gb. If you buy at the right time, they are basically giving them away.
The nicer Samsung and SanDisk drives range from 256gb to 2TB with no issues, this includes enterprise locations.
I'm a believer.
70 • ssd + hdd on ext4 (by dbyo46 on 2018-09-18 22:46:20 GMT from Indonesia)
since ssd(samsung 850Pro 256GB) more expensive & less capacity, but have great io rather than hdd(seagate constalation es 2TB), we use it as system(ext4) in ubuntu 16.04.x(moodle), Dell T30 16GB Ram. mainly for CBT. no more than 10 times use it in 1 year.
and yes, with old school style "the swap partition size is 2*RAM" on HDD
remain size on hdd for windows(ntfs), wimdows all works flawlesly
71 • ssd storage (by simon on 2018-09-19 01:40:28 GMT from Canada)
Samsung turned our SSD Endurance Experiment into something incredible https://techreport.com/review/29450/samsung-turned-our-ssd-endurance-experiment-into-something-incredible
Introducing the SSD Endurance Experiment Just how long do they last, anyway? https://techreport.com/review/24841/introducing-the-ssd-endurance-experiment
SSD vs HDD https://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd
Consumer SSD Reviews https://www.storagereview.com/reviews/consumer/ssd
72 • SSDs & others (by ROSAs on 2018-09-19 02:08:04 GMT from Australia)
SSDs, mSATAs, & even CFcards (+adapter) are good for fitting into squeezy drive bays, when thin HDDs are hard to fit.
73 • ssd storage + Linux File Systems (by simon on 2018-09-19 03:15:47 GMT from Canada)
Intel SSD 660p: 512GB Of NVMe Storage For $99 USD Written by Michael Larabel in Storage on 10 August 2018.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-ssd-660p&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-ssd-660p&num=3
Reiser4 File-System Benchmarks With Linux 4.17 Written by Michael Larabel in Storage on 2 July 2018.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=reiser4-linux-417&num=1
74 • No way for now (by Scott on 2018-09-19 05:18:22 GMT from United States)
The technology behind solid state drives isn't good enough for me, yet. I'd rather use flash drive, before risking my data on one. You guys have to understand that it takes time for technology to evolve. We can't be impatient about this. Wait another year and a half. Give this technology some extra time to grow and develop. Hold a sec...what? For real? Guys, I may have spoken too soon. Just found a a good solid state drive on Ebay for $5 and free shipping. Forget what I said.
75 • Filesystems (by Earlybird on 2018-09-19 06:49:51 GMT from Canada)
@73 simon - Thanks for links to Phoronix. Even more enlightening than the graphs were some of the comments, especially one concerning filesystem behaviour on write operations during power failure. Guess if you're using a laptop with built-in battery, less of a concern, but for a desktop user, a UPS is cheap insurance. Also, consider what happens if you're doing a "backup" during power failure. Unless you have multiple backups, that "backup" isn't going to do much good if it is also corrupted. BTW - for those unfamiliar with Storage mag, it is a "trade" magazine whose main audience would likely be sysadmins, so you won't find it at the local magazine store. Oh gee; is a magazine store now "obsolete technology" also? Suddenly feeling obsolete myself....
76 • @64 • LMDE 3.0 "Cassandra" (by frisbee on 2018-09-19 08:12:31 GMT from Switzerland)
There is no such thing like LMDE 3.0 Community Edition.
Your link: https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=14 ... is a "Ghost Website". Messed up Wordpres db.
If you go on and check announcement, it will bring you to:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=4395
Cassandra XFCE Community Edition is out! by clem » Tue Aug 07, 2007 7:54 am
If you proceed to downloads:
https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/linuxmint/debian/
... you will find out that there is only LMDE 3.0 Cinnamon available for download.
77 • F2FS (by Miks on 2018-09-19 12:43:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
@ Jesse, why no mention of f2fs, or did I miss something?
78 • @76 - oops... (by brad on 2018-09-19 13:08:35 GMT from United States)
Oops...only off by 11 years or so - my bad...
79 • BTRFS (by CS on 2018-09-19 19:04:25 GMT from United States)
Redhat dumped BTRFS because of lingering data loss issues they encountered in internal testing. They were quite gung-ho about BTRFS at one point and planned for several releases to make it default in Fedora. After a few years on that treadmill they cut their losses and moved on to more productive problems. There are quite a few references to this you can find online. If you're using BTRFS, keep those backups current!
80 • re: 74 (by denPes on 2018-09-19 21:55:42 GMT from Belgium)
SSD's are fine and trustworthy. All my SSD's are still working. My oldest SSD's is 6 years old, and when I check the S.M.A.R.T. info, it says it's like new.
Except for the price, it only has advantages over the mechanical drives. Less sound, less heat, much faster. The enterprise versions even have protection with power outages. That's the one I use as system drive.
But first questioning that "new" technology, and then buy a "good" SSD for 5 dollar sounds kinda weird to me.
81 • Linus (by facetime on 2018-09-19 22:00:25 GMT from Australia)
Linus Torvalds is known for his abrasive style with Linux kernel contributors and tech views. But he has said that he had a "look at yourself in the mirror" moment, and has recognised his problem. So he's going to address his lack of emotional empathy when dealing with other people.
When there is a lot of trolling and bad behaviour on the Internet , Linus is leading the way as a good role model. Maybe he's been reading Distrowatch's Mark Twain quotes.
82 • @81 Re: Linus T (by Rev_Don on 2018-09-20 00:35:25 GMT from United States)
Word is that some of the major financial backers of the Linux Foundation threatened to pull their funding if something wasn't done about his childish and abusive behaviour. Money talks and so Linus' BS walks.
83 • Linus Torvalds and apology, @81 (by Angel on 2018-09-20 00:40:23 GMT from Philippines)
I was reading "It's FOSS" this morning, and there seems to be more to this than is apparent at first glance, and may be relevant to the future of Linux.
84 • knoppix (by jamesk on 2018-09-20 00:49:52 GMT from United States)
knoppix has a lost ball in tall weeds. Terrible repository waist of time and resources. Once was top shelf. I revisited and know lost myself. jkb
85 • EEE (by chunk on 2018-09-20 07:52:22 GMT from United States)
Linux Foundation? With Microsoft as a member? Why would I give a damn what they think?
86 • @85, probably mutual (by Angel on 2018-09-20 11:29:08 GMT from Philippines)
I believe the feeling might be mutual between you and the foundation, but Torvalds may differ, since they pay him a bunch of money yearly.
87 • @84 Re: Knoppix (by Rev_Don on 2018-09-20 14:20:48 GMT from United States)
"terrible repository waist of time and resources."
If you read the FAQ you'll notice that it clearly states that you aren't supposed to be updating it. It's supposed to be run as is as a Live DVD/USB. With that in mind, what makes it's repository important?
http://knoppix.net/wiki/Full_HD_install_-_warning
88 • SSD with BTRFS (by Dxvid on 2018-09-20 22:37:27 GMT from Sweden)
I almost always use SSD for the root and with /home, both on home computers and on servers. For large storage I use HDD.
There's a lot of myths on the internet about BTRFS, probably written by beginners who haven't used that file system much or people who just like bashing things they don't know much about. I've used it for a few years daily and it has many advantages over ext4 and XFS, especially on important computers/servers where it's important to take snapshots often. I don't think I'll ever go back, because ZFS and BTRFS have good extra features that I would miss.
However one has to understand that a file system with a lot of benefits in the form of handy features will use up more resources than ext4 or XFS. They require a lot more disk space if you use snapshots, and you should have large partitions in order for it to run smoothly and not fill up the SSD/HDD with snapshots and other stuff too quickly. If you've run a computer for one year taking snapshots regularly without deleting much it's not uncommon that the files in use take up around 5-10GB while all the snapshots take up 25-50GB. Of course this depends on setup and usage, but 5 times more disk space used is to be expected after a year.
BTRFS uses more CPU because of all the calculations done and CPU can peak during weekly maintenance. You should use BTRFS on systems with pretty fast CPUs with good single threaded performance.
ZFS needs much more RAM than ext4 or XFS and also uses CPU more for calculations.
In short, with feature rich file systems you need better equipment. It's the same if you use software RAID, you pay by getting more CPU usage and RAM usage.
89 • Linus Torvalds (by simon on 2018-09-21 01:03:23 GMT from Canada)
Linus Torvalds is in the New Yorker
After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside By Noam Cohen September 19, 2018
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-abusive-e-mails-the-creator-of-linux-steps-aside
90 • Both HDD and SSD (by Flavio R. Cavalcanti on 2018-09-21 11:35:05 GMT from Brazil)
I have 3 internal HDDs, using mostly ext4, except for openSUSE Leap with / BtrFS and /home XFS.
And I have 1 external SSD (USB2) from 2011 for testing distros, using distro's preferred filesystem.
91 • SSD drives (by fatmac on 2018-09-21 17:48:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have converted my two regular Intel/AMD laptops to small (64GB) SSD drives, whilst one other uses a 16GB SDHC card as it's main drive, & an EeeBox computer has another small (60GB) SSD drive in it.
My RPI3B uses an internal 16GB mSDHC card with an external spinning 320GB, my second 3B & my 3B+ both use 64GB mSDHC cards.
I use these mainly because they are quiet, but the SSD are a bit faster than the HDDs that they replaced.
92 • SSD drives addendum (by fatmac on 2018-09-21 17:51:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
Forgot to mention, all of them are using ext4 filesystems. :)
93 • Linus Torvalds (by facetime on 2018-09-22 03:28:00 GMT from Australia)
@89 According to the New Yorker piece, the problem with Torvalds' abrasive style is that it is discouraging women from working as Linux programmers .And since he works with the Linux Foundation - which has to deal with corporates - LF contributors can't be seen behaving like this..In the corporate world they would have to be fired, or leave voluntarily.
So Linus has done the right thing and stepped aside for a while - still a good example for others to follow.
94 • Will ... Linux Foundation founder? (by Kregle von Schnitzelbank on 2018-09-22 19:32:44 GMT from United States)
@89 • Yes, it's quite the hit piece. Research the people it quotes. After the imposition (by commercial funders) of a weapon like that "code of conduct", I'd take a long break, perhaps a sabbatical. But then, perhaps it's time for the BDFL to take a behind-the-scenes position, like so many power brokers do, and put some politically-skilled agent on the stage? He could spend his sabbatical developing skills for shepherding stubbornly uncooperative contributors using gentler coercion. Velvet glove, but still needing iron hand.
95 • @94 (by edcoolio on 2018-09-22 23:25:30 GMT from United States)
Agreed. It is quite the hit piece. As for the people attacking him, I will leave you with a quote from the article when describing one of the main Anti-Torvalds individuals:
"...Sharp, who is nonbinary and uses “they/them” pronouns..."
I am sure the readers of Distrowatch can come to their own conclusions. Remember, I am only quoting the article, which makes it a point to include this information.
Interpret this as you will.
96 • Focus on the code (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2018-09-23 02:35:42 GMT from United States)
@95 • I prefer to avoid distractions. Merit matters.
97 • @96 (by edcoolio on 2018-09-23 05:13:33 GMT from United States)
Merit should be ALL that matters, but it would seem that these distractions have taken the place of merit... unfortunately.
98 • Linus Torvalds, Linux Foundation and Credibility of Linux Kernel a.k.a 4.19 (by Lexxy Lorand on 2018-09-23 06:34:13 GMT from Canada)
Newyorker news of Linus stepping aside is a major break this week, and shaken linux community. One has have a look at sponsors/members of Linux Foundation and understand how it is funded. MS bought github, and became member of Linux Foundation.
Linux Foundation is supported by members such as AT&T, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Intel, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm, Samsung, as well as developers from around the world.
Whole ball game were started back in 1990 when AT&T throw some pieces of codes of UNIX for free. Berkley came out with two SDs. BSD and LSD. This can not be an accident.
While Linus came out with Linux, Linus has served more than two decades (in fact, to the members of Linux Foundation). If it could have not been Linus, then AT&T might have Lomar or Lenny.
And, that is it, story is too long and I hate typing.
With Linus on Linux Foundation, They have lots of hindrance to merge lots bits and bytes merging and steaming into Linux Kernel Mainline.
Without Linus one major issue Linux Community will going to face is "The Credibility" of Linux Kernel a.k.a 4.19 and onwards. Lone distro brewers or lone developers are not funded by these oligarchies have yet to decide their direction of future travel.
Two quotes from Linus: 1. "In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny."
2. "If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." (He has already WON for sure!).
The shining star like the SUN can not be covered by shadow, if you think about night, There is SUN rise somewhere, And, same hold true for Linus, Amen. Now, at least Linus might have some spare time to tech or write a book or a manual.
99 • Correct code is top priority ... but be civil in enforcement (by Kragle on 2018-09-23 06:44:18 GMT from United States)
@97 • Life refuses to be so simple. Coding should not violate priorities or best-practices, but neither should behavior - including motivating others to correct their errors, no matter how egregious and persistent. This is the ideal we should aspire toward.. Sometimes talent in one aspect comes with deficiency in another; in such cases, it is best to seek coping methods.
100 • @98 Berkley (by Bill S on 2018-09-23 13:00:34 GMT from United States)
"Berkley came out with two SDs. BSD and LSD. " Ha ha And many of us tried them both!
101 • The Linux Foundation (by M.Z. on 2018-09-23 19:55:40 GMT from United States)
The term hit piece is fairly loaded & subjective, and the behaviour of Linus has often been both abrasive & controversial to anyone paying attention. A lot of great & amazing work has been done & Torvalds deserves a hell of a lot of recognition & credit for what he started as a computer science student in Helsinki Finland & for managing the Linux Foundation from the Portland Oregon area.
Credit being due, it does seem things could have been handled better & that the combo of lob brow jokes & harsh jabs at the bad work of others created a ripe target for criticism that would have inevitably been questioned eventually. The rise to prominence of Linux made looking in critically more likely every passing year. All it took was enough people wondering about what goes on with this thing that powers all the Android phones & super computers in the world, and then taking a look at both the good and bad going on.
I for one hope like some others here that we get Linus back, but with a bit more craftiness & wisdom about finding the right balance in managing things well while finding the right way to call people on BS.
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• 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 |
• Full list of all issues |
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Random Distribution | 
BunsenLabs Linux
BunsenLabs Linux is a distribution offering a light-weight and easily customizable Openbox desktop. The BunsenLabs distribution is based on Debian's Stable branch and is a community continuation of the CrunchBang Linux distribution.
Status: Active
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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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