 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 827, 12 August 2019 |
Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Sometimes it can seem like every software developer is adding more features, more options and more bloat to their creations. However, there are some projects which strive to keep their systems lean and compatible with older hardware. We begin this week with a look at Q4OS, a lightweight Debian distribution which offers users the choice of modern software like KDE Plasma 5, while also providing the option to run the classic Trinity desktop. Read on to learn more about this snappy, Debian-based distribution in our Feature Story. Then, in our Tips and Tricks column, we explore a few methods for finding files from the command line. We would like to know what is the best method you have for locating files on your hard drive and welcome feedback in our Opinion Poll. Last week Ubuntu developers talked about improving ZFS support and the Haiku team worked on performance bottlenecks. We have more details on these stories in our News section along with a sad report that OSDisc, a service that shipped Linux install media around the world, is shutting down. Plus we share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Q4OS 3.8
- News: Ubuntu works toward ZFS on root, Haiku team improves performance, OSDisc shuts down
- Tips and tricks: How to find files
- Released last week: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7, Ubuntu 18.04.3, Voyager Live 10
- Torrent corner: AUSTRUMI, BeeFree, Endless, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, KDE neon, OSMC, PCLinuxOS, Raspberry Slideshow, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Voyager, Xubuntu, Zeroshell
- Upcoming releases: Rebellin Linux 4
- Opinion poll: Methods for finding files
- New distributions: CryptoCurrency OS
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (10MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Q4OS 3.8
Q4OS is a curious project which has done a few things that set it apart from most other Linux distributions. The first thing which stands out about Q4OS is it runs the Trinity desktop. Trinity is the continuation of KDE 3, a flexible desktop environment that was replaced by KDE Plasma on most Linux distributions. Q4OS is one of just two projects in the DistroWatch database still using Trinity as a first tier desktop.
The other feature which immediately stands out is Q4OS is designed to look like classic versions of Microsoft Windows. The Trinity desktop has been themed to have a distinctly Windows XP appearance, complete with desktop icons and a two-pane application menu.
Q4OS 3.8 is based on Debian 10 and is available in 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86_64) builds. The project ships two editions. The first edition now uses KDE Plasma by default, but still ships with Trinity as a secondary desktop on the install media. The second edition ships with Trinity only. The KDE Plasma media is 869MB in size while the pure Trinity edition is a 638MB download. I decided to download the combined Plasma and Trinity edition.
The disc boots to a graphical environment. A pop-up appears and asks us to select our language from a drop-down list. When wireless networks are detected we are also given the chance to connect over wi-fi. The Plasma desktop (version 5.14.5) then loads. The desktop features a single icon for launching the distribution's installer. A panel at the bottom of the display holds the application menu, task switcher and system tray. A welcome window then appears and offers us six buttons that launch configuration modules or tools to help us install packages. I will come back to the welcome window later as it is not particularly useful when running from the live media.
Q4OS 3.8 -- Trinity using the Classic menu
(full image size: 162kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
I feel it is worth noting that we can sign out of the Plasma desktop and sign into the Trinity desktop while running from the live media. There probably isn't a good reason to do this if we downloaded the main edition of Q4OS (if we wanted to run Trinity we could have downloaded the smaller edition). However, I wanted to see if Trinity would work on the live media and it does.
Installing
Q4OS uses the Calamares system installer, a cross-distro, graphical tool that makes installing Linux distributions straight forward. With a few clicks we can pick our preferred language, time zone and keyboard layout. We are then asked to either manually partition the hard drive or let Calamares set up partitions for us. Calamares suggests a two-partition layout using ext4 for the root filesystem alongside a swap partition. We then make up a username and password for ourselves and the installer copies its packages to the disk. Calamares is, in my opinion, a very friendly installer and its whole process is both quick and easy to navigate.
Early impressions
Q4OS boots to a graphical login screen where we can sign into either Trinity or Plasma. When we first sign in a window pops up and asks which of three bundles of software we want to install. We can install the Full bundle which includes several commonly used applications; the Basic desktop bundle which includes just a few applications; or we can leave things as they are, relatively bare bones. Not many details are given as to the specifics of what each bundle includes. I went with the Full option, which is recommended for new users. We are then shown progress information as several new packages are downloaded and installed. The packages mostly appear to come from Debian repositories, but the information scrolled by too quickly for me to see exactly which applications were being installed. Once the download is complete we are asked to reboot the computer.
Q4OS 3.8 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 129kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The next time we sign into our account the welcome window appears with its six options. One button launches the desktop profiler, which turns out to be the program that installs Full or Basic bundles of software. Another button gives us the option of turning on visual desktop effects. A third button lets us switch application menu styles between Classic (a tree-style menu), Kickoff (the Plasma default), and Bourbon which appears to be the Trinity two-pane style menu that resembles the Windows XP menu.
The welcome window also includes a button to enable automatic logins, a button for installing third-party media codecs, and one for launching a custom software centre. The software centre lists 19 popular applications (including Chrome, Firefox, LibreOffice, WINE, and Skype). We can select one application to install at a time. There is no indication of which packages have already been installed which I believe may confuse people. When we select an application to install, a Windows-style wizard appears and guides us through installing the package. In the background APT is still doing the work, but the user experience resembles the Windows approach of clicking Next, Next, Done when installing new software.
Q4OS 3.8 -- Installing popular applications
(full image size: 138kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The Plasma and Trinity desktops are set up with similar layouts and styles. One of the few significant differences I noticed was Trinity displays icons on the desktop for launching popular applications. There are icons for opening the Chrome browser, VLC, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice. Plasma does not display icons on the desktop by default. Another minor difference is Trinity's screensaver turns on after six minutes while Plasma's is set to launch after five. The default Trinity application menu contains many sub-categories of software, and some of those contain their own sub-categories. A few launchers are as deep as five layers down. Plasma's menu offers fewer levels of categories making its menu slightly faster to navigate.
Hardware
Memory usage is another area where Trinity and Plasma differ. Running the KDE Plasma desktop on Q4OS requires 420MB of memory when logged in while Trinity uses a mere 245MB. Both desktops are responsive and worked quickly during my trial, though Trinity is noticeably snappier. Menus open quicker and Trinity has an overall lighter feel to it. Q4OS, with the Full bundle of applications installed, takes up about 5.6GB of disk space. This is a little leaner than the average mainstream distribution running just one desktop environment.
I tried running Q4OS on a laptop computer and in a VirtualBox machine. In both test environments Q4OS worked well. The operating system booted quickly, ran smoothly, and detected all of my hardware. When run in a virtual machine, Q4OS integrated with VirtualBox and was able to use my host computer's maximum screen resolution.
Applications
With the Full software bundle installed, Q4OS ships with the Chrome and Konqueror web browsers, LibreOffice, and the Thunderbird e-mail client. The distribution also features the Okular document viewer, the K3b and Brasero disc burners, and the VLC multimedia player. Media codecs can be downloaded through the welcome window and work as expected. The Krusader and Dolphin file managers are installed and Network Manager is present to help us connect to networks. Java is present on the system. Like its parent distribution, Q4OS uses the systemd init software and ships with version 4.19 of the Linux kernel.
Q4OS 3.8 -- Running the Chrome web browser
(full image size: 251kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The software included with Q4OS was all stable and worked properly. The default selection of applications is likely to supply the functionality most people need. I would have appreciated a dedicated music player, but those are easy enough to install as needed.
Software management
Q4OS provided me with two software managers: Discover and Synaptic. Synaptic is a classic, graphical package manager, suitable for working with low-level packages. Synaptic offers users many package filters, quick search results and it processes install, upgrade and removal actions in batches.
Q4OS 3.8 -- The Synaptic package manager
(full image size: 86kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Discover has a more modern look and focuses on desktop applications. Discover can also install, remove and upgrade packages. It processes actions immediately instead of in batches and its interface is noticeably slower. Discover, I was sorry to find, tended to crash frequently. In fact, almost any time a search for a package name was performed, Discover would terminate.
Q4OS pulls in many of its packages from Debian's servers, but the project also maintains some of its own package repositories. Plus we are connected with Google's Chrome repository in order to get browser updates.
During my time running Q4OS's Trinity desktop I did not notice any notifications of new software updates, though I tended to use Trinity more frequently than Plasma. When I did run Plasma, an icon in the system tray would let me know when new software updates were available. Clicking the icon would offer me the option of launching Discover to review and install new updates. There were not many updates, probably less than a dozen, totaling less than 100MB during my week with the distribution.
Though Q4OS does not appear to advertise portable package support, the distribution ships with both the Snap and Flatpak frameworks installed. Both of these are integrated with the Discover software manager. I wasn't able to successfully search for and install portable packages through Discover as it would crash before completing its actions, but the command line Snap and Flatpak tools worked.
Settings
Each desktop environment ships with its own settings panel. The KDE Plasma panel uses the newer, two-pane layout. There are many groups of settings and many sub-groups within them. Luckily there is a search feature to help users find the settings they want to adjust. Trinity's settings panel features far fewer modules and is presented more like a file manager showing folders. Both settings panels worked well for me.
Q4OS 3.8 -- The Trinity settings panel
(full image size: 160kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Other observations
I made a few other observations while playing with Q4OS. For instance, the distribution ships with sudo, allowing the first user to perform administrative tasks.
More importantly, this may be the first distribution I have used that ran Trinity and Plasma (effectively KDE 3 and KDE 5) side-by-side. The experience is seamless and I encountered no problems as a result of having these two desktops installed together. Each appears to be entirely isolated from the other, with their own settings and features.
Q4OS 3.8 -- Plasma desktop settings
(full image size: 172kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Conclusions
Q4OS is one of the better performing distributions I have used this year. The performance, especially when running the Trinity desktop, is top-notch and the resource footprint is small.
I had wondered going into this trial if Trinity would be available on the Plasma install media and, if so, if Trinity would offer a usable experience. Trinity was created as a continuation of KDE 3 about eleven years ago, after KDE 4.0 was launched, and I did not expect a particularly modern or polished experience. However, Trinity worked well and, with a little adjustment, looked quite good in my opinion. In a few places, like the settings panel, it shows its age, but Trinity provided a solid performance and I found I enjoyed it better than Plasma.
For the most part, Q4OS works well. I like its installer, I like that it offers five years of support (thanks to its Debian base), and the distribution is particularly light and fast. I think newcomers to Linux will appreciate the Windows-like theme Trinity offers, especially if they recently used Windows XP, Vista, or 7.
The one weak point in the experience for me was Discover. The software manager offers several features and I like that it can integrate with both Flatpak and Snap, but trying to do almost anything with Discover (apart from installing updates) caused the centre to crash.
Otherwise, I greatly enjoyed Q4OS. I like the small, yet capable collection of default software. The welcome screen is easy to navigate, and I did not encounter any serious problems with the distribution as a whole. I also like that Q4OS is targeting lower-spec hardware and should run equally well on 32-bit or 64-bit machines. In short: it's friendly, fast, and offers all the packages available on Debian which I think makes it an attractive desktop distribution.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
* * * * *
Visitor supplied rating
Q4OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.6/10 from 123 review(s).
Have you used Q4OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu works toward ZFS on root, Haiku team improves performance, OSDisc shuts down
The Ubuntu team has been gradually adding more support for the advanced filesystem called ZFS. ZFS is able to create vast storage pools across multiple disks and supports creating filesystem snapshots, deduplicating files, and compression. Making it possible to run ZFS as the root filesystem is an experimental feature planned for Ubuntu 19.10. "So, what's new for Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine)? As has already been reported, spotted in our weekly team report on Ubuntu discourse, we are going to enhance ZFS on root support in the coming cycles. Ubuntu 19.10 is a first round towards that goal. We want to support ZFS on root as an experimental installer option, initially for desktop, but keeping the layout extensible for server later on. The desktop will be the first beneficiary in Ubuntu 19.10. Note the use of the term 'experimental' though! As we want to have the dataset layout right and we know a file system is very crucial as it's responsible for all your data, we don't want to encourage people to use it on production systems yet, or at least, not without regular backups." Further details are available in this Ubuntu blog post.
* * * * *
The Haiku developers have been polishing their lightweight operating system, which continues the design and work started by BeOS. The Haiku developers have made a lot of progress recently in improving the performance of their already snappy operating system. In particular, writes to disks are getting faster: "I noticed that it had a hard-coded 2-second timeout in-between write-backs, to avoid disk congestion (and to avoid writing back blocks that were likely to be modified again). This meant it could fill up and then applications would be stuck waiting for it to write out the dirtied blocks (which was the cause of the long-standing 'Tracker stops and starts while emptying Trash'), among other slownesses. (Probably when this code was first written over a decade ago it was not as much of a bottleneck.) Now we instead compute a dynamic timeout based on how long the last block writes took, which can be a 10x performance difference (on HDDs) or even a 100-200x performance improvement (on SSDs)." Other improvements are mentioned in the Haiku monthly newsletter.
* * * * *
We received word on August 5th that OSDisc is shutting down operations. For over 16 years OSDisc has been shipping Linux install media to people around the world, providing physical media to people who wanted to try distributions that did not provide any off-line methods for acquiring install discs. OSDisc has faced issues with rising shipping costs while wide-spread high-speed Internet has reduced the need for physical install media. "After over 16 years, OSDisc.com is ending service. The website has stopped accepting orders, but it will stay live for a while to handle returns, support questions, and warranty issues for our customers. Why? I started OSDisc to spread Linux and help new users get started. But DVDs just aren't relevant anymore, and have a little effect on the spread of Linux. I regularly see very small distros that provide tens of thousands of downloads, but sell one or two DVDs, if any. The vast majority of Linux users are downloading the software themselves. And that's a great thing to see." The notice from OSDisc reports that, over the past decade and a half, over 200,000 discs were shipped to Linux and BSD customers.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
How to find files
Modern operating systems hold a lot of files. It's not uncommon for an operating system with just one user to store over 100,000 files on its disk. (At the time of writing my laptop is home to 1,268,988 files.) Which means virtually every computer's disk has become a haystack and any file we did not store in an organized way (that we still remember) becomes the proverbial needle.
Luckily there are several tools which will help us find files on our computer. The right tool for the job will depend on what sort of file we want to find and what parameters we can supply to help the system find our data.
In instances where we know the name of a program, such as ls, grep, or systemctl, but do not know the directory it is in, we can use the which command to find it. The which program takes the name of a command and tells us its full pathname, as shown below:
which grep
/bin/grep
In cases where we know part of a filename, but not its full location, or perhaps even its full name, most distributions can use the locate command to find files with similar names. Let's say I want to find any document with the term "tax" in the name. I can locate any matching files using locate as follows:
locate tax
The above command will return files with names like the following:
/usr/share/yelp-xsl/js/jquery.syntax.js
/usr/include/netax25
/home/jesse/Documents/income-tax.ods
Chances are the only file in the above list we really wanted was the last one. So if we are getting dozens or hundreds of matches we can use the grep command to filter down the results. For instance, the following command also looks for files with the term "tax" in the name, but then filters down the results to only show results in my home directory:
locate tax | grep /home/jesse
In this next example, I want to find all songs on my computer with the word "love" in the title. The "love" keyword will show up in many system files, so I modify the locate command to only show items it finds in my Music folder:
locate love | grep Music
In this case I was missing some entries that I thought should appear and it turned out that, since Linux filenames are case-sensitive, that locate was not finding songs with "Love" or "LOVE" in the title, only "love". To fix this, we can use the "-i" parameter to tell locate to ignore case-sensitivity.
locate -i love | grep Music
The locate command has the advantage of being very fast. It returns results quickly because it is not examining the available files on the disk when it is run, it is looking through a database of filenames that are updated periodically. This means locate is ideal at finding information that is a day or more older, and it is good at finding matching filenames, but it is not useful for finding brand new files or files with specific characteristics. For special cases like these we will want to use the find command.
The find command accepts a location where it will look for files, followed by flags that tell it how to narrow its search. To find a file with a specific series of characters in the name we can use the "-iname" parameter. For instance, here I look for any files with the ".html" extension in my Documents directory. The "*" matches any characters, so this example finds any files with names that end with ".html":
find ~/Documents -iname "*.html"
We can also search for files based on when they were last modified. This is useful when looking for new files we want to add to a backup. For instance, this find command looks for all files in our home directory that have been created or modified in the past seven days:
find ~/ -mtime -7
The "-7" in this case means we want to see files changed less than seven days ago. We can reverse the logic and look for files more than a week old by using "+7":
find ~/ -mtime +7
The find command can also locate files based on which permissions they have. Permissions are passed to find the same way they are passed to chmod. Programs that retain root permissions when they are run are especially powerful and we might want to know if any of them are on the system. Special executables, such as sudo and firejail, will show up when we look for programs with the set user identity (setuid) permission. Here we can search for setuid programs:
find /usr -perm -4000
Searching the entirety of the /usr directory is likely to take a long time. We can narrow our search to using just our user's path (the locations where the system will look for programs) by performing the following search:
find $(echo $PATH | tr ':' ' ') -perm -4000
The above command filters out the separating colon characters from our user's PATH variable and uses the locations included in the path to narrow our search for powerful setuid programs that may be used to elevate permissions.
The find command allows for multiple parameters to be used. For instance, we can combine looking for specific strings of characters and modification times. This example looks through my Documents directory for new text (txt) files that are less than a week old:
find ~/Documents -mtime -7 -iname "*.txt"
The above command is especially useful if we know we created a file recently, but completely forgot what it was named.
The find program is very flexible and offers several more options for filtering files in searches. Its manual page lists all of the recognized filters and we have common invocations of the find command in our simplified manual page.
* * * * *
Additional tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7
Red Hat has announced a new update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7. The new release, 7.7, is expected to be the final feature update to Red Hat's 7.x series as the platform is now shifting into its maintenance phase. "Beyond new capabilities, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 also marks the transition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Maintenance Phase I within the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10-year lifecycle. Maintenance Phase I emphasizes maintaining infrastructure stability for production environments and enhancing the reliability of the operating system. Future minor releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 will now focus solely on retaining and improving this stability rather than net-new features. Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers are able to migrate across platform versions as support and feature needs dictate. To help with the process, Red Hat offers tools, including in-place upgrades, which helps to streamline and simplify migrating from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8." Further details can be found in the press release and in the release notes.
Ubuntu 18.04.3
Adam Conrad has announced the release of new install media for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. The new media carries to the version number 18.04.3 and contains minor updates and package fixes. Ubuntu community editions, including Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Kylin have also published updated media. "Like previous LTS series, 18.04.3 includes hardware enablement stacks for use on newer hardware. This support is offered on all architectures and is installed by default when using one of the desktop images. Ubuntu Server defaults to installing the GA kernel; however you may select the HWE kernel from the installer bootloader. As usual, this point release includes many updates, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation." Further details can be found in the release notes.
Voyager Live 10
Rodolphe Bachelart has announced the release of Voyager Live 10, a major update of the project's desktop Linux distribution branch based on Debian 10 and featuring a customised GNOME desktop: "Voyager Live 10 is based on Debian 10 'Buster', with 3 edition. A unique, free and open-source, 64-bit GNOME for the purists and two non-free variants with GNOME (amd64 and i386) with all firmware installed for those who have problems with hardware compatibility using the free edition. All editions are built around the new GNOME 3.30 and the Linux kernel 4.19. Warning: Voyager 10 is only a variant of Debian Buster. All the internal structure of Debian 10 is left by default to avoid problems with security and packages and all updates come from official Debian repositories. It is also an international version, with all languages and translations preserved. Among the new Debian Buster features, security is in the spotlight with support for Secure Boot; this means that users will no longer have to disable support for Secure Boot in the firmware configuration. There is also the activation of AppArmor on new installations, the choice of Wayland as the default GNOME display server for the Linux kernel 4.19." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and screenshots.
Voyager Live 10 -- The default Voyager Live desktop
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
* * * * *
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: 1,548
- Total data uploaded: 27.1TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Methods for finding files
In this week's Tips and Tricks column we covered various ways to locate files from the command line. We would like to hear how you find files on your computer. Do you use the file manager's search tool, run locate, find files with find?
You can see the results of our previous poll on custom versus vanilla desktop environments in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Methods for finding files
| I use find: | 281 (21%) |
| I use locate: | 123 (9%) |
| I search with my text-based file manager: | 22 (2%) |
| I search with my GUI file manager: | 443 (33%) |
| I use a desktop indexing search tool: | 70 (5%) |
| I use a combination of the above: | 354 (26%) |
| I use none of the above: | 64 (5%) |
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|
| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
Distributions added to waiting list
- CryptoCurrency OS. CryptoCurrency OS is a distribution based on Linux Mint which ships with multiple cryptocurrency wallets pre-installed. Supported wallets include Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and EOS.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 19 August 2019. 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 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
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INSERT - Inside Security Rescue Toolkit
INSERT (Inside Security Rescue Toolkit) aims to be a multi-functional, multi-purpose disaster recovery and network analysis system. It runs from a credit card-sized CD-ROM for convenient transport or download and was basically a stripped-down version of Knoppix. INSERT provides full read-write support for NTFS-partitions using captive-ntfs.
Status: Discontinued
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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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