 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 848, 13 January 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While proprietary operating systems eventually reach their end of life and new versions need to be purchased, Linux distributions are usually provided free of charge and with free updates between new versions. This makes Linux an excellent choice for people looking to replace their aging proprietary operating systems. One distribution which is especially geared towards Linux newcomers is elementary OS, an Ubuntu-based distribution which uses a macOS-style interface. Joshua Allen Holm takes elementary 5.1 for a test drive and reports on his experiences in our Feature Story. Then we discuss NetBSD developers expanding Wayland support in their software ports and Fedora phasing out legacy Python packages. We also remind Ubuntu users that version 19.04 is nearing the end of its supported life. Plus we discuss how to gain direct access to USB ports as a regular user, particularly when running applications under WINE. We continue the discussion on giving users access to raw storage devices in our Opinion Poll and would like to hear your comments about whether this is a good idea. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: elementary OS 5.1
- News: NetBSD expanding Wayland support, Fedora phasing out legacy Python packages, Ubuntu 19.04 nearing its end of life
- Questions and answers: Accessing USB ports under WINE
- Released last week: Tails 4.2, IPFire 2.23 Core 139, Archman 2020-01
- Torrent corner: Archman, ArcoLinux, AryaLinux, Bluestar, EasyOS, Endless OS, IPFire, SparkyLinux, Tails
- Opinion poll: Allowing regular users to access storage drives
- New distributions: PsychOS, theshell OS
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm) |
elementary OS 5.1
elementary OS 5.1 "Hera" is an Ubuntu-based distribution with its own custom desktop environment known as Pantheon. Built upon Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, elementary OS uses its Pantheon desktop and applications to create a desktop experience that draws more inspiration from macOS than it does from Windows.
For this review I began by heading to the elementary OS website to download the ISO. The website is clean and well organized with the download option right at the top of the main page. The download is "pay what you want" and the default price is $20 (that price should be in US Dollars, but the page does not make that clear, and I have no idea if the prices change for people in other countries). Setting the price to zero (resulting in a free download) is an option, which is what I did for this review.
elementary OS 5.1 -- The live desktop
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I downloaded the 1.47GB ISO, copied it to a flash drive, and used that flash drive to boot my computer. The boot options were very similar to Ubuntu with options to try a live desktop or skip right to installing elementary OS. I opted to try the live desktop for a little while before running the installer. Everything seemed to work fine in the live desktop so I moved on to installing the operation system.
Installing elementary OS
The installation process for elementary OS is the same as Ubuntu. The Ubiquity installer handles the process and prompts the user for all the typical information: language, keyboard layout, timezone, whether to download updates while installing, partition the hard drive, create a new user, and the like. The process was uneventful; there were no issues and the installation went as smoothly as it does whenever I use an Ubuntu-based distribution that uses Ubiquity. When the installer finished its work, I rebooted my computer and began using elementary OS.
elementary OS 5.1 -- The Ubiquity installer
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The Pantheon desktop environment
From the login screen to the desktop environment, everything is custom developed for elementary OS. Sure, you can get Pantheon on some other distributions, but this is the distribution it was designed for, which means everything fits together seamlessly. I will get to some flaws shortly, but overall the Pantheon desktop experience is extremely well polished. It is obvious that a lot of care was taken in making sure everything followed the same rules in order to provide a consistent user experience.
elementary OS 5.1 -- First run greeter
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The first time I logged in I was presented with a welcome screen/greeter that helped me finish setting up my system. The greeter prompted me about configuring location services, night light settings, automatically deleting files in the trash and temporary files, and provided information about getting applications. The experience was not far removed from GNOME's initial setup screens, but elementary's provided a slightly cleaner and somewhat more informative process.
First run setup completed, I explored the desktop in more detail. The desktop is best described as macOS-inspired with some GNOME influence. There is a dock at the bottom the screen and a top panel with an Applications menu, date and time with calendar applet, and a selection of items for controlling sound, networking, Bluetooth, power/screen brightness, notifications, and logging out/shutting down. What really cements the macOS inspiration is the use of the Command key symbol in many of the short-cuts. In most Linux desktop environments this key is called the Super key, and on standard PC keyboard it usually has the Windows flag logo, but elementary's keyboard short-cuts show the Command key symbol, which could be a little confusing to some because the symbol does not appear on a standard PC keyboard.
elementary OS 5.1 -- Keyboard short-cuts
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When it comes to keyboard short-cuts, elementary's are somewhat atypical. The Super/Command key brings up a screen showing the short-cuts when pressed on its own. On some other desktop environments Super alone opens the application menu, but to do that on elementary the shortcut is Command-Space. There is a consistent logic to the Command key short-cuts, but they are not what users of other desktop environments are probably familiar with.
The System Settings application provides a way to tweak the system to a user's needs. In some ways this application is more user friendly than the equivalent in other desktop environments, but in other ways it is more restricted. For example, the Online Account panel only provides options for Last.fm, FastMail, and generic IMAP e-mail accounts. There is also a Parental Controls panel that, at least in theory, allows parents to restrict the times their kids can user the computer and disable applications and websites, but nothing I tried would make the settings actually work. I gave up after only 30 minutes, and a search on-line confirms that other people are having the same problem, but this feature should work without having to put in extra effort to try to make it work.
When it comes to default software packages, elementary OS comes with a small selection of software, mostly basic utilities. The Applications menu has short-cuts for AppCenter, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Code (an elementary OS text editor similar to gedit), Epiphany, Files, Mail, Multitasking View, Music, Photos, Screenshots, System Settings, Terminal, and Videos. The dock has a subset of these as the default items. There are also a few other utilities, like a PDF viewer, that do not have short-cuts in the application menu or dock.
Most of the default applications are elementary/Pantheon applications and follow elementary's user interface guidelines. This typically means a streamlined user experience with some applications only having a small handful of settings that the user can configure. One other feature of most of these applications is that they remember what the user was doing the last time the application was used. For example, if the user was using the Terminal application and the last working directory they were in was /home/[username]/Videos, that directory will be the current working directory when starting a new Terminal.
Installing additional software
While the default elementary OS applications are nice, they are somewhat lacking. Thankfully, AppCenter contains a large number of other applications. The software available is everything from Ubuntu 18.04 plus a selection of elementary applications. The elementary OS applications are classified as "curated" and are mostly "pay what you want" applications; $0 is a valid option, but some are always free.
elementary OS 5.1 -- AppCenter
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AppCenter gets a little awkward when trying to install non-curated applications. It provides a warning about the software and asks the user to confirm if they want to install it. In theory this is okay, but this extends to software like Firefox and LibreOffice, which have packages maintained by Canonical. Yes, elementary does not maintain the packages, but the "it may not receive bug fixes or feature updates" warning for packages that do get updates might intimidate new users. Granted, the "feature updates" warning does apply apply to LibreOffice because elementary is using LibreOffice 6.0, not the latest release, but the older version is to be expected when the distribution is based on an Ubuntu LTS release.
elementary OS 5.1 -- Installing non-curated application
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The extra warning when I tried to install Firefox and LibreOffice was not the only odd issue with AppCenter. LibreOffice is broken down into several entries. There is a LibreOffice entry and then separate entries for each component application. I started by selecting the LibreOffice entry in the hopes that it was a meta-package that installed the entirety of LibreOffice, but it only install the core of LibreOffice, which was unusable without also installing Calc, Writer, etc.
Elementary OS 5.1 also comes with Flatpak pre-installed, but the Flathub repository is not enabled by default. Heading over to Flathub and installing a package using the link provided on the applications page installed the desired application and enabled the entire repo. After I did this, all the Flathub applications showed up in AppCenter and were treated as non-curated applications with the associated warnings when trying to install them.
Because elementary is based on Ubuntu, the typical Debian-style command line applications, apt and dpkg, are available for managing packages. Flatpak can also be managed from the command line. Snap support was not installed by default when I installed elementary OS 5.1 (a subsequent update brought it in as a dependency, but that might have been caused some of that additional software I installed), but it too can be used to install additional software.
Final thoughts
There is a lot to like about elementary, but it is not perfect. The Parental Controls are advertised as a key feature on the distributions website, but it just does not work. There are open bugs about it, but open bugs about a non-working feature still means that the feature does not work. Until it does, it should not be a selling point for the distribution. Aside from that, elementary is wonderfully polished. I personally find the use of the Command symbol in the Keyboard Shortcuts window to be a little odd, and think that the non-curated software warning should be toned down or rephrased for packages that are supported by Canonical (i.e. these packages are not directly supported by elementary, but do receive fixes), but other than a few odds and ends like those examples, elementary OS 5.1 is very well put together. If you are looking for a solid distribution for yourself, or are searching for a distribution to recommend for users coming from macOS, this distribution is an excellent choice.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
elementary OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 4.9/10 from 132 review(s).
Have you used elementary OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
NetBSD expanding Wayland support, Fedora phasing out legacy Python packages, Ubuntu 19.04 nearing its end of life
Usually when we hear about the Wayland display software it is in the context of Linux distributions and their desktops. However, Wayland has gradually be making inroads in the BSD communities too. The NetBSD community is starting to get more Wayland support through the pkgsrc repository. A mailing list post outlines software ports which can now run with Wayland support enabled: "This is just a heads up that the Wayland option is now turned on by default for NetBSD 9 and Linux in cases where it peacefully coexists with X11. Right now, this effects the following packages: graphics/MesaLib, devel/SDL2, www/webkit-gtk, x11/gtk3. The WebRTC option has also been enabled by default on NetBSD 9 for two Firefox versions: www/firefox, www/firefox68. Please keep me informed of any fallout. Hopefully, there will be none."
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Distributions are gradually phasing out support for Python 2 releases, which are no longer supported upstream as of the start of 2020. While Python 2 does not receive official upstream support, package maintainers of Linux distributions continue to keep the old versions running and patched as best they can, at least for a time. Fedora is planning to remove an older version of Python (2.6) when Fedora 33 launches. "The python26 package will be retired without replacement from Fedora 33. Python 2.6 has been End of Life since October 2013 and was kept around only to test software targeting RHEL/EPEL 6. The removal is aligned with EPEL 6 EOL." Further details can be found in the Fedora change proposal.
* * * * *
Adam Conrad has posted a reminder that Ubuntu 19.04 and its related community editions will reach the end of their supported life on January 23rd, 2020. "Ubuntu announced its 19.04 (Disco Dingo) release almost 9 months ago, on April 18, 2019. As a non-LTS release, 19.04 has a 9-month
support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 19.04 will reach end of life on Thursday, Jan 23rd. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 19.04." People wishing to upgrade to version 19.10 are encouraged to read the upgrade instructions.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Accessing USB ports under WINE
The-glass-is-half-full-of-wine asks: I am a Linux user and this problem eludes me. I have never been able to get Windows programs that run under WINE to use the USB comports. Could you explain how to use comports, when running a Windows program under WINE?
DistroWatch answers: When we run an application under WINE it can see hardware ports, such as parallel and USB ports, through a translation process which maps the local Linux device names into Windows device names. We can see a complete list of these translated devices in the .wine/dosdevices directory under our home folder. If we get a long directory listing of that location we will see something like this:
ls -l ~/.wine/dosdevices
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jesse jesse 10 Dec 1 13:00 c: -> ../drive_c
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jesse jesse 8 Dec 1 13:02 f:: -> /dev/sdc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jesse jesse 1 Dec 1 13:00 z: -> /
Here we can see the C, F, and Z drive mappings. C and Z are special cases and link to locations in our filesystem. In my case the F drive is linked to the device /dev/sdc which is a USB thumb drive.
Any mappings which show up in this location should be available to all Windows programs we run through WINE. If a device mapping is missing, we can add it. For example, if my optical drive, /dev/sr0, is missing from the listing, I can create it as the W drive by running:
ln -s /dev/sr0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/w::
wineserver -k
The above two commands create a symbolic link for the new device mapping and then shutdown the existing WINE service, effectively restarting WINE so the change will take effect.
Let's say the symbolic link to your USB device is linked in the ~/.wine/dosdevices directory and you still cannot access it from your application. The problem is likely that WINE is running under your user account and only has access to the directories and devices your user has permission to read. On most Linux distributions regular users are not allowed to access raw USB ports or storage devices, not directly anyway. The devices are usually mounted by the administrator who can determine who can browse the devices.
We can address this lack of permission by looking at which group has access to the device and then making our user a part of that group. For example, up above I pointed out WINE considers its F drive to be my /dev/sdc device, which is a USB drive. I can confirm which device this is by running lsusb or lsblk to get a listing of my USB and storage devices, respectively.
When I check the permissions of my /dev/sdc device, I see the device is owned by the root user, which is typical, and members of the disk group can also access the device.
ls -l /dev/sdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 Dec 1 14:28 /dev/sdc
My regular user account, called jesse, is not a member of the disk group, therefore I cannot access the /dev/sdc device directly. I can fix this by adding my user to the group and then logging out of my account and signing back in. I add myself to the disk group by running the following command:
sudo adduser jesse disk
From now on, when I run a program under WINE, it is able to access the USB drive called /dev/sdc. On other distributions the device may be associated with another group, such as sys, but whichever group owns it, adding our user to that group allows us to access it.
Of course, since most storage devices are owned by the same group we need to be careful. If we assign our user to a group that owns storage devices it opens up the possibility we (or a program running as our user) will also be able to access any drive attached to our computer. It is probably best to either remove the extra group permission later, or set up one special user that is only used to run WINE. That way it reduces the risk we will accidentally access or destroy data on the storage device. I can remove myself from the disk group by running the following command:
sudo deluser jesse disk
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Tails 4.2
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The project has released a new version of the distribution, Tails 4.2, which makes several improvements to the upgrade process: "We worked on important improvements to the automatic upgrade feature, which is still one of your major pain points when using Tails: Until now, if your version of Tails was several months old, you sometimes had to do two or more automatic upgrades in a row. For example, to upgrade from Tails 3.12 to Tails 3.16, you first had to upgrade to Tails 3.14. Starting with 4.2, direct automatic upgrades will be available from all prior versions to the latest version. Until now, you could only do a limited number of automatic upgrades, after which you had to do a much more complicated 'manual' upgrade. Starting with 4.2, you will only have to do a manual upgrade between major versions, for example to upgrade to Tails 5.0 in 2021. We made automatic upgrades use less memory. We optimized a bit the size of the download when doing automatic upgrades." Additional information on Tails 4.2 can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-01
Demiray Muhterem has announced the release of Archman GNU/Linux 2020-01 "Xfce" edition, the latest stable build of the project's Arch-based distribution featuring the Xfce desktop. This release introduces an alternative package installation program called tkPacman: "Archman Xfce 2020-01, code name 'Lake Van' stable release is ready to use. As of this release, Archman repositories use packages with the extension tar.zst. In this release you will see a 70% centered panel at the bottom of the screen. With this panel's smart hiding feature, the entire screen will be available for use. We also grouped window tasks as icons only in the panel. We have made many other cosmetic changes. We set the Papirus icon set aside and decided to use the Surfn Arc icon set. In Sample Files, we place information and visual files about Lake Van which we introduce in this release. We've fixed many bugs you've detected in earlier release. As an alternative package installer, we have added tkPacman to Archman repositories and we recommend you to try it." See the full release announcement for more details and screenshots.
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-01 -- Running the Xfce desktop
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IPFire 2.23 Core 139
IPFire is a lightweight Linux distribution for use on network devices such as firewalls. The distribution is managed through a web interface for easier access. The project's latest update is IPFire 2.23 Core Update 139 and the project's release announcement provides an overview of available improvements: "It is time for the first release of the year, IPFire 2.23 - Core Update 139. It is packed with improvements, software updates, and many many bug fixes. Improved booting & reconnecting: Dialup scripts have been cleaned up to avoid any unnecessary delays after the system has been handed a DHCP lease from the Internet Service Provider. This allows the system to reconnect quicker after loss of the Internet connection and booting up and connecting to the Internet is quicker, too. Improvements to the Intrusion Prevention System: Various smaller bug fixes have been applied in this Core Update which makes our IPS a little bit better with every release. To take advantage of deeper analysis of DNS packets, the IPS is now informed about which DNS servers are being used by the system. TLSL: IPFire is configured as securely as possible."
AryaLinux 2.1
AryaLinux is a source-based GNU/Linux distribution that has been put together using Linux From Scratch (LFS) as a guide. The AryaLinux distribution uses a source/ports style of package management and a custom package manager called 'alps'. The distribution's latest release, AryaLinux 2.1, is available in four desktop editions: GNOME, KDE Plasma, MATE, and Xfce. "Listed below are some of the changes that have made it to this release of AryaLinux. Apart from package updates and upgrades, there are several things that make this release different from our other releases. Release for all supported desktop environments: Xfce, MATE, KDE and GNOME. Linux kernel major version update from 4.x to 5.x. All package versions in line with package versions of LFS and BLFS stable book version 9.0. A complete rewrite of AryaLinux took place before this release which resulted in few regressions. We are working on the same. Please click here for known issues in this release." Further information can be found in the release notes.
AryaLinux 2.1 -- Running the Xfce desktop
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SuperGamer 5
David Nickel has announced the release of SuperGamer 5, a brand-new version of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution designed for gamers. Although the live image does not come with any pre-installed games, it includes scripts for downloading and installing a number of popular gaming platforms, such as Steam, Lutris (an open-source gaming platform for Linux) and PlayOnLinux (a Wine software compatibility layer for installing Windows-based video games and other software on Linux). The new release of SuperGamer is based on Ubuntu 19.10, featuring a recent Linux kernel (version 5.3) and an Xfce 4.14 user interface with a Whisker menu. "The SuperGamer version 5 has arrived. It is based upon the Ubuntu 19.10 base, is 64-bit ONLY, and it has the 5.3 kernel and Xfce 4.14. I have included installers for Steam, Lutris and PlayOnLinux as well as cleaned up the look and feel of it. UEFI support is still hit and miss with the new GRUB, but it does work in Live mode." Visit the project's home page to read the brief release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 1,767
- Total data uploaded: 29.7TB
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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) |
Allowing regular users to access storage drives
In our Questions and Answers column we talked about security restrictions which prevent most users from directly accessing storage devices. Typically users are limited to accessing specific filesystems on a device, rather than the raw data of the device itself. This prevents all sorts of accidental (and malicious) tampering with regards to data on the disk.
We would like to know if your regular user account has permission to access raw storage devices, such as disk drives and thumb drives, or if you need to access these devices through sudo or the root account.
You can see the results of our previous poll on disk encryption and file vaults in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Allowing regular users to access storage drives
| My regular account can access all storage devices: | 595 (56%) |
| My regular account can directly access some storage devices: | 187 (17%) |
| My regular account can only access storage devices through sudo: | 174 (16%) |
| My regular account cannot access storage devices: | 44 (4%) |
| My regular account is root: | 53 (5%) |
| Other: | 16 (1%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
Distributions added to waiting list
- PsychOS. PsychOS is a Devuan-based distribution customized for an out of the box desktop experience.
- theShell OS. theShell OS is an Arch Linux-based distribution featuring a desktop environment called theShell.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 20 January 2020. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
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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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ZENIX GNU/Linux
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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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