 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 849, 20 January 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 3rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There has been a lot of talk in the Linux community recently about how best to welcome former Windows 7 users as the legacy version of Microsoft's operating system has reached the end of its supported life. There are several beginner-oriented desktop distributions in the Linux community and perhaps the one most geared towards Windows refugees is Zorin OS, a distribution that is designed to resemble Microsoft's operating system. Robert Rijkhoff took Zorin OS 15.1 for a spin and reports on the distribution's strengths and problems in our Feature Story. Then, in our Questions and Answers section, we discuss distributions that are still running SysV init and why, along with some thoughts on OpenBSD's recent security patches. Whether init software is an important factor in picking a distribution is the subject of this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we report on the PinePhone, an open platform mobile device, shipping and link to a guide with a list of operating systems which will run on the new phone. We also report on new features coming to elementary OS in 2020 and say a sad good-bye to Mark Greaves, a core member of the Peppermint OS team who passed away this month. Mark was a positive and talented open source contributor and will be missed. We also share the releases of the past week and share the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful and fulfilling week.
Content:
- Review: Zorin 15.1 "Lite"
- News: elementary team plans future features, open platform PinePhone now shipping, Peppermint marks the passing of Mark Greaves
- Questions and answers: PCLinuxOS, antiX, and OpenBSD patches
- Released last week: CentOS 8.1.1911, Linux Lite 4.8, Raspberry Slideshow 13.0
- Torrent corner: Alpine, AUSTRUMI, CentOS, Linux Lite, KDE neon, Nitrux, PCLinuxOS, Raspberry Slideshow, SmartOS, Tails, Volumio
- Opinion poll: Does it matter which init software your distribution uses?
- Website news: Server upgrade
- New distributions: Kaisen Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (16MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Robert Rijkhoff) |
Zorin 15.1 "Lite"
Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based operating system that aims to make Linux easy for Windows and macOS users. In the words of Zorin, it is "the alternative to Windows and macOS designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure and privacy respecting". Zorin's main product is the paid-for "Ultimate" edition, which will set you back €39 and comes with macOS, Windows, Linux and "Touch" layouts (i.e. themes) as well as a relatively large collection of software and "installation support". Other editions of Zorin are free but come with less pre-installed software and fewer desktop layouts.
For this review I dusted off a MacBook that dates from late 2009 and installed the "Lite" edition which, as the name suggests, is designed to breathe new life into older hardware. The laptop is one of the plastic, white MacBooks. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM - I doubled the amount of RAM a few months ago. The laptop has mostly been running Fedora with the MATE desktop and the i3 window manager as an alternative environment, both of which ran fine. Zorin's Lite edition uses Xfce as the desktop environment.
First impressions and installation
Zorin's website is either modern and clean or yet another bootstrap site, depending on your view. There are just three links in the navigation menu: Download, Computers and Help (the Computers section links to vendors that sell laptops with Zorin pre-installed). The Download section lists Zorin's Ultimate edition first, followed by the Core, Lite and Education editions.
Clicking any of the Download links for the free versions triggers a "Sign up to our newsletter & Download" pop-up window featuring a huge "Sign up & Download" button and a very small "Skip to download" link. I am not a fan of this type of marketing. I don't mind that they ask if I maybe want to sign up to their mailing list, but I take issue with the fact that the dialogue window has been designed to make the "No thanks" option easy to miss. Such marketing techniques assume that users need to be tricked into signing up to receiving marketing materials, which reflects poorly on the project as a whole.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- The newsletter subscription form that pops-up when trying to download Zorin
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Speaking of dubious marketing practices, Zorin's home page claims that installing the operating system will make your computer "virus resistant". The word "resistant" is open to interpretation, but I reckon it is fair to say that most people use "resistant" and "immune" interchangeably. Zorin's claim is obviously false, and I really wish Zorin would reign in its marketing department. So much for my rant about marketing – let's get back to the review...
The Lite edition is available for 32- and 64-bit architectures and the download page helpfully explains that PCs with less than 2GB of RAM should use the 32-bit version. When you select the version you want to download the website provides a link to the installation instructions in the Help section. The articles in the Help section are quite minimal but well written. One thing I found interesting is that Zorin recommends creating a bootable USB drive using an application called balenaEtcher. The application is available for Windows, macOS and, as an AppImage, for Linux. I couldn't get balenaEtcher to work on Fedora 31, so I did what I usually do: dd the ISO image to a USB stick like a greybeard.
Zorin boots to a live environment and I was pleased that almost everything worked out of the box, including the Fn keys. The only issue I noticed early-on was that right-clicking on the laptop's trackpad often registered a left-click.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- The live environment
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Zorin uses Ubiquity for the installer. Ubiquity is very user-friendly but I did manage to get myself into a bit of muddle at the partitioning stage. The issue appeared to be related to the fact that the existing partitions on the laptop were encrypted. I decided to cancel the installation and do the partitioning using fdisk before running the installer again, which did the trick.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- Testing the keyboard layout in the Ubiquity installer
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Zorin 15 and 15.1 features
Zorin 15 Lite was released in November and only a few weeks later all Zorin editions were updated to version 15.1. Both versions are based on Ubuntu 18.04 and users of Zorin 15 are automatically upgraded to version 15.1 when they update their system.
The release notes for Zorin 15 highlighted a few changes: the desktop theme has been "refreshed and refined"; the theme can be now configured to automatically switch from the default light theme to a dark theme in the evening; Flatpak support has been added and there is a new "Do not disturb" mode for notifications. The blog post about Zorin 15.1 mentions improvements to Zorin Connect (a clone of GSConnect); a new "GameMode" which makes games run faster by allocating more system resources to games being played and improvements to the above-mentioned theme switcher.
The main change in Zorin 15.1 isn't mentioned in the release notes: in the installer you can now opt-out of the "Zorin census". By default, Zorin contacts a server every hour and once a day via cron jobs in the /etc/cron.hourly and /etc/cron.daily directories. Until recently nobody seemed to be aware of Zorin's telemetry, and when it was discovered there was a bit of an outcry.
The zorin-os-census Bash script was first introduced in November 2016, when Zorin 12 was released. In Zorin 15.1 the script posts various bits of data to census.zorinos.com/submit:
- The number of user accounts on the system (by counting the number of users on the system with an ID equal to or greater than 1000).
- The Zorin OS version number (i.e. 15 or 15.1).
- The OEM ID, if present (that is, an ID assigned to a laptop that came pre-installed with Zorin).
- A unique identifier stored in /var/lib/zorin-os-census/uuid.
Of course, to send this data your IP is collected by the mothership as well. Zorin's CEO insisted in an interview with It's FOSS that the user's IP address isn't logged by Zorin and he promised that version 15.1 would have an opt-out box in the installer. The opt-out box has indeed been added: on the page where you can choose to download updates during the install and include third-party software you can now tick a box if you don't want to participate in the census. The checkbox is accompanied by a link for more information.
Personally, I am fine with operating systems collecting basic, anonymised information. It is quite obvious that having data is useful for projects and that it will help with the development of the software. However, I think Zorin showed poor judgment by introducing the telemetry without informing users (it should have been mentioned in the release notes for Zorin 12) and with given users an option to opt-out. When the telemetry was discovered it didn't take long for people with objections to creep out of the woodwork and the fact that Zorin was collecting data in secret will hurt the project's reputation for a long time.
One other thing to note is that the description of the zorin-os-census package changed from version 1.2 (installed on version 15) and 1.2.1 (installed on 15.1). The description for version 1.2 states that the package transmits "the operating system version, the number of user accounts and the city & country the user is in". As the diff for version 1.2.1 shows, the mention of geolocation data was removed in version 1.2.1. That raises several questions. The It's FOSS interview was published in November, and at that time the package description stated that the user's city and country were being collected (presumably by linking a user's IP address to the data submitted via census script). Does that mean that the package description was factually incorrect, or have they stopped collecting geolocation data?
Zorin OS 15.1 -- The zorin-os-census script and the diff for version 1.2.1
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Again, I don't mind distros collecting a small amount of anonymised data, but it seems to me that Zorin has done this wrong. In any case, you can opt-out by removing the zorin-os-census package by running "sudo apt purge zorin-os-census".
Applications and software management
Zorin Lite includes a fairly large collection of pre-installed software. Leaving aside Firefox, Thunderbird and the LibreOffice suite the applications are mostly a mix of well-known Xfce and GNOME apps. The file manager, terminal emulator, media player and image viewer are all Xfce applications, and the GNOME applications include Gedit, Software, Evince, Simple Scan and various smaller applications, such as games and a calculator.
Zorin uses the Ubuntu repos and its own PPAs. The PPAs includes various packages that are also in the Ubuntu repos, including LibreOffice, the Thunar file manager and WINE. I think these packages are mainly included in the PPAs to give users more up to date software. As a result I got version 6.3 of LibreOffice, which features a "tabbed" menu toolbar and full-page background fills.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- LibreOffice and GNOME Mines. The unusual approach to playing mines is because right-clicks are often registered as left-clicks
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Interestingly, the Zorin themes are shipped as Flatpak packages. However, contrary to what the release notes for Zorin 15 suggest, it is not possible to add Flatpak repositories via GNOME Software (which, like the other GNOME applications, is at version 3.28). To add the Flathub repository I needed to add a PPA via the command line. I encountered a few issues with Flatpaks I installed. There is currently a bug that prevents the openh264 Flatpak from being installed and GNOME Music threw the error "Your system Tracker version seems to be outdated". The Tracker package was not installed, and the only version available in the repos was too old.
I didn't run into any issues with software I installed from the Ubuntu repos and Zorin's PPAs. That is to be expected for a distro is based on Ubuntu's long-term support releases but it is worth noting that the system was stable.
Theming and usability
One of Zorin's main selling points are the desktop themes, and that is precisely the point where Zorin fell down for me. Roughly half of the pre-installed applications are GNOME applications, and they have a very different look and feel than the other applications. Worse, in Zorin 15 various GNOME applications were missing options. Most GNOME applications in Zorin don't have the hamburger menu and instead display one or two items from the menu as large buttons. To illustrate the point, the below image shows the Baobab disk usage analyser in Zorin 15 and 15.1. In Zorin 15 Boabab had just one option: Scan Folder. In Zorin 15.1 an application icon was added, which also acts as a menu.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- GNOME menus in Zorin Lite 15 (top) and 15.1 (below).
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What remains is the issue that GNOME and Xfce applications look and behave differently. GNOME applications don't show the application name in the title bar and instead use a combination of a drop-down menu and large buttons in the toolbar. Towards the end of my trial I turned Zorin Lite into a GNOME Lite desktop by changing the theme to Adwaita and replacing most Xfce applications with their GNOME equivalents. The experiment was fairly successful, although there is no way to get round the fact the GNOME applications don't integrate well in a non-GNOME environment.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- Zorin Lite with the Adwaita them and two GNOME apps (Podcasts and Web)
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There are two applications that can tweak the theme: Zorin Appearance and Xfce's Appearance utility. The Zorin Appearance application in the Lite edition doesn't let you drastically change the desktop layout. There are only two layouts to choose from, and the only difference between them is the size of the application launchers in the taskbar.
Zorin Appearance's Theme tab lets you define the accent colour (by default elements such as buttons are blue); select the light or dark theme (and set up auto-switching the themes) and define the theme used by applications, the icon set and the window manager. The latter three items use drop-down menus and by default no option is selected. That is a usability bug, as there is nothing to indicate the default desktop theme, icon set and window manager. In other words, there is no easy way to revert any changes. If you select, say, an icon set that you don't like there is no quick way to go back to the default icons.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- Zorin Appearance and Xfce's Appearance application
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Xfce's Appearance application is much more functional when it comes to changing the desktop theme and icons. I suspect that Zorin Appearance was simply ported from the GNOME-based Zorin editions to Zorin Lite, without much thought about whether or not it makes sense to duplicate various theming options.
Performance, bugs and oddities
I rarely mention CPU and memory usage in distro reviews, as just about any distro I install runs fine. Zorin Lite was an exception. I regularly found myself looking into why the laptop's fan was going crazy. It was mostly the xfwm4 process that was responsible for the high CPU usage, though on a few occasions xiccd was the culprit. I wasn't able to find out what triggered the issue but I suspect it may be Zorin-specific, as the xfwm4 package is provided by one of the Zorin PPAs. Whatever caused the issue, it was annoying. No matter what I tried, at times the laptop's fan just kept spinning like mad and the only solution was to reboot the laptop.
There were a few other issues I encountered. At one point I rebooted the laptop after applying some updates. During the boot process the GRUB screen was suddenly displayed and had a time-out of 30 seconds. After I had logged in the screen saver kicked in after two minutes, which is not the default time-out setting. And after twenty minutes or so I got a notification telling me that new updates were available, even though GNOME Software told me that the system was fully up to date. For the most part the system was stable and pleasant to use, but there were a few occasions when it seemed to have a life of its own.
Something I found curious is that Zorin displays asterisk characters when you enter your sudo password in a terminal window. I was taught that doing so is bad practice, as it reveals the length of your password to anyone who might be looking over your shoulders while you enter your password. I didn't know this behaviour could be changed but it turns out to be quite easy – you can add (or remove) the pwfeedback option in either the sudoers file or by adding a file to /etc/sudoers.d/.
Another unusual default setting is that the application menu includes command line utilities. For instance, when you search for "desktop" you will see an option named "run top". That option is supposed to open a terminal window and run the top command, but that didn't work for me. I also don't quite see the benefit of including options such as "run dd" and "run rsync" in the menu.
There are a few other minor issues with the applications menu. For instance, a search for the string "terminal" returns both "Terminal Emulator" and "Xfce Terminal". The first launches the Xfce Terminal while the latter launched the preferences for the application.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- Searching for a terminal and unusual sudo behaviour
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Another minor annoyance are Zorin's default keyboard shortcuts. You can open the menu by hitting the super key, which is a bit awkward as the key is also used for a dozen or so other shortcuts. If, for instance, you launch the default web browser using Super+W the application menu opens first and after a few seconds Firefox will launch. The menu is still sitting in the foreground, and the search field in the menu still has focus.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- Opening Firefox using the Super-F keyboard shortcut.
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After a bit of digging I found that the menu is launched by xfce4-popup-zorinmenulite and that the default keyboard shortcut is "Super L" (which is just the Super key on its own and different from Super+L). To change the shortcut you have to remove it and then add it again. I mapped it to Super+Spacebar.
Finally, I should note that I haven't really touched on the new features mentioned in the release notes. The dark theme looks good and the auto-theme switcher works as advertised. The "Do Not Disturb" feature, which can be enabled via the Notifications icon in the system tray, is also quite nice. I did find it odd that enabling the option also suppresses the visual cues you normally get when you change the screen brightness or volume. To my mind, those are not really notifications as the visual feedback is only triggered when you interact with the desktop environment.
My gaming activities are limited to classics such as Mines and Solitaire, so I can't really say anything meaningful about the new "GameMode". As for Zorin Connect, the package is not compatible with Zorin Lite as it depends on GNOME. I did try installing the zorin-connect package, just to see what would happen. It installed GNOME, and on the login screen I got two new desktop environment options: Ubuntu and Ubuntu on Wayland. As expected, Zorin Connect refused to launch on the Lite desktop.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- The Ubuntu GNOME session
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Conclusions
Zorin Lite is a relatively young project and quite different from Zorin's other versions - if only because it uses Xfce rather than GNOME as the desktop environment. The distro aims to provide a lightweight operating system that looks modern, and in many respects Zorin Lite achieves that goal. Things like the login screen, task bar and application menu have plenty of polish and work well. It is nice that applications such as LibreOffice are more up to date than they are in Ubuntu, and Zorin's dark theme is quite well done.
Zorin OS 15.1 -- Zorin's dark theme
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That said, Zorin Lite didn't strike me as a finished product. Compared with other distros I have tried on my MacBook the performance wasn't great. And although I noticed some improvement when I moved from version 15 to 15.1, there are some basic usability issues that I don't expect to see in a project that is over two years old. In particular, I don't see the benefit of including command line utilities in the menu's search results and the pre-defined keyboard shortcuts don't make much sense. Also, having two separate - but overlapping - applications to tweak the appearance of the desktop is confusing.
Another thing I disliked was the mix of Xfce and GNOME applications. My experiment to turn Zorin Lite into a GNOME Lite desktop worked fairly well, though I personally feel it would make more sense for Zorin Lite to stay much closer to Xfce. Zorin Lite is aimed at Windows refugees and Xfce applications behave much more like Windows applications than their GNOME counterparts. As things stand I am not sure why I would recommend Zorin Lite over distros like Xubuntu or Ubuntu MATE.
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Visitor supplied rating
Zorin OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.4/10 from 202 review(s).
Have you used Zorin OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
elementary team plans future features, open platform PinePhone now shipping, Peppermint marks the passing of Mark Greaves
The elementary OS team has written a blog post in which they look back at milestones in the project's progress in 2019 and plan ahead for new features in 2020. Some of the upcoming new features include making more applications work with Wayland and improving touch gesture support: "Flatpak, sandboxing, and Portals. Along with our big Flatpak efforts comes updating several components to use newer sandboxed APIs and implementing the many Portals available to apps. Some of that work intersects with becoming Wayland ready, and we've already made progress towards Screenshot being ready for Wayland - with other issues being tracked on GitHub. Even if we don"t ship Wayland by default in 2020, these fixes and updated APIs will still make the experience more robust and secure. Improved gesture support in elementary OS: One area in elementary OS that we aim to significantly improve in 2020 is support for one-to-one touch gestures, like we recently added to Onboarding."
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People interested in getting their hands on an open platform smartphone that can run GNU/Linux operating systems will soon have a new option available. The PinePhone began shipping on January 17th. By default it does not include an end-user operating system as the company plans for the phone to be more of an open platform on which users can install their preferred software. However, the UBports team has been working on early development kits of the PinePhone and have install images ready for the device. The option to use the UBports graphical installer to automate the install process is expected to arrive in the future. "At this point I assume that everyone getting a Braveheart PinePhone understand that it"s up to them to find the operating system build they are interested in, flash it and take part in the community discussion and ongoing development. Most builds are available on the PinePhone Wiki"
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The Peppermint team published sad news this week, reporting one of the distribution's lead developers, Mark Greaves, passed away earlier this month. "With a heavy heart I unfortunately have to inform you that Mark is no longer with us. Shane and I received word from one of Mark's sons that he passed away this morning after a 10 day hospital stay. Mark was among the best of us. His contributions to both Peppermint and to the desktop Linux world as a whole are incalculable and he will be sorely missed. There are many unanswered questions at the moment and I'll try to be diligent in relaying relevant information." Greaves will be missed - by his family, the Peppermint community, and the DistroWatch team who got to correspond with him.
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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) |
PCLinuxOS, antiX, and OpenBSD patches
Curious-on-a-range-of-topics asks: I wonder if readers would enjoy a side-by-side deep-dive comparison between antiX and PCLinuxOS, ranked 11th & 13th respectively as of today. I'd be curious to learn how they approach things differently. They appear to be the two strongest non-systemd distros. Not only are they both on the rise, recently, but coupled with antiX's big brother MX Linux's top spot, there seems some substance to indications of a growing grass-roots "rebellion". Yes, perhaps a bit of drama, but it does add interest!
I'd also like to hear OpenBSD discuss how 12 security patches suddenly crushed their past bragging rights so severely (OK, they can still be proud, but you get what I mean). So far they've been silent running (besides issuing patches). Were the causes external? Will similar discoveries be the new normal? Inquiring minds want to know!
DistroWatch answers: There are several mini-topics to explore here so let's quickly run through them. Both antiX and PCLinuxOS are fine distributions and ones I have enjoyed using. The MX Linux project, which is closely connected to antiX, is also a project I enjoy a lot. So, in general, I'm happy to discuss them and have posted the occasional reviews of these projects.
While I like exploring these three distributions separately, I think doing any kind of side-by-side comparison between them would yield unwieldy results. PCLinuxOS and antiX have different development models (rolling versus static, usually), different bases (independent versus Debian), different approaches to package management (RPM versus Deb), different default desktop environments (KDE and MATE versus lightweight window managers). One of the few things these two projects do have in common is their init software (SysV init), and even then they don't use the same version of the package.
All of that is to say, we can find a lot of things these projects do differently, but I don't feel an article comparing them would have a firm common base from which to draw attention to those differences. For now I'd suggest trying each project on its own as each one does some things really well. But I personally would have trouble comparing them side-by-side.
The question made reference to the idea of a "rebellion", I suspect against the move many distributions have made toward using systemd. Maybe there is some truth to that, some people do feel strongly about which init software they use. However, I also think it is equally true these project may be continuing to use SysV init, less as an act of defiance, and more because the developers feel it works well enough. A case of "If it's not broke, don't fix it." The systemd init software may offer enticing features, but some developers are conservative when it comes to adopting newer technologies if they can get by with what they already have.
Let's move on now to talking about the second question: OpenBSD's patches and security record. The question didn't mention which specific security patches the author meant, but I suspect (based on when this query landed in my inbox) these OpenBSD patches from December were the ones being referenced.
While I am not an OpenBSD developer, I can get a pretty good idea of what is happening in these patches and I do not think there is anything here that would "crush their past bragging rights". The OpenBSD project famously claims a good record with remote security: "Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!" A long time, in this case, meaning around two decades, which is impressive.
Some of the patches issued by OpenBSD are serious, in my opinion, but none of them appear to affect the remote security of a default install. In fact, while there are several patches published, I don't think any of these issues appear particularly out of the ordinary for OpenBSD. Which is probably why not much has been said about them.
I don't know enough about the OpenBSD code to say who introduced the issues or why they got fixed now. But I don't think there is any sign that these issues came about from external factors or that this shifts what is normal for the OpenBSD project.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Linux Lite 4.8
Jerry Bezencon has announced the release of Linux Lite 4.8, a new stable version of the project's beginner-friendly distribution based on Ubuntu 18.04 and featuring the Xfce desktop: "Linux Lite 4.8 final is now available for download and installation. We would like to take this opportunity to welcome all Windows 7 people who have come here to find a simple, fast and free alternative to Windows 7 which has reached its end of life and no longer provides security updates. Linux Lite makes the transition to a Linux-based operating system by offering a full, Microsoft-compatible office suite, familiar software like Firefox, Chrome, Teamviewer, VLC as well as full system back-up tools, a comprehensive and easy-to-follow help manual to guide you on your journey, Steam so you can keep playing your Windows games and so much more familiar software. Our desktop is laid out just like it is in Windows with a Start Menu to the left and a tray to the right with volume, network and calendar options, with familiar desktop icons that take you exactly where you want to go on your system." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
Linux Lite 4.8 -- Running the Xfce desktop
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Raspberry Slideshow 13.0
Raspberry Slideshow is focused on being a quick-to-set-up platform for displaying image and video files. The distribution is built for the Raspberry Pi exclusively. The distribution's latest release is Raspberry Slideshow 13.0 introduces some significant configuration changes, more logging options and the default media folder has been moved. The project's release announcement lists the latest changes: "New features for the v13 release: media.conf now replaces all the .txt files for configuring the system behaviour. It’s a breaking change; upon timeout reached, only remote changed sources’ media are fetched again (previously, all media of all remote sources were downloaded); Web/P images added to whitelisted images’ file formats; better logging and printer debugging output; refetching hashes improved and better handling of connection issues (Dropbox improved); USB device is unmounted as soon as media have been copied to the internal SD card for a safer USB key removal, idea thanks to Francois Audirac; default MEDIA_FOLDER moved to /var/lib/rs; the underlying operating system has been updated."
CentOS 8.1.1911
CentOS, which builds its distribution's packages from upstream sources provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, has published a new release, CentOS 8.1.1911. The new version is derived from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 source code. "Release for CentOS Linux 8 (1911): We are pleased to announce the general availability of CentOS Linux 8. Effectively immediately, this is the current release for CentOS Linux 8 and is tagged as 1911, derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 Source Code. As always, read through the Release Notes - these notes contain important information about the release and details about some of the content inside the release from the CentOS QA team. These notes are updated constantly to include issues and incorporate feedback from the users. This release supersedes all previously released content for CentOS Linux 8, and therefore we highly encourage all users to upgrade their machines." Further information was provided by Brian Stinson in the release announcement.
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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: 1,778
- Total data uploaded: 29.8TB
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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) |
Does it matter which init software your distribution uses?
In our Questions and Answers column we touched on the idea of some distributions not using systemd and some possible reasons why. Some people feel quite strongly about which init software their distribution uses while others are indifferent as long as the operating system boots properly. We would like to hear whether init software is a factor in which distribution you choose to run.
You can see the results of our previous poll on direct storage access in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Does init software choice matter?
| I do choose which distro I use based on init software: | 401 (19%) |
| The init software is one factor I consider: | 696 (32%) |
| I do not care which init software my distro uses: | 1025 (47%) |
| Other: | 39 (2%) |
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|
| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
Server upgrade
Last weekend we migrated from our old web server to a new machine. The old box was having some hardware trouble and we felt it was time to switch over to newer (and hopefully more reliable) equipment for the long-term health of this website.
The migration went smoothly for the most part and we were happy to complete the transition from the old server to the new one without experiencing any downtime.
Since we were getting a fresh start with the equipment and were not in a terrible rush to get it set up, it opened the opportunity to talk about which technologies we wanted to run on the new server. We are, after all, not immune to the siren song of distro-hopping and like to try out different approaches from time to time.
In the end, we decided to run FreeBSD on the new server, which offers some nice features such as filesystem snapshots, boot environments, the PF firewall, and long-term support. Previously we had been running Debian for the past twelve years and had a very good experience with the distribution. You can see more of the history of the operating systems running on the DistroWatch web server on our FAQ page.
* * * * *
Distributions added to waiting list
- Kaisen Linux. Kaisen Linux is a Debian-based distribution that aims to provide the maximum of tools necessary for troubleshooting, maintenance, as well as certain tools to diagnose and help in the administration of IT infrastructure.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 27 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 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Full list of all issues |
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CentOS
CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users which started in 2003 and has been sponsored by Red Hat since 2014. CentOS Linux versions up to CentOS Linux 8 are 100% compatible rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. In 2020 it was announced CentOS Linux is being discontinued and replaced with CentOS Stream, a developer-focused distribution which acts as a middle-stream between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Status: Active
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| Star Labs |
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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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