 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 863, 27 April 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 17th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the big events in the Linux community this past week was the launch of a new long-term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu. The new Ubuntu 20.04 offers a number of new features for desktop and server users, including experimental ZFS support for people who want advanced filesystem features. The distribution is accompanied by many community editions with alternative desktop flavours and we share details on each of these below. First though we explore a small, Debian-based project called Star. The Star distribution is quite minimal and Bernhard Hoffmann takes this project for a spin and reports on his findings. In our News section we talk about Arch Linux getting a new tool to verify the integrity of package builds and DragonFly BSD discussing removing Google API keys from the Chromium package. We are also happy to report the Fedora distribution will soon begin shipping on Lenovo laptops. Plus we share tips on finding Linux distributions with specific features in our Questions and Answers column. One question we frequently get is how to locate distributions that will run on older, 32-bit computers. We would like to know how many of you still run older members of the 32-bit CPU family in our Opinion Poll. This week we added a new project, KISS, to our database and the details on this unusual project are included below. Plus we are pleased to list the releases of the past week and link to the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Star 2.1.0
- News: DragonFly BSD discusses removing Google API keys from Chromium, Arch Linux provides package rebuilder, Fedora shipping on Lenovo laptops
- Questions and answers: Looking for specific distributions
- Released last week: Ubuntu 20.04, Manjaro Linux 20.0, NixOS 20.03
- Torrent corner: Absolute, Alpine, FuryBSD, IPFire, Manjaro, Nitrux, NixOS, Scientific, Ubuntu
- Upcoming releases: Fedora 32
- Opinion poll: Running an older CPU than i686
- New additions: KISS
- New distributions: DXT2
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (17MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Bernhard Hoffmann) |
Star 2.1.0
The Star Linux distribution has been around for years in various guises and I resolved to look at it in a bit more depth in the current quest to look at more Devuan-derived distributions as alternatives to Debian in my search for init freedom, rather than just running it for a minute in VirtualBox like I have with its predecessors. Star is done by the developers of CROWZ, formerly Zephyr Linux, which seems mostly identical in aim, setup and flavours of window managers provided.
Both projects provide 32-bit and 64-bit Intel/AMD architecture builds and are hosted on Sourceforge and both are built on the currently stable version of Devuan GNU+Linux, at the moment 2.1 "ASCII".
For the purposes of this test I downloaded the JWM, i3 and Xfce 64-bit editions of Star Linux 2.1 (code name "Kirk") from the Files section of the distribution's website where the checksums of the ISO images can also be found to check integrity if one is so inclined. Openbox, Fluxbox and net-install images are also available. They come in at about 480-518MB in size, with the net-install image listed as 320MB. 32-bit images optimized for i686 are only available with JWM or as a net-install option. Interestingly, the i3 flavour with only a bare window manager was the largest at 518MB, while the Xfce flavor came in at 504MB and JWM at 500MB. Backports repositories are enabled by default.
It is clear almost immediately that looks are not what the makers are overly concerned with. The distribution's representative icon reminds me of the negative of a very simple, bad tattoo.
In an e-mail exchange, Zephdev informed me that Ozi Traveller is the lead developer for Star, whereas CROWZ is Zeph's project. Zeph explains the rationale behind both projects:
We both embrace the same ideas and structure our distributions similar right down to no wallpaper. Actually any bloat or unneeded apps are simply not installed in the image build. Most Linux users know what they want or need so installing software other than what is initially installed is the minimum to get the new user up and running. Both distributions use a similar welcome-screen that populates on the first run or when they simply reenter in a terminal for more applications.
Ozi expanded on this by providing a bit of background history.
Star was born from CrunchBang Linux and a parting comment by Corenominal (Philip Newborough), where he described his thoughts on the next version, if he were to build one. I felt boiled down to "more minimal, and only using stable Debian packages".
I intentionally, only have a few applications, Star is meant to be customised by the user. I don't know what the user will want, and everyone is different. Star is a starting point! Customise it to your own liking!
Star Linux is a bit like CrunchBang with its simple, black presentation, only without the additional pipe-menus and scripts. In a way a stripped down CrunchBang. If that appeals to you, read on.
Star 2.1.0 -- The GRUB boot loader
(full image size: 14kB, resolution: 640x480 pixels)
As usual, the distribution was first tested in VirtualBox and then as a bare metal install. Booting up the GRUB2 screen is nothing to write home about, with the usual entries. And it is mostly black.
Live session and installation
Anyways, from here we can opt to boot into live mode, extract and copy to memory first, start a text based installer or the graphical installer. Star is using a Devuan base and with that the old Debian installer. Under advanced options one can, for example, provide a preseeded configuration to automate larger installs. Other entries are Rescue Mode and Expert Install which gives a few more options to customize language and keyboard input separately, and to install accessibility features for blind and visually impaired users. Here one can also change the priority of questions asked by the installer and depth of system configuration with debconf. 99.9% of users shouldn't need this and should only ever have to select Install or Graphical Install from the main menu. In fact, in the case of Star, the questions were virtually identical.
Installation is mostly a point and click thing encompassing the usual steps, selecting the device to install on, timezone, root password, making up a username and choosing where to install the boot loader. Most people will want to go with the main hard drive identified and with the MBR for the boot loader or skip it altogether if booting will be handled by another operating system's boot loader. If going for auto-install instead of manual partitioning this setup process can be very streamlined indeed.
Star 2.1.0 -- The login page
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In VirtualBox the initial boot screen is a lowly 640x480 resolution but we get full mouse integration. One thing that seemed annoying in the beginning was that Star always asked prior to going into live mode what resolution and color depth it should adopt. You are expected to select from a list of supported resolutions and punch in the code. While this seemed old-fashioned at first, it allowed me to set a larger screen size as there is no option to change screen resolution in the live session.
Once rebooted, Star identified simply as Devuan, reinforcing that these custom installs are probably better thought of as modifications of the parent OS than as independent distributions and which are offering alternative flavours with their images as a starting point that the original distribution does not provide. These are a variety of window managers, and also firmware that is included.
The login screen again is predictably black. This may not be to everybody's taste but at least prompting for a username is good security practice. Still though, the login theming should be changed, even if it's going to be all black or, preferably, something slightly more hackerish would suit this modification well.
Desktop and applications - JWM
At first I tested the JWM edition. The desktop is presented with the panel at the top and the Conky system monitor at the bottom. As is common, we get the menu button on the left hand side of the panel, followed by quick launcher shortcuts for the terminal, the PCManFM file manager, the MPV video player and a browser. I haven't had good experiences with MPV as it seems very picky about when to work but applications can be switched out.
Star 2.1.0 -- The JWM environment
(full image size: 18kB, resolution: 1440x900 pixels)
Interestingly, not Firefox or something light like Midori has been chosen but Web, the web browser for the GNOME desktop (what I believe used to be the Epiphany browser). Web actually starts up really fast, by default it loads a pre-set page file with helpful links to the forum of related projects, parent distributions and other projects like BunsenLabs Linux.
Star 2.1.0 -- Running the Web browser on JWM
(full image size: 86kB, resolution: 1440x900 pixels)
Further to the right we find the window list of open applications and a system tray with virtual desktop switcher, network applet and a clock.
At the bottom of the screen we find the usual information for monitoring a running system, i.e. kernel version, CPU usage, RAM usage and network and battery monitors. From the looks of it you couldn't tell if this is JWM, Xfce or Openbox.
Left- or right-clicking on the desktop brings up the application menu which again, by design, appears very much like the menu in Openbox. Aspects of window manager behaviour and the menu can be changed and edited in the JWM menu under Settings in the main menu. If you have ever edited Openbox or Fluxbox settings and menus via their config files you will feel right at home here. There's also a nicely commented autostart file, in case one is going to install Wicd, or Nitrogen to manage backgrounds, all we have to do is to uncomment the respective entries.
Star 2.1.0 -- Browsing the JWM menu
(full image size: 55kB, resolution: 1440x900 pixels)
The applications menu also includes LXappearance to change style and theming once you have installed additional ones as Star only comes with their default theme. True to the one application per task lean and mean philosophy there are only a couple of applications. It's enough to get you started but don't expect heavy packages like LibreOffice to be on board. In addition to the already mentioned programs, under Accessories we get a basic calculator, the Mousepad text editor, Xarchiver and Xterm; under Graphics the Mirage picture viewer and entries for taking screenshots; an audio mixer under Multimedia; the Xpdf viewer is the only item in the Office section. The best stocked area is the system tools section which includes the Synaptic package manager, a hardware information utility, GParted and the Gdebi package installer, a disk manager, Htop for monitoring and possibly terminating processes, an alternatives selector to change default behaviour and which applications will handle tasks, options to start the terminal and file manager as the root user and to mount and unmount removable media.
A minor oversight in the file manager's Preferences --> Advanced tab is that file-roller is selected to integrate archive management but Xarchiver is installed. This is easily remedied by selecting Xarchiver from the drop-down list.
Xfce
Despite 4.14 being out now for a while Star is still on Xfce 4.12. In essence, the desktop presentation and application choice is trying to preserve a similar experience as in JWM, most visibly borne out by the layout of the panel and the icon theme. The Star Xfce desktop is also using the Epiphany web browser, MPV and alsamixer, Mousepad, Mirage and Xpdf viewer.
Some of the LX applications have been swapped out in favour of those native to the desktop environment, such as the terminal and the file manager.
With Qalculate! a more capable calculator has been included that can also load exchange rates from the net. Apart from this it is the same set of programs. Not quite sure why arandr is included when Xfce has a native module to set screen resolution in the settings manager. Volume management is enabled by default in Thunar and the right click desktop menu has some neat entries to open terminal or file manager with root privileges. A couple of Debian and Devuan wallpapers are included.
Star 2.1.0 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 54kB, resolution: 1440x900 pixels)
i3
I did not dabble much with this. Predictably, the i3 desktop behaves and looks very differently, for example there is no shell menu on mouse clicks and applications are launched in full screen mode.
Shortcuts in the lower left corner help us get started with common commands and with launching the most common applications. I was able to launch the terminal, the PCManFM file manager and the browser which was also GNOME Web/Epiphany. The text editor was Mousepad so by all accounts the Star team appear to stick to the same set of applications if items are not window manager specific. Even the issue with file-roller set to extract archives instead of Xarchiver is present in the file manager.
Star 2.1.0 -- Running the i3 window manager
(full image size: 46kB, resolution: 1440x900 pixels)
The menu in i3 is provided by dmenu which is listed at the top. It is probably the most important shortcut as it allows us to see what is installed and launch any additional programs. I guess to be more productive a good idea would be to define more shortcuts ourselves to get quick access to our most often used programs, in my case to a word processor or the whole office suite. It would have also made sense to have one pointing to Synaptic, but maybe there is a reason not to make it easily accessible.
Boot sequence
Being based on Devuan means Star is using the SysV init system for managing PID 1. One of the arguments against SysV init was that supposedly it was taking too long to start up because it was running scripts serially and not in parallel, resulting in long and delayed boot times.
Star's implementation includes the insserv boot sequence organiser package that updates the order of symlinks to optimize the boot process for the installed packages, and startpar to run processes in parallel.
Firmware and networking
I thought this warrants an extra section as the part of the free and open source software world that is based on Debian GNU/Linux, or in this case Devuan GNU+Linux, can be quite particular about inclusion of proprietary blobs.
All editions have free and non-free firmware, iwlwifi and intel-microcode packages as well as support for Broadcom chips (legacy and current installer) included. Other firmware is on the live image for AMD microcode and graphics, Ralink and Realtek chips. Particularly with inclusion of the latter ones external USB adapters should work without further ado.
All editions of Star use connman and connman-ui to manage networks. This appears to support Ethernet, wireless networking and Bluetooth but I am unsure how and if connman works with VPN connections which could be a deal breaker.
Running it for real
So far we've only been cruising around in VirtualBox and giving an overview over what to expect. And that for a good reason. At first I thought my trusty Flash Voyager USB key was faulty until I tried a new one from SanDisk. I tried several utilities to write the live images as well as dd, no joy, as well as all of the above images. None of them were even recognized in the BIOS so I was unable to configure setup to boot from it.
This is a newer ASUS Vivobook I am trying this on and unfortunately I do not have access to my old Dell. After a while I found out I had to disable CMS and voila, my USB stick was detected.
I used the JWM edition for bare metal testing as it sort of seems to be the default Star edition. We get the prompt for screen resolution again and, once selected, are logged into the desktop in the live session. The connman utility can be a bit tricky to set up and although I was able to connect after supplying the password, due to the UI, it would not be my preferred networking manager.
There were some oddities where the pmount utility did not detect any of my external memory cards or USB to mount and although PCManFM was set to manage volumes it did not detect any either. I was in essence restricted to the live session, unable to mount any internal or external drives, so this would not be a good rescue medium although quite secure as it doesn't allow us to mess with anything.
To be honest, in the end I didn't feel like installing Star, although it's an incredibly light and fast system.
Resources
Going by the JWM edition, CPU usage was low at 1% on idle and no spikes or unexplained activity showing. 110MB of RAM was used immediately after start, 120MB after a few applications had been opened and closed again. 146MB as seen in the screenshot with normal desktop activity and the MPV video player open.
The i3 edition seemed a bit less efficient, needing 146MB straight away after boot. Xfce used 196MB.
Conclusion
At first Star looks a bit bland and barren and only has few basic applications installed, following the one application per task concept. Going by feedback on the project's site and the mini reviews or ratings left on DistroWatch, Star has a lot of satisfied users who clearly don't mind the bare looks and the small size. If anything, that is the attraction. All it needs is a change of wallpaper and some theming if you're so inclined and adding a few choice programs, just like most distributions.
This kind of base can be interesting to the advanced user who wants to build their installation up themselves and know what they want out of it, starting from a small base install but one that has X and a window manager for a functional GUI already available. On top of that it is based on Devuan which presents with a sane and proven init system. I quite like Star and will certainly bear it in mind in the future once there is a new release.
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Hardware used in this review
- ASUS Vivobook, ASUSTeK product: X510UNR
- Motherboard: ASUSTeK X510UNR
- UEFI: American Megatrends v: X510UNR.308 date: 07/24/2018
- CPU: Quad Core model (4x2): Intel Core i7-8550U arch: Kaby Lake
- rev: A L2 cache: 8192 KiB, 400/4000 MHz Core speeds
- RAM: 16GB
- Intel wireless: iwlwifi
- Micron 250 GB SSD + 1 TB Toshiba disk
- SonicMaster Audio
- Integrated Intel i915 Graphics
- NanoEdge Display, maximum resolution: 1920x1080
- ASUSTeK ASUS Battery
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Visitor supplied rating
Star has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.8/10 from 10 review(s).
Have you used Star? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
DragonFly BSD discusses removing Google API keys from Chromium, Arch Linux provides package rebuilder, Fedora shipping on Lenovo laptops
There are often debates in the open source community around whether a downstream operating system, such as a Linux distribution or one of the BSDs, should ship unmodified upstream software, or customize it to introduce bug fixes or other improvements. Such a discussion is taking place in the DragonFly BSD community with regards to the Chromium web browser. There is some discussion as to whether Chromium should be built and packaged with Google API keys included, or if these should be removed in favour of decoupling the browser from Google. Matthew Dillon wrote recently: "The keys are required by Google to integrate with Google services such as account synchronization and automatic translation. Without the keys, those services will not operate in a fully integrated manner (for example, no auto-translation, but you can still go directly to the translation URL). It's a bit of a mess, we're mulling over what to do. Honestly I'm leaning towards not building Chromium with any API keys at all since doing so marries the browser to Google's integrated services."
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An important part of being able to audit an operating system is confirming that the binary packages running on the system came from their corresponding source code. That is, we need to be able to verify the publicly published source code was used (unaltered) to create the binary packages running on our computer. One of the tools used to do this is reproducible builds, a method of rebuilding source code to verify the resulting package is identical to the package provided in a distribution's repositories. The Arch Linux project now has a tool, called Rebuilder which helps administrators rebuild and verify packages. "We're happy to announce that it's now possible to run independent
rebuilders for Arch Linux in 4 easy(-ish) steps. The rebuilder tracks the package index of Arch Linux and automatically issues rebuilds for new packages." Tips on setting up and using Rebuilder can be found in the Arch wiki.
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Matthew Miller has announced that the Fedora distribution will soon begin shipping on Lenovo laptops. "Today, I'm excited to share some big news with you - Fedora Workstation will be available on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops! Yes, I know, many of us already run a Fedora operating system on a Lenovo system, but this is different. You'll soon be able to get Fedora pre-installed by selecting it as you customize your purchase. This is a pilot of Lenovo's Linux Community Series - Fedora Edition, beginning with ThinkPad P1 Gen2, ThinkPad P53, and ThinkPad X1 Gen8 laptops, possibly expanding to other models in the future." The Lenovo laptops will reportedly ship with software exclusively found in Fedora's repositories and therefore follow Fedora's strict open source policy.
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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) |
Looking for specific distributions
Hunting-for-a child-friendly-distro asks: You list so many different versions but are there any distros that are specifically aimed at children (under 12)?
DistroWatch answers: Distributions for children are often presented as having other priorities, apart from just being kid-friendly, such as a focus on education or running on low-resource computers, so they may not be marketed specifically toward children. This can make them harder to find.
There are not many distributions I know of aimed at children under the age of 12. There used to be HandyLinux and DoudouLinux, but they have since been discontinued. You might want to look at ubermix, which is aimed at school-age children and is currently sitting on our waiting list. You may also want to look at the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) distribution.
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Supporting-older-hardware asks: Where can I find a distro that still supports i386? Some distros claim to but don't actually work.
DistroWatch answers: Part of the problem with hunting down an operating system which supports the i386 CPU architecture is the term i386 has also become short-hand for any 32-bit member of the x86 process family. Often times if you visit a distribution's download page (or mirrors) you will find they offer "i386" and "amd64" builds, the latter for any 64-bit processor. But since i386 is often used to refer to any 32-bit build, you might actually be downloading install media for i586 or i686 CPUs and the software will not really run on i386 computers.
Calling the builds i386 is not exactly wrong, since most developers know i386 can refer to any 32-bit x86 CPU, but it is a broad generalization that can catch people running real i386 processors off guard.
At this point you are unlikely to find current, actively maintained distributions which support true i386 builds. The reason is i386 support has been dropped from the Linux kernel. (I think i486, i586 and i686 are still supported at the time of writing.) This makes it impossible for a modern build of the kernel to run on true i386 hardware. To run i386 software you will need to find an older copy of a distribution or one that still provides patched versions of older kernels. You might want to look at Tiny Core Linux or SliTaz GNU/Linux. Both are designed to run in very low-resource environments (on computers with less than 100MB of RAM) and will probably run on older processors.
If you need true i386 support then you might also want to explore some lightweight BSD platforms. I believe both OpenBSD and NetBSD, to name two, still run on i386 processors.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
NixOS 20.03
The NixOS project has announced the release of NixOS 20.03, the latest stable version of the project's independently-developed Linux distribution with a unique approach to package and configuration management, as well as a custom package manager called "Nix": "Release 20.03 'Markhor'. In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights: support is planned until the end of October 2020, handing over to 20.09; core version changes - GCC 9.2.0, glibc 2.30, Linux kernel 5.4, Mesa 19.3.3, OpenSSL 1.1.1d; desktop version changes - KDE Plasma 5.17.5, KDE Applications: 19.12.3, GNOME 3.34, Pantheon 5.1.3; Linux kernel is updated to branch 5.4 by default; PostgreSQL for NixOS service now defaults to version 11; the graphical installer image starts the graphical session automatically, before you'd be greeted by a tty and asked to enter systemctl start display-manager; it is now possible to disable the display-manager from running by selecting the 'Disable display-manager' quirk in the boot menu." Read the detailed release notes for further information.
Lubuntu 20.04
The Lubuntu team has announced the availability of Lubuntu 20.04, a long-term support (LTS) release. This release used the LXQt desktop (most previous releases used LXDE as the default desktop) and uses the Calamares system installer instead of the Ubiquity installer used by most other official Ubuntu editions. "This is the fourth Lubuntu release with LXQt as the main desktop environment. The Lubuntu project, in 18.10 and successive releases, will no longer support the LXDE desktop environment or tools in the Ubuntu archive, and will instead focus on the LXQt desktop environment. You can find the following major applications and toolkits installed by default in this release: LXQt 0.14.1. Qt 5.12.8 LTS. Mozilla Firefox 75, which will receive updates from the Ubuntu Security Team throughout the support cycle of the release. The LibreOffice 6.4.2 suite. VLC 3.0.9.2, for viewing media and listening to music. Featherpad 0.12.1, for notes and code editing. Discover Software Center 5.18.4, for an easy, graphical way to install and update software. The powerful and fast email client Trojita 0.7 to get you to inbox zero in no time." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Lubuntu 20.04 -- Running the LXQt desktop
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Ubuntu 20.04
Iain Lane has announced the release of Ubuntu 20.04, a new long-term support (LTS) version of the popular distribution. "The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 5.4 based Linux kernel, with additional support for Wireguard VPN, AUFS5, and improved support for IBM, Intel, Raspberry Pi and AMD hardware. Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS features the latest version of the GNOME desktop environment, 3.36. Notable changes from 18.04 LTS include performance improvements, a new lock screen design, and support for fractional scaling under X11. 20.04 LTS also features a new look-and-feel: the Yaru theme, available in both light and dark variants. 20.04 LTS also brings support for installing an Ubuntu desktop system on top of ZFS. The latest version brings performance enhancements and optional encryption support. Zsys, Ubuntu’s ZFS system tool, provides automated system and user state saving. Tight integration with GRUB allows a user to revert to any system state on boot and go back in time to pave the way to a bulletproof Ubuntu Desktop." Further details can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
Ubuntu Studio 20.04
The Ubuntu Studio team has announced the release of Ubuntu Studio 20.04, a long-term support release which receives three years of security updates. "The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 20.04, code-named "Focal Fossa”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 27th release. This release is a Long-Term Support release and as such, it is supported for 3 years (until April 2023). Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a complete list of changes and known issues." The release announcement displays screenshots and offers upgrade instructions for existing users. It also lists new software available in this release, along with items which were removed from version 20.04, often due to Python 2 reaching the end of its supported life.
Kubuntu 20.04
The Kubuntu team has announced the release of Kubuntu 20.04. The new release features the KDE Plasma 5.18 desktop and offers three years of security updates. "The Kubuntu Team is happy to announce that Kubuntu 20.04 LTS has been released, featuring the beautiful KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS: simple by default, powerful when needed. Codenamed Focal Fossa, Kubuntu 20.04 continues our tradition of giving you Friendly Computing by integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs. Under the hood, there have been updates to many core packages, including a new 5.4-based kernel, KDE Frameworks 5.68, Plasma 5.18 LTS and KDE Applications 19.12.3. Kubuntu has seen many updates for other applications, both in our default install, and installable from the Ubuntu archive." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
Kubuntu 20.04 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
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Ubuntu MATE 20.04
Martin Wimpress has announced the release of Ubuntu MATE 20.04. The new release, which will receive three years of support, ships with version 1.24 of the MATE desktop and introduces a firmware update tool called fwupd. "Those of you who follow the desktop Linux news will know that upstream MATE Desktop recently released version 1.24. Ubuntu MATE 20.04 is shipping with MATE Desktop 1.24. Thus, all of the improvements in MATE Desktop 1.24 are present in Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS. Since the last LTS we worked on the following: Added multiple coloured theme variations as one-click installs for those of you who simply don’t like Chelsea Cucumber. Added experimental ZFS install option. Added GameMode from Feral Interactive. Fixed several crashers in Brisk Menu and added keyboard navigation. Fixed panel layout switching which is now stable and reliable via MATE Tweak Tweak and Ubuntu MATE Welcome. Fixed rendering window controls on HiDPI displays." Further details on the new version can be found in the project's release announcement.
Ubuntu Kylin 20.04
Ubuntu Kylin 20.04, an official Ubuntu edition customised for the users in China, has been released. This release comes with an updated version of the UKUI desktop environment (a fork of MATE): "The Ubuntu Kylin team is pleased to announce the official release of Ubuntu Kylin's open-source operating system, version 20.04 LTS (code-named 'Focal Fossa'). Ubuntu Kylin 20.04 is the fourth long-term support (LTS) version and it offers 3 years of technical support. The new version of Ubuntu Kylin 20.04 LTS comes with the new UKUI 3.0 desktop environment preview and it supports x86 and arm64 architectures, which further optimizes the 4K HD display effect and application component stability. The new Kirin cloud account function unifies the identity authentication of all platforms and provides users with the cloud synchronization function. It also fixes 539 known issues, such as the inability of the taskbar to preview minimized apps and a file manager memory leak." See the release announcements (in Simplified Chinese or in English) for further information and screenshots.
Xubuntu 20.04
Yousuf Philips has announced the release of Xubuntu 20.04, the latest stable version from the project that develops an official Ubuntu spin with Xfce as the preferred desktop: "The Xubuntu team is happy to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 20.04. Xubuntu 20.04, code-named 'Focal Fossa', is a long-term support (LTS) release and will be supported for three years, until April 2023. The Xubuntu team has been hard at work for the last six months of this development cycle improving both the Xfce desktop environment and the Xubuntu user experience following our 19.10 release, which introduced Xfce 4.14 for the first time. We were thrilled by the response to the Ubuntu testing week which helped us make 20.04 another great and stable release. Highlights: a brand-new dark theme, Greybird-dark, has been added, complementing the default Greybird theme; six community wallpapers are bundled from winners of the Community Wallpaper Contest; with the end of life of Python 2, we no longer ship it by default, while apt-offline and pidgin-libnotify are no longer included." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information and known issues.
Ubuntu Budgie 20.04
To conclude the much-awaited Ubuntu LTS release day, here is David Mohammed's announcement of the release of Ubuntu Budgie 20.04: "We are pleased to announce the release of the new version of our distribution, our second long-term support (LTS) release as an official flavor of the Ubuntu family. This LTS build is supported for three years while the regular releases are supported for 9 months. The new version rolls-up various developments, fixes and optimizations that have been released since the 18.04 LTS release in April 2018: stylish menu applet; Budgie-based network manager applet; Window Shuffler - a keyboard-friendly tiling CTRL+ALT+keypad numbers; the currently focussed window can be tiled to each corner, side to side or maximized and unmaximized all from the keyboard; desktop layouts - choose your default desktop layout with one click; 4K resolution Budgie desktop and Budgie applet support; GNOME Firmware and Drawing are the new default applications; Ubuntu Budgie team wallpapers for 20.04...." See the full release announcement for a complete list of new features.
Manjaro Linux 20.0
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 20.0, a major new update of the project's rolling-release distribution, originally forked from Arch Linux, with a choice of GNOME, KDE and Xfce desktops: "After two months of development we are proud to announce Manjaro 'Lysia' to our community. The Xfce edition remains our flagship offering and has received the attention it deserves. Only a few can claim to offer such a polished, integrated and leading-edge Xfce experience. With this release we ship Xfce 4.14 and have mostly focused on polishing the user experience with the desktop and window manager. Also we have switched to a new theme called Matcha. A new feature Display-Profiles allows you to store one or more profiles for your preferred display configuration. We also have implemented auto-application of profiles when new displays are connected. Our KDE edition provides the powerful, mature and feature-rich Plasma 5.18 desktop environment with a unique look-and-feel, which we completely re-designed in 2020." Here is the full 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: 1,942
- Total data uploaded: 31.5TB
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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) |
Running an older CPU than i686
In our Questions and Answers section this week we talked about 32-bit CPUs, how they are labeled, and how the term "i386" is sometimes used as a catch-all for 32-bit machines. These days most people are running modern 64-bit machines or, if they have a 32-bit processor, it is often in the relatively newer i686 family. We would like to hear if you are running a processor older than i686 (such as i386, i486, or i586). Let us know which operating system you are running on these older machines in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using a Linux appliance at home in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Running older, 32-bit CPUs
| I run an i386 CPU: | 59 (4%) |
| I run an i486 CPU: | 19 (1%) |
| I run an i586 CPU: | 54 (3%) |
| I run an i686 CPU: | 193 (11%) |
| My main PC has an ARM CPU: | 20 (1%) |
| All my PCs are 64-bit: | 936 (56%) |
| I run another family of CPU: | 8 (0%) |
| Some combination of the above: | 367 (22%) |
| None of the above: | 17 (1%) |
| Unsure: | 7 (0%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
New projects added to database
KISS
KISS is a meta-distribution which provides a minimal, command line environment (using BusyBox) and a package manager (called kiss) written in a shell script. The project strives to reduce the size and requirements of packages to provide a lean and more fully understandable operating system.
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Distributions added to waiting list
- DXT2. DXT2 is a Debian-based distribution featuring the Xfce desktop. The desktop has been altered to be more familiar to former Windows users.
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DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 4 May 2020. 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • STAR (by Andy Prough on 2020-04-27 01:09:19 GMT from United States)
This is a very interesting distro, I had not heard of it before, thanks for the review! Sounds a lot like antiX in that it has lightweight window managers and is non-systemd.
I tried BunsenLabs recently and really liked it, but its use of systemd seems counter to its goal to be a minimal distro without bloat. STAR should fill that role nicely.
2 • Kid friendly distro (by Tim on 2020-04-27 01:50:38 GMT from United States)
I know of one kid friendly distro, which is called Lliurex. It is produced by the Valencia, Spain school system and the infantil version is worth a look to see what kid friendly programs there are.
On any Linux distro, GCompris and Tux Paint have been must haves for my kids
3 • Only base Ubuntu 20.04 will have 5-year LTS? (by R O on 2020-04-27 02:57:36 GMT from United States)
What's with all the other DE's only having 3-year support? How about if one gets the base version, then "add on" one of the other DE's? We used be able to do that a few versions back, as I recall, not so?
4 • 64 vs 32 bit at home, and 32 bit distros (by TheTKS on 2020-04-27 02:58:55 GMT from Canada)
64 bit on all home desktops and laptops since 2007.
I don't use i#86 CPUs on my computers (something I use in my house might), but since the article comments on one of the OSs I use, I got curious and decided to check the websites for the rest I use at least occasionally (except Xubuntu), in case I'm ever asked to help somebody with older hardware.
OpenBSD: references i386 on their Hardware Platforms page, but clicking through shows
"Supported hardware: Processors - All CPUs compatible with the Intel 80486 or better, with Intel-compatible hardware floating point support should work."
Slackware: oldest supported versions packages available back to i486, per my update notification emails.
Puppies: even though the disros which two main Puppy distros (currently available on their download page) are compatible with are Slackware 14.1 (Slacko 6.3.2) and Ubuntu 14.04 (Tahrpup), it looks like these are i686.
From puppylinux.com Supported Architecture page:
"Puppy will not (likely) run on an old 486, or even an old PI. A PII will struggle with a modern Puppy. Some later PIII and Athlon machines should cope... Since around 2009 Puppy’s kernels have been compiled with Pentium Pro support making the operating system “i686”. Most software is compiled i686 as well."
TinyCore: didn't find an answer
TKS
5 • 32-bit vs 64-bit CPUs (by Wedge009 on 2020-04-27 03:13:14 GMT from Australia)
I think part of the collective confusion about i386, etc, terminology is that Intel's CPU code names diverged from the marketing names. i386 may also be treated as being synonymous with 32-bit x86-based processors because it was the first to introduce IA-32 instructions.
If I understand it correctly (and I could be wrong):
i386 --> Intel 80386
i486 --> Intel 80486
i586 --> Intel P5 (Pentium)
i686 --> Intel P6 (Pentium Pro/II/III)
Netburst-based Pentium 4s were mostly 32-bit x86-based processors as well, 64-bit instructions were only introduced in the last generation. I recall Intel's first 64-bit processor attempt was IA-64, or the now-defunct Itanium. They eventually followed AMD's lead in adding 64-bit extensions to existing x86 instructions.
As for the poll, I still have working 32-bit only as well as the 64-bit generation of Pentium 4s, as well as the 32-bit only K7-based Athlon XPs from AMD. But I rarely use them any more (and older CPUs are probably dead, or lack working supporting hardware) - the oldest CPU I am still actively running right now is a Penryn-based Intel Core 2, and I'm considering replacing that one soon (it's over 12 years old and so probably deserves retirement).
I recently retired K10-based AMD Phenom IIs despite still being otherwise-viable processors for my needs, mainly because of the lack of AVX instructions (the Core 2 lacks AVX too, but it's in a laptop rather than a desktop).
For the related topic of whether or not it's worth supporting older CPUs, I think there is some worth, but of course it's hard to justify support for them when the cost-to-benefit ratio increases beyond what developers are willing to commit to. Also it may sometimes be the case that the willingness to support is there but the hardware being available for testing is not.
6 • 32 bit Tiny Core (by 32 bit Tiny Core on 2020-04-27 03:21:40 GMT from Singapore)
@4
According to Tiny Core's FAQ (http://www.tinycorelinux.net/faq.html#req),
"The minimum cpu is i486DX (486 with a math processor)."
7 • 80386 and below - ELKS (by Andy Prough on 2020-04-27 05:52:45 GMT from United States)
80386 is actually one of the most recent chips that ELKS will not on, from my understanding. ELKS stands for embedded Linux kernel subset. They have a GitHub page where you can get the code, and there are some YouTube videos of it running on 80286 and 8086 type processors.
8 • There's always Gentoo... (by Door on 2020-04-27 06:09:39 GMT from United States)
Don't take my word for it, someone actually went and did it: https://yeokhengmeng.com/2018/01/make-the-486-great-again/
He cheated a bit. The CPU is actually an AMD 5x86, which is a 486-architecture core internally and fits in a 486 socket, but is about the fastest possible thing you can use and still say "i486" with a straight face. He also had 64MB of RAM, an absolutely ungodly amount by the standards of the early 90s, and used a compactflash card on an adapter instead of a period-appropriate hard drive. He also did the compiling on a modern machine.
It still takes more than ten minutes to boot, for all that. If you were willing to put (a lot...) more time into it, you could probably tune it further by hacking more things out of the kernel config and USE flags. Given the memory pressure, I bet for at least some software you'd come out ahead telling GCC to optimize for code size rather than execution speed, especially if you were using an original hard disk.
The oldest machine I have in running order is actually an 80286. No Linux ever ran on that, it was 386+ from the very beginning. I have various 32-bit CPUs sitting in an old parts box, but no working motherboards for any of them. =(
9 • 32-bit or 64-bit CPUs (by Nicola on 2020-04-27 06:36:29 GMT from Italy)
All my PCs have 64bit CPU while my father's one is 32bit, it's a Pentium4: for his needs is perfect and using Slackware-current updated up to yesterday.
10 • Oldest pc (by Steph on 2020-04-27 09:14:36 GMT from France)
My oldest PC is a 64 bit i3 with windows 7.
The processor was released in 2010.
11 • Ubuntu “mini.iso” Minimal Install .ISO for 20.04 LTS (HTTPS) (by Bob Wiley on 2020-04-27 09:19:54 GMT from Canada)
= Ubuntu “mini.iso” Minimal Install .ISO for 20.04 LTS (HTTPS)
With this week’s release of the new version of Ubuntu Linux, there’s been a change in location for the “mini.iso” file. Rather than copy/paste the solution here, please see the following paste on Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/hhSasirL
12 • Oldest PC (by Daniel on 2020-04-27 09:33:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
My oldest PC is a Dell Inspiron 640m, built in 2006. It has an Intel T2300 "Yonah" (32 bit).
I don't use it much these days but I have maxed out the RAM and it runs 64-bit Arch without any problems.
13 • Old kit (by Someguy on 2020-04-27 09:49:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thanks partly to the DoJ/EU and WIntel standoffs, 64bit machines will generally run 32bit code - folks tend to forget! Got loadsa old boards/ machines back to 486s and a collection of 8088/8086/286-up cpu's probably still functional, plus several built machines with i586/i686, some early Athlon/Sempron 64bit as well as very early mini laptops. Not many in daily use now! Also got one only Amstrad tape drive and one Amstrad disc machines complete with S/W in the loft, amongst the cobwebs.
14 • Google API Keys (by rkyrk on 2020-04-27 11:04:25 GMT from United States)
Since many of the distributions have eliminated the API keys in Chromium, people like myself that require these in Chromium to do our jobs have had to move on. My solution killed two birds with one stone. Installed Devuan and got rid of systemd and now can just download and install native Chrome.
15 • 286 (by pfbruce on 2020-04-27 11:53:11 GMT from United States)
8 -"The oldest machine I have in running order is actually an 80286. No Linux ever ran on that, it was 386+ from the very beginning."
Really! I swear my first distro was Slackware (0.8 or 0.9) on a seond hand 286 with single speed CD drive that also was a sound card (emulating Soundblaster). But, then, maybe I mis remember.
16 • old 32 bit (by wally``` on 2020-04-27 11:53:36 GMT from United States)
Still regularly use a 2005 Toshiba laptop i686.
Runs Debian Buster, Ubunbu Mate, and Linux Mint DE3.
But my main desktop is newish 64 bit.
17 • Star review Connman (by Chris Whelan on 2020-04-27 12:14:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
The reason Connman is used I suspect is because the almost obligatory Network Manager needs systemd support. That's why antiX has to use Connman, whereas MX Linux can use Network Manager.
I agree that Connman does things a bit differently, but once you understand those differences it is easy to use.
18 • PowerPC (by Paolo on 2020-04-27 12:17:56 GMT from Italy)
Running Ubuntu MATE 16.04 on a superb iMac G4 PowerPC 7455 v3.3 1.25 GHz (2003) ... my favourite desktop computer of all times...
19 • 32 bit OS (by Friar Tux on 2020-04-27 13:57:00 GMT from Canada)
I voted none 'All my PC's are 64-bit.' I do have one older PC that appears to be able to run anything bit-wise. As for finding older OS's just go to archiveos.org and click on the Linux sub-heading. I've tried quite a few from there and most seem to work just fine.
As for kid-friendly Linux distros, go over to the sugar-on-a-stick website. I think you may find that helpful. I haven't actually, personally, tried it out, but I hear good things about it. (My kids are in their 40's and my grandkids are in their 20's so you get the picture.)
20 • NetworkManager needs systemd? (by nanome on 2020-04-27 15:34:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
@17 Void Linux + XFCE4 runs NetworkManager but has no element of systemd. Unless there are two different packages with the same name. Having said that, I would prefer an alternative which didn't enable WIFI on boot, and had to be disabled manually [prefer wired networks].
21 • 32-bit hardware (by David on 2020-04-27 15:47:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
My desktop is a 64-bit AMD, but I still have an i686 laptop for taking out and for use in emergencies — an real IBM Thinkpad with a Pentium M, coming up to its 17th birthday!
22 • AntiX & MX Linux (by Martin on 2020-04-27 17:03:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
@17 AntiX and MX Linux are systemd free, so there must be another reason for that.
23 • @17 - Network manager does not need systemd (by Andy Prough on 2020-04-27 17:46:36 GMT from United States)
> The reason Connman is used I suspect is because the almost obligatory Network Manager needs systemd support.
Last I checked, Artix with openRC was using Network Manager just fine on the KDE desktop, no systemd on it.
24 • @22: (by dragonmouth on 2020-04-27 18:11:56 GMT from United States)
MX Linux has a systemd stub which cannot be uninstalled without wrecking the system.
25 • Old kit/New kit (by Mannix on 2020-04-27 18:23:02 GMT from Luxembourg)
I mainly run an Athlon II X2 64 bit (MX Linux as main OS with various flavours installed on a separate SSD as alternatives e.g. Solus 4.1, Manjaro, Mint XFCE, often based on good reviews from DW).
I have an i5 Intel laptop (Windows) for occasional use and Raspberry Pi 4B and 3B+ just for fun; however I have a P4 which I built back in the early noughties and which I've failed to get a Linux flavour to run at speed (it only has 2 Gb memory - the max that the P4 Asus mb will support). Looking at Jesse's advice this week I may have to try a BSD flavour which is new territory to me
26 • Running GNU/Linux on very old CPUs. (by Tuxedoar on 2020-04-27 18:32:05 GMT from Argentina)
Even though most of my PCs are, relatively modern, 64bit machines, I still own an old still working Netbook, with an i386 quite old Atom processor. I've been running Debian on it, since always. Recently, just for fun, I updgraded Debian to its version 9!.
Browsing the web with such an old hardware, is increasingly challenging and inconvenient. Even if you use an adequate lightweight browser (such as NetSurf), many modern web pages render horribly on many of these browsers, which makes reading from them, pretty uncomfortable!. Not to mention the reduced or lack of certain functionality with limited JavaScript support or abscence of it!. Yet, for things like light programming, plain text writing, some network troubleshooting or remote connections with SSH, I find my Netbook still useful!.
Speaking of lightweight software, I use LXDE (thank you devs!! :) ) on all of my PCs, regardless how powerful they are!!. I love it!!. In my case,, the same applies to Debian :) !!.
Cheers.-
27 • I made a mistake. (by Tuxedoar on 2020-04-27 19:06:14 GMT from Argentina)
I made a mistake on #26. The Atom processor of the Netbook I mentioned earlier, is an i686 processor, certainly not an i386!.
Sorry!.
28 • old pc (by arda on 2020-04-27 19:07:33 GMT from Turkey)
Using old PCs is my main point into linux universe. Puppy 2.14 is best for older machines i use it on my pentium 2 and 3s.
29 • old pc and lubuntu (by arda on 2020-04-27 19:09:06 GMT from Turkey)
Btw i forgot to say that i think lxqt on lubuntu is nonsense. Lxde was really good for old computers and computers cope with lxqt should work ubuntu mate or linux mate better.
30 • Oldest computer is... (by Steve on 2020-04-27 19:36:37 GMT from United States)
...a Sony laptop with a 386 in it. I could get a hard drive with more storage into it but I'm limited to 256MB of memory. It came with win98 SE installed, though that only lasted so long. I had Fedora installed for a bit, back with it was still a reputable OS. But it got bloated and started that ridiculous update cycle so I switched to Tiny Core, which is what it's still running. It ain't fancy, but it does what I need it to do.
I have plenty of higher powered boxes for the stuff that requires more. And I voted "a combination of above" as I have a mix of assorted intel and amd processors and one arm processor in the bunch.
31 • Older CPUs (by Rev_Don on 2020-04-27 19:56:09 GMT from United States)
While I selected that all of my PCs are 64 bit, I do have a couple of older 32bit only computers around here that are basically retro or parts computers. None of them are used regularly (or at all).
32 • @22, 24 (by Hoos on 2020-04-27 19:58:23 GMT from Singapore)
MX is not intended to be free of systemd packages.
MX boots by default into sysV init, but gives users the option to boot into systemd init if they wish.
So it is not intended for the user to remove the systemd-shim package that makes it possible for both inits to exist on the same system. @24 is right that if you try removing them, you can make a mess of your system.
If the user's wish is to be completely free of systemd packages, use sister distro antiX or other non-systemd distros.
33 • 32 bit CPU and SSE2 (by Beta on 2020-04-27 20:09:47 GMT from Germany)
in 32 bit CPUs is also big difference for Linux Distros if you have SSE2 CPU or SSE1 CPU like Amd Athlon XP CPU .
for AMD Athlon XP CPU 32 bit is good Debian 9 and 10
and problems with AGP GPUs from Nvidia and AMD .
34 • Deprecation of mini.iso (by mikef90000 on 2020-04-27 20:12:19 GMT from United States)
Apparently the unsupervised child-devs have decided that the mini iso was only used for server installs - not true! I've used it for creating custom desktop installs that do not contain the unwanted Canonical defaults / cruft.
Does anyone have further details behind this change? The pastebin link shows that the mini iso is not in the standard mirror tree, or I may be wrong. Grrrr.
35 • Running an older CPU than i686 (by Terry on 2020-04-27 20:30:49 GMT from United States)
My first computer was a IBM 286 model. Those days, if you had a computer you were high as a mountain.
It had very little memory RAM and Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were the only software you could run on it except for DOS 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
Linux was popular then. I did not even here about Linux until Windows OS/2 came out. Those were the days computing was really fun. Sound cards, Video cards, Hard drives are all manually configured and separate pieces of equipment. Not like today where everything mostly is built;t into the system board.
36 • @35 • Running an older CPU than i686 (by Terry Rosinski on 2020-04-27 20:34:28 GMT from United States)
My first PC was IBM 286 bought back in 1998
37 • Kid friendly distros (by Friar Tux on 2020-04-27 20:35:02 GMT from Canada)
Re @19... I forgot to mention Emmabuntus. It is quite child friendly (once set up by an adult, of course,) and it's easy to use. It's used in schools around the world. You can easily get it here at DW or at the Emmabuntus website. By the way, HandyLinux and DoudouLinux are both discontinued. Ubermix, Suger On A Stick (SoaS), and Emmabuntus are still going strong and are the best.
38 • antiX - connman v network-manager (by anticapitalista on 2020-04-27 20:40:13 GMT from Greece)
Due to the great work done by the Debian init-diversity team, it is now possible to run network-manager on antiX (buster, testing and sid) without any (lib)systemd(0) with a simple apt install. Remember antiX sticks to the Debian repos and along with Knoppix, we are probably the only Debian based distros not running systemd at all (no shim like MX uses) and in the case of antiX - no libsystemd either. This was not the case with the previous Debian stable release (stretch) where antiX had to provide its own de-systemd version of network-manager (which seemed to work ok).
Connman was chosen for antiX because 1) when we chose it it had no (lib)systemd(0) dependencies and more importantly for us 2) it is lighter on RAM than network-manager
39 • @36 Running an older CPU than i686 (by Terry on 2020-04-27 20:41:27 GMT from United States)
Sorry PC bought back in 1991-Just got married and shared our 1st pc together. It only had floppy to floppy drives and hard drive to speak of. Had IBM DOS 3.0 and I loaded Windows 2.0 on it. It took a long time to load and took lots of floppy disk to install as well. The good old days.
40 • Chromium? Who cares? (by CS on 2020-04-27 20:46:53 GMT from United States)
I run Firefox because I'm fairly convinced Mozilla Corporation is too incompetent to spy on me.
41 • popcnt CPU (by beta on 2020-04-27 21:30:59 GMT from Germany)
it would be funny when all new Linux distros would be compiled only for minimal 64 bit SSE 4.2 CPU popcnt. like most fast computer chess engines
42 • Network connection managers (by barnabyh on 2020-04-27 21:33:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
Our options are quite limited when it comes to anything more than connecting. There's also Wicd and Frisbee. The first one has not been actively developed for years (that was already the case when I stopped using it in 2014 or so) and such is not adding functionality, probably by design as the developers think it does what it's supposed to do and is complete, the other was only really used in Puppy as far as I know where it worked really well.
Both do not support more complicated setups like system wide proxy, ssh and the various VPN connections. Which is ok if you get custom software from your VPN provider but not if you want to connect to your own or your company server. In this case I don't know of any better solution than to use NM with the respective plugins. I'ld say there is a niche here, unless of course we take the stance that NM is 'good enough' and covers all our needs thanks to the geat work done by the init-diversity team and antiX as described in #38. Not a fan of reinventing the wheel either but something more independent may be good.
What do people think of Frisbee (in general)?
43 • Pentium Pro Anyone? (by Ben Myers on 2020-04-27 21:44:57 GMT from United States)
Well, it's not a machine per se, but a collection of boards looking for a chassis. I have an Intel VS440 motherboard with 200MHz Pentium Pro and 1GB (!!) of memory consisting of 4x256MB 72-pin SIMMs salvaged from a long-gone Intergraph system. I can and have set up the board with a decent PCI graphics card, a SoundBlaster card and a 10/100 Intel Ethernet card.
I have not run Linux on this collection, but I have successfully booted from a USB stick and run HiRens stripped down Windows 10 x64. If you want to see slow, you have to see it load web pages.
Maybe it's time to boot it up with a modern Linux distro.
44 • Knoppix runs well on 32bit x86 netbook with KDE Plasma 5 (by Elcaset on 2020-04-27 23:01:23 GMT from United States)
The oldest x86 computer I'm running currently is a netbook with a 32bit x86 Atom cpu. It's maxed out at only 2GB RAM. The current version of Knoppix runs surprisingly well even with KDE Plasma 5. It's also the only distro I've gotten my old & newish laser printers to work with. I'm very impressed with Knoppix.
45 • 32-bit with Devuan (by Trox on 2020-04-27 23:58:11 GMT from Norway)
Devuan works fine on both my 32-bit and 64-bit pc's. And both have installed Xfce and Trinity (TDE).
I use for the most Trinity, a lightweight Kde desktop. Trinity Desktop Manager (TDM) is exelent.
Use the Debian instructions, wget and install trinity-keyring.deb, add to sources.list, apt-get update,
and then search "trinity" to have all applications in Synaptic.
Xfe and Dolphin-Trinity file-managers, Firefox and Midori browsers
46 • 32-bit CPUs (by brokeass on 2020-04-28 00:02:32 GMT from United States)
My home server for years was a Pentium III running custom kernel and ubuntu 6.06 packages. It was used primarily to run VMWare Server with a Windows ME guest running a commercial fax program that allowed my wife to send/receive faxes remotely (it's a Dell desktop w/ a serial port). The original 6Gb HDD just died last year after being powered on continuously for over a decade.
I'm writing this on a Pentium M laptop running Debian 9 (my general web browsing rig). My old netbook (Atom) is running Ubuntu 10, and I used it exclusively as my online banking computer (using the last Firefox w/ GTK2 support) until this year when chase.com became unusable (CPU can no longer handle the scripting).
47 • U'bu 20.04 74MB mini.iso (by Somewhat Reticent on 2020-04-28 00:20:32 GMT from United States)
There may be an applicable explanation here
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/server-installer-plans-for-20-04-lts/13631
of how U'bu devs hope to simplify their work;
the mini.iso popular with so many distro devs is available (under "legacy")
as noted (on reddit's Ubuntu discussion area)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/g2itbj/tried_to_find_miniiso_for_ubuntu_2004_beta_and/
which refers to
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/netboot/
which yields
mini.iso = 20.04 with 5.4.0-26-generic kernel
Hope that helps!
48 • Distro for Kids offline (by Aamir Shahzad on 2020-04-28 00:42:53 GMT from Pakistan)
EGOS, old, not updated but still usable for kids offline.
"EGOS. EGOS is a Linux distribution based on Linux Mint featuring the Xfce desktop environment. The distribution is intended to be used by children and has an unusual installation process which requires the use of Systemback to install the project's 6GB download image."
"This distro is specially made for children. It's Linux Mint based (Xfce). Many software pre installed, so it size is about 6 GB (installed system size about 13 GB). That's why we can't provide it's ISO. It's suitable for creating 8 GB live USB."
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20170925#waiting
49 • 64bit vs 32bit (by cykodrone on 2020-04-28 01:15:45 GMT from Germany)
While I applaud some hardware not winding up in a landfill, older machines are not very environment friendly, the power used per clock cycle is insane. That being said, there's still the issue of most usable software (not OS, software) being 64bit these days. So just out of curiosity, what would you use an old clunker for? File server? Space heater (kidding)? Headless IP spoofing firewall?
50 • @37 Sugar (by Titus_Groan on 2020-04-28 06:47:16 GMT from New Zealand)
further reading : https://sugarlabs.org/
Sugar DE is available from some Distro repos, so you could just login to the Sugar DE if you share the computer with a young person
51 • @40: (by dragonmouth on 2020-04-28 11:57:53 GMT from United States)
Mozilla may be too incompetent to spy on us but it farms that task out to Google who perform that task quite adequately. Go into about:config and search for "Google" and "Safe Browsing" and you will see how many hooks into Google there are in Firefox.Luckily, most, if not all, of those hooks can be disabled.
52 • @45 - Devuan with TDE == EXE Linux (by Uncle Slacky on 2020-04-28 12:29:06 GMT from France)
You could just use EXE GNU/Linux, it's already done most of the work for you! http://exegnulinux.net/
53 • Running an older CPU than i686 (by Roger on 2020-04-28 14:14:12 GMT from Belgium)
Running an older CPU than i686, which is what I do and the other members of our Linuxworkgroup.
So I voted some combination of the above, because for me it is important that hardware go's a long way.
For that reason I like what Emmabunüs is doing, a very worthwhile initiative.
In our work-group we do the same and get second hand computers and/or laptop and put Linux on them.
Here at my place I run around 25 PC with Linux and 10 laptop, only one laptop was bought new.
Two of the PC where bought new and came in 2007 with Vista and now still work running Linux Mint Mate which is my preferred Distro as for most members.
So yes older CPU are still capable.
54 • STAR (by sananab on 2020-04-28 17:02:07 GMT from Canada)
Star is definitely the next distro I'll be trying. Crunchbang is my favourite distro of all time, but Bunsenlabs didn't do much for me. I've also had some pretty annoying issues with both SystemD and PulseAudio this month, and I'm seriously thinking about moving away from Poettering and enjoying computing like I used to.
55 • Re: 26 • Running GNU/Linux on very old CPUs. (by Bill Lee on 2020-04-28 18:17:06 GMT from Canada)
re: 26 • Running GNU/Linux on very old CPUs.
So the netbook renders web pages horribly.
Try using Lynx, the text browser software, with the Blynx setting (numbers each link for "blind" users) and zoom away,
Most web pages show well and you can zoom around a page much more easily.
56 • Does distinguishing i386, i486, i586 and i686 matter nowadays? (by RoestVrijStaal on 2020-04-28 23:47:57 GMT from Netherlands)
I wonder if the distros who still actively support 32-bit x86 CPUs do specific things to advertise that they support a specific i*86 generation.
As far as I've checked, the distros who support 32-bit x86 come with ONE iso targeting 32-bit x86 CPU. No specific i386, i486, i586 and i686 flavors.
Why does DistroWatch still distinguish those, and not provide x86_32 as catch-all? Compare x86_64, which is a catch-all for AMD64 and EM64T.
57 • @15 SB CD-ROM (by Semiarticulate on 2020-04-29 20:41:42 GMT from United States)
You remember correctly. I had that Sound Blaster sound card. It came with a proprietary IDE interface that allowed for running a 1x CD-ROM. Was pretty hi-tech at the time. It was years later before my friends had CD-ROM drives.
58 • Kid's Linux (by Tim on 2020-04-30 02:03:11 GMT from United States)
I decided to look back and into this topic because it had been a number of years since I last looked and my kids definitely need some new stuff to do.
I tried installing the Sugar DE on Mint 19.3, and it just crashed. So I downloaded it as the new live image built on Fedora and ran it in a VM. It seemed like it was really meant for classroom use on netbooks- it didn't seem to be the kid's customized general purpose distro that would keep my kids interested.
So I tried Lliurex Infantil again. Honestly, it's great. I'd love my kids to be exposed to something like this in school. It's a normal Linux desktop (KDE for the 2019 image, MATE for the 2016 image, GNOME classic for the 2015 image) full of open source games and educational programs. I'm really impressed that they could curate a collection of software that a kid could play with for hours. I wish other school systems did this.
One bad thing: at least in the US, I can't get either of the newer images to install. They work live, but their installer has a bad mirror. That said, one can play with them live, find the software your kid likes, and just install it on a normal distro. I did get the 15.05 image to install in a VM, though, and that's what my kid is currently playing with.
59 • Firefox spying (by Jim on 2020-04-30 10:23:04 GMT from United States)
AskVG
[Tip] Disable Telemetry and Data Collection in Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
https://www.askvg.com/tip-disable-telemetry-and-data-collection-in-mozilla-firefox-quantum/
60 • @59 no "telemetry" (by curious on 2020-04-30 10:56:46 GMT from Germany)
Or use a browser that doesn't try this kind of spying in the first place, for example Pale Moon.
61 • @60: (by dragonmouth on 2020-04-30 13:39:42 GMT from United States)
Pale Moon is good but one cannot use many of the security/privacy add-ons that one can use with Firefox. And no, the functionality of those add-ons is not built into Pale Moon.
62 • 32bit OS and ... (by OstroL on 2020-04-30 19:04:45 GMT from Poland)
I don't really have any 32bit computers, but I have a 32bit OS running on a 64bit machine as it has only 2GB RAM. It is a '2 in 1' that runs 32bit Windows 10.
If we consider the "smartphone" as a computer, then I have 32bit machine, a Nexus 6 running 32bit Android 9.
63 • Firefox (by M.Z. on 2020-04-30 21:46:17 GMT from United States)
I'm sure Firefox isn't perfect, as nothing really is, but it is still the best major browser for privacy by a wide margin. The one that's definitively untrustworthy is Google Chrome & people eat that garbage up so much they made it the number 1 browser by a fair margin. It even seems to be threatening a return to the days of browser mono-culture like there was when IE had over 90% market share. That I actually find threatening, especially given what Google generally does to your privacy. It might be nice if Firefox leaned on them a little less, but could swear I've heard complaints about things like the crash reporter existing in Firefox. Let them try to fix the freaking bugs for crying out loud, and try and focus on serious problems.
It's worth remembering that not only does Mozilla have a clear policy set out on data collection for Firefox, but they tell you how to turn that stuff off if you want:
"Telemetry measures and collects non-personal information..."
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Telemetry
And:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1197144
64 • Firefox Security Settings Suggestions (by David on 2020-05-01 03:27:38 GMT from United States)
@40 @51 @59 @60
I'd suggest reviewing these links to harden Firefox security within about:config -
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/firefox-hardening-guide/
https://restoreprivacy.com/firefox-privacy/
The two sites cross-reference each other, and offer a few settings that one or the other do not include.
I use Chromium as well. I went into chrome://flags and disabled every setting that references Google, WebGL, WebRTC, peer-to-peer, Omnibox and many others. I also disable all the "experimental" settings. If you web search possible settings to disable, you'd be surprised how many of them you can safely disable without getting hammered by any negative performance reduction. If the changes don't work for you, just hit the "Reset all to default" settings button, and start over again until you get closer to the security level that you're comfortable with.
For example, there's a setting in Chromium called "Freeze User-Agent request header" that locks you into one user agent, thus making you easier to track. I disabled that setting, and installed a user agent spoofer extension as well.
Lastly, take a look at a Firefox & Chromium extension called Trace, which features multiple customizable security settings that work with both browsers.
JMHO
65 • (by on 2020-05-01 09:53:29 GMT from United States)
60 • @59 no "telemetry"
61 • @60: (by dragonmouth
Pale Moon is good but one cannot use many of the security/privacy add-ons that one can use with Firefox. And no, the functionality of those add-ons is not built into Pale Moon.
I agree with dragonmouth on this one. I had used Palemoon for years, but the lack of addons and poor performance pushed me back to Firefox. I still keep it installed on my desktop, but seldom use it anymore. I also dual boot Parrot for privacy and security and us anon surf and the tor browser for somethings, but it does not really work as my everyday OS.
66 • Palemoon (by cykodrone on 2020-05-01 11:28:18 GMT from Italy)
I also got forced back to Firefox, but only for generic, spammy sites (that refuse to work properly in TB, or use too much TOR bandwidth). I use TB to fly under the radar, and shred the unpacked folder of the self executable regularly (and thoroughly go through the privacy settings, to disable anything that's even remotely snoopy, each time). What perplexes me is, most distros have little to no support for Palemoon in their repos, I've even had to add a custom repo just to get it, or install it from a hunted down, downloaded package (even a package conversion to native once). I find this odd, from the FOSS/privacy community. Same community that drank the Kool-Aid and adopted RH's spywared, and are now prisoners, slaves to it.
67 • Old Computers (by coolio on 2020-05-01 19:19:52 GMT from United States)
My oldest computers are laptops with Pentium M running at 2.0 ghz and 2GB of RAM. I used to run Lubuntu, but with the DE change, it's become bloated and useless.
I've gone back and forth between a bunch of distros, trying to get the best performance out of the old laptops. WIndows XP performs really well and is decent with the taokaizen Chrome version which runs on 32 bit with security updates.
As for Linux, I want to keep a nice GUI that is really light on the GPU and CPU. Not too worried about RAM. It seems like every review focuses on RAM instead of CPU and GPU usage.
I've tried Puppy, but the lack of easy install and hassle to get an updated 32 bit browser is not worth it.
I've tried Lubuntu, and it was my go-to, until they turned it into a resource hog and plans to drop 32 bit support. It's too bad, because I would run Lubuntu on new equipment and the old Pentium M laptops so that I had matching software. No more.
I've tried Peppermint, LXDE, and a bunch of other "light" distros. They all just don't cut it.
I'm still trying to see what the big deal is about AntiX. It's light, but for whatever reason, it's just slow. Maybe in the quest to kill SystemD, it has painted itself into a corner. It simply is not quick enough for such a stripped down distro.
CONCLUSION:
The best distro for these old systems, by far, is Bodhi. I keep searching out for something quicker and nicer, but there isn't. It's fast, stable, and I can run whatever software on a supported 32bit OS. Chromium runs great on it. It doesn't have a bunch of extra software crap on it. It comes clean, I strip down the few things that I don't need, and load up the things I do need.
There is a seller on eBay (drowsyparrot) that sells tested IDE laptop SSD drives. These things are great! I put one of these in, then max the RAM to 2GB, put in 2.0 ghz CPU, and I have a useful computer when I add XP or Bodhi. Great for old school computing.
Just my 2 cents.
68 • @old computers (by anticapitalista on 2020-05-01 20:11:54 GMT from Greece)
@67 - nice! You didn't say which version of Bodhi?
69 • @67 Review RAM (by cykodrone on 2020-05-01 20:48:09 GMT from Sweden)
I have to agree, full RAM is good, the more there is up in the RAM, the faster the OS and programs are. When a machine has to constantly harass the drive, it's actually slower. So called 'lite' distros should be also be praised for the least amount of junk (frivolous processes, little or never used, start on demand is good) running after a fresh boot, and sitting idle at the desktop, whatever overhead is left (cpu, gpu, and yes, even ram), is for the user to get things done, or play. I used to use wattOS on older hardware, was fun to play with, sadly, it looks dormant. https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wattos
70 • @67 - Light distros (by Uncle Slacky on 2020-05-01 21:48:06 GMT from France)
Bodhi is a good choice - I used it for a long time on my Asus EEE 701 netbook. You might also want to check out Slitaz, Q4OS Trinity or EXE GNU/Linux or even MX Linux (which now offers Fluxbox if XFCE is too slow).
71 • Privacy & Browser Choice (by M.Z. on 2020-05-01 22:31:47 GMT from United States)
@ cykodrone
If you want a great grab bag of browser option in the default repos of a Distro you should probably check out PCLinuxOS (I think they had Palemoon along with a lot of others).
Also, the only time I heard of a legit case that someone was spreading spyware via open source _This_ is the community that forced Shuttleworth the get rid of the Unity 'lens' sending user data back up to the mothership at Canonical. Real problems can be handled, pernicious init FUD not so much, but you do have a real choice & it's more likely to stay around if you support the Distros that provide the choices you want than if you make baseless attacks on others.
72 • Pentium Pro (by Norbi on 2020-05-02 12:27:47 GMT from Switzerland)
Running a second hand Dell Laptop from the late 90's 350 Mhz PPro, 256 MB RAM with Q4OS,
All my other machines are 64-bit (Pi 3, Odroid N2, 2 x Intel i7, Atom x5 w AMD64 microcode)
73 • Bodhi, and old PCs (by Angel on 2020-05-03 02:05:27 GMT from Philippines)
@ 68, For 32bit computers, the legacy version of Bodhi with non-pae kernel. As to your comment in @38, BusterDog runs without systemD, borrowing from antiX to do so. Then there would be Simplicity, which is based on BusterDog.
For anyone running really old machines, maybe they should consider really old Linux:
https://soft.lafibre.info/
74 • Privacy and Browser Choice @71 (by Basil Fernie on 2020-05-03 13:16:42 GMT from South Africa)
The current MXLinux (simple) Package Installer shows 11 browsers, including Palemoon. I don't much like Firefox, especially with its regular large updates that download automatically.
After Microsoft's Inherently Evil browser (well, not the browser but the business strategy) suffocated Netscape Navigator, I turned to Opera, which in those days (32-bit, OS/2) incorporated an e-mail facility which worked exceptionally well for me. After Microsoft's Win32s denial suffocated OS/2, I wandered around in the Window (7, mainly) wilderness for a bit until Linux (SuSE initially, then Lubuntu) and I had reached some working agreement, and eventually revisited Opera which had become 64-bit and, IIRC, had comtinued to implement the emailer in the versions for Windows but denied it to Unix users. Don't understand the strategic thinking, it was never going to dislodge Outlook for all those MS users, but could possibly have reached quite a prominent position amongst Linuxers. (No, I am not a doctrinaire FOSSer). Rather like LibreOffice, really.
Opera has historically tended to be a bit ahead of the competition technically, and I've appreciated that.
75 • @74, browsers (by Angel on 2020-05-03 13:56:11 GMT from Philippines)
The Opera that was is not the Opera that is. It is owned by the Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund which just by its name one can tell it's in China. The browser now uses the Chromium engine, so much for innovation. Lately its begun to pop up suggestions about features and such, which then involves a search to find way to disable those. It does offer a limited "VPN." (proxy) The one feature I keep it around for is the personal news page, which I find useful.
Firefox doesn't update automatically, unless you set your distro up to do that. In Windows, it's automatic by default, but can be easily changed. Updates are no bigger than others.
Number of Comments: 75
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