 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 866, 18 May 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Fedora Linux distribution is a cutting-edge project that is often used as a testing ground for new technologies. The latest compilers, development tools, desktop environments, and systemd features often appear in Fedora before arriving in other fixed-release distributions. This week Joshua Allen Holm takes us on a tour of Fedora's latest Workstation release and explores some of the features and improvements available in Fedora 32. In our Questions and Answers column we share reasons distributions tend to build their own software packages, such as web browsers, instead of redistributing binary packages from their upstream source. Where does your web browser package come from? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about Fedora's Silverblue project along with new features coming to the UBports mobile operating system. Plus we say farewell to the TrueOS project as it officially shuts down. Then we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the distribution torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Fedora 32 Workstation
- News: UBports status report, TrueOS shuts down, an overview of Fedora Silverblue
- Questions and answers: Why distros offer custom builds of packages
- Released last week: Proxmox 6.2 "Virtual Environment", Q4OS 3.11, Kali Linux 2020.2
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Android-x86, ArcoLinux, BackBox, Bluestar, Finnix, Kali Linux, Manjaro 20.0.1, KDE neon, Plamo, Q4OS, Zevenet
- Upcoming releases: OpenBSD 6.7
- Opinion poll: The source of your web browser package
- 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 Joshua Allen Holm) |
Fedora 32 Workstation
In late April, the Fedora project released Fedora 32. This release, like all recent Fedora releases, is available in several different editions. Workstation and Server are the two main editions, and there are three emerging editions: Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Silverblue, and Fedora IoT. There are also several spins that feature alternate desktop environments and labs that serve specific purposes. For this review I will be focusing on Fedora Workstation, which uses GNOME as the desktop environment, but many of the enhancements made in Fedora 32 are available in all the Fedora editions.
Installing Fedora Workstation
I began by downloading the 1.8GB Fedora 32 Workstation x86_64 ISO and copying it to a flash drive. Then I rebooted the computer and booted from the flash drive. Fedora booted quickly and I was soon looking at a GNOME desktop with a prompt asking me if I wanted to "Try Fedora" or "Install to Hard Drive". Because I already knew that my hardware (except for the fingerprint scanner on the touchpad) worked with Fedora's previous release, I picked the install option.
Fedora 32 -- Live desktop with Try or Install options
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The first part of Fedora's installation process is handled by Anaconda. The only things that are configured during this part of the process are keyboard layout, time & date, and selecting/partitioning the disk Fedora will be installed on. The partitioning option does provide advanced customization options, but I opted for the defaults. This worked fine for the most part, but I did notice that on my new Fedora installation the volume group name for the LVM volume group created by Anaconda was "fedora_localhost--live". Because Anaconda has no option for configuring networking or setting the hostname, and because I did not use any other method to change the hostname of the live image, this name carried over to the volume group during installation. For comparison, the hostname changes from "localhost-live" on the live image to "localhost" on an installed system. The hostname gets adjusted if no hostname is set, but the volume group retains the "-live" suffix. Changing the hostname on the live image before running Anaconda solves this problem, but it is not very intuitive to have to go into GNOME Settings or use another method to change the hostname of the live image to properly set the volume group labels. Of course, this only applies when selecting the default partitioning option; when using the custom option, the volume group names can be configured by the user.
Fedora 32 -- The Anaconda installer
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The next step of the installation process is handled after the new Fedora installation is booted for the first time. GNOME Initial Setup handles creating a new user and configuring a few privacy settings. This new user has administrator privileges and the root account is disabled. Installing additional users can be done using the GNOME Settings application. The root account can be enabled by using "sudo passwd" to set a password for the root account.
Fedora 32 -- Creating a new user during the initial setup
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Fedora Workstation's default GNOME desktop and software
Fedora 32's GNOME desktop is very close to GNOME's default settings. The only GNOME extension enabled by default is one that shows "Fedora" in the lower right corner of the background, but Fedora does provide a "Classic" login option that enables more extensions and provides a desktop experience closer to, but not exactly like, GNOME 2. If you like GNOME, Fedora Workstation is an excellent choice, but if do not like the GNOME way of doing things, one of Fedora's spins or a different distribution entirely might be a better choice. Personally, I really like GNOME as is, so I do prefer Fedora's take on GNOME, but I know not everyone feels the same way.
Fedora 32 -- The default software selection
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The default selection of software that comes pre-installed with Fedora 32 consists of Firefox, the Calc, Impress, Math, and Writer components of LibreOffice 6.4 , and a selection of GNOME applications and utilities. There is no e-mail application installed by default, but in the age of web-based e-mail that is understandable. The default audio player is Rhythmbox, the default video player is GNOME Videos, and the default image viewer is Image Viewer, but GNOME Photos is also installed.
Fedora 32 Workstation's GNOME 3.36 desktop environment works extremely well. Earlier versions of Fedora and GNOME would occasionally slow down or freeze up entirely on the laptop I used for this review, but nothing like that occurred so far with Fedora 32. Part of this is thanks to improvements made to GNOME, and part is due to the inclusion of EarlyOOM, which makes Fedora handle low memory situations much better than it did in earlier versions.
Installing additional software
Like most Fedora releases, the bulk of the change log is "new version of [some programming language or development tool]". Most of these packages do not come pre-installed, but can easily be installed using the DNF package manager. Fedora has up to date packages for Go, GCC, Pascal, Python, Ruby, and a wide selection of other options, which makes Fedora a good choice for developers. Python 2.7 is end of life, but there is still a python27 package available.
In Fedora 32 DNF feels much, much faster. Packages install faster than they did in Fedora 31. Given the network congestion caused by everyone working from home right now, it is not possible for me to properly benchmark DNF's Fedora 31 and Fedora 32 performance, but it is snappier enough to be noticeable. The "command not found" feature on the command line also works better. It still takes a while to return information the first time it runs in a session, but after that it seems to behave much better and quickly provides the option to install a package that provides the entered command or state that the command was not found if no package provides that command.
Fedora 32 -- GNOME Software
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The graphical option to install additional software is GNOME Software. This application provides a selection of GUI applications from Fedora's RPM repositories and from Fedora's own Flatpak repository. Fedora's RPM repository contains a lot of packages, but the Flatpak repository is very, very small. The Flatpak repository contains mostly games and GNOME applications. Most of these Flatpak applications are already packaged as RPMs, so, at present, the Fedora Flatpak repository does not provide much value. GNOME Software does allow the user to enable a selection of "Third Party Repositories", but this option only enables a Copr repository for PyCharm, a repository for Google Chrome, and Steam and NVIDIA drivers provided by RPM Fusion. Despite using RPM Fusion for two packages, there is no automatic way to enable the full RPM Fusion repositories. There is the same issue for Flathub, which contains way more packages than the Fedora Flatpak repository. Enabling Flathub would be helpful, but it is not an option presented by GNOME Software. If a user wants to use Flathub, they must enable it themselves by going to the Flathub website and following the instructions. While there are understandable legal issues around providing RPM Fusion and Flathub by default, it is unfortunate that the optimal Fedora experience requires knowing that RPM Fusion and Flathub exist.
One minor frustration with GNOME Software is that it keeps displaying an error message stating that it is "Unable to install English as not supported". Fedora 32 changed the way language packs are installed, but GNOME Software seems to have some issues with the changes. The English language tools seem to be installed properly, and are working just fine in LibreOffice and other applications, but GNOME Software keeps displaying the error every time I open it.
Final thoughts
If you are already a Fedora user, Fedora 32 is something you should upgrade to immediately. Fedora 32's improvements far outweigh the few minor issues (e.g. GNOME Software complaining about being unable to install English). If you are currently using a different distribution or if you are new to Linux, I still recommend Fedora 32, but with the caveat that you need to know about RPM Fusion and be able to follow the instructions on the RPM Fusion website to install the repositories and install the multimedia codec packages to have an experience on par with other distributions. While not as crucial, it also helps to enable Flathub, which provides a much larger set of packages than Fedora's own Flatpak repository, including many applications that are not available as standard RPM packages. There are valid reasons for a Red Hat sponsored project not enabling those things by default, but it does make the Fedora installation process and user experience more complicated that it could be. Even with the extra work needed to set everything up, Fedora 32 Workstation is a great choice for general desktop computing, development work, or for learning the ins and outs of how Red Hat-style distributions work.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
Fedora has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.2/10 from 256 review(s).
Have you used Fedora? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
UBports status report, TrueOS shuts down, an overview of Fedora Silverblue
The UBports team has published an update on work being done to their mobile operating system. The team has reported improvements in compatibility with the PinePhone and upgrades to the user interface. There have also been improvements to the Morph web browser: "OTA-12 includes the very last version of Unity 8 (now Lomiri) that Canonical ever prepared. It has finally been brought out of mothballs. There are better contrasting colours across the whole OS, thanks to Cibersheep. The keyboard edit overlay now operates by swiping up, instead of the long press on the space bar. Double tap now works to control it. With Morph improvements, apps can now utilise it to download files. Deleting cookies is now possible! Yes, that should have been in there before but everything takes time... Devices equipped with multi-colour LEDs now show charging status properly. [white/green = charging, green = charged, orange = battery low]. Also some translations have been tidied up and now appear correctly in system settings and elsewhere." Additional details can be found in the project's Q&A post.
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The TrueOS project has been dormant for several months and the team has now announced that the project is officially being discontinued. "With a heavy heart, the TrueOS Project's core team has decided to discontinue the development of TrueOS for the foreseeable future. We'll still be heavily involved in other Open Source projects like FreeNAS & TrueNAS CORE. We're incredibly proud of the work we put into TrueOS and its predecessor, PC-BSD. TrueOS source code will remain available on GitHub for others that may want to continue the work that we started so many years ago." People who are interested in rolling release varieties of FreeBSD and desktop flavours of FreeBSD may be interested in exploring the closely related GhostBSD project.
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Fedora Silverblue is an interesting branch of the Fedora project which presents the core operating system as a set image. Modules can be added on top of Silverblue, but the base operating system is intended to stay as a single, atomic foundation. Nick Hardiman dives into some of Silverblue's features: "The libostree project supplies the goods for managing Silverblue's file system. It is an upgrade system that the user can control using rpm-ostree commands. libostree knows nothing about packages - an upgrade means replacing one complete file system with another complete file system. libostree treats the file system tree as one atomic object (an unbreakable unit). In fact, the forerunner to Silverblue was named Project Atomic. The libostree project provides a library and set of tools. It's an upgrade system that carries out these tasks: Pull in a new file system, store the new file system, deploy the new file system." Hardiman's post further explores managing software on Silverblue.
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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) |
Why distros offer custom builds of packages
Looking-at-the-label asks: Back when I was hopping around for which distro to stick with (thanks to DistroWatch for being my guide), I noticed that the About page for Firefox usually said "Firefox for <distro name>". What are the differences between a "distro specific" Firefox build and the "generic" Firefox build from Mozilla? Why do distros (the ones I've tried, at least) prefer to have their own build rather than use the "generic" build?
DistroWatch answers: There are a handful of reasons a project might want to make their own, custom build of Firefox rather than just install a generic build from Mozilla.
One is customizing locations of files or making Firefox fit better with the distribution's filesystem layout. A distribution might want to shuffle things around to keep resources, icons, or libraries organized more consistently.
A second option is the distribution has security patches which they apply to their build which might not yet be available upstream. Similarly, maybe there aren't any patches at the moment, but doing a custom build means it is easier to insert patches later if they are needed. It is more straight forward to add a patch to a source build than to re-write the packaging routine from using a generic build to then incorporate a patch.
Building a custom package for Firefox, or any other software, allows the distribution to introduce compile-time improvements. These can include code optimizations to make the software faster, security features that make the browser harder to exploit, debugging information to help developers find problems. A lot of little tweaks can be made during the build that make a big difference in program size, speed, and security.
Branding can also play a role. Some projects may want to put their name on the browser, or adjust the browser's identification slightly to make their distribution show up in website statistics. It also lets users know where to report bugs. If you run into a problem with Mozilla's build of Firefox it should be reported to Mozilla. If you run into issues while running Ubuntu's build of Firefox it should be reported to Ubuntu.
Building from source code will often produce warnings or errors which developers can address and fix. This can result in potential problems being addressed early rather than waiting for Mozilla (or another upstream team) to notice the issue and address it.
There is also the issue of reproducible builds. Some projects want to make sure that the binary package they are providing can be reproduced. In other words, they want to confirm the binary they share with their users was built using the corresponding source code and that fact can be verified. Shipping a pre-made, generic binary, does not allow a distribution to confirm their software builds are reproducible.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Proxmox 6.2 "Virtual Environment"
Proxmox is a commercial company which offers specialized products based on Debian. The company has launched Proxmox Virtual Environment version 6.2 which is based on Debian 10.4 "Buster". The release announcement covers the highlights of the new version which include updates to the kernel and ZFS support. "We are proud to announce the general availability of our virtualization management platform Proxmox VE 6.2. It's built on Debian Buster 10.4 and a 5.4 long-term Linux kernel, QEMU 5.0, LXC 4.0, ZFS 0.8.3, Ceph 14.2.9 (Nautilus), and ZFS 0.8.3. This release brings a built-in validation of domains for Let's Encrypt TLS certificates via the DNS-based challenge mechanism, full support for up to eight corosync network links, support for Zstandard for Backup/Restore, and a new LDAP sync for users and groups and full support for API tokens. Countless bugfixes and smaller improvements are included as well, see the full release notes." Further information on the new version and upgrade instructions can be found in the release announcement.
Q4OS 3.11
Q4OS is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution designed to offer classic-style user interface (Trinity) or the more modern Plasma desktop. The project's latest version, Q4OS 3.11, offers several package upgrades and introduces new dedicated installers for the Firefox and Palemoon web browsers. The release announcement offers further details: "A significant update to Q4OS 3 Centaurus LTS is immediately available for download. The new 3.11 series receives all the fixes and goodies from the recent Debian Buster 10.4 update, critical security and bug fixes and brings several Q4OS specific improvements. Most importantly, the Q4OS Software centre applications list has got a bunch of new items. National keyboard layout configuration has been enhanced. In addition to the above, Q4OS 3.11 brings other exciting enhancements, such as dedicated installers for Firefox 76 and Palemoon browsers as well as cumulative upgrade covering all changes since the previous stable version of Q4OS 3 Centaurus."
Kali Linux 2020.2
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The project's latest release makes it easier for users to access PowerShell, updates themes for KDE Plasma, and the size requirements for the distribution's ARM-build SD cards has been increased from 8GB to 16GB. "A while ago, we put PowerShell into Kali Linux's network repository. This means if you wanted PowerShell, you had to install the package as a one off by doing 'sudo apt install -y powershell'. We now have put PowerShell into one of our (primary) metapackages, kali-linux-large. This means, if you choose to install this metapackage during system setup, or once Kali is up and running (sudo apt install -y kali-linux-large), if PowerShell is compatible with your architecture, you can just jump straight into it (pwsh). PowerShell isn't in the default metapackage (that's kali-linux-default), but it is in the one that includes the default and many extras, and can be included during system setup." Additional information and screenshots of the new KDE Plasma themes can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Kali Linux 2020.2 -- The live desktop
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Finnix 120
After a 5-year hiatus, the Finnix distribution has come to life once more with a release of version 120. Finnix is a Debian-based live Linux CD made for system administrators and designed to manipulate hard drives and partitions, monitor networks, and rebuild boot records. The new version is the project's first release for the x86_64 architecture: "Finnix 120 released. That's right: after a 5-year hiatus, Finnix - the live CD for system administrators and the oldest live CD in production - is back to celebrate its 20-year anniversary in 2020 with Finnix 120. Finnix 120 is a complete overhaul, with a number of major changes (as well as too many minor changes to enumerate): Finnix 120 is now a native 64-bit amd64 userland and kernel system; both BIOS and UEFI booting are now available, with Secure Boot; hundreds of new utility packages have been added; automatic setup attempts of complex block device layouts have been removed in favor of management via udisksctl with tab-completion; other legacy features and boot modes have been discontinued or are no longer supported, in favor of core USB/CD booting...." Read the release announcement and release notes for more information.
UBports 16.04 OTA-12
The UBports team has published an update to their mobile operating system. The new version, 16.04 OTA-12 introduces a new version of the Lomiri (formerly Unity8) user interface and Mir now supports working with Wayland clients. "The headline feature of this new release is our import of Canonical's final changes to Unity8. This is a transition that started in April of 2019 and has brought many new features. As an Ubuntu Touch user, you'll be seeing the effects of the revision right away -- the Ubuntu Touch 'home screen', the Unity8 Dash, has now been replaced by a blank background, with the Drawer serving as the new app list. The new version of Unity8 performs extensive self-tests, helping us to avoid introducing new bugs or triggering old ones again. Unity8 is now called Lomiri, though the code naming is only being updated slowly to reflect this. Most importantly for us, we upgraded from Mir 0.24, released back in 2015, to Mir 1.2, released in 2019. This newer version of Mir features support for Wayland clients!" Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
BackBox Linux 7
BackBox Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution developed to perform penetration tests and security assessments. The distribution's latest release is BackBox 7 which is based on Ubuntu's 20.04 long-term support release. The distribution now features version 5.4 of the Linux kernel and Xfce 4.14. "The BackBox Team, ten years after its first release, is happy to announce the new major release of BackBox Linux, version 7. As usual, this major release includes many updates. These include new kernel, updated tools and some structural changes with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. What's new: Updated Linux Kernel 5.4. Updated desktop environment. Updated hacking tools. Updated ISO Hybrid with UEFI support." Further details, including minimal system requirements, can be found in the project's release announcement.
BackBox 7 -- Running the Xfce desktop
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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: 1,979
- Total data uploaded: 31.8TB
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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) |
The source of your web browser package
In our Questions and Answers article this week we talked about why distributions would provide their own builds of Firefox rather than simply redistributing Mozilla's binary package of the web browser. Many packages, particularly popular ones like Firefox, can be installed through several methods and we would like to know how you get your web brwoser installed.
Do you install your web browser through your distribution's traditional package manager or through a portable package like Flatpak or Snap? Do you build your browser from source code, use a PPA, download the browser as a binary from its upstream website?
You can see the results of our previous poll on using screen sharing applications in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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The source of your web browser package
| My distro's default repository: | 1395 (76%) |
| A third-party/PAA repository: | 159 (9%) |
| A portable package (Flatpak/Snap): | 41 (2%) |
| Generic binary from upstream: | 138 (8%) |
| I build it from source code: | 32 (2%) |
| Other: | 51 (3%) |
| Unsure: | 23 (1%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 25 May 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 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 |
| • Issue 984 (2022-09-05): deepin 23 Preview, watching for changing to directories, Mint team tests Steam Deck, Devuan posts fix for repository key expiry |
| • Issue 983 (2022-08-29): Qubes OS 4.1.1, Alchg Linux, immutable operating systems, Debian considers stance on non-free firmware, Arch-based projects suffer boot issue |
| • Issue 982 (2022-08-22): Peropesis 1.6.2, KaOS strips out Python 2 and PulseAudio, deepin becomes independent, getting security update notifications |
| • Issue 981 (2022-08-15): Linux Lite 6.0, defining desktop environments and window managers, Mint releases upgrade tool, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 980 (2022-08-08): Linux Mint 21, Pledge on Linux, SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan base |
| • Issue 979 (2022-08-01): KaOS 2022.06 and KDE Plasma 5.25, terminating processes after a set time, GNOME plans Secure Boot check |
| • Issue 978 (2022-07-25): EndeavourOS 22.6, Slax explores a return to Slackware, Ubuntu certified with Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 |
| • Issue 977 (2022-07-18): EasyOS 4.2, transferring desktop themes between distros, Tails publishes list of updates, Zevenet automates Let's Encrypt renewals |
| • Issue 976 (2022-07-11): NixOS 22.05, making a fake webcam, exploring the Linux scheduler, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 975 (2022-07-04): Murena One running /e/OS, where are all the openSUSE distributions, Fedora to offer unfiltered Flathub access |
| • Issue 974 (2022-06-27): AlmaLinux 9.0, the changing data of DistroWatch's database, UBports on the Pixel 3a, Tails and GhostBSD publish hot fixes |
| • Issue 973 (2022-06-20): openSUSE 15.4, collecting distro media, FreeBSD status report, Ubuntu Core with optional real-time kernel |
| • Issue 972 (2022-06-13): Rolling Rhino Remix, SambaBox 4.1, SUSE team considers future of SUSE and openSUSE Leap, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant |
| • Issue 971 (2022-06-06): ChimeraOS 2022.01.03, Lilidog 22.04, NixOS gains graphical installer, Mint replaces Bluetooth stack and adopts Timeshift, how to change a MAC address |
| • Issue 970 (2022-05-30): Tails 5.0, taking apart a Linux distro, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop |
| • Full list of all issues |
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