 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 868, 1 June 2020 |
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Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The longer a computer is used the more data it accumulates. Downloads, e-mails, photos, and documents gradually fill up each user's home directory and, eventually, additional storage space is required to hold it all. This week we explore how to migrate users' home directories to a new device or partition in our Questions and Answers column. Do you keep your home directories on their own partition or merge it with the operating system's partitions? Let us know in our Opinion Poll. First though we kick off the week with a look at two projects: AutoTux and Kaisen Linux. The AutoTux project creates a Debian-based distribution which automated as much of the install process as possible. Kaisen is also based on Debian, but offers a different approach and focuses on providing system administration tools for detecting and fixing problems. Read on to learn more about these two distributions in our Feature Story. In our News section we talk about progressive updates coming to Snap packages and UBports now shipping pre-installed on the PinePhone. Plus we report on Fedora 30 reaching the end of its supported life cycle. We are also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: AutoTux 2.0 and Kaisen Linux 20200307
- News: Snap gets progressive releases, UBports now shipping on the PinePhone, Fedora 30 reaches its EOL date
- Questions and answers: Moving the /home directory to another partition
- Released last week: Kodachi Linux 7.0, BlackArch Linux 2020.06.01, Alpine Linux 3.12.0
- Torrent corner: Alpine, AUSTRUMI, Bee free, BlackArch, Container, EasyOS, Kodachi, KDE neon, Lite, Linuxfx, Nitrux, Ultimate Edition, Volumio
- Upcoming releases: Tails 4.7
- Opinion poll: Keeping root and /home together or separate
- Website news: Major Distributions page updated with German translation
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (19MB) and MP3 (14MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
AutoTux 2.0
One of the most difficult barriers to overcome when migrating to a new operating system is getting it installed. There are time zones to select, disks to partition, and user accounts to set up. It can be a daunting task for inexperienced users and even computer veterans can face challenges getting a distribution installed.
AutoTux is a Debian-based distribution which attempts to address these challenges. AutoTux claims to automate almost the entire install process. We simply download the project's ISO file, transfer it to an optical disc or USB thumb drive, and boot from it. The distribution is supposed to then take over, installing itself on the computer without further intervention. Afterwards we should have a copy of Debian 10 running the Xfce desktop.
I downloaded AutoTux 2.0 which is available as a 2.5GB ISO file. We are told on the project's front page that our default login credentials will be the username "tux" with password "tux". I downloaded the ISO file, transferred it to a USB stick and plugged it in to see what would happen.
What happens is we are presented with a text screen. At the top of the page is a banner which indicates the Fully Automatic Installation (FAI) is running. Below we are shown status information as the disk is partitioned, packages are checked, and the system is configured. The process is, as the name suggests, entirely automatic. We are not prompted at all, there is no confirmation before the installer goes to work. This is what the distribution is designed to do, but I want to underline the point once more: do not put the AutoTux media in a computer that has information on it you want to keep; the hard drive will be wiped and the partitions replaced.
When it is finished we are asked to press Enter to reboot the computer without removing the media.
When the computer reboots the status messages scroll by very quickly. It's hard to tell at first if additional configuration steps are taking place or if the install is happening over again. There is no indication of which step we are on or progress indicator, apart from the steady march of package management messages on the screen. After a while it became clear the install was happening over again from scratch as familiar messages started to scroll by. I'm not sure why we are told to not remove the install media before rebooting when leaving it in just causes OS to be re-installed each time the computer restarts.
The second time through, I ignored the request to keep the disc in my computer and ejected it before restarting the machine. This time the distribution booted to a graphical login screen. We can then sign into a default account using the username and password "tux".
AutoTux 2.0 -- Exploring the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The default desktop environment is Xfce and it is presented with a thin panel placed across the top of the display. There is an application menu in the upper-left corner of the screen and a system tray in the upper-right corner. There is a dock at the bottom of the display with launchers for commonly used applications. Icons on the desktop can be used to access the file manager. The default theme and icon style result in desktop that somewhat resembles macOS.
A fresh login uses about 250MB of RAM and AutoTux consumes about 8GB of disk space, installed on an ext4 filesystem. The system also sets up swap space, about 3GB worth in my case.
For all practical purposes the operating system is Debian 10. The boot menu and software builds all identify the system as being Debian. The packages mostly appear to be pulled from Debian's Stable repositories. There is quite a large collection of software included for us to try. We are treated to the Firefox web browser and the Chrome browser. TeamViewer, FileZilla, and qBittorrent are all included. There are some other popular applications such as LibreOffice, the Atril document viewer, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, FreeCAD, and Inkscape.
There were a few surprises too, including DOSBox for playing old DOS games, the Parole and Quod Libet media players, and a series of development tools, including BlueJ and Brackets. Rounding out the selection we find VirtualBox, the Thunar file manager, the Synaptic package manager, and the GNU Compiler Collection. I also found Java is installed for us. In the background we find systemd's init software and version 4.19 of the Linux kernel. It is quite a varied group of software and I suspect the development team has tried to provide a little bit of something for everyone.
The included software generally worked as expected, though I found Synaptic couldn't be launched from the application menu. Synaptic prompts for the root password, which is not set by default. We need to either open a terminal and launch Synaptic with administrator access or set a password on the root account in order to operate the venerable package manager.
Conclusions
Once AutoTux is up and running it is very close to running Debian 10 with Xfce installed and a macOS-style theme in place. The key feature of the distribution is less about what we end up with and more about how we get there. In other words, the focus of the project is the install process and I feel that is what we should look at when evaluating its merit.
To its credit, AutoTux does what it claims to do. It almost entirely automates the install process. We transfer the ISO file to removable media, boot from it and the installer is entirely automated. All we need to do is remove the disc at the end and press Enter to restart the computer. It really does not get much more streamlined than that. In the end, we end up with a solid, Debian-based install with a wide array of default applications that should allow most people to get straight to work. This is a fast way to get up and running with a general purpose operating system.
I have just two concerns when it comes to AutoTux. The first is the message we are shown when the install is over which asks the user to leave the install media in the machine when pressing Enter to reboot. Following this direction results in an endless loop of the system being installed over and over. It may seem like a small detail, but when a project's install process is just two manual steps, having one of them include a misleading prompt is an unfortunate oversight.
The other concern I have is AutoTux is very streamlined. It does exactly what it sets out to do: provide a fully automated install. We just put in the disc and it goes to work. Which is efficient and technically well executed. My concern is that it means if someone boots from the install media not knowing what is on it (say when revisiting a collection of distributions on old USB thumb drives), AutoTux will immediately wipe their hard drive without warning. In my opinion it is really not a good idea to have unprompted destructive behaviour built into software.
In other words, AutoTux does what it claims to do, but I question whether doing it so well is really a good thing? I personally don't want to have DVDs and thumb drives laying around my home or office that, if booted from, will immediately wipe the computer without a prompt asking "Are you sure?" Yes, it is a powerful, useful tool in some situations, but it is also one which should probably be placed in a box with a big warning label on the cover.
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Kaisen Linux 20200307
Kaisen Linux is a rescue system based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It is a complete operating system whose originality is to provide a set of tools dedicated to system administration and covering all the needs for diagnosing and dealing with faults or failures of an installed system and its components.
Kaisen Linux is available for 64-bit (x86_64) computers exclusively. The sole ISO available for download is 3.3GB in size. Booting from the distribution's media offers us three main options: booting with French language support, booting with English support, and installing the operating system. The install option lets us launch either the text-based or graphical versions of the Debian installer. Kaisen is a rescue distribution and probably not something people are going to install, but the option is there if we want to use it.
Taking the live desktop option loads the MATE 1.20 desktop. The desktop features two panels. One panel is placed along the top edge of the screen and provides access to the Applications, Places, and System menus. There is also a system tray located in the upper-right corner of the display. The second panel rests at the bottom of the screen and provides us with a task switcher. There is a Conky status panel on the desktop along with icons for launching the file manager, a terminal, and the Firefox browser.
Like AutoTux, Kaisen is based on Debian 10 "Buster", but with some more up to date packages. For instance, Kaisen's kernel (Linux 5.4) appears to be pulled from Debian's Testing branch.
Applications
Kaisen's application menu is split into two parts. One is called "User applications" and contains the typical MATE menu with its own sub-categories of software and launchers. Here we can find the Firefox web browser, LibreOffice, an image viewer, terminal, and file manager.
Kaisen Linux 20200307 -- Exploring the Kaisen application menu
(full image size: 361kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The second section of the Applications menu is called "Kaisen Linux" and it is further divided into three sub-sections: "Services", "Tools for administrators", and "Tools for technicians". The Services sub-menu contains categories all named after services, such as NTP, SSH, CUPS, and so on. Inside each service name sub-menu are launchers to enable or disable the given service. This means we can start the Clam anti-virus software by clicking on the Applications menu, going to Kaisen Linux, then Services, then Clam, then selecting the Enable launcher. Some of these launchers work and some did not. For instance, the secure shell (SSH) service could not be enabled through this menu, the service failed to start when the launcher was clicked. The CUPS printing service could be enabled, but there was no graphical printer configuration tool to use it, making the service somewhat moot. On the other hand other services, including ClamAV, did run and function.
The tools in the other two sub-menus, the ones for technicians and administrators, are mostly launchers for command line utilities which will run in a new virtual terminal window. This typically means when we click a tool, like du, a terminal opens, runs the command without parameters and this results in an error message being printed in the window, followed by a command prompt.
There are some graphical tools and a few text-menu-driven tools. Graphical tools include the ClamAV front-end, along with FileZilla and gFTP for transferring files. There are some text-menu-based tools like Clonezilla too, but most launchers are for command line programs. One tool which was conspicuous by its absence was GParted, the partition manager. It is a useful and commonly used tool, yet it was not included among the links to tcpdump, dd, and gpart.
Conclusions
Kaisen has a few good things going for it. The distribution includes a lot of useful tools which would certainly be helpful when repairing, restoring or recovering a damaged operating system. There are lots of utilities which an experienced administrator could use to check for viruses, repair the boot loader, or image the system. Having the multi-level application menu, while it takes a while to drill down through, is well organized and makes it easy to find the specific tool we need.
There are, as I see it, two problems with Kaisen which make me reluctant to use it as my day-to-day recovery tool. One is that, while it includes a lot of useful tools, it doesn't include many more than any other mainstream live distribution does these days. I can typically get by using something like Linux Mint to recover files, re-install the boot loader or image a drive. I'm not sure that I need a whole other, larger distribution just for the few extra tools it includes. In some cases there may be extra items I want, but it is rare a live disc doesn't include enough basics to get the job done.
My other issue is Kaisen was oddly slow to respond. MATE is typically a snappy desktop in my test environments and Debian has a well-deserved reputation for performance, but the combination of services and configuration Kaisen ships with slow it down noticeably.
In the end, I think if you know you need a specific tool Kaisen ships, or if you do a lot of on-site recovery and repair, then this distribution is a good option. However, if you only need to do minor repair work, restore a few files, or image a drive, then most mainstream Linux distributions will provide the same tools in a smaller package.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Snap gets progressive releases, UBports now shipping on the PinePhone, Fedora 30 reaches its EOL date
Canonical is rolling out a new feature to Snap package developers that should soon land in Ubuntu and other distributions supporting Snap. The new feature is called progressive releases and it allows creators of Snap packages to publish updates to their packages which will be deployed to a limited number of users. This allows developers to try out new changes with a percentage of their user base. "The idea behind progressive releases is to allow an incremental portion of the total pool of users of a particular snap to receive the update over time. The developer can increase the percentage as they gain confidence that the particular version is working as expected. In particular, this can be quite effective when testing prospective releases for snaps with large install bases." This approach will be in contrast to the traditional package management approach where all users would get instant access to changes as soon as their package repositories were updated by the developer.
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The UBports team has announced that PinePhone mobile devices will begin shipping with UBports optionally pre-installed on Monday, June 1st. "The PinePhone UBports 'Community Edition' starts shipping on Monday. We are very pleased to announce that between 4,000 to 4,500 will be shipped! CE labelling has been fixed now so hopefully Customs services in Germany will be fine with it. There will likely be a big OS update for you as soon as you get it. Some prominent YouTubers and commentators will be getting theirs, so we await their opinions with interest."
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The Fedora team has announced that Fedora 30 has reached the end of its supported life and will receive no more security updates. Users are advised to upgrade to version 31 or 32 if they have not already done so. "As of the 26th of May 2020, Fedora 30 has reached its end of life for updates and support. No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 30. Fedora 31 will continue to receive updates until approximately one month after the release of Fedora 33. The maintenance schedule of Fedora releases is documented on the Fedora
Project wiki."
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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) |
Moving the /home directory to another partition
Moving to a new home asks: I got a second drive for my computer and want to move my home directory over to a partition on the new drive. Is there a way to move an entire partition? Can I just copy everything over or do I need to do something special to move my /home? Any pointers would be welcome.
DistroWatch answers: Migrating your existing /home filesystem to a new drive is basically a four-step process:
- Create a partition on the new drive and format the new partition with a suitable filesystem.
- Mount the new partition.
- Copy all of the data from your existing /home to the new location.
- Update your operating system's /etc/fstab file to make sure your /home directory is associated with the new partition.
I will walk through the steps to perform the above four tasks. Each person's computer may use different partition names and you may wish to use a different filesystem for your new disk. For the purposes of this example I am going to assume your new disk has been assigned the name /dev/sdb and you want to use the popular ext4 filesystem for your new /home partition.
In the following example commands virtually every command used will need to be run with administrator (root) access. You can accomplish this on most Linux distributions by either running commands as the root user directly or by prefixing each command with "sudo", for example running the mount command as "sudo mount".
Step one, we need to create a partition on the new drive. You can most easily accomplish this using a friendly partition manager such as GParted. In GParted, select your new disk, /dev/sdb for the purposes of our example, in the drop-down list on the right. Then go to the Device menu and select "Create partition table". This will wipe existing partition data from the disk so double-check you are working with the right disk.
Once the disk has been set up with a fresh partition table, click on the Partition menu and select New. A menu will pop up giving you a chance to select the size of the partition in megabytes and the type of the partition. First we will concern ourselves with the size field. When in doubt, for now, we can use the default which should be to use all the available space. In the filesystem field we will select ext4.
Once GParted has finished setting up the partition it should appear in the graphical representation of the disk at the top of the GParted window. The new partition will likely be assigned a name such as /dev/sdb1, indicating it is the first partition (1) on the second (b) drive.
The next thing we need to do is access (mount) the new partition in a temporary location and copy our existing files from the original /home directory over to the new location. For the sake of this example I will mount the new partition (/dev/sdb1) under the /mnt directory, use the rsync command to copy everything over, and then unmount the partition.
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
rsync -av /home/ /mnt/
umount /mnt
Note the trailing slash (/) characters in the rsync line of the above sequence is important. It makes the difference between rsync copying a directory or the contents of a directory to its new location.
Now all the files have been copied to their new location. The only thing left to do is to tell the operating system to use the new partition as its /home directory in place of whatever was being used before. To do this we can open the /etc/fstab file in our preferred text editor. The text editor must be run as the root user, so we might want to launch the editor from the command line. Here we launch the nano editor.
nano /etc/fstab
What we will do next will depend on how the original /home directory was set up. If it was set up on its own partition on the computer's original disk then we should see an entry in /etc/fstab which looks like this, noting the "/home" entry in the second column:
UUID=b369d563-bc6b-4ed6-91b8-1ad5fd2df7a3 /home ext4 defaults 1 2
We can change this line so that the "UUID=" field is altered to match the partition name we used above - /dev/sdb1 in our case. This will change the line to read as follows:
/dev/sdb1 /home ext4 defaults 1 2
However, if the original /home was part of one big root partition then it will not have its own entry. There will be no line with "/home" in the second column. We can then add a new line to the end of the /etc/fstab file which looks like this:
/dev/sdb1 /home ext4 defaults 1 2
We then save the text file. At this point if we reboot the computer, the /home directory should be mounted in its new location. We can verify this by running the following command:
mount | grep /home
The above command should produce one line which shows the name of the new partition we just created, /dev/sdb1 in this example. In my case the above command shows:
/dev/sdb1 on /home type ext4
If no entry is shown at all or the partition name in the first column is incorrect then something went wrong and we should re-check the entry for /home in the /etc/fstab file.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Linux Kodachi 7.0
Warith Al Maawali has announced the release of Linux Kodachi 7.0, an updated version of the project's privacy-focused Linux distribution that also includes a number of forensic tools. Despite a major change in version number, this release is still based on Xubuntu 18.04. From the changelog: "Linux kernel upgrade from 5.0 to 5.4; added FDN DNS; added Next DNS; added Cloudflare Family malware and adult content filtering; added Neustar Family malware and adult content filtering; added exfat file system support; added Enigmail plugin for Thunderbird; added Tilix; added USBGuard; added USBKill; added proxychains; Conky improved new display items like Torrify IP country and font size; added MPV player; added new options to IP source control and system log scripts; Jaxx wallet remove; Exoduse wallet removed; Xelcore wallet removed; Bisq exchange removed; Tox chat removed; Ring chat removed; VLC removed; full system update; removed Tenta and Fourth estate DNS - slow and dead. Kodachi browser changes: DuckDuckGo plugin removed; disable JavaScript plugin removed; BP Privacy Block All Font and Glyph Detection replaced with trace; Canvas Defender replaced WITH trace; Canvas Blocker replaced WITH trace...."
Linux Kodachi 7.0 -- The default Xfce desktop
(full image size: 341kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
BlackArch Linux 2020.06.01
BlackArch Linux is an Arch Linux-based distribution designed for penetration testers and security researchers. The project's latest release, BlackArch Linux 2020.06.01, features many additional tools, disables the iptables and VirtualBox services, and introduces several package upgrades. The distribution's release announcement states: "Here's the ChangeLog: added more than 150 new tools; disabled iptables/ip6tables service; remove unneeded VirtualPC services (drag'n'drop, vmsvga-x11); replace wicd with wifi-radar (GUI) and wifi-menu (curses -> netctl); updated blackarch-installer to v1.1.45; included linux kernel 5.6.14; QA'ed and fixed a lot of packages (runtime exec, missing dependencies); updated all vim plugins and improved vim config options; updated all blackarch tools and packages including config files; updated all system packages; updated all window manager menus (Awesome, Fluxbox, Openbox)."
Alpine Linux 3.12.0
Alpine Linux is a community developed operating system designed for routers, firewalls, VPNs, VoIP boxes and servers. The project has published a new version of their lightweight distribution, launching Alpine Linux 3.12.0. The new version introduces initial support for the mips64 architecture and the D programming language. A number of package upgrades have also been provided: "We are pleased to announce the release of Alpine Linux 3.12.0, the first in the v3.12 stable series. New features and noteworthy new packages: Initial support for mips64 (big endian). Initial support for D programming language. Significant updates: Linux 5.4.43, GCC 9.3.0, LLVM 10.0.0, Git 2.24.3, Node.js 12.16.3, Nextcloud 18.0.3, PostgreSQL 12.3, QEMU 5.0.0, Zabbix 5.0.0." Further details and upgrade tips can be found in the project's release announcement.
EasyOS 2.3
Barry Kauler has announced the release of EasyOS 2.3, the latest stable version of the project's experimental Linux distribution derived from Puppy Linux. The new release continues to draw packages from the Debian 10 "Buster" repositories, although it uses a newer kernel (version 5.4.40): "Version 2.3 is built with 10.4 DEBs, and there are significant infrastructure and utility/application improvements: built with Debian 'Buster' 10.4 DEB packages; Linux kernel version 5.4.40; Gpptp VPN network connection tool fixed; improvements and fixes for EasyDD; major overhaul of Ethernet connection logic; SeaMonkey version 2.53.2, with ChatZilla, profile workaround; ffplay-gtk media player improved; mtPaint version 3.49.27 and bug fixes; MoManager updated, translation separation from EasyPup; Rxvt-unicode instability fixed; extra b43 firmware. EasyOS uses NetworkManager by default and one user of 2.2.16 reported Ethernet not being detected and no IP lease obtained at first boot-up. This has resulted in considerable redesign of Ethernet detection, with, hopefully, fallbacks to catch situations where NetworkManager seems to be failing." Read the release announcement and the release notes for further information.
Linux Lite 5.0
Jerry Bezencon has announced the release of Linux Lite 5.0, a lightweight desktop distribution based on Ubuntu. The project's latest release features the Xfce desktop and is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. The new version improves UEFI support and swaps out the old firewall utility for FireWallD. The project's release announcement offers further information: "UEFI is now supported out of the box. It is recommended that you disable Secure Boot even though it will work, it's just a huge hassle to have it enabled. See the new inbuilt Help Manual for ways to do this on the Start page. No hidden telemetry: Integrity Check during live boot (an Ubuntu implementation) Crtl+C cancels check. GUFW has been replaced by the highly configurable FireWallD (disabled by default). Please read the full guide in the Help Manual under Tutorials. New Updater notifier: Enabled by default to check for updates twice per day, and only notify when there are updates. To disable, Menu Settings, Session and Startup, Application Autostart tab, untick Package Update Indicator."
Linux Lite 5.0 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 184kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
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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: 1,999
- Total data uploaded: 32.0TB
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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) |
Keeping root and /home together or separate
Linux offers the ability to seamlessly maintain directories on separate devices and partitions. This means the entire filesystem can be kept on one giant partition or divided between multiple devices. It is fairly common for people to keep their /home directory on a separate partition or disk drive in order to allow it to be accessed and managed independently of the rest of the operating system. We would like to know if you keep your /home directory on the same partition as the rest of your filesystem or if /home is on a separate partition or device.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using command line aliases in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Keeping root and /home together or separate
| My /home shares a partition with the root filesystem: | 848 (45%) |
| My /home is on a separate partition: | 784 (42%) |
| My /home is on a separate disk: | 180 (10%) |
| My /home is on a separate computer/NAS: | 13 (1%) |
| Other: | 45 (2%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
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Major Distributions page updated with German translation
Karsten Pfelffer kindly offered to update the German translation of our Major Distributions page this week. He not only updated the translation on the page, but corrected some outdated information. Thank you, Karsten. The translated page is now entirely up to date with our English page.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 8 June 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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| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • /home (by Tux_Raider on 2020-06-01 00:35:52 GMT from United States)
i always keep /home as a separate partition, plus /home is storage for other things like source code, and my collection of custom built packages,
2 • poll question, etc. (by randomly generated entity on 2020-06-01 01:15:28 GMT from United States)
Because I have several separate drives/partitions set aside for storage, I always opt for the /home directory to be on the same partition as the rest of the installed system. Then I add symlinks (using mc) from the home folder for Downloads, Pictures and Music, which are in fact spread in various ways across three physical drives.
As for AutoTux? Yikes! I mean, I suppose anyone that really wants or needs this will know what it's gonna do, but it still seems unnecessarily dangerous. Just a single "Are you sure? We're gonna clobber your (_) drive..." prompt would do a lot to mitigate that. As Jesse says, what if someone pulls this monstrosity out years from now on a USB drive? Maybe just to reformat the danged thing? Is that even possible? Again, yikes!
(no Gnome bashing or Plasma proselytizing from me this week!)
3 • /home (by jVictor Barbicane on 2020-06-01 01:25:29 GMT from United States)
I like it as part of the root partition. I use my Raspberry Pi as a network drive to save all sorts of files. I move these files to and from the /home directory as needed for work. Ocasionally I insert one of my USB passport hard drives to save all the files for backup and storage. Then I also rsync to the second USB passport drive and store it elsewhere out of sight and danger.
4 • AutoTux (by Vern on 2020-06-01 01:58:19 GMT from United States)
I was hoping AutoTux was similar to preseed. I'm looking for install that I normally use. Many of the question that Ubiquity asks are the same that I supply over and over again. I wanted to automate that. I could never get preseed to work.
5 • home (by wally on 2020-06-01 01:59:43 GMT from United States)
All my pc's run multiple os's sharing common data.
Home is unique to each os root to maintain separate unique to os configs.
Data is on separate partition that is mounted in home on each os.
6 • /home (by Mike on 2020-06-01 02:19:02 GMT from Australia)
I answered 'other'. My home directory is on the same partition but it only stores config files. All the usual folders are links to a separate partition for all my data. This way I can have multiple distros with their own home configurations but all sharing the same documents/ photos/ music etc. It also makes backups bery easy.
7 • /home partition (by Romane on 2020-06-01 02:43:00 GMT from Australia)
I keep my /home on its own partition. The dot files on it all relate to my primary system, while it gets mounted under /media and links placed from it to the system /home for the other multibooted systems I may run.
This means that if I need or want to wipe and re-install my primary booted system, everything, apart from a few packages that likewise need to be re-installed, pretty well works without me needing to re-configure it all again.
While, for the other systems, they can each write their configuration files to their own /home partition without affecting my separate /home partition, and with the links from /media I still have full access to all my data files
8 • AutoTux autoinstall (by Jeff on 2020-06-01 03:28:06 GMT from United States)
@2
When I format or write files to a USB drive I insert it after I boot the computer I am going to use to do the formatting. I would expect that it would be seen as a regular drive then and not start an install.
But we should never underestimate the innate tendency for people to do the dumb thing instead of the right thing...
9 • transfering /home (by greenpossum on 2020-06-01 03:58:56 GMT from Australia)
A gotcha: If there is already a /home on the same disk as / and you mount another partition on top of this mountpoint it will hide the files underneath. This does no harm but suddenly a part of the / disk becomes unavailable and the storage is not recovered. In such a case you should move the existing /home aside and create a new mountpoint.
mv /home /oldhome
mkdir /home
and proceed as written. /oldhome can be deleted when satisfied that all the files have been correctly copied.
Also I would add H to the rsync options so that hard links are preserved. Some people use them heavily and you would use extra space if hard links became separate files. Those who use extended attributes may like to add X also.
10 • Home sweet home (by Mark on 2020-06-01 04:20:40 GMT from Canada)
All my Distros (multiboot) think their Home is bundled with Root. But selected files/subdirectories are Symlinked to a larger common partition, where the Distros share the same data, configs, themes, appimages, etc.
11 • /home ... (by Someguy on 2020-06-01 05:21:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
...remains fully integrated into the single, main, root partition. Tried separating it onto own partition or own disc some years ago but experienced too many consequential issues when updating/upgrading/other modifications. Now run different discs with previous/different/mobile - /homes on different boxes.
Folks constantly give me their 'old' boxes when making entirely unnecessary new purchases - our disposable society! It's got to stop, but it helps me...
12 • /home (by hotdiggettydog on 2020-06-01 05:39:15 GMT from Canada)
I always have /home on its own partition. Its easy to wipe the /root partition to install a
new OS without worrying about migrating data.
13 • Autotux, Swift, and Home (by Twicky Wabbit on 2020-06-01 06:18:33 GMT from United States)
Autotux: Just the thing to put on a USB stick and send to someone you don't like: "Here, try this." It should really qualify as malware.
Swift: Looked it up expecting a light distro, but it's only Swift as in "Taylor". It's MX19 with different wallpaper. There have been discussions here about what constitutes a distro, with good arguments on different sides, but really? Different wallpaper? I've thought about beautifying the ugly duckling a few times. Since I keep it in a flash drive mostly for rescue purposes, I haven't bothered. But now that I know I can submit it as a new distro, I'm raring to go: (Halle) Berry Linux? (Johannsson) Scarlett Linux? (Sharlize) Theron Linux? I'm like a kid in a candy store.:)
Home: I keep it separate. I usually upgrade my main distro with the same desktop and configuration. Makes life easy and I don't have to worry about losing data. Data normally gets sent to an NTFS partition or drive for access by other distros or Windows. Other distros share the home partition with different user names which will resemble the distro's name. Fedora is Fred, Debian is Debbie, Arch is Archie, Ubuntu is Übermensch. (Just kidding about that last one.) They all get along fine.
14 • /home (by Daniel on 2020-06-01 09:34:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
I keep a separate small /home for each of the distros I use (for storing config files), but use a common data storage partition with links from each of the distros. I ensure the username and user ID is the same in each of the distros, so no problems with file permissions (so far).
15 • Home directory (by Jim on 2020-06-01 09:38:37 GMT from United States)
I keep home and root on the same partition. I am a pretty casual user and back up regularly.
16 • Essential Essentials (by who knows on 2020-06-01 09:51:50 GMT from Switzerland)
@ 13 & @ 2
I'd very much like to propose (Tori) Black (wide open edition) Linux. It MUST come with Gnome 3 DE — it's the least distracting and lets (at least male) users fully concentrate on the wallpaper. ;)
:) :) :)
17 • AutoTux (by GreginNC on 2020-06-01 09:56:30 GMT from United States)
That is really kind of unbelievable.
While something like that kind of makes me want to buy a bunch of cheap usb dongles, put AutoTux on them, ans scatter them around parking lots and campuses.
The adult in me is kind of horrified anyone wouldn't see what a danger they were unleashing on the unsuspecting.
I have to say the creators of AutoTux are irresponsible and negligent in releasing something like this.
18 • @17 AutoTux (by OstroL on 2020-06-01 10:26:20 GMT from Poland)
A pretty efficient way to get rid of Windows or MacOS in computers. :) I couldn't stop laughing reading the article/review.
19 • /home (by Simon Plaistowe on 2020-06-01 10:28:10 GMT from New Zealand)
My method is identical to #14 (Daniel from UK), except that some of my links to data storage point to a large local partition and others point to NFS shares on other machines.
20 • /home (by Tim on 2020-06-01 11:46:38 GMT from United States)
My /home is in the same disk partition with /, but I use the volume management capability of btrfs to keep them in separate subvolumes.
21 • Autotux is crap (by Stefan on 2020-06-01 13:05:43 GMT from United States)
Yes, it is a powerful, useful tool in some situations, but it is also one which should probably be placed in a box with a big warning label on the cover: >> WARNING: DO NOT PLUG THIS EVIL THUMB DRIVE TO YOUR COMPUTER, UNLESS YOU ARE THE DUMBEST OF ALL LINUX USERS. <<
WTF. I have never seen such an absurd stuff as an "auto-installing OS". It resembles the "STUX USB trojan" made by NSA/CIA/Mosad. Another wrong way of doing things, just as systemd and GNOME... But Linux is for geeks, not for ascephalous people unable to make smart decisions; then Autotux will not prosper. (I hope.)
Just think of a future where everything under the Sun is "automated". Thus, you will not be given the right to CHOOSE what you want. Even your car will be driven by a 5G network, not by you... Is that the world you dreamed of when you were a kid? For me, not taking absolute control of my life anymore would be a terrifying nightmare.
So... Burn in hell, Autotux! We do not need that kind of automation!
22 • The most hilarious issue in the past decade (by Ram on 2020-06-01 13:59:16 GMT from India)
I have to admit, this issue is the most hilarious I found in the past decade of my life.
Specially I am enjoying the comments on Swift & Auto, the distraction free GNOME3 ...!! Seriously, Linux is now idiots playground ;)
23 • /home partitions (by Flavio R. Cavalcanti on 2020-06-01 14:23:37 GMT from Brazil)
I have voted "in a separate disk" because it happened to be so, but it could be in a separate partition.
No real problem with a /home folder into root partition, at all ─ but I prefer a separate /home partition at long term, because it is better, if I would need to reinstall some distro, in the future, without loosing custom configurations.
All my documents, images, videos etc. are in other specific partitions, as I dualboot many distros, so I can work with all docs from any distro, since all "users" have the same UID=1000.
This year, I had to reinstall all distros in a new hardware, and I have used just /home folders, at the beginning. ─ Moved /home folders to separate partitions in other disk, later.
Moving /home to separate partitions was not new to me, except in the cases of openSUSE and Fedora, so I needed to learn a few more things.
24 • AutoTux is the strongest case yet for UEFI (by CS on 2020-06-01 15:11:10 GMT from United States)
Don't forget that the average joe can't boot from USB anyway without a lot of finagling. AutoTux makes that look like a genius move.
25 • Don't hardcode disks in fstab (by Kingneutron on 2020-06-01 15:38:35 GMT from United States)
@Jesse, hardcoding something like /dev/sdb1 in /etc/fstab has been deprecated for years. Disk assignations can change when you reboot, especially if you add USB disk(s). (This is well known to ZFS admins, we tend to use /dev/disk/by-id for zpool disks.)
Always use UUID or LABEL designations from ' blkid ' for disks and partitions, and your reboots will sort themselves out instead of requiring manual intervention because the distro can't find /home.
26 • Disk names (by Jesse on 2020-06-01 15:55:58 GMT from Canada)
>> "hardcoding something like /dev/sdb1 in /etc/fstab has been deprecated for years. Disk assignations can change when you reboot, especially if you add USB disk(s)."
While technically this is true, at least in environments where you are likely to swap out disks or plug in new disks, it virtually never happens on home systems which is what was being discussed here. If you're running the same disks all the time (as you would with a laptop) the disk names will never change.
In the 20+ years I've been running Linux and BSD systems I've never once seen a disk change its name, unless it was hot-plugged, and never from one boot to the next. It _can_ happen, but for all practical purposes it probably never will for a home user.
27 • home (by ask_about_home on 2020-06-01 16:02:30 GMT from Hungary)
Question to those who keep their /home on a NAS: only using it with one distro or more than one? How can it be usable if more than one distro is in use?
Are distros asking it? I'm on a LTS que, os my install was years ago...
LVM and /home are friends? If an install is LVM how to spot on a /home on another drive?
[Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases - where's Fuguita 6.7 http://fuguita.org/index.php?FuguIta%2F6.7 It's a major one on 20200526]
28 • home partition (by sananab on 2020-06-01 16:24:15 GMT from Canada)
For my first few years of Linux, I always took the 'advanced users only' install prompt as a challenge or an insult and always used a separate partition for home, which always turned out to be an enormous pain, and a suitable punishment for my hubris. Now I just keep everything on home that I care about automatically backed up elsewhere. It's actually nice to totally delete home on reinstalling or moving to a new computer, because so many forgotten or useless hidden files get left behind.
29 • @25, 26 (by randomly generated entity on 2020-06-01 18:02:28 GMT from United States)
I've seen disk letters change on my PCs. It's extremely rare, caused by who knows what, but it can and does happen to simple home systems with only a few drives. I always go with UUID in fstab for this reason alone.
Also, I recently discovered a fabulous fstab/ntfs option that dramatically speeds up throughput, namely the big_writes option. What a difference! Pefectly safe too. It pays to scour the Arch Wiki when you're bored.
30 • Fixing AutoTux (by Ben Myers on 2020-06-01 18:44:03 GMT from United States)
Seems like the Autotux project could be fixed easily, albeit with a necessary sacrifice in truly automatic installation. How about if it tells you immediately "This installation will wipe your hard drive clean. Do you really want to do this?" Answer Yes No. Then, "Are you absolutely sure?" Answer Yes or No. The message not to remove the flash stick before rebooting can be fixed easily, and should be as soon as the project member see Jesse's review.
31 • separate partitions/disks and Linux Lite (by Bobbie Sellers on 2020-06-01 19:15:08 GMT from United States)
IF I had multiple places to put a hard drive I would keep /home on a separate drive but using
laptops as I do it is very hard to find space to install or connections to attach more than one hard drive.
Maybe someday I will buy a Dell Precision portable workstation and then will have room
for a second drive for /home.
The latest release of Linux Lite is getting a good review on Usenet already.
bliss
32 • @31, HDDs and Lite (by Twicky Wabbit on 2020-06-01 22:11:33 GMT from United States)
Don't know what kind of laptops you have. Mine had a DVD drive that I hadn't used in years, so I replaced it with a hard drive bay. Works like a charm. Any rare CD/DVD that may come my way can be handled by a USB DVD drive.
I put the new Linux Lite on VBox. Live boot took was taking way too long. On verbose it showed a running job raising networks, timeout in 5.9 minutes. Disabled the network on VBox, and it booted quickly. After install, again it took too long. This time it showed 5.5 minutes. I let it go on. It only happened at first boot. After that all was well. Can't speak for bare metal install. Heavy on the memory use for XFCE. Nice looking distro. I like the desktop defaults. Other than that, I don't see the advantage over other Ubuntu derivatives with XFCE.
33 • AutoTux stupidity (by Simon Plaistowe on 2020-06-01 22:59:52 GMT from New Zealand)
WTF!!! ...is that for real? That's guaranteed to cause some grief - an accident waiting to happen!
34 • Poll & AutoTux (by M.Z. on 2020-06-01 23:30:13 GMT from United States)
I chose other, because like some previous posters I do have a /root + /home setup; however, I have a /data partition that is linked to my /home folder on all the distros I multi-boot on each computer. It's supposed to be great for making sure hidden .dot files don't cause problems across multiple distros.
-----------
AutoTux does have to potential to be a rather cruel joke on MS fanboys & those in the cult of Mac, but even then I wouldn't really give it to anyone unless they were a massive jerk. I can think of one really smug & foolish Mac user who might deserve it. Still the default setup is genuinely too dangerous to your computer, let alone that of family members who don't know what that one crazy USB does.
The fix of a warning before the wipe mentioned by others is a minimum needed to be truly useful. In fact I'd say that a warning prompt is the minimum needed for the distro to keep in the realm of common decency. I'd argue that to be truly useful it should include a few very minimal options like a basic user account setup as an alternative to the super low input method. Even just an option for setting passwords on a user & root and/or sudo account would go along way to making something like AutoTux actually useful in my view, & of course some kind of fair warning before it wipes everything.
35 • AutoTux preseed? (by Jeff on 2020-06-02 01:25:28 GMT from United States)
@4
What you are looking for seems like an MX Linux snapshot.
You set up your installed system the way you want, it make an ISO copy of it then make your USB (or DVD) from that ISO.
The only possible drawback is that is only built for MX and antiX.
If there was a way to customize the AutoTux ISO before installing that would be better, as it is it is very limited in utility.
36 • Home place (by Alexandru on 2020-06-02 07:58:33 GMT from Austria)
I use separate data partition for me (settings are in root partition) and separate home partition for my wife. This way it is easy to use multiple distributions / versions.
The real problem is files ownership. A typical Linux distribution start numbering user ids from 1001. And usually the same set of users (almost always there is just one) are set up. So the home / data partition sharing usually works.
However, there may happen 2 issues:
1. Some Linux installation has different number of users / different set of users than other. The same id = 1001 in one installation means user Foo, in other it stands for user Bar. The data ownership may happen to match without being intended.
2. Some Linux distributions start numbering users from 501. So the same user Foo in one Linux installation is assigned id = 1001 and in other Linux installation is assigned id = 501. The data ownership is different even if it was intended to be the same.
Both situations can be resolved by manually setting each id for each user in each and every Linux distribution to ensure they match.
Another approach is to use home / data partition on NAS and to allow NAS to authenticate the users.
37 • Autotux (by hank on 2020-06-02 08:08:23 GMT from Germany)
Is this another crazy attack on Linux, or a boneheads joke. On the other side maybe somebody might think it really funny. Hey try linux, heres a STICK. SICK PEOPLE.
38 • Autotux Alarm. (by Angel on 2020-06-02 08:53:04 GMT from Philippines)
I thing the reactions to Autotux are starting to run towards the overwrought. Shoddy and incompetent, yes. Malicious? I doubt it. Leaving flash keys around will do nothing. One would need to convince the finder to boot from it. Inserting it, even before booting to format or use otherwise should do nothing. For the PC to boot from USB you have to tell it, either by pressing the special key at boot, or in some units, by changing the Bios boot order. Still, down the road, some poor soul may think it's a live distro and wipe his/her PC. Or some joker might find it funny to get someone to do it. Murphy's law: If it can happen, it probably will.
39 • AutoTux (by OstroL on 2020-06-02 12:13:47 GMT from Poland)
Actually, there's a warning in their web site.
"Warning: The installation is fully automated without any user intervention. The system is automatically installed on the first available disk."
"The aim of AutoTux is to provide the students with a ready-made operating system and software packages which are not time-consuming to install and configure. Instead of having to manually install the operating system and every piece of software one by one, the student can just burn the image on a DVD or else create a bootable USB pendrive, boot the system and, from that point onwards, the installation is fully automatic. Once the system is installed, no further configuration is required and the student can just load the operating system, log in and start working. At the same time, AutoTux introduces the students to the world of Linux, a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Using a Solid State Drive (SSD), in less than 20 minutes you can have a fully installed operating system with all your required applications."
People should read...
40 • People should read between the lines, too... (by nobody on 2020-06-02 14:22:59 GMT from United States)
"AutoTux introduces the students to the world of Linux"
This mean AutoTux is meant specifically for YOUNG PEOPLE, OUTSIDE of Linux world.
IMHO this is noting but malicious!
41 • AutoSux (by Stefan on 2020-06-02 17:07:31 GMT from United States)
@39
>> Actually, there's a warning in their web site.
"Warning: The installation is fully automated without any user intervention. The system is automatically installed on the first available disk." <<
That's the biggest issue with AutoTux. It forces the installation to be done in /dev/sda (the first available disk). Just think of what would happen if someone had a huge HDD in /dev/sda for both Linux and data storage, and a small SSD in /dev/sdb just for testing OSes. All their precious data would be LOST... Why the stupid AutoTux doesn't allow the user to choose /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sda?
>> People should read... <<
Not only read, but also THINK. No Linux distro should have such a simplistic and limitating installation process. AutoTux is an insult to the user's intelligence. Better call it "AutoSux".
42 • home partitions (by cykodrone on 2020-06-02 18:38:50 GMT from Germany)
I let the installer put home where it wants to, fiddling with partition software pre-install can be a pain, just to have the installer reject all that work, ermph. So one OS is separate, the other shares root, bing bang badda boom. Just guessing, but isn't a separate home pretty much just to preserve your personal home data in case of an OS crash/failure, or is there an actual security risk if home shares the root partition?
43 • home (by Ioannis on 2020-06-02 20:35:43 GMT from United States)
I don't understand why config files and data are kept in the same partition. If you update software or multi-boot you won't necessarily want the same config files, but of course you want to keep your data.
I keep my data on seperate data partitions, and just use /home for configs or temporary data.
44 • Autotux (by Andy Prough on 2020-06-03 01:57:16 GMT from United States)
Autotux is another reminder of why I always try distros in a vm first. All those live USB's have root privileges and can all do the same damage or worse than Autotux the moment you put them into a USB port and hit the power button.
45 • Teaching valuable lesson(s) (by Somewhat Reticent on 2020-06-03 02:05:38 GMT from United States)
"… students especially during the Vocational IT, Computing, Robotics and ICT C3 courses in Malta. …"
Finding out just how destructive a tool can be is a valuable lesson.
Sometimes students need to learn just what it is the school is meant to teach.
46 • /home status (by Kazlu on 2020-06-03 10:09:10 GMT from France)
Like many others here, I keep my /home folder in the root partition, but this is only for the settings. My personal data is stored on a separate partition which is auto mounted on my main system. I just have a shortcut in Thunar to access it, that has proven sufficient.
47 • Autototux a distribution? rather just an ISO built using the FAI.me service. (by Didier Spaier on 2020-06-03 12:25:19 GMT from France)
Out of curiosity and as I want to installing Slint with as less as possible questions to be answered by newbie users, I downloaded the ISO using the link provided on this page: https://autotuxlinux.com/
Having dived into it I soon realized that this ISO was built using the FAI.me service: https://fai-project.org/FAIme/# announced by Thomas Lange in this post: https://lists.uni-koeln.de/pipermail/linux-fai/2017-November/011869.html
It would have been fair from the writers of the page https://autotuxlinux.com/ to give credit where credit is due, i.e. to the Fully Automatic Installation or FAI project: https://fai-project.org/ and its team of developers: https://fai-project.org/team/
As an aside, I would have expected to find this information mentioned in the article I am commenting.
Have a good day,
Didier
48 • Correction of my postt #47 (by Didier Spaier on 2020-06-03 12:43:37 GMT from France)
Sorry for not overlooked it, credit is is given in the last line of https://autotuxlinux.com/, quoted below:
Developed by Robert Spiteri - Special thanks to Thomas Lange for his work on the FAI system.
49 • Autotux (by Justin on 2020-06-03 15:59:02 GMT from United States)
I understand the criticisms that Autotux is receiving. However, I think the tool is really cool. There's a big difference between 1 step and 0 steps. I have made scripts like this to auto-install Arch in a VM so that I can recover my systems in an automated way were something to happen to them. I don't want to remember all my tweaks, packages, etc.; that's what the computer is for. Even then it's annoying to test because I have 3-4 manual steps to get it to the point where it will install. Set and forget is _very_ useful in certain use cases. Automated testing of your work is one. Installing on tens, hundreds, or thousands of machines is another (work uses preseed everywhere for this reason).
After a while, you learn giving users choices is often the source of problems, and when given a choice, many users get it wrong. If you're smart enough to make this USB but stupid enough to put it in your Windows box, not have a backup anywhere, etc., then welcome to life. If someone handed you the stick and you stuck it in, then take it up with them; they hurt you, not Autotux.
As someone pointed out, this is a sobering lesson that when you download ISOs and run them on your machines, it's the same as downloading random binaries and executing them if you don't understand what you have. I have more to say, but I don't want to give script kiddies ideas.
50 • @49, Autotux (by Angel on 2020-06-04 01:45:12 GMT from Philippines)
"If someone handed you the stick and you stuck it in, then take it up with them; they hurt you, not Autotux." If a piece of software can damage a users PC without any warning, I think the maker bears some responsibility.
Back in the old days, the phrase was "Tell me twice." That referred to any user action that would result in irreversible change. Would it make the use of Autotux so much more difficult to follow that rule? A warning: This software is meant for experienced users. will erase everything on your drive. Do you want to go ahead? Press Enter. Are you sure? Press enter again. Some blurb on the Website is not sufficient.
I can see no use for Autotux except for experienced users who know what they are doing and are fine with the consequences. Even then, someone, sometime, will screw up. Any newbie who finds it too difficult to use simple installers like Ubiquity or Calamares, should be letting someone else do the installing.
51 • Autotux (by Andy Prough on 2020-06-04 16:27:29 GMT from United States)
What's the difference between handing someone a USB loaded with Autotux and one loaded with the Stuxnet malware and saying "try this"? Both will destroy all the data or the computer itself.
52 • @51 Autotux (by El Gato Felix on 2020-06-04 17:08:56 GMT from Spain)
Stuxnet: It will deploy when you insert a a USB drive in a running PC or if you boot with it inserted. Will do nothing to your data. In fact, if you should have it in your home PC, you probably won't know it's there. It's meant for industrial plants.
Autotux: It will do nothing if inserted in a running PC. For Autotux to do any damage, you have to insert it and change the boot sequence in your PC to boot from the USB drive. Then it will destroy your files.
53 • Autotux (by Myrtle on 2020-06-05 19:24:09 GMT from United States)
Let me see, it wipes your hd and then tells you to leave it in so it can do it again, ad infinitum.
Clever. Great fun for the whole family.
54 • autotux @53 (by Nameless on 2020-06-06 00:31:29 GMT from Canada)
"Clever. Great fun for the whole family." Like a cat watching the toilet flush over and over. At least, it should be the last Linux installer you'll ever need.
55 • Partitions (by Francesco Turco on 2020-06-06 08:10:52 GMT from Italy)
I currently have a single shared ext4 partition with both root and home, but I plan to separate them in the next few days. My goal is to set 5% reserved blocks for the root partition and 0% reserved blocks for the home partition. Since my hard disk is quite big (3 TB), I will be able to free some space.
56 • @9 extra rsync options (by Ricardo on 2020-06-07 03:44:58 GMT from Argentina)
I was about to comment on the '-H' option for rsync too, and also about option '-S' to preserver sparse files. Think of virtual machine disks for example.
Cheers!
57 • Keeping /root and /home together or separate (by Roger on 2020-06-07 13:26:08 GMT from Belgium)
Keeping root and /home together or separate, yes well I do both.
It all depends which computer it's going to be, simple home or office or for something else.
More sensitive computers get a separate /root and /home together on one HD or separate on different HD / SSD.
Number of Comments: 57
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| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Linux LiveCD Router
Linux LiveCD Router was a Linux distribution designed to share a broadband connection over WiFi. It can be used with DSL, cable modem, T1, ISDN, and dial-up connections. It can also be used it as a firewall, or as an access point for most WiFi cards. Linux LiveCD Router does not require any installation, but requires a dedicated computer to boot and run the CD.
Status: Discontinued
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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