 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 873, 6 July 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 27th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Linux Mint is a widely popular desktop distribution and the project's main edition is based on Ubuntu long-term support releases. The Mint team published a new version, Linux Mint 20, at the end of June and we begin this week with a look at some of the distribution's new features and key characteristics. One feature Mint continues to support, that many distributions are moving away from, is home directory encryption. If you are migrating from a distribution which used directory encryption to one that does not support the feature it may be necessary to rescue your encrypted files. We offer tips on how to perform this rescue in our Tips and Tricks column. Do you use home directory encryption? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about new improvements coming to the Project Trident system installer and new filesystem & driver support arriving in Haiku. Plus we link to tips on upgrading Ubuntu 19.10 as this version of Canonical's operating system is nearing the end of its supported life. We are also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Linux Mint 20
- News: Project Trident updates its installer, Haiku improves filesystem support, Ubuntu 19.10 nears its end of life
- Tips and tricks: Rescuing encrypted home directory data
- Released last week: openSUSE 15.2, Tails 4.8, Zenwalk Linux 15.0-200701
- Torrent corner: Arch Linux, CoudReady, GParted Live, IPFire, Linuxfx, KDE neon, openSUSE, Pardus, SolydXk, SystemRescue, Tails, Zenwalk
- Opinion poll: Encrypting home directories
- New distributions: SulinOS, HefftorLinux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (13MB) and MP3 (10MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Mint 20
Linux Mint is a desktop distribution which is available in two branches, one based on Debian and the other which uses Ubuntu as its base. The project recently published Linux Mint 20 which is based on Ubuntu 20.04 and promises five years of security updates. The distribution is available in three editions: Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. These editions are available for 64-bit (x86_64) computers exclusively and the download for each edition is approximately 2GB in size.
There are a few key new features in Linux Mint 20. One is Warpinator, a simple desktop tool which makes it easy to share files in a peer-to-peer fashion with other computers running Mint on the same local network. Warpinator replaces a past Mint utility called Giver and works much the same way, making sharing files across the network a point and click experience.
This release also features the NVIDIA Prime applet that can be used to switch between using one video card and another. This is helpful when running laptops that have an Intel video card and another from NVIDIA.
The Cinnamon desktop now allows each monitor attached to the computer to have different fractional scaling and this should improve the visual experience on HiDPI screens.
Unlike its parent, Mint does not ship with support for Snap packages. In fact, Deb packages which would normally install Snap bundles (the way Ubuntu's Chromium package does) have been replaced with empty packages. Mint instead supplies Flatpak support for people wishing to run portable package formats.
The project's release notes include a few warnings and workarounds. For instance, we are told that encrypted home directories are available, but may not unmount properly when logging out of the system due to a regression between the ecryptfs software and systemd.
Guest sessions are available, though disabled by default, and can be activated through the Login Window settings module. We are also warned that Chromium web browser packages are not available in the default repositories, but can be found in an add-on repository if the browser is needed.
The live session
Booting from the Cinnamon live media brought up a menu asking if I wanted to start the distribution, launch the distribution in compatibility mode, or perform an OEM install. There is also an option for performing a memory check.
Taking the default live session option brings up the Cinnamon desktop. The desktop's background is mostly black with the Mint logo. A panel along the bottom of the screen houses the application menu to the left and the system tray to the right. Icons on the desktop open the Nemo file manager and launch the system installer.
Linux Mint 20 -- The Cinnamon desktop and application menu
(full image size: 321kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
The application menu is split into three sections. To the far left we find launchers that have been marked as favourites, along with shutdown and logout options. The middle of the menu is home to category names of software, such as Internet and Preferences. To the right of the menu we can see specific launchers for programs in a selected category. At the top of the menu is a search bar which can be used to locate specific launchers by name.
Installing
Mint, like its parent, uses the Ubiquity system installer, a graphical application that makes it very straight forward to install the distribution. We are given the chance to select our preferred language and offered a link to the project's release notes. The installer also guides us through picking our keyboard's layout from a list and the local time zone from a map. One screen asks if we would like to install optional media codecs.
When it comes to disk partitioning Mint's installer offers automated partitioning which can use LVM volumes. ZFS volumes, which are offered by Ubuntu, are not available. Manual partitioning allows us to work with most filesystem types and the manual partitioning tool is quite friendly. The first time I installed Mint I opted to use Btrfs for my operating system's partition in the hopes of using filesystem snapshots. At the end of the install process we are asked to make up a username and password for ourselves and we are given the option of encrypting our user's home directory. Once the installer finishes its work it asks if we would like to return to the live desktop or restart the computer.
Early impressions
When I first started working with Mint I noticed the boot process would display repeated error messages about failing to activate /swapfile. I will come back to this issue later. Mint would successfully boot to a login screen. Signing into my account would bring up a welcome window on the Cinnamon desktop. The welcome screen presents us with five tabs: Welcome, First Steps, Documentation, Help, and Contribute.
Linux Mint 20 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 290kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
The Welcome tab offers us a brief greeting while the Documentation tab provides access to release notes and an overview of new features. The Help tab provides links to the distribution's chat room and forums. The Contribute tab links us to a web page which lists ways people can donate to the distribution or work on helping the project in various ways.
The First Steps page is probably the most interesting as it links to common ways we may wish to customize or set up the operating system. For instance, we can pick a preferred desktop colour scheme and select a light or dark theme. We can also pick a traditional or modern desktop panel. The traditional option displays small icons and window titles in the task switcher while the modern version shows just a large icon for each open window.
The First Steps screen also offers links to create snapshots (through Timeshift), open the driver manager, open the update manager, launch the software manager, open the Cinnamon settings panel, and open the Gufw firewall tool. I tested out these tools and found they each seemed to function well. For instance, the Timeshift tool did make it easy to schedule Btrfs snapshots and it worked well. I like being able to access past versions of the filesystem easily. Timeshift also offers an alternative option where we can copy files using rsync instead of Btrfs, but this approach is much more time consuming and uses a lot more disk space.
The driver manager will search for third-party drivers which may work with our hardware. In my case the driver manager did not find any components on my system that would benefit from alternative drivers.
Linux Mint 20 -- The update manager
(full image size: 268kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
updates
The update manager and software manager I will touch upon later, but for now I can say they worked. The update utility showed me 55 available updates, about 90MB in size. I could optionally select which items to download and all new packages downloaded and were installed without any problems.
The system settings panel is very nicely laid out and easy to navigate. I like that it features a search option to help us find specific configuration toggles. I had no problems when exploring and changing settings, with one exception. The project's release notes mention we can enable a guest account through the settings panel. The login screen options were easy enough to find and turning on the guest account is a simple toggle switch. When I signed out of my account there was no guest sign in option on the login screen. I rebooted and the guest login option appeared. However, trying to sign into the guest account brought up an error message saying the ICEauthority file could not be updated and the session immediately kicked me back to the login screen. This happened repeatedly so it seems that, for all practical purposes, the guest account option does not work.
Hardware
I started my trial with Mint by installing the distribution in a VirtualBox environment. This worked fairly well. Cinnamon can be a little sluggish in a virtual machine, but I think its performance has improved slightly in recent years. Cinnamon these days is not snappy in VirtualBox, but ran well enough to be practical and fairly smooth. One of my few concerns with running Mint in the virtual machine was that the desktop would not dynamically resize with the VirtualBox window. We can, instead, manually adjust Cinnamon's dimensions through the settings panel.
Linux Mint 20 -- The Cinnamon settings panel
(full image size: 273kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
settings
When I switched to running Mint on my laptop the performance was better. The distribution was faster to boot and Cinnamon was more responsive. I would say, on physical hardware, Cinnamon gives average performance, about on par with MATE or KDE Plasma. All of my laptop's hardware was detected and worked properly. I found Mint uses "natural scrolling" (or reversed scrolling) by default on my laptop and this can be changed in the settings panel.
One issue I ran into occasionally was Cinnamon used more of my CPU than expected. When running directly on my laptop, Cinnamon's CPU usage often spiked to 20% when moving or resizing windows. When run in a virtual machine Cinnamon tended to use around 10% CPU when idle and would run consistently between 50%-80% when performing minor tasks like drawing a progress bar or displaying a notification. While the desktop remained responsive during these spikes, it slowed down background tasks, like installing software or browsing the web, whenever animations were displayed on the screen. In summary, I'd recommend Cinnamon for use on physical hardware, but suggest using one of the other editions (MATE or Xfce) when running Mint in a virtual machine.
Mint, when logged into Cinnamon, used about 580MB of memory and 8.5GB of disk space. I found the latter statistic higher than expected and did some looking into it. I found that 1GB of that space was set aside for a swap file, located at /swapfile. However, the swap file was not in use, meaning I had no available swap space. When I tried to activate the swap file the swapon tool reported it was given an invalid argument. Even with the swap file manually formatted for use a swap space, it was not recognized as a valid swap device.
Since I was running Mint on a Btrfs partition and swap files need to be created in a particular way on Btrfs, I later set up a fresh install of Mint on an ext4 filesystem. This time the swap file was created and automatically activated, giving me a gigabyte of swap space out of the box. It seems the swap file only fails to work when combined with Btrfs. In other words, if you plan to use Btrfs as Mint's filesystem, make sure you set up a separate partition for swap.
Applications
Browsing through the application menu I noticed some entries were listed with their name and some with their purpose. For example, HexChat, Rhythmbox, and Transmission show just their names. However, mintBackup is listed as Backup Tool and mintInstall is listed as Software Manager.
Apart from the applications mentioned above, Mint ships with the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird e-mail client, and LibreOffice. There is a calendar application, the Celluloid media player, and a document scanner. The Pix image viewer is included along with an archive manager, system monitor, and the Redshift desktop lighting software.
In the background we find the GNU Compiler Collection, Java, and systemd provides init functionality. The distribution runs on version 5.4 of the Linux kernel.
There are some other interesting programs that add to the Mint experience. For instance, there is a System Reports tool in the system tray. Clicking its icon opens a window that lists potential problems and offers to launch tools to fix them. This can be helpful if you have not yet created a snapshot of your filesystem or are missing out on drivers which would improve performance.
Linux Mint 20 -- The System Reports tool
(full image size: 187kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
reports
The Warpinator tool I've mentioned before and it will automatically try to detect other users who have Warpinator on the network, making it possible to quickly send them files. This is nice as it means we do not need to set up OpenSSH, Samba shares, or cloud storage in order to share files with people in the same house or office.
Software management
There are a few tools included with Mint to help us manage software. In the system tray we find an icon that lets us know when software updates are available. Clicking the icon opens the update manager. The update manager has been streamlined a bit in recent years. It no longer ranks updates based on safety or testing results. Instead all available updates are listed and sorted by whether they are a security update or generic package update. We can select which items we want to upgrade and the manager works smoothly and quickly to download and install the new packages.
Linux Mint 20 -- The software centre
(full image size: 258kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
There are two software managers. The first, mintInstall, is a modern software manager that focuses on desktop software. We can browse categories of software or perform searches for specific items. Each entry is displayed with its name, short description, icon, and a rating. Clicking an entry brings up a full page of information and a screenshot. We can install new software with a click.
The software manager works with both traditional packages and portable Flatpaks, which it pulls from Flathub. Some Flatpak bundles indicate in their name that they are Flatpaks while others only display this information in their full page description. This means if we see multiple entries for items, such as VLC or GIMP, we may want to click the entry to check its repository if we care which type of package we are going to install.
I liked the software manager and found it worked for everything I wanted to do. For people who like working with lower level packages there is Synaptic, a classic package manager. The Synaptic utility lists all available Deb packages and performs both installs and removals quickly.
Both graphical tools worked well for me. Should we want to work from the command line, the APT package manager and Flatpak command line tool are both present.
Linux Mint 20 -- Installing a Flatpak from the command line
(full image size: 323kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Conclusions
Linux Mint has, in my opinion, a well deserved reputation for providing a friendly, capable, practical desktop operating system. The project takes the best parts of Ubuntu (hardware support, user friendliness, a huge collection of software) and works around some of its issues. Cinnamon requires about half as much memory as GNOME and looks more familiar to people migrating from Windows. Flatpaks are more portable and widely used than Snaps, and Mint wisely avoids installing Snap packages people wish to avoid.
Meanwhile Mint also provides a lot of useful tools like Warpinator, System Reports, and a simple backup utility. I also really like the Timeshift integration with Btrfs for people who want to snapshot their filesystem.
This release had a few rough edges. The swap file does not work with Btrfs and given that Btrfs is needed to take full advantage of the Timeshift tool this seems like an unfortunate oversight. Also the release notes mention how to enable the guest account, but the guest account did not work for me.
All in all, Linux Mint 20 is a solid operating system. It has lots of features, a good look, lots of polished tools, and a very useful welcome window. There are a few rough patches, but these probably won't affect a lot of people and will likely be fixed in version 20.1 In general, I'd recommend Mint, especially to people coming to Windows and trying out Linux for the first time.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Linux Mint has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.7/10 from 743 review(s).
Have you used Linux Mint? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Project Trident updates its installer, Haiku improves filesystem support, Ubuntu 19.10 nears its end of life
The Project Trident team has published a new update. Though no new media has been published, the current update will provide a new installer which can be run after the existing net-install media boots. "The 20.06 updates for the Project Trident packages, as well as an updated version of the installer routine are now available! This can be used by selecting the 'release/20.06' version of the install script when prompted in the installer. Note that the net-install ISO has not been changed. There is simply a new version of the installer routine available for it to bootstrap and use. Main Changes: Switch to using the new trident-base package for basic package dependencies instead of the base-system package from Void Linux. Switch to manually setting up the default UEFI boot option rather than the default setup from the rEFInd package. This fixes all the issues with UEFI booting that we could find on various systems. Leaves a bit more space on the end of the drive when doing the partitioning. Remove the special nvidia-modeset boot option. No longer needed. Cleanup some of the initial configuration for zfsbootmenu." Additional changes to Project Trident can be found in the project's blog post.
* * * * *
Since the release of Haiku R1 Beta 2 last month the project has been hard at work adding new features. In particular there have been improvements to drivers and filesystem support. "Kyle Ambroff-Kao continues his work on improving our unit tests, fixing some remaining problems with handling of symlinks. The ext2 driver now properly report the filesystem name as ext2, 3 or 4 depending on which disk is mounted. This does not change the behavior, but avoids some confusion as previously it always said ext2. We have a single driver for all 3 versions of the filesystem as they are in fact quite similar and share a very large part of the code. The work on XFS and UFS2 from our GSoC students is also being merged, with initial work towards listing the content of the root directory in progress." Further details can be found in the project's activity report.
* * * * *
Iain Lane has announced that Ubuntu 19.10 is nearing the end of its supported life. After July 17, 2020 the 19.10 release will no longer receive security fixes. "Ubuntu announced its 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) release almost 9 months ago, on October 17, 2019, and its support period is now nearing its
end. Ubuntu 19.10 will reach end of life on Friday, July 17 2020. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 19.10. The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 19.10 is via Ubuntu 20.04." Tips on upgrading to a newer version of the distribution can be found in the Ubuntu documentation.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Rescuing encrypted home directory data
A little while ago I was upgrading a Debian-based distribution that had been running on one of my laptops. The installation of the new version was, for the most part, pleasantly smooth and I soon had a fresh copy of my distribution with up to date software. However, when I went to login for the first time I noticed all of my data and configuration files were missing from my account. Since I had not formatted the laptop's /home partition I was curious where those files had gone.
That was when it occurred to me: my home directory had been encrypted under the older version of the distribution. I did some digging and soon found my /home directory contained a hidden sub-directory called .ecryptfs where all my files were still being held in encrypted form. This was good news, my files were still in place and I should not need to retrieve hundreds of gigabytes of data from my backup server over the network (a time-consuming process at the best of times). All I would need to do was make sure the ecryptfs-utils package was installed and use its tools to mount and access my files. Then I learned the bad news: Debian dropped the ecryptfs-utils package in version 10, meaning it was not available in my distribution's repositories.
At this point I had a few options. I could restore my files from the backup server, which would be reliable and time-consuming. I could re-install the older version of the distribution and access my files locally, which should work well but would leave me with an out of date operating system once more. I had the option of downloading the ecryptfs-utils source code and building it myself, which was likely to be time consuming, but should grant me access to the files on my new distribution. I could try to "rescue" the files from their encrypted form and then continue running the latest version of my distribution which would take an unknown amount of time, but leave me running my new system. I decided the final option would be the most engaging approach and decided to recover my encrypted files.
The first thing I decided to do was download a distribution that was based on Debian 9, since that would give me easy access to the ecryptfs-utils package. I opted to download MX Linux 17.1, though any distribution with the ecryptfs utilities in its repositories would have worked.
Once I had booted from the MX 17.1 live media and connected to the network, I then had to perform a handful of steps.
- Install the ecryptfs-utils package.
- Mount my computer's home partition.
- Access the encrypted volume, mounting it somewhere.
- Copy the files from the encrypted mount point to my new home directory.
Installing the ecryptfs-utils package was straight forward and could be accomplished with just two commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils
With the software installed on my live copy of MX Linux, I was then free to mount my home partition. In my case the partition was the third one on my local drive, giving it the name /dev/sda3. I could confirm this by running the lsblk command to get a list of all the attached drives and their partitions. I then mounted my home partition under the /media directory:
sudo mount /dev/sda3 /media
My encrypted files were then stored under the /media/.ecryptfs/jesse directory. They could be accessed by running a command from the ecryptfs-utils package called ecryptfs-recover-private. The command accepts the location of a hidden, private directory. In my case, the following command mounted the encrypted volume for access:
ecryptfs-recover-private /media/.ecryptfs/jesse/.Private
I was prompted for my login password, the one I had used to access my account before performing my operating system upgrade. When the command completed successfully it told me my files were available under the /tmp directory, specifically in /tmp/ecryptfs.dec0deabc. I could now copy the files from that temporary location into my normal home directory, which was stored under /media in this case.
From there it was a matter of running a copy or synchronization command to transfer all my encrypted files to their new home:
rsync -av /tmp/ecryptfs.dec0deabc/ /media/jesse/
When this long copy job finally finished and I had confirmed my files were all back in my new home directory, I unmounted the volumes:
sudo umount /tmp/ecryptfs.dec0deabc
sudo umount /media
After these steps were completed I restarted the computer and went back to enjoying having all my usual files in my home directory in my new, Debian 10-based distribution. As a number of distributions, such as Debian and Ubuntu have phased out home directory encryption in favour of full disk encryption, I suspect this steps to recover encrypted directories will be increasingly useful over time.
* * * * *
Additional tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Tails 4.8
Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The project's latest release, Tails 4.8, focuses on security updates. "Tails 4.8 is out. This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible. We disabled the Unsafe Browser by default and clarified that the Unsafe Browser can be used to de-anonymize you. An attacker could exploit a security vulnerability in another application in Tails to start an invisible Unsafe Browser and reveal your IP address, even if you are not using the Unsafe Browser. For example, an attacker could exploit a security vulnerability in Thunderbird by sending you a phishing email that could start an invisible Unsafe Browser and reveal them your IP address. Such an attack is very unlikely but could be performed by a strong attacker, such as a government or a hacking firm. This is why we recommend that you: only enable the Unsafe Browser if you need to log in to a captive portal; always upgrade to the latest version of Tails to fix known vulnerabilities as soon as possible." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
openSUSE 15.2
The openSUSE team have announced the release of openSUSE 15.2. Th new release updates desktop packages, improves detection of other operating systems at install time, and includes a number of new container and machine learning tools. "Several exciting Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning packages are added in Leap 15.2. Tensorflow: A framework for deep learning that can be used by data scientists, provide numerical computations and data-flow graphs. Its flexible architecture enables users to deploy computations to one or more CPUs in a desktop, server, or mobile device without rewriting code. PyTorch: Made for both server and compute resources, this machine learning library accelerates power users' ability to prototype a project and move it to a production deployment. ONNX: An open format built to represent machine learning models, provides interoperability in the AI tool space. It enables AI developers to use models with a variety of frameworks, tools, runtimes, and compilers." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the wiki.
openSUSE 15.2 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 970kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Zenwalk Linux 15.0-200701
Zenwalk Linux is a Slackware Linux-based, desktop-origented distribution. The project's latest release provides users with the Xfce 4.14 desktop and Flatpak support. PAM support, imported from Slackware's development branch, is available available. "Once a year, Zenwalk Current is considered stable enough for a "milestone" release, here's Zenwalk 15 milestone 2020. Based on Slackware Current July 2020, Zenwalk 15 milestone 2020 is fully compatible. As usual, the goal is to provide fast simple setup, refined desktop, selection of the best apps, ease of use, with full respect of the Slackware philosophy. The news items are: New Xfce desktop based on the latest Xfce 4.14+ with many tweaks providing the widest possible workspace for modern full HD displays. Introduction of Flatpak support for installing any application from Flathub or GNOME Desktop. New rewritten Netpkg package manager for instant access to thousand of packages from the Slackware community, and keep the system up to date with one liner command. PAM authentication system thanks to upstream. Kernel 5.4.50...." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
GParted Live 1.1.0-3
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live 1.1.0-3, an updated build of the project's specialist live CD/USB image that ships with an assortment of disk management and data rescue utilities, all compiled from software present in Debian's "unstable" branch: "The GParted team is pleased to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. This release includes GParted 1.1.0, updated packages and other improvements. Items of note include: based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2020-07-01; Linux kernel updated to 5.7.6; fixed issue #94 - Netsurf browser crashes on some websites. This release of GParted Live has been successfully tested on VirtualBox, VMware, BIOS, UEFI and physical computers with AMD/ATI, NVIDIA and Intel graphics. Note that the default boot options does not display an X Desktop on old Acer Aspire laptops. The workaround is to select 'Other modes' of GParted Live and choose 'GParted Live (Safe graphics setting, vga-normal)'." Here is the brief release announcement.
SolydXK 10.4
SolydXK is a Debian-based distribution that offers two main editions: KDE and Xfce. The project's latest release is SolydXK 10.4 which is based on Debian 10.4 "Buster" and offers improved privacy settings for the web browser. The release announcement reports: "The SolydXK Team has worked long and hard to create the next point release based on Debian Buster. Highlights: Based on Debian Buster 10.4 release with the latest kernel version 4.19. usr directories have been merged where the /{bin,sbin,lib}/ directories become symbolic links to /usr/{bin,sbin,lib}/. More info on the subject. Many bugs were resolved and we changed the SolydXK Firefox settings even further to improve user privacy. This is done in the firefox-solydxk-adjustments package which can be purged if you don't need it."
* * * * *
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: 2,054
- Total data uploaded: 32.5TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Encrypting home directories
In our Tips and Tricks column we talked about encrypted home directories and recovering files from past encrypted directories. We would like to hear how many of our readers use encrypted home directories and how many use fully encrypted disks or partitions.
You can see the results of our previous poll on filesystem layouts in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Encrypted home directories
| I encrypt my home directory: | 75 (6%) |
| I encrypt my whole partition/disk: | 229 (17%) |
| I use encrypted file vaults: | 108 (8%) |
| I do not use storage encryption: | 921 (69%) |
|
|
| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
Distributions added to waiting list
- SulinOS. SulinOS is an independent, systemd-free, general purpose operating system based on the Linux kernel and glibc. SulinOS aims to be simple, compact and safe. It can be used on desktops, servers and embedded devices. It uses it's own package manager called inary and OpenRC to manage services.
- HefftorLinux. HefftorLinux is a rolling release distribution which provides a series of desktop editions based on ArcoLinux.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 13 July 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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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
Condorux
Condorux was a Peruvian Linux distribution based on Knoppix.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
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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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