 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 880, 24 August 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 34th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the aspects of open source that appeals to developers is the ability to take an existing piece of software and modify it to make an improved and customized version. This reusing of base technology or packages allows for rapid development and the evolution of lots of specially focused applications and distributions. This week we begin with a look at two projects which customize a popular base: GeckoLinux which is based on openSUSE and MX Linux's new "KDE" edition. Read on to find out how these projects compare to their parent distributions. Both GeckoLinux and MX Linux are small community projects and, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about the competition community and commercial projects face in the open source community. Is your main distribution commercially or community-backed? Let us know in our Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss new features being tested by the UBports team and link to some tips for configuring a firewall provided by IPFire. We also talk about how to verify the contents of an open source Snap package. Then we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are pleased to welcome the Garuda Linux distribution as the newest addition to our database. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: GeckoLinux 152 "KDE Plasma", MX Linux 19.2 "KDE"
- News: IPFire provides firewall tips, UBports plans to test Wayland and systemd packages, verifying the contents of a Snap package
- Questions and answers: The survival of small, community projects
- Released last week: Parrot 4.10, Kali Linux 2020.3, Linuxfx 10.5
- Torrent corner: Kali Linux, Linuxfx, MakuluLinux, KDE neon, Parrot, RebornOS, Redo Rescue, Swift, Voyager Live
- Upcoming releases: Tails 4.10
- Opinion poll: Do you run commercial or community distributions?
- New additions: Garuda Linux
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
GeckoLinux 152 "KDE Plasma"
This week instead of spending several days with one distribution I decided to try two alternative spins or approaches to projects I have explored in the recent past. In particular I wanted to compare the latest release of GeckoLinux against its parent, openSUSE, and try out the new KDE Plasma edition of MX Linux. Let's start with Gecko.
The GeckoLinux project presents itself as a more desktop-oriented version of openSUSE, which I reviewed in July. The project ships in multiple live desktop editions for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. Available editions include Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE and Xfce. I decided to try the KDE Plasma edition to keep my trial as close to my experience with openSUSE 15.2 as possible.
Booting from the Gecko media brings up the KDE Plasma desktop. Icons for opening a language installer and the Calamares system installer are located on the desktop. There is a panel placed at the bottom of the display.
GeckoLinux 152 -- The live Plasma desktop
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Unlike openSUSE, which uses its own custom installer, GeckoLinux uses the distro-neutral Calamares system installer. Calamares streamlines the process, doing away with many of the niche options and configuration tweaks openSUSE offers. This makes the graphical installer faster to get through, but the trade off is a lack of control and flexibility we can enjoy with openSUSE. I also noticed that Calamares defaults to using the ext4 filesystem rather than the more feature-rich Btrfs that openSUSE suggests. We can, should we choose, still use Btrfs with GeckoLinux, though it means we need to use manual rather than guided partitioning.
Once Gecko is installed it offers us two session options: Openbox and Plasma. The Openbox session works, but only presents us with an empty screen and a right-click menu. There aren't any bells and whistles available in the Openbox session and I spent almost all of my time in the Plasma session as a result. I feel it worth noting Gecko streamlines things here once again. openSUSE offers five sessions when KDE Plasma is set as the default desktop while Gecko provides just two, though it ends up effectively providing just as much functionality in a practical sense as we're unlikely to use the extra session options.
GeckoLinux 152 -- The settings panel, Dolphin and application menu
(full image size: 306kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Once I got signed into Plasma, most aspects of Gecko and openSUSE seemed to be the same. Gecko has done away with the Discover software manager and instead places the YaST Software package manager in the Favourites section of the application menu. This seemed out of character for the distribution. Up to this point everything Gecko had done differently from its parent had been to streamline or simplify the system. However, YaST Software is a complex, low-level package manager that is far from ideal for less experienced users. It seemed to me to be an odd choice for the default software manager.
On the other hand, Gecko does us a favour by installing media codecs by default, something I struggled with a lot on openSUSE. On the parent distribution we need to track down codecs and then I found the media player would crash once the codecs were installed. On Gecko, media playing just worked out of the box.
Also on the subject of included software I found it odd that Gecko does not ship with manual pages installed. This is a standard feature on most distributions, including openSUSE, and I was surprised they were stripped from Gecko.
When I reviewed openSUSE I mentioned I had trouble getting the Plasma desktop to resize in VirtualBox. This problem did not exist on Gecko and the desktop naturally resized to match the VirtualBox window.
Resource usage on Gecko was better than on openSUSE, which I found intriguing. Running the same desktop session, Gecko used 360MB of RAM, compared to openSUSE's 400MB. A fresh install of Gecko took up 4.5GB of disk space next to openSUSE's 6.2GB. On modern systems these are not significant numbers, but they are a small bonus for potential Gecko users.
Earlier I mentioned that, left to its defaults, Gecko will be installed on the ext4 filesystem which does not offer some of the attractive snapshotting and volume management options Btrfs provides. I set up Gecko on Btrfs using manual partitioning and discovered that the distribution does not take automated snapshots when we install updated packages or make configuration changes. This was disappointing as it is one of openSUSE's best features, in my opinion, and something that makes openSUSE stand out in the sea of Linux distributions. I'm not sure why Gecko chose to not enable the Snapper snapshot tool by default. However, I found it was possible to enable Snapper and automated snapshots by running "sudo snapper create-config /" from the command line. After that, YaST would create a filesystem snapshot whenever I made a change to the system through the control panel.
On the whole Gecko looks and acts almost exactly like its parent, though with a few changes. Most of these differences show themselves clearly in the first few minutes of exploring the distribution. Gecko offers a faster and simplified installer, includes media codecs by default and uses fewer resources. However, it also forsakes manual pages, does not enable Btrfs or automatic snapshots and throws away the friendly software manager in favour of the low-level YaST Software. In most ways it looks like Gecko is targeting people who like openSUSE, but want an easier setup and have no plans to use the command line or advanced features. There is some value added, certainly, though also some useful features have been removed from the parent project.
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MX Linux 19.2 "KDE"
After playing with Gecko for a while and determining that it feels, apart from some initial setup choices, to be very close to its parent, I decided to look at MX Linux's KDE edition. I reviewed MX Linux late last year and found it to be a solid, capable operating system. MX Linux uses Xfce as its default desktop and I was curious to see how the new KDE Plasma edition would compare to the original.
The KDE edition of MX Linux is available for 64-bit (x86_64) computers exclusively at the moment and the download is about 2.1GB. The distribution is based on Debian 10 "Buster" and though we should expect most packages to come from Debian 10's repositories, some items such as the kernel and Firefox, are kept more up to date with upstream projects.
Booting from the live media brings up the KDE Plasma desktop. It is arranged a lot like MX's Xfce edition with a Conky status panel in the upper-right corner and a welcome window in the middle of the desktop. However, the Plasma desktop panel is placed horizontally across the bottom of the screen rather than vertically down the left side the way it is in the Xfce edition. On the desktop we find icons for opening the manual, the FAQ document and launching the system installer. So far, apart from the placement of the panel, the two MX editions seemed very similar.
MX 19.2 "KDE" -- The KDE Plasma menu
(full image size: 315kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
When I launched the system installer I found it uses the exact same installer used in the Xfce edition. This made navigating through the setup process and configuring the operating system quite straight forward. The first significant difference I noticed was that the KDE edition uses the KDE Partition Manager to set up partitions while the main edition uses the GParted utility.
The KDE edition installed successfully and my fresh copy booted to a graphical login screen. When I signed into the Plasma session the desktop loaded slowly, however once it finished loading the desktop worked quickly and was responsive.
Memory and disk usage were a little higher on the KDE edition than on MX's original edition. The KDE Plasma session uses 450MB of RAM, up from 400MB for the Xfce edition. Disk usage increased from 5.2GB for Xfce to 6.6GB for KDE. As with my comparison between Gecko and openSUSE, these are not big gaps and to be expected given KDE's extra configuration options and features.
The application menu contains an interesting mix of software. Much of it appears to match MX's Xfce edition. The Firefox browser, LibreOffice and MX Tools are the same. I also found both editions include the Clementine and VLC media players. However, lower level tools like the text editor, virtual terminal and file manager are different across editions. Predictably the KDE edition ships with KDE/Qt applications in place of the Xfce/GTK equivalents. I noticed a few other swaps too, such as Xfburn being replaced by K3b and Transmission being removed in favour of KTorrent.
MX 19.2 "KDE" -- The MX Tools panel and KDE System Settings
(full image size: 218kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Apart from these little differences in default the applications the two editions seem to ship with the same tools, the same configuration, the same add-on repositories and with the same codecs. As I mentioned before, the KDE session loads more slowly than the Xfce desktop. However, once it is up and running KDE Plasma kept pace with Xfce in the same test environment and I really liked the wealth of configuration options Plasma offers.
While Gecko makes setting up the distribution more streamlined and with fewer options compared to openSUSE, but then offers approximately the same experience as its parent, MX takes the opposite approach. Setting up MX's KDE edition is almost identical to setting up MX's Xfce edition, however we end up with different desktop software in the end which provides a different end-user experience. Most of the administration tools are the same and the initial configuration is the same, MX just provides different desktop environments with different desktop accessories once the system is installed.
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Visitor supplied rating
GeckoLinux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.5/10 from 41 review(s).
Have you used GeckoLinux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
IPFire provides firewall tips, UBports plans to test Wayland and systemd packages, verifying the contents of a Snap package
The IPFire project is continuing their series of tips to improve computer and network security. This week the team posted tips on setting up a firewall. "By default, IPFire permits all outgoing connections initiated by internal networks or the system itself. While this is certainly not optimal in terms of security, it is necessary for some use cases such as fixed changeover dates and makes using IPFire less troublesome for beginners and drop-in replacement scenarios, as its firewall engine behaves like an ordinary ISP router. To make things as secure as possible, however, it is necessary to drop any connection by default." As the tutorial points out, locking down the firewall will prevent network services, including remote logins, from functioning making it important to proceed with caution.
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The UBports team has published an update on progress the project is making with its mobile operating system. The update includes answers to some common questions, including what the developers plan to work on in the near future. "What will happen after OTA-13? systemd, Wayland, etc figure in our aims. What is the news on those? After OTA-13, we will be getting them onto other platforms such as Debian and Arch. That will inevitably expose our older software to issues which we have not spotted when running on UT alone. The process of resolving those issues will of course help to build greater stability into UT and head off problems before they occur. That doesn't amount to full 20.04 implementation but each step lays the basis for that. For example, the progress on building debs. The upgrade of Qt 5.9 to 5.12 will bring us level with the Qt version used in 20.04. As with all uncharted development, some things will surprise us by moving much more easily than we expect. Other things will disappoint by being much more problematic. Hence no firm timetables."
The UBports team also published updates on work being done to get UBports functioning smoothly on the PinePhone and PineTab mobile devices: "Dalton has completed the initial factory image for the PineTab. It boots, it has a UI and it operates in tablet mode. Some touch stuff still does not work. The backlit keyboard is around $35. Around $90 for the tablet itself. At those prices, Dalton considered it a very nice device. PinePhone has a working camera now It is still very limited. The frame rate is about one per three seconds. Portrait is right side up but landscape is upside down At the moment is shoots only in 2.1 megapixel mode."
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The portable Snap package format is increasingly being used in the Ubuntu community to distribute software packages. Snap packages are relatively portable, compared to classic Deb packages and their lower degree of maintenance makes them attractive to developers. However, it can be more difficult to verify the contents of a Snap package compared to Deb packages, which are usually paired with a corresponding source package. Merlijn Sebrechts shares tips on how to examine and verify the contents of open source Snap bundles. "Many Snap packages contain two files which allow users to verify what sources were used to build the package. snap/snapcraft.yaml is the 'source' of the package. This file was used by snapcraft to build the package. snap/manifest.yaml is a 'recording' of the build of that package. It is similar to the first file, but it includes a lot more information to pinpoint what exact sources were being used. It records the exact package versions of dependencies, the git commit of all source repositories, checksums of any downloaded binary and more...."
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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) |
The survival of small, community projects
Looking out for the little guys asks: Nowadays, free and independent community Linux distributions tend to be crowded out by big companies that have adopted or bought open source projects opportunistically. Some media allow themselves to say that DistroWatch is losing interest. If you think it's interesting for DistroWatch, I suggest you to write an article about a Linux distribution that exists since 2004 and is still maintained by a single developer.
DistroWatch answers: I spent a lot of time thinking about this message, in large part because my initial reaction was to question whether the premise is true. Are open source projects and small Linux distributions forced out or severely hampered by big companies? I am not sure this is the case. Often times when large companies try to force a change in direction or push their weight around in the Linux community, the community either pushes back or changes direction around them.
When Oracle bought OpenOffice and looked to be taking things in a direction the open source community didn't like, almost everyone abandoned using OpenOffice and we ended up with LibreOffice. When Debian decided to adopt systemd, Canonical was practically forced to abandon their own init software (Upstart) and follow Debian's lead. When Ubuntu created their own desktop environment (Unity) virtually every other distribution ignored it until Canonical ran out of resources/motivation to dedicate to the desktop and switched back to GNOME. When Red Hat ditched Red Hat Linux to focus on their commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux, several forks of their product (such as CentOS) rose up to provide a free alternative.
There are lots of examples like these where a commercial entity tried to shape or influence the open source community and those entities tend to discover that the open source community is either indifferent or hostile to their vision. When companies shipped locked-down Android phones, we ended up with UBports and /e/ OS. When Oracle bought Solaris we ended up with OpenIndiana. When Red Hat bought Container Linux, the Flatcar developers vowed to keep a fork of the original project going.
From the other side of things, I find it difficult to come up with examples of small open source projects being bought out or forced out of existence by larger companies. Many small projects shut down due to a developer's lack of time or resources, but rarely from outside pressures. Slackware Linux is still going strong, Puppy Linux (in various forms) is still popular, Tiny Core Linux is still actively maintained, Void and Arch Linux appear to be more popular than ever and Alpine Linux is showing up in new containers all the time.
I was glancing through the page hit raking table while writing this response and couldn't help but notice that the top three projects listed are all small community projects and based on community projects (or have a branch based on a community edition). Five of the top ten are community projects rather than commercial distributions. Of the top fifteen, seven are community distributions and not based on a commercial distribution. Of those seven community projects, one of the youngest is at least a decade old while the oldest ones are about twenty-five years old.
All of this is to say that I find it tricky to find examples of corporate interests pushing out or taking over open source projects successfully. However, I can find many examples of open source projects providing alternatives to or replacing commercial products in the Linux ecosystem. Some people, particularly those who oppose systemd, claim it is an example of a company-based technology that was forced onto small, open source projects. Yet I do not see much evidence to support this idea. Arch Linux (a community distribution) was one of the early adopters of systemd while Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu (both company backed distributions) were among the last. The Debian community was somewhere in the middle and many smaller projects, among them Slackware, Gentoo and Void have all avoided adopting systemd.
One of the nice things about open source software is that is can live on as long as there is a person (or people) willing to maintain it. Open source doesn't usually require much money or marketing. It doesn't even need to be stronger in a "survival of the fittest" sense. Open source projects just need a person to keep working on it for it to continue. Companies, with their need to make money, employ teams and provide an attractive product, do not have such a luxury. It gives them a disadvantage in this ecosystem.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Linuxfx 10.5
Rafael Rachid has announced the release of Linuxfx 10.5, the latest stable version of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution with a look and feel that emulates Windows 10 and with useful tools designed to help users migrate from Windows to Linux. This version is based on Ubuntu 20.04 and it features a highly customised Cinnamon desktop called "WX Desktop". Some of the improvements in Linuxfx 10.5 include: support for older computers; a re-worked Wine compatibility layer with better support for Windows games as well as *.exe and *.msi files which can now be launched by double-clicking them in the file manager; inclusion of OnlyOffice 5.6.0 "Desktop" edition at the expense of LibreOffice; updated desktop theme and control panel; re-designed login and logout screens; improvements to file sharing. The Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.7.15. Here is the brief release announcement (in Portuguese). This new version of Linuxfx, which supports English, Portuguese and Spanish languages, is available from SourceForge.
Linuxfx 10.5 -- Running the WX Desktop interface
(full image size: 412kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Parrot 4.10
Lorenzo Faletra has announced the release of Parrot 4.10, an updated build of the project's distribution set based on Debian's "Testing" branch. The new version comes with AnonSurf 3.0 and it also updates the Linux kernel to version 5.7.10: "We are proud to announce the release of Parrot OS 4.10. This new version includes many important updates to make the distribution more reliable and more secure. AnonSurf 3.0 is ready, and it has many important features. It is now subdivided into three modules - GUI, Daemon and Utilities. The GUI is written in NIM, a blazing-fast programming language, very easy to write and read, that compiles in native C code. It uses Gintro GTK for the interface and it has several features to let the user control the AnonSurf behavior. You can start, stop and reload AnonSurf, and you can easily configure AnonSurf to automatically start at boot. It is easy to monitor the status of Tor and see the traffic, the logs and some usage statistics thanks to its integration with NYX." Read the complete release notes for more information and screenshots.
Kali Linux 2020.3
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution that supplies a collection of security and forensics tools. The project's latest release swaps out the bash shell for zsh, introduces new icons for installed tools and adds improved HiDPI support. "Its that time of year again, time for another Kali Linux release! Quarter #3 - Kali Linux 20202.3. This release has various impressive updates, all of which are ready for immediate download or updating. A quick overview of what's new since the last release in May 2020: New Shell - Starting the process to switch from 'Bash' to 'ZSH'. The release of 'Win-Kex' - Get ready WSL2. Automating HiDPI support - Easy switching mode. Tool Icons - Every default tool now has its own unique icon. Bluetooth Arsenal - New set of tools for Kali NetHunter. Nokia Support - New devices for Kali NetHunter. Setup Process - No more missing network repositories and quicker installs." Further details on these changes and some details on the switch to zsh can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,109
- Total data uploaded: 33.3TB
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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) |
Do you run commercial or community distributions?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about how commercial and community projects co-exist in the open source ecosystem and how these projects can compete or provide alternatives to each other. We would like to know if your main distribution is provided by a commercial entity (like SUSE) or a community project (like Debian). Some commercial distributions are based on community projects (the way Ubuntu is based on Debian) and some community projects are based on commercial projects (the way GeckoLinux is based on openSUSE. We'd like to hear which category your main distribution falls under.
You can see the results of our previous poll on running the MINIX operating system in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Commercial or community project
| I run a commercial distro: | 120 (6%) |
| I run a community distro: | 1299 (68%) |
| I run a community-based commercial distro: | 234 (12%) |
| I run a commercial-based community distro: | 182 (10%) |
| Unknown/Other: | 70 (4%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
Garuda Linux
Garuda Linux is a rolling distribution based on the Arch Linux operating system. Unlike Arch Linux, Garuda Linux comes with a graphical installer (Calamares) for easy installation, and other advanced graphical tools for managing your system. Garuda is a performance-oriented distro with many performance enhancing tweaks. Some of the many tweaks include using zram, a performance CPU governor, along with custom memory management software. Garuda Linux has striven to provide system stability by including the Timeshift backup utility.
Garuda Linux 200817 -- Displaying the welcome screen
(full image size: 2.8MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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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, 31 August 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 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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ToOpPy Linux
ToOpPy Linux is a French distribution based on Puppy Linux. The project provides a lightweight distribution which includes many small utilities and can be run either from a live disc or installed on the hard drive.
Status: Dormant
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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