 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 889, 26 October 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 43rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Computers, as powerful, fast, and capable as they are all have limited resources. One resource limit people frequently run into is finite storage space. This week we discuss a number of issues that can make a disk act full (or appear to be full) and how to investigate the problem in our Questions and Answers column. How much of your disk space currently remains free? Let us know how much extra space you have on your disks in our Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about a compatibility problem between recent versions of the Linux kernel and NVIDIA video drivers. Plus we discuss Debian donating funds to Peertube and openSUSE's MicroOS platform for running containers. The FreeBSD team has been hard at work improving driver support, the ability to run Linux programs, and supporting data compression on ZFS. We link to the details on development being done on FreeBSD below. First through we talk about a lightweight member of the Ubuntu family which marries some desktop and web-based features together. Peppermint OS merges a fast desktop environment with web apps and we provide an overview of this distribution in our Feature Story. Plus we are pleased to share the many releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Peppermint OS 10
- News: Arch warns of NVIDIA driver issue, Debian donates to Peertube, openSUSE explains MicroOS, FreeBSD publishes status report
- Questions and answers: What to do when the disk acts full
- Released last week: Ubuntu 20.10, Tails 4.12, NetBSD 9.1
- Torrent corner: Alpine, ExTiX, KDE neon, NetBSD, OSMC, Redo Rescue, Scientific, Septor, SystemRescue, Tails, Trisquel, Ubuntu
- Upcoming releases: Fedora 33, FreeBSD 12.2
- Opinion poll: How much of your disk space is unused?
- New distributions: Obscurix
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (17MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Peppermint OS 10
It has been a few years since I last checked on Peppermint OS, a distribution that is assembled mostly from packages in the Ubuntu repositories along with some key components from Linux Mint. Peppermint offers two claims to fame. The first is its hybrid desktop environment which weds components from LXDE (such as lxsession) and Xfce (including the window manager). This combination of desktop components makes for a surprisingly attractive and responsive environment.
Peppermint's other key component is its site specific browser (SSB). This is a tool which launches web pages or web apps in a web browser with a minimal interface. The streamlined, single-tab browser makes the web interface it is displaying seem more like a locally run desktop application. To complement the SSB, Peppermint ships with a tool called Ice that helps users set up links to websites to be launched in the SSB.
Version 10 of Peppermint OS is based on Ubuntu 18.04, though it includes some more up to date packages. The distribution is available in both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86_64) builds. I downloaded the 64-bit build which is about 1.5GB in size. There was talk of publishing a new version of the distribution, Peppermint OS 11, back in June and July. The project's blog includes several posts about an upcoming release. However, these posts appeared to have stopped about three months ago, suggesting version 10 will continue to be the most recent release for a while.
Live media
Booting from the live media brings up a menu asking if we would like to try the distribution, run the system installer, or launch an OEM installer. Taking the default Try option loads the hybrid LXDE/Xfce desktop. It has a fairly typical layout with a panel placed across the bottom edge of the screen. The application menu is placed on the left, the task switcher is in the middle, and the system tray is over to the right. A single icon on the desktop can be used to launch the system installer.
The desktop seemed responsive and a quick test showed my hardware was functioning properly so I dived right into the install process.
Peppermint OS 10 -- The application menu and menu settings
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Installing
Peppermint uses Ubuntu's Ubiquity installer. The graphical installer begins by asking us to select our preferred language and offers to show us the project's release notes. Clicking the link to see the release notes opens a web browser and displays the release notes for Ubuntu 18.04. The installer also asks if we would like to set up a Minimal installation or a Normal install. Peppermint is always fairly minimal so I felt good about doing a full, Normal setup. We are given the chance to download software updates while the system is installing and we are asked if we would like to download third-party items such as drivers and media codecs.
When it comes to partitioning we can take a guided option. The guided approach defaults to setting up a unified ext4 partition, plus swap space. Alternatively we can check boxes to use LVM volumes and encryption. The manual partitioning approach presents us with a very friendly partition manager which can be used to set up most Linux filesystems. After that we confirm our time zone and make up a username and password for ourselves.
The installer started off working quickly, but seemed to get bogged down toward the end, appearing to come to a halt a few times while setting up kernel packages. The installer did finally finish, but displayed a few error messages. The first was "end of file on stdin at conffile prompt". This was followed by another: "dependency problems - leaving unconfigured". Then the installer reported it had finished successfully and offered to restart the computer. When I accepted the option to restart, the installer reported it had crashed and terminated. This did not inspire confidence.
Early impressions
My new copy of Peppermint booted to a graphical login screen. We can sign into the system using the account we set up through Ubiquity or we can sign into a guest account. The guest account has no password and its contents are wiped after each use. If we decide later we do not want a guest account it can be disabled in the distribution's settings panel.
The Peppermint desktop is pleasantly uncluttered and calm. There were virtually no pop-ups, notices, and there was no welcome window. There was an icon in the system tray which let me know when new software updates were available, but otherwise Peppermint seems to strive for a distraction-free desktop. The environment is also unusually responsive with menus, windows, and applications offering better than average performance.
Hardware
When I started playing with Peppermint OS in VirtualBox the distribution performed well. The system was responsive and generally performed tasks quickly. The LXDE/Xfce desktop did not dynamically resize with the default settings, but I could change the guest's screen resolution through the settings panel.
When I moved over to running Peppermint on my desktop computer, everything worked well. My hardware, including wireless card, was all recognized and used properly. My keyboard's media keys functioned and desktop performance was excellent.
The distribution is relatively light, using about 295MB of RAM when signed into the desktop. A fresh install of the Normal configuration used 6.5GB of disk space.
Applications
The Peppermint application menu features a two-pane layout. Categories of software are displayed to the left while individual launchers in a category are shown to the right. Some utilities in the menu are listed with their name showing while others are listed with a description of their purpose. For instance, the Transmission application is listed as "BitTorrent Client" and Xplayer is listed as "Media Player". On the other hand, examples of named applications include such items as Firefox, Dropbox, and guvcview.
Peppermint OS 10 -- The file manager and Synaptic package manager
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The menu is not particularly full. There are some basic tools like a text editor, the Gufw firewall configuration tool, and a launcher called Additional Drivers which will show alternative hardware drivers we can enable. Many of the menu entries are web applications. These open in the site specific browser to present more like native applications. Some of these include Gmail, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Office Online. There are also a few games.
Peppermint provides media codecs, assuming we choose to enable them at install time. The distribution includes the GNU Compiler Collection. In the background we find the systemd init software and version 5.0 of the Linux kernel.
I feel the distribution's settings panel is worth a mention. It appears to be a custom portal for finding settings. While the layout is that of a fairly standard, classic settings panel, I like the way configuration modules are grouped into tabs. The panel is quite responsive and I found the supplied settings easy to navigate.
Peppermint OS 10 -- The settings panel and Peppermint Control Centre
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A tool I had less success with was the Browser Manager. This tool is designed, I believe, to help us install additional web browsers. However, any time I tried to launch Browser Manager it immediately crashed. This was the only program I tried that did not work smoothly and it stood out in my otherwise pleasant experience with the distribution.
Ice and Site-Specific Browser
Two of Peppermint's main selling points are its Site Specific Browser and the Ice tool used to manage SSB launchers. Ice is a fairly easy tool to use. It provides a simple wizard for providing the name and URL of a website and we can choose which browser will open the URL. Ice then adds a new launcher to the application menu so we can easily access the chosen website like any other program. Ice can also removing existing web app launchers from the menu.
Peppermint OS 10 -- Setting up a new site specific browser in Ice
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Websites opened in the SSB have a minimal browser interface in an attempt to make web apps more streamlined and appear similar to local applications. Sometimes this illusion works pretty well. However, the slower performance, the need to login to some web apps, and ads which show up in others are regular reminders that we are visiting websites in a browser. I tended to avoid web apps in favour of locally run, open source alternatives.
Software management
Peppermint ships with two utilities for managing software. The first is mintInstall which is borrowed from the Linux Mint project. mintInstall is a pleasantly modern software manager which presents us with a list of featured/popular applications. We can then browse categories of software, click application entries to see a full page description, and queue up new installs with a button click. mintInstall is pleasantly responsive and easy to navigate.
One aspect of mintInstall I appreciate is it has a separate Flatpak category to help us find portable Flatpak packages. I also like that the software manager clearly states on the description page of an item whether an application we are viewing is a Flatpak or regular Deb package. This is useful when we are browsing popular desktop applications like Firefox or GIMP and want to download one type of package over the other.
Peppermint OS 10 -- The mintInstall software centre
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The one problem I ran into when dealing with mintInstall came when I was installing Flatpak applications. Newly installed Flatpaks were not added to the application menu; I had to logout and sign back into my account to see the new launchers. Even when the launchers showed up, the icons for Flatpaks were left blank. This is not a functional issue, but looks ugly next to the entries set up by Deb-based packages.
The second software manager is Synaptic, which provides a classic, low level, package-oriented approach. Synaptic works quickly and is useful for downloading and removing software in batches. We can also use Synaptic to manage repository information.
When new software updates become available there is an icon in the system tray which turns blue. Clicking this icon opens the update manager, which is also borrowed from Linux Mint. This tool lists available updates and we can check a box next to the items we want to download. It has been a while since Peppermint had a media refresh and there were 329 updates waiting for me on my first day, totalling 340MB in size. The update manager handled all of these new packages gracefully (if a bit slowly) and brought my system cleanly up to date. After that a few more updates trickled in during the week. I encountered no problems while updating Peppermint, though a few packages did prompt me to either overwrite or keep old configuration files. This is not a bug, but it is likely to confuse newcomers. I think graphical update tools should probably have a reasonable default for this situation rather than prompting the user to ask whether a low level configuration file they have never heard of should be replaced.
Conclusions
Peppermint is one of those delightful distributions which does what it says it will do. It sets out to be lightweight, easy to set up, and offer native-like access to web applications. It does all of these things and does them well. I also happen to really like the well-organized settings panel and the friendly software manager. I especially like how mintInstall makes it clear when it is working with Deb or Flatpak packages.
While I'm not personally a fan of web applications, I do think Peppermint deserves full credit for making them as easy to use as possible and as native-like as it does. I may never like running my applications over the web, but for people who do like this approach, Peppermint's Ice and SSB features are excellent.
Mostly though I'm a big fan of the distribution's combined LXDE/Xfce desktop. It is a mixture of components which works nicely, is fairly easy to configure, and it offers some of the best performance I have had with an open source desktop this year.
There are some rough edges. The system installer threw out some errors towards the end of the setup process. Needing to logout and back in to see Flatpaks in the application menu was a pain, but not a deal breaker. On the whole I think Peppermint does a good job of feeling modern while offering good performance and easy to use tools.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Peppermint OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.6/10 from 92 review(s).
Have you used Peppermint OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Arch warns of NVIDIA driver issue, Debian donates to Peertube, openSUSE explains MicroOS, FreeBSD publishes status report
The Arch Linux team is warning their users (and other people running very up to date versions of the Linux kernel) that Linux 5.9 is somewhat incompatible with NVIDIA video drivers. While basic graphic functions should continue to work, some other driver features will not. "NVIDIA is currently partially incompatible with Linux >= 5.9. While graphics should work fine, CUDA, OpenCL, and likely other features are broken. Users who've already upgraded and need those features are advised to switch to the Linux LTS kernel for the time being until a fix for NVIDIA is available."
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The Debian project is making an unusual move and putting their financial support behind a third-party project, Peertube. "The Debian project is happy to announce a donation of 10,000 USD to help Framasoft reach the fourth stretch-goal of its Peertube v3 crowdfunding campaign -- Live Streaming. This year's iteration of the Debian annual conference, DebConf20, had to be held online, and while being a resounding success, it made clear to the project our need to have a permanent live streaming infrastructure for small events held by local Debian groups. As such, Peertube, a FLOSS video hosting platform, seems to be the perfect solution for us." Additional information on Debian's donation and Peertube can be found in the announcement.
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The openSUSE team have made available a minimal operating system intended for running containers. The new platform is called openSUSE MicroOS. The openSUSE wiki describes the new platform as follows: "openSUSE MicroOS is an operating system you don't have to worry about. It's designed for but not limited to container hosts and edge devices. Due to the focus on unattended operation it's especially suited for large deployments. openSUSE MicroOS inherits the openSUSE Tumbleweed and SUSE Linux Enterprise knowledge while redefining the operating system into a small, efficient and reliable distribution. openSUSE MicroOS is available as variant of openSUSE Tumbleweed or openSUSE Leap and serves as a base of openSUSE Kubic, a Container as a Service platform." The MicroOS platform uses a read-only filesystem to provide extra protection against corruption and uses Btrfs to create snapshots of data on the system.
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The FreeBSD project has published its Quarterly Status Report for the months of July through September. The project has done a lot of work to prepare for migrating from its SVN code repository to Git, improved video driver support, updated Linux compatibility, and implemented Zstandard (ZSTD) compression for ZFS volumes. "Zstandard (ZSTD) is a modern high-performance compression algorithm designed to provide the compression ratios of gzip while offering much better performance. ZSTD has been adopted in FreeBSD for a number of other uses, including compressing kernel crash dumps, as a replacement for gzip or bzip for compressing log files, and for future versions of pkg(8). This effort to complete the integration of ZSTD into ZFS is funded by the FreeBSD Foundation. During the third quarter the integrating of ZSTD into OpenZFS was completed in the upstream OpenZFS repository, and the new OpenZFS 2.0 codebase was imported into 13-CURRENT." Further information on work the FreeBSD is doing can be found in the report.
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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) |
What to do when the disk acts full
Feeling-full asks: I was downloading a file and the transfer stopped dead with a report that my disk is full. But when I look at the disk I can see it's not full yet. What's going on and how do I fix this?
DistroWatch answers: When a utility, like a download manager, reports the disk is full what it is likely saying is that it cannot write any more data to the file you are downloading. The assumption is that the disk is full, but there are other possibilities. Sometimes another issue is taking place which makes it seem like the disk is full and the application does not have any way to distinguish between a really full disk or something else going on.
You mentioned looking at the disk to see whether it is full, but not the specific tools used or what information was shown. So let's look at some possibilities as to what might be causing the issue.
- The disk may not be full, but maybe your partition is. Depending on which tool you use you may see that disk still has room on it for more data, but one partition (the one where your file is being saved) could be full. If you are saving a file to your home directory, maybe /home is full while the root partition (/) still has space. Or, maybe your download tool saves temporary data to /tmp before moving it into your home directory. If one partition fills up it can make it seem like the entire disk is full.
Running the following command will show which, if any, partitions are full.
df -h
Take a close look at the fifth column, Use%, and see if any of them are nearing 100%. If so then the file might be stored there and clearing out some old files will free up needed space.
- You could be running into a reserved space limit. Many modern filesystems, including ext4, reserve a percentage of their total space for the root user and root-run services. The default amount of space set aside is 5% of the total space on the partition. So a 500GB filesystem has 25GB set aside for root. This enables the administrator to still login in the event something consumes virtually all of the storage space. The amount of reserved space on ext3/4 filesystems can be adjusted using the "-m" parameter of the tune2fs utility.
- Your user could have a quota limiting the amount of data you can write. This usually does not happen on home machines, but it is common in business environments. If you are at work you can ask the administrator if there is a data quota on your account. You can also check for quotas using the quota command.
- It is possible there is still space left on the drive, but your filesystem has run out of inodes. An inode is basically an index marker for a file. When a filesystem contains a lot of small files it can run out of inodes before it runs out of space. You can check whether your filesystem is out of inodes by running the following command:
df -ih
The fifth column, IUse%, shows the percentage of inodes the filesystem has consumed. If this number is near 100% then you may need to delete some files to free up more inodes.
- It is possible, though not likely, that the disk has run into an error and been put into read-only mode. This almost never happens, but just to cover all the bases, I wanted to mention it. If you run the following command it will show all mounted filesystems and their status, including "ro" for read-only or "rw" for reading-and-writing:
mount
A quick way to check for filesystems that have been placed in read-only mode is to run the following command:
mount | grep -q \(ro && echo "Found read-only filesystem" || echo "No read-only filesystems"
If a read-only filesystem is found then usually it can be fixed using the mount command. For instance, the following command will attempt to remount the /home partition, reestablishing write access:
mount -o remount,rw /home
Typically rebooting the computer will also force a remount of the filesystem in read-and-write mode.
One of the above situations is probably the cause of the faulty warning. Usually in this case I find the issue is a partition running out of inodes, so I would start looking there. Deleting a handful of small files you don't need anymore, maybe by clearing your web browser cache, will often correct the problem.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Trisquel GNU/Linux 9.0
Trisquel GNU/Linux is a fully free operating system from the Ubuntu family. The project has, after a long development cycle, released version 9.0 with long-term support (LTS). "They say that good things come to those who wait, and for this release there has been a lot of waiting but also plenty of good things. Trisquel 9.0, codename "Etiona" is our most polished release yet, thanks to the contribution of a very committed team of volunteers. This release comes in several flavors: MATE desktop, the default. Based on the popular fork of GNOME 2.x, this edition provides a classic desktop environment matching the user experience of previous Trisquel releases. Trisquel Mini, a lightweight version for older machines and netbooks. Based on the LXDE desktop environment and a selection of resource-saving applications to bring new life to your hardware. Triskel, running the KDE environment. Excellent for customizing the design and look in fine detail. Trisquel netinstall image. To deploy with a command-line install interface, ideal for servers and advanced users. Trisquel TOAST, based on the Sugar learning platform. Comes with dozens of educational activities for children." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement.
Trisquel GNU/Linux 9.0 -- Running the MATE desktop
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Tails 4.12
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The project's latest release, version 4.12, mostly introduces minor updates and security fixes. "Update Tor Browser to 10.0.2. Update tor to 0.4.4.5. Update Linux to 5.8 and most firmware packages. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.). Add a button to cancel an automated upgrade while downloading. Fixed problems: Fix several internationalization issues in Electrum, Tails Installer, and Tails Upgrader. Anonymize URLs in the technical details provided by WhisperBack." Tails now also includes tools for managing persistent storage which can save key pieces of data and system configuration. Further information can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the changelog.
NetBSD 9.1
NetBSD is a lightweight, highly portable operating system that can run on many CPU hardware architectures. The project's latest release, NetBSD 9.1, introduces a number of performance improvements, bug fixes, and improved stability for ZFS volumes. The default graphical user interface has been changed too: "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 9.1, the first update of the NetBSD 9 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Here are some highlights of this new release. Parallelized disk encryption with cgd(4). Added the C.UTF-8 locale. Added support for Xen 4.13. Various reliability fixes and improvements for ZFS. Added support for ZFS on dk(4) wedges on ld(4). NVMM hypervisor updated, bringing improved emulation, performance, and stability. Additional settings for the NPF firewall, updated documentation, and various npfctl(8) usability improvements. X11 improvements, default window manager switched to ctwm(1), enabled sixel support in xterm(1), fixes for older Intel chipsets." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
SystemRescue 7.00
François Dupoux has released SystemRescue 7.00, a new version of the project's useful system rescue toolkit for administrating or repairing a system and data after a crash. It is based on Arch Linux and features the Xfce desktop. The major version change is the result of the distribution's renaming from SystemRescueCd to SystemRescue, as well as a new domain name, but otherwise it is just a routine upgrade from the 6.x series. From the changelog: "Renamed project from SystemRescueCd to SystemRescue; new website address - system-rescue.org; updated Linux kernel to long-term-supported linux 5.4.71; added dislocker to access disks encrypted using BitLocker (#46)." SystemRescue continues to be available in both amd64 and i686 variants; it includes a good catalogue of storage, disk partitioning, networking, file system, recovery, hardware information and secure deleting tools - see the project's system tools page for a full list.
Ubuntu 20.10
Brian Murray has announced the release of Ubuntu 20.10, codenamed "Groovy Gorilla". The new release ships with version 5.8 of the Linux kernel and defaults to running the GNOME 3.38 desktop environment. "Codenamed "Groovy Gorilla", 20.10 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs. The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 5.8 based Linux kernel, and our default toolchain has moved to gcc 10 with glibc 2.32. Additionally, there is now a desktop variant of the Raspberry Pi image for Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and 8GB. Ubuntu Desktop 20.10 introduces GNOME 3.38, the fastest release yet with significant performance improvements delivering a more responsive Experience. Additionally, the desktop installer includes the ability to connect to Active Directory domains." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the distribution's release notes.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- Running the GNOME desktop
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Ubuntu MATE 20.10
The Ubuntu MATE team has announced the release of Ubuntu MATE 20.10 which ships with the MATE 1.24.1 desktop. The new release offers nine months of support. "If you follow the Ubuntu MATE Twitter account you'll know that MATE Desktop 1.24.1 was recently released. Naturally Ubuntu MATE 20.10 features that maintenance release of MATE Desktop. In addition, we have prepared updated MATE Desktop 1.24.1 packages for Ubuntu MATE 20.04 that are currently in the SRU process. Given the number of MATE packages being updated in 20.04, it might take some time for all the updates to land, but we're hopeful that the fixes and improvements from MATE Desktop 1.24.1 will soon be available for those of you running 20.04 LTS. The Ubuntu Desktop team added the option to enroll your computer into an Active Directory domain during install. We've been tracking that work and the same capability is available in Ubuntu MATE too." Further information and screenshots can be found in the project's release announcement.
Ubuntu Studio 20.10
The Ubuntu Studio team have announced the release of Ubuntu Studio 20.10, an interim release which received nine months of support. This version makes a shift in desktop environments, migrating from Xfce to using KDE Plasma as the default user interface. "The biggest new feature is the switch of desktop environment to KDE Plasma. We believe this will provide a more cohesive and integrated experience for many of the applications that we include by default. We have previously outlined our reasoning for this switch as part of our 20.04 LTS release announcement. This release includes Plasma 5.19.5. If you would like a newer version, the Kubuntu Backports PPA may include a newer version of Plasma when ready. We are excited to be a part of the KDE community with this change, and have embraced the warm welcome we have received. You will notice that our theming and layout of Plasma looks very much like our Xfce theming. (Spoiler: it's the same theme and layout!)" Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Kubuntu 20.10
Jonathan Riddell has announced the release of Kubuntu 20.10, featuring the KDE Plasma 5.19.5 desktop, KDE Application 20.08, the brand-new digiKam 7.0.0, support for Cloud deployment, and various other improvements: "The Kubuntu community are delighted to announce the release of Kubuntu 20.10 'Groovy Gorilla'. For this release, Kubuntu ships with Plasma 5.19.5 and Applications 20.08. The desktop carries the fresh new look and gorgeous wallpaper design selected by the KDE Visual Design Group. Dolphin, KDE's file explorer adds previews for more types of files and improvements to the way long names are summarized, allowing you to better see what each file is or does. For those of you into photography, KDE's professional photo management application, digiKam has just released its version 7.0.0. The highlight here is the smart face recognition feature that uses deep-learning to match faces to names and even recognizes pets." See the full release announcement for further information.
Lubuntu 20.10
Dan Simmons has announced the release of Lubuntu 20.10, a new version of the Ubuntu's lightweight subproject that features the LXQt desktop: "Lubuntu 20.10 has been released. With the code name 'Groovy Gorilla', Lubuntu 20.10 is the 19th release of Lubuntu and the fifth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment. You can find the following major applications and toolkits installed by default in this release: LXQt 0.15.0 - with many improvements over 0.14 present in 20.04; Qt 5.14.2; Mozilla Firefox 81.0.2 which will receive updates from the Ubuntu Security team throughout the support cycle of the release; the LibreOffice 7.0.2 suite which solves the printing issue present in 20.04; VLC 3.0.11.1, for viewing media and listening to music; Featherpad 0.12.1 for notes and code editing; Discover Software Center 5.19.5 for an easy, graphical way to install and update software; the powerful and fast email client Trojitá 0.7 to get you to inbox zero in no time." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details and screenshots.
Lubuntu 20.10 -- Running the LXQt desktop
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Ubuntu Budgie 20.10
David Mohammed has announced the release of Ubuntu Budgie 20.10, the latest version of the project that integrates the Budgie desktop into the underlying Ubuntu system: "For 20.10 your Ubuntu Budgie team has concentrated on paper-cuts - tidying up the rough areas reported by you our community. Shuffler has had some nice touches including the funky-sounding sticky neighbours and also a full CLI to allow the tinkers to fully customise their application arrangements. Our application menu now leverages the search facility to find the various parts of GNOME Settings. Many icons previously displayed are now stripped out allowing quicker visual access to applications. Also, look out for the optional rollover capability now in the category view. We now include a full Mac-like makeover using the fabulous Mojave theme and icons though a click of a button. Also, we have developed an optional applet to replace the menu to present a full-screen application icons display based on a new project called lightpad." See the detailed release notes for a full list of improvements and screenshots.
Ubuntu Kylin 20.10
Ubuntu Kylin, a Linux distribution built for China and an official member of the Ubuntu family, has arrived at the 20.10 release. The new version features the much improved UKUI 3.0 desktop environment (a fork of MATE), as well as an enhanced file manager called Peony: "The Ubuntu Kylin team is pleased to announce the official release of the open-source operating system version 20.10 (code-named 'Groovy Gorilla') of Ubuntu Kylin. 20.10 is the 16th version released by Ubuntu Kylin, which provides 9-month technical support, and it is released globally. The latest Linux 5.8 kernel and UKUI 3.0 desktop environment are integrated into the Ubuntu Kylin 20.10 release by default. It has fixed many problems in the start menu, file manager and control panel so as to provide users with a more efficient and stable user experience. You are welcome to download it and have a try, and do give us feedback on your user experience." Read the long list of improvements and bug fixes in the release announcement, available both in Simplified Chinese and in English).
Xubuntu 20.10
Xubuntu 20.10, the latest stable version of the project's official Ubuntu variant featuring the Xfce desktop, has been released: "Xubuntu 20.10 was released on Thursday, October 22, 2020 and will be supported for nine months until Thursday, July 22, 2021." The project has yet to publish an official release announcement, but the release notes do provide some information, including a list of known issues: "Installer issues: grub-installer chooses which drive to install to with no user input. Graphical issues: AMD graphics - block staircase display with side-by-side monitors of different pixel widths (fixed upstream, SRU expected for 20.04.1). General issues: GNOME Font Viewer - crashes in the live environment; Xfce PulseAudio plugin - multiple notifications displayed if multiple PulseAudio plugins added to panel; Xfce Screensaver - password required twice when switching users; Xfce Settings daemon - sometimes does not run after logging in, resulting in appearance and configuration issues. This was a less active development cycle for our team, though we did make some significant improvements for our contributors."
Xubuntu 20.10 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 216kB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
Pop!_OS 20.10
System76, a US-based manufacturer of Linux desktops, laptops and servers, has announced the release of Pop!_OS 20.10, the latest version of the company's Ubuntu-based Linux distribution. It includes various usability improvements, such as stacking tiled windows, floating window exceptions, fractional scaling or external monitor support in hybrid graphics mode: "Pop!_OS 20.10 is the result of fine-tuning features released in version 20.04. Similar to the tabs in your web browser, stack tiled windows atop one another for easier organization. First, use Super + S to convert a window into a stack. Using Super + Enter and your arrow keys or Vim shortcuts will add a window to your stack. You can also launch an application into the stack using Super + / to add it automatically. Super + Left or Right arrows cycles between windows in the stack. Lastly, move windows out of the stack and press Super + S to convert it back to a standard window." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information, screenshots and screencasts.
RISC OS Open 5.28
RISC OS Open is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England in 1987. RISC OS was specifically designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archimedes personal computers. It takes its name from the RISC (reduced instruction set computing) architecture supported. The project's latest release, RISC OS 5.28, improves network security, introduces system-wide clipboard support, and fixes several issues. "RISC OS 5.28 now available. Slightly delayed from our original target in Spring, we're pleased to announce RISC OS 5.28 is now available for all platforms that met or exceeded our stable release criteria. What's inside? The extra few months has allowed us to pack in a fantastic 366 improvements to the 'HardDisc4' image and applications, and a similarly impressive 344 improvements to the main operating system. Enjoy an overhauled Paint, up-to-date network security, system wide clipboard support, all running faster thanks to our community led bounty schemes." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
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: 2,190
- Total data uploaded: 34.3TB
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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) |
How much of your disk space is unused?
As modern disk drives grow in capacity so does our ability to fill them. Today's archives, videos, and massive collections of e-mail can expand to fill just about any storage device. This week we would like to hear how much of your main computer's storage capacity remains unused. Are your disks mostly unused or filled to the brim with data files?
You can see the results of our previous poll on checking the system for rootkits in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How much of your disk space is unused?
| 91% or more: | 105 (7%) |
| 70%-90%: | 300 (20%) |
| 50%-69%: | 406 (27%) |
| 30%-49%: | 289 (20%) |
| 10%-29%: | 258 (17%) |
| Less than 10%: | 121 (8%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Obscurix. Obscurix is an Arch Linux-based distribution that is configured for anonymous web browsing and privacy. Obscurix forces all Internet traffic through the Tor network and is run entirely from RAM.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 2 November 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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| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 1, value: US$15.00) |
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
Ultramarine Linux
Ultramarine Linux is a Fedora-based distribution featuring extra package repositories such as RPM Fusion and enabling multimedia codecs. Ultramarine can be considered a spiritual successor to Korora Project and aims to make Fedora a more desktop-friendly experience.
Status: Active
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| 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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