 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 893, 23 November 2020 |
|
Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Mobile devices are increasingly a part of our lives. Virtually everyone in our society has a smart phone of one type or another. These devices store a great deal of information about our lives - who we talk to, where we go, and what we have scheduled. This week, in our News section, we talk about two mobile devices which are designed to provide more privacy and more open source solutions. The KDE team is working on running the Plasma Mobile interface on PinePhone devices while the Purism team is now selling its mass production edition of the Librem 5 phone. The details on both are below. Plus we discuss the Haiku team introducing support for the XFS and UFS filesystems along with a Debian developer seeking guidance on how to address init diversity issues. We also say good-bye to Fedora 31 as this legacy version of the distribution reaches the end of its supported life while Sabayon switches its base to Funtoo. First though we talk about ArchBang Linux, a rolling release distribution which recently switched from using the Openbox window manager to i3. Read on to hear about how this cutting edge distribution performs. Plus, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about how Secure Boot works, why some data is pushed to swap space when memory isn't full, and why some distributions do not enable a firewall by default. Do you run machines with Secure Boot enabled? Let us know if you make use of this feature in our Opinion Poll. As usual, we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: ArchBang Linux 0111
- News: Plasma Mobile coming to PinePhones, Purism launches mass production units of Librem 5, Haiku improves filesystem support, Debian developer seeks guidance on init issue, Fedora 31 reaches the end of its life, Sabayon changes its base to Funtoo
- Questions and answers: Secure Boot, stuff stored in swap when memory is not full, enabling the firewall
- Released last week: Kali Linux 2020.4, IPFire 2.25 Core 152, EasyOS 2.5
- Torrent corner: Bluestar, CloudReady, EasyOS, IPFire, Kali Linux, KaOS, Karoshi, MidnightBSD, Tails, Volumio
- Opinion poll: Do you enable Secure Boot?
- New distributions: MocaccinoOS
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (10MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
|
| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
ArchBang Linux 0111
ArchBang Linux is a lightweight distribution based on Arch Linux. Using the i3 window manager, it strives to be fast, up-to-date and suitable for desktop systems. The current snapshots of ArchBang use an unusual versioning convention with a day & month combination. For example, 0811 is the snapshot for the 8th of November. Previous versions used a year & month combination so that a snapshot from January 2014 would be 2014.01.
Apart from the shift in version numbers since the last time I tried ArchBang the distribution has also swapped out the Openbox window manager for i3 on the install media. I was curious to see how this would work. ArchBang has just one download option, a 914MB ISO file that runs on 64-bit (x86_64) machines.
The live media boots and brings up the i3 window manager. The wallpaper displays a nice water-focused nature scene. There is a Conky status panel displayed to the right of the desktop. Under the status readout there is a listing for keyboard shortcuts we can use to launch some programs, access desktop settings, and start the install process.
ArchBang 0111 -- The live media running i3
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Unlike most window managers, we cannot left- or right-click on the desktop. Nor can we click on the panel at the bottom of the screen or the status readout. There is a volume icon we can click on to mute and un-mute audio. There is also a small network icon we can click to connect to local networks. In short, the environment is mostly non-interactive. The live media uses about 200MB of RAM while signed into i3 and the interface is very responsive.
Opening any one application window causes the application to be displayed as a full screen window. Opening additional programs causes their windows to be placed side-by-side, resulting in a horizontal collection of windows that get increasingly squeezed. It's not particularly practical unless we have a wide monitor or only wish to use one program at a time.
Installing
ArchBang offers two system installers on the live media. The first runs in text mode in a virtual terminal. The second system installer, which is referred to as the Zen Installer, uses a graphical interface. I started with the Zen Installer. The first thing I discovered about the Zen Installer is it presents us with a serious of screens where, at the bottom of each screen, we have buttons with the option to proceed (OK) or back out (Cancel). At first we are asked about partitioning and which disk we want to use. I selected automatic partitioning by accident and decided to cancel and go back to take the manual partitioning option. I soon discovered that clicking the Cancel button works exactly the same as clicking OK. Which means if we click Cancel a few times the installer picks a disk to format and wipes it.
I want to be clear here. Launching the system installer and clicking Cancel a few times wipes out existing partitions. This is a pretty serious bug and I tried it a couple of times (in a virtual machine) to confirm it's a consistent problem.
ArchBang 0111 -- The Zen Installer
(full image size: 413kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
The Zen Installer, assuming we go ahead with it and pick partitioning options that work for us, takes an unusually long time to get through. There are over 26 screens in the installer, assuming we don't choose to install a bunch of extras or take any advanced options. This may make ArchBang's graphical installer the longest one I have seen to date. I'd like to quickly run through the screens, listing their questions in point form, just to give readers an idea of what the Zen installer asks at a minimum:
We pick a storage device to use; select guided or manual partitioning through GParted; pick a partition to use for the root filesystem; select a partition to use for swap; pick a country code for our location; pick our locale from a cryptic list; pick a two-letter country code for our keyboard; confirm if our keyboard was in the previous list; pick a time zone; make up a hostname; make up a username; set passwords for the root account and our regular user account; pick a shell (from bash, fish, or zsh); select which kernel (Linux, LTS, Zen, or Hardened) to install; when running in VirtualBox we are asked if VirtualBox add-ons should be installed; do we wish to add a third-party package repository?; we can then enable multilib repositories; we are asked if we want a graphical package manager; we are asked to pick which graphical package manager; we are asked if we want to enable the AUR; we can choose to install printer support; we are asked to pick our session manager (LXDM, SSDM, GDM, and "default" are available); we can pick a single desktop environment from a long list; we are asked if we want to install Firefox; which language to install with Firefox; whether we wish to install LibreOffice; install the Still or Fresh LibreOffice package; which language support to add to LibreOffice; do we want to install other optional software?; do we want to install a boot loader?; and where to install the boot loader?
The installer finally copies its files to the hard drive and then gives us one more option. We can restart the computer, edit the package manager's configuration, or run a chroot in the freshly installed distribution.
The questions themselves are not all that unusual, but two things really stood out (apart from the vast number of queries we need to go through). One is that we can only select one desktop environment to install and some of the options are a little odd. Most of the items, like LXQt and Cinnamon, are clear enough. However, some of the options are listed in a way that makes me unsure what they do differently. For example, there is a MATE option and a MATE-MATE Extra option. The same applies to Deepin and Deepin-Deepin Extra. I suppose the Extra options probably come with more software, but I'm unclear on what would be bundled as an extra in this case.
The second thing which really stood out is virtually all configuration is done up front and manually. This really slows down the install process. It's something one of my UNIX system administration textbooks would refer to as the "spineless" approach, where software has virtually no defaults and therefore doesn't work until it is configured in detail. Which is incredibly flexible, but not particularly practical for getting new software up and running.
First impressions
The first time I completed the install process I tried to boot into my new system and it failed, with the computer reporting there was no bootable medium found. I thought perhaps something had gone wrong when installing the boot loader using the Zen Installer and so decided to try again with the text installer.
The text installer offers mostly similar steps to Zen, but it's a shorter process. I proceeded through the steps fairly easily, going through disk partitioning, picking a time zone, and so on. When it came to setting up the boot loader there were two main options: install GRUB automatically or install a boot loader manually. The automated GRUB option reported an error message, but showed up as a completed step in the system installer's menu. I redid the step, selecting the manual option which hands us over to a virtual terminal where we need to manually type in the GRUB install command along with a disk location. Once this was done and I had closed the terminal window the system installer went into a loop where it kept trying to perform the GRUB automated installation over and over and over.
ArchBang 0111 -- The text-based installer
(full image size: 48kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
After quitting the text-based installer I went back to the Zen Installer and tried again. I zipped through the installer, focusing on taking as few options as possible. The installer finished its work and offered to restart the computer. This time bootable media was found and GRUB successfully handed over control to ArchBang. Messages appeared on the screen reporting the kernel and RAM disk were being loaded, then the system froze. After a few minutes I performed a hard restart of the machine and it successfully booted to a graphical login screen.
At this point it temporarily looked like my difficulties were at an end, but then I tried to sign into my account. The system started to load my desktop session, then kicked me back to the login screen. This was different behaviour than what happened if I intentionally put in invalid login credentials so it seems the issue was happening with correct username and password information. Wondering if a permission issue might be at work, I tried logging in with the root account and again was shunted back to the login page.
Blocked from logging into a desktop environment (I tried one install with LXQt and another with MATE) I switched to the text console. My account could sign into the console and, from there, I could interact with command line programs, run the pacman package manager, and manage services with systemd. Version 5.4 of the Linux kernel was running in the background. This may seem like an unusually old version of Linux for an Arch-based distribution, but I had opted to go for the long-term support kernel at install time, which is more conservative.
From the console I was able to run startx to launch a graphical environment, but it defaulted to the very minimal twm interface rather than the desktop environment I had installed.
A short time later I ran the halt command to shutdown the system. Instead ArchBang restarted the computer and, after going through the GRUB boot loader, locked up again after loading the kernel and RAM disk.
Conclusions
At this point I officially gave up on ArchBang. Both installers have critical bugs in them. The distribution takes far too long to install, did not manage to produce a working desktop environment when it installed successfully, and 2/5ths of the time I tried to boot the installed operating system it locked up.
I will give credit where it is due. The distribution's live media worked well. I must have booted the live disc a dozen times while testing hardware and exploring different install options. Each time it booted quickly, used a small amount of RAM, and the i3 interface was responsive. The i3 window manager is quite minimal and feels more akin to a tablet interface than a regular desktop with free-floating windows. It is not to my taste, but I know some people really like the focused approach tiling window mangers provide.
When running from the live media, whether in a virtual machine or on my laptop, ArchBang ran smoothly and detected all of my hardware. It's just unfortunate that the install process is so cumbersome and, in my case, effectively does not provide a working operating system.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
* * * * *
Visitor supplied rating
ArchBang Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.6/10 from 7 review(s).
Have you used ArchBang Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
|
| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Plasma Mobile coming to PinePhones, Purism launches mass production units of Librem 5, Haiku improves filesystem support, Debian developer seeks guidance on init issue, Fedora 31 reaches the end of its life, Sabayon changes its base to Funtoo
The KDE team has announced that it is now possible to run the Plasma Mobile user interface on the PinePhone. "KDE and Pine64 are announcing today the imminent availability of the new PinePhone - KDE Community edition. This Pine64 PinePhone gives you a taste of where free mobile devices and software platforms are headed. The PinePhone - KDE Community edition includes most of the essential features a smartphone user would expect and its functionalities increase day by day. You can follow the progress of the development of apps and features in the Plasma Mobile blog. Plasma Mobile is a direct descendant from KDE's successful Plasma desktop. The same underlying technologies drive both environments and apps like KDE Connect that lets you connect phones and desktops, the Okular document reader, the VVave music player, and others, are available on both desktop and mobile." The Plasma Mobile interface will be running on a mobile edition of KDE neon.
* * * * *
The Haiku team have published their monthly newsletter which outlines work being done to the lightweight, desktop operating system. One of the significant changes in the works is the ability to support both the XFS and UFS filesystems. The system installer can now be used to reset the operating system without wiping out existing data files and settings. "Parts of this summer GSoC work from cruxbox (on XFS) and Suhel Mehta (on UFS2) were merged. The filesystems are still not quite ready for day to day usage, however. PulkoMandy's work on MMC and SDHCI (for eMMC and SD cards) has been merged but is still incomplete and not enabled by default. Korli added posix_fallocate with the matching syscall to preallocate disk space before writing it, and also added an implementation for SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE in lseek. kallisti5 changed the write() implementation to allow 0-byte writes, as needed by the Go port. Installer can be used again to erase an existing install while preserving user data and settings. This can be used to restore an unbootable system while keeping the user data."
* * * * *
Kyle Rankin has announced that Purism is now shipping the mass production version of their Librem 5 phone. The mobile device is designed to be open and ships with the project's GNU/Linux distribution pre-installed. The phone is privacy-focused and ships with a number of hardware switches for disabling the cellular modem, Bluetooth, and camera. "Purism, a Social Purpose Company (SPC) focusing on security and privacy with its hardware and software, has begun shipping its mass-produced Librem 5 phone to customers. The Librem 5 is a one-of-a-kind general-purpose computer in a phone form-factor that Purism has designed and built from scratch following a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised over $2.2 million. Both the hardware and software design is focused on respecting the end user's freedom and giving them control over their privacy and security. The Librem 5 doesn't run Android nor iOS but instead runs the same PureOS operating system as Purism's laptops and mini PC." Further details can be found in the announcement. Additional information and purchase options for the Librem 5 and other Purism devices can be found on the organization's Products page.
* * * * *
About a year ago the Debian project voted on the subject of init software and init diversity. The outcome was that Debian would, as a project, focus its resources on using systemd while leaving the door open for people to support alternatives, allowing users to run a variety of init software. The winning option of the vote read: "The Debian project recognizes that systemd service units are the preferred configuration for describing how to start a daemon/service. However, Debian remains an environment where developers and users can explore and develop alternate init systems and alternatives to systemd features."
Matthew Vernon has raised the concern that developers working on alternative init software are being stonewalled by Debian's package maintainers, some of whom are removing alternative init support from their packages and refusing to accept patches which support non-systemd options. Vernon wrote to the Debian Technical Community looking for guidance: "I'm afraid the effect of this is that the maintainers of this package are making it impossible for other developers to enable support of sysvinit. There are people who will (and have) test compatibility changes, help with issues with sysvinit scripts, and so on, but those
efforts are in effect being stonewalled. The effect of this, and equivalent behaviour in some other packages, is that it is going to be impossible to make a useful Bullseye for users who want to use sysvinit." At the time of writing a response has not been published.
* * * * *
Mohan Boddu has sent out a reminder that Fedora 31 is about to reach the end of its supported life. "Fedora 31 will go end of life for updates and support on 24th of November 2020. No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 31 after the said date. All the updates of Fedora 31 being pushed to stable will be stopped as well. Fedora 32 will continue to receive updates until approximately one month after the release of Fedora 34." Further information, including upgrade instructions, can be found in Boddu's mailing list post.
* * * * *
The Sabayon distribution is a long-running, rolling release platform based on Gentoo. The Sabayon team has been working in collaboration with the Funtoo distribution and will be basing future work on the Funtoo base. The Sabayon blog reports: "Funtoo shines for additional QA layers, proven reliability, and incredible performance setup out of the box, plus the wonderful metatools and Kits ecosystem. Funtoo has a strong community with a solid background. By joining together forces, years of experience, knowledge, and tooling, we will be able to deliver the best Linux experience also in a binary format, stronger, and together. We will mutually contribute to each others' projects, actually merging our development teams." A corresponding message appeared on the Funtoo forum.
The Sabayon project is also looking to move in a new direction with plans to introduce a new name (MocaccinoOS), and a new package manager called Luet. Luet will be used as a front-end for container-based package management.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
|
| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Secure Boot, stuff stored in swap when memory is not full, enabling the firewall
Some weeks I get a series of questions which require relatively short answers. I collected a bunch of these and decided to answer them all together.
Am-I-secure asks: How does Secure Boot work? I read it's Microsoft technology and they sign everything, so how do Linux distributions use it? Is Microsoft signing their kernels or what?
DistroWatch answers: Secure Boot is a technology which allows your computer's hardware (or, more specifically, its firmware) to check to see whether the low-level code it is running, like the kernel, has been corrupted or tampered with maliciously. The idea is that a company or developer can sign their low-level code, whether it be a boot loader or kernel. The signature allows us to know who created the package and whether it has been tampered with. The computer's firmware then refuses to load any code from developers it does not recognize, and refuses to boot if code has been corrupted. In theory this means we are protected against maliciously replaced kernels and boot loaders.
Microsoft does not sign all the kernels for distributions which support Secure Boot technology. What has happened is the computers are shipped with the ability to recognize and verify code signed by Microsoft. Then distributions, such a Ubuntu, get Microsoft to sign a shim or certificate. From that point on the distribution's developers just need to sign their code with their own key. The idea is the computer's hardware trusts Microsoft, and Microsoft has authenticated (therefore trusts) the Linux developers' certificates. Therefore the Linux developers can sign anything they want their distribution to run. It's a chain of trust.
A good explanation along with details on how this works can be found in the Ubuntu wiki under the Secure Boot section.
* * * * *
Filling-up asks: My system monitor shows swap space being used, even when memory is mostly empty. What is going wrong here?
DistroWatch answers: The good news is nothing is going wrong. The operating system will sometimes recognize when memory is not being accessed and preemptively copy that information to swap space. The system is fairly certain it will not need that data in a hurry and so it is pushing the information from RAM out to swap in order to free up space for things you might want to do in the near future.
You can adjust how likely Linux is to move information into swap space using a parameter called swappiness. A high swappiness value (90-100) means Linux will try to shove as much data as possible out to swap space to free up RAM. A low swappiness value (1-10) means very little will get sent to swap space and the system will try to keep data in RAM until it runs out of room.
You can experiment with different swappiness values by running the sysctl command and passing it a new swappiness value. Here I set my swappiness value to 25:
sysctl vm.swappiness=25
Please note the sysctl command must be run with root access or using a tool like sudo. You can see what your distribution's current swappiness level is by running:
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
* * * * *
Hiding-behind-a-wall asks: Why do so many distros not turn on the firewall? Isn't that a big security risk?
DistroWatch answers: A firewall is typically used to block (or limit) network connections to a local service running on your computer. This can be helpful if you want to place a restriction on the number of connections coming in or prevent people from connecting to a service, like secure shell. However, if your computer is not running any network services (such as secure shell, printer sharing, or a web server) then there is nothing for remote users to connect to on your computer. There isn't much point in setting up a firewall that blocks access to nothing.
In addition, some distribution developers are aware that if you do set up a network service, one of the most common problems people run into is the firewall blocking access while they are trying to test their new service. Disabling the firewall by default avoids the most common problems when a service is being enabled.
Basically, firewalls are useful for people who want to run network services, but who also want to prevent some people from using those services. It is unusual to find such a computer set up and connected directly to the Internet, rather than behind a router or dedicated firewall. Which means many of us don't need a firewall which is why many distributions do not enable it out of the box.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
|
| Released Last Week |
IPFire 2.25 Core 152
IPFire is a Linux-based distribution for network appliances such as routers and firewalls. The project's latest release is IPFire 2.25 Core Update 152. The project's new version includes a number of package updates and a big upgrade for Samba users. "Samba, has been updated to 4.13.0. Because of various reasons and lack of development time, we were stuck on Samba 3 which is unmaintained for a while. With this new version of Samba, new protocol features like SMB3 and encryption are supported. We have also rewritten large parts of the web user interface, made them tidier and fixed some usability issues. We also dropped some features which we believe are not being used any more. This mainly concerns compatibility to MS-DOS clients, WINS, and using IPFire as Primary Domain Controller for Windows NT domains." Further details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Kali Linux 2020.4
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The project's latest release, Kali Linux 2020.4, makes zsh the default command line shell, introduces new users to resources at login, and adjusts the bash shell to appear more like zsh. "In our previous quarterly release, 2020.3, we gave a heads up that we will be switching from Bash to zsh as our default shell going forwards (where possible). We are happy to announce that after testing and feedback from users, the switch has now happened. Say hello to to zsh. Thank you to everyone who provided positive and constructive feedback. We are happy with it, and hope you are too. With that said, we know we cannot please everyone with it (so if you wish to revert back to Bash, please do: 'chsh -s /bin/bash')." Further details along with screenshots of the new bash shell style can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Kali Linux 2020.4 -- Exploring the Kali suite of tools
(full image size: 274kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
EasyOS 2.5
EasyOS is an experimental Linux distribution which uses many of the technologies and package formats pioneered by Puppy Linux. The distribution features custom container technology called Easy Containers which can run applications or the entire desktop environment in a container. EasyOS 2.5 introduces a number of new changes which are highlighted in the project's release announcement. "EasyOS 2.5 is the latest in the 2.x Buster-series, built with Debian 10.6 DEBs. As well as the DEBs, other packages are updated, including SeaMonkey 2.53.5, and the Linux kernel is now 5.4.78. There have been many infrastructure and utility fixes and improvements, including hardware-profiling for the CPU temperature monitor. The single most significant application change relative to the previous release is the new BluePup bluetooth manager, replacing Blueman (though Blueman is in the repository, so can be installed if needed). The Multiple Sound Card Wizard has been integrated with BluePup." More detailed information can be found in the distribution's release notes.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
|
| 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: 2,233
- Total data uploaded: 34.9TB
|
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
|
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Do you enable Secure Boot?
In our Questions and Answers column we talked about some security features, including Secure Boot and firewalls. Secure Boot can be used to guard against low-level components of the operating system being altered. Do you enable Secure Boot on your computers?
You can see the results of our previous poll on recommending distributions in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
|
Do you enable Secure Boot?
| I use Secure Boot on all my computers: | 137 (9%) |
| I use Secure Boot on some computers: | 216 (14%) |
| I do not use Secure Boot: | 1147 (72%) |
| Unsure: | 87 (5%) |
|
|
| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- MocaccinoOS. MocaccinoOS is a Funtoo-based distribution which uses the Luet package manager to act as a friendly front-end for container-based software distribution.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 30 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)
|
|
| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
|
| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Debian stonewalling alternate init work (by Andy Prough on 2020-11-23 00:28:48 GMT from United States)
This is why Devuan is just about the most important project around. They need more help, but if they aren't successful going forward then there will be very few options for a mainstream non-systemd or systemd-optional distro. More people need to contribute time, money and resources to Devuan's valuable work.
2 • ArchBang (by Otis on 2020-11-23 00:56:36 GMT from United States)
Following reading that review today, I wonder why/how the ArchBang devs would release such a mess. Are we to test it and do bug reports, rather than install it as a working linux distro?
3 • Archbang (by Redding on 2020-11-23 02:36:30 GMT from United States)
@Otis: I just wonder why Jesse even bothered downloading the release in
the first place. As soon as I read Jesse's description of the new
Archbang release numbering system, I knew to expect thoughtlessness
and non-professionalism.
4 • ArchBang (by Roger Brown on 2020-11-23 03:14:20 GMT from Australia)
Oddly enough I have found the Zen installer, as found here, https://sourceforge.net/projects/revenge-installer/ to work perfectly reliably as an Arch installer. I've used it a number of times with success.
But it isn't necessarily designed as a turnkey installer - like the standard Arch installer, it assumes you want to build up and configure your system yourself.
So maybe the ArchBang folks are trying to make it do something for which it wasn't designed,
5 • Secure Boot is a boot in the ssa!!! (by tom joad on 2020-11-23 03:31:17 GMT from Germany)
I wish you would have included another option, "Why the Hell do we have to deal with this MS 'stuff?'"
Secure Boot is simply more MS deviltry unleashed on the unsuspecting gentle folks who are just trying to get stuff done.I honestly stay away from anything MS as best I can. Under Oath in Court I couldn't attest to what Secure Boot is and what it is supposed to do other than to create havoc far and wide in a world with way to much havoc now. I don't want or need to be protected from every computer boogy man these computer whiz bang fools believes is 'out there.' The boogy man rarely, if ever, bothers me.
Fact is, I mess more stuff up than the boogy man ever did.
Secure Boot isn't the solution...It, and MS, is the problem. CMOS I understand; Secure Boot not at all or do I want to.
6 • secure boot (by Dave on 2020-11-23 04:04:22 GMT from United States)
My H P computer came with secure boot as default. It is has to be on to run windows 10.Its not just m s anymore.
7 • Secure Boot (by vern on 2020-11-23 04:53:34 GMT from United States)
@6. Windows came on my Acer desktop. I've re-installed Windows several times since then. Always have Secure Boot turned off. For a while I thought it was necessary or Windows couldn't run. It run perfectly along side Linux,
8 • Secure Boot is not too secure... (by Bobbie Sellers on 2020-11-23 04:57:38 GMT from United States)
Well it is not secure when you cannot use it with your own choice of Operating System,
This is another Microsoft attempt at forcing other systems off of the hardware. It it was a truely secure boot you should be able to enter a BIOS command to generate one's own unique key.
But I update my kernel(s) fairly often so that would have to confirmed with the BIOS tool which is a step I would happily forgo,
bliss - “Nearly any fool can use a computer. Many do.” After all here I am...
~]$ inxi -SCGxxx
System: Host: bliss.box Kernel: 5.9.4-pclos1 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.20.3 tk: Qt 5.15.2 wm: kwin_x11 dm: SDDM
Distro: PCLinuxOS 2020 CPU: Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-4800MQ bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Haswell rev: 3 L2 cache: 6144 KiB
Speed: 1189 MHz min/max: 800/3700 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1134 2: 1510 3: 1349 4: 829 5: 805 6: 902 7: 8018: 1699
Graphics: Device-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:0416 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:6606
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: intel,radeon,
resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz s-dpi: 96
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2) v: 4.5
Mesa 20.2.2 compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes
9 • Archbang latest release (by Saleem Khan on 2020-11-23 05:00:25 GMT from Pakistan)
I installed Archbang with the recently released i3 version ISO in RC stage and everything worked perfectly . Zen installer on Archbang is a borrowed installer from Zen Installer ISO and it has always worked when I used it to install Arch Linux. Archbang's text based installer will install any live Arch based ISO made with archiso , I have tested it countless times . It only fails to install Manjaro Linux ISO files .
10 • Swappiness misinformation (by Head_on_a_Stick on 2020-11-23 06:01:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
@Jesse: vm.swappiness does *not* dictate "how likely Linux is to move information into swap space" — the value changes the balance between swapping out file cache pages in favour of anonymous pages. Changing the value will not change the point at which swap space is used, contrary to the popular myth.
See https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/88693/why-is-swappiness-set-to-60-by-default for a full explanation.
11 • Purism Librem 5 (by Andrew on 2020-11-23 06:02:58 GMT from Spain)
"Purism launches mass production units of Librem 5", I hope that means the software and battery life is finally in well shape.
12 • :) (by Any on 2020-11-23 07:51:31 GMT from Spain)
At first I thought Jesse had seen screens with scary and severe not novice friendly messages during the installation but then I realized it was a typo. At the end of the reading I saw it was a subconscious warning for what was coming :)
"... The first thing I discovered about the Zen Installer is it presents us with a serious of screens where..."
As of PinePhone - I wish there were easier ways of buying the products of Hard Kernel and Pine64.
13 • Generate own Secure-Boot keys (by whoKnows on 2020-11-23 08:42:28 GMT from Switzerland)
@5 • Secure Boot ... (by tom joad) & @8 • Secure Boot ... (by Bobbie Sellers)
You'll probably like to discover, that soon every AMD and Intel processor will come out with another feature called "Microsoft-Pluton-Controller as Root of Trust".
https://www.heise.de/news/CPU-Sicherheitsmodul-Pluton-Intel-verspricht-Wahlmoeglichkeit-4964528.html
As of: "If it was a truly secure boot you should be able to enter a BIOS command to generate one's own unique key."
It reminds me of @1 • Debian stonewalling alternate init work (by Andy Prough) and that constant crying about systemd.
Interesting pattern shows up - it's always kind of people who understands nothing about the matter and who probably never has any reason to deal with that kind of stuff, which are loudest in criticizing.
Of course, one can generate his or hers own secure boot keys.
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/take-control-your-pc-uefi-secure-boot
https://medium.com/@ruchirkhatri/uefi-secure-boot-taking-control-b7a7da4c422b
14 • Zen Installer (by OstroL on 2020-11-23 08:43:28 GMT from Poland)
If you are using Zen Installer, you can install pure Arch Linux quite easily with whatever DE you want. Additionally, you can add revenge repos for extra apps. Or, you can omit it. Once installed, Revenge/Zen won't interfere with anything, you have your Arch Linux install.
15 • Debian and D. Secure bull#*it (by Hank on 2020-11-23 09:48:21 GMT from Ukraine)
constant crying about systemd, decry is more to the point.
Since moving to a non systemD linux -- antiX I have an init which boots my system at least as fast as systemD.
It does not try to do more than that.
Does not create lunatic dependency chains, generate huge binary logfiles, try to take over my home.
cause shutdown lag or any other annoyance.
I have disabled secure boot. Nothing secure about it anyway. Just another try to handcuff users to MS,
rubbish system. Last weekend took more than 4 hours to update and broke my installation. I will not reinstall.
16 • secure boot (by James on 2020-11-23 11:24:01 GMT from United States)
I have a System 76 laptop, so use Core Boot, which is secure.
17 • firewall (by some random user on 2020-11-23 12:34:26 GMT from United States)
Also more than likely the user will find themselves behind a NAT router. NAT routers by default block incoming traffic from the outside (Internet).
18 • systemd (by Livestradamus on 2020-11-23 13:15:59 GMT from Saudi Arabia)
I use Slackware as well as OpenBSD and am not forced to constantly take a beating from systemd insane changes and overreaching requirements.
19 • swwppiness (by jesse on 2020-11-23 13:38:36 GMT from Canada)
@10 The linked article you shared about swappines does not contradict what I wrote. So I am not sure why you think what I shared is a "myth". The article you shared explains why swappiness works, but the affect is still as I described.
You can get more information on what swappiness is and a better explanation on how it works from the Red Hat documentation. https://access.redhat.com/solutions/103833
20 • Secure Boot (by cykodrone on 2020-11-23 14:12:37 GMT from Germany)
Oh hellz no! Do not use anything MS, haven't for a decade, yes, I know there are UEFI capable Linux distros, but meh, I'm old school, can't be bothered, tried it, didn't like it. Nobody wants to hack a nobody like me anyway. But, I do use the BIOS drive lock password, and MBR overwrite protection (every time grub changes, I have to BIOS OK its overwrite). I won't even let the fingerprint reader connect to its maker's server, or MS's servers (I turned it off), my fingerprint on a big bro NSA 'cloud' somewhere, umm, no, not gunna happen. Since there is original intellectual property on this machine, I should be using a home encrypting distro, but I'm just too damn lazy, and decrypting drains the battery (the actual IP files are encrypted). I occasionally run antivirus and rootkit sniffers. That's 'force of habit' paranoia left over from my MS days. Over the years, I think I may have received a few shady links/files, but they were quickly spotted, and sent to digital purgatory. The only real problems I've had, were caused by me, tinkering and hacking schiz, which resulted in re-installs, whoopee.
Juzz my 2% of a dollah.
21 • About i3 (by GTC on 2020-11-23 14:21:22 GMT from France)
As Jesse said, tiling window managers are best for some type of use. But there is some misleading information here. It is not that you would use windows that shrinks or focus only on one application, rather you should make heavy use of workspaces. Also, very useful to have a multi-monitor setup. You then can make those windows fit your needed size. The idea behind tiling is to get the most real space from your desktop. Again, is a paradigm you need to get use to in order to get the most out of it. For those of us who grew using floating windows, may look like: "why on earth would I use tiling?" But I appreciate there are those options available.
22 • Debian and inits (by cykodrone on 2020-11-23 14:42:04 GMT from Germany)
I told ya so, even way back to when Debian voted to go with cancerd. Systemd is a buggy, bloated mess, that's become bully-ware. Again, for the millionth time, if Len P. wanted to have his own distro, why didn't he just write one? Instead of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' almost every other distro, remember the ear worm scene in Star Trek, yeah, like that, that's cancerd, so far. Even my all time foss hero and 'god' Linus got fed up with them, asking for unproven, buggy, insane patches to be spliced in to the kernel itself. That drama was well documented, long before this ancient stalwart distro's (Debian, Ian is spinning in his grave) demise, via an invasive init species.
23 • Archbang (by babu on 2020-11-23 14:46:17 GMT from Belgium)
Sorry to read that Jesse had so many problems with Archbang. My experience is just the opposite ...
Archbang live iso is the best live iso one can find on the internet. And its maintainer Mr Green is the kindest guy one can meet. Always ready to solve all your Archbang questions.
My main system runs Archbang. I installed it over six years ago and still no big problems. The only time I got into trouble was when Arch changed the /bin system.
Did a full install (abinstall) on HD and usb-sticks more than 10 times. Got only one time problems with installing grub but could solve them by installing grub manually.
Would like to invite some gentlemen to try the iso and then to install themselves Archbang. Archbang is not a 'mess'(2) but a very nice working Linux distro. Also wondering why the "release numbering system" would mean "thoughtlessness and non-professionalism"(3). (Sans rancune ...)
Archbang is in my eyes the easiest way to have a pure Arch system.
24 • @13 - crying about systemd (by Andy Prough on 2020-11-23 14:54:44 GMT from United States)
It's really amusing how anyone that brings up the subject of init systems gets attacked by the Poettering crowd as "crying about systemd". I have systemd installed, I simply choose not to use it as MX gives me the option of booting to sysvinit instead and it is more stable and performs better. That's what init freedom is all about, users need choices. Other MX users boot with systemd and it works better for their system, more power to them.
But fewer distros will have init system options if Debian suffocates alternative work, which makes the Devuan project critically important. As I said, our money, time and resources need to be used to support Devuan, it's absolutely vital.
25 • RE: 3, 23 ArchBang versioning system (by ladislav on 2020-11-23 15:24:06 GMT from Taiwan)
There is a reason why most software developers use unique, incremental version numbers (or unique code names) for each of their releases. They help to organise the releases in a logical way and assure that you can find any of the release, even an old one.
ArchBang, by contrast, uses a date-based versioning system (DDMM) without the year digits. This is clearly not unique - it may already exist and may be repeated again in the future. In fact, it has happened already. ArchBang produces new releases frequently, sometimes several times a week, so chances of that happening are not insignificant. It may not matter to the developer or to any user who always uses the latest version, but it does matter to us at DistroWatch as we are trying to keep things logical and organised. The Linux distribution world is an enormous mess as it is and a versioning system that uses non-unique version numbers just ads to the confusion. It's not the end of the world, but we do not like it.
Another example of an unusual (and troublesome for us) versioning system is used by the Ubuntu-based Feren OS project. Actually, they do not use version numbers at all and every time they release a new version, they just overwrite the old file. As you can imagine, it's hard to keep track of such projects.
There are also versioning systems that go into the other extreme. I remember how, a few years ago, the developer of SQLite decided to change the versioning system from the (more or less) standard X.X.X (e.g. 3.25.1) to something like XXXXXXX (e.g 3250001). The reason for this change was that the FTP servers were unable to list the files in chronological order if he used the former versioning system (e.g a version number 3.9.0 would end up below 3.25.0, even though it was released earlier). On the website he continues giving SQLite the standard 3.25.1 number, but on the FTP server the file is listed as 3250001. This can of course cause a separate type of confusion, but it is not as bad as using non-unique version numbers or no version numbers at all.
From our perspective, version numbers of any software should be unique. With ArchBang and Feren OS we don't get that and this creates some difficulty for us in keeping the information on DistroWatch correct, logical and organised.
26 • Swappiness (by Head_on_a_Stick on 2020-11-23 17:11:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
@jesse: did you read the note on the RedHat documentation to which you have linked? It clearly states that swap_tendency is no longer a tunable parameter. Once more: vm.swapipiness does *not* cause the system to use swap more or less readily, it only influences how the swap space is used.
This Arch forums thread goes into a bit more detail: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=231265
27 • swappiness (by Jesse on 2020-11-23 17:42:44 GMT from Canada)
@28: Yes, of course I read the documentation I linked to. While the exact calculations have changed over versions of the kernel, the behaviour still works out to be the same.
Again, we're stating the same thing, you're just explaining how it works while I'm explaining the effect. It would be like if I said "Push the gas pedal to make the car go faster," and you said "No, that's a myth! Pushing the gas pedal just sends more fuel to the engine." Exactly, which makes the car speed up, which was my point.
You can read the documentation for RHEL 7 which explains it again for more modern versions of the distro: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/3383811
in particular: "The value of /proc/sys/vm/swappiness dictates how 'aggressively' the Linux kernel will swap memory pages."
You don't have to take my word or Red Hat's word for it though. You can read what the kernel developers said about it right from the literal source: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v5.0/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt#L809
"swappiness - This control is used to define how aggressive the kernel will swap
memory pages. Higher values will increase aggressiveness, lower values
decrease the amount of swap. A value of 0 instructs the kernel not to
initiate swap until the amount of free and file-backed pages is less
than the high water mark in a zone."
28 • Another Arch based system (by Archiso on 2020-11-23 17:42:45 GMT from United States)
After reading the review of Archbang, I thought I would mention the ezarch project. It is an Arch based system with purely Arch repos and two installation methods: calamares and custom bash scripts available in the live user's home folder.
https://osdn.net/projects/ezarch/releases/73969
29 • PinePhone KDE (by dogma on 2020-11-23 19:21:12 GMT from United States)
So far people seem down on the state of KDE on the PinePhone, so if you buy the KDE CE, don’t hesitate to flash other distributions onto it if you’re disappointed.
30 • Purism is as always being shady with the Librem 5 (by dogma on 2020-11-23 19:25:42 GMT from United States)
They claimed they were shipping Evergreen to the "early adopters", but if you thought that so-called "early adopter" included the earliest ordinary people who made their preorders back in 2017 or whenever, you would be wrong.
31 • I do not use Secure Boot (by Roger on 2020-11-23 19:31:46 GMT from Belgium)
My answer is I do not use Secure Boot, and I don't care about it.
It's one of the first things that is being switched of.
32 • Swappiness (by Head_on_a_Stick on 2020-11-23 19:43:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
@jesse: that kernel documentation doesn't support your claim that vm.swappiness changes the point at which the kernel decides to start using swap.
But I'm bored of this argument now so I'll stop. Hopefully everybody else will try reading the Arch forums thread to which I linked (which supports my argument).
33 • Swappiness (by cor on 2020-11-23 23:54:25 GMT from United States)
There is a reference to a Swappiness article from 7 years, 2 months ago. The following link about Swappiness actions is a bit different from the older article. From Red Hat, updated January 10, 2020. https://access.redhat.com/solutions/103833
34 • secure boot (by Steve L. on 2020-11-24 01:33:43 GMT from United States)
I bought a laptop about a year ago that came with win10 and secure boot...
...someday (sooner rather than later) I will dump win10 for one of the BSD's or PCLinuxOS. I just want to image the drive before I purge it and I don't have the hardware to pull that off (yet). Since I currently only use it for limited browsing and it sits on wireless and outside my protected network I don't care (so much) about win10 and it's pervasive telemetry.
Once I get a real OS on the box and disable that secure boot crap it will be allowed inside my network.
35 • init tinfoil hat time (by cykodrone on 2020-11-24 01:40:15 GMT from Germany)
I highly recommend nuking a bag of popcorn before reading this. Systemd was written by a RH employee, who have/had large government contracts (yeah yeah, I know it's GPL, blah blah, big deal, who cares). An init is supposed to stop/start services/processes, and basically boot the OS. Why would an init need networking? Unless it wanted to 'phone' somewhere? If I'm not mistaken, now it has control over the file systems on your machine, excuse me?! It's just one intrusive new 'feature' after another. How long before systemd becomes the actual kernel, now THAT is a scary campfire story (for geeks, lol). Why was it so heavily pushed, and if one was skeptical, they were attacked relentlessly (much like trolls from the orange politician's cult camp). Think about it, the gov wants to have their fingers, eyes, and ears in EVERYTHING, could it be trojand [i]is[/i] actually a (Linux ecosystem) 'trojan'?
Sorry for the rant, DW sirs, but this one piece of software has been a BLOB of contention since day one, and just not worth the headaches, paranoia, bandwidth, etc, etc. KISS is a basic rule of FOSS, I'll stick with sleek, stable, and flexible, thank you very much. I'm just a humble domestic PC/laptop user, and don't use systemd, if I ever had the need to run a server, it would be the LAST init I would use, or any Borg OS it has assimilated.
Here's another thing that keeps server IT people up at night, RH being swallowed up by a giant (hostile and friendly takeovers happen all the time), and systemd becomes proprietary, essentially freezing at its last GPL release. Oopsy. The possibilities are endless. AFAIAC, throw a burlap sack over the medusa head of this frankenware...
36 • Sabayon, MoccacinoOS News (by Hoos on 2020-11-24 06:14:24 GMT from Singapore)
So Sabayon in its current form is coming to an end. Sigh.
Since it's not my main distro, I'll just let the development of Moccacino play out and test the migration when (if?) the upgrade/migration path is announced to be ready.
If it works and I like the new distro, fine. If not, I'll just say goodbye to my long running Sabayon partition. Oh well.
37 • RE 25 : archbang (by joji on 2020-11-24 08:04:00 GMT from Belgium)
Thank you for kind comments.
Understand your point of view. But as you write "It may not matter to the developer or to any user who always uses the latest version"
Have a nice day!
38 • Community decided (by whoKnows on 2020-11-24 09:13:23 GMT from Switzerland)
@15 • Debian and D. Secure bull#*it (by Hank)
"Since moving to a non systemD linux -- antiX I have an init which boots my system ..."
It is not init that boosts your system - it's the primitive WM.
Try installing Win 98 on your brand-new HW - it boots quicker than Win10 with "quick boot".
"Last weekend took more than 4 hours to update and broke my installation. I will not reinstall."
Hundreds of systems here and for years - no broken installations yet.
Everything has to be learned.
@20 • Secure Boot (by cykodrone)
"Oh hellz no! Do not use anything MS [...] I won't even let [...] my fingerprint on a big bro NSA 'cloud' somewhere, umm, no, not gunna happen. Since there is original intellectual property on this machine, I should be using a home encrypting distro ..."
Complete nonsense by someone paranoid.
Last time I was in Canada, I wanted to go to U.S. for a couple of hours. I was allowed to enter, as soon as they took my fingerprints and made the retina scan, and put them on the NSA server. So yeah ...
"Intellectual property"? You mean something produced by the intellectual, that I'll anyway publish in my next book, has to be well hidden from the NSA? Does this make any sense?
@22 • Debian and inits (by cykodrone)
"I told ya so, even way back to when Debian voted to go with cancerd. Systemd is a buggy, bloated mess, that's become bully-ware. Again, for the millionth time, if Len P. wanted to have his own distro, why didn't he just write one?"
It's not Len P.'s mistake, but yours - you don't want to accept the facts, you don't want to learn and you choose systemd ... if you consider yourself a part of Linux "community".
"Plus, Linux distributions aren’t blindly following Red Hat; they’re adopting systemd after serious deliberation. The debate raged on the Debian mailing lists for a long time. However, in 2014, the community voted to adopt systemd as the default init system, but to also support alternatives."
https://www.howtogeek.com/675569/why-linuxs-systemd-is-still-divisive-after-all-these-years/
@24 • @13 - crying about systemd (by Andy Prough)
"It's really amusing how anyone that brings up the subject of init systems gets attacked by the Poettering crowd as "crying about systemd"."
Who did attack you? Is anybody forcing you to use systemd? Then why do you even mention it?
The simple fact is, that the systemd is overall better.
"systemd:
- Fast boot time, mainly achieved due to starting services in parallell. This can also be achieved with SystemV init, but has to be done manually, while it is a product of dependency handling on systemd.
- Automatic dependency handling.
- Monitoring of started services with the ability to restart crashed services.
- Modules written in compiled languages, probably hard to debug.
- Tries to replace several system services, from the actual init over hardware recognition and session management to the logging service, and many more. Not the Unix way.
SystemV:
- Boot time depends on the admins optimizations.
- Due to its static dependency handling relies on a knowledgeable admin. Decide for yourself if you count that as advantage or not.
- Needs often some hacks to monitor services, services can easily escape the monitoring.
- Written as Shell scripts, so easy to debug and alter if necessary.
- Minimal approach, doesn't try to be the one super-service running the system."
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/what-are-the-advantages-disadvantages-of-using-systemd-versus-sysvinit-4175422544/
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Comparison_of_init_systems
It's your good right to reject it or to adopt it - and if you have any need to ever deal with some logs or services, systemd is not a disadvantage, but advantage. All it takes is to learn oh how to use it.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5877/what-are-the-pros-cons-of-upstart-and-systemd
@31 • I do not use Secure Boot (by Roger)
@34 • secure boot (by Steve L.)
"My answer is I do not use Secure Boot, and I don't care about it.
It's one of the first things that is being switched of."
... is fine, as long as it still can be switched off, however that's soon gonna change - for better or for worse... Until then, it's your personal choice.
@35 • init tinfoil hat time (by cykodrone)
"Why would an init need networking?"
Performance and manageability?
https://kernelmastery.com/systemd-vs-sysvinit/
"Networkd is particular useful with statically configured networks. Very powerful syntax lets the admin configure the network to match existing environmental conditions – for example, on the basis of the properties of the physical network devices, the server architecture, or the virtualization type."
https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2014/166/systemd-networkd
https://sudonull.com/post/78611-Advantages-of-systemd-networkd-on-Linux-virtual-servers-RUVDScom-blog
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/13ao4r/benefits_of_systemd/
39 • @38 Wall of text that misses the point (by curious on 2020-11-24 10:18:43 GMT from Germany)
Nobody needs yet another rehash of why some people think systemd is great. The decision by certain parties to adopt it - or to reject it - is now years old, and the arguments, whether true or false, are by now all known. Repeating them will not convince anybody - and blanket statements like "The simple fact is, that the systemd is overall better" will not either.
But that is not what is currently the problem. The current problem is that certain people at Debian are now *disregarding* how the community voted (OTOH Debian focuses on systemd but allows people to support other inits) and are taking away the possibility for others to support other init systems. In effect, some package maintainers are taking away the choice that the Debian community voted to keep available - even if others have already done the work.
Also, please don't confuse the Debian community (which voted on these things) with some kind of artificial "Linux community". Linux without systemd is also Linux.
And if you don't understand what IP ("intellectual property") actually means (e.g. inventions, trade secrets, patents etc.), don't comment on it, especially not in a derogatory fashion.
40 • @38: (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-24 12:29:01 GMT from United States)
Nice links. Are they persuasive? Who knows? The wonderful thing about the Internet is that one can find articles and pronouncements to support ANY point of view, even diametrically opposite ones. Anyone can post an opinion and he'll find those that agree with him.
41 • Missing the point (systemd and software freedom) (by cykodrone on 2020-11-24 13:22:32 GMT from Germany)
I left MS products because of the very situation systemd is causing, spoiled brat-ware that expects the rest of the world to conform to it. The beauty of Linux (it's actually just the kernel, distros are built on top of it), and the lovely distros that sprang from it (which were endlessly praised back in the day), is that applications and programs (are supposed to) run INDEPENDENT of the kernel, and/or low level system services, such as systemd. This was a major fatal flaw in many MS products (like so heavily ingraining a web browser in to the OS, removing it literally BROKE the 'host' OS, *cough Internet Exploder cough*). Trojan and virus writers knew this, and exploited it, to the max, penetration through garbage software that has/had unnecessary access to 'under-the-hood' level system processes and services.
Anti systemd people are not anti progress, they're anti being forced to use software that forces 3rd party developers to 'Animal Farm' relent in the software space, and literally alter their creations for the whims of (a few) others. That's not freedom. It's not our fault some petulant RH employee decided everybody else had/has to cater to his perpetual beta massive blob of octopus like OS intrusion. If I wanted a blob inside my PC, I'd just make a 5 gallon pail of green jello, open my PC's case, and dump it in.
I don't know how many ways I can put this, but systemd is like one of those HUGE MS secretive 'service-packs', that breaks half the software (you paid big bucks for) on your machine, and (extra, secretly) installs lord knows what. We never did get clear explanations as to why it SELECTIVELY (consistency is more reassuring, and far less suspicious) creates non-human-readable log files, etc.
If you don't try to fit in, in society, or in a software ecosystem, and insist on having your way, YOU are the bully, end of.
I want those nice creations other developers have made (to run on any distro, like they used to, even the BSDs), in this case, the many are worth more than the 'one'. Fit in, or take a hike.
@38 So you are saying you never disconnect from the internet while working on hyper secret material? The NSA are the least of my worries, blackhats are the curious, malicious, and greedy (do you know what white/grey/blackhats are?). Even if the NSA or some blackhat stole my file(s), it would literally take decades to decrypt them, good luck with that, and I'll probably be dead by then, so... . After something is published (your example, not a confirmation of what I do), it's already available for sale, IP theft post publication is a fact of life. The mere fact I have to explain any of this to you...don't you have something to 'thumb up' on Fakenewsbook?
42 • Meme boot (by Cheker on 2020-11-24 14:20:24 GMT from Portugal)
Secure boot is a Microsoft meme meant to further lock down the hardware you bought, own and are supposed to do whatever the hell you want with.
43 • SystemD (by Cynic on 2020-11-24 15:45:01 GMT from Ghana)
SystemD has potential.. but so do most other beta projects.
The hate isn't needed.. although I avoid all SystemD based OS's out of preference, it is not because SystemD is just something "I don't like", but rather because it serves to further complicate the already complex system inherently found in an OS.
It is not very suitable for servers, as well as it's counterpart, NetworkManager. Despite everyone being aware of the issues it has with advanced networking and bridging, and RedHat even stating that NetworkManager should be disabled if doing such routing.. they still include it as a core component of the OS - leaving admins to figure out how to disable and work around it on a server/enterprise centered system.
SystemD should have been parked to a "testing" branch of Debian or whatever until the bugs were worked out. It's supposed to be all inclusive but it is not. The tendrils it has in all aspects of the OS's it's wired into also scare me as it feels more like a "serpentine" belt in a car rather than separate belts for separate things.
As a matter of preference, I'll stick to sysvinit till SystemD is considered stable by those who know better than I (namely Linus Torvalds and Patrick Volkerding).
My two cents.
44 • Who is missing which point? (by whoKnows on 2020-11-24 16:23:49 GMT from Switzerland)
@39 • @38 Wall of text that misses the point (by curious)
The problem here is the context of the sentence @20 and not understanding of IP.
"Since there is original intellectual property on this machine, I should be using a home encrypting distro, but I'm just too damn lazy, and decrypting drains the battery (the actual IP files are encrypted)."
The IP is a series of photographs or a story that'll be soon published, as well as a new car engine or the next generation nuclear weapon.
I don't see the big problem if the first group is stored on OneDrive. The second group will never be on a machine with internet access and also not without a physical access control or even armed guards.
As of the rest, what did you expect that is going to happen? There's nothing bad if the old init disappears at some point in time - it was to be expected.
That's how capitalism works - big fish swallows the small and that's not bad - that's simple reality and just how systemd itself will be replaced for yet another init system.
This is a kind of no problem problem. It will not kill "the diversity".
@40 • @38: (by dragonmouth)
The thing here is pretty clear and very well known.
There is "be right" and there is "get right". There's no guarantee that you'll get right because you are right, right? Remember "Eppur si muove"? The majority will usually get right - and the majority voted in our example. For good or for bad.
And yes, there will always be some who do not agree ... just another day on Earth.
@41 • Missing the point (systemd and software freedom) (by cykodrone)
To make it clear - I don't mind your view, nor do I care if you are for or against systemd, but I care for your logic - which just doesn't work.
The point is, that's all only your opinion and the opinion of the minority. The majority decided for systemd and were not forced by anybody; even less by "some petulant RH employee".
The employee just had an idea (IP) and developed something, but all the others didn't accept it without having a good reason. And exactly at that point, we get the problem. Who knows better? The majority or the minority? I just explained it, a couple of seconds ago ("Eppur si muove") ...
So yeah, if you like it or not, the world is moving forward and tomorrow is another day ... another product ... It's like evolution ... something new comes and replaces previous, and it itself also gets replaced at some future point in time.
As of "human non-readable" systemd log files and "Trojan and virus writers" and MS ...
Trojan and virus writers would write (and they do it - in rare cases) exploits for Linux with or without systemd. Linux is in no way more secure, but the exact opposite is truth.
And if you want to read the journal, you just need a different approach to it ...
https://coreos.com/os/docs/latest/reading-the-system-log.html
"So you are saying you never disconnect from the internet while working on hyper secret material?"
I'm saying that I never connect to the internet or that it doesn't really matter - depending on the sort of IP - IP is relative and it wasn't exactly specified.
45 • SystemD (by Otis on 2020-11-24 16:40:16 GMT from United States)
@45 "SystemD should have been parked to a "testing" branch of Debian or whatever until the bugs were worked out."
Insightful in its simplicity. I agree.. and love the other insight embedded/barnacled to it: "We'd then have a choice as to whether or not we wanted to participate in the bug reporting/developing of that init system."
Of course we do have that choice if we hunt down and find a non-systemd distro (or BSD) we like.. having first looked at our beloved Debian (and now a host of other distros we loved pre-systemd) then backed away to begin said hunt.
46 • @46 expect (or not) (by curious on 2020-11-24 17:02:17 GMT from Germany)
"As of the rest, what did you expect that is going to happen?"
What one should be able to expect is that people with responsibility in Debian (e.g. package maintainers) follow the decisions of the Debian community. Which is NOT capitalism, by the way.
As the systemd supporters constantly repeat, Debian voted on its init policies, and one should accept the outcome of that vote. But now it seems, that that only applies to the people disliking systemd - its supporters may ignore the result, because "thats how capitalism works" (or whatever other excuse).
47 • whoCares (by whoKnows on 2020-11-24 17:45:16 GMT from Switzerland)
@46 • @46 expect (or not) (by curious)
But you saw that "evolution" part too, didn't you?
And now think of @45:
"Of course we do have that choice if we hunt down and find a non-systemd distro (or BSD) we like... having first looked at our beloved Debian (and now a host of other distros we loved pre-systemd) then backed away to begin said hunt."
1. Why you should "have a choice" for granted?
The whole Linux is controlled and produced by and from big companies for the big companies - nobody cares for you or for me.
2. Ask yourself why the majority is using what they are using, be it Windows or systemd. Why don't we have a choice? Why people all choose the same "bad" (in your opinion)?
Are they all simply stupid? Are they taking something that is worse?
It's obvious that they decided to use what is better - for them.
Now, if the majority decides to use something that's bad, they are still the majority, and they'll get right - that's the way to go.
If they are all stupid ... see the previous sentence and remember "Eppour si mouve".
Think of systemd as of Russian Revolution. Lenin didn't make the revolution on its own. He just tried to "sell the product". The majority bought it.
If all the people thought of it as a "wrong thing to do" at the given moment, they wouldn't have done it.
The outcome is irrelevant - it's the evolutionary process.
The time will tell.
48 • @41 cykodrone: (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-24 17:54:09 GMT from United States)
"Anti systemd people are not anti progress"
Depends what kind of progress you are talking about.
The debate whether systemd is technological progress has been going on since it came out.
If you are referring to systemd's progress towards world domination, then yes. anti-systemd people ARE against progress. :-)
49 • @44: (by dragonmoputh on 2020-11-24 18:10:56 GMT from United States)
"The majority decided for systemd"
Just as the majority decides to perpetuate the Politburo.
"Who knows better? The majority or the minority?"
Even if a hundred million people say the wrong thins, it is till wrong. Unless you subscribe to Joseph Goebbels' statement that if a lie is repeated often enough, people will start to believe it.
"
If all the people thought of it as a "wrong thing to do" at the given moment, they wouldn't have done it."
Once they found out it was the "wrong thing to do" it was too late. They had no more choice in the matter. One liked it or one was cancelled.
50 • NO to social darwinism (by curious on 2020-11-24 18:20:48 GMT from Germany)
Once more:
If a "democratically run" community project (NOT run by a big company, as you know) decides by vote to not prevent choice, anyone should be able to take that result for granted, at least until the next vote on the subject.
That has nothing to do with evolution, big companies, good, bad or stupid. It only has to do with certain Debian people being hypocrites.
On point 2:
"why the majority is using what they are using, be it Windows or systemd. Why don't we have a choice? Why people all choose the same "bad" (in your opinion)? Are they all simply stupid? Are they taking something that is worse? It's obvious that they decided to use what is better - for them."
I did not state which choice is good or bad. Don't put words in my mouth.
And it is quite likely that people DO take something that is (even for them) "worse", simply because it is easily available while any alternative is not:
In most cases, if one buys a computer, one has Windows. That is not a conscious decision FOR Windows, but just for getting a computer. So why make the effort to get another operating system? Same with systemd. Most large or easy to use distros have systemd. That people use them is not a conscious decision FOR systemd - more like "I don't care". You may even call that stupid, if you like.
Final point: Darwins theory of evolution applies to biology. Any other use of this "evolution" is speculative at best, possibly even dangerous.
51 • Next DW poll suggestion (by cykodrone on 2020-11-24 19:03:57 GMT from Germany)
Is systemd's vanilla-izing Linux (so-called cross distro compatibility, this is a major claim of the pro camp, so Borg) worth de-modularization of 3rd party software (difficulty porting, once it's infested with systemd compatibility code).
This problem can be solved by 3rd party apps and software not dragging in systemd as a 'dependency'. That's a Faustian bargain with RH by proxy. I'm not Faust, and I don't want any 'bargains'.
Now if they simplified systemd, and made it COMPLETELY transparent, and maybe put it on a crash diet ('she's' a big girl right now)...
These are just question ideas, I'm not the poll writer.
@whoKnows, you're still trying to phish/troll what I have, do, etc. Sorry bro (assuming you're male), you'll just have to wait. ;D Oh, and I've NEVER used a 'cloud' service, EVER. While my passwords are insanely strong, and each one different, and NONE are written down...no, just no, I point you to all the celebrity compromising photos hacks, etc. I trust remote storage as much as I trust systemd. xD
52 • Who says? (by whoKnows on 2020-11-24 19:04:34 GMT from Switzerland)
@49 • @44: (by dragonmouth)
Yup - you are right - that's exactly what I told you by "Eppur si mouve".
Burn, my dear Galileo.
It helps nothing to be right, but you can't take yourself that right - since you didn't persuade the majority which was wrong, you burn ... for good or for bad.
@50 • NO to social darwinism (by curious)
It doesn't help if you try to think - it's lost time if you can't.
You misunderstood my post completely.
That HAS something to do with evolution - the better/stronger one survives! That's why, your favorite init is soon no more, whatever your preferred init is - except if it is systemd.
However, there will come another, better one after it ...
Nothing is forever, only some things stay around for too long, like 32-bit and such.
On point 2, you also misunderstood me.
The point here is that your opinion doesn't matter - be it right or wrong.
I didn't try to put you anything in the mouth, but to explain to you that your opinion --> you are irrelevant.
"And it is quite likely that people DO take something that is (even for them) "worse", simply because it is easily available while any alternative is not: [...]"
False.
"In most cases, if one buys a computer, one has Windows. That is not a conscious decision FOR Windows, but just for getting a computer. So why make the effort to get another [FAR WORSE!!] operating system?"
People DO NOT CARE for the OS, so why should they replace THE BETTER OS, just to get the worse one, if they don't care for the OS??
They want their applications to run, and they don't run, if they use Linux.
And besides, Windows is by far better than Linux in every possible way (except as a server) and the only minus point is the privacy issue.
The only positive side of Linux is less privacy issues (which is again not a plus, but minus for most of its users!) and ... not one usable Distro OOTB, no SW, HW support incomplete ...
"Most large or easy to use distros have systemd" because it was a better choice!
"Final point: Darwin's theory of evolution applies to biology. Any other use of this "evolution" is speculative at best, possibly even dangerous."
You are witnessing it in IT too. It's up to you to close your eyes.
Or you stop unchecking that "Send us your telemetry data" checkmark and you maybe get a better Linux one day - if IBM or Canonical or ... decide you deserve it.
But that's very unlikely as of a moment - every try to make a good product ended up in "Community" undermining it.
Remember Unity and Amazon in Ubuntu 14.04?
The best Linux up to date, killed by the community.
53 • Debian/Systemd: Elephant in the room... (by SquareRootSquared on 2020-11-24 19:46:00 GMT from United States)
As everyone knew, the situation would come to pass that Debian would bow down to their Globalist masters and turn Debian/GNU/Linux into Debian/Systemd++. Forget user choice, there is no choice - their Globalist masters own them. Systemd is being forced on as many Linux users as possible. Why?
54 • Been a while since we had a good systemd flame war (by CS on 2020-11-24 20:31:50 GMT from United States)
Maintainers don't want to waste their time supporting legacy init system hardly anyone uses? That's not stonewalling that's just common sense.
Debian's weak leadership is putting package maintainers in a difficult spot. Maintainers are tired of paying the anti-systemd troll tax after only a year, which does not bode well for the future.
It's time for Debian to cut bait with the "choose your own init" strategy, since many scenarios will only work with systemd, who is going to take a chance on anything else?
55 • systemd (by Otis on 2020-11-24 21:29:14 GMT from United States)
@52 hey amigo you're waaaaay over-thinking this, superimposing political history (of Russia? omg) over the issue of Debian/systemd. i agree with the person above who said that systemd should have been a test lane for Debian. That's it.
But it's out there and it's spread like a disease, not like a breath of fresh air. Upsides to it are for some devs and corporations. Downsides feel intrusive.
'nuff said.
56 • systemd (by DaveT on 2020-11-25 01:01:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
@52: what can I say? systemd is not allowed in my house. OpenBSD and Devuan only. At work I make sure they too understand the vileness that is systemd - and so our servers still run linux with sysvinit. (they would be OpenBSD if I had my way, but we do what we can)
My desktop pc at work runs OpenBSD. Happiness.
Yours Eur.Ing. Sad Old Fart CEng CITP
57 • Secure Boot? No. (by Jeff on 2020-11-25 02:16:30 GMT from United States)
Secure boot is not compatible with undervolting the CPU, so I cannot use it even if I wanted to.
I do not use undervolting to save battery life or save electricity, I use it because it makes the CPU run cooler, which makes the CPU run faster since it does no thermal throttling. The CPU lasting longer is a nice side benefit.
58 • ArchBang (by Jeff on 2020-11-25 02:22:16 GMT from United States)
They should drop the Bang from the name now.
ArchBang was developed as an Arch based clone of CrunchBang.
CrunchBang was a Debian OpenBox distro.
By dropping OpenBox they have dropped the connection to CrunchBang so it is time for a new name.
59 • Systemd (by SquareRootSquared on 2020-11-25 05:40:08 GMT from United States)
@54: Maintainers are not wasting their time supporting other init systems, a very significant amount of users would use a different init system if only they were not being coerced into accepting systemd based software, I know I would. When everything desirable depends on systemd it's kind of hard not to use it - that's called coercion btw. And it's not desirable because of systemd, it's desirable in spite of systemd. Debian's weak leadership is putting the users in a difficult spot, not the maintainers. Many scenarios depend on systemd because? It's all about forcing everyone to use it - which brings us to the real question of why do they want so desperately for everyone to? Please don't say that it's because systemd is just so useful and wonderful, and makes everything so-o-o much easier, that's a bogus answer used for redirection. The real reason I suspect has to do with control.
60 • Charity Project (by whoKnows on 2020-11-25 06:49:24 GMT from Switzerland)
@59 • Systemd (by SquareRootSquared)
"It's all about forcing everyone to use it - which brings us to the real question of why do they want so desperately for everyone to? Please don't say that it's because systemd is just so useful and wonderful, and makes everything so-o-o much easier, that's a bogus answer used for redirection. The real reason I suspect has to do with control."
Wrong and false.
1. There is no forcing. Take systemd free or develop your own init.
2. systemd "is just so useful and wonderful, and makes everything so-o-o much easier" for a multibillion companies.
At the end of @38 is just one of many examples.
I'm repeating myself like the broken vinyl record - developed by the big companies and for the big companies - developed for themselves and for their own needs.
You are using the projects of those, whose products you reject.
Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle ...
You depend on Microsoft's ... goodwill.
"Funding for the Linux Foundation comes primarily from its Platinum Members ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation
61 • @60 - "big companies" (by Hoos on 2020-11-25 07:38:54 GMT from Singapore)
I believe the news article in DW that is being discussed is about the resolution that was voted on and passed by the Debian Community, and how some debian maintainers are not following the resolution agreed upon.
The article is not about systemd per se and its development/use by big companies or Redhat or other commercial linux enterprises. It is about packages in Debian and the approach Debian agreed to take regarding alternative inits.
The point that posts @39, @46 and a few others are trying to make is that with respect to the Debian community, the vote that passed was that even though systemd was default in Debian, "Debian remains an environment where developers and users can explore and develop alternate init systems and alternatives to systemd features."
The news article referred to complaints made by debian community members that certain debian maintainers/devs were now *disregarding* how the community voted and "are taking away the possibility for others to support other init systems. In effect, some package maintainers are taking away the choice that the Debian community voted to keep available - even if others have already done the work." (quoting @39).
So the focus of the discussion and article, which you are missing, is not whether systemd should be the default in Linux or even Debian generally (it already is), whether it's a better init than others, nor whether big business has developed systemd so it is already the Chosen One.
It is about Debian community members not keeping to what was agreed in their own community vote, and whether it is wrong for them to refuse to accept patches that will permit the usage of alternative inits with their packages, in addition to their current usage with systemd.
62 • Don't worry (by whoKnows on 2020-11-25 09:53:19 GMT from Switzerland)
@61 • @60 - "big companies" (by Hoos)
"So the focus of the discussion and article, which you are missing, is not whether systemd should be the default in Linux or even Debian generally (it already is), whether it's a better init than others, nor whether a big business has developed systemd so it is already the Chosen One.
It is about Debian community members not keeping to what was agreed in their own community vote, and whether it is wrong for them to refuse to accept patches that will permit the usage of alternative inits with their packages, in addition to their current usage with systemd."
Oh, don't worry, I did understand what it is about, I just choose to answer some posts which were more related to systemd than to the "politics" itself, because that what it is - politics.
You see, The Debian Project, The Document Foundation, The Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation ... The whatNot Foundation ... they are all reliant on funding.
I don't know how much you and the others here are regularly donating, but I know for sure that "The Open Source Foundation Community Projects Organization" wouldn't survive until tomorrow morning if it would rely on you - they all rely on the money of the big companies.
Those big companies also have more and more of their own people involved in "The Whatever Open Foundations" and, as the biggest donators, they also influence the decisions of all those Foundations overtime.
The rest is simple politics.
Today Party A is the stronger party and has the saying, tomorrow it will be the Party B.
Think of Steve Ballmer and "Linux is a cancer" and of MS as the biggest supporter of Linux World today.
At the time when they decided to introduce systemd, people agreed to support other inits too, but the time passed away and the experience shows us that the opinions change over time. It became obvious that even if that decision was done at some point in the past, it simply doesn't make much sense anymore, and why doesn't make much sense, you could read in some of my previous answers.
As I wrote in @44 - "That's how capitalism [and politics] works [...]".
63 • Debian=Systemd (by SquareRootSquared on 2020-11-26 07:20:04 GMT from United States)
@62: @60: So we agree that Debian no longer cares about it's average user, it only cares about the globalist corporate entities that give it lots of $$$ and blindly follows their lead, and consequently it follows that Debian users no longer have real choice or say in matters. Debian steering project direction primarily on what ever brings in more money is not what Debian used to be about, and I believe that doing so does not bring about great results for everyone. It hurts the users because shaping software to only maximize benefit for these globalist corporate masters is not in the interest of the users, none, zero. Sorry, but true. Perfect example.. systemd malware infecting everything it touches and many other examples. Downsizing many of these so called foundations and projects, using resulting less funds, focusing more limited efforts on what really matters to the users, and maybe development would slow down a little, but the results would be better for the community. At the rate things are going Debian will soon evaporate into the corporate ionosphere and will have to change its' name from Debian to Debsysian.
64 • The reality is real ... (by whoKnows on 2020-11-26 09:50:07 GMT from Switzerland)
@63 • Debian=Systemd (by SquareRootSquared)
... if one accepts it, or not. And the reality is hard to swallow sometimes.
We might accidentally come to the same conclusions sometimes, but we will never agree on anything because I can think and not a single of my posts was about the topic itself, but about the posters state of mind.
DISCLAIMER: This is extremely simplified view - a complete explanation would take a couple of hundreds of pages, so please keep that in mind!
I hate religion because the religion is a disease - it makes people believe whatever they believe and it makes them blind. However, it's absolutely normal that the people become religious - it's because they are not capable of more. That happens because of "Pareto Principle" in conjunction with the "Dunning-Kruger Effect".
The second important thing is the capitalism thing. Capitalism is a broken system, but all other systems before were even more broken and all other systems after it are utopia - completely impossible - because of us, the people, and the way how we think and behave.
As of Open Source in general or Debian in particular, the things are easy to explain and easy to understand - if one's not religious - understanding needs the open mind.
And what religion and capitalism has to do with Debian and systemd?
Most Open Source projects start as a hobby ("garage-project") and they evolve over time. Either they continue growing and become a product at some point, or they stay a project forever, or they collapse.
A successful project keeps getting improvements because of the hard work. To be able to work at all, one needs to fulfill some basic requirements - from having enough food, over having a place to live and enough 'toys' needed for the work, to making the holidays and relax, to recover the energy one needs to invest in work. All that costs money. One can't live on idealism.
Now, Debian and many other projects started as a "one man show" and evolved over time to become a company. A small project can be fully under control of one person, but at a certain point, it becomes too much. On that point, one needs further help (~ers). If it reaches the point of "The Foundation" (== company), it'll need "thinkers", "workers" etc., etc. Since you and me obviously can't fund the company, and since every company needs money to survive, some way of financing has to be insured. That's were IBM, MS and Co. come in.
However, nobody is just giving something to somebody for no reason - everybody expects something in return. If you give flowers to your partner, you expect it to be nice towards you (whatever you understand under "nice"). Same so, one IBM, MS and Co. expect something in return - they get free ideas from the "one man shows" that they can take and improve, which costs them much less than if they had to develop it on their own - it only costs them "silver membership".
And now comes the religious and says: "It hurts the users because shaping software to only maximize benefit for these globalist corporate masters is not in the interest of the users, none, zero."
The religious should actually be grateful that it gets whatever it gets - it gets a free operating system and free application that covers the most of his/hers needs, but no, that's not enough ... The religious even bitches against those big companies which are giving him something for nothing at all ("Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth") and even EXPECTS that they should care about "the interest of the users"! How sick is that??
The expectation of "the user" ("religious believer") and its inability to understand and accept the reality are here the only problem.
P.S.
Define "Debian users".
"Debian users no longer have real choice or say in matters" is false. "Debian users" is IBM, MS ... not you or me - and they get their choice.
"Debian [...] is not what Debian used to be" is an evolutionary process. You and I are also not what we used to be 50 years ago. We also got older and wiser during the past 50 years ... I hope at least.
"Downsizing many of these so called foundations and projects, using resulting less funds, focusing more limited efforts on what really matters to the users, and maybe development would slow down a little, but the results would be better for the community."
This is the exact reason why Linux never become a success - nobody has a total control and power to make one product out of it - like macOS or Windows.
This is the example for the "Diversity killed the cat".
Maybe that is better for you personally, and better for some other "believers", but it is generally the exact opposite of "better" for most. Thankfully, some people at Debian can think too.
*
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24539/dont-look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth
65 • consequences for Debian (by curious on 2020-11-26 11:26:33 GMT from Germany)
From the previous post (which is much too long - this is also a way of suppressing other voices), it follows that the Debian charter is meaningless and nobody needs to abide by the votes of the Debian community.
Thank you for clearing that up.
And thank you for insulting everybody who does not share your thought processes: "We might accidentally come to the same conclusions sometimes, but we will never agree on anything because I can think ..."
66 • Random (by Someone Knows on 2020-11-26 15:45:05 GMT from United States)
@63 ".. systemd malware infecting everything it touches and many other examples"
Funny my Systemd systems run perfectly or they run perfect malware perfectly :)
All my Systemd systems run the same as my non-Systemd systems.
So if I'm infected, that's great.
@64: "Most Open Source projects start as a hobby ("garage-project") and they evolve over time. Either they continue growing and become a product at some point, or they stay a project forever, or they collapse."
Apply and HP started out in a garage, and their not Open Source, but very Closed Source.
67 • Not only... (by whoKnows on 2020-11-26 16:00:28 GMT from Switzerland)
@66 • Random (by Someone Knows)
"Appl[e] and HP started out in a garage, and their not Open Source, but very Closed Source."
Truth, but irrelevant.
68 • Perfect whether systemd or not (by Otis on 2020-11-26 16:14:57 GMT from United States)
@66: "Funny my Systemd systems run perfectly or they run perfect malware perfectly :)
All my Systemd systems run the same as my non-Systemd systems."
That remark invites analogies to a lot of well-running malware and other evil things; I'm surprised anyone would go there.
69 • BSD and SystemD (by Otis on 2020-11-26 17:56:29 GMT from United States)
Mention (fear?) of FreeBSD heading toward systemd ("looking closely" at it) found its way into the conversation here. And the very first paragraph of the most prominent article about that which I could find (Hacker News) states:
"FreeBSD is looking closely at systemd. While it is agreed it isn't the right solution to the problem, it is also agreed it solves a problem that init scripts cannot solve. Systemd as is will not (for legal reasons) ever be in freebsd, but don't be surprised if FreeBSD writes their own semi-clone that does most of the same things and implements a good part of the interface. I suspect if debian will drop systemd for the freebsd replacement a few years after it is released."
My thinking goes in the direction of systemd as a disease in the open source community, so I feel disqualified to debate much about it. FreeBSD folks even THINKING about bringing that in feels a lot like it felt when it was first being seen in Debian (and then of course spreading to the myriad Debian forks/siblings/children/clones across the Linux landscape).
That quoted paragraph from Hacker News contains both a perceived threat and a bit of a walk-back, but that tells me that systemd is at the least being taken seriously by (some in) the BSD community, and worst as a plan to modify for BSD needs and present as an alternative for Debian and others in the Linux community.
70 • SysD (by Cheker on 2020-11-26 18:50:58 GMT from Portugal)
Personally systemd hasn't given me problems. I think if the BSD folks of all people are even looking at it, that means that there is *some* merit in there. And if you wanna take it one step further, I want you to think about the fact that there's at least one distro (Trisquel) approved by the FSF that has systemd as its init. Man, if the FSF of all entities is okay with systemd, it can't possibly be THAT bad. I do get the repudiation, I'm like that towards other technologies.
71 • "Evil" (systemd) (by whoKnows on 2020-11-26 19:07:42 GMT from Switzerland)
1. Not the technology is evil; only the people are.
2. Think of it logically: if the systemd would 'leak' your data (which wasn't proven by anybody), then we would also get the data of Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, NSA, Oracle ... even the Russian Secret Service approved Astra is using systemd.
3. There is a systemd for "them" and for "us" ... If this was the case (which wasn't proven by anybody), then - see 1.
72 • systemd and BSDs (by Jesse on 2020-11-26 19:14:26 GMT from Canada)
>> " I think if the BSD folks of all people are even looking at it, that means that there is *some* merit in there."
I think there is a misunderstanding here. The BSD communities did look at systemd, but mostly to find ways to work around it. An increasing amount of open source (primarily Linux) software now relies on systemd. The BSD community often needs to patch around this behaviour or create shims to trick Linux software into working on the BSDs.
The FreeBSD community has looked at another service manager called launchd. This is from macOS and is not the same as systemd. The launchd migration was eventually rejected, largely because it was too systemd-like. The FreeBSD community isn't interested in adopting systemd or similar software at this point.
Keep in mind the FreeBSD grew a fair amount from people leaving Linux when systemd become widely used. They know that adopting systemd, or a similar init system, would likely drive those new users and supporters away.
>> "Man, if the FSF of all entities is okay with systemd, it can't possibly be THAT bad"
The FSF doesn't care about the functionality of the software, only its license. Trisquel is endorsed because it contains no non-free software. The functionality of the software is not a factor in the endorsement.
73 • SecureBoot (by TheTKS on 2020-11-26 22:53:49 GMT from Canada)
SecureBoot is disabled on my Linux & Windows multiboot computer. That doesn't stop Windows from launching, via GRUB.
SecureBoot is disabled on my OpenBSD-only computer.
SecureBoot is enabled on all Windows-only computers here. It's the default, so I just left it. Is it actually more secure than if it were disabled? From what I read, it is for Windows-only computers, but I don't understand it enough to verify one way or the other. Does anybody here?
To turn that question around, are my computers with SecureBoot disabled *less* secure (aside from when I fire up Windows 4 to 5 times a year on the one) to use than our Windows-only ones?
On another topic in this week's weekly, I'm tempted to try out EasyOS. I like the look & feel of Puppy, but there are some things EasyOS is trying that seem intriguing to me. Just a matter of time & priorities... maybe someday.
TKS
74 • BSD and SystemD (by Otis on 2020-11-27 12:58:17 GMT from United States)
@72 "The BSD communities did look at systemd, but mostly to find ways to work around it."
Yes, "mostly," I guess.
But the reasons outside of the mostly are worth noting and/or wondering about. Perhaps an interview with one or more BSD distro developers will help with this. Why are they bothering with systemd at all except to find ways to avoid it as they try to bring us Linux apps entwined with systemd? One writer says, "..to find a good compromise.." because "..systemd as an approach to starting services has some significant advantages and that FreeBSD wants."
Are portions of that attractive approach the very things that are listed at nosystemd.org as what's so bad about it?
75 • End of Debian? (by Igor on 2020-11-27 14:23:46 GMT from Croatia)
So there is sort of friction in Debian community. How comes?? Come on folks, things of the sort are daily chore in organisations that large. I recently read a bug track about KDE Plasma focus stealing prevention settings. It ended up as a quarrel of two anti-social guys, one being techie, a developer, and the other keen OOTB defender, a user. And no resolution.
Let me remind you that Debian is probably the only Linux distro with GNU Hurd and BSD kernel community spins (well, perhaps Arch...). So yes, there is diversity in Debian, and there are places at that huge continent where maintainers do not care much about all the systemd fuss.
Now, one of the most important merits attributed to systemd is that it simplifies sysadmin's job. If it only helps in maintenance of servers, like this one in Danmark that we all are using right now to argue, than it is to users' benefit, as in this particular situation, we all are users, right? If, on the other hand, it is just a malware, then it is not very sane to participate in forum served by it, so one would expect no heated debate about the init software. (Seriously, is this server "powered by" systemd?)
There is the other thing that bothers me here for quite some time. There are many folks here advocating Average User and her needs. I've looked for this ms/mr for a few decades now, not only in computing matters, and never succeeded in meeting them. They must be sort of Proteus constantly morphing into countless personalities, each with her/his own particular approaches, needs and wishes, regerdless of gender, age, race, technical competence or digital equipment budget. Frankly I doubt this person exists, which turns its image into poor commonplace of almost every campaigning.
@ The One Who Knows: Half of my life big money is trying to persuade me that there is one size that fits all, that I should better do/work/buy as Everyone Else, etc., etc., and they still did not convince me. I am afraid your production management wisdom is out of place in this forum. I assembled my PC myself, brought more than ten years old laptop to new life, and am about to do the same with half dozen of downwritten PCs that were not able to bear the load of Windows XP SP4. There is no doubt that none of it is of a new Dell laptop quality, but it is possible to watch YouTube videos on each one of them.
I am ready for your remark that it is OK to have joy in aimless tinkering, which is different to any serious work. Well, unlike at your place, we have families here who don't own any computers, simply because providing for at least two meals a day and some heating, or mending a roof that leaks after the earthquake is higher on their agenda. As new lockdown is nearing, along with schools going online again, it turns out this is serious hindrance to their children's education, and twelve years old PC still in good condition might just come handy.
I take pride in considering situations and solutions like these more seriously than demands of big money being put on me, and I have some experience approving this stance too.
By the way, there was about dozen people believing that Eppur Si Muove at the time it was formulated, which is pretty far from any majority.
76 • DistroWatch server (by Jesse on 2020-11-27 14:37:11 GMT from Canada)
@75: >> "If, on the other hand, it is just a malware, then it is not very sane to participate in forum served by it, so one would expect no heated debate about the init software. (Seriously, is this server "powered by" systemd?)"
No, the DistroWatch server currently runs FreeBSD. Previously it ran on an older version of Debian which used SysV init. This is mentioned on the FAQ page: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=faq#mydistro
77 • other BSD "news" (by just some BSD on 2020-11-27 15:28:39 GMT from Hungary)
Under section Upcoming Releases and Announcements we see FreeBSD 13.0 is on the way. But something's happening with one based on it: HardenedBSD
78 • of Systemd... (by tom joad on 2020-11-27 16:39:52 GMT from Germany)
Forgive a second comment in one week...
I have been reading Distrowatch for several years. And over that sweep of time Systemd has been a relentless, constant irritant to many, many folks using Linux. I have read countless comments both ways. Some say it is evil, others don't and folks like me don't really give a rat's rear end one way or the other.
Of late, though, me thinks where there is smoke there must be fire some where. When I look at distros I always check the package list. I ALWAYS look to see if systemd is present and it mostly is. Having it present is kind of deal breaker for me. In the TAILS reviews, something I do use, there are a lot of complains there about systemd.
I have been happily using Mint which is Systemd. However, I am seriously thinking of moving back to MX or on to Anti-X. Again, I don't know what systemd does or doesn't but enough other folks over a long period of time rag on it for me to become leery of it.
Maybe Jesse could spend time explaining what Systemd is, what it does and is it really dangerous. Is there really a 'boogy man' in the machine. Jesse, if you have done that please point to that dissertation.
Again, sorry, for a second comment.
79 • Persuading?? (by whoKnows on 2020-11-27 17:05:28 GMT from Switzerland)
@75 • End of Debian? (by Igor)
"@ The One Who Knows: Half of my life big money is trying to persuade me that there is one size that fits all, that I should better do/work/buy as Everyone Else, etc., etc., and they still did not convince me. I am afraid your production management wisdom is out of place in this forum."
I'd dare to say that only the people who can't see the importance of the good set of presets (default settings) are out of place on any forum. The good defaults will pay you fixing the roof, because you'll not bring that money to the doctors who will have to fix your health, after working on a PC with bad defaults.
The sense of having the good default presets OOTB is to help and insure that the majority of less skilled people, have something good to start with, without the need to fix it first - NOT to persuade anybody.
That has very little to do with "big money wanting to persuade you" - its about your health and your healthy logic should persuade you.
PC ergonomics is a science and "one size fits all" is the fact in most of the cases.
That's also the reason why it is even regulated by the law.
https://re.srb-group.com/web1/images/pdf/infomaterialien/suva-d/44022-d.pdf
https://wien.arbeiterkammer.at/service/broschueren/Arbeitnehmerschutz/broschueren/Bildschirmarbeit_2019.pdf
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Die+Arbeit+am+Bildschirm&PC=LCTS
80 • Systemd/Reality (by SquareRootSquared on 2020-11-27 20:05:40 GMT from United States)
@64: In addition to "religious believers" there are also those known as "corporate shills", and many in the Linux community today fall under that title.. Contrary to your assertion that non-bigtech Linux users should be grateful for whatever scraps are thrown to them by the likes of the Microsoft, Google, IBM, etc (globalist corps that run the show).. No we should expect them to also give us what we want (in addition to them getting what they want). Why can we say that with any power? Because these corporate masters use the millions of us users to debug/test their crapware on a massive scale (why is Linux so stable, reliable, etc?). We are not "getting it for free". Think Fedora, mainstream distros, etc. No, there is plenty of resources to have it both ways, non-bigtech user wants should not be actively denied. Forcing ("forcing" here means making it very difficult to not use it) bigtech corporate crapware onto the whole Linux user population is not a reality that should be accepted. FYI - I think you are confusing "religious" with "logical".
81 • Expectations are allowed (by whoKnows on 2020-11-28 05:54:12 GMT from Switzerland)
@80 • Systemd/Reality (by SquareRootSquared)
"No we should expect them to also give us what we want (in addition to them getting what they want). Why can we say that with any power? Because these corporate masters use the millions of us users to debug/test their crapware on a massive scale (why is Linux so stable, reliable, etc?). We are not "getting it for free". [...] Forcing ("forcing" here means making it very difficult to not use it) bigtech corporate crapware onto the whole Linux user population is not a reality that should be accepted. FYI - I think you are confusing "religious" with "logical"."
1. How many regular Linux users are donators (I don't mean donating $1 or $10)?
2. How many of the whole Linux user population are developers (and give ideas)?
3. How many of the whole Linux user population are denying progress?
2 % + 2 % + 2 % of 1.75 % kind of "logic" is expecting.
I hope u can see the "logical problem".
82 • Blatant Shilling (by cykodrone on 2020-11-28 14:51:08 GMT from Germany)
The majority of software written for, and on top of the Linux kernel (thank you ever so much, Sir Torvalds) was written by 'off the clock' IT people who were fed up with oppression by software, and spying for profit/big brother. Never, in the history of Linux, and its software ecosystem, has it ever seen a bully-like campaign to adopt such an oppressive, all encompassing, code ambiguous, BLOB like systemd.
Foofy doublespeak doesn't change reality, 3rd party developers having to kowtow to a piece of corp-ware (which was written and pushed 'on the clock') is proof of the authoritarian nature of this situation. Do you see RH developers giving even the smallest of inches? They are knowingly forcing out other init options, and could care less how the rest of the Linux/distro community feels, or wants, the very people that write the nifty apps that make Linux distros a viable alternative to super oppressive corp-ware.
I am one of those lowly private citizens you speak of, who has made numerous financial contributions, albeit averaging $50USD, and have made numerous improvement suggestions, and bug reports. Frankly, having my intelligence questioned, is stepping over the line, we nerds/geeks are extremely smart people, and we can see what's happening right under our noses.
83 • How do we fight it? (by Otis on 2020-11-28 16:47:20 GMT from United States)
@78 GhostBSD
@82 Thank you! It's spelled out there in your remarks as to what we're up against. How the hell do we fight it other than voting with our feet? The fear is that it'll creep into non-systemd distros as well as BSD at some point.
84 • on the "good set of defaults" (by Igor on 2020-11-28 21:42:04 GMT from Croatia)
@79 Yes, a few years ago we paid a guy who was authorised engineer of workplace security to bring our business in align with EU norms. About our work with computers we had to buy stalls that raised our monitors with their centres aligned with our eyes. That had us put in a working stance where we had our heads raised and arms working in forward position, somewhat raised. Ask any physiatrist about merits of such a stance. My mother in law just did.
I remember you categorically stating something like dark workspace themes of a GUI are simply flawed, and if any, then blue, rather than gray. Well, my wife has just had a third eye surgery, and her surgeon warned her of danger of using electronic displays, * particularly because of the blue region of its luminescence *. The guy is running a WHO reference centre on eye diseases, and knows how to use a computer.
I am using exclusively dark workspace themes to spare my old eyes from excessively glaring modern displays. You may object that I could just decrease the lightness. Have you ever seen a computer, or any other display initially set to 80% lightness? And what about a sound default setting? Have you ever tried reading from a display with lightness set to 60% (as this would bring it close enough to a dark workspace theme)?
I suggest you consult some people Who Actually Know about human body and its requirements, like for instance actual physicians, rather than Jacob Nielsen (we in the East have a name for such guys, after a character from immortal Russian novels, namely Ostap Bender) and flawed standards.
There are exactly two things about which I agree with you. First, if someone wants something Working Out of The Box, s/he should purchase a Windows PC, or a Mac, or some iOS or Android gadget. Unixoids require some learning, work and engagement. In my opinion, none of it is bad, and this way I am getting what I need, not what software producer says I am supposed to need (one size fits all, defaults doing the business for and instead of user).
Second, gaining the sweet sense of belonging is a poor motivation in choosing software. It is very clearly manifesting in the hatred against Microsoft. In this one matter you're 100% right, when it comes to software, let's think and speak rationally.
As a consequence of both, I don't feel bad about being minority. There is nothing bad in being one of 2%+2%+2% of 1,75% (i actually believed the multiplicand was below 1%). I am member of few more minorities, like those who prefer classical music (not necessarily European) to popular music from United States and its local derivatives, those who prefer singing and playing it to just listen, those who drink tea rather than coffee (in Balkans!), those who drink wine rather than beer, those who read poetry, etc., etc.
And I am wary of the belief that in matters other than taste majority is probably right. Along with its general set of good defaults majority is on the way to destroy life on Earth, human race included.
Number of Comments: 84
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
| | |
| 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.
|
| Archives |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • 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 |
| • 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.
|
| Random Distribution | 
GNUstep Live CD
GNUstep live CD was a Debian-based Linux distribution containing GNUstep, network tools, multimedia software and games. GNUstep was an implementation of the OPENSTEP and Cocoa frameworks.
Status: Discontinued
|
| 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.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
