 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 898, 4 January 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 1st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Linux community is full of new approaches and new styles. Developers are always trying out fresh ways to solve persistent problems. To kick off the new year we begin with a look at MocaccinoOS, a distribution that experiments with a new package manager called Luet. MocaccinoOS includes a few other unusual features, including its lightweight C library and runit init software. Our Feature Story offers more details about this young project and its multiple editions. In our News section we talk about Fedora speeding up package management via the Btr filesystem and managing low-memory situations using a systemd utility. Plus the Haiku project has been improving its desktop and the appearance of text. We are also pleased to report the HAMMER2 filesystem can now span multiple local volumes and we share more on this feature below. Last year iXsystems merged the FreeNAS and TrueNAS projects and we have updated our information pages to track this change. Late last year Red Hat announced CentOS Linux is being phased out and our Question and Answers column is a response to people who wrote in asking about alternative long-term support platforms. Then we are pleased to share the releases of the past two weeks and list the torrents we are seeding. Going into the new year we have been decluttering a bit and are curious to know how many packages people have installed on their Linux machines. Let us know how many pieces of software you have installed in the Opinion Poll. We wish you all a wonderful start to the new year and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: MocaccinoOS
- News: Fedora using Btrfs to speed up package upgrades, Haiku improves text contrast, HAMMER2 gets multi-volume support, FreeNAS merges with TrueNAS
- Questions and answers: Longest supported distribution
- Released in the past two weeks: 4MLinux 35.0, Parted Magic 2020_12_25, deepin 20.1
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Arch, ArchBang, deepin, Gardua, KDE neon, Nitrux, OSMC, Rescuezilla, Septor, Slackel
- Opinion poll: How many packages are installed on your main computer?
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
MocaccinoOS
MocaccinoOS is a young Linux distribution which is experimenting with a new approach to package management. In particular, Mocaccino uses the Luet package manager which acts as a front-end for container-based software.
Luet uses container technologies (Docker) to build packages. It provides an abstraction over the Dockerfile format introducing relation and versioning of images. Versioned rootfs as layers, delivered as upgrades or multiple single packages.
Though it is not explicitly stated, it looks like the idea here is to provide new applications and dependencies through containers to better handle dependencies and allow for for more stable upgrades.
At the time of writing there are two editions of Mocaccino. The first is Mocaccino Micro, a distribution which runs on the musl C library. It is stated to be based on Linux From Scratch using Luet for package management. Micro is minimal and reportedly suited for cloud and Docker, deployments. The second edition is Mocaccino Portage, a Gentoo-based operating system suited for desktop environments. At the moment it appears Mocaccino Portage is available in one desktop flavour: GNOME.
The Mocaccino website repeatedly warns us development of the project is still in its early stages. The distribution is not, the developers tell us, ready for production. We should regard Mocaccino, therefore, as an interesting work in progress. This approach is reflected in the documentation which is sparse and mostly talks about how to migrate from an existing Sabayon installation to Mocaccino and set up the new project's software repositories.
I downloaded both editions of Mocaccino. The Portage edition with the GNOME desktop is a 2.2GB ISO file while the Micro edition weighs in at a relatively small 334MB.
Portage edition with GNOME
I started off trying the Portage edition, with the idea that it would be easier to begin with a pre-configured desktop edition. Unfortunately this edition failed to load properly. During the early boot sequence the system displayed several errors declaring "Device device name has no proper overlay structure." This was followed by a message saying, "Rootfs not found." At this point the operating system gave up and dropped to an emergency shell prompt. No services were running, there were no recognized network devices, and no way to access the desktop. I tried loading the Portage edition a few times and it always ended up with me at a shell prompt with a minimal, recovery environment.
I was a little disappointed, but not really put off by this turn of events. After all, the distribution is still very much in its early development stages and the website is clear about not expecting things to work yet.
Micro edition
I had better luck with the Micro edition. This edition booted successfully and brought me to a text-based login screen. From there I could sign into the console using the username "root" and by guessing the password "mocaccino".
Exploring the Micro edition I discovered a few things about its minimal, command line only environment. Pleasantly, if a wired network connection is available, Mocaccino will automatically connect to it for us. The distribution mostly uses Busybox for its command line tools. For example, the ls, grep, and man commands are all links to Busybox. Unfortunately the man command does not work and was unable to show me any documentation for installed programs.
The Micro edition uses runit for its init software and runs on version 5.4.0 of the Linux kernel. It looks like the kernel package is provided by the Sabayon project. A newer version of the kernel, 5.7.0, is available if we want to upgrade. The distribution appears to be set up to run on 64-bit (x86_64) machines only.
The Micro edition boots and shuts down very quickly, taking only a few seconds to get going or stop. This is probably due to a combination of runit which is blazingly fast and the distribution running very few services by default. In fact, Mocaccino only consumed about 30MB of RAM when I was logged into the console.
Package management
As I mentioned earlier, Mocaccino uses a new package manager called Luet. While Luet works a bit differently and acts as a front-end for container-based packages, the commands Luet recognizes are mostly familiar. The key commands most people will want to use are "search", "install", "uninstall", and "upgrade" which are pretty self-explanatory. There are other Luet sub-commands for managing repositories, building and packaging software, and getting helpful tips on how to use Luet.
When we install or upgrade software through Luet the output from the package manager is very verbose and scrolls across the screen quickly. This meant I usually did not know what was going on, apart from it looked like package data from each repository is being downloaded. This happened every time I performed a search for a package; it seems Luet downloads repository information every time we do a search and that slows down the package manager a lot. Presumably caching in future versions will remove the need for the frequent pulls from the remote servers.
To be fair, while searches are slow with Luet, compared to other package managers, the refresh and search functions probably take less than ten seconds. It only adds up a lot when we perform multiple searches back-to-back. Also on the topic of searches, Luet appears to search for items by name, but not by description. This means a search for "ftp" returns nothing, but searching for "cur" returns curl, the FTP and web client, along with the ncurses package.
Installing new software worked smoothly and, from the user's perspective, works exactly the same as command line package management on other distributions. I was wondering if using containers behind the scenes might complicate things, but everything was seamless. The only quirk of Luet I ran into come when installing software. I needed to specify the category of software I was installing along with its name. For example, I had to run "luet install development/make" to get the make package and "luet install utils/curl" to get the curl program. The category is provided in search results so we immediately know which category to use, it's just a little extra typing.
At first I couldn't find any way to show which software was installed on the system. I get the impression most of Mocaccino is meant to be considered an atomic whole, rather than a collection of packages, so listing installed packages in the default system is not an obvious procedure. That being said, I did find I could list all the packages I had installed by listing the contents of the /var/cache/luet directory. This directory keeps a cache of software we have downloaded.
Installing
I could not find instructions for installing fresh copies of either edition of Mocaccino. The project's documentation does explain how to convert an existing Sabayon install into the new Mocaccino Portage distribution. The documentation also mentions that the Micro edition can be run as a Docker container. However, I have not found a method to do a clean install of either edition to a hard drive.
Conclusions
As I mentioned before, MocaccinoOS is very much in its early stages. Its core operating system and package manager are closer to proof-of-concept creations than complete tools. However, I do think there may be promise here, at least with the Micro edition. It's small, light, and fast. It feels akin to Alpine Linux with its tiny footprint and I suspect it could be used as a practical base for container management.
Luet, while still in its early stages, looks like it could be very useful with a little polish and faster searches. I can't say I have, as of yet, found a practical difference between Luet and, for example, DNF or APT, but perhaps this will change as the distribution matures and its container-focused approach takes on more distinct features. I wouldn't recommend using Mocaccino yet, but I feel it will be worth watching and trying again in a year.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora using Btrfs to speed up package upgrades, Haiku improves text contrast, HAMMER2 gets multi-volume support, FreeNAS merges with TrueNAS
The Fedora developers are working on new changes expected to arrive in Fedora 34. Some of the proposed alterations include using the systemd out of memory process killer, which would replace EarlyOOM, and using Btrfs copy-on-write features in parallel with the package manager to change the way new updates are applied to the system. The new approach to package management could greatly improve upgrade times on systems using Btrfs. "Ballpark performance difference is about half the duration for file download+install time. A lot of RPMs are very small, so it's difficult to see/measure. Larger RPMs give much clearer signal."
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The Haiku team published a newsletter which outlines work being done to their lightweight, desktop operating system. The project is doing quite a bit of clean-up, improving their ARM port, and polishing the user interface. One immediately practical feature is the attempt to make text always visible, even when the background colour has changed. "nephele and PulkoMandy modified the algorithm to decide the text colour on the Desktop and in other Tracker windows. Now the document background and foreground colours are used by default, and the text automatically switches to white or black when needed to make sure the text remains readable with a custom background color (for example on the desktop)."
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The DragonFly BSD developers have been working on making their HAMMER2 advanced filesystem more flexible. The second version of HAMMER is now able to span multiple physical volumes. This allows the HAMMER2 filesystem to be spread over multiple local hard drives, expanding its storage space. "This commit adds initial multi-volumes support for HAMMER2. Maximum supported volumes is 64. The feature and implementation is similar to multi-volumes support in HAMMER1." More detailed technical information on this change and HAMMER2 can be found in this mailing list post.
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Back in March of 2020 we reported that the FreeNAS project would be merging with TrueNAS. The idea was for FreeNAS to become the no-charge, community-oriented branch of TrueNAS and would carry the name TrueNAS Core. Meanwhile the existing TrueNAS product, backed by iXsystems, would be branded TrueNAS Enterprise. As the transition appears to be complete and a new version of FreeNAS/TrueNAS Core has been released under the new name, we have updated our information pages to match on DistroWatch. All old ratings, news stories, and release announcements can now be found on our TrueNAS page.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Longest supported distribution
Here-for-a-long-time asks: I'm looking to set up a system that is minimal and requires minimal maintenance, meaning a static OS so no rolling releases. Which distros have the longest support?
DistroWatch answers: The answer to which distribution has the longest support cycle, meaning you will not need to upgrade your operating system during that time, will depend on whether you are planning to pay for support or not. Both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise have been providing at least ten years of support for their commercial distributions for a long time. I say at least ten years because these companies also offer extended support contracts. SUSE offers three year extensions, making for a total of thirteen years of support. Canonical also offers paid support for some versions of Ubuntu for ten years.
However, if you are looking for a non-commercial distribution then the maximum time span you are likely to get is from Springdale Linux which provides about ten years of support, courtesy of Red Hat's upstream patches. Some other distributions provide five years of support, though sometimes the timeline is unofficial. Ubuntu, along with many of its descendants, and Debian provide five years of support for free. The openSUSE distribution receives about three years of free support.
Though not a Linux distribution, FreeBSD supports major releases for five years.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
4MLinux 35.0
Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 35.0, a quarterly update of the project's minimalist desktop and server distribution featuring "four Ms": maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), mini-server (using the inetd daemon) and mystery (providing several small Linux games). As usual, the new release updates many of the base packages, but it also includes some new ones, such as Inkscape and Dangerous Dave (a game): "The status of the 4MLinux 35.0 series has been changed to stable. As always, the new major release has some new features. Inkscape (vector graphics editor) is now available as a downloadable extension. Dangerous Dave has been added to the collection of games which can be played via DOSBox. Notepad++ (advanced code editor) has been included in the 4MLinux WINE package. Nmap (network scanner) and ircII (IRC client) have been added to the 4MLinux Server." Here is the complete release announcement as published on the project's Blogspot pages.
Parted Magic 2020_12_25
Parted Magic is a small live CD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives. Although GParted and Parted are the main programs, the CD/USB also offers other applications, such as Partition Image, TestDisk, fdisk, sfdisk, dd, and ddrescue. The project's latest release updates the desktop to Xfce 4.14 from 4.12. "This version of Parted Magic comes with a huge number of package updates and improvements. Most notable is the upgrade to Xfce 4.14. I spent a lot of time tweaking the general look and feel. It looks significantly better than the last version. The boot menus have some changes so it's easier for people the find the more common booting work-a-arounds. Fcitx has been added to further improve input support. A menu allows you choose between Fcitx and Ibus. The old PXE version download has been discontinued. I highly suggest using the new method to boot Parted Magic via PXE: https://partedmagic.com/pxe/. If you really need to use the old slow PXE method you can build it with the included script: boot/pxelinux/pm2pxe.sh." The project's news page has more information. Parted Magic can be purchased from the distribution's online store for US$11.
deepin 20.1
The deepin project has published a new update to the distribution's 20.x series. deepin 20.1 features a new kernel, Linux 5.8, along with bringing the rest of the operating system up to date with Debian 10.6. There have also been a number of performance improvements. "In deepin 20.1, the operating efficiency of processors, network transmission and response, file reading and writing, and graphics display has been significantly enhanced by overall optimization of kernel configurations and codes; and conventional operations have been fully optimized. You will enjoy smoother experiences and faster responses from these improvements. Control Center: The new power settings - Power Plans supports three modes: Balanced, Power Saver, and High Performance. When ultimate performance is required, the high-performance mode offers smoother user experiences." Further details and screenshots can be found in the distribution's release announcement (Chinese, English).
Slackel 7.4 "Openbox"
Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel, a Slackware-based distribution. The project's latest release is Slackel 7.4 which brings the distribution up to date with Slackware's Current development branch. It also introduces support for 64-bit UEFI systems. "The new version is available in 64-bit and 32-bit builds. The 64-bit ISO image support booting on UEFI systems. ISO images are isohybrid. ISO images can be used as installation media. It is good to read the Slackel Startup Guide before install Slackel. What is new: Slackel can be installed (real installation) in an external 16GB or 32GB USB stick or SSD disk and have a portable fast system always with you. You can upgrade it also having the latest programs. It is a real installation. You will not notice you run Slackel from a USB. System is fast. In details: Slackel Live Installer (SLI) now can do a real installation to an external USB stick or USB SSD or USB hard disk, creating the necessary initrd for booting...." Further details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Slackel 7.4 "Openbox" -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Septor 2021
The Debian Srbija project has announced the release of Septor 2021, a brand-new version of its Debian-based distribution with a focus on preserving the anonymity and privacy of users. Unlike the versions of Septor released last year, which were all based on the stable Debian 10 "Buster" version, this latest release is based on Debian's testing branch, which will eventually become Debian 11 "Bullseye". This means a complete upgrade to the distribution's based systems and applications, including Linux kernel 5.9.15 and KDE Plasma 5.20.4, the default desktop. Browsing is done with the Tor Browser and most internet applications connect to the outside world through the Tor network - this includes Mozilla Thunderbird, the qTox internet messenger, HexChat, QuiteRSS and the OnionShare file sharing utility. The live image also comes with a variety of productivity, graphics and multimedia applications as well as general-purpose utilities. See the release announcement (in Serbian, with a video and a number of screenshots) and also visit the project's home page on SourceForge for further information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,285
- Total data uploaded: 35.6TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
How many packages are installed on your main computer?
Modern operating systems are made up of hundreds, often thousands, of individual packages and components spread across tens of thousands of files. Typically these files are tracked and maintained by a package manager as staying on top of updates for every component manually would be a full time job.
We would like to hear how many packages are currently installed on your Linux distribution. If you are uncertain how to get this information, then visiting our Package Management page may be useful. Listing the installed packages on your system and running the result through the wc command will give you the number of installed items.
Here are the commands for checking the number of installed packages on distributions in the Fedora, Debian, and Arch Linux families:
Arch Linux:
pacman -Q | wc -l
Debian:
dpkg -l | grep "^ii" | wc -l
Fedora:
rpm -qa | wc -l
You can see the results of our previous poll on migrating away from CentOS Linux in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How many packages are installed on your Linux system?
| Less than 100: | 58 (4%) |
| 100-500: | 68 (4%) |
| 501-1000: | 102 (7%) |
| 1001-2500: | 734 (47%) |
| 2501-5000: | 363 (23%) |
| Greater than 5000: | 38 (2%) |
| Unknown: | 151 (10%) |
| I am not running a Linux system: | 34 (2%) |
| My Linux distro does not have a package manager: | 8 (1%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 11 January 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
AgiliaLinux
AgiliaLinux was a Russian community distribution with roots in Slackware Linux. It features a custom text-mode system installer with installation classes, an advanced package manager called mpkg, and support for several popular desktop environments.
Status: Discontinued
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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