 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 899, 11 January 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are a lot of distributions in the world and each one has its own options, quirks, and special features. One of the most important aspects in selecting a new distribution to install is checking whether it will work with your hardware. In our Questions and Answers column this week we talk about how to quickly run a few tests to get a practical sense of whether a live distribution will work with your computer. Does your Linux distribution support all of your computing hardware? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. First though we begin this week with a look at PakOS, a Debian-based, desktop distribution. PakOS is mostly geared toward being useful for the people of Pakistan, however it is equally well suited for most people around the world and we provide an overview of PakOS below. In our News section we talk about Arch Linux improving its tools for creating reproducible builds as the Gentoo team debates the usefulness of LibreSSL, a fork of the OpenSSL cryptography software. We also discuss plans the Tails project is working on. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fabulous week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: PakOS 2020-08-24
- News: Arch improving reproducible build tools, Gentoo debates usefulness of LibreSSL, Tails outlines plans for 2021
- Questions and answers: Testing multiple hardware devices quickly
- Released last week: Linux Mint 20.1, Puppy Linux 7.0 "Slacko", ExTiX 21.1
- Torrent corner: ExTiX, GParted Live, Linux Mint, KDE neon, Live Raizo, Puppy, Snal
- Opinion poll: Does Linux support all of your hardware?
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
PakOS 2020-08-24
PakOS is a Debian-based distribution that is intended to be a general purpose, desktop operating system. The distribution's niche or primary audience is people who are from, or living in, Pakistan. The project's website mentions that the operating system features the WPS office suite, comes with CrossOver installed, and includes an optional Windows-like theme. There are also security tools provided including the Clam anti-virus utility, a firewall tool, and Firejail for sandboxing applications. The project further mentions supplying kernels for both 64-bit (x86_64) and 32-bit (x86) processors.
The PakOS distribution appears to be available in just one edition running the LXQt desktop. This edition is 3.1GB in size. One of the first things I discovered about PakOS is that, despite the mention of 32-bit kernels being available, the live media does not run on 32-bit machines. It seems that while 32-bit kernels may be available in the repositories I did not see any way to install PakOS on a 32-bit machine.
The live environment
The boot menu of the live disc offers to let us run the live desktop environment, run an installer, or run a graphical installer. The Install and Graphical Install options do not do anything and merely return us to the boot menu. Only the live desktop boot options work. Choosing the live boot item loads the LXQt desktop running on the xfwm window manager. A panel sits at the bottom of the display and is home to the application menu, task switcher, and system tray.
The application menu is provided by the Whisker menu, running a two-pane layout. In the system tray I found a few items running. There is a weather app which reports it cannot find weather data. I tried selecting a few different locations (the default was a region of Pakistan), but the weather app failed to load data from any location. The system tray shows audio is muted by default, which I personally appreciate. Another icon in the system tray shows a desktop lighting tone program is running in the background. We can turn this lighting tone program on or off, but there does not appear to be any other configuration option. The desktop's wallpaper changes every five minutes, displaying images of people, farm equipment, camels, and landscapes.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The application menu on the live media
(full image size: 709kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
PakOS features several desktop icons. Clicking these, at least the first time, brings up a prompt asking if we want to launch the associated program or open the shortcut in an editor to read the file. One icon opens the PCManFM-Qt file manager, another launches the Calamares system installer. One icon labelled First Boot brings up a settings panel where we can choose the style of our application menu, adjust start-up items, and fix boot loader issues.
There is an icon for enabling Internet and this brings up a pop-up window that explains Debian enables IPv6 by default which often is not suitable in Pakistan. We are then given step-by-step instructions for manually configuring networking through NetworkManager. There is an icon which launches the distribution's update manager and I will talk more about this utility later.
One additional icon is called Sally Prayer Times which brings up a window that, I believe, lists Islamic prayer times. The window contains a countdown clock which appears to indicate the time until the next selected prayer session.
Installing
PakOS uses the Calamares graphical installer. The system installer does a nice job walking us through the usual tasks of selecting our time zone, keyboard layout, language, and making up a username & password combination. Calamares supports both manual and guided partitioning. The guided option sets up a single ext4 filesystem partition and a large swap partition.
Calamares worked very well for me and my one serious complaint with the process came on the first screen where buttons are displayed offering us access to Support and Release Notes. Clicking either of these buttons brings up an endless stream of pop-up errors saying the wrong number of arguments was given. A minor complaint I also had was that PakOS would activate its screensaver after just five minutes and this obscures the progress information Calamares displays.
Early impressions
My freshly installed copy of PakOS booted to its graphical login screen where we can type our username and password to sign in. Typing the username is a little different than the approach of many other distributions these days which tend to show the usernames of accounts and allow us to click on which account we want.
Once I got signed in the LXQt 0.14.1 desktop loaded and I was presented with the same layout and icons as I saw during the live session, minus the system installer desktop icon. There is no welcome screen and the first-run wizard only opens if we manually select it from its desktop icon.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- First-run configuration options
(full image size: 800kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
LXQt is relatively light and quick. I found the desktop tended to perform well while staying out of the way. One of the few adjustments I made was to change the digital clock in the system tray so as to not display time in seconds as the constant updating was distracting me.
Hardware
I explored running PakOS in a VirtualBox environment and on my laptop. In both situations the distribution performed well. The desktop was responsive, boot times were good, programs tended to open quickly. All of my laptop's hardware was detected and, when running in VirtualBox, the PakOS guest desktop resized dynamically to fit its window.
The distribution uses a rather large amount of resources when we consider it is, at its heart, Debian running the lightweight LXQt desktop. PakOS consumed 11GB of disk space for a fresh install and quickly gobbled up a few more gigabytes for refreshed repository information, updated package archives, and configuration files. Logging into LXQt consumed 435MB of RAM. For comparison's sake, the last time I tried Lubuntu (which has its roots in Debian), when running LXQt the system used 280MB of RAM.
Applications
PakOS ships with a lot of software installed for us. Many of these are common items such as the Firefox browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, a calendar application, and the Transmission bittorrent client. There are some less common applications though like the Franz messaging application, the WPS office suite, and the FBReader e-reader.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The WPS office suite
(full image size: 122kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Rounding out the selection are some popular tools like the GNU Image Manipulation Program, Audacity audio editor, and Kdenlive video editor. We are also given the Audacious music player and SMPlayer multimedia player, along with a full range of media codecs.
There is a graphical file synchronization program called Grsync, a printer manager, and the CrossOver suite for installing and running Windows applications. The Firejail sandbox software is present and works for limiting system access to selected programs.
In the background we find the GNU Compiler Collection and systemd provides the distribution's init software. Version 4.19 of the Linux kernel keeps things running smoothly.
Generally speaking, the software included with PakOS worked and ran well. The mainstream applications like the multimedia player, Firefox, and image editor all worked as expected. I was a little surprised by the choice to use WPS instead of the more popular LibreOffice suite. I am guessing WPS offers some advantage in format compatibility the developers hoped to include.
There is a small settings panel included to tweak the desktop configuration. The panel includes simple configuration modules for handling the desktop's theme, wallpaper, and display resolution. There are also launchers for accessing printer settings and launching the Synaptic package manager. The LXQt settings panel worked well.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The LXQt settings panel
(full image size: 1,002kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
I tried to use CrossOver to install three different Windows applications. The wizard which downloads and configures the environment for these programs failed each time. CrossOver may be useful in some areas, but the programs I selected from the list of known items, each carrying five-star ratings, failed to install properly.
Another issue I ran into was with networking. For the first day or two everything ran smoothly. Then, mid-week DNS stopped functioning on my PakOS system even though all other devices on the network continued to perform lookups properly. Switching to manually supplied DNS servers fixed the issue. I ran into this problem later in the week when I took my laptop to another location. Again, networking started out fine, but DNS stopped working after an hour. Manually supplying DNS servers fixed the issue on the second network too. The issue occurred both when running the distribution in a virtual machine and on my laptop.
Software management
For most software management actions PakOS provides the Synaptic package manager. Synaptic is a classic, low-level package manager and works quickly. It's not a modern, beginner-friendly software centre, but it usually does its job well. I did run into some problems this time around where Synaptic would sometimes report it was unable to verify the security of remote repositories. I discovered this was due to the intermittent DNS issue mentioned above and found Synaptic worked properly after I manually set my DNS servers.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The Synaptic package manager
(full image size: 868kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
There is a separate update manager which can be launched from its desktop icon. When we launch the update manager it opens two windows - a terminal which opens in the background and a smaller window which provides us with a list of available updates and progress information. The update utility worked, though its output and list of available package updates were a bit unpolished. I further found that the foreground window would occasionally appear to lock-up for periods. I found when this happened it was because the terminal window in the background had prompted me for a password. The update process would wait until I switched to the terminal window and typed my password. This is not ideal because if the terminal window is behind something else (or minimized) we have no way of knowing the update process is waiting for something rather than just being slow.
Conclusions
On one hand, PakOS does a lot of things well for such a young project. The LXQt desktop is nicely arranged and looks fairly polished and elegant. The distribution ships with a large collection of useful applications. Perhaps, if anything, there may be more applications than most people will need. However, the documentation does hint that this may be an effort to provide as much functionality as possible in remote regions where Internet connections are slower.
While the distribution is intended to be used by the people of Pakistan, the operating system seems well suited to any region. I did not notice any situations where locale settings or language translations were a problem. Only the weather application was specifically configured to look up data for Pakistan.
Speaking of the weather application, my main recurring issue with PakOS is that parts of it feel unfinished or unpolished. The live media still has entries for Debian's installer which do not work. The installer has buttons for support and documentation which bring up an infinite loop of error messages. The weather application cannot look up data for any region. The DNS settings, for some reason, keep failing though other devices using automated DNS settings on the same network continue to work. The update manager, along with a few other tools, feel like they could be made friendlier.
None of these issues were terminal, the distribution mostly continued to function and I could work around the problems I encountered with a little effort. However, these sorts of minor "paper cut" problems reveal areas where the distribution could (and hopefully will) be improved.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
PakOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 10/10 from 2 review(s).
Have you used PakOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Arch improving reproducible build tools, Gentoo debates usefulness of LibreSSL, Tails outlines plans for 2021
Reproducible software builds are a method for verifying that the binary software we have installed on our computer was created, unmodified, from the source code associated with the same project. It helps confirm that software has not been altered or corrupted during the build and distribution process. The Arch Linux project, along with other distributions, is striving to build their software with reproducible means. Jelle van der Waa has published an update on the tools and infrastructure which are helping to make Arch Linux package reproducible. "archlinux-repro: Also known as repro this tool allows one to rebuild a package and check if it is reproducible by providing a build package such as $foo.pkg.tar.zst. It then sets up a build root, downloads PKGBUILD and sources and rebuilds the package checking if it's reproducible afterwards. During the year the tool has improved a lot to being able to rebuild all the packages in our repository without any known side effects at the moment.
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About six years ago, in the wake of the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability, the OpenBSD project created its own fork of OpenSSL called LibreSSL. While OpenBSD has been successfully using LibreSSL since, the new cryptography library never really caught on in the Linux ecosystem. A few Linux projects, such as Gentoo, supported LibreSSL as an option, but it looks like it will be phased out in favour of keeping OpenSSL. LWN reports: "Two distributions that did attempt to provide LibreSSL support were Alpine Linux and Gentoo. Alpine Linux supported LibreSSL as its primary TLS library for a while, but switched back to OpenSSL with the 3.9.0 release in January 2019. Gentoo never tried to switch over completely, but it supports LibreSSL as an alternative. That support will end in February, though. Gentoo developer Michał Górny first suggested this change at the end of December, saying that LibreSSL offers no benefit over OpenSSL at this point while imposing a lot of costs. In particular, he complained about the large number of packages that require patches to work with LibreSSL and the constant stream of regressions that the project must deal with." Further discussion on LibreSSL and the debate over whether to support it in Gentoo can be found in the LWN article.
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The Tails project has published a newsletter outlining plans the distribution's developers have for the coming year. Some of the key issues deal with persistent storage and circumventing censorship. "We want to completely redesign how to start Tor and configure Tor bridges. This will make it easier for people in countries where accessing Tor is blocked to circumvent censorship. According to data from the Tor project, the top 5 countries by users of Tor bridges are Russia, Iran, the US, Belarus, and China. We want to improve the interface of the Persistent Storage settings. Improving the Persistent Storage was your top priority when we surveyed our users in July. We want to start by improving the usability of its core features and rewriting this 9-year-old Perl application into Python GTK+. This will make it possible to improve it faster in the future. We also want to make it possible to persist Tor bridges." Additional details can be found in the project's news post.
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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) |
Testing multiple hardware devices quickly
Curious-about-methodology asks: A lot of your reviews of Linux distributions have the following sentence: "a quick test showed my hardware was functioning properly so I dived right into the install process."
Can you please elaborate what exactly this test is and if it involves running few commands, etc?
DistroWatch answers: I like tests that are quick, simple, and easy to perform. Typically when I'm testing hardware compatibility I play a video on YouTube.
Streaming a single video might not seem like a comprehensive test, but there are a lot of components which need to work properly in order to deliver a video across the network to the desktop. In order for the video to play successfully, first the distribution needs to be able to boot on my hardware and load its desktop environment. This confirms my processor is supported, no drivers cause an immediate crash, and the video card is working properly.
Then I open the network settings tool (which requires a working mouse or trackpad), find my wireless network in the list of available local networks (confirming my wireless card is functioning), and type my wi-fi password (confirming the keyboard functions). Then I open a web browser and browse to YouTube (confirming both networking and DNS are functioning properly). When I click on a video and it plays successfully that confirms audio hardware is working. It also tells me if the distribution has unusual audio quirks, such as muted sound or the volume set to maximum by default. In under two minutes I've confirmed at least six major hardware components are functioning properly (or not, if part of the test fails).
Basically, if a streaming video plays without any obvious problems then chances are everything else I'm going to be doing on the distribution is going to work just fine.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
ExTiX 21.1
Arne Exton has announced the release of ExTiX 21.1, the latest build of the project's desktop-oriented Linux distribution. This version is based on the deepin 20.1 distribution and it features a customised Deepin desktop environment: "ExTiX Deepin 21.1 live based on Deepin 20.1 (latest) with Skype, Spotify, Refracta snapshot and Linux kernel 5.10.4. New features: you can run ExTiX from RAM - use boot alternative 2 (load to RAM) or 'Advanced'; you will have the opportunity to choose language before you enter the Deepin 20.1 desktop - all main languages are supported; I have replaced Deepin Installer with the Reborn version of Deepin Installer - works better in every way; I have replaced Linux kernel 5.9.1 with Linux kernel 5.10.4, corresponding to the latest available stable kernel from kernel.org; Spotify and Skype are pre-installed; you can watch Netflix while running Firefox; you can also install ExTiX Deepin in VirtualBox or VMware using Deepin Installer; as an alternative to APT you can use the Cactus package manager...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
ExTiX 21.1 -- Running the Deepin desktop
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Puppy Linux 7.0 "Slacko"
If you are a fan of Puppy Linux, a unique, minimalist Linux distribution designed for the desktop, here is an interesting piece of news for you - the based-on-Slackware "Slacko" variant of Puppy Linux has hit version 7.0. This version continues to be built on top of Slackware Linux 14.2, but it includes all of the upstream bug and security fixes as well: "Another stable release of Slacko64 Puppy Linux is out. Slacko64 Puppy is built from Slackware64 14.2 binary TXZ packages, hence has binary compatibility with Slackware and access to the Slackware and Salix repositories. It is a 64-bit operating system and requires a compatible Intel (IA64) or AMD (amd64) processor. More comprehensive release notes and documentation of known issues are available. Features include: latest bug fixes from upstream Slackware; 64-bit and 32-bit EUFI boot capability; FrugalPup installer to install Puppy to UEFI and BIOS computers, either to hard drive, USB or SD/MMC devices; ability to boot from ISO files from hard drive or USB device using Super Grub2 or you can prepare a GRUB 2 entry manually...." See the release announcement for further details.
Linux Mint 20.1
The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 20.1, a long-term support release which will continue to receive updates until 2025. The project's newest version features a new web apps manager which will assist users in setting up websites to act more like native applications. The project is also including the Hypnotix IPTV application and the ability to mark files as favourites for quick access. "Time and time again we need to access the same files. Up until Linux Mint 20.1 we would remember where they were stored and slowly get to them using the file manager, bookmark their containing folder to get to them faster, look in the recently opened document section, hoping to find them in there, clutter our desktop with direct links... Well, there's a much better way now! If you're working on a file and you know you access it often, right-click it and select 'Add to Favorites'. You'll see a little star pop up in your panel. That's where all favorite files are, just one click away. You'll also find them in your application menu." Further information can be found in the project's release announcements for its three editions (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce) and in the release notes (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce).
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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: 2,292
- Total data uploaded: 35.7TB
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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) |
Does Linux support all of your hardware?
The Linux kernel includes drivers for a huge number of hardware devices. However, there are many devices in the world and many companies do not write their own drivers for Linux. Have you run into situations where Linux was unable to detect or use one of your devices, or is Linux able to work with all your hardware? Let us known which items still do not work with Linux in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on the number of packages installed on your distribution in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Does all of your hardware work with Linux?
| Yes: | 1530 (72%) |
| No: | 542 (26%) |
| I am not running Linux: | 40 (2%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 18 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 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 |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
LinuxPPC
LinuxPPC was a Red Hat 6.2-based distribution for the PowerPC platform. It was no longer supported.
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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