 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 899, 11 January 2021 |
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.
* * * * *
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
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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).
* * * * *
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 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Polar Bear Linux
Polar Bear Linux was a source-based GNU/Linux distribution derived from Linux From Scratch. All software packages are provided in the form of source code, which are compiled during installation. This has many advantages, as well as a major drawback in the time it takes to install the system (approximately 9 hours for a base system). Polar Bear Linux uses a simple package manager called Tarball Package Manager (TBPKG).
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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