 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 905, 22 February 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 8th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are a number of tools, browser plugins and distributions geared towards helping people stay anonymous on-line. One of the most popular of these is the combination of the Tails distribution running the Tor web browser. However, there are alternatives and this week we explore one called Septor. The Septor project, like Tails, is based on Debian and funnels its network traffic through Tor. However, Septor ships with a different collection of tools and a different desktop environment, giving it a notably different approach. Read on to hear Jesse Smith's first impressions of the Septor project. In our News section we talk about PINE64 selecting Manjaro Linux as the default operating system for the PinePhone. Meanwhile UBports has unveiled a new Devices page which tracks supported mobile hardware and work left to do on some phones. The Slackware project is gearing up for its first stable release in over four years and we share details below. We also share a request from the Linux Mint team for people to keep up with security updates. Then, in our Questions and Answers section, we talk about how to avoid upgrading to newer versions of Ubuntu's kernel when upgrading could cause regressions. Do you run upgraded kernels with newer hardware support on a fixed release distribution? Let us know what your approach is to newer kernels in our Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading.
Content:
- Review: Septor 2021
- News: Manjaro to be PinePhone's default operating system, Slackware prepares for a new release, UBports unveils new Devices page, Mint urges users apply security updates
- Questions and answers: Using older kernels on Ubuntu LTS releases
- Released last week: siduction 21.1.0, Devuan GNU+Linux 3.1.0, Q4OS 3.14
- Torrent corner: Alpine, Devuan, Endless OS, KDE neon, KNOPPIX, Mabox, Netrunner, pfSense, Q4OS, siduction, Tiny Core, Void
- Upcoming releases: FreeBSD 13.0-RC1
- Opinion poll: Running Hardware Enablement kernels
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (10MB) and MP3 (17MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Septor 2021
Septor is a Linux distribution which provides users with a pre-configured computing environment for surfing the Internet anonymously. It is based on Debian's Testing branch and it uses Privoxy, a privacy-enhancing proxy, together with the Tor anonymity network to modify web page data and HTTP headers before the page is rendered by the browser. The distribution uses KDE Plasma as the preferred desktop environment and it also includes the Tor Browser for anonymous web browsing and OnionShare for file sharing.
Septor is in the same family of distributions as Tails, which we talked about last year. Tails is also Debian-based and is intended to be used for anonymous web browsing and file sharing. One of the big differences between the two projects is Tails uses the GNOME desktop while Septor uses KDE Plasma. Another difference is Tails is typically run as a live distribution from a USB thumb drive, often with persistent storage. Septor, on the other hand, can either be used as a standard live disc or installed to a hard drive via Debian's system installer.
Septor is available in one edition for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. The ISO file we download is 1.8GB in size. Booting from this media brings up a menu asking if we would like to run the live desktop or launch the installer. When running in UEFI mode just one install option was visible, but in Legacy BIOS mode I could select either a graphical installer or a text installer.
Taking the live option brings up a graphical login screen. We are shown a mostly empty screen that tells us we can sign in to the live desktop using the password "live". There are drop-down menus for choosing our session type (only KDE Plasma is available) and our keyboard layout (only US is available). Signing into the default user account brings up the Plasma desktop with a blue background. A panel sits at the bottom of the display. The desktop is fairly quiet and empty, though browsing through the application menu presents us with several useful tools I will talk about later. We are automatically connected to the Tor network when we open a web browser or other tool, allowing us to browse the web with a degree of anonymity.
Septor 2021 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 715kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
One feature of Septor I found unusual is there is a weather widget in the desktop panel. The reason I found this odd is weather is highly localized in its context. Meaning if we tell the weather widget where we are to get useful weather information, then we are no longer acting in an anonymous fashion on-line and can be linked to a location. However if we do not tell the weather widget our location then the weather information it provides will likely be useless. It's a little like installing a VPN client on a phone and leaving the GPS function enabled, it seems to be self-defeating. I checked, out of curiosity, and discovered the weather widget displays data for New York City.
Installing
There was no obvious way to install the distribution from the live desktop. We can restart the computer and select one of the installer options from the boot menu if we wish to customize and then run Septor on a regular basis.
Septor uses Debian's installer which is, as far as I can tell, virtually unmodified. Apart from skipping some of the base package options, everything from selecting our language and keyboard layout, disk partitioning, and setting up user accounts seemed to be exactly the same experience as what plain Debian provides.
On a side note, I observed that this installer is somewhat unusual in that it does not set the noatime filesystem flag when taking the guided partitioning option. This flag can improve disk performance and life span while disabling it rarely has any negative side-effects, except when using a few specific tools. Most of the systems I have checked in recent years use noatime by default.
Hardware
When I began using Septor it was running in VirtualBox. The distribution provided good performance in the virtual machine. Its boot time was fairly average, but desktop performance was quite good. I believe Septor makes a reasonable choice in disabling file indexing, which I suspect both improves performance and reduces the chance of leaking information. The KDE Plasma desktop properly resized itself automatically to fit the VirtualBox window.
When I switched over to running Septor on my laptop the distribution again ran smoothly. It was able to boot in either Legacy BIOS or UEFI mode. The Plasma desktop was very responsive and all of my hardware was properly detected. The distribution disables taps as clicks on the touchpad by default, however taps (and other gestures) can be enabled in the System Settings panel.
Septor 2021 -- Adjusting desktop settings
(full image size: 420kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
One of the only problems I encountered with the distribution was a minor one. When opening the network manager widget it would show a list of nearby wireless networks. This was to be as expected. However, in busy areas the list of available networks would refresh rapidly, sometimes so quickly I would find myself clicking on the wrong network two or three times as they reshuffled themselves. It was not a serious issue and one which mostly went away while I was home.
Septor is average in its resource usage, requiring about 630MB of RAM when logged into the Plasma desktop. A fresh install of the distribution, should we wish to run it from the hard drive, requires 5.8GB of space, not including swap space.
Applications
Septor ships with a variety of useful software that covers a range of functionality. The distribution offers the Tor Browser and OnionShare, which I will talk about later. The HexChat IRC client is available along with the Thunderbird e-mail client. LibreOffice and KOrganizer are installed along with two contact managers. The KDE Connect software is installed to share information between devices.
Septor 2021 -- The Tor Browser privacy add-ons
(full image size: 326kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
The QuiteRSS feed reader is available along with the GNU Image Manipulation Program. The Dolphin file manager is present along with the K3b disc burning software and the VLC media player. The Okular document viewer is installed alongside the Eqonomize accounting program. (Side note to application developers: Please do not name your applications things like Eqonomize, it is hard to tell people how to find your website and it makes my spell checker cry.)
To assist Septor in its goal to provide privacy, the distribution ships with the zuluCrypt volume manager which can access encrypted storage. We are also given the Kleopatra certificate manager and the KGpg encryption tool. Septor ships with the KDE System Settings panel and a full compliment of manual pages. In the background the distribution runs the systemd init software and version 5.9 of the Linux kernel.
Special tools
Earlier I mentioned two special tools which ship with Septor. One is the Tor Browser, a Firefox-based browser that redirects its traffic through the Tor network. The Tor Browser includes several useful add-ons, including the HTTPS Everywhere extension, NoScript, and uBlock Origin. These tools help keep our network traffic encrypted while stripping out a lot of scripts and ads which could otherwise be used to track our on-line activity.
Browsing through the Tor network is mostly anonymous, but it is also slow. Users may also run into firewalls or websites which block traffic from commonly used exit nodes. There are some inconveniences to trying to travel the web anonymously.
I found it interesting that the Tor Browser saves downloads in a directory called "Downloads", but it is not the Downloads directory in our user's home. Instead it is buried several levels down in .local/share/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/Downloads. This made it a little confusing when I went to find items I had downloaded. The web browser is not sandboxed, it can save to other locations in our user's home, it just doesn't. I'm not sure why this default was selected, but it is inconvenient.
Septor 2021 -- Digging down to the default location for saved files
(full image size: 142kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
OnionShare is the other special application Septor includes. The OnionShare application has evolved a lot in recent years. This tool makes it quite easy to share files (and now receive files) over the Tor network. To share files we can pick a few files we want to send out to someone. OnionShare then creates a unique URL for us. We can copy this URL and send it to someone or post it on-line. The other person then connects to this URL through the Tor Browser. Our computer waits and serves up the file (or files) to the first person to connect to our URL. Once the files have been downloaded the service closes, preventing additional people from obtaining the file.
Septor 2021 -- Sharing files over OnionShare
(full image size: 342kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Receiving files through OnionShare works much the same way. We can click a button to enable receiving files through OnionShare at which point we are given a custom URL. Anyone we give this special URL to can open it in the Tor Browser and it will display a web page that accepts file uploads. Any files people choose to send us are stored in the OnionShare directory in our home. Each file is saved under its own set of sub-directories stamped with the current date and time. We can click another button in OnionShare to terminate the receiving process.
Septor 2021 -- Receiving files through OnionShare
(full image size: 362kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
In the past I sometimes had trouble getting OnionShare to work properly, but it was all smooth sailing this time and the application worked beautifully. I like that we can both share and receive files without worrying about setting up a domain, using a chat program, or adjusting firewall settings.
Software management
When it comes to browsing and sharing files anonymously, I feel Septor comes with just about everything it needs. We have ways to encrypt (or decrypt) files, browse anonymously, transfer files, and chat on-line. We can also work with encrypted storage volumes. One of the few items I felt might be missing was a tool to scrub meta data from files. Should we wish to install new software or update existing packages we can use the APT command line tools or the Synaptic graphical package manager. Synaptic may not be much to look at, but it handled installing, removing, and upgrading software. It also allows us to configure repositories. I used Synaptic a few times and found it ran smoothly with no surprises.
Septor 2021 -- Installing new packages with Synaptic and using the Dolphin file manager
(full image size: 430kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Conclusions
I went into my trial with Septor expecting to have access to most of the same tools I would with Tails and to have roughly the same experience. However, I found (to my pleasure) that I was mistaken. While Tails is a well put together distribution and quite easy to use and set up as a live distribution, I found Septor to be more accessible and, in a sense, more familiar.
On the surface this may be counter-intuitive. Tails has a smaller download, lots of wonderful documentation, and a more simple interface. The two projects have the same Debian base, include much of the same key functionality and are about evenly matched when it comes to memory usage. So what makes me enjoy Septor more?
What I think it boils down to is Tails is a great appliance. A person can download Tails to a USB stick, plug it into a computer, and have a simple, streamlined, anonymous web browsing experience. Then we can unplug the stick and the appliance experience is done.
While Septor can be used in this manner - written to a thumb drive and used as a live distribution - I feel Septor is less like an appliance and more of a general purpose tool. Septor has a wider array of applications, it is designed to be installed to a hard drive if we want to use it full-time. While Tails has a very streamlined, appliance-like desktop, courtesy of GNOME, Septor has a very flexible, classic-style desktop through KDE Plasma. In my tests Septor's desktop was much more responsive than Tails and its range of customization makes it a welcome option for people like me who like to adjust tools to suit them.
In short, for people who want a temporary live distribution they can use once (or on-demand) and then stop using, then Tails is probably the better choice. For people with less computing experience or who want an uncluttered, guided experience, Tails is probably better. However, for people who want to install their anonymous tools locally, or who want to customize their desktop, or who need more tools pre-installed, then Septor is probably the better fit.
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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
Septor has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.6/10 from 5 review(s).
Have you used Septor? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Manjaro to be PinePhone's default operating system, Slackware prepares for a new release, UBports unveils new Devices page, Mint urges users apply security updates
The PinePhone has attracted a lot of attention over the past few years as an open and friendly platform for mobile operating systems, including Linux-based distributions. Several Linux projects have been ported to the PinePhone, including UBports and Manjaro Linux. The latter is now considered the default operating system with which new PinePhone devices will be bundled. "A question that I frequently receive concerns the default operating system and user interface that will ship on the PinePhone. Today we are very pleased to announce that the PinePhone will ship with Plasma Mobile on a Manjaro ARM base from this point on. We have a long-standing relationship with Manjaro and KDE Community, and both projects have supported us and our efforts since the dawn of PINE64. I'm not sure if I wrote about this publicly in the past, but the promise that Plasma Mobile held in its early stages was the deciding factor for us to proceed with creating a Linux smartphone in the first place. Needless to say, we have been excited to see the UI environment mature and flourish on our platform over the past 12 months. Manjaro is our core partner, offering support for all our flagship Linux devices, including the ROCKPro64 and the Pinebook Pro. Their work on the PinePhone has been indispensable, and their current OS images are among the best and most fully-featured for the platform."
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Fans of the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution received some interesting news this week. The Slackware changelog hinted at an upcoming release, following a large rebuild of packages. "Here we go again... upgraded to glibc-2.33 and one last mass rebuild for Slackware 15.0. The only packages upgraded in this batch are glibc and the kernels - everything else is just a rebuild against the new glibc. Not rebuilt in this batch: devs (best to just leave this alone), glibc-zoneinfo, kernel-firmware, rust, linux-faqs, linux-howtos, aspell-en, mozilla-firefox, mozilla-thunderbird, and seamonkey. There's a new Rust compiler but Firefox and Thunderbird will need to be patched to use it, so we'll hold off on those until they're ready for the new Rust either with patches or new upstream releases. Until we have that and a few more scheduled upgrades I'm not quite ready to call this beta yet, but you can call it 15.0-alpha1." The most recent stable version of Slackware Linux, 14.2, was published over four years ago and 14.1 was released about three years before that.
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The UBports team has launched a new web page which lists the project's supported mobile devices and devices which are currently works in progress. The page currently lists 58 devices along with a status board showing what is working and what is not on each piece of hardware. "The devices supporting UT (now 55+) are listed there and a progress bar has been provided with each, which will hopefully reflect more clearly how it delivers in terms of everyday practicality. For each component feature that is listed as not working, you can now click on that feature to read the bug report. Of course for this to work as it should, each device porter or their representative needs to keep their own progress data up to date on their device page. We still need to do some work in promoting that but the mechanisms for doing it are now very simple."
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The Linux Mint team have published a blog post with some uncomfortable statistics about how many users of their distribution are not keeping up with security updates and are, often, running unsupported versions of Mint. "We can't measure anything with precision because there's nothing in your computer which sends data to us and we don't configure Linux Mint in a way that even allows us to count how many users we have. In other words, there is nothing in Linux Mint that is common to all users and that we could rely on to establish statistics. That being said, we do have a few metrics we can measure. They give us stats which only tell one particular aspect of the story and they are unreliable and imprecise but do tell us something nonetheless. About 30% of users apply updates in less than a week." The post goes on to provide instructions for upgrading Mint safely using Timeshift and upgrade tools.
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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) |
Using older kernels on Ubuntu LTS releases
Not-wanting-to-upgrade asks: I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on one of the family computers. I set it up such that non-sudo users would get software updates, and accordingly I've mostly forgotten about it since. However, the automatic kernel update from 5.4 to 5.8 unexpectedly made the computer wonky enough to be unusable unless the alternate 5.4 boot option is selected in GRUB.
Rather than making the family manually choose 5.4 upon every boot up, how would someone go about blacklisting 5.8 but not affecting the computer from automatically receiving future non-5.8 kernel updates e.g. 5.10? Alternatively, and perhaps preferably, since 5.4 is an LTS kernel, how would someone go about blacklisting any non-5.4 kernel updates but still automatically receiving future 5.4 subversion kernel updates?
DistroWatch answers: As some of our readers may know, Canonical publishes new versions of the Ubuntu distribution every six months. Once every two years the company launches a long-term support (LTS) version which is supported for five years. These LTS releases are the ones most people should be using, especially if they are less technically inclined.
These LTS versions (16.04, 18.04, 20.04, etc) receive media refreshes around twice a year. The refreshed install media includes critical bug fixes and new hardware support (in the form of newer kernel versions) in an effort to make installing the distribution on newer computers quicker and safer. The newer kernels also support more recent hardware. This process of providing up to date hardware support with a newer kernel is discussed on the Ubuntu wiki and is referred to as hardware enablement (HWE).
Canonical's plan to provide more up to date hardware support is, on the whole, a good move and convenient for people with new computers. However, as the above question points out, newer kernels can introduce instability where things were running smoothly before. So how do you avoid upgrading to the latest HWE kernel while continuing to get minor updates to the older kernel your system originally came with?
Ubuntu LTS releases ship with two meta-packages for the kernel (packages which pull in other or additional packages). The older, stable kernel is called linux-image-generic while the newer kernel with additional hardware support is called linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04. Note the newer HWE kernel includes a version number which will be specific to the version of Ubuntu you are running. If you had Ubuntu 18.04 installed then the HWE kernel package would be called linux-image-generic-hwe-18.04. To stick with the older kernel all you will need to do is make sure the older kernel's meta-package is still installed and then remove the newer (HWE) kernel package. You can do this with two commands. First, make sure your computer is booted into the older, generic kernel. This is version 5.4 of the kernel in this example. Then run the following two commands:
sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic linux-headers-generic
sudo apt-get remove linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04 linux-headers-generic-hwe-20.04
These lines first make sure the regular, original kernel package is marked as installed. This package should already be in place and you will probably just see a message indicating the package is installed and already at its latest version. The second line then removes the HWE kernel which was causing the stability problems.
From this point on the system should only apply updates to the older kernel during package upgrades and not install newer versions of the HWE kernel.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
siduction 21.1.0
Ferdinand Thommes has announced the release of siduction 21.1.0, a brand-new version of the project's set of rolling-release distributions based on Debian's "unstable" branch with a choice of Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, LXDE, LXQt and Xfce desktops: "The siduction team is proud to present siduction 2021.1. After a long hiatus of almost three years, we are happy to be back with an official release. This one is dubbed 'C-Blues' and it should be easy to guess what the 'C' stands for in these troubled times. The flavors we offer for siduction 2021.1.0 are KDE Plasma 5.20.5, LXQt 0.16.0, Cinnamon 4.8.6, Xfce 4.16, LXDE 10, X.Org and noX. GNOME and MATE did not make it this time. They might be back at some point or not. Of course, they are still installable from the repository. The released images are a snapshot of Debian 'unstable' from 2021-02-07. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, an installer based on Calamares and a custom-patched version of the Linux kernel 5.10.15 and systemd at 247.3." Continue to the release notes for further details.
siduction 21.1.0 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 3.9MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Devuan GNU+Linux 3.1.0
The Devuan GNU+Linux team have announced the availability of a new point release of their distribution. The new point release, Devuan GNU+Linux 3.1.0, now supports three init options at install time: OpenRC, SysV init, and runit. The installer now also allows users to install an alternative bootloader (lilo) instead of GRUB. The release announcement states: "Devuan Beowulf 3.1.0 point release installer ISOs, desktop-live, and minimal-live ISOs are now available. Note that ARM and virtual images are not updated in this release. What's new in this point release: The installer now offers a choice of three init systems. runit has been added, along with sysvinit and OpenRC. If you would like to select an alternate bootloader (lilo) or exclude non-free firmware, you must select one of the Expert install options." Further information can be found in the project's release notes.
Q4OS 3.14
The Q4OS team have announced a new version of their lightweight, Debian-based distribution. The Q4OS distribution is available in two editions, featuring the KDE Plasma and Trinity desktop environments. The Q4OS developers have introduced an automatic guide for VirtualBox guest additions along with a tool for selecting the default web browser. The project's release announcement for Q4OS 3.14 reads: "An update to Q4OS 3 Centaurus LTS has been released. The new 3.14 Series receives the recent Debian Buster 10.8 update, updated Debian stable kernel and important security and bug fixes. This update brings along a few Q4OS specific improvements, for example Virtualbox guest additions automatic installation guide, a convenient script for setting the default web browser for Plamsa as well as Trinity desktop and cumulative upgrade covering all the changes from the previous stable Q4OS 3 Centaurus release. Current users only need to perform a regular update to get all the new features. Anyone is welcome to download installation media images from the Downloads section of the Q4OS website."
Tiny Core Linux 12.0
Tiny Core Linux is one of the world's smallest Linux distributions which uses the BusyBox userland utilities. The project's latest release, Tiny Core Linux 12.0, introduces a number of new fixes, package updates, and updated hardware support. "Changelog for 12.0: kernel updated to 5.10.3, glibc updated to 2.32 gcc updated to 10.2.0, binutils updated to 2.35.1, e2fsprogs base libs/apps updated to 1.45.6, util-linux base libs/apps updated to 2.36.1, busybox updated to 1.33.0, busybox patched to load more than 9 extensions, busybox patched to remove 'Module has invalid ELF header', tc-config: no gratuitous permissions changes in /opt from bdantas, tc-functions: version changes from andyj, shutdown.sh: clarifying comment, busybox-aliases: additions from bdantas, filetool.sh: comments from bdantas, tce-setup: remove neeedless timestamp from bdantas, tce-config: more precise /opt copying from bdantas, tce-config: rename autoscan from polikuo, tc-config: similar awk rounding...." Further details can be found in the distribution's release announcement. The distribution is available in three editions: a minimal Core, a desktop flavour called TinyCore, and a full installation image called CorePlus.
pfSense 2.5.0
pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD specifically tailored for use as a firewall and router that is entirely managed via web interface. The project's latest release, pfSense 2.5.0, is based on FreeBSD 12.2. The release announcement highlights changes in the new version: "Base OS upgraded to FreeBSD 12.2-STABLE, OpenSSL upgraded to 1.1.1, pPerformance improvements. Kernel WireGuard implementation, as mentioned in a previous WireGuard blog post. WireGuard is a new VPN Layer 3 protocol designed for speed and simplicity. The pfSense documentation site includes information on how to configure WireGuard as well as example configuration recipes. IPsec enhancements: Configuration for the strongSwan IPsec backend was changed from the deprecated ipsec.conf/stroke format to the new swanctl/VICI format. Various improvements to tunnel configuration, including better options for lifetime and rekey to avoid duplicate security associations."
Mabox Linux 21.02
Mabox Linux is a Manjaro-based rolling release distribution. Mabox Linux features the Openbox window manager as its default interface and provides a welcome screen with access to utilities which add additional software to the operating system. The project's latest snashot, Mabox Linux 21.02, updates the default kernel to the latest LTS kernel release, fixes memory usage statistics in the Conky panel, and offers both free and non-free driver options at boot time. "I am pleased to announce a new release of Mabox Linux 21.02 Foltest. Mabox is a distribution based on Manjaro, with a preconfigured lightweight Openbox window manager and several specially developed programs and tools. Works great even on weaker computers. Mabox 21.02 Foltest is equipped with the latest 5.10 LTS kernel, of course you can easily install other kernels and decide which one to run at boot time. The installer offers the option of choosing free or proprietary drivers - when booting, select the free or non-free option. This release includes a number of fixes, new/updated packages and new features." The release announcement has further details.
Mabox Linux 21.02 -- Running the Openbox window manager
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1600x900 pixels)
Netrunner 21.01
Netrunner 21.01, an updated version of the project's desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's "stable" branch, but featuring the latest LTS (long-term support) kernel, has been released: "The Netrunner team is happy to announce the release of Netrunner 21.01 'XOXO'. This version is based on the current Debian 10.7 ('Buster') and it comes with better support for modern hardware thanks to Linux kernel 5.9.15 from Debian backports. Netrunner 21.01 ships with all the latest security updates provided by Debian and a new beautiful wallpaper showing the new code name of this release. With the activated Debian backports repository, we provide updated firmware for WiFi and ethernet chips as well as improved printer drivers to allow more modern hardware support. Firefox-ESR and Thunderbird were updated to the latest stable LTS versions, which get regular security updates provided by Debian security. Netrunner maintains its gorgeous look and feel from the previous version based upon Breeze Window decoration and red color cursor." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and screenshots.
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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: 2,347
- Total data uploaded: 36.3TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Running Hardware Enablement kernels
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about Hardware Enablement (HWE) kernels. These special kernels include updated driver support to allow the distribution to run on more modern hardware. These kernels can be useful to people installing a distribution on new computers, but may introduce regressions in functionality or performance, resulting in some people preferring to run older (generic) versions of the kernel. We would like to know if you run an HWE kernel on your distribution. Let us know about your experiences with HWE kernels in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on connecting devices with KDE Connect in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you run a HWE kernel?
| I run a HWE kernel: | 149 (13%) |
| I run an older/generic kernel: | 244 (22%) |
| My fixed release distro does not offer HWE: | 106 (9%) |
| My distro is a rolling release: | 344 (31%) |
| I do not know if I run a HWE kernel: | 273 (24%) |
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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, 1 March 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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1 • Kernels (by Brad on 2021-02-22 00:24:35 GMT from United States)
I wonder if this poll will be relevant to many folks, since one of the reasons to use Linux, is to keep old hardware going.
Personally, I see no reason to refresh my hardware every two or three years - when I'm "ready" for a hardware change, it's usually for an older piece of affordable hardware.
2 • Kernel (by Tim on 2021-02-22 00:51:11 GMT from United States)
I chose "I don't know" because that's as close as I can get to "I don't care..." unless I'm in the situation like the person Jesse was replying to and my system has a problem with a specific kernel. It was interesting hearing the different Ubuntu packages though, I will keep this in mind if I need it.
I've been using Mobian with phosh (and Mate) on my Pinephone. I've been really happy with it. How have people found other distros?
3 • HWE (by wally on 2021-02-22 00:52:28 GMT from United States)
no HWE on any machines, even one a few months old
4 • Ubuntu LTS HWE Kernels (by Wedge009 on 2021-02-22 01:21:20 GMT from Australia)
Had to revert to the older generic kernel due to amdgpu-pro support (or rather, lack of support for HWE kernels).
5 • Ubuntu LTS HWE Kernel (by RogerInLawrenceville on 2021-02-22 01:35:02 GMT from United States)
I upgraded an HP DL380 G5 from 16.04 to 18.04. The server wouldn't boot because the newer kernel had removed support for my HP RAID controller. Luckily the previous kernel was still present so I was able to boot the server.
6 • HWE kernel (by Andy Prough on 2021-02-22 02:34:06 GMT from United States)
I run a HWE kernel with MX KDE which has AHS (advanced hardware support) on one system, mainly to test certain features and to create one of my respins. But on my other systems I find that the 4.19 LTS kernel usually works best. Usually all I need is the Linux-libre kernel, which is kind of the opposite of HWE.
7 • Mageia & LMDE kernels (by M.Z. on 2021-02-22 03:51:41 GMT from United States)
I suppose I run an older kernel on Mint Debian, but for Magiea it's kind of none of the above, as it is a fixed release with a modern kernel. I'm on Linux 5.10.14 right now, though much of the rest of the software like LibreOffice is getting a bit old & Firefox is the ESR version. I've got no stability issues & no kernel issues that I can remember. I get why Debian, RHEL, & other things targeted at a production environment/big IT shop would do things wilt old kernels, though it really isn't necessary for most users. Given how good Mageia is, I'm a bit surprised that Ubuntu & similar distros don't just have some box on their upgrade system to automatically got to the latest LTS kernel.
8 • kernel ver. (by Marvin (P.) Android on 2021-02-22 06:30:03 GMT from New Zealand)
My daily driver is on kernel 5.7.19, but Mageia is offering Linux 5.10.14.
I have yet to update.
I dont have the latest hardware - my youngest h/w is late 2014, oldest is a 32bit Athlon xp2400+ desktop, and a variety in between.
Mageia 7 runs on them all, that includes (OOTB) 32bit UEFI hardware.
The oldest hardware runs a bit slower, but is still usable - even Firefox.
Some programs however are not compatible with SSE due to age, so they just do not run.
So not a kernel problem, per se, but libraries that have been deprecated.
Oh, nearly forgot - never used timeshift (or equivalent) to recover a borked update, because, well, I have yet to experience one. I use Clonezilla as an irregular backup tool.
9 • Roll your own kernel (by James in NZ on 2021-02-22 07:02:20 GMT from New Zealand)
I roll my own kernel using the sources on kernel.org (5.11); I recently had to do this to use usb adapters that were not previously supported in "stable" distro kernel release (5.10)
10 • Septor (by Barnabyh on 2021-02-22 07:53:34 GMT from South Africa)
Well-written review, thanks Jesse. The previous version of Septor had a tool called MAT, the Metadata Anonymisation Toolkit. It would be interesting to know why this is not there anymore if it was omitted.
11 • Septor (by Marko on 2021-02-22 08:17:18 GMT from Serbia)
@Barnabyh MAT2 is here now. Right click in Dolphin - Actions - Clean metadata.
12 • HWE kernels, and stable fixed feature complete in general. (by henry on 2021-02-22 09:55:31 GMT from Belgium)
I think these are the last years/decade of "stable fixed feature complete" of anything. Unfortunately. From win10 - linux distro's - up to the kernel. It's telling the user never to get too comfortable, and never really rely on anything. Just go with it. Accept you are no longer in control.
Stable fixed feature complete releases are key to guarantee long term compatibility for software/hardware vendors. But also that is no longer necessary. If it doesn't work anymore, you can buy something new.
Supporting stable fixed feature releases of anything costs money and dedication. It's cheaper to support just one branch. So it must go. F the user!
13 • MAT (by Jesse on 2021-02-22 11:19:05 GMT from Canada)
@10: It looks like the MAT package for removing metadata from files was dropped from Debian. Since Septor uses Debian as its base, that would explain why the tool is missing. https://packages.qa.debian.org/m/mat.html
14 • slow and steady wins the race (by fonz on 2021-02-22 11:21:14 GMT from Indonesia)
while i do prefer LTS stuff, my new desk+laptop dont really work at peak performance. its a bit of a small trade off IMHO, but still slow and steady wins the race. not a fan of all the new shiny stuff being heavily promoted (but being very borked) as said on last weeks weekly. take a look at all the modern games. so shiny, yet so borked. i remembered back in the 90s we could get product recalls, get a free updated game/app + a coupon as an apology for releasing something buggy...
OTOH, manjaro on a pinephone does seem fun. not liking where droids are going to as undoing droid 10 (borked) forced me to buy a new phone anways.
also kudos to DW for reviewing obscure distros nowadays. although i dont think i really need an anonymity focused distro for the foreseeable future, having a few reviewed should help privacy noobs like me make a more educamacated guess...
15 • slackware "..but you can call it 15.0-alpha1" edition (by henry on 2021-02-22 11:25:25 GMT from Belgium)
I'm am really looking forward to Slackware 15. I already have the "15.0-alpha1" running on my PC. And it is running great. No issues and very fast. However I am running it with the 5.4.99 kernel, because of compatibility. When running current, and when you have stuff that is using specific compiled kernel modules for stuff you run like the nvidia driver or virtualbox-kernel, it's best to roll your own kernel outside package management. If not, you can go for stock kernel.
Installation was fast, and performance is great. And as host for virtualbox it's behaving well. There are a lot of new tools, but luckily the oldskool tool sets are still there. Stuff like lftp, mc, etc that I use on a daily base. For the fun stuff, games from steam run also great. gta5 is running just as fast as on windows these days. Hell, even the default shortkeys in xfce made a lot of sense out-of-the-box.
16 • slackware - maybe one the best distros ever (by slack- on 2021-02-22 13:49:33 GMT from Brazil)
Slackware 15 will be the first release with kde 5, perhaps the last kde-based distro to adopt it.
Will replace my debian 10 machine with it when it is ready.
Btw, Slackware uses SySV. "because PID1 must be simple, secure and stable." (quote from ArtixLinux website)
17 • Eqonomize (by pepa65 on 2021-02-22 14:10:01 GMT from Thailand)
Jesse said: "do not name your applications things like Eqonomize, it is hard to tell people how to find your website" -- I am baffled by this. I googled "Eqonomize" and the top link was the desired result. You tell people "with a Q instead of a C" and they will find it. Had they called their app Economize, it would have been very hard to find...
18 • HWE (by Tad Generic on 2021-02-22 15:00:35 GMT from Canada)
No Idea if I have one or not. I'm just at the level where I'll distro hop until I find one that just works on whatever I'm installing it on. This took a bit of time on a 4 year old Acer Expire (AMD A9) where the screen would flicker periodically. I tend to favour the rolling release model, because I don't like doing periodic reinstalls, and traditionally don't use LTS versions on desktops (though perhaps I should reconsider that). OpenSuSE Tumbleweed and Manjaro are current favourites. I'm going to give Mabox a look today, out of curiosity.
19 • App names (by Jesse on 2021-02-22 15:13:00 GMT from Canada)
@17: "Jesse said: "do not name your applications things like Eqonomize, it is hard to tell people how to find your website" -- I am baffled by this. I googled "Eqonomize" and the top link was the desired result."
Of course it was, because you spelled the search the way the app is named, not the way it sounds. Which was entirely my point. If someone had _told_ you to search for an app named "economize" you'd never find the website you wanted. The first 200 pages of search results wold be about finances. It's only because you know (from reading its name in text) that the app has a misspelled name that you were able to find it.
The same goes for apps like Kontact or Konquorer. These are terrible because anyone who hears them (rather than seeing them in text) will never find them.
20 • kernels (by Otis on 2021-02-22 15:52:02 GMT from United States)
Some people and a lot of companies have more than one machine and type of machine, so kernels are going to be more important to them, perhaps even HWE kernels if the computers they use are across more than one generation of hardware evolution.
But I'm wondering if the poll question is moot to most of the population of linux users with older hardware. And yes I do wonder often what those percentages are now days. Some of us began our linux journey on state of the art machines in 1995.
Many of us kept going as to updating our computers to newer laptops and PCs, but still installed linux distros on the new machines, even wiping out Windows, but often also just purchasing spare hard drives for linux; we were doing it both ways, even usb sticks, etc.
21 • @19 - eqonomize (by Andy Prough on 2021-02-22 17:02:33 GMT from United States)
Just say "e-kwon-omize". My search engine finds eqonomize as the first hit whether I spell it "eqonomize" or "equonomize".
22 • kernels (by David on 2021-02-22 17:34:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
Using PCLinuxOS you get a choice of how to handle the kernel. I opted for a fully rolling-release, so I've just got version 5.10, but you can opt to use a LTS kernel — currently either 5.4 or 4.19.
23 • Rolling release and kernels (by Bobbie Sellers on 2021-02-22 18:49:45 GMT from United States)
All my hardware is used from 11 to 6 years old.
I run PCLinuxOS64 and my kernel is 5.10.17
and today I am using that on my Latitude E7450
PCLinuxOS64 using that kernel, latest iso to avoid excess updates to KDE is
2021.0215. I look forward to using it on my older machines two Dell
Latitudes E6520 and E6540. I only use older kernels when I have
some problems with the newest kernel.
bliss -“Nearly any fool can use a computer. Many do.” After all here I am...
24 • #19 (by Essexson on 2021-02-22 18:58:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sorry Jesse, your misspelling was misspelt. Konquorer should be Konqueror :)
25 • HWE?? WTH?? :) (by Jan K. on 2021-02-22 19:15:54 GMT from Denmark)
How does one vote, when running huge kernel 5.11 in a not fixed nor rolling distro?
According to the wiki definition, "huge kernel" is not HWE....
Sigh
26 • HWE (by Penguin86 on 2021-02-22 19:20:43 GMT from United States)
I'd rather see continued support for older hardware. Most of my hardware is at least 5 years old. If it ain't broke, don't "fix" it.
27 • Linux kernel discussions: HWE, GA, etc. (by Greg Zeng on 2021-02-22 21:55:42 GMT from Australia)
Tried to make sense of this week's topic. So many unanswered questions. The official Ubuntu site on HWE & GA showed more unanswered questions, referring to the years of 2016 & 2018. Other years of LTS releases do not exist: 2020, etc? Is the discussion only about server operating systems, without or with a desktop environment?
Seemingly unknown are many other Linux facts. More creators of Linux operating systems use Ubuntu LTS CORE systems than any other core base (Debian, Red Hat, Arch, Open Suse, Manjaro, etc). Does this HWE discussion apply to these Ubuntu LTS systems as well? Mint, Pop!_OS, KDE Neon, Zorin, etc?
Ubuntu itself has official Linux kernel releases, new every few days. These officially compiled releases include all the old, new, alpha & beta releases of all Ubuntu kernels ever released: "Index of /~kernel-ppa/mainline"
The reasons why these are published is that bug fixing, optimizations and features being added & removed are continuous processes. "Perfection" does not exist. OK performance is the best possible, since accidents, changed environments & malware can be continually happening.
The derived creators of the know the "bug" that Jesse's OP mentions. Some later derivative operating systems have GUI versions of this Distrowatch CLI solution. The system administrator is given the GUI choice of staying with any of the Linux kernel choices, easily, now or forever.
Reading the users' comments, some users have simple family computers that never are exposed to malware & changed environments. Yet they still use the latest Linux operating systems that are aware of the newer Linux kernels?
The other problem of all Linux systems that allow updates to the Linux kernel are the accumulated files, file spaces & administrative overheads demanded with so many old or new Linux kernels. There are ways to remove these unwanted pieces, if they are allowed to clutter the operating system.
28 • Septor & Kernels (by Cheker on 2021-02-23 00:47:00 GMT from Portugal)
Septor seems nice. I haven't tried it myself yet because I felt like it wasn't gonna be too different from Tails.
I'm on LTS kernels (5.4 and 4.19) on both machines (one new, one old), even though the new one is a rolling release. I don't think I have a use case for newer kernels, so I'll take the stability.
29 • Re. No26, distros, versions, colonels and co, (by Someguy on 2021-02-23 08:49:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes, No.26, and older kit. Who are all these fellas actually 'buying' ready-build hardware?! ASPs are the obvious route even for new builds. Best to specify your own hardware right down to the nuts & bolts as well as the distros, colonels, boot options, etc. There's good parts that can be recycled from really ancient kit, too. I have a really old 'full tower' case running my latest hardware - mostly empty space inside keeps everything nice and cool & quiet, can sit on it or put a vase of tulips on for an early Spring display. With older stuff, sometimes run into nV incompatibilities and don't like Intel hardware for choice. Otherwise, rolling, HWE, SySV, - whatever works. Looking forward to Slack15.
30 • HWE kernel (by John on 2021-02-23 11:07:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am running the 4.15 kernel. In the past I too have had issues rebooting following a kernel upgrade (hwe or otherwise). Whether rightly or wrongly, I rebooted into an older kernel version, fired up synaptic, and removed all references to the newest kernel (headers, image, extras etc.) - then rebooted, and everything was back to normal. I usually wait at least a month before updating again, and by that time the kernel has been sufficiently modified to not cause any further problems.
Don't laugh, and it's certainly more work than Jesse's two lines of code, but us newbies lacking in the knowledge have to find our own solutions!
31 • Older Mint Installs (by Chris on 2021-02-23 12:21:37 GMT from United States)
I'm running Mint 18.3 since that's the last one with KDE. I tried adding KDE to the current version using instructions from various web sites, but the end result was a total mess. I do keep my 18.3 up to date though (so far).
32 • HWE Kernel (by dragonmouth on 2021-02-23 13:19:59 GMT from United States)
For the past 5 years or so I've been using PCLinuxOS. Never had any problems with using different kernels. Sometimes I would have 4 of them on my PC and use them interchangeably. Then I was forced to switch to antiX. The first time I tried using a kernel other than the default, I got an error on boot. So I'm stuck using 4.9.212.
33 • HWE needed for newer AMD processors (by mikef90000 on 2021-02-23 19:28:07 GMT from United States)
On Linux Mint 20 I've confirmed that the HWE 5.8 is required for stability.
The early 5.4 kernels showed many amdgpu warnings in syslog and the graphics on my APU would occasionally stop responding (logout or reboot required).
On lower memory systems the newer kernels seem a little slower but RAM is usually an easy upgrade.
34 • both (by Tim on 2021-02-23 22:27:16 GMT from United States)
I just want to point out that supporting old kit and new kit is not mutually exclusive. The oldest of my internet connected computers, a 2008 Core Duo, is running the 5.10 kernel currently in Debian testing.
The nugget from this week is that Ubuntu gives easy options of multiple supported mainline kernels. I’ll use that if I ever have trouble with one, whether it’s the original or the hwe.
I’ve never had to roll my own kernel on any machine. Regressions on older hardware are often random and disappear on the next release. New hardware we have rolling releases for until supported kernels end up in a formal release. At any given time, there’s a Debian stable, a Debian oldstable, a Debian Testing, 3 Ubuntu LTSs, a Ubuntu interim, and 2 supported families of Mint. One of those options is usually going to work fine, and with /home on a separate partition an OS refresh takes about half an hour and fixes the vast majority of any problems.
35 • @32 - switching kernels on antiX (by Andy Prough on 2021-02-23 22:30:37 GMT from United States)
> Then I was forced to switch to antiX. The first time I tried using a kernel other than the default, I got an error on boot. So I'm stuck using 4.9.212.
I switch kernels and add kernels frequently on antiX. Works quite well. Possibly you grabbed a kernel from an incompatible source, like from an Ubuntu PPA?
36 • To HWE or not to (by whoKnows on 2021-02-24 09:29:08 GMT from Switzerland)
@33 • HWE needed for newer AMD processors (by mikef90000)
"On Linux Mint 20 I've confirmed that the HWE 5.8 is required for stability."
As always, you need to know what are you doing and why exactly.
As Jesse explained:
"These special kernels [Hardware Enablement (HWE) kernels] include updated driver support to allow the distribution to run on more modern hardware. These kernels can be useful to people installing a distribution on new computers [...]"
Example:
You build yourself a new Ryzen PC and use the Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE AX V2 motherboard.
https://www.gigabyte.com/de/Motherboard/B550-AORUS-ELITE-AX-V2-rev-10/sp#sp
If you check its specs, you'll find out that it uses Realtek® 2.5GbE LAN chip (2.5 Gbit/1 Gbit/100 Mbit).
The first Kernel that supports it was the 5.9 Kernel.
Obviously if you're still on Kernel 5.8, you'll have "no internet" (no driver for your Realtek Ethernet chip) at all.
Either you'll have to use some old, supported NW LAN card, or you MUST use the 5.10+ Kernel, or the 5.8 HWE (where applicable).
This has nothing to do with "stability" but more with to have or not to have something (internet connection in this example) at all.
37 • kernel vs modern hardware (by Otis on 2021-02-24 15:17:24 GMT from United States)
@36 "Either you'll have to use some old, supported NW LAN card, or you MUST use the 5.10+ Kernel, or the 5.8 HWE (where applicable)."
Those aren't the only two choices, fortunately. A linux user savvy enough to build their own system can (learn to) build a customized kernel for said system. Many do.
The wonders of linux/bsd.
38 • MAT / MAT2 debian (by Dimitris on 2021-02-24 18:14:20 GMT from Greece)
@10 , @13
mat privacy tool, has been removed, because there is mat2 around : https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mat2
so you can still get it in debian / debian based
39 • Kernel version (by Adam Drake on 2021-02-24 22:02:01 GMT from United States)
5.8.0-45 on my laptop with Ubuntu installed and groovy-proposed enabled. If my "new" home server ever arrives, it will run whatever Buster is up to these days.
40 • @36 - 5.9 Kernel and new ethernet chip (by Andy Prough on 2021-02-24 22:04:37 GMT from United States)
> If you check its specs, you'll find out that it uses Realtek® 2.5GbE LAN chip (2.5 Gbit/1 Gbit/100 Mbit). The first Kernel that supports it was the 5.9 Kernel.
That's usually how it works - if you want to use something that first came to market in 2020, like the Realtek 2.5GbE LAN chip, you'll want to use a kernel or firmware from 2020 that supports it.
Number of Comments: 40
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| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
arkOS
arkOS was a flavour of Arch Linux ARM, a lightweight Linux-based operating system, that runs on embedded devices and standalone servers. arkOS allows you to run websites, email accounts, social networking profiles from its graphical interface.
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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