 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 908, 15 March 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Technology steadily moves forward and software leaps forward faster than most. Sometimes the march of progress leaves older utilities and programs behind, but other times entrenched software sticks around for a surpringingly long time. We talk about older packet filters hanging around after they have been replaced in our Questions and Answers column. Which packet filter do you use on your home computer to manage your firewall? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Before talking about firewalls, we begin this week with a look at Solus, a rolling release desktop distribution. Solus is an independent Linux distribution that can run a number of desktop environments, including its very own Budgie desktop. Read on to find out how the latest version of Solus performs. Solus is not the only distribution making progress, other open source projects are moving forward with their own developments. In our News section we discuss Canonical adopting Flutter for future desktop application development while the Void team warns about performance issues with newer kernels. Meanwhile developers are successfully testing Rust-based core utilities on Debian and the Haiku project is polishing its desktop applications. We wrap up this week's edition with a list of last week's releases along with the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Solus 4.2
Solus is an independently developed, rolling release distribution. The project uses the eopkg package manager, which has its roots in the PiSi package manager. The distribution is available in four editions, one of which runs the Budgie desktop which was created by the Solus team. The other three flavours feature the GNOME, KDE Plasma, and MATE desktops. These four editions all run on 64-bit (x86_64) machines and range from 1.7GB to 2.0GB in size.
I decided to focus on the Budgie edition as it seems to be the flagship of the distribution's efforts. The new Solus 4.2 release included some key changes. For instance, the release notes mention the system tray for Budgie has been completely rewritten. We are also told the volume control now has a mute button. One big change is the way in which desktop icons are handled. The release announcement mentions past versions of Solus relied on an older version of the Nautilus file manager to handle desktop icons, but desktop icons are now handled by Budgie rather than relying on a third-party solution.
Live media
Booting from the Solus media brings us directly to the Budgie desktop and the system plays a short audio clip to indicate it is ready to be used. A panel sits at the bottom of the display. The application menu sits to the left of the panel. A small collection of quick-launch buttons are placed just to the right of the menu. A system tray and logout button are located on the right side of the panel. On the desktop we find icons for opening the GNOME Files file manager and launching the system installer. The application menu uses a two-pane approach with categories on the left we can click on to explore and specific application launchers shown on the right. There is a search bar built into the menu to help us locate specific programs.
The Budgie desktop defaults to using a dark theme. Most panels and menus are black with white text. Highlighted items and folder icons are displayed in blue. The background is soft blue. All of this made Solus visually appealing to me right from the start.
Installing
Solus uses a graphical system installer which looks to be unique to this distribution. There is a list of steps the installer will take shown down the left side of the window and we can use this to track our progress. The rest of the window guides us through configuration steps.
We begin by picking our language from a list. The installer then offers to find our location in order to automatically guess some other key bits of information. We are then asked to confirm our keyboard layout and time zone. I found that when I accepted the location check my time zone was guessed correctly, but the keyboard layout was not. However, if I denied the location check the keyboard layout was correct while the time zone was not filled in.
We are next offered the options of guided or manual partitioning and it looks as though the guided option will take over the entire hard drive. The manual partitioning screen can only format existing partitions and assign them mount points. If a suitable partition is not available we need to exit the installer, arrange partitions using a tool such as GParted (which is included on the live media), and then re-launch the installer. The installer itself does not include manual partitioning options. This process works, though I found GParted appeared to lock up for a minute or two while it was applying its changes to the disk.
Assigning mount points in the Solus installer is not a clear process. We need to click on a partition, in a specific field, to assign a mount point. This is not explained for us and it is not clear that one part (though not another) of the partition entry is interactive.
Solus 4.2 -- Assigning mount points in the installer
(full image size: 528kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
After this screen we move on to making up a hostname for the computer and optionally installing a boot loader. Then we advance to creating a user account for ourselves. The installer can make multiple user accounts, the first of which is granted administrator access. Packages are then copied to the hard drive and, when it is finished, the installer offers to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My new copy of Solus booted quickly. The distribution brings up a graphical login page. Text is displayed in white on a light background which makes it difficult to read. I found when multiple user accounts existed they are all listed on the login screen. My account was always highlighted by default, but I could not select it. To sign in I had to select another user account then move back to mine before it would let me put in my password. I reboot rarely, but this was a speed bump every time I started the computer.
Signing in brought me back to the Budgie desktop. The file manager icons are still on the desktop, though the launcher for the installer is, naturally, gone. Shortly after signing into Budgie a notification appeared letting me know package updates were available. This pop-up includes a link we can click to open the software centre and display available updates.
Solus 4.2 -- Exploring the application menu while running Firefox
(full image size: 671kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Software management
When I opened the software centre from the update notification the software manager showed me 11 available updates, 281MB in size. At first, trying to install these updates brought up a password prompt box. I was unable to click on the box, enter my password, or click the visible Cancel button. At this point I could not interact with the software centre's window either. I eventually closed the software centre and re-launched it. Then tried to apply the waiting updates again. This time the password prompt was responsive and the new packages were downloaded successfully.
The software centre has six tabs down the left side of the window. These are: Home which shows software categories we can browse; Updates, a page that just shows a list of available new packages we can install; Installed, a list of installed packages we can remove; Third-Party, non-free software from unofficial repositories such as Android Studio, Slack, and Skype; Search which helps us find software by name; and Settings where we can adjust the frequency of checks for updates and other options like whether we want to download screenshots when viewing information about applications.
Solus 4.2 -- Browsing the software centre
(full image size: 375kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Searching for software worked well and browsing categories went smoothly. The software centre's interface was fairly responsive. New packages can be queued for installation with a single click. There were problems I kept running into though. Typically these issues came up when trying to install new applications, either from the official repositories or from the third-party collection. Often times when I tried to install a new package I would be prompted for my password, but the password box would not let me click on it or type my password. Closing the software centre and then relaunching it usually cleared the issue and the next time around the password box would work.
When I tried to install Spotify I ran into two errors. The first was the inactive password prompt and the second was an error indicating the desired package could not be fetched. This was followed by the software centre locking up and I had to kill its process. I also tried multiple times to install Slack, Falkon and VLC. The Slack process gave me the most trouble. Again the initial password prompt failed. After terminating the software centre and re-launching it, I tried again. This time I was not prompted for a password at all, the software centre just indicated Slack was being downloaded. This proceeded for a minute and then the software centre locked up and its process had to be killed from the command line because the window's close button did not respond.
I started keeping track after a while and found 75% of the time I tried to install software or updates, the software centre failed, unusually resulting in the interface locking up and requiring a trip to the command line to kill its process.
Should we wish to explore other forms of package management, Solus ships with both Snap and Flatpak frameworks. This gives us access to a wide range of portable packages. There are no Flatpak repositories enabled by default, but the default Snap repository from Canonical is available.
Hardware
I began testing Solus in a VirtualBox environment. Budgie performed fairly well, but was occasionally sluggish. I also found that Budgie's window manager process tended to spike in CPU usage occasionally, even when the desktop was calm. The desktop automatically resized dynamically to fit the VirtualBox window which was pleasantly convenient.
When I switched over to running Solus on my workstation the distribution ran quickly. I no longer ran into any sluggish behaviour (Budgie offered good responsiveness) and I no longer encountered CPU spikes, which I suspect were caused by software rendering when hardware capabilities were not directly available.
Solus worked well with my hardware and I found both the desktop and underlying operating system were pleasantly stable. Solus consumed 575MB of memory to log into Budgie, which is about average for mainstream Linux distributions. Its disk usage was also typical, about 6.1GB were required for the root partition.
Applications
Solus ships with a relatively conservative collection of applications. Looking through the application menu we can find Firefox, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice. There is a Calendar application, the HexChat IRC client, and an image viewer. The Rhythmbox audio player and GNOME MPV media player are included along with codecs to play popular media formats.
Solus 4.2 -- The desktop calendar and GNOME Files applications
(full image size: 74kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
There are also a large number of configuration tools for tweaking the desktop, power settings, setting up user accounts, and on-line services. These configuration modules are available both through the application menu and the desktop's settings panel. The Budgie settings panel appears to be GNOME's settings panel and, at a casual glance, there do not appear to be any Budgie-specific modifications or features.
The Solus Budgie edition uses the GNOME Files file manager, the systemd init software, and ships with version 5.10 of the Linux kernel. These, along with a few small tools, such as a system monitor and text editor, mean that the application menu remains uncluttered while basic desktop functionality is provided.
I went looking for a way to adjust where some launchers appear in the application menu. I also hoped to find a way to disable the need to click on a software category in order to see the launchers in that part of the menu. However, I was unable to find a way to customize the Budgie menu. I could, on the other hand, pin open applications to the quick-launch bar which made accessing commonly used programs faster.
Solus 4.2 -- The settings panel
(full image size: 425kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
One feature which performed inconsistently was the screenshot application. Sometimes if I pressed the Print Screen button on my keyboard I would hear the satisfying "shutter" sound and a new screenshot would appear in my Pictures directory. However, sometimes a "boop" error sound would be played and no image would be saved to the Pictures directory. Still other times no sound would play at all and no snapshot would be taken. I did not find any pattern as to when the shortcut key would work and when it did not. Launching the screenshot utility from the application menu and taking snapshots through the utility always worked.
Conclusions
In a lot of ways running Solus felt, to me, to be similar to running Artix Linux just before I started this review. The two projects have a number of things in common. They are both rolling releases, both use dark themes, both ship with a fairly small collection of software we can build on. I feel as though Artix places more focus on being lightweight with better performance while Solus places more emphasis on looking pretty and having features like a modern-looking notification area.
Solus 4.2 -- The applets and notifications panel
(full image size: 718kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The Budgie desktop, which I usually don't use apart from when I am reviewing Solus, mostly worked well. I like its layout and style more than GNOME, but also appreciate that it imports a number of useful tools from the GNOME family (like the settings panel) which lend more functionality and polish to the Budgie experience.
Like Artix, Solus finds a good balance between offering just enough applications to get started without overly cluttering the application menu. There is enough functionality to get people started browsing the web, writing letters, and importing appointments into their calendar, without needing to wade through a massive collection of software.
On the whole, Solus performed fairly well for me and gave me the tools I wanted. The system was stable and, while not super fast, worked smoothly enough. There are two areas where I feel Solus could be improved. Performing manual partitioning could be a nicer experience. Even if the installer just had a button to launch GParted and restart the installer this would save the user from finding and launching GParted manually and then opening the installer again. After that, assigning mount points does not feel clear. I think an obvious drop-down menu or button would be better than making the user click along a highlighted bar looking for the spot that reacts. These are minor issues, but the installer is a big part of a person's first impressions.
The other area I felt needed improvement was the software centre. I had terrible luck with managing software. Downloads sometimes failed, the password prompt worked less than half the time, sometimes the centre would simply lock up mid-action and need to be closed. The layout and organization of the software centre is great, but a successful transaction rate of 25% is devastating to the user experience.
On the other hand, I do applaud the Solus team for trying to provide portable packages, such as Flatpak and Snap, along with popular third-party applications many users will want. New Linux users are often interested in running Spotify, Slack, and Skype so it's nice to see these readily available.
On the whole I think Solus is doing well. There are some key areas that can be polished, particularly software management and desktop performance, though otherwise the distribution offers a solid, useful, and attractive experience.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Solus has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.6/10 from 196 review(s).
Have you used Solus? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Haiku polishes applications, Ubuntu to get Flutter applications, Rust coreutils running on Debian, Void warns about performance hits on newer kernels with default settings
The Haiku team have been hard at work, improving their operating system. The project's latest activity report mentions driver improvements, ongoing work to get Haiku running on ARM processors, and improvements to existing applications. "kerwizzy added a fullscreen mode and an option to save pictures to Mandelbrot. Jaidyn Ann fixed the DNS settings in Network preferences to disable some buttons when they would do nothing. mt fixed memory leaks in MediaPlayer and ProcessController, as well as other problems found by the clang static analyzer in various places in the kernel, the FreeBSD driver compatibility layer, and the filepanel command line tool. nephele switched the default search engine in WebPositive from Google to DuckDuckGo." The report also mentions improvements coming to Haiku running on EFI-enabled computers.
* * * * *
The 9to5Linux site is reporting that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is shifting its development efforts to use Google's Flutter toolkit to create desktop applications. "Now, the company behind Ubuntu is writing another page of history by targeting Flutter as the default UI (user interface) framework for building their own Ubuntu apps, which will work across a wide-range of hardware and configurations. Canonical already announced last month that they are re-writing their Ubuntu Installer for future Ubuntu releases in Flutter. This will allow Canonical to provide a consistent installer experience across the entire Ubuntu product portfolio." Further information on Canonical adopting Flutter can be found in the 9to5Linux article.
* * * * *
The coreutils package contains a collection of basic commands which handle navigating directories, moving, removing, and copying files. These core programs make up the basis of most UNIX-like operating systems, including Linux distributions. There are different implementations of the coreutils package with one of the most popular being the GNU implementation which is written in C. Recently an effort has been made to reimplement the coreutils package in the Rust language which offers some memory protection benefits. The Rust coreutils package now runs on Debian. "Rust/coreutils is now available in Debian, good enough to boot a Debian with GNOME, install the top 1,000 packages, build Firefox, the Linux Kernel and LLVM/Clang. Even if I wrote more than 100 patches to achieve that, it will probably be a bumpy ride for many other use cases. It is also a terrific project to learn Rust." Additional information on the coreutils package written in Rust and how it works on Debian can be found in this blog post.
* * * * *
In February the Void team reported they would be switching from the LibreSSL cryptography library to OpenSSL, which is more commonly used among Linux distributions. Following this news, the Void project undertook a massive rebuild of packages which rely on OpenSSL and also made some adjustments to kernel hardening. The new kernel changes can cause older computers to run more slowly and suffer from longer boot times. "As a consequence of these changes, Void's default kernel command-line now omits the slub_debug and page_poison options. There is a chance that your existing system still has the old options enabled. They still work in newer kernels, but have a performance impact more in line with init_on_free=1. On older hardware this can be quite noticeable. If you are running a kernel series older than 5.4, you can keep them (or add them) for extra security at the cost of performance; otherwise, you should remove them." Details on both changes can be found in the Void project's news post.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Packet filters and legacy technology
Cleaning-out-the-cruft asks: According to Wikipedia, iptables
superseded ipchains; and the successor of iptables is nftables.
However, on CentOS we still find iptables 1.4.21 in
CentOS 7.8 and iptables 1.8.2 in CentOS 8.2. So why is iptables
still around in modern distribution releases?
DistroWatch answers: I have a few answers to this question. First, when talking specifically about CentOS 7.8, the reason iptables is still in use there is nftables requires version 3.13 of the Linux kernel. The CentOS 7.x series ships with Linux 3.10. This means nftables will not run on CentOS 7.8 and iptables would be the most modern tool in the packet filter series available.
But why does CentOS 8.x, which uses version 4.18 of the kernel, still include iptables? The main reason is probably that iptables still works perfectly well and has been around for two decades. Virtually every Linux system administrator who has been in the work force at some point since the year 2000 will be familiar with iptables, but nftables has only been around for about six years (or one major version of CentOS/RHEL).
This means there is a cost associated with upgrading and adopting the new technology. Administrators need to receive new training, old scripts and programs that used iptables would need to be updated to use the new nftables syntax, which is entirely different from the iptables syntax. Any organizations running multiple versions of enterprise-level distributions (such as CentOS and Debian) would need to write different tools and scripts to handle firewall rules on CentOS 7 and CentOS 8 if they wanted to use nftables whenever possible. That is a nightmare for administrators and a lot of duplication of work.
Basically, adopting nftables (especially in enterprise environments) will be a non-trivial amount of work and may require implementing multiple tools to do the work, along with re-training people. There is a cost involved in upgrading. On the other hand, what benefit does nftables provide over iptables? For most people there is almost no benefit to switching to nftables. Looking over the list of features nftables provides we can see some behind-the-scenes perks and philosophy changes, but from a practical point of view, administrators and end-users are almost never better off using nftables over iptables.
What it comes down to is there is little incentive to upgrade, but a notable cost to adopting nftables, at least in bigger organizations. On the other side of things, what is the benefit or cost to keeping iptables around and shipping it with systems which can also run nftables? The benefit to keeping iptables around is that people can migrate at their own pace, legacy tools work, and mixed-version environments continue to work smoothly. The cost to keeping iptables is a few kilobytes of storage space to keep the package on the hard drive, something almost nobody will notice.
In short, switching to nftables is (relatively) expensive with minimal benefit while keeping iptables available on the operating system costs almost nothing while providing several benefits, including a smoother transition to nftables in the future and it avoids breaking existing scripts.
The same argument applies in a lot of cases where one new, incompatible tool tries to replace an old one with an established ecosystem. The Python project is probably the best example of this. Python 2 became entrenched and, since Python 3 was not backward compatible and did not provide much benefit over Python 2, developers were very reluctant to switch. Many distributions kept both versions of Python in their repositories and supported both versions for over a decade (approximately 2008 to 2020) because developers saw few reasons to upgrade, but plenty of reasons to ignore the newer version. Upgrading even trivial Python projects to the new version of the language was more effort than was usually justifiable and this kept Python 2 around for five years after it was originally going to be discontinued.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
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: 2,361
- Total data uploaded: 36.7TB
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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) |
Which packet filter do you use?
In our Questions and Answers column we talked about different approaches to setting up a network firewall. There are a number of tools on Linux distributions and the BSD flavours which can be used to filter network packets. On the Linux side the underlying filters are ipchains, iptables, and nftables. In the BSD communities there are a few different packet filters, including pf, ipfw, and ipf. Which of these do you use on your system?
You can see the results of our previous poll on writing custom shell scripts in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Packet filters
| I use ipchains: | 7 (1%) |
| I use iptables: | 367 (34%) |
| I use nftables: | 61 (6%) |
| I use pf: | 70 (6%) |
| I use ipfw: | 28 (3%) |
| I use ipf: | 1 (0%) |
| I use another open source firewall: | 104 (10%) |
| I do not use Linux or BSD: | 16 (1%) |
| I do not use a firewall: | 355 (33%) |
| Other: | 69 (6%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
Venom Linux
Venom Linux is an independently-developed, rolling-release distribution inspired by CRUX. It targets experienced Linux users. Venom uses runit as the main init system and BSD-like ports as software packages which are managed by a custom package management tool called scratchpkg (written in compliance with POSIX standards). The distribution offers a simple graphical desktop built around the Openbox window manager and a text-mode system installer.
Venom Linux -- Running the Openbox window manager
(full image size: 3.9MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 22 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Mayix XliveCD
Mayix was a Gentoo-based Linux live CD with GNOME as its default desktop. The project also develops a "stage4" CD, which allows users to install a full Gentoo Linux desktop system in under one hour.
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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