 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 910, 29 March 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Every once in a while a Linux distribution comes along that takes an entirely different approach, either with the user interface, the available utilities, or the underlying technology. The Void distribution blazes its own trail on a number of fronts, providing the runit init software, its own package manager, and multiple implementations of system libraries. This week we begin with a look at Void and discuss some of the unique project's strengths and weaknesses. Most Linux distributions do not strive to create something unique and instead build on existing projects, called parent distributions. Some parent distributions are more popular bases than others for new projects. In our Questions and Answers column we discuss this and why we do not see more Fedora-based distributions. Do you run a Fedora-based distribution? Let us know about it in the Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about improvements coming to the Purism team's Librem 5 phone and new features available in recently released GNOME 40. Plus we report that a close relative to UNIX and Linux, called Plan 9, is now available under the open source MIT license. We also report on reactions to the news Richard M Stallman has returned to the Free Software Foundation's Board of Directors and report on Debian's latest media refresh. 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: Void 20210218
- News: Purism polishes mobile platform, GNOME 40 released, Plan 9 released as open source, Red Hat cuts funding to Free Software Foundation, Debian updates install media
- Questions and answers: Where are the Fedora-based distributions?
- Released last week: Manjaro Linux 21.0, Tails 4.17, 4MLinux 36.0
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Alpine, ArcoLinux, Debian, Debian Edu, IPFire, KaOS, KDE neon, Manjaro, Porteus Kiosk, RaspiOS, Septor, Tails
- Upcoming releases: Ubuntu 21.04 Beta
- Opinion poll: Running Fedora or a Fedora-based distro
- New distributions: Tribblix
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (19MB) and MP3 (14MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Void 20210218
Void is an independently developed, rolling release distribution. The project features the XBPS package manager which allows for a hybrid approach to using both binary and source packages. Void also includes the runit init software which is minimal, lightweight, and works very quickly to bring the system on-line. The distribution offers several editions, including a minimal Base flavour, and several desktop editions that ship with the Cinnamon, Enlightenment, GNOME, LXDE, LXQt, Xfce, and MATE user interfaces. The distribution further supplies editions with two separate C libraries. The project offers separate install media for the glibc and musl libraries. These, along with multiple hardware architecture support that includes x86_64, i686, and ARM, means there are a lot of download options. The smallest edition of Void is Base which is about 468MB and the largest is GNOME at 1,050MB. Since I last tried the Xfce on musl combination, I decided to switch over to glibc and explore Xfce running on a glibc base, which is a 788MB download.
Booting from the Void media brings up a graphical login screen. We can sign into a regular user account or the media's root account using the password "voidlinux". The login credentials for the live media are published on the distribution's Download page. Signing into an account brings up the Xfce desktop. A thin panel is placed across the top of the screen. An application menu sits in the upper-left corner while the system tray is in the upper-right. The middle of the panel functions as a task switcher. At the bottom of the screen we find a dock with quick-launch buttons on it. On the desktop we find icons for launching the Thunar file manager.
Installing
Looking through the application menu I did not find any launcher for the Void system installer. The project's website says we can run the command line program void-installer as root (or via sudo) to get started. The Void website also warns us not to use on-line package sources when setting up a desktop environment, though not the reason behind this advice: "To install the packages for the desktop environment, DON'T choose 'install from network' choose the 'local install' option."
The installer uses text-based menus and resembles the Slackware and FreeBSD system installers. The Void installer allows us to perform configuration tasks in the order of our choosing. Going down through the list we are asked to choose our keyboard layout and enable networking, with the option of using DHCP. We are asked whether we wish to use local (live disc) or on-line sources for software packages. Following the project's advice, I opted to use the local packages. We are then walked through selecting our time zone from a list and making up a root password. We also have the option of creating a non-root user account.
The system installer gives us the option of setting up the GRUB boot loader and which disk should hold it. When it comes to setting up disk partitions Void's installer offers to launch either the fdisk or cfdisk console-based partition managers. We can then select which filesystem to set up on the root partition with options including Btrfs, ext2/3/4, F2FS, and Xfce. I decided to run Void on Btrfs which worked well.
With the configuration steps completed, Void's installer copies its packages to the hard drive while showing detailed progress information. When it is finished it offers to restart the computer or simply exit so we can continue using the live environment.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of Void booted to a graphical login screen with a soft blue background. Signing into the Xfce 4.16 desktop brought up the same interface I experienced on the live media. The desktop uses a mostly bright theme with thick window title bars by default. The appearance can be adjusted using a range of Xfce configuration modules.
Void 20210218 -- Exploring the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 208kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
When we start using Void there are no pop-ups, no welcome screens, no initial configuration wizards. The distribution immediately leaves us to use and customize the system the way we want.
One of the first things I noticed about Void was that applications like Firefox and Parole made no sound. This seems to go hand-in-hand with Void not shipping an audio control in the system tray the way most distributions do. There was also no obvious command line audio mixer such as alsamixer. I got around this limitation by installing the pnmixer package and setting it to run automatically at each login. This gave me a system tray volume control, though it still did not work. I had to open the mixer's configuration and provide it with the full path to the pamixer executable. This then allowed me to unmute the sound system and play audio through my speakers.
The muted audio and lack of system tray volume control seems like an odd omission to me. The PulseAudio and ALSA sound systems are installed for us already so it's not as though Void is saving disk space by not supporting audio playback out of the box. Making the user install and configuring the front-end mixer controls just seems like a lot of extra steps for something most distributions do automatically and I don't see a benefit to not including this functionality on the desktop edition of the operating system.
Void 20210218 -- Setting up an audio mixer
(full image size: 207kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Hardware
When I started using Void it was in a VirtualBox environment. I found the distribution was quick to start and responsive. Xfce worked quickly and well in the virtual machine. The desktop would not resize itself automatically to match the VirtualBox window, but I could adjust Xfce's resolution using its Display configuration module.
When I moved on to trying Void on my workstation the distribution ran into trouble at first as it was not able to boot in UEFI mode. However, when I switched to booting in Legacy BIOS mode the distribution ran smoothly. All my hardware was detected and the system was responsive.
Void is a relatively lightweight distribution. The operating system consumes 245MB when signed into the Xfce desktop, which is below average for memory consumption. A fresh install of the distribution requires just 2GB of disk space, which is about a third of the space most mainstream Linux distributions consume these days. Granted, Void doesn't ship with many applications so by the time I added all the programs I wanted, Void had doubled in size.
Void 20210218 -- Running Thunderbird and LibreOffice
(full image size: 181kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Applications
Looking through the sparse application menu, which is presented in a classic tree style, we find the Firefox web browser and Parole media player. The system ships with media codecs allowing us to play audio and video files out of the box. The Thunar file manager is present along with the Ristretto image viewer.
The Xfce 4.16 desktop ships with a handful of configuration modules and a settings panel which help us modify and customize the desktop environment. No modules for handling the lower level configuration of the operating system are included.
Void 20210218 -- Adjusting desktop settings
(full image size: 178kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Void ships with manual pages for installed software and boots using the runit init software. I find runit to be light and fast. Enabling new services is straight forward and covered in the project's documentation. In the background Void runs version 5.10.17 of the Linux kernel. As Void is a rolling release we can expect packages to gradually get upgraded over time.
Package management
Package management on Void is handled by the command line XBPS utilities. Unlike some distributions where the package manager is one program that handles a range of functionality, XBPS is broken into separate tools. This means we search for software using one tool (xbps-query) while performing installations and upgrades using another (xbps-install) rather than having one tool, such as DNF or APT handle everything.
Void 20210218 -- Downloading system updates with XBPS
(full image size: 238kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The syntax XBPS uses is unusual. Instead of using easily recognizable terms such as "search", we end up running commands like "xbps-query -Rs package name". I find this can take a little while to get used to. However, despite the unusual syntax, XBPS operates quickly and I encountered no problems with it during my trial.
The first day I was running Void there were just 19 updates available, totalling 19MB in size. These new packages were all downloaded and applied to the system without any trouble. I had similar success adding the applications I wanted to use, such as alternative media players, productivity suite, and the Thunderbird e-mail client. In fact, despite its relatively small size, the Void team seems to have been able to supply a solid collection of popular software.
Though not installed by default, the Flatpak portable package framework is available in the repositories, providing access to additional desktop programs.
One curiosity I ran into with Void is that XBPS is not set up with any remote package repositories when running on the live media. This effectively disables the package manager when we are running the live desktop. Once Void is installed to a hard drive XBPS is automatically configured with the official repositories.
Other observations
Earlier I mentioned installing Void on a Btrfs volume. This worked fairly well and I was hopeful the distribution might make use of the advanced filesystem in some way. However, this was not the case. Void does not appear to support boot environments. Btrfs was set up with a simple volume (and no sub-volumes) and, oddly enough, had file access times enabled, which distributions often turn off for better performance.
I tried installing Void's Timeshift package and it fails due to Timeshift only working with Btrfs snapshots when the filesystem is set up the same way Ubuntu creates Btrfs layouts. However, it is possible to manually create Btrfs snapshots using the filesystem's command line tools.
Also on the subject of filesystems, Void is one of the few distributions I can recall using recently that locks down the user's home directory, granting exclusive access to the user (permissions 700). I like this as I feel some distributions are too open with their home directories.
Conclusions
In the past I've installed Void a few times and it has often made a mixed impression due to one problem or another. In hindsight I suspect these past issues, often with application functionality or package management, might have been the result of trying musl editions of the distribution rather than the more mainstream glibc editions.
Even during this trial, which I feel went really well for the most part, things got off to a rocky start. Void is unusual in that it makes users sign into the live disc, it didn't boot in UEFI mode on my computer, and package management seems to be disabled on the live disc. When it comes to installing, Void's installer is functional and easy to navigate, but its text interface does look dated next to system installers such as Ubiquity and Calamares. Though I will give Void credit for having an installer that should work exactly the same whether run from a desktop or the command line.
Once Void was installed, the initial rough impression continued when I had to manually install and configure a system tray audio mixer in order to enable sound in applications such as Parole and Firefox.
After Void was installed and audio was working things really turned around. Void is unusually lightweight and fast. The Xfce desktop worked smoothly and I like that the distribution ships with a relatively small collection of applications, leaving the application menu mostly free of clutter. XBPS, despite its unusual syntax, works remarkably quickly and soon had all the extra applications I wanted installed.
Void is quick to start up and stays out of the way. I was not bogged down in configuration steps or first-run wizards. There were no flashy effects or distractions. Void is relatively minimal for a desktop distribution, but what is included works smoothly. I like the simplicity of the design, especially where runit and service management are concerned. Most distro-specific features, like runit and XBPS seem to be well documented.
What I particularly find interesting is Void feels unique. In a world with a lot of Debian and Arch Linux spins, sometimes it is nice to find a distribution that is doing something, or several things, different. Void runs most of the same software other distributions do, but a lot of the underpinnings (init, package management, core system libraries) are different. They work, they're lighter than average, and they mostly seem to be set up to make system administration simple.
Void is certainly not a beginner distribution, it feels like it is intended for more experienced users. Ones who want to squeeze more performance out of their machines, customize their experience, and will be comfortable on the command line. I certainly fall into this category and felt at home with Void once I got used to the alternative tools, like XBPS, being used. If you are familiar with the command line and crave both speed and a rolling release experience, Void feels like a great choice.
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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
Void has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.3/10 from 190 review(s).
Have you used Void? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Purism polishes their mobile platform, GNOME 40 released, Plan 9 released as open source, Red Hat cuts funding to the Free Software Foundation, Debian updates install media
The Purism team have unveiled a series of changes and improvements coming to their mobile platform. The project has stated the next release of PureOS for the Librem 5 smartphone will include the option to encrypt the root filesystem and be based on Debian's Testing branch. "Everything is newer; this release uses the more recent base of Debian Bullseye. On top of that, the codebase between phone, laptop, desktop, and the server will be shared. There was a special repository for the phone that contained additional adaptive applications in the previous release. From this release on, the desktop and phone will use the same adaptive apps and packages." Additional information on the mobile operating system can be found in the project's blog post.
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The GNOME desktop project has hit a new milestone with the launch of GNOME 40. Despite the large version jump from 3.38 to 40, essentially dropping the "3.x" from the version number, the new release is a relatively gentle evolutionary step forward for the desktop environment. Some of the key new features include a revamped Activities Overview page, the Weather application has been redesigned, and the Maps program can now display information on locations pulled from Wikipedia. There have also been changes to the GNOME Software utility: "Software has had a number of improvements for GNOME 40. The large application banners have a new and improved look, and now cycle automatically. New version history dialogs display the recent changes for each application, the updates logic has been updated to reduce the frequency of reminders. Be it Flatpak or distribution packages, GNOME Software now tells you where you're installing your software from. Some work happened behind the scenes to improve how Software presents information about new packages." Additional information and screenshots are provided in GNOME's release notes.
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We don't generally talk about Plan 9, a cousin to UNIX (and a quirky uncle to Linux) which was developed by Bell Labs. Plan 9 is perhaps most well known for taking some UNIX concepts a step further with a focus on more network-oriented tasks. OSNews is reporting that ownership of Plan 9 has been transferred from Nokia to the Plan 9 Foundation and the source code for the revered operating system is being released under the liberal MIT open source license. "The historical releases are at the Foundation's website. Nokia also posted a press release which gives some more background about Plan 9 for those who may not know about its history."
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In 2019 Richard M Stallman, often referred to as RMS, stepped down from his position as president of the Free Software Foundation. Stallman, who founded the Free Software movement and the GNU project, has often been a controversial figure. Admit backlash over some of his public comments he removed himself from the leadership of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
Last week the FSF board silently reinstated Stallman as a member of their Board of Directors, raising a number of questions and complaints. The Open Source Initiative has published a complaint against the quiet about-face by the FSF board. This was followed by a petition to have Stallman removed from the board which has been signed by members of the GNOME and Debian projects.
Red Hat has made perhaps the strongest statement against Stallman's return, stating in a blog post: Red Hat is a long-time donor and contributor to projects stewarded by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), with hundreds of contributors and millions of lines of code contributed. Considering the circumstances of Richard Stallman's original resignation in 2019, Red Hat was appalled to learn that he had rejoined the FSF board of directors. As a result, we are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events. In addition, many Red Hat contributors have told us they no longer plan to participate in FSF-led or backed events, and we stand behind them."
The Free Software Foundation has responded, stating they will be reviewing their board memberships.
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The Debian project has published updated install media for Debian 10 "Buster". The new release is not a new variant of Debian, rather includes security updates since Debian 10 was released. "Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 10 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old Buster media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror."
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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) |
Where are the Fedora-based distributions?
Looking-for-my-hat asks: I've encountered a lot of distros based on Debian and Arch, but why are there not more Fedora-based distros? Fedora seems like a better base than those so why aren't there more Fedora distros?
DistroWatch answers: Though I've never taken a survey, there are probably a lot of little reasons for the shift toward Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch Linux platforms as a base for new projects. A lot of it, I suspect, has to do with the way the community has shifted over the years.
If we rewind to a period from around 1997 through to 2003, Red Hat Linux (which was the forerunner to Fedora) was a highly popular base for distributions. Projects like Mandrake Linux/Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Phat Linux, ROSA, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Fuduntu, and so on all owe their beginnings to Red Hat Linux/Fedora. In fact, there are 94 Linux distributions based on Fedora (or Red Hat Linux) in our database. Most of them (about 82) are inactive. For comparison's sake, there are 153 distributions in the database based on Ubuntu with 99 inactive. That's a 35% survival rate for Ubuntu, a 13% active rate for Fedora, Debian (not including Ubuntu-based children) has a 28% survival rate, and Arch has 43 total with 21 inactive giving it a survival rate of 51%.
I'm getting off track now due to my love of statistics, but my point is that there have been lots and lots of distributions based on Red Hat Linux/Fedora in the past. In fact, Fedora has spawned more than twice as many children as Arch, but only about 13% of them are still actively maintained. Which means people used to see Fedora (or Red Hat Linux before it) as a great base for a distribution, but people are not making or maintaining Fedora-based projects now. Meanwhile Arch Linux only has 43 projects that have made it into our database, but a full half of them have survived.
For the most part I believe there are four key reasons for this shift away from running Fedora-based projects and toward Debian, Ubuntu and Arch. One, and perhaps the most obvious, is that
people don't make full, independent projects based on Fedora because people who like working with Fedora create spins or labs which are incorporated in the Fedora infrastructure. If you want to throw together your own spin of Fedora with a different desktop, theme, and tools, then you can create a spin and host it with the Fedora project. Fedora Workstation, Server, Silverblue, CoreOS, and over a dozen spins & labs all live together in the same infrastructure so people don't think of them as separate projects.
In comparison, if someone wants to make a new spin of Ubuntu or Arch Linux they need to set up their own website, forms, mailing list, and so on. This makes the projects appear as though they are all separate entities while Fedora seems like one big project with many community spins. This accounts for a lot of the gap in Fedora-based projects versus Debian, Ubuntu, or Arch.
Another factor is Fedora operates in a strange middle ground compared to the other popular base distributions. Debian offers a fixed, conservative branch, and two development branches people can use as a base. Ubuntu offers both long term support releases and rapid, six-month releases. People who like rolling releases on the cutting edge can use Arch. Fedora has a rapid release cycle with fixed packages and a short support cycle. For developers this means a lot of work with little benefit because they need to constantly keep up, constantly be planning new versions, without the benefit of being able to just update in place the way a rolling distribution does.
Fedora's release and support cycle means constant work with minimal benefit for a developer. The project is in an awkward middle position where it offers neither long term support or rolling upgrades, while requiring a fast pace of updates to newer versions. That isn't appealing to many distribution maintainers.
A third issue I think may be at play is Fedora has a strict license policy. It won't package proprietary software or patent-encumbered software. The latter is really only an issue in a few countries like the United States. Debian, Arch, and Ubuntu take a relatively friendly approach which either allows for these types of software or they make it easy to enable a non-free repository with a click to provide access to less liberally licensed software. Fedora relies on third-party repositories which are not always in sync with Fedora and this poses a problem for people who want to make new desktop distributions.
Finally, I suspect a big part of why so many projects were based on Red Hat Linux (and Fedora) prior to 2003 while we see relatively few surviving projects based on it these days has to do with the perceived shift at Red Hat. Back in 2003 Red Hat did away with Red Hat Linux, turning its attention to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and spinning off Fedora as a community project with a strong focus on software development and testing new technologies. Fedora, for all its benefits, was not the solid, stable, predictable platform Red Hat Linux had been. It frequently changed package managers, introduced SELinux which caused some problems, and generally become more experimental.
Meanwhile, around the same time, Arch Linux and Ubuntu appeared on the scene. I believe Arch launched in 2002 and Ubuntu in 2004. Ubuntu was geared towards the desktop and tried to be more friendly, more beginner-oriented while Arch was more cutting edge and more geared toward experts. Ubuntu in particular did a good job of supporting hardware, having a friendly desktop, and having a huge repository of packages. It was the natural "first distro" for many people, a niche Red Hat Linux previously filled. In short, Ubuntu captured a lot of mind share. Since people tend to use what they know, this meant people who started out as beginners with Ubuntu started using it at work, installing it on servers, and modifying it.
In other words, Ubuntu (and therefore Debian) and Arch were stepping into the community spotlight at about the same time Red Hat (and Fedora) appeared to be exiting. I think this is a big part of why, in the last 15 years, we have observed so many distributions based on Arch and Ubuntu emerging while relatively few new projects are based on Fedora. The mind share of the community shifted toward more beginner friendly and more advanced distributions while Fedora occupied an awkward middle ground where it was too experimental for beginners and too heavy or static for advanced users.
In summary, I'd say that Fedora lost its position at the top of the market share charts. Then people who were using it found that, as a base, it either moved too quickly (for people who wanted long term support releases) and too slowly for people who like rolling releases. At the same time Fedora's infrastructure hosts multiple projects (over a dozen) which, in the Debian and Arch families, would be set up as entirely separate projects with their own websites and project names. This makes Fedora's share of current distributions smaller and to appear even smaller than it is.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus Kiosk 5.2.0
Tomasz Jokiel has announced the release of Porteus Kiosk 5.2.0, a new stable version of the project's single-purpose, Gentoo-based Linux distribution designed for web kiosks and restricted to internet browsing only: "I'm pleased to announce that Porteus Kiosk 5.2.0 is now available for download. Major software upgrades in this release include Linux kernel 5.20.25, Google Chrome 87.0.4280.141 and Mozilla Firefox 78.8.0 ESR. Packages from the userland are upgraded to portage snapshot tagged on 2021-03-14. This is the last kiosk release which supports Adoble FlashPlayer plugin. Within the next 6 months we are planning to upgrade the browsers to versions where Flash support is removed by the upstream developers. If your web pages still contain a Flash content then please migrate it to HTML 5 and JavaScript as soon as possible. In Kiosk 5.2.0 we have added a libva-intel-media-driver package and updated the VAAPI stack. This is in preparation for a much welcome 'hardware accelerated video decode' which should become a reality in the next kiosk version on selected GPUs. Digital signage solutions should benefit the most from this feature." See the release announcement and changelog for more information.
Tails 4.17
Version 4.17 of Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System), a Debian-based live image designed for anonymous browsing of internet websites, has been released. The new release mostly includes fixes for a smoother upgrade process, and upgrades key software packages. "This release fixes known security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible. Reliability improvements to automatic upgrades: Repair automatically the file system used during upgrades. Automatic upgrades were sometimes failing even after doing a manual upgrade because of an unclean file system. Resume automatically when the download of an upgrade fails. Other changes and updates. Update Tor Browser to 10.0.14. Update Thunderbird to 78.8.0. Update Tor to 0.4.5.7. Update GRUB to 2.04-16. Update some firmware packages. This should improve the support for some Wi-Fi interfaces, especially Intel, Broadcom, and Cypress interfaces." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the changelog.
Manjaro Linux 21.0
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 21.0, a significant update of the project's desktop-oriented, rolling-release distribution featuring the GNOME, KDE and Xfce desktops. This release updates the desktops to GNOME 3.38, KDE 2.21 and Xfce 4.16: "With our Xfce edition, we now have Xfce 4.16. The window manager received lots of updates and improvements again in the area of compositing and GLX. Support for fractional scaling was added to the display dialog, along with highlighting the preferred mode of a display with an asterisk and adding aspect ratios next to resolutions. The settings manager has improved search and filter capabilities. Thunar file manager received a boatload of fixes and quite a few notable features, including pause for copy/move operations, support for queued file transfer, remembering view settings per directory and support for transparency in GTK themes. Linux kernel 5.10 LTS is used for this release." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
Manjaro Linux 21.0 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 698kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
4MLinux 36.0
Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 36.0, the latest stable build of the project's minimalist desktop and server distribution combining "four Ms": maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), mini-server (using the inetd daemon) and mystery (providing several small Linux games). The new release ships with a number of updated packages, including LibreOffice 7.1.2, AbiWord 3.0.4, GIMP 2.10.22, Gnumeric 1.12.48, Firefox 87.0, Chromium 88.0.4324.96, Thunderbird 78.9.0, Audacious 4.0.5, VLC 3.0.12, MESA 20.3.1 and Wine 6.1. "The status of the 4MLinux 36.0 series has been changed to STABLE. As always, the new major release has some new features. Support for NBD (network block device) protocol has been added. Support for exFAT file system is now available via exfatprogs and GParted. New applications: GtkHash (a program to calculate checksums) and VeraCrypt (a popular encryption tool). Additionally, UNetbootin (a utility to create live USB images) is now available out of the box. All Flash Player dependencies have been removed from the 4MLinux repositories." See the release announcement for more information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,377
- Total data uploaded: 36.8TB
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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 Fedora or a Fedora-based distro
In our Questions and Answers column we talked about Fedora and how the distribution tends to spawn more official spins than completely separate distributions with their own infrastructure. We would like to learn whether you use Fedora, one of its community spins, or another Fedora-based distribution. Let us know what you enjoy about Fedora-based distros and spins in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on remote servers and services in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Running Fedora and Fedora-based projects
| I run Fedora: | 256 (14%) |
| I run a Fedora spin: | 97 (5%) |
| I run a Fedora-based distro: | 24 (1%) |
| I run a downstream distro RHEL/CentOS: | 51 (3%) |
| I do not run Fedora or a Fedora-based distro: | 1349 (76%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Tribblix. Tribblix is an operating system based on illumos and OpenIndiana. The project features ZFS support along with Zones, and DTrace. Tribblix defaults to using the Xfce desktop, though MATE and Enlightenment graphical environments are available. Tribblix runs on x86, x86_64, and SPARC processors.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 5 April 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 • Fedora (by wally on 2021-03-29 00:19:35 GMT from United States)
I run Fedora (Mate) along with SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu. and Win10.
Although Deb is my main sys, I like to keep abreast of how the others are going, and I rotate my logins on my non-main boxes (4) between the other distros for that purpose.
2 • Stallman's return (by Name (mandatory) on 2021-03-29 00:59:30 GMT from United States)
It should also be noted that, in addition to the anti-Stallman letter, there's a pro-Stallman letter at https://rms-support-letter.github.io/
Red hat trying to play the "good guy" here is hilarious when they've been notorious for years for strongarming other projects. They totally wanted their guys on the FSF board and are mad about that. I actually laughed out loud when I read their official release about the situation because of how thinly veiled everything was. Give me a break.
3 • Fedora/RedHat based vs others (by Otis on 2021-03-29 01:11:20 GMT from United States)
Congratulations on a Pulitzer Prize worthy write-up on that subject, and I'm not joking. Very nice read and informative enough for a second read at least (at least by me).
Lots to stand out, but this caught my attention: "Fedora has spawned more than twice as many children as Arch, but only about 13% of them are still actively maintained." When something like that happens in other areas of concern, we experience it as moving forward away from an outdated/outmoded model (version or business). I'm wondering if the (very gradual) shift to Arch and the others from the Hat is simply telling us that it was too "clunky."
Yep there are fans of the clunky who will say, "CLUNKY?! IT JUST WORKS," while we (again gradually) move to distros families that just work quicker and ..less clunky.
4 • Response to reinstating RMS (by Richard Engkraf on 2021-03-29 01:16:00 GMT from United States)
I am sure glad I run KDE & i3 on Arch, because after their response to this I would never again consider running anything based on Red Hat or Debian and will never use Gnome again either. Campiagning against freedom of speech simply cannot be tollerated. Anyone & everyone should be able to say what they think. This is censorship and, regardless of what they think they are accomplishing, it is evil. If anyone should be boycotted it is these three entities! Just say no to institutional censorship.
5 • Fedora / RHEL / CentOS (by R. Cain on 2021-03-29 01:21:01 GMT from United States)
I run CentOS 7.9.(2009).
Compared to the sorry state of the current "one-step-forward, three-steps-backwards crop (some would spell that word as "crap") of Linux distros nowadays, this is one of the most pleasant, most stable, no-surprises, NO-REGRESSIONS distros out there.
EOL is *June, 2024*.
6 • RMS said & did some messed up things (by M.Z. on 2021-03-29 02:03:33 GMT from United States)
One of the important bits of the controversy that not enough people are pointing to is this list of allegations & reasons behind ousting RMS to begin with, available here:
https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix
There are some very legitimate concerns in there, including decades of female students complaining about feeling uncomfortable around RMS & getting some creepy pressure tactics. In addition, & perhaps most damning are things like RMS claiming that child pornography should be illegal to make, but not posses. This is a particularly sick & disturbing rabbit hole, where under the RMS theory, one could only imagine that legal possession would boost some of the most terrible & exploitative behaviour in society. All of that & he really seems to hate people with down's syndrome, in a kinda creepy eugenics sort of way.
To be fair some of the things in the list are utter BS, like the grammar/gender pronoun thing. I hate made up new grammar too, & using 'they' everywhere feels awkward & stupid to me no matter who or why it is being advocated for. Regardless of that most of the concerns seem legitimate & RMS really should have cleaned up his act regarding treating ladies with respect decades ago, let alone realize how dangerous & abusive things can get between unethical adults & minors. There are some very bad & dangerous positions to be publicly pontificating on in there.
7 • Not a Fedora kind of guy... (by Tom Joad on 2021-03-29 02:32:12 GMT from Germany)
I seriously started with Linux using Breezy back in the old days. I got a copy from a kid my son knew. I think it was breezy or edgy. Anyway, I used it and have been forever in the Debian branch.
And that is the way I look at it. Linux has only a very few main branches. I think once one starts with a branch, and Debian is a big one, one tends to just stay there.
I have wandered a time or two to other branches like Slackware but never stayed. I have never loaded anything Fedora or Red Hat...ever.
Lastly, one of the reasons I stayed with the Debian branch is the amazingly broad spectrum of software. I like that a lot!
8 • @6 RMS positions (by Man D. Tory on 2021-03-29 02:49:16 GMT from United States)
I know plenty of people who believe terrible things. I disagree with them. Do I attack them and try to ruin their lives? No. That would be petty. In fact, I don't really care about it at all as long as they do their jobs. People have different opinions, and some of them are even distasteful. I don't understand why this is any different.
9 • RMS (by Barry on 2021-03-29 03:11:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
The freedom of speech thing is an interesting debate.
As #8 mentioned " as long as the person does their job" and basicly that there are many people you are going to work with those opinions you might find distasteful.
I think the counter argument is who asked him what he thought? I'm just because you have an opinion, should you use your position whatever it may be to make make-up political outbursts? I personally think not.
For example, if I own the bar I would not distribute political leaflets. While if anybody asked me I could discuss things if I am using my position to say things and people find that distasteful I should pay the consequences. Whether you think he is being silenced or not the guy is clearly very stupid.
10 • IBM's letter (by Andy Prough on 2021-03-29 03:16:09 GMT from United States)
IBM's letter is funny on several levels.
a) continuing to call themselves RedHat as if they are still a separate company even though they've been 100% owned and controlled by IBM since 2019
b) claiming they'll stop giving money, when they were probably only giving a tiny tiny tiny fraction back of the billions they've made because of Stallman's code and license contributions since the 80s. Without GNU and the GPL there would be no RedHat to begin with
c) Suddenly having a problem with Stallman's weird political rantings in 2021, decades after he started blogging them publicly on a daily basis. During which time RedHat and IBM were happily making the aforementioned billions selling GNU binaries and GPL'd code, and never had a single disparaging word to say about RMS's rants
d) RedHat (now IBM) always loudly proclaims they contribute millions of lines of code to every project in existence. Do they even realize that the FSF doesn't host any code, and so their contributions are the same zero lines as everyone else's? Maybe they should stop copying and pasting from old press releases.
11 • RMS (by William Bean on 2021-03-29 03:27:06 GMT from United States)
RMS is a rude, self-aggrandizing, and, now I learn, perverted jerk who tried to write an OS but utterly failed because he couldn't write the part that mattered, the kernel. He left lying around a few disconnected utilities which Linus Torvalds could use with the OS he was developing. (Saving him having to write them himself.)
When Linux became enormously popular, because it ran and ran stably and safely, RMS tried to steal the spotlight and persuade people to call the successful Linux OS, the GNU/Linux OS - what a joke. Thankfully only the folks at Debian failed to catch the joke and took it seriously.
Thank you RMS for a joke to prompt sunny spirits (and hats off to Mark Twain).
12 • RE:11 • RMS (by William Bean (by TuxRaider on 2021-03-29 04:16:15 GMT from United States)
(removed)
13 • aVoid (by whoKnows on 2021-03-29 05:15:00 GMT from Switzerland)
Reminds me of latest Fedora 34 Xfce.
Some will never stop insulting us.
https://ibb.co/SNKPV9V
https://ibb.co/dGfpX79
What's the point?
14 • Void Review (by frc-kde on 2021-03-29 05:30:53 GMT from Brazil)
«The Void website also warns us not to use on-line package sources when setting up a desktop environment, though not the reason behind this advice»
If you want to install Void with one of the offered desktop environments, ─ LXDE, LXQt, MATE, Xfce, Cinnamon, Enlightment, ─ you must download the corresponding ISO image, and choose the packages that come with it.
It is to say: ─ "not to use on-line package sources". ─ You will comfortably get the full DE installation from your chosen ISO.
«To install the packages for the desktop environment, DON'T choose 'install from network' choose the 'local install' option»
Instead, I wanted to use KDE, and there were no KDE-ISO, back in 2020. ─ So, I have downloaded "void-live-x86_64-20191109.iso" (411 MiB), +/-7 months old back then, and the option to download packages from the official repository while installing was an advantage to me, as it avoided the need to update everything, right after installing Void Linux, ─ but it only offered the “basic system”, which was what I wanted.
Installing a custom and clean KDE, with just what I wanted, has been very easy, following the official documentation.
No problem to boot in UEFI mode, just by following the official manual.
No sound here, too, after installing from my no-DE ISO + manually installed KDE. So, I have runned alsamixer in order to enable the channels that I needed for Chromium and VLC. ─ No KDE panel integration, yet.
PulseAudio has not been automaticly installed. ─ I had already tried PulseAudio, too, one year before, and got no result to KDE panel, so now I didn't try again.
I don't use to change volume levels in daily use. ─ Well, it is not a great goal, but if I needed more, I could have tried more.
As said before, 2020 has been my second experience with Void Linux (just because I have assembled a new PC). So, xbps was not new to me, and I feel fine with it.
If you want more details on my experience, I have saved some notes here ─ with a "Translate button" at the top of right column, for desktop screens:
https://byteria.blogspot.com/2020/07/void-linux-kde-plasma.html
15 • Active Harm from RMS (by M.Z. on 2021-03-29 05:35:49 GMT from United States)
@8 - " ...Do I attack them and try to ruin their lives?"
Lets not skip over large swaths of the point. I never said anyone should be the thought police, but the apparent decades of harassing people was very much in the mix of serious issues. If the stories about ladies strategizing on how to get him to back down & writing a report sized complaint to MIT in the 1980s are true, then he was doing something that could have & likely did ruin a lot of potential carriers/lives. Is someone in power wreaking the potential of others not ruining lives?
16 • RMS (by kksheth on 2021-03-29 06:14:57 GMT from India)
I am using fedora since 2004. Shifted to mate after gnome-3.
I support RMS.
What has RMS done. RMS tried to defend a defamation of a dead friend. (Dead for quite some time). looking to age difference it may be a tutor to him.
Haters took opportunity to oust him by using a student.
Ever heard of Bhisam and shikhndi. (refer mahabharat)
Hate campaign against RMS is loss to linux
17 • RMS blah blah (by Dr. Dave on 2021-03-29 06:38:27 GMT from United States)
This is one of the big problems with western society, today. Disingenuous, cannibalistic leftists, frothing at the mouth, attempting to eat everyone alive, including eachother, over non-issues. Only in our 1st world countries are priorities so misaligned that hordes of bored lunatics can be herded by a digital hivemind, in to putting 90+% of their energy toward the regurgitation of rehearsed grievances; feigning outrage over manufactured problems which they don't honestly care about. The biggest corporations and universities compete over who can transmit the most social signals and anyone who does not conform is publicly immolated.
I have my suspicions about RMS (and really any 'public figure') to begin with, but let's assume that he's not just a character in a scripted show, being used to inspire some and piss off others. At least he appears to be more like a conventional liberal and not some phony baloney, authoritarian parrot, like most so-called 'liberals' today. RMS is jewish, but unlike the anxious mass of fake liberals and fake conservatives today, I bet he would defend a person's right to express so-called 'antisemitic' opinions.
This smells similar to the media campaigning to get people to subscribe to prepared opinions about something Bill Cosby may or may not have done 40 years ago. Do you really care, or are you just responding to programming put in front of you? Instructed to choose one of two opinions, on something that has no affect on your life. People need to think for themselves and stop being led around like a bunch of cattle. Calling people 'sheep' might be cliche but it's an appropriate comparison most of the time.
18 • RMS (by lupus on 2021-03-29 07:15:13 GMT from Germany)
Beeing very aggravated by the cancel culture of our times and the thought of being forced to use made up pronouns for people that might only have a special mental condition (gender dysphoria) one seems to have to defend RMS against this smear tactics that are designed to discredit even our most valuable assets. As a strong supporter for free and open source Software one feels compelled to support RMS although he seems to detest the mixing of 'free' and 'open source' as totally different entities.
On the other Hand and maybe it's a good thing that I do not have a say in this, RMS is a self righteous, obnoxious Charakter that has some merits that lie way in the past, but is one of the most disagreeable persons on this planet. Some of his statements aren't well thought through and if he had the guts to straighten them out in advance of becoming a member on the FSF Board again I wouldn't feel the need to write this dribble. As it is now I think RMS is not an asset to the FSF but a burden. They should have come clean and told him to review some of his statements before letting him crawl back. So the FSF looks absolutely spineless and I doubt that they could have a good influence on the Free and open source movement. It's a shame!
19 • @6 false accusations against RMS (by Orlando on 2021-03-29 07:19:21 GMT from Austria)
Many of the accusations against RMS are either exaggerated or downright false. (Never mind the "some people might allegedly may have probably imagined" stuff...) See https://jorgemorais.gitlab.io/justice-for-rms/ , and you'll realize half of it is bullsh!t, or irrelevant when it comes to RMS's work.
20 • RMS (by G.O. on 2021-03-29 07:15:56 GMT from Spain)
"‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’"
George Orwell
21 • The World Today (by Mark B on 2021-03-29 07:31:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
@17
I strongly agree with Dr Dave's assessment of the world at present. It seems that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
As for Fedora, I have never seen the point of it. It has such a short shelf life that it makes zero sense to use it for a server, for example. I think CentOS was a better idea for that role but since the debacle around Stream many will look elsewhere. I did like Vortexbox, which is based on Fedora but the project seems to have gone quiet.
22 • Void Linux Feature Story (by nanome on 2021-03-29 08:00:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
As I use Void Linux every day, there are parts of Jesse's Feature Story that are confusing.
"Booting from the Void media brings up a graphical login screen." Is confusing: if by "live media" he means booting one of the ISO images, then the user is left already logged-in to the selected desktop; no explicit login [or password] is needed. On the other hand, running the installer DOES require root login from a terminal emulator.
Sound is irritingly NOT setup from the start; however, as my main computer is for "serious" work, I prefer a quiet environment.
"XBPS is not set up with any remote package repositories when running on the live media". Not sure what this means. I often boot Void from a USB drive with a live ISO, and can add XBPS packages as needed with xbps-install; this also requires a root login.
Void Linux installation is no more complicated than [say] Devuan/Debian, and with about 11K packages available, it behaves like a general-purpose distro.
23 • Fedora and Fuduntu (by Hoos on 2021-03-29 08:36:42 GMT from Singapore)
Jesse said "...perhaps the most obvious, is that people don't make full, independent projects based on Fedora because people who like working with Fedora create spins or labs which are incorporated in the Fedora infrastructure".
Perhaps it's true for some distros, but your generalised statement isn't true of Fuduntu. It may have started being Fedora-based, but it was not fully a spin "incorporated within the Fedora infrastructure". And it soon evolved into its own independent thing, an rpm-package-based, full rolling distro.
24
• RMS et al (by Kurt_Aust on 2021-03-29 08:47:43 GMT from Australia)
This reminds me of the (unfortunately successful) campaign to remove Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla because he (personally, not in his official capacity) opposed gay marriage.
Of course the Firefox browser could still be used by LGBT people and (horrors) could even connect to the Grinder gay dating website.
Interesting isn't it that many of those who demanded his resignation continued to use JavaScript programming language that he developed ...
25 • Red Hat, Cent OS (by Hank on 2021-03-29 08:49:23 GMT from Germany)
Heavy on memory, Short support, full of poetterings madness. Lumbering fat Gnome is the most awful desktop experience I ever had.
Tried it and left in a hurry, presumably forever.
26 • Fedora and others (by Any on 2021-03-29 08:55:48 GMT from Spain)
My first direct contact with Linux was in 2000 when I tried Zipslack from a CD which came with a magazine. I did not know what to do, so I called a friend of mine and he sad to me "Type mc, root is the administrator..." . Not interesting for a DOS,Win95,Win98 guy. So I quit :) Then a couple of years later another distro came with a CD - PeanutLinux and I somewhat liked it. Then I decided to give Linux a try and started trying what I could find. When I got RedHat 9 CD's I tried it and I liked the KDE-ish style of Gnome2, called Bluecurve, that it had. But then suddenly Red Hat announced the birth of Fedora. From the very beginning I did not like the name. Not to mention the idea and that move. So I continued distrohopping. Then came Mark Shuttleworth... And the distrohopping continued. In 2004 I tried Arch too. How tough was it to install... Installing FreeBSD or Slackware was a breeze compared to Arch. So I never gave Arch a serious try and Slackware converted to my favourite distro. Thanks to Ubuntu and Debian trying and testing things in virtual machines on today's hardware is very easy and fast. Nothing beats UbuntuMini's installer on matter of flexibility and speed of installing and configuring a virtual machine. Pity they try to deprecate it :(
So right now I am writing this on Manjaro installed on early December 2020. So far so good. Maybe a step to Arch :)
Eagerly waiting for Slackware 15 though :)
RMS - did the man commit a crime?
27 • why Fedora? (by Hayley Atwell on 2021-03-29 09:15:48 GMT from United States)
Because you're tired of the back and forth between JACK and Pulseaudio and want a modern, professional audio system -- enter Pipewire. Fedora will get to Pipewire faster than any other distro, whether it makes the cut for Fedora 34 or not. And that has implications for normal, day-to-day use, beyond future rock stars recording their masterwork on Linux.
It's a shame the Korora project shut down, 'cause it made Fedora much more approachable.
28 • Void Linux Feature Story [correction] (by nanome on 2021-03-29 09:56:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
@22: I forgot that XBPS needs to be updated with "xbps-install -Su xbps" before it will work, sorry I missed that. After that, it has access to any of the packages in the default [only] repository.
29 • RMS (by Kaczor on 2021-03-29 11:24:37 GMT from Czechia)
Without RMS, neither Redhat, Debian or even this web site would here today, don't forget that!
30 • RMS tear down (by Joe Random Hash on 2021-03-29 11:40:13 GMT from United States)
The part many people miss is that tearing down people (even those long dead who have roads, schools, or parks named after them) is frequently about the attackers getting one of their group installed to replace them.
If only we could be sure that IBM/Red Hat would not install someone to placate the attackers or get more influence for the Poettering take over.
31 • Fedora (by bananabob on 2021-03-29 11:51:47 GMT from United States)
I was a die hard fan of Linux Mint for 3 reasons. First, Linux Mint offers alternative desktop environments besides Gnome 3. Second,, it includes non-free software like flash player out of the box. Third, it offers wifi and video drivers out of the box, not included in other distros. I avoided Fedora 33 for these reasons.
But now,, I'm giving Fedora 34 beta a try. It includes an alternative to Gnome 3. Flash player is end of life and no longer needed. And, unlike Fedora 33, 34 is compatible with the wifi adapter in my laptop. I've been running it for 3 days now, and like it so far.
I tried a 30 day free trial of Red Hat. It was ok, but I didn't really need all the enterprise security features on a home laptop. I didn't think it was worth paying the for $175 annual subscription fee to continue using Red Hat. Then, CentOS was discontinued. So now I'm giving the new and improved Fedora a try.
32 • Q&A - One of the Best !! (by Ti-Paul on 2021-03-29 13:24:21 GMT from Canada)
One of the best Q&A i read for a while!
I'm on Linux since 1997 and the history of Redhat/Fedora is pretty accurate. Your statements are in-line with what i saw...
I consider myself a distro hopper since 24 years because i love to try new stuff.
Since 2-3 years, i stabilized onto Ubuntu derivative Linux Mint and Manjaro/Antergos (Arch) when installing to my harddrive.
Now i'm mostly using a Ventoy formatted USB thumbdrive where i copy all new distro that i want to try in LIVE mode... sometimes i try Fedora or its spins but they never catch my attention like they do back in the earlies 2000's...
33 • Void Linux ~ Easy setup (by Ghost 67 on 2021-03-29 13:31:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've been using Void XFCE since before Christmas and after perusing their wiki and asking around I've streamlined my post-install routine thus:
1) In a terminal as su:
xbps-install -Su (updates the system)
xbps-install octoxbps (for the GUI package manager)
2) Then, in Octoxbps search and install:
void-repo-nonfree
void-repo-multilib
void-repo-multilib-nonfree
(refresh the repos)
3) Still in Octoxbps install:
pavucontrol
xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
(manually add pulseaudio plugin to the xfce panel in the usual way)
4) Then install the following if you need Nvidia and Steam:
steam
libgcc-32bit
libstdc++-32bit
libdrm-32bit
libglvnd-32bit
nvidia
nvidia-libs-32bit
(REBOOT)
All done! Rock'n'roll on your new Void install :)
34 • RMS (by ionel on 2021-03-29 14:04:55 GMT from Moldova)
RMS
When FSF was started by RMS, there was UNIX, which was very expensive, more than 10k $ for a license.
And there was BSD, which was just a bunch of patches on top of UNIX, which were emailed to you.
And if you didn't have a UNIX copy, BSD patches were useless.
With UNIX kernel, you got a C compiler, a shell, a bunch of programs.
With bsd you got "vi" and a small set of programs, and a bunch of patches which made Unix kernel working better (virtual memory, bsd sockets)
so when RMS started GNU -> he had nothing
so FSF did:
1) a free compiler GCC
2) a free standard library glibc
3) a free shell bash
4) wrote all unix utilities versions
5) wrote all bsd utilities versions
and made a few mistakes when tried to do a revolutionary UNIX kernel design (microkernel)
till nowadays microkernels are interesting, but not mainstream.
GNU (and IBM too) wasted huge amount of time on fighting windmills
while the last piece -> linux was provided.
so thats how GNU + linux started.
and all open source initiative.
p.s:
so FSF founder RMS is :
0) involved into open source projects
1) teacher (or working at university)
2) open source blogger
3) political blogger
AND AFAIU he is :
0) a good open source software developer
1) a teacher which treated female students badly
2) a rather radical open source blogger, which wrote a bunch of articles with interesting point of view about internet, software etc.
3) has a separate political blog, in which for 30 years published some stuff, and nobody in 30 years gave a f*** about what he wrote there.
but one day someone decided that he had to go... and suddenly all the things he wrote in a political blog mattered
IMHO it is typical capitalist interests in FSF board membership... (look at big evil red for clues)
35 • Fedora (by David on 2021-03-29 15:41:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
The poll might have been more interesting if it had listed the option of "used to use it but stopped". I started on Red Hat and moved to Fedora when it separated. Over the years I began to feel like a hamster in a wheel keeping up with the changes and the arrival of Gnome 3 was the last straw — and too many things in Fedora depended on the presence of Gnome — so I switched to CentOS. When CentOS as we know it vanished, I moved to PCLinuxOS: it might be rolling release, but things aren't released until they actually work.
36 • RMS (by dragonmouth on 2021-03-29 15:55:51 GMT from United States)
Is IBM/Red Hat trying to "cancel" Stallman?
There are opinions we agree with and opinions we disagree with. In an enlightened society, ALL opinions are tolerated. In a "woke", oppressive society a self-appointed, self-important Thought Police dictate what will or will not be heard.
When all are thinking alike, then nobody is thinking.
Gen George S. Patton
37 • @6 M.Z.: (by dragonmouth on 2021-03-29 16:05:53 GMT from United States)
"Making females uncomfortable" and "using creepy tactics" are not illegal or criminal, or, for that matter, actionable in any way.
So RMS has ideas/viewpoint/opinions that we disagree with. On what stone is it graven that we all must think the same?
38 • @Richard Engkraf + @William Bean (by Mighty Mouse on 2021-03-29 16:06:06 GMT from Switzerland)
@Richard Engkraf
I hope you've seen that some people from Arch signed against RMS! So, some Archers are on the same line as Debian and RedHat folks. Arch made unfortunately a sad development from a distribution for Linux-enthusiasts and those who want to understand what works how to a hipster distribution à la "Look, I've installed Arch on my laptop. Now, I am a Linux hacker and expert."
@William Bean
>>> " a few disconnected utilities"
Then I suggest you remove right away from your system gcc, bison, bash, grub, make, fdisk among several other programs. If it even then does not come into your mind why it is called GNU Linux and not simply Linux (and that RMS did not intend to take over Linux, on whatever pseudofacts your ridiculous accusation is based on), then I suggest you stop commenting on behalf of this matter on any serious forum which does want to follow your admired "cancel culture".
39 • FSF Board (by R Hoagland on 2021-03-29 16:08:36 GMT from United States)
Regardless of your stance on RMS, the newly chartered FSF board governance was a long time coming, which should have been implemented when RMS initially stepped down--if not sooner.
40 • About RMS controversy, and Fedora 34 (by Jeffersonian on 2021-03-29 16:29:43 GMT from France)
Hello:
RMS and Linus Torvalds have really started the FOSS (Free Open Source) saga, they contribution technical and leadership in "Open Source patriotism" must be recognized.
They jump started it, RMS with eMacs, the C compiler (and much more) and Linux, with this "small OS kernel" ...
Now like in any endeavor, the work and the person must be separated.
To both of them, and the multitude of FOSS contributors, just a big "Job well done , thank you !".
---
On Fedora 34 MATE along with RPMFUSION related support : the install was seamless, almost everything works well excepted:
1) An issue with Bluetooth speaker, fixed quickly (found the solution on line).
2) Skype rpm (No Fedora fault) also fixed quickly.
Fedora is stable, robust, reliable : one of the best Linux Disros for every day use Desktop, in my view.
Fedora 34 seems to have the same "high usability" quality that Red Hat had for a very long time !
What would make it even better:
The Install is a bit clumsy, (especially custom install) and NVIDIA when needed is hellishly difficult to install (Unlike Mint Linux where this is a lot easier).
Go for it, it Fedora 34 MATE (spin) is good stuff !
Jeffersonian
41 • Should IBM get involved in the FSF ? (by Jeffersonian on 2021-03-29 16:56:58 GMT from France)
"Red Hat has made perhaps the strongest statement against Stallman's return, stating in a blog post: Red Hat is a long-time donor and contributor to projects stewarded by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), with hundreds of contributors and millions of lines of code contributed. Considering the circumstances of Richard Stallman's original resignation in 2019, Red Hat was appalled to learn that he had rejoined the FSF board of directors. As a result, we are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events. In addition, many Red Hat contributors have told us they no longer plan to participate in FSF-led or backed events, and we stand behind them."
----
Comment: Red Hat, is now IBM, a very large for profit corporation, and to get involved in the politics of the FSF, (Free Software Fundation) which is "non profit" raises ethical questions, especially when they target one single person, here RMS (Stallman). The Open Source movement was started, exactly for this: regaining freedom from mercantile corporate interest.
If it is fine for IBM corporation to express opinions, without libel or defamation, about anyone, what seems to be blackmailing of the FSF does not sound right. I would say the same regardless of the issue, if a gun manufacturer company was trying to influence the NRA by funding or defunding it.
If RMS had been found guilty in a fair trial, this would be different, only slightly.
Without being naive, let's defend the relative freedom of the FSF from undue corporate interests.
Is it a fair question to ask:
"Does IBM corporate try to dismiss RMS because of his staunch stance on the "purity of the GPL" (Gnu Public License) which preserve Open Source Software from undue corporate influence ?"
Jeffersonian
42 • RMS (by vern on 2021-03-29 17:05:57 GMT from United States)
RMS is disrespectful to women, Linus Torvalds is disrespectful to everybody.
I like this quote:
"When all are thinking alike, then nobody is thinking.
Gen George S. Patton "
I find now that all our past Presidents , leaders, founders, were all racist.
Political correctness is a disease.
43 • RMS and the FSF (by vw72 on 2021-03-29 17:08:42 GMT from United States)
The debate over RMS returning to the FSF misses the point. There is no doubting that he can be divisive and his opinions on things often unrelated to FSF are quite controversial. None of that is in question.
What should be the discussion is whether or not having a controversial person as RMS on the board of the FSF enhances their mission or not?
My personal opinion is that the attention that the FSF is receiving because of RMS distracts them from their mission. Given the current environment we live in, it is hard to see how RMS's presence on the Board can be beneficial. He is entitled to his opinions, as is everybody. But like everybody else, he is entitled to suffer the consequences of making those opinions public.
The FSF is an organization and if they believe that RMS being on the Board is in the best interest of their organization, so be it. But just like many are arguing in favor of RMS' right to express his opinions, so do those who disagree with his opinions and the actions the FSF have taken. Free speech works both ways.
44 • @27 Fedora w/ Pipewire (by Dr. Dave on 2021-03-29 17:29:07 GMT from United States)
An interesting enough point on the surface, however I don't see why it matters who is first to implement Pipewire. First of all, Pipewire is still considerably buggy, so if they implement it now, it's just going to frustrate hopeful users. And while it's a 'sound' idea hyuk hyuk-- there is no guarantee that it will become the universal sound solution.
If it does work out that way and Fedora beats everyone to the finish line, how narrow will the difference be between Fedora's 'First Place' position and everyone else? A day earlier? A week, or a month? Don't forget that Fedora has been 'First' to implement a lot of things, many of them half-baked, but that hasn't helped them to win any popularity contests.
Fedora was first to implement PolypAudio and a relatively short time later, it was crammed down everyone else's throats. Does everyone use Fedora today because its implementation of Pulse is somehow better because it's older? Is Fedora today's go-to 'Pro Audio' distro? Not by a longshot. So this idea that being first to implement Pipewire will be a good reason to use Fedora is more of a Pipedream than a reality.
45 • Decision makers and theur ways (by IBM dictator on 2021-03-29 18:11:39 GMT from Greece)
RMS makes rational statements to support his opinions and arguments, and it is this tendency that founded FSF and GNU based on democratic ideals.
IBM, as all corporations, are dictatorial in nature, and use power (wealth and other means) to enforce their decisions on others. It is clear how they try to get their way here as well, which is very natural, expected, to be a dictatorial approach to decision making. FSF and dictatorships can not blend or be unified. People and corporations can not coexist as equals. Either one or the other will win.
Since I am pro-human and anti-dictatorship, whether I like RMS or not is secondary, I must support him against "it", a faceless dictatorship with only object its high profits.
Closet fascists, anti-human monsters, who hide behind their corporate-fan-boy mask should just be honest and come out and say "we are happy when humans lose and dictatorial organizations with only goal profits win". Which sadly is the case for linux, open/free software .... humans lost corporations won. Or isn't the war final yet, and some are still hopeful to coexist.
A handful of multinational corporations, control now the Linux foundations board, they have crawled all over FSF, and most likely have totally undermined the goals of GNU for their own oligopoly.
At some point we may have to accept game over and start from scratch with stronger ideals, values, and principles, where there will be not a square millimeter space and tolerance for corporate involvement. This means open/free/non-corporate hardware, compilers, kernels, etc.
46 • Void + KDE (correction) (by frc-kde on 2021-03-29 18:52:58 GMT from Brazil)
Correction to @14:
Please, ignore this:
«No problem to boot in UEFI mode, just by following the official manual»
I didn't install UEFI bootloader to Void. ─ Just updated grub.cfg in order to be read by openSUSE's Grub, which is my main Boot Menu.
47 • Fedora (by Arijit on 2021-03-29 19:19:54 GMT from United States)
I started my Linux journey with Fedora Core, then switched back to Windows fo many years. But once I again came back to Linux, I have become a Fedora guy.
I believe your point #2 (middle ground) is Fedora's strength for people like me. I want a fast-moving distro with latest version of packages, yet it shouldn't break. I am using Fedora in my two laptops, and honestly, it broke only 3 times in last couple years. But it's for my mistake only. I use in-place upgrade rather than re-install (yes, I still use ext4 as file system). Nothing ever happened.
48 • Fedora and the RMS / FSF controversy (by Scott Dowdle on 2021-03-29 21:41:41 GMT from United States)
First off, stop arguing about the FSF and RMS. This split-the-community subject couldn't have been made any more destructive by our worst enemies (whoever that might be) even if they had tried. Just let them sort it out and give them time to do so. I too have an opinion on it, and it is nuanced... but I'm not going to forcefully discuss it with others online... especially if there isn't even a perceived benefit.
Regarding Fedora remixes... I can tell you there are a lot of them out there in the wild but they aren't necessarily promoted by folks... and are largely used internally. I have my own... and have been remixing Fedora since around F7 (or was it FC7?). They make it fairly easy to do with their livecd-tools package. I'm a member of the Fedora Repin SIG which makes refreshed media twice a month... but unfortunately it isn't (yet) promoted on the main Fedora website but via IRC and Planet Fedora. It might also be useful to ask why aren't there a whole lot of SLES clones or OpenSUSE clones. There are some, but comparatively less. I don't think the factors mentioned in the fine article come into play with regards to SUSE. I do think the number of spins and lab mixes of Fedora that are provided by the Fedora Project... and the ease of self-respin/mixing means many users can easily alter Fedora to meet their needs. For stuff Fedora can't ship, rpmfusion and flatpak are both well established and one doesn't really need a derivative distro just to add on a few packages or change some defaults.
Anyhoo... Fedora is easily upgradable so in my opinion, there isn't that big of a distinction between a "rolling release" distro and one that is easy to upgrade from one release to the next especially given the 6-month release cycle and 13-month support cycle.
So far as saying Red Hat is greedy... please remember that a significant chunk of the widely adopted technology that has appeared in Linux distros was primarily sponsored (directly or indirectly) by Red Hat and most all distributions and users benefit from their work. Sure, you run Debian or Ubuntu or Arch... but so much of what you run came from Red Hat. So far as IBM completely ruling Red Hat goes... that simply isn't true. The former Red Hat CEO became the President of IBM, not the other way around... and Red Hat is still run as an independent entity... believe-it-or-not.
49 • Fedora based dstros (by pengxuin on 2021-03-29 22:44:10 GMT from New Zealand)
No, I do not use one.
regarding the relative number of offspring, .deb vs .rpm.
is a derivative of Ubuntu with new wall paper and theme a real distro?
Generally, those out in the wild .rpm distros are complete;
they have their own kernel team, their own repos and generally (with caveats), a .rpm will work between .rpm distros.
very few debian / ubuntu derivatives have their own set of repos, some have none.
as an aside, the names of some packages should reflect real world applications.
one would not expect 2 different applications to have the same name, eg: xviewer
one is a Mint created application, the other a windows application, and I suspect that a new to Linux user whom is familiar with the windows version would be...disappointed.
50 • Other Fedora/Red Hat Distros (by bananabob on 2021-03-29 22:47:16 GMT from United States)
I tried Stella, a CentOS based distro from Romania. It worked ok, but I wasn't sure about getting long term updates with a non mainstream distro like that. I tried this one as an alternative to Fedora, because it used Gnome 2 instead of Gnome 3.
The same with Hanthana Linux, a Fedora based distro from Sri Lanka. I liked the look and feel of it. But again, I wasn't sure about long term updates. Also, the Hanthana server was kind of slow and it was difficult to download the ISO file. I also like the fact that Hanthana offered LXDE instead of Gnome 3.
51 • void (by thym on 2021-03-30 00:10:44 GMT from Greece)
I tested Void about six months and was so impressed that i ve installed it, as my main system in all my boxes: a fairly new desktop computer, a tiny 8 years old netbook and an eleven years old laptop. For laptop & netbook, i opted for xfce4. For desktop, i used a nightly plasma build from https://www.voidbuilds.xyz/
Runit and xbps are very fast and relatively easy to understand.
In all the boxes, system seems fast, responsive and also very stable. Maintenance is easy and does not require much time.
A final note regarding kernels - imo, another one of Void's pros.
When a newer kernel is installed, grub is updated automatically and older kernels are not deleted. Anytime later, if the user decides to delete an older kernel (or some older kernels), there is a specific script (vkpurge) for that purpose.
52 • RMS (by Jeb on 2021-03-30 00:25:20 GMT from Australia)
RMS is a strange man, but strange people are still allowed to work. Especially for groups that they themselves started.
also I love Void, its unbelievably fast. it's the OS arch is pretending to be.
53 • RMS Stuff (by M.Z. on 2021-03-30 00:32:08 GMT from United States)
@37 - "..."Making females uncomfortable" and "using creepy tactics" are not illegal or criminal, or, for that matter, actionable in any way."
Really? Where have you been:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment#United_States
I won't claim to know what really happened, but if indeed there are a long chain of complaints as has been claimed, that seems to be credible evidence of wrong doing & abuse of power. Professors can't go around pressuring their students or underlings & it's been that way for decades. It's also caught up people of all different sorts, from Roy Moore & Sen. Al Frakin, to Trump & Gov. Cuomo. Laws about this have been created for a reason & everyone on all sides of a claim deserve an honest investigation & a justice outcome. On occasion that means some fringe lady deserves to have the book thrown at her, but what I understand to be the more statistically likely outcome is that a person in power has to go. Everyone deserves better than some animal farm garbage where some are more equal than others.
If someone has evidence that RMS has been exonerated in a court of law, that is a very valid argument against listening to the critics. I have yet to see it.
On the other had, if you go through some of the claims against him & ask yourself: "If this is true, would I want this guy in a position of power over any woman I care about?", I kinda doubt RMS supports can honestly defend him.
Ideally we'd see some suit or other legal proceeding that had a fair investigation & either got rid of RMS from any position of power or eliminated all credible allegations. In the meantime we have a lot of aggrieved fanboys who care more about their political axes than justice, so I doubt this thread is going anywhere productive or honest.
54 • @53 (by Andy Prough on 2021-03-30 01:12:46 GMT from Switzerland)
> "If someone has evidence that RMS has been exonerated in a court of law, that is a very valid argument against listening to the critics. I have yet to see it."
Justice has a presumption of innocence. What you are talking about, requiring that someone "exonerate" themselves in court before you feel they are worthy of retaining their job or position, is a presumption of guilt. You certainly wouldn't want that standard applied to yourself, where you had to run to court and clear your name anytime someone said something about you in order to keep your job. So you shouldn't apply it to others.
55 • RMS Conspiracy Theory (by Mark on 2021-03-30 03:46:28 GMT from Canada)
The dark-shadow puppet-masters are pulling the strings on this whole thing.
Their goal : Take over or kill the FSF.
Their method : Find an excuse to de-fund & destabilize the FSF. When they are on their knees, offer to reinstate funding & support if they re-structure entirely to the instructions of said “saviour”.
Their tool : Lure RMS back into the FSF with promises of forgiveness, remuneration, etc. Convince the FSF Board this is a good idea. Wait for the sh*t-storm to plaster everything.
The Result : Things are going by the playbook so far . . .
56 • Plan9 (by x on 2021-03-30 04:26:02 GMT from United States)
Glad to see Plan9 finally relicensed to something more reasonable. I would have preferred an ISC or BSD style license, however, this is a much better option than any of the former licenses.
Plan9 is an interesting approach to computing could have made an impact if ownership had furthered it's development or released it with a useable license.
Hopefully, it will receive more attention.
Will it be added to Distrowatch? I believe it should.
57 • FEDORA, RPM, or not? (by Greg Zeng on 2021-03-30 06:18:11 GMT from Australia)
Red Hat uses a version of package manager that seems the same type for all packages. However the application coders have very great trouble preparing compiled versions of RPM BINARIES. Application coders using RPM have very great trouble with their compilations for the many types of RPM
Debian has better handling of its package manager, so is preferred by application coders: Crossover, Flashpeak Slimjet, etc.
All Linux operating systems are hostile to compiled applications, which must conform to an error correcting "Package Manager" for the compiled code. Perhaps either Snap (Ubuntu-stimulated) or Flatpak might evolve further enough to replace appimage?
Sandboxing applications away from disorderly operating systems seem to be needed.
There are various other sandboxes fo user applications. Meantime both Windows & Apple are favored by the application creators, instead of the anarchy of the Linux public-usable operating systems.
Ongoing discussion on package management continues:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/866511/what-are-the-differences-between-snaps-appimage-flatpak-and-others
The RPM, DEB, etc remain the biggest barrier to application creators. The instructions about: "Zoom for Windows, Chrome, Firefox, Linux, and Android 5.6.1" show how troublesome Linux is.
58 • RMS (by Simon on 2021-03-30 10:57:31 GMT from New Zealand)
Great to see so much support for RMS among these comments. Amazing that such a flagrantly overblown witch hunt has gained enough momentum to be taken so seriously and to suck so many people in. I've read through the list of his alleged sins and it's one of the most pathetic things I've ever read: thoroughly ordinary (though occasionally unpleasant) and in some cases even perfectly reasonable (or even admirable, in the case of his courageous defence of rationality in the face of vindictive lynch mobs) actions being presented as monstrous and somehow invalidating his history-shaping leadership of software freedom. The people howling for his blood are doing so on software that exists thanks to his GPL, built with software he wrote, making money off industries that only exist thanks to the movement he founded and champions...and they have the arrogance to position themselves as his moral superiors because they lack the courage to speak truth to power as recklessly as he does? What a pack of simpering cowards. One more nail in the coffin of any respect I had for Red Hat. They've been subverting Linux for years, making it more Windows-like in an effort to disempower users and make them more dependent on Red Hat products...and now they're openly using their money to block the influence of free software's staunchest advocate? Wow.
59 • Fedora (by Roger on 2021-03-30 12:25:34 GMT from United States)
The subject is Fedora which I've used since it was a glimmer in Red Hat's eye. Screw RMS. Get a haircut!
60 • RMS... (by Vukota on 2021-03-30 13:37:11 GMT from Serbia)
Linus was also accused in the past of "making females uncomfortable" and "using creepy tactics", and I haven't seen IBM or Red Hat, or anyone accusing RMS today, ditching use of Linux kernel, or trying to ban Linus from working on Linux kernel as they are making money of it.
IBM supported Adolf Hitler before WW2. Should we boycott IBM (and now Red Hat) because of it? Should we demand that IBM give up their ownership in Red Hat because of it?
I agree with people who think this is a power/money grab scheme.
61 • Gnome 3.x -> 40 (by silent on 2021-03-30 13:50:38 GMT from Austria)
So what was the purpose of the 3.x ->40 version jump? Was the aim to upset packagers? It is sort of confusing, because it is not linked to GTK 4.0 at all.
62 • oo noo (by fonz on 2021-03-30 14:16:33 GMT from Indonesia)
void was a fun distro ive tested years ago on a now dead laptop, the HD still lives but im guessing its prolly better to start again from scratch. pretty curious why they didnt decide to bundle audio controls over the years when most things were already in place.
i havent tried fedora ever since ubuntu came out a long time ago. making things like installing drivers and whatnot (IMHO) is more important than staying 100% FOSS. add to that a few reviews here on DW IIRC had a bit of a bumpy ride. the Q&A section might also apply to opensuse and their remixing, same quirks apply, but there is gecko for a more streamlined install.
so much drama nowadays, making fence sitting more fun in terrible ways. people who scream 'free speech' tend to forget the limit of it (libel). heres a view i dont mind spreading around. do X crime Y times, you go bye-bye, wee. tax money is better spent elsewhere, like education in these troubled times -_-
also wondering why numb jumped from 3 to 40. i thought 40 was a new numb app or something. is it because numb 40 ate 4-39..?
63 • This RMS drama is strangely familiar (by Style99 on 2021-03-30 15:04:05 GMT from United States)
Remember back when Hans Reiser faced accusations and a sudden tidal wave of white knights made a lot of noise about him being innocent until proven guilty?
64 • RMS, Reiser, RRR (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2021-03-30 20:28:49 GMT from United States)
Yes, and many of the witch-hunters still demand they both be persecuted - instead of doing something constructive for the community. Clearly they're not interested in rehab.
Go figure.
At least Linus T. got someone with diplomacy skills.
65 • RMS cancellation (by Davd on 2021-03-31 00:36:43 GMT from United States)
RMS is part of the old guard, it's time to CANCEL him!
There needs to be someone else, someone with a more 'diverse' background', the 'woke' mob demands it! Of course, that person must support the correct causes and say the right things. You just can't have an actual individual in a position of power like that. He might say something that the thought police don't like, which would reflect badly on Corporate.
66 • Political Correctness (by x on 2021-03-31 05:12:25 GMT from United States)
At one time burning witches at the stake was politically correct.
So which distribution is developed by only those who meet or excede the litmus test for purity of action and thought or word? If this is not possible which lines of the tainted code must be removed in order to achieve perfection, or should we toss out the GPL and create a new one witten by people without the stain of human fraility.
I just want to make sure I do not have to face the Inquisitors.
67 • Oh the Humanity... (by Tech in San Diego on 2021-03-31 06:45:55 GMT from United States)
@48 - So many distros and so few developers. There are other alternatives however, Windows for Workgroups 3.10, Novell 3.11 and who could forget OS/2. They sure bring back fond memories.
@53 - On August 17, 1998, President Clinton was asked whether the statement by his lawyer Robert S. Bennett to Judge Susan Webber Wright that, “there is absolutely no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form, with President Clinton [and Monica Lewinsky]" was truthful, President Clinton replied, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Clinton explained that if “is” meant “never has been” that is one thing; but, if “is” meant “there is none currently” then the statement by Mr. Bennett was correct.
@64 - I happen to enjoy RMS's Tye-died T-Shirts, ketchup stains and all.
68 • @66 x: (by dragonmouth on 2021-03-31 13:47:58 GMT from United States)
The problem with Political Correctness and "wokeness" is that both are moving targets. Anything that is "PC" or "woke" today, may be totally abhorrent to the Thought Police by next week.
Not too long ago, the Women's Lib movement demanded that every occurrence of "man" or "men" be replaced by the gender neutral "person". Would have made for some interesting new franken-words. For example: "woman" would become "woperson" or "mental" would become "persontal".
69 • Fedora - Redhat - Debian (by Will on 2021-03-31 18:42:23 GMT from United States)
I started with Slackware, back in the early 1990's. I quickly moved over to RedHat, through about version 5. Then, I found Debian and stuck with it up until about Mint 16, when I went all in on Mint. Nowadays, I flit back and forth from Mint to Debian to K/Xubuntu and back again, with most of my time spent in Debian. Ubuntu's starting silently installing snaps, another ecosystem I can't stand, so even though I have a working method of disabling snaps, it's pushing me back to Debian.
My main issues with RedHat are:
1. RPM's - can't stand the ecosystem
2. Gnome/MATE - disliked from day one - too dumbed down and space inefficient for my taste
Fedora's got the same issues, plus it won't install on my T430, some deal with the oldness of the UEFI support. Which is sad, since I have installed dozens of other distros and OSes on the thing without any problems.
I know I can install other desktops and package managers, but there's a world of difference between adding stuff, and having it delivered as a standard configuration. Yes, debian offers Gnome as the default desktop, who knows why, but KDE and XFCE are still 1st class citizens there, as well.
70 • critical_user (by nanome on 2021-03-31 20:19:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Jesse writes: "When I started using Void it was in a VirtualBox environment. I found the distribution was quick to start and responsive."
You ask: "And are there good accessibility features?": these are always a function of the desktop environment; XFCE4 is pretty good on accessibility, I am forced to use sticky keys to write this.
CUPS printing works [I use it].
71 • Fedora (by Jeffrydada on 2021-03-31 22:52:34 GMT from United States)
I still use Jam! in my studio. But the Fedora offshot I loved was Korora, it was the "Mint" of Fedora spins.
72 • Fedora and Korora - @71 (by Hoos on 2021-04-01 03:09:22 GMT from Singapore)
Korora was indeed excellent and nicely set up with all the appropriate non-free repos. But for existing users of Korora, there was no need to abandon it after the developer stopped work on it.
Most of the applications are actually installed from the standard and non-free repos. You could simply remove the korora repo, the korora release/os file and the other branding files that came from that repo, and just continue the distro as a pre-configured Fedora.
73 • Fedora won't install (by whoKnows on 2021-04-01 07:17:31 GMT from Switzerland)
@69 • Fedora - Redhat - Debian (by Will from United States)
"My main issues with RedHat are:
1. [...]
2. Gnome/MATE - disliked from day one - too dumbed down and space inefficient for my taste
Fedora's got the same issues, plus it won't install on my T430, some deal with the oldness of the UEFI support."
Some people prefer coffee to tea, or the other way round; some open the bottle of whiskey early in the morning, instead of both ...
However, “space inefficient” is relative — Gnome3 really is the best Linux DE on any “2 in 1” or “3 in 1” device, and it still can be used with a mouse.
As of Fedora “won't install on my T430”, I can only say, I don't know what's your issue, but it is YOUR ISSUE, and not Fedora's (33/34), nor Lenovo's.
Works just fine here on T420/T430.
https://ibb.co/4fkBMHZ
74 • Fedora and derivatives (by Wally on 2021-04-01 18:16:39 GMT from United States)
I am a fellow Korora enthusiast! I came around in the Korora 22 days (Fedora 22). That was my first choice for a desktop Linux distribution. And I like that analogy, "Korora was the Mint of Fedora." It's what turned me on to Numix icon theme, even though I don't normally go for that flat look.
I still have one Fedora system, which has an Nvidia graphics card (the cheapest one that my friends recommended that could run the one game I care to play). And I was manually installing the proprietary Nvidia graphics every month or two, but then I discovered that rpmfusion-nonfree already includes them for me! I can't recall if it's dkms or already bundled into the kernel or whatever, but it made it way easier.
I love the selinux, and pre-configured firewall on by default,versus wide open lack of firewall by default on Devuan.
75 • firewalls by default (by nanome on 2021-04-01 21:30:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
@74: as it's a quiet week, I noted that you were critical of Devuan for lack of a firewall. In fact hardly any distros enable or even install any kind of Firewall. These days, most people rely on whatever their broadband router provides. Or are oblivious.
Even deploying gufw or ufw would be better than nothing. It would be better to deploy a firewall during and after installation, and leave a note, just in case it interferes with applications at a later time.
What will it take for distro-makers to take firewalls seriously?
76 • RMS (by Andy Figueroa on 2021-04-02 03:18:10 GMT from United States)
People need to be allowed to have been wrong in the past, and to mature into having better personal opinions. RMS' treatment is in the worst tradition of today's cancel culture.
77 • Think first, talk second (by whoKnows on 2021-04-02 06:00:33 GMT from Switzerland)
@76 • RMS (by Andy Figueroa from United States)
“People need to be allowed to have been wrong in the past, and to mature into having better personal opinions.”
People ARE allowed to have been wrong in the past, and to mature into having better personal opinions — “to mature into having better personal opinions” does (and should) not imply letting RMS stay for any longer on any of his previous positions.
If “to mature into having better personal opinions” would imply reinstalling somebody back to his previous position, then why not reinstall Phillip R. Bennett again as a Refco's CEO and chairman?
I don't know what exactly RMS exactly did or did not, neither most of you here. We only know what somebody told us, and we can't really make any own objective opinion on that matter.
78 • Void (by Erin on 2021-04-02 08:53:48 GMT from Spain)
Void isn't built to be for newbie. The documentation is reasonable, it is rock solid and updated (actively). Been using the glibc and musl versions for a long time. Yes it is different in several respects, yes it doesn't have lots of packages installed, yes you'll probably need to tweak it to work for you BUT there are lots of options open and an active community to help.
Is it the best distro in the world - possibly but it depends on what you're trying to achieve and how willing you are to spend time with it!
79 • Gnome 40 and Ubuntu (by Kaczor on 2021-04-02 20:07:23 GMT from United States)
Gnome 40 was released on 24th March, 2021
Fedora 4 Beta with Gnome 40 was released on 23rd March, 2021
Ubuntu would/might release a distro with Gnome 40 sometime in October, 2021. But, by that time, there could be Gnome 41.
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| • 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Dr.Parted Live
Dr.Parted Live is a bootable GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian Testing. It is a live CD/USB featuring a lightweight Openbox window manager and useful applications for data backup, restore and recovery.
Status: Active
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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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