 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 912, 12 April 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 15th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the more recent additions to the DistroWatch database is a project called Venom Linux. Venom is an independent, rolling release distribution with a focus towards minimalism. We take Venom for a test drive this week and report on the experience in our Feature Story. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about what a kernel panic is and what a person might be able to do to work around it. We also discuss modern Linux filesystems and why someone might switch from one filesystem to another. Do you have a preferred Linux filesystem? Let us know which filesystem you trust with your data in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about Debian's annual Project Leader election and link to the platforms of both candidates for Debian's leadership. We also share news that Oracle has lost its API infringement case against Google and link to a debate over whether the aging FTP service should be kept in FreeBSD's core system. We also report on FreeBSD making ARM64 a top tier architecture. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (12MB) and MP3 (9MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Venom Linux 20210312
Venom Linux is an independently-developed, minimal, rolling-release distribution inspired by CRUX. It targets experienced Linux users. Venom uses SysV init as the main init system and BSD-like ports as software packages which are managed by a custom package manager. The distribution's package manager is called scratch.
Venom is built for 64-bit (x86_64) machines exclusively. The project is available in one edition which can be downloaded as a 1.3GB ISO. Booting from the supplied media boots directly into the Openbox window manager. A panel sits at the bottom of the screen and offers us access to a few quick-launch icons, a virtual desktop widget, and a clock. We can right-click on empty space on the desktop to open the application menu.
Venom Linux 20210312 -- The Openbox application menu
(full image size: 939kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The live desktop provides a very minimal environment. There are no status widgets, welcome screen, or desktop icons. After exploring the live session for a while and confirming the system runs smoothly we can install Venom by running its installer, venom-installer, from the command line or from the application menu.
Installing
Venom's installer uses a series of text-based menus. We can perform the steps of the installer in the order of our choosing. The installer somewhat resembles the ones used by Void and Slackware Linux. We are first asked to select our keyboard's layout from a list of short, cryptic names. We are then given the chance to use either of the console-based cfdisk or fdisk partitioning tools to set up the disk. Once partitions have been created we are given the chance to pick a filesystem for the root partition. Options include Btrfs, ext2/3/4, Reiserfs, and XFS. I decided to use ext4 for this trial.
The following screens asks us if we would like to enable a swap partition, and to create a root password. We can also make up a username and password for our regular user account. The final step allows us to choose where the GRUB boot loader will be installed. The Venom installer then copies its packages to the hard drive and configures the local copy of the operating system. When it finishes we are advised to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of Venom Linux booted to a graphical login page. The sign in box looks to be truncated around the sides, despite there being a lot of empty space around it on the screen, and the greeting welcomes us with "Hellc LogiI".
Once signed into the Openbox session we are returned to the same empty, responsive session experienced on the live media. As there are no notifications or welcome messages we can dive straight into exploring the system and tackling tasks.
Hardware
I started out by trying Venom in a VirtualBox environment. Venom boots quickly and ran smoothly in the virtual machine. Openbox was pleasantly responsive. The only issue I had while trying Venom in VirtualBox was the Openbox window manager would not dynamically resize to match the VirtualBox window's resolution. This, combined with an apparent lack of configuration tools for handling screen resolution, left me with a very low-resolution graphical environment while I was using the virtual machine.
Venom Linux 20210312 -- Browsing alternative window manager themes
(full image size: 738kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
When I switched over to running Venom on my laptop my screen resolution was properly detected. Openbox was highly responsive on physical hardware. Audio worked out of the box as did wireless networking.
Venom is an unusually lightweight distribution. Signing into the Openbox environment takes just 87MB of memory and a fresh install consumes just 4GB of disk space. However, Venom was strangely aggressive with my CPU. The distribution rarely dropped below 8% to 10% CPU usage on my laptop with nothing but a idle terminal open. Most distributions I test idle at about 1% or less when logged into a desktop session. The extra CPU was being consumed by the X.Org server and picom, suggesting a bug with the compositor. This meant Venom consumed almost no memory while causing my laptop to run hotter than normal.
Venom Linux 20210312 -- Monitoring CPU usage
(full image size: 777kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Included software
The distribution ships with a small collection of applications. The Firefox web browser is included along with the Geany IDE. The Leafpad text editor and PCManFM file manager are installed for us. The GParted partition manager is included along with a few tools for adjusting the look of Openbox.
There are two compilers, Clang and the GNU Compiler Collection, installed for us. These and some related developer tools assist in building software and packages. I'll talk more about acquiring packages later. Manual pages are included by default.
Venom Linux 20210312 -- Checking Firefox's extensions
(full image size: 91kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Venom ships with xterm as the default virtual terminal. The xterm colours are set to display dark blue and white on a charcoal background. I found this difficult to read and the terminal doesn't enable scrollbars by default, making it an unusually limited terminal. I ended up installing LXTerminal which uses a higher contrast white-on-black font and includes all the standard terminal features.
When I started out using Venom on my laptop I wasn't sure if I would be able to get on-line as there are no network connection utilities in the application menu and no network connection widget on the panel. I found the distribution ships with the Network Manager text-based wizard (nmtui) for connecting to wireless networks. The Venom Linux download page says, at the time of writing, that the distribution runs the runit init software. This information turned out to be incorrect as Venom runs the SysV init software. In the background I found version 5.4 of the Linux kernel.
To perform administrator actions we can either login as the root user or use sudo which automatically enables admin tasks for the regular user we create at install time.
Venom Linux 20210312 -- The PCManFM file manager
(full image size: 442kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Venom does not ship with any office suit, image viewer, or image editor. There is no screenshot utility, no printer support, and no multimedia support. I could view YouTube videos in Firefox, but the web browser and terminal supplied virtually all of the distribution's out of the box functionality. On a related note, audio worked on Venom, though there is no volume control on the desktop. We are limited to in-application volume management or installing a mixer.
Something I found odd was right-clicking on the desktop panel would cause it to disappear. I'm not sure if this is by design or right-clicking on the panel caused it to crash. Either way it was frustrating to accidentally click the panel instead of in a window or an empty piece of desktop and have my task switcher disappear.
Package management
Package management on Venom is handled by a command line tool the project's website refers to as scratchpkg, though the command line program is invoked as scratch. We can run scratch to find packages in the repositories, download new applications, see information on installed items, build packages from source code, and remove old items. The command line syntax is fairly straight forward. To provide a few examples, running "scratch search" finds a package, "scratch install" downloads new software, "scratch remove" deletes an existing package, and "scratch installed" lists items already on our system. Perhaps most importantly, the "scratch help" command lists all available command line options.
Venom Linux 20210312 -- Getting a list of installed software from scratch
(full image size: 733kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
It appears as though all packages (or at least all the ones I downloaded) are built from source code. Each time I downloaded a new package it would result in scratch configuring and compiling new software for my system. This was fine for smaller tools, but larger programs with multiple dependencies can take several minutes to an hour to build. This made setting up Venom with useful software a unpleasantly long process.
Unfortunately, a lot of software I would normally install was not available. The distribution's repositories are still quite small and are lacking a lot of common tools, across a variety of categories. For instance, I could find no office suite, no games (though Steam is available), no nmap scanner, no Falkon web browser, no SoX sound sample translator. I did find some media tools and applications, such as VLC and FFmpeg, though the latter failed to build.
Conclusions
I believe the Venom Linux project is still relatively young and, I suspect, the work of one developer. With this in mind it is perhaps unfair to judge the project harshly as it seems to still be finding its feet. Some aspects of the design appeal to me. I have a growing fondness for relatively lightweight distributions and ones which keep the under-the-hood components simple. However, I think Venom takes this to an uncomfortable extreme.
The project currently has very little documentation, relatively few packages available, few utilities most people would need to get set up, such as a graphical network connection manager, an office suite and a full featured terminal. The distribution is surprisingly light in memory which is great, but it was unusually hard on my CPU.
The package manager mostly worked well, apart from failing to compile one package, but the fact it needs to build packages from source code is deal breaker for me. It would be faster for me to go into town, buy another computer, and install another distribution featuring LibreOffice on it than wait for Venom to compile the suite from source.
All of this is to say that while most of what Venom provides works, it provides very little. Some people, myself included, can appreciate a minimal starting foundation, but I do like to have some more basics like volume control and printer support easily available.
Venom is, as the project's website says, targeting people who are advanced Linux users, folks who want to use the command line, people who want to build from the ground up. In this way it's not dissimilar to CRUX or Arch Linux. However, it offers fewer tools, documentation, and packages than the latter, making it a more niche distribution.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Venom Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.6/10 from 9 review(s).
Have you used Venom Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Oracle loses court case over copyrighting APIs, FreeBSD developers debate FTP service in core and increase support for ARM64, Debian's Project Leader elections underway
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a verdict this week which was bad news for Oracle, but good news for the rest of the software community. Years ago Oracle sued Google over the use of Java APIs which Google had implemented in Android. Oracle sought over $8 billion dollars in damages for the matching APIs which define what software does, though not how software accomplishes a task. A win for Oracle would have essentially made re-implementing any software functionality in a new program, even one written from scratch, illegal. Reuters reports: "In a 6-2 decision, the justices overturned a lower court's ruling that Google's inclusion of Oracle's software code in Android did not constitute a fair use under U.S. copyright law. Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, said that allowing Oracle to enforce a copyright on its code would harm the public by making it a 'lock limiting the future creativity of new programs. Oracle alone would hold the key.'"
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Using FTP to transfer files is a practise which has generally fallen out of favour in the past 20 years as FTP is both insecure and can unnecessarily complicates firewall rules. These days servers have generally switched to using more secure methods such as OpenSSH and HTTPS for transferring files. With this in mind, Ed Maste proposed moving the aging FTP server software (ftpd) out of FreeBSD's core and making it a separate package administrators could install if needed. This would reduce the size of the core FreeBSD system and remove insecure software unless specifically needed and installed by the administrator. The proposal has been met with strong opposition from FreeBSD members who still use the insecure FTP protocol and the idea was ultimately retracted.
The FreeBSD team has announced 64-bit ARM hardware will received top tier support in version 13.0. Ed Maste explains what this means: "FreeBSD will promote arm64 to a Tier 1 architecture in FreeBSD 13. This means we will provide release images, binary packages, and security and errata updates. While we anticipate there will be minor issues with this first release, we believe the port is mature enough that they can be resolved during the life of FreeBSD 13." Further information can be found in this mailing list post.
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The annual elections for Debian's Project Leader position are underway. There are just two people campaigning this time, incumbent Jonathan Carter and challenger Sruthi Chandran. The Debian website provides an overview of the platforms for both candidates. Carter has said he wants to fill in some administrative gaps in the project while Chandran is campaigning with an effort to promote diversity in the Debian developer ranks.
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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) |
Kernel panics and filesystem changes
Stuck in a panic asks: What is happening when my system says it's experiencing a kernel panic? What do I do about this?
DistroWatch answers: A kernel panic is basically how the kernel tells you that something has gone wrong, really wrong, and that it either can't recover or can't recover in a way that won't risk making things worse. Since the kernel mostly deals with talking to your computer's hardware, starting the first service (called init), and managing resources, a panic often indicates one of three things:
- Something is wrong with either your hardware or one of the drivers that supports your hardware. Basically the kernel is having trouble talking with your hardware and the situation is bad enough the kernel feels it necessary to hit the eject button rather than continue. This tends to happen either after a kernel upgrade or when switching to a new video driver. Testing your hardware and reverting any recent driver changes will let you know if your computer's hardware is at fault.
- The kernel either was not properly compiled or not properly installed for your system. Maybe a driver is missing or a module wasn't compiled that should have been. Usually Linux distributions allow the user to reboot and select to start the system with the previous kernel to work around this issue.
- Sometimes the init process (the first process to run on the system) failing to start, or crashing after it starts, will cause the kernel to panic. This is because init is supposed to be practically bullet proof and is in charge of some important tasks. If the init process either fails to run or dies that is a sign things have gone very wrong and the kernel may bring down the system. When this happens it probably means the init package either got corrupted or the init executable file is missing. Reinstalling init from a live disc may fix the issue.
Kernel panics are typically rare, unless a cutting edge driver has been installed or the system's hardware is starting to fail. Typically I find rolling back to the previous version of the kernel through the boot menu, and removing any new video drivers, will fix any software issues. If that doesn't correct the problem then it may be time to check, and possibly replace, hardware components.
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Seeking a better filesystem asks: Is it possible to switch filesystems without re-installing? I'm running ext4, but heard XFS is better. Is that true and how can I try it out?
DistroWatch answers: Usually it is not possible to change filesystems on your operating system's partition without re-installing. Different filesystems organize data on the disk differently and changing filesystems means a shift in how the data is stored and indexed. This means if you plan to change filesystems you will almost certainly need to backup your data, reformat the partition, re-install the operating system (if you are changing your root filesystem), and then copy your data back from the backup.
There are some rare exceptions where filesystems can be changed without wiping the partition and starting over from scratch. I don't recommend doing this and, if you do decide to try it, first make a backup of any data you want to keep.
The ext2, ext3, and ext4 filesystems are all part of the same family and similar enough that they can be managed with some of the same tools. In fact, older versions of the ext filesystem, like ext3, are handled by the Linux ext4 filesystem driver. It is possible to upgrade from older versions of the filesystem to ext4. The Linux kernel wiki has instructions for making the conversion.
It is also possible to convert an ext2/3/4 filesystem to Btrfs. The btrfs-convert command will transition a filesystem from ext2/3/4 to Btrfs. Again, create a backup before attempting this.
So far as I know there aren't any tools for converting an existing ext4 filesystem to XFS.
That being said, even if there is an ext4-to-XFS utility, I wouldn't recommend making that switch because some people prefer XFS. The mainstream Linux filesystems are all pretty good at what they do - storing and retrieving data - and are pretty fast, robust, and reliable. In most situations there won't be a reason to switch between one and another. In fact, in home and small business environments, you will probably never notice the difference between the popular Linux filesystems. I generally recommend people not switch between one filesystem and another unless they have a good, specific reason for doing so. By which I mean there is a specific feature in XFS (or another filesystem) you are aware of that you need for your operation to run properly and that your default filesystem cannot provide.
For some scenarios XFS may be better than ext4, but you're not likely to run into them unless you're running storage servers or NAS devices. The Red Hat documentation mentions, for example, XFS provides on-line defragmentation and resizing features. There are some other filesystems which can do these things too, and they are useful in organizations that need to dynamically grow their storage capacity. I suspect that might be why people suggested you try XFS.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,392
- Total data uploaded: 37.0TB
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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) |
Do you have a preferred Linux filesystem?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about popular Linux filesystems, such as XFS and ext4. Do you have a favourite Linux filesystem? Let us know why you use the filesystem you do in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on deciding whether to install a distribution based on its country of origin in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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My preferred Linux filesystem
| Btrfs: | 382 (14%) |
| ext2: | 19 (1%) |
| ext3: | 36 (1%) |
| ext4: | 1734 (63%) |
| JFS: | 31 (1%) |
| Reiserfs: | 24 (1%) |
| XFS: | 158 (6%) |
| Other non-native filesystem module: | 54 (2%) |
| Other FUSE filesystem: | 6 (0%) |
| I am a Linux user without peference: | 299 (11%) |
| I am not a Linux user: | 31 (1%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- PluriOS. PluriOS is based on Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix with language translations for Bolivia.
- AzzeraOS. AzzeraOS is a Debian-based distribution for public terminals. The operating system resets itself after each restart and requires a password if users wish to customize the interface.
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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, 19 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • ext4 file systems (by vern on 2021-04-12 00:18:10 GMT from United States)
I only use ext4 FS. Tried some of the more advanced systems, but in the end, I just use ext4
2 • File Systems (by C.Wizard on 2021-04-12 00:25:01 GMT from United States)
I prefer F2FS for SSDs and Ext4 for spinning hard drives.
3 • ext (by Gary W on 2021-04-12 00:48:30 GMT from Australia)
Mostly I use ext4. For older systems with some type of SSD I turn off its journalling (to save on writes). For really old systems, like my original eeepc, I don't believe ext4 has any advantage, so I use ext2.
4 • File system (by DaveW on 2021-04-12 00:53:27 GMT from United States)
I regularly read about all the things XFS and Btrfs can do, but so far nothing has given me a compelling reason to use anything but ext4 on my Linux Mint system.
5 • File system - mostly ext4 (by M.Z. on 2021-04-12 01:08:41 GMT from United States)
I do run Btrfs on /root for my new Mint install, otherwise ext4 all the way for KDE Neon, Mageia, and the /data partition they all point to for my files.
6 • EXT4, or others? (by Greg Zeng on 2021-04-12 02:07:28 GMT from Australia)
Modern Linux operating systems now are using Grub Customizer, or the equivalent now, to allow easy & quick modifications to the Linux systems. BTRFS & most (all?) other Linux file systems are ignored or incompatible with the menu systems of these Grub Customizer.
These customizer applications allow easier menu selection of which Linux kernels, which of many Linux & other operating systems. No CLI crudity is needed, in using nor in creating these choices.
Quick reading of Wikipedia explains the Linux file systems might be: "... ext2, ext3 and ext4), XFS, JFS, and btrfs". Wikipedia editors like myself should really explain that there are a few NTFS Linux file systems as well, with one only being open source.
Conversions, and read-write capabilities between these file systems varies, according to the versions of the applications that allow this. Microsoft has given legal permission to open source users to use their version of NTFS. Not many file systems allow the real-time compression, encryption, permissions, safety, speed, defragmenting, etc. of BTRFS & the advanced NTFS systems.
Linux is unique in that it allows some file systems to be hard-coded into the Linux kernel. This kernel is updated every few days, so close watching of the updates are needed to know if any update might allow better operation of any file system. Currently EXT4 is the best & most frequent supported system in Linux, until the open source coders start adding the Microsoft NTFS to the Linux kernel.
The applications to convert, & read-write between these various file systems should be listed as well, in the Wikipedia pages, if we get around to doing this.
7 • File system (by mmphosis on 2021-04-12 02:19:40 GMT from Canada)
I prefer ext4. I use Btrfs where space is constrained. I seem to need FAT / EFI System in order to boot some systems. I like having a large enough swap partition where the filesystem doesn't matter. I use FAT in it's various formats to exchange files but it has limitations. I use HFS on old Macs. I've used FUSE and other filesystems, but I prefer ext4 because it's boring and there are few surprises.
8 • fs in use (by cor on 2021-04-12 03:11:23 GMT from United States)
I use ext4 for my Kubuntu system. My video files are on 3 external HDD, all formatted XFS.
9 • Linux fs (by Jyrki on 2021-04-12 03:43:19 GMT from Czechia)
Currently I run ext2/ext3 since I do dualbooting with BSDs.
Before systemd started to spread, I was hapilly running XFS as a prime option, however when systemd started to gain attention, I wanted to have a backdoor so I installed BSD alongside Linux, so if one day, there will be no systemd-free Linux distro available, I am ready to switch.
10 • File systems (by tum on 2021-04-12 04:39:24 GMT from Bulgaria)
ZFS for everything and FAT for EFI, but I guess they are not popular to be included in your poll
11 • whatever FS comes with the distro (by uncle on 2021-04-12 04:57:13 GMT from New Zealand)
I run with whatever the distro I choose defaults to. In general that means ext4 (Mint and Manjaro). I have tried other for a bit in the past, but saw/discovered no quick or obvious advantage(s).
12 • fs (by dogma on 2021-04-12 04:59:04 GMT from Puerto Rico)
I've been sticking with ext3 for FreeBSD interoperability.
Showing my age: When I see XFS I think Xiafs.
I can't imagine ever trusting butter fs, as it's been too embattled for far too long.
I'm a little curious about f2fs but haven't actually tried it.
13 • file systems (by nanome on 2021-04-12 07:24:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
Where I have been given the choice, I have mostly used ext2 over the last 2+ decades. I know ext2 is now implemented with ext3/ext4, but I want to avoid file systems with journals.
I would like to move to a "copy-on-write" [COW] file system, but the candidates: btrfs, ZFS and bcachefs are either too new or have "issues" making them risky for daily use.
14 • File system (by openCHRYSLER on 2021-04-12 08:13:33 GMT from Spain)
I use XFS in NVME, XFS has jornaling and parallelizes the reads and writes very well --best choice for NVME-- it has great performance. I do not include FAT32 for the EFI partition. Of course in my use --desktop-- the / tmp and the local cache I mount them on TMPFS in the FSTAB
15 • Linux file system (by Thomas Mueller on 2021-04-12 08:13:40 GMT from United States)
My initial preference is for ext2 for interoperability with FreeBSD and NetBSD, and also Haiku. But in the future, I might be more interested in ext3 and ext4, with ext2 for data that needs to be read-write accessible to/from NetBSD and FreeBSD.
16 • Seeking a better filesystem asks (by Alexandru on 2021-04-12 08:31:47 GMT from Austria)
First of all, different filesystems perform better in different scenarios. And this is sufficient argument to switch filesystem when some scenario is your main use-case. Second, there are filesystems supported by default kernel, for which there is no option during installation of some distribution.
The following procedure is proved working for switching the root filesystem:
1. Boot your system from some live distribution whose kernel is known to support both old and new filesystem.
2. Mount and backup installed root filesystem with rsync, dd, cp, whatever.
3. Unmount that partition and format it into new filesystem.
4. Mount that partition and restore your backup with rsync, dd, cp, whatever.
5. Modify /etc/fstab of the installation on restored partition to reflect filesystem change (new UUID, new filesystem, new opteions).
6. Unmount that partition and reboot.
This procedure only works for distributions where /etc folder contains actual configuration of the system and not just mirrors it for compatibility reasons. For some reason I could not add separate /home mount option in installed Mint system by modifying /etc/fstab.
17 • Switch installed system to new filesystem (by Alexandru on 2021-04-12 08:40:37 GMT from Austria)
First of all, different filesystems perform better for different use-cases, and if your main usage is some of them, it is sufficient reason for switching. Second, the kernel may support some filesystem, but the installation program may not offer it as installation option.
The following procedure is proved working:
1. Boot from live media whose kernel is known to support both old and new filesystem.
2. Mount the partition where your installed system resides and backup it with rsync, dd, cp, whatever.
3. Unmount that partition and format it to new filesystem.
4. Mount that partition and restore your backup with rsync, dd, cp, whatever.
5. Modify /etc/fstab on that partition to reflect the changes (new UUID, new filesystem, new mount options, etc).
6. Unmount that partition and reboot.
This procedure only works for distribution whose /etc folder actually contains configuration for the system, not just mirrors it for compatibility reasons. I faile!d to add separate /home mount point for already installed Mint Linux just by modifying its /etc/fstab configuration.
18 • File System (by Luca on 2021-04-12 08:41:05 GMT from Italy)
In my Manjaro system, I use ext4 for /home, btrfs for all the other directories. My btrfs partition is handled by snapper, so that I would be able to rollback my system if an update goes wrong
19 • file systems (by on 2021-04-12 08:52:28 GMT from Switzerland)
@13 ZFS an Btrfs are widely used, stable filesystems (OpenSuse, and now Fedora too, uses btrfs by default; ZFS is used by FreeBsd among other.
I mostly use ext4 because the OS i use default to ext4.
20 • Judging Venom harshly (by uselessmore999 on 2021-04-12 09:00:24 GMT from Germany)
The first thing that struck me when I visited Venom Linux's website was that it won't display any content whatsoever without allowing Javascript. That's just utterly disrespectful, and quite dumb on top of that. And what you get to see when you allow Javascript most certainly doesn't make up for that in any way. Why would it?
I'm also beginning to grow sick and tired of this "targeting experienced users" drivel, which is, in most cases, a sorry excuse for providing a rough-around-the-edges, less capable distribution based on misguided ideas of minimalism and being "lightweight". This is really all mostly a euphemism for "We just don't have the resources to do things in reasonable ways."
E.g., writing a package manager in POSIX shell is not a sane thing to do and there are already enough examples of this nonsense out there. I just hope they at least use Shellcheck.
Also, solely source-based systems are just a drag, except when you have a truly compelling reason to use them. Desktop/laptop power user wanting more control and have things run faster is, in my experience, never a compelling reason to run a source-based distribution. The real reason these kinds of distributions (like CRUX) are source-based seems to be that their maintainers simply cannot afford providing pre-built binary packages.
Then, I wonder what the Venom team means by saying they provide a "collection of small packages which are trimmed down by remov[ing] unnecessary things like locale, doc, gtk-doc, info pages, (man pages are kept)". If this means that these things are just thrown out, with no way to install them as separate packages, then this is highly questionable practice. E.g., given the status of manual pages in GNU, you better have some of those info pages on your system, especially if it lacks a permanent internet connection for finding trash answers on ExchangeOverflow _instead_ of reading the actual documentation or at least giving it a try. Having useful and complete documentation available on a c!
omputer directly matters, and any sane system should be largely self-documenting.
Last but not least, why are they still using MD5 for their image checksums?
21 • @3 which ext for eee pc (by eee shepherd on 2021-04-12 10:03:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
On my fleet of eee pc I have toyed with using the original ext2 filesystem but the booting is not as pretty and some errors have occurred.
All my eee are on ext4. I have never been aware of wearing out a single cell on the ssd of an eee pc and would love to see proof of this ever happening.
22 • Debian election (by bravenewworld on 2021-04-12 10:47:41 GMT from United States)
"...Chandran is campaigning with an effort to promote diversity in the Debian developer ranks." In other words if Chandran becomes the new project leader then you can expect to see positions at Debian going to lesbians of color, with an eyepatch, who preferred to be addressed as Lord Zoltar on days beginning with a "T", over and above anyone else regardless of the knowledge and coding ability of either party.
23 • zfs (by dave on 2021-04-12 10:58:17 GMT from Australia)
I always use zfs
24 • filesystems (by Jesse on 2021-04-12 11:08:55 GMT from Canada)
@10 ZFS is not a native Linux filesystem. FAT is not one which can be used for a regular install due to permission issues.
25 • File systems (by John on 2021-04-12 11:15:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
I always use ext4. I have tried btrfs a few times but always end up going back to ext4 because of problems with multi-booting.
26 • Venom task bar (by BJ on 2021-04-12 12:06:03 GMT from United States)
Assumption here that the taskbar you found on Venom is tint2.
I also had a similar experience with another distro install I was testing. I had added openbox with the tint2 from their/Debian repos, and had the same right click-taskbar disappear phenom. I also had the right click autoclosing images displayed with feh, so initially I started looking at something more global for the action. But in the end, in tint2, it just turned out to be a weird choice in the tint2rc con file that had the mouse right click set to close the program. The feh issue had to do with an odd font (yudit.ttf) that somehow didn't get installed.
Neither of those occurances ever happened before or since,
Venon sounds mildly interesting, but I'm currently having a good experience using antiX core with runit and openbox et al added. And I know I've got a good solid core underneath that anticapitalista and the crew have woven for me. But always enjoy your looks into fresh territory.
27 • Subject (by Cheker on 2021-04-12 13:20:27 GMT from Portugal)
Was a slow week for releases, eh? I want to look at FreeBSD 13 when it finally comes out.
Venom looks interesting, 87mb logged in is pretty crazy. I hope they fix its shortcomings and it sticks around.
I have no strong feelings towards any particular filesystem, I stick with the distro's default, which is almost always ext4 in my case.
28 • file systems (by nicu on 2021-04-12 13:25:01 GMT from Moldova)
I always used ext4 cause it is default linux file system.
And since then didn't switch to other file systems cause it is simple very good, and it is good enough,
I tried XFS, some things felt faster, some things felt slower, not compelling to switch
I tried Btrfs, user experience felt bad, very complicated system, majority of things felt slower, not compelling to switch
I tried ZFS, user experience felt so so, very complicated system, some things felt faster, some things felt slower, not compelling to switch.
I tried JFS, everything felt slower, definitely ext 4 is newer and an improvement,
So Ext4 is simply good enough for me.
For same reason on BSDs for me UFS is good enough for me.
p.s: the same story as Plan 9 vs Unix 7
29 • Preferred filesystems (by AdamB on 2021-04-12 14:40:38 GMT from Australia)
For many years I have happily used Ext3/Ext4. Ext4 has, until now, been my default for new installations.
I studied Btrfs when it started to be talked about, but found it intimidating, and noted the warnings about it being experimental.
Recently my storage requirements have become more complex, and I have used software RAID, LVM, dm-crypt and Btrfs - all working well. I have also started experimenting with ZFS.
On a recent installation, for the first time I put the root filesytem on Btrfs, using subvolumes, so that certain parts of the filesystem can be snapshotted separately.
Nowadays I am becoming concerned about long-term storage reliability, so filesystems that monitor the integrity of both data and metadata are of great interest - hence my interest in Btfs and ZFS.
If you need both encryption and mirroring, built-in encryption greatly simplifies an installation. If Btrfs supported encryption, I probably wouldn't bother with ZFS.
My experiment with ZFS is under Devuan 3, but its version of ZFS doesn't support encryption, so I will have to try a more recent distro - maybe Debian Testing?
30 • FTP? WTF! (by Sitwon on 2021-04-12 15:21:37 GMT from United States)
I am floored that in this decade there are still people relying on FTP for *anything*, let alone arguing that it should continue to be included by default in a modern operating system distribution.
There is nothing FTP has to offer that other protocols can't do better, faster, and more securely. Just let it die like BBCs and Gopher and acoustic couplers.
31 • @21 @3 eeePC (by J-F on 2021-04-12 15:23:37 GMT from Canada)
Which distribution to you use on your eeePC? I have an original 701SD with 4 (or is it just 2) GB of storage and I struggled to get antiX on it. Is there a distribution that is known to run well & install easily on the first-generation eeePCs?
32 • FS (by That's Nobody on 2021-04-12 15:55:31 GMT from Canada)
I've been using BTRFS out of some vague notion of it being better, plus a couple distributions I've tried having it set as the default. If the snapshots work as advertised, it would be nice to have that time machine / system restore type of capability. Otherwise I'm not fussy so long as it's a modern journaling FS.
33 • Filesystems (by Robert on 2021-04-12 15:57:25 GMT from United States)
I use ZFS for /home. I'm not one to claim its the holy grail of filesystems, but I do like its featureset. I chose it because btrfs was definitely not ready at the time, and there's no super compelling reason to switch now.
I use XFS for root because getting root on ZFS was too much of a hassle. No particular reason that I chose it over ext4, it's just what I use.
I might end up switching to btrfs when there's actually concensus that it's good to go. Facebook uses it, opensuse uses it, and fedora either uses it or is about to switch, so it can't be too far off. Will be nice to get away from the minor inconvenience that comes with out-of-tree drivers.
34 • Of File Systems... (by tom joad on 2021-04-12 16:05:36 GMT from United States)
I voted EXT4. It just seems to work fine for what I do and how I use Linux. It is a 'Steady Eddie.'
35 • @31 - Distros for eeePC (by Uncle Slacky on 2021-04-12 16:47:31 GMT from France)
I'd recommend Void (LXDE or Enlightenment), something Devuan-based like Refracta or EXE GNU/Linux, Q4OS Trinity, or Slitaz or BionicPup if those are too big and/or slow for you. You could even run Bodhi or MX Linux if you use an SD card for your system partition (and put /home on the internal SSD).
There's also Haiku OS if you're feeling adventurous.
36 • filesystems integritty (by nanome on 2021-04-12 17:11:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
@13: saying that I wanted to use a COW file system [eg btrfs, ZFS etc] means that I worry about fs failures and/or "bitrot".
My solution is to deploy lsync to create a near-realtime "RAID" copies of the file system on 2 or more devices [partitions, external SSD drives], and rsync+tar to create archival copies on offline devices. Not rocket science, but peace of mind.
I have watched a hard drive as it failed on multiple sectors, but bitrot is a more nebulous phenomenon.
37 • Linux File Systems (by tosim on 2021-04-12 17:31:45 GMT from United States)
I'm a distro hopper looking t various Linux OS', but my main driver is MINT, with ext4. However, as I'm "heavy" into several Puppy, and Dog distros, I also use ext2, ext3.
38 • @31 eeePC (by Sohl on 2021-04-12 18:00:16 GMT from United States)
Back in the day, I had a 10-inch eeePC model 1000-something. I put Fedora (Core?) on it for work and TinyCore LInux for playing around. Both worked fairly well. Fedora probably was using ext2. I can't recall if Tinycore ran as a 'frugal' installation where a file cache stored on the Fedora partition or maybe it had its own. But the main thing is TinyCore runs out of RAM normally so there are very few disk IO operations and so low wear-and-tear on the disk/SSD.
39 • File systems (by vw72 on 2021-04-12 18:08:16 GMT from United States)
I use btrfs for / and ext4 for home. btrfs has saved my butt several times when a system update didn't go well. I just use snapper to revert to the prior snapshot.
40 • fsarchiver can convert filesystems during restore (by Kingneutron on 2021-04-12 19:06:47 GMT from United States)
> So far as I know there aren't any tools for converting an existing ext4 filesystem to XFS
PROTIP: Look into ' fsarchiver ' - on Debian/Ubuntu and Centos-compatible systems** you can make a bare-metal backup with it to a usb or shared drive. Then boot into a systemrescuecd environment (or second installed distro if you dual- or triple-boot) and restore on the fly to XFS using the original installed disk/partition.
**Some older systems (like MX18) if it's not in the repos or only has an old version that doesn't support zstd compression, you might compile it from source.
You will need to modify /etc/fstab and take out any filesystem-specific options ( commit, errors=remount-ro and the like ) either before backup or before rebooting into the restored system and change the root filesystem type to xfs. (Changing it to auto may work but I haven't tested it.) Easiest way to reboot into the restored system is use super grub disc and then once you have root, ' grub-install /dev/sdX ' and ' update-grub '.
REF:
https://www.fsarchiver.org/
https://www.fsarchiver.org/installation/
https://distrowatch.com/supergrub
41 • Some notes on XFS vs ext4 (by Kingneutron on 2021-04-12 19:30:41 GMT from United States)
Note that if you switch root from ext4 to XFS, you lose the ability to shrink your root filesystem. Mostly applies to VMs running LVM, may not matter to a home user. XFS also supports auto-adding inodes on the fly. In my experience, XFS is noticeably faster than ext4 on the same hardware.
For the curious, I have a full set of scripts for backing up/restoring Linux root with fsarchiver here:
https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/tree/master/VIRTBOX
42 • Linux file systems... (by Tech in San Diego on 2021-04-12 20:18:41 GMT from United States)
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this weeks article. I always seem to learn a tidbit or 2 that I hadn't considered in my Linux environment.
I use BTRFS on openSUSE Tumbleweed. For me personally, the snapshot utility is an invaluable tool.
@2 Great article on F2FS. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/F2FS
Thanks to all in the DW family!
43 • Filesystem (by Will on 2021-04-12 21:55:15 GMT from United States)
I put ext4, cuz that’s my preference of what’s commonly available by default. I’d very much prefer ZFS if it would work as well as it does on FreeBSD and it’s getting close w/openzfs on Ubuntu, even including boot on ZFS, so maybe soon :)!
44 • Distro for eeePC (by Gary W on 2021-04-12 22:40:11 GMT from Australia)
@31 Yes, I have a 701 (recently sold a 901). As @35 says, EXE is a good match for this low-spec hardware; from memory, occupies only 51Mb before logging in to the Trinity desktop.
45 • Linux File Systems- (by behto5 on 2021-04-13 03:41:19 GMT from Uruguay)
I completely agree with John @25: 'I always use ext4. I have tried btrfs sometime but ended up going back to ext4 because of problems with multi-booting'. I set up all my machines with a multi-boot scheme and ext4 simply just works.
46 • oh Debian.. (by Dave on 2021-04-13 04:01:13 GMT from United States)
Debian did a diversity hire when they put Sam Hartman in as project leader-- a guy who seemed to care much more about 'feelings' than software and was fully wililng to let the systemd cult walk all over everyone, so long as his emotions weren't negatively impacted. He was chosen purely because he has a disability and Debian voters wanted to show off just how indiscriminant they are.
When systemd critics rightly called foul at some of Hartman's thinly-veiled systemd pandering, he basically cried about it. After that debacle, we got the whole 'init diversity' lie. I used to love Debian, but the project has become just another insane social experiment. Saying Debian (or really anything) needs 'more diversity' is just codeword for saying less white males. Chandran is just another power-hungry, antiwhite race baiter, who feels emboldened by current political trends. How about they remove all of the work done by white males and then see how much is left??
47 • Ext4 + Tune4fs tools (by James on 2021-04-13 07:33:32 GMT from New Zealand)
+1 another happy ext4 user here. All home machines use debian with ext4.
Also file system tools for ext4 are really easy to use e.g Tune4fs - very easy to configure journaling to switch off on sd cards for raspberry pi projects.
48 • @31 - which distro for eee pc : (by eee shepherd on 2021-04-13 08:59:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
Currently,
Install LMDE 3 Cinnamon, run synaptic, set all manual to auto, keep the ones you want, autoremove bloat
Update and upgrade.
Point sources to Debbie and Devuan, then apt upgrade to Debbowulf.
Before starting desktop, we are using less than 20 MB ram
Desktop configurations can range from using as little as 50MB to as much as 170MB (a fully loaded taskbar, file-manager, music-player, avahi, etc)
You should have less than 800 packages. OH, don't forget to delete all the '@2x' icons and all the themes you don't need, and all the docs, if you want to fit debbowulf into less than 2.5 GiB
For the 2G surf, true mint debbie is not currently possible, so here we are using antix, debian, or devuan netinstalls with lightweight mint bodykits.
49 • @31 - assets: (by eee shepherd on 2021-04-13 09:20:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
#Add the following entries to the /etc/apt/apt.conf configuration file:
APT::Install-Recommends "0" ; APT::Install-Suggests "0" ;
use bleachbit or later versions of localepurge to remove extra languages.
Don't install xorg, just install the bits you need, ditto the desktop environment. Remove cinnamon, install mate-session-manager mate-control-center marco. That's all you need for 'mate-desktop'.
Don't use network-manager, use ifupdown or iwd - wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse
For initial install, mount /usr or /usr/share to a separate usb drive.
It's helpful to have a drive prepared, 16GB is fine, with a system installed for doctoring the system you are installing, and another two partitions, one for your /usr and another for your /var/cache/apt/archives. On a fresh LMDE3/4 install, /usr is more than around 4.3 GiB.
50 • @31 - assets: (by eee shepherd on 2021-04-13 09:23:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
(when system is small enough, rsync /usr over to main drive and comment /usr entry out of fstab)
51 • filesystem (by James on 2021-04-13 10:06:00 GMT from United States)
I use what is the default when I install an OS. So far that has been ext. 4, with the exception of Parrot, which recently switched to Btfrs.
52 • @10 ZFS is not a native Linux filesystem (by Vukota on 2021-04-13 12:00:14 GMT from Serbia)
Jessy, I am really disappointed with this week's pool choices. Usually, you are very good with explaining what different pool options mean, but this week it is not the case. I was really looking to understand what "non-native filesystem module" is supposed to mean, but to my surprise google gave me almost no results. Same thing with opposite term "native filesystem module". So before offering this option in the pool, you were supposed to explain it a bit to your readers.
If "native" in this context assumes built-in (or in simple words "bundled") support in the kernel (or native, not user space module), question is who (and which distribution) bundles what support. Ubuntu in their last couple iterations support ZFS as "bundled" (though marked experimental), thus this option (ZFS) is clearly missing in the pool and is questionable if it can be assumed as "non-native", when it is kind of "bundled" in some distributions like *buntu and derivatives like Mint.
There is another level of debate in the community of whether Oracle or some third party company may hold copyright or patent claims against ZFS (ZoL) use, though if people were really that worried, they would never use Linux in the first place. Oracle's loss of recent law suite proves this point.
Now, on the ZFS and technical point. I didn't use it until recently due to luck of support in mainstream distributions and did not see a real value for common desktop (non-server) use cases, but since I saw mainstream support from Ubuntu, I started evaluating if it can be a good choice.
To my surprise, it really is and here is my why...
(1) Encryption - I was looking to use encryption on all my desktop systems with Linux and backups, but LUKS even though good, is complex and adds another layer to your file system. With ZFS, currently, you get it at the file system level, what IMHO makes it more natural and performant.
(2) Compression - We always have problems with space sooner or later and having seamless performant compression at file system level is always welcome.
(3) Caching - If there is enough RAM on the system, ZFS brings this to a whole new level, compared to others.
(4) Backups, snapshots and replication - File system built-in support with builtin encryption and compression - Can you ask for more? Works perfectly on the setups I have.
(5) Optimizations, flexibility and data safety - ZFS has unmatched potential in this regards, and tweaks at file system level that you can do seems endless.
(6) Performance in recent versions bundled with *buntus is fantastic (for compression and encryption alone compared to unencrypted and in general).
Now, there are some cons too, but I think that benefits outweigh cons.
(1) Setup/maintenance is more complex, but you may go with (almost) default choices and be good with them (except for the swap) on most modern desktop/laptop systems.
(2) in *buntus you don't have an easy way (yet) to install it as a dual boot, and in others it is very labor intensive.
53 • @31, et al -- the EeePC (by R. Cain on 2021-04-13 15:40:59 GMT from United States)
You might try antiX 'base' version of antiX 17. The 'base' version (≈ 700 MB) is a very capable distro, whereas the 'full'' version is, well, a very *full* and complete version, with everything--and a LOT more--than you'll ever need.
https://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/docs-antiX-17/FAQ/index.html
Do NOT try antiX 19. Version 17 is still extremely current and very capable, and offers the best chance of getting a very good, modern distro on your EeePC 701-4G (the 701's main problem / stumbling block is its 900 MHz (max; sometimes it's a lot lower) Celeron processor; this is not a problem on later EeePCs). It's really a shame that Xandros was forced out of business by Microsoft, when it (Microsoft) was scared silly by the wild acceptance of the EeePC 701.
19 suffers from the same plague which infects all modern Linux distros, in the name of progress, of course: bloat.
If you have an EeePC 900, 901, or 1000 (-series), you can't do ANY better than installing MX-Linux 18, which will give you a brand-new ten-year-old (or more) machine. See here for VERY GOOD details:
"MX Linux MX-18 & 10-year-old EeePC netbook - Fantastic"
Updated: April 1, 2019
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/eeepc-mx-linux.html
54 • All real eee pc are at least 11 years old! (by eee shepherd on 2021-04-13 16:07:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
The base version of antix is too big. Use the net install and ** skip the select and install software stage **
I don't mean untick all the boxes, I mean totally skip it. Antix with a minty desktop and full audio capabilities can be installed into a 1.4 GiB partition with ease, and a very trim desktop version fits into 1.1 GiB
55 • ZFS (by ozzy81 on 2021-04-14 07:59:37 GMT from Australia)
I was really hoping that BTRFS would have seen more progression in the RAID5/6 space since the "write hole" bug was identified several years ago, but it feels like a bit of a dead-end without it. I know you can have BTRFS on top of an LVM2-based RAID-5 logical volume, but having a logical filesystem layer under BTRFS has a performance impact.
I've been using ZFS on two FreeNAS for more than 10 years and has a very impressive featureset compared to most other filesystems (even more so with FreeBSD 12.2 now using OpenZFS 2.0 instread of the aged implementation from illumnos/OpenSolaris).
If only Oracle could come to party and relax the licensing rules for it (fat chance)
56 • File systems (by TheTKS on 2021-04-14 11:00:48 GMT from Canada)
I have used the default that comes with the distros I use, and that’s mostly ext4. It works for my needs, and I have yet to run into a problem with it - yes, probably just a matter of time, but rely on backups to recover if/when that ever happens, and hard copies of critical documents.
Not Linux, but OpenBSD with FFS2 has also yet to give me a problem.
TKS
57 • filesystems (by bananabob on 2021-04-16 08:43:51 GMT from United States)
I like the ext4 filesystem because it just works. I am the most familiar with ext4, plus it's semi-compatible with ext2 and ext3. Plus I know what to do for disaster recovery.
58 • File system choices. (by R. Cain on 2021-04-16 15:10:15 GMT from United States)
ext4's compatibility goes all the way back to ext2: a long time, a lot of history with UNIX and Linux, and a lot of history in a lot of working situations.
ext4 is a 'journaling' file system, which makes recovery easier if problems should occur, and is the main reason for its very wide acceptance
ext2 is not a 'journaling' file system; consequently, it uses fewer 'writes' to the system's hard drive. Because of this characteristic, many people consider the use of ext2 essential when any type solid-state drive is used.
Number of Comments: 58
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| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Epidemic GNU/Linux
Epidemic GNU/Linux was a Brazilian desktop Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. Its main features are the KDE desktop, easy-to-use installer, 3D desktop features with CompizFusion, use of the GFXBoot bootloader, out-of-the-box support for numerous proprietary and non-free kernel drivers, and support for a variety of media codecs.
Status: Discontinued
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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