DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 913, 19 April 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 16th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
When people talk about computer security they are usually looking for ways to keep untrusted individuals out of their data. There are a lot of people out there who would like to access, corrupt, or delete our files for profit, amusement, or leverage. It is less common for people to want to protect their computer systems from themselves and this is the topic we tackle in this week's Questions and Answers column. Do you use any technologies to guard against accidentally deleting files or running a malicious program? Let us know about your approach to saving your data from yourself in our Opinion Poll. We begin this week with a look at two projects: helloSystem, a FreeBSD-based desktop operating system, and Peux OS, an Arch-based Linux distribution. Read on to explore first impressions of these two platforms. In our News section we cover the Pop!_OS team's efforts to customize the GNOME desktop, TENS shutting down, and talk about openSUSE pulling its support from the Free Software Foundation. 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: helloSystem 0.5.0 and Peux OS 21.01
- News: openSUSE pulls FSF sponsorship, Pop!_OS unveils modified GNOME desktop, TENS loses its funding, Jonathan Carter wins Debian Project Leader election
- Questions and answers: Protecting files in a user's home directory
- Released last week: FreeBSD 13.0, EasyOS 2.7, Proxmox 1.1 "Backup Server"
- Torrent corner: AcademiX, Alpine, EasyOS, EndeavourOS, FreeBSD, KDE neon, Pisi, Promox, Regata OS, SystemRescue, Ultimate Edition
- Upcoming releases: Ubuntu 21.04, Tails 4.18
- Opinion poll: Protecting files from yourself
- New distributions: Carbs Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
helloSystem 0.5.0
This week I decided to browse the DistroWatch waiting list for some young projects I have not had a chance to try previously. The first project that caught my eye was helloSystem (sometimes referred to as simply "hello"). The helloSystem project sets out to create a FreeBSD-based operating system which will feel pleasantly familiar to macOS users. The project's website describes the team's efforts as follows:
Based on FreeBSD. Less, but better! For mere mortals. Welcoming to switchers from macOS. Not just a theme. Not a clone of anything, but something with which the long-time Mac user should feel instantly comfortable. The latest technologies, without the complexities of Linux distributions. Without lock down. Without Big Brother. The user in full control.
The operating system ships with FreeBSD 12 as its base with a preconfigured desktop which bears a resemblance to macOS. The project offers one edition, a 1.8GB download for 64-bit (x86_64) machines.
Unfortunately the operating system's live media failed to boot on my test systems, systems which can run FreeBSD, and so I put it aside to try another project.
* * * * *
Peux OS 21.01
The next operating system to catch my attention was Peux OS. Peux is an Arch-based distribution which provides a graphical installer (Calamares) and multiple desktop editions.
Peux OS uses customized Xfce as its default-version. It uses Polybar as its default panel and is tied with apps that will help you secure your data and privacy. Btrfs is the default filesystem with autosnap enabled. As any Arch Linux distributions, Peux OS comes with pacman as default CLI package manager along with yay and Pamac as alternatives. For GUI, use Pamac-Manager, with Flatpak and AUR support options in its settings. It comes with four different desktop flavours: GNOME, KDE, LXQt and Xfce. Xfce is the flagship.
I decided to try the Xfce flagship edition, which is 2GB download for x86_64 machines. Peux OS is unusual in that it does not appear to provide direct download links or mirrors for any of its live media options. Instead we are given torrent links to download. When I was downloading the Xfce edition there was only one seed for the ISO which topped out at 500kB/s which is relatively slow compared to the speeds provided by most free, open source mirrors.
Peux OS's live media boots to the Xfce desktop. A panel at the top of the display holds a search icon in the left corner which, when clicked, opens the application menu. There are some quick launch buttons also on the left side of the panel. Over on the right side we find the system tray and an icon which provides logout options.
There is a large Conky panel in the middle of the desktop which displays the current date. At the bottom of the desktop there is a task switcher which lists the names of open windows. On the desktop we find icons for opening the file manager, a README file, and the Calamares system installer. The README file contains a list of desktop shortcuts and links for contributing to the Peux OS project.
Something which immediately stood out as unusual about Peux is that there are no tool tips for quick-launch and system tray icons. The icons feature simple designs which are small and monochrome. This makes it difficult to tell what an icon does without clicking it. Sometimes even clicking an icon doesn't clear up the mystery. For instance, clicking one icon opens a terminal window and prompts for the user's sudo password, but gives no indication as to why this is happening. I gave it a try and discovered the terminal window runs the pacman package manager to check for software updates and download them if any are available.
The application menu offers a similar challenge. The menu is divided into pages with 30 icons on a page. The icons are packed close together and the text under the icons is often truncated, making it impossible to know what an application is before opening it. Even then sometimes there is some confusion. For instance, when I launched an icon called Butter it prompted for my password, but again gave no indication as to why or what action would be accomplished with the elevated access.

Peux OS 21.01 -- The custom application menu
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Installing
When trying to launch the Calamares installer a warning appears on the desktop saying the program is not marked as executable and is stored in an insecure location. We are asked if we wish to proceed. With a warning like this it seems like a bad idea, which is made worse when, after the warning appears, a second pop-up appears saying that launching the program has failed due to a timeout. Despite these warnings, choosing to proceed opens the Calamares installer.
On the first page of the installer are two buttons marked Donate and Support. Clicking either of these buttons produces an error saying "Failed to execute default WebBrowser." Launching Firefox manually works without any problems so this appears to be a configuration issue with Calamares.
The second page of the installer asks us to select one or more office suits to install. The options include LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, WPS, and Ghostwriter. These options have a description field, but no useful descriptions. I opted to install LibreOffice. We are then asked to confirm our time zone and keyboard layout.
When it comes to partitioning we can use a friendly, manual partitioning tool which is fairly straight forward. Alternatively we can take a guided option which will automatically set up a Btrfs volume using available disk space. The guided approach also allows us to pick one of three options for swap space: no swap, a swap file, or a swap partition. I chose to use a swap partition since Btrfs has some known issues with swap files. The last page of the installer asks us to make up a username and password for ourselves. Calamares then copies its packages to the hard drive and offers to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My pristine copy of Peux booted to a graphical login screen with an image of swirling clouds of coloured smoke in the background. Available usernames are displayed on this page and we can click one to bring up the password prompt. Signing in brings up the Xfce desktop.
Earlier I mentioned the application menu is unusual in that it displays 30 tightly packed launchers which don't always have enough room to display the name of the corresponding program under them. Another unusual aspect is we need to double-click icons to launch a program. Alternatively we can click a launcher once, then press Enter to launch the desired item. To switch between pages in the menu (there are three pages of icons on a fresh install), we need to scroll through the icons and, getting to the end of the page moves us to the next page of 30 icons.
This is unusually cumbersome as it means either using the mouse wheel to scroll through 30 icons per page or selecting the last icon on the page and then moving down to the next page. Luckily we also have the option of typing the name of the program we want to run and this will filter down the list of displayed launchers. However we approach things, this is an inefficient way to access applications.
While I'm talking about the appearance of the distribution, I found the theme to be difficult on the eyes at times. I didn't mind the relatively bright theme with purple icons most of the time. However, buttons often display grey text on a white background making them difficult to read. Not all buttons are like this, some are more brightly lit with better contrast, bringing to mind the classic Windows XP Start button, but enough were low-contrast that I soon wanted to adjust the theme.

Peux OS 21.01 -- Using a terminal with the default colours and transparency
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I found the wallpaper would change occasionally. I think about once every five minutes or so we are treated to a new background.
Hardware
When I began testing Peux it was in a VirtualBox environment. I had a few problems with the distribution in the virtual machine. The Xfce desktop did not resize to fit the VirtualBox window. Fixing the resolution situation was made harder because the application menu does not scale well and it proved difficult to find the Display module to adjust the dimensions of the desktop.
The distribution launched applications somewhat slowly and Xfce was unusually sluggish in VirtualBox. Typically Xfce is quite snappy, even in virtual machines, but this time windows stuttered and flickered when moved. There was typically a notable pause when opening menus.
When I switched over to running Peux on my workstation things were much better. There were no delays when loading applications and the Xfce desktop was responsive. All of my workstation's hardware was detected and used properly.

Peux OS 21.01 -- Disabling unnecessary services
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I did run into a speed bump when trying to get on-line. While my wireless card was detected, clicking the Network Manager icon in the system tray did nothing. I had to right-click the icon, choose to create a new network connection, and then manually input the network name, security type, and password. Usually, with distributions which use Network Manager, one can simply click the icon, click the name of the network we want to join, and type the password. Peux forces the user through a roundabout approach which is likely to throw off less experienced users.
Peux consumed about 514MB of memory when signed into the Xfce desktop. This puts the distribution around the middle-weight category for Linux distributions. However, Peux consumes a surprisingly large amount (11GB) of disk space for a fresh install, not including swap space.
Applications
Peux ships with a collection of software which is mostly made up of standard items. Firefox, LibreOffice, the MPV media player, the Leafpad text editor, and the GNU Compiler Collection are all present. There are some tools though which are much less common. BlueMail and Discord are installed for us, along with Electron and Lplayer. The distribution supplies codecs for popular media formats.

Peux OS 21.01 -- Running the Tor Browser and LibreOffice
(full image size: 382kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
There are some security tools included such as the Firejail sandboxing software and Firetools, which is used to make shortcuts for applications we wish to run inside a sandbox. The Tor web browser is present for anonymous web surfing. We are also given a copy of the Clam anti-virus software and a graphical front-end to manage it.
In the background Peux ships with the systemd init software and version 5.10 of the Linux kernel.
At first it seemed as though there was no screenshot utility installed. I couldn't find one in the application menu and pressing the Print Screen button did not appear to do anything. I found out later than pressing Print Screen caused a screenshot to be taken and silently saved in my home directory with the timestamp conveniently placed in the filename. Usually screenshot tools tend to place new items in the Pictures directory, but once I found out where the images were being saved, I was able to sort them into new locations.
I tried using the Clam anti-virus software. Performing scans, even on directories with very few (or zero) files took over a minute. I discovered that performing scans of directories does not include sub-directories or hidden files, making it important to remember to scan each sub-directory separately.

Peux OS 21.01 -- Clam's scanning results for the home directory
(full image size: 864kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I do like that Firejail is installed by default. It is a useful way to isolate software, especially network-facing applications. I'm hoping future releases integrate Firejail more completely, perhaps launching applications inside sandboxes by default.
Software management
While we can use command line tools such as pacman and yay to manage software on Peux OS, the Pamac software centre is readily available in the application menu. Pamac is split into three tabs: Browse, Installed, and Updates.
Sometimes while I was using Peux, a notification would appear next to the system tray telling me new software updates were available. Clicking the provided button would open Pamac and display the Updates tab. It looks as through Pamac lists new packages from both the official Arch Linux repositories and from the Arch User Repository (AUR). Some of the items available to upgrade are listed as needing to be built and are not available through the pacman command line tool which leads me to believe they are third-party community contributions from the AUR.
The Installed tab lists packages already on our system with the option of removing them. Both the Installed tab and the Updates tab functioned smoothly. When I tried to use the Browse tab to discover new applications I ran into a problem. The Browse tab always showed me a message which said "No package found." I tried changing the filter for types of software shown, I tried switching between Group and Category views, I tried to refresh the package database. In each case Pamac failed to find any software to show me. Meanwhile the pacman command line tool not only successfully performed searches, it also installed new packages and updates without any issues.

Peux OS 21.01 -- The Pamac software centre
(full image size: 570kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
While Pamac was unable to find or install new applications for me, it was able to fetch new software updates. The first time I used Pamac for this purpose it prompted me to import and trust the Tor Browser security key. This probably should have been enabled ahead of time, but accepting the key allowed all updates to proceed cleanly.
Other observations
Right-clicking window names on the task switcher panel causes the window to close without confirmation. Other task switchers usually bring up a window control menu in response to right-clicks so this may surprise people and result in data loss.
A few days into my trial, a new dock appeared at bottom of the desktop. I had not added any new programs or services so it was a surprise when it just showed up one day when I signed in.
Conclusions
It appears as though Peux OS is still in its early stages so it is reasonable to expect the distribution to have some rough edges. Which is good, because there are a lot of rough edges. Just during the first hour setting up the distribution I ran into several issues. The project doesn't appear to offer (at the time of writing) direct download links, the live media warns us against running the Calamares installer, and the Support button in the system installer doesn't work.
To make matters worse, Peux does not function well in a virtual machine, which is unusual for a distribution running the Xfce desktop. Plus the graphical front-end for package management seems to be broken and unable to install new applications.
My biggest concerns with this distribution though are in the little day-to-day tasks. The application menu is unusual in many ways (it doesn't scale well, it requires double-clicks to launch applications, and it is horribly tedious to navigate). I also found the lack of tool tips when hovering the mouse over quick-launch and system tray icons, combined with the tiny, minimal icon designs, meant I constantly had to take my best guess at what any given button would do.
I sometimes encounter distributions which try something different. A new launcher, a new desktop layout, a different style of managing packages or organizing windows. Sometimes these unusual approaches take some time to adjust to before they make sense. Sometimes the design is good and the problem is me and my habits - my muscle memory. I can see the benefit of the alternative approach, even if it takes me all week to relearn how to use it efficiently. I cannot find any benefit to Peux's unusual application menu layout, mystery icons, or the way programs instantly close instead of displaying a menu when I right-click on their window button. All of this seems to add extra steps and guess work without any perceived benefit.
When I add to this the launcher dock magically showing up on the third day of my trial and the problems I ran into setting up networking and installing software, I'm hard pressed to find a benefit to using Peux over any of the other dozen Arch-based distributions which use Calamares to set them up and run Xfce as their flagship desktop.
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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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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE pulls FSF sponsorship, Pop!_OS unveils modified GNOME desktop, TENS loses its funding, Jonathan Carter wins Debian Project Leader election
The openSUSE project decided to follow Red Hat's example and pulled their sponsorship of the Free Software Foundation along with events and organizations associated with it. "As a board, we also believe that these principles that apply to our openSUSE communities shall also apply to the events and groups that we partner with and sponsor. We are reassessing our sponsorships in that light. In accordance with this statement, we are discontinuing sponsorship of all events and organizations affiliated with the Free Software Foundation until further notice." This move comes about two weeks after Red Hat made a similar announcement.
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System76 sells computers bundled with their custom, Ubuntu-based operating system, called Pop!_OS. System76 is experimenting with a modified GNOME desktop experience based on feedback from their community. For instance: "We separated the Activities Overview into two distinct views: Workspaces and Applications. As before, the Workspaces view will allow you to view your open windows and workspaces, while the Applications view will open an application picker. The latter's new dark background looks slick as a tuxedo and makes it easier to scan for your desired application. During user testing, we found that even GNOME veterans have a tendency to pause in their task after opening the Activities Overview. The split views allow you to access the application picker in a single click, while the cleaner UI design prevents visual distraction." The new desktop style is called COSMIC and is expected to ship with Pop!_OS 21.04 in June of 2021. Further details are available in the company's blog post about COSMIC.
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The Trusted End Node Security project, better known as TENS, is a product produced by the United States of America's Department of Defence and is part of that organization's Software Protection Initiative. The TENS project has announced it has lost funding and will be discontinued in the near future. "DISA has announced that they are no longer willing to fund the TENS program. Without a champion organization and funding, the program will be decommissioned in the coming months." While Linux distributions often rise and fall, due to limited time or funds, it is unusual for a government-backed distribution to die out due to a lack of funding.
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The Debian developers have cast their votes and elected Jonathan Carter as the Debian Project Leader. Carter ran on a platform of improving stability and filling in administrative gaps in the Debian infrastructure.
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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) |
Protecting files in a user's home directory
Becoming-more-cautious asks: The other day I nearly wiped out my entire Documents folder. Luckily I just trashed it instead of deleting it and could get it back. Is there a way I can guard my important directories against accidentally deleting them, like forcing the system to ask for my password first?
DistroWatch answers: This is an interesting issue because, unlike most of the security-related questions I received, this one is not asking for a way to guard against outside attacks or protection from malicious family members. Instead this question is basically asking how someone can protect their files from themselves and that is quite a different style of challenge.
There are some things you can do to make it less likely you will delete or overwrite your own files. Assuming you don't plan to change the files yourself you can remove your user's write permission on the files or directories you want to protect. Just about any file manager or the chmod command will let you remove write/delete permission from files and directories. However, if you do this it means you need to give yourself permission back again if you want to update any of the files. If you make certain directories, such as .config or .local, unwriteable then some programs which save information in these locations may no longer function properly.
Most file managers will prompt before deleting data and you can use an alias to make sure the command line deletion tool (rm) prompts before removing a file.
If you are likely to wipe out files while using a specific program, then you can run that application in a sandbox which is not allowed to access or delete your important files. I have written before about how to use Firejail to protect files and resources when running a specific utility.
Ultimately though the best protection against mistakes is to have multiple backups, one kept locally and one stored remotely. I recommend setting up filesystem snapshots (on Btrfs or ZFS) to maintain local copies of files or getting an external hard drive. Having a second external drive which is typically kept at another location, or an on-line storage account, are both good ways to make sure your backups are out of harm's way if your computer is damaged or compromised.
Any data you have on your computer is one power surge, strong magnet, or typo away from being erased. The best defence against this sort of data loss is to make multiple copies and keep at least one of them detached from your computer.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
FreeBSD 13.0
The FreeBSD project has announced the availability of FreeBSD 13.0. After an extended development cycle, FreeBSD has arrived with a number of key improvements and features, in particular ARM64 is now a Tier 1 architecture, meaning it will receive additional support: "Removed the obsolete version of the GNU debugger that was installed to /usr/libexec for use by crashinfo(8). Detailed kernel crash information can be obtained by installing modern GDB from ports or packages. Removed the obsolete binutils 2.17 and gcc(1) 4.2.1 from the tree. All supported architectures now use the LLVM/clang toolchain. The BSD version of grep(1) is now installed by default. The obsolete GNU version that was the previous default has been removed. Removed CU-SeeMe support from libalias(3). The qat(4) driver has been added, supporting some of the cryptographic acceleration functions of the Intel QuickAssist (QAT) device. The qat(4) driver supports the QAT devices integrated with Atom C2000 and C3000 and Xeon C620 and D-1500 platforms, and the Intel QAT Adapter 8950. Several deprecated drivers have been removed. Several drivers have been ported to the PowerPC64 architecture. The kernel now supports in-kernel framing and encryption of Transport Layer Security (TLS) data on TCP sockets for TLS versions 1.0 through 1.3." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
EasyOS 2.7
Barry Kauler has announced the release of EasyOS 2.7, a new version of the project's minimalist (and experimental) Linux distribution with roots in Puppy Linux. This version is part of the "Dunfell" series, compiled from the source code of a port of the OpenEmbedded project. From the release announcement: "EasyOS 'Dunfell' version 2.7 has the driver's seat and is the flagship release. Almost all of the packages are compiled in OpenEmbedded, with the exception of a few large and difficult-to-cross-compile packages, such as LibreOffice and SeaMonkey - these were compiled in the running EasyOS 2.7 pre-release. LibreOffice and SeaMonkey are the latest versions, 7.1.2 and 2.53.7. Network management has been enhanced with ModemManager, which NetworkManager Applet and ModemManage GUI are frontends for. NetworkManager Applet is an icon in the systray and ModemManager GUI is in the 'Network' menu. The Linux kernel is 5.10.26. There have been some significant bug fixes since the previous release of EasyOS, including faster startup of a Linux distribution desktop in a container (without wallpaper corruption), Osmo stability, and the X.Org Wizard previously causing X not to start."

EasyOS -- Running a desktop container
(full image size: 96kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Proxmox 1.1 "Backup Server"
Proxmox is a commercial company offering specialized products based on Debian GNU/Linux. The company's latest release is Proxmox 1.1 "Backup Server". The new release is based on Debian 10 and features ZFS 2.0. "Proxmox Backup Server supports LTO (LTO 4 and newer). Tape backup jobs: back up datastores to a media pool. Tape restore jobs: restore content of a media set to one or more datastores. Flexible retention policies. New user space tape driver written in Rust. Support for various tape autoloaders: mtx tool rewritten in Rust (now called pmtx). Configuration of components, jobs, and schedules via GUI. Proxmox LTO Barcode Label Generator, a small web-app, to generate and print bar-code labels. Two-factor authentication (TFA) for the GUI. Time-base One-Time Password (TOTP), WebAuthn, and recovery keys for single use." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
EndeavourOS 2021.04.17
Bryan Poerwo has announced the release of a new version of EndeavourOS, a rolling-release Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It aims to be an easy-to-install and pre-configured system featuring Xfce as the default desktop environment. From the release announcement: "We are proud to announce our second release of 2021 and this one is a bit more than a refresh ISO image release, so before you hit the download button and go play with it, just sit back and let us inform you first because we are really excited about this release. We already covered our websites receiving a new look but in this case, I want to put the spotlight on our wiki. Our Discovery magazine has been discontinued due to a lack of writers and it now has been rebooted as the EndeavourOS knowledge base for both x86_64 and ARM. The other new feature on the knowledge base are video tutorials - like the wiki articles, this category will expand over time and at the moment it contains general Linux and Arch-specific tutorials from the Chris Titus Tech and EF Linux YouTube channels."
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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: 2,403
- Total data uploaded: 37.1TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Protecting files from yourself
In our Questions and Answers column this week we discussed methods for protecting a person's files from themselves. Or, more broadly, we looked at ways to protect files from a person's own programs and mistakes. Do you use any technical solutions to guard against data loss due to a mistyped command or rogue program?
You can see the results of our previous poll on deciding whether to install a distribution based on preferred Linux filesystems in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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I guard my files from my own programs with...
Containers: | 16 (1%) |
Filesystem permissions: | 127 (10%) |
MAC (SELinux/AppArmor): | 38 (3%) |
Multiple user accounts: | 27 (2%) |
Sandboxing: | 22 (2%) |
Virtual machines: | 57 (5%) |
Other: | 159 (13%) |
Some of the above: | 174 (14%) |
None of the above: | 608 (50%) |
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Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Carbs Linux. Carbs Linux is a source-based Linux distribution that aims to be simple, flexible and extensible while staying as pragmatic and practical as possible. The system can consist of as much or as little as its user can intend to. Carbs Linux uses its own package manager Carbs Packaging Tools, a POSIX shell package manager forked from KISS. Carbs uses Busybox for its core command line tools and supports multiple init implementations.
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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, 26 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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Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Several security strategies (by Andy Prough on 2021-04-19 01:55:51 GMT from United States)
I use a combination of apparmor, sandboxing, and virtual machines to segregate data from programs. This is one of the main advantages in using a Linux distro over Windows, is the ability to guard the system and the data better in multiple ways.
2 • protecting files (by Andy Alt on 2021-04-19 02:03:57 GMT from United States)
>Becoming-more-cautious asks: The other day I nearly wiped out my entire Documents folder. Luckily I just trashed it instead of deleting it and could get it back. Is there a way I can guard my important directories against accidentally deleting them, like forcing the system to ask for my password first?
This isn't quite the solution for what OP asked, but some may find it useful. I maintain an open source project called rmw.
rmw (ReMove to Waste) is a safe-remove utility for the command line. Its goal is to conform to the FreeDesktop.org Trash specification and therefore be compatible with KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and others. Desktop integration is optional however, and by default, rmw will only use a waste folder separated from your desktop trash. One of its unique features is the ability to purge files from your Waste/Trash directories after x number of days.
3 • Xubuntu tweaked (by Lola Ada Borg on 2021-04-19 02:20:29 GMT from Netherlands)
My comment is not specific to the new Linux distro being reviewed Peux OS.
XFCE is great and it works on many distro's, from Debian, Ubuntu to whatever :)
Years ago I gradually switched to Linux and it was a steep learning curve = through Slackware based stuff (Zenwalk and ... ) until I settled with Xubuntu 11
As a nerd I worked with a tweaked Win98 for a few years. That is decades ago indeed.
SystemRescue (has switched to Arch) and Bootrepair (based on Lubuntu) are essential tools for me at home. Gosh, I have lost count of how much PC's I have worked with, most of them were or are 2nd hand. And is just a hobby, simple.
Regarding bloatware, no further comment. Recently me installed Xub20LTS and removed the [software center] to replace it with synaptic. The default web browser is Firefox, Falkon is an option.
Is Gparted part of Ubuntu - or GSmartControl? Yups, old hardware here and 2 of 5 old hard disks almost failed. Never mind, managed to save all data.
Now I am just an average nerd from Europe ... There are new distro's on the waiting list.
Building a new distro, that is beyond my knowledge and experience. ReactOs is an interesting project, they have been working on it for years. My idea is for an even more basic version of Xubuntu - let's call it Zubuntu? Lola is not a coder, she has done webdesign.
Reviewing a new (version of) of any distro may take a few days. Hardware here is a second hand desktop PC [Lisa] with 2 modern hard disks. No laptop yet, though that could be nice.
By the road, Lola is a Dutch transgendered person and a geek.
4 • 128GB of music mounted @home/Music... (by eee shepherd on 2021-04-19 02:47:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
Accidentally deleted entire /home.
Sadly with 128 gb music sdcard attached, Takes forever to restore from identical backup copy
5 • Protecting yourself from shooting your own feet (by Love Bami Goreng on 2021-04-19 04:55:06 GMT from United States)
I haven't used ext4 attributes much, but I think you can set the immutable attribute (see chattr). This might make the files a little too immutable for your purposes, though.
Another way would be to create hard links to the files using ln. This kinda creates a poor man's backup. I used to do this in the days when you had to write your own XF86config file, and in those days, I would occasionally find files were somehow mysteriously deleted, and having to redo all those modelines was annoying. Saved me once. Of course, the links have to be on the same partition as the files.
If I were doing it, I probably wouldn't use either of these methods, though.
6 • Hello System (by matt on 2021-04-19 05:00:18 GMT from United States)
I've tried the hello system in a VM and on an old thinkpad. Never had a problem installing. I like the idea behind it and I hope it takes off. I don't think I would use it over my preferred OS (debian) but hello system has some good ideas and I hope it grows.
7 • Protection (by Sondar on 2021-04-19 07:03:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
None of us mere humans are immune from our own actions. Only one computer? Surely not - get another one gratis from the local tip; if necessary renovate two (several?!) into one working box. Can stack two on top of each other under the desk. [Spousal objections are not relevant where the family's wealth & knowledge base are concerned.] Got a laptop? Never touch them; unreliable, prone to accidental damage, tedious repair options, over-stressed components, theft risk, you-name-it. Then there's multiple discs, rotating & SSD, Clonezilla, caddies, external self-powered, USB-powered and separately powered. As for risks from external forces, flood, fire, pestilence, theft, etc. with caddies and stored clone discs - only need to grab one of them with your wallet and trousers...
8 • Protect home? (by Jan K. on 2021-04-19 07:09:45 GMT from Denmark)
Sorry, but nothing on my systems are in any way or form protected against me. I'm the user, administrator and what-not... everything's on my mercy! :)
But I do keep multiple backups of everything...
9 • file protection (by James on 2021-04-19 09:59:20 GMT from United States)
Not only don't I protect my files, I also use the optional "delete" command in my file manager rather than the "move to trash". The best protection is paying close attention before you delete anything!
10 • Protecting my files (by burdi01 on 2021-04-19 10:22:47 GMT from Netherlands)
Over here the same as in #8. As an aside: the poll does not mention the multiple backups option. :D
11 • Protecting against accidental deletions (by Scott Dowdle on 2021-04-19 11:51:59 GMT from United States)
The only real protection against accidental deletion is backups. If you are using other methods thinking it'll save you, think again. Drive failure and accidental deletions... has had a solution for decades... and didn't need some new technology to come around and save you. Backup the stuff you care about. No really, backup the stuff you care about.
12 • How I backup (by John on 2021-04-19 12:10:41 GMT from United States)
Hi All,
I just lost a 32GB SD card with a 3 weeks of work on it.
Yesterday I backed up a whole SD card to a USB magnetic disk.
Gotta remember to do this more regularly.
John - NH USA
13 • Protect against data loss (by Will on 2021-04-19 12:45:43 GMT from United States)
Two things - Git and ZFS. Git for specific stuff and ZFS for everything. Haven’t lost a file or part if a file this way other than through my own stupidity (delete, delete snapshots, overwrite disk!)... ever.
14 • Protecting File in a Users Home Directory (by Rick on 2021-04-19 13:32:21 GMT from United States)
Ha! Feeling that pain right now, how ironic. "Oh! That was a symlink back to ~/subfolder?" while cleaning cruft from my backup.
15 • Protecting files (by Robert McConnell on 2021-04-19 13:38:26 GMT from United States)
Each workstation has a cron job that calls rsync for multiple file trees every night, even on the Raspberry Pi's. The file servers used as a destination all have multiple drives in RAID-1 configurations. I occasionally prune the destination drives of files that have been untouched for over a year, but I am more likely to use mv than rm. Not letting my fingers get too familiar with the latter command helps make me think about it more closely when I do need to use it.
16 • Midnight Commander (by Kingneutron on 2021-04-19 13:31:13 GMT from United States)
If you want to be extra careful when deleting multiple files or a directory tree, use Midnight Commander instead of the GUI. Can tag multiple files and F8 to delete, it will even prompt you yes/no. Safest way I know of to delete a directory.
I protect my files with ZFS snapshots and have a script to move /home to zfs here:
https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/tree/master/ZFS
The best way to really protect your files is to have a backup schedule. If you can't put it in cron then do it every Friday or Saturday, as long as it's the same day each week.
17 • Protecting user files using chattr? (by Kyle on 2021-04-19 13:39:24 GMT from United States)
Upon reading the Q&A about protecting user files, I immediately thought about the chattr command and file attributes. The only attribute I have personally used up to this point is the immutable ('i') flag, but as @5 mentioned, that might make things too unchangeable. So I looked at the documentation and found two seemingly promising alternatives, append only ('a') and undeletable ('u').
Without changing any of my (default) access control settings, applying the 'a' attribute required switching to the superuser, which is generally not a good idea when trying to protect files from mistakes. This would also mean that you would need the ability to either log in as root or at least use sudo/doas to run chattr, which makes this solution impossible for non-administrator users. For the sake of testing how well this would work assuming that superuser permissions are available, I proceeded to set the 'a' flag on a test file where I had written a couple lines of text. I expected to be able to add text to the end of the file, but not between existing characters, and that I would not be able to delete the file. It was indeed protected from deletion and modifications between existing characters, but I was not able to append to it either! This was true of both my unprivileged account and the superuser. So on my system, this attribute would not even be acceptable for log files where data is only added to the end.
The 'u' attribute was similarly disappointing. I set that attribute on another test file, and I was still perfectly capable of editing and even deleting it. When I looked for the command to undelete the file, though, I quickly found that my kernel does not support that attribute on the ext4 filesystem. This was set forth plainly in my local man page for chattr, a reminder that it is always a good idea to consult your system's documentation before trying something new.
The failure of the undeletable attribute was purely a limitation of my kernel and filesystem choices; perhaps it would work on yours, but you will need to read the documentation and do some tests of your own. I wonder if my observation of the append-only attribute behaving as immutable was also implementation-dependent, but that would still require some configuration so that non-superuser accounts would be able to access it.
18 • Poll (BACKUPS) (by Andy Figueroa on 2021-04-19 20:21:11 GMT from United States)
How is it that BACKUPS didn't make it into the choices of this week's pool?
19 • backups (by Jesse on 2021-04-19 20:25:02 GMT from Canada)
@18: Backups don't protect files. They just give you a method of recovery after the files have been lost.
20 • Protection against failing OS (by Jan on 2021-04-19 23:43:47 GMT from Netherlands)
I always have a few of the latest bootable live linux DVD's. To access a failing OS. And I have always the latest GParted-CD.
21 • PopperOS Gnome mods (by Dave on 2021-04-20 05:39:02 GMT from United States)
It's hilarious to watch these Gnome 3 users discovering all these hip new ways to pretend that they're not wishing Gnome Shell worked like Gnome 2; a sane, conventional work environment. I imagine long about the time somebody twists Gnome Shell in to something resembling a usable desktop, the Gnome devs will release Gnome 4 and they'll have to start all over again.
22 • backup (by denk_mal on 2021-04-20 07:21:06 GMT from Germany)
@19 sure, a backup won't protect files and folders directely but it is the better method of protecting files and folders. With a good backup strategy (and good mediums of course) you need not really a file protection.
23 • File/OS protection (by Cheker on 2021-04-20 15:33:18 GMT from Portugal)
It wasn't always like this but at some point I started doing the more questionable/risky browsing and software testing inside Virtual Machines. It's probably overkill in a lot of cases, too, but I got used to it and I have a good amount of RAM to spare for it. Shoutouts to Mutahar for making it worse
24 • overlayfs (by Justin on 2021-04-20 21:32:40 GMT from United States)
VMs are excellent. I also use overlayfs on a laptop. It was mainly for browser malware protection, but being able to reset each time into a clean state is very useful!
25 • Hello and more (by mikef90000 on 2021-04-20 22:43:43 GMT from United States)
I had no problem booting Hello* in virtualbox after I found that it needed 4GB of memory AND legacy BIOS. As far as backing up personal files, the usual belt and suspenders: a) local USB HDD and b) RAID 5 array on file backup server.
26 • Protection (by penguinx86 on 2021-04-21 02:12:22 GMT from United States)
I backup my important data to a WD Passport external drive. if I screw something up on my Linux PC, I just reinstall the OS and restore my data from the external drive.
27 • File protection (by Kazlu on 2021-04-21 10:00:23 GMT from France)
I am joining the backup clan here. I am past the days where I had time to try out and setup tons of fancy pieces of software to improve this or that aspect of my computing needs. I now try to streamline it as much as possible so I don't forget too much about what I setup. If a tool/procedure covers multiple needs, it's better that seting up several.
The risk associated with incorrect manipulation of files from the user is data loss. Data loss scenario is already covered by a backup strategy: files synchronised with a local nextcloud server, manual backups on an offline HDD every now and then and another distant workstation is syncing (on manual request, offline otherwise) important files from the nextcloud server, should my house be burned or robbed. Whatever the source of data loss, be it hacking, accident at home, hardware failure, software upgrade failure or wrong user manipulation, the situation is already covered by the backup strategy. Adding file protection would add an extra layer of complexity for the sole purpose of speeding up the recovery process of an event that is very, very rare. Not worth it in my case.
28 • Accidental Removal (by Wanderer By on 2021-04-21 17:29:50 GMT from Canada)
Testdisk and photorec have come in handy several times in the past for me to recover deleted files.
29 • Backups (by Mandatory Name on 2021-04-21 20:03:47 GMT from Canada)
I keep most files on a seperate physical hard drive. And regularly create a backup. Worst case scenario, installing an OS takes a few minutes.
@21 "about the time somebody twists Gnome Shell in to something resembling a usable desktop" That just sounds like Cinnamon.
30 • Protection vs. Restoration (by Kyle on 2021-04-22 17:52:01 GMT from United States)
I think that the arguments for backups being the ultimate (or only) method of protecting files miss the point of this Q&A as I understand it. There is no substitute for a proper backup when data gets overwritten, wiped, or corrupted, but a backup must be isolated from the rest of the system by design. I do not think that it is unreasonable for somebody to ask about preventative measures that would, in certain situations, eliminate the need to resort to a slower storage area to restore what was lost.
Consider a case where somebody enters a malformed rm command, causing some unintended files to get caught up in the delete operation. In most implementations I have seen, rm succeeds silently, so the user may not notice this mistake for some time. When they do, they can restore the files from their latest backup; hopefully they have not made too many changes since then! This could be a significant setback if changes have been made rapidly. Even the most disciplined of users have a limit to how often they will (or can) make a backup of their work.
Now suppose that some of these files had been protected from deletion, such as by setting the immutable attribute. rm would have given the user an error message such as "operation not permitted," alerting them immediately that something had gone wrong. Not all of the unintended files would be safe, but presumably the most "important" (relatively speaking) would have been protected, and thus remain intact. Only the "unimportant" files would need to be restored from the backup, if at all. Importantly, the user had a chance to specify that some files were important enough to get an extra layer of protection.
Is the immutable attribute an odd choice for a file that would be modified so rapidly? Of course it is. But that just serves to highlight why this question is valuable: Maybe somebody would come forward with a better alternative. Out of curiosity, I tried the append-only and undeletable attributes to see if they would work. They did not, but at least I learned about a shortcoming of my filesystem before that fact had the chance to cause any harm.
What may seem like an unnecessarily complicated feature to you might be a lifesaver to somebody who has a different use case.
31 • om gnome gnome (by TS on 2021-04-22 18:01:59 GMT from Canada)
@21 I don't have a problem with Gnome being what it is, but what boggles me why any distribution would choose what is really a touch-centric interface for their flagship desktop OS, relegating traditional environments to secondary status, re-spins, community editions, etc..
Even Microsoft figured out their error of forcing that touch-first model with the steaming turd that was Win8, and backpedaled.
32 • gnome (by fred on 2021-04-22 21:59:28 GMT from Portugal)
Gnome is a leap avant of our time. Earlier than later traditional keyboards will have a touch-centric real state. Just my 2cts, may be wrong and Gnome too :)
33 • GNOME (by M.Z. on 2021-04-23 02:56:06 GMT from United States)
I saw the Pop!_OS thing about Gnome as well, as I remember it's a whole new shell called Cosmic. The System76 team found a majority of desktop users actually wanted a dock & all the basic functionality stuff that Gnome tossed out by default. I've been wondering since version 3 came out why they weren't just making things easier on users to begin with by adding more sane defaults that desktop users expect & apparently its still an issue, which surprises virtually nobody.
@21 "...I imagine long about the time somebody twists Gnome Shell in to something resembling a usable desktop, the Gnome devs will release Gnome 4 and they'll have to start all over again."
Too late, they pulled a Chrome versioning scheme about 3 weeks ago & jumped straight to version 40. Apparently bigger numbers solve everything... or so they're hoping. They really ought to have moved toward what the new Cosmic shell is doing a long time ago, get user feed back & put in the improvements people want by default.
Personally I didn't really like any of the defaults System76 was offering up till now, but I've got a spare partition on the system they sent me that I'll be happy to try their reworked DE on.
34 • GNOME (and Debian) (by Barnabyh on 2021-04-23 11:15:55 GMT from Germany)
GNOME and Debian used to be the stalwarts of freedom and free software. As time went on younger developers joined and took over, had their own ideas and increasingly shaped these projects, many of the original or older developers retired, passed away, were forced out or chose to leave (--> Devuan, for instance). Apart from the name, these are not the same projects they were 10 or 20 years ago. The GNOME project in particular do not seem interested in changing their desktop vision to anything remotely sane that would work for people that do not use a touch screen. Debian has other problems with their politics, having released the buggiest version yet with Debian 10 and no longer being quite that synonimous with stability for many users. Choice of packages is still great though. Fortunately there are enough forks and derivatives.
35 • @ 34 (by kaczor on 2021-04-23 12:17:23 GMT from United States)
No one, my friend, makes you use Gnome, or Debian. There are so many DEs, WMs in the stew.
36 • @34, @35 (by Justin on 2021-04-23 16:24:40 GMT from United States)
I agree with @34. Debian was my default for so long because it filled the niche of stability (some call it "staleness") of software and security updates. Many new features just aren't useful to me. But without security updates, you leave yourself vulnerable. I just want to fix the lock on my door, not replace the entire entryway.
@35, yes no one forces us to use them. However when your friend stops being the person you used to know, do you not regret the loss of that friend?
37 • Of crashes, hiccups and life boats... (by tom joad on 2021-04-23 19:05:05 GMT from United States)
I had an issue with my laptop just this week. The laptop had been booting fine. But I attempted to load the xscreensavers. I used synaptic but nonetheless I jacked up the computer. The computer rebooted just fine. Only when I attempted to log into my everyday account I got a message that the xscreensavers were not loaded and that the default would be used. I clicked ok but nothing ever happened. I tried to get to the terminal but that was gone too. I tried the sudo account but got the same silly message about loading the defaults only it didn't.
It was Timeshift to the rescue. Bing, bang, boom...everything was back to normal in a jiffy.
No, I didn't write the message down. Whatever. I will stay away from those silly xscreensavers but on to compiz in another attempt to jack up my computer.
Lastly I was in no danger. I have back ups and I have constant cloud storage too. And I have a number of 'rescue' usb's at the ready if I had needed them. Luckily, I didn't. But the hiccup was a bother and would have been a real *pain* had I had to reload the whole bloody computer.
Isn't Linux fun?!?!?!?
Number of Comments: 37
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TUXEDO |

TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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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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