 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 920, 7 June 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
openSUSE is the community branch of the SUSE family. The project published a new version last week which introduces binary compatibility with its commercial sibling SUSE Linux Enterprise. We begin this week with a look at openSUSE Leap 15.3 and some of its key features. Then, in our News section, we report on the Linux Mint team adding new search functions to the Nemo file manager along with the Rocky Linux project looking for volunteers to help round out the young distribution. We also share tips on counter-acting an operating system's out of memory (OOM) process when a memory-heavy program needs to be protected. Our Questions and Answers column this week discusses writing downloaded files directly to removable media when local hard drive storage is not available. What tools do you use to write ISO and IMG files to a thumb drive? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: openSUSE 15.3
- News: Nemo gets new search capabilities, Rocky publishes status update and seeks volunteers, tips for protecting against out of memory termination
- Questions and answers: Writing an ISO directly from the web to a thumb drive
- Released last week: CentOS 8.4.2105, openSUSE 15.3, Kali 2021.2
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Arch, CentOS, Clonezilla, Kali, Lakka, NixOS, MakuluLinux, openSUSE, OviOS, Rescuezilla, Septor, Tails
- Opinion poll: Writing an ISO/IMG file to a thumb drive
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (18MB) and MP3 (13MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE 15.3
openSUSE Leap 15.3 is the latest release in the distribution's series of stable versions. For the most part, openSUSE 15.3 is a minor update to the 15.x series which brings the community-focused, freely available openSUSE distribution closer in its technology to the business-oriented SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE).
There is one huge change from the previous Leap versions. openSUSE Leap 15.3 is built not just from SUSE Linux Enterprise source code like in previous versions, but built with the exact same binary packages, which strengthens the flow between Leap and SLE.
There are a few other new features and upgrades. Most of these focus on containers and small improvements to development tools. For the most part major packages have stayed at the same versions they were earlier in the 15.x series. The KDE Plasma desktop is still shipping version 5.18 and GNOME remains at version 3.34. The Xfce desktop though received a major update, moving from version 4.14 to 4.16 which introduces a number of improvements.
openSUSE 15.3 offers 18 months of security updates and support. People upgrading from previous versions should first upgrade to 15.2 as upgrading from earlier releases isn't supported.
Users upgrading to openSUSE Leap 15.3 need to be aware that upgrading directly from versions before openSUSE Leap 15.2 is not recommended. Due to the upgrade path, it is highly recommended to upgrade to Leap 15.2 before upgrading to Leap 15.3.
There are several editions of openSUSE, built for multiple hardware architectures. openSUSE's installation media is available in both net-install and off-line installer flavours for x86_64, AArch64, IBM Z, and PowerPC systems. The full install images are about 4.4GB in size while the network installers tend to be about 150MB in size. There are also live desktop editions of the distribution which are available in GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, and Rescue flavours. These range in size from about 600MB up to about 950MB. For the purposes of this trial I installed openSUSE using the full install 4.4GB ISO for x86_64 machines. I also tried out the live desktop media with Xfce for the same architecture.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The Xfce desktop and application menu
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Installing
Booting from the install media offers to perform a media check for us, start a new install, or upgrade from a previous version of openSUSE. The boot menu also offers to provide rescue tools for recovering a broken system. Taking the Install option loads a graphical environment and presents us with the distribution's custom installer.
openSUSE's installer begins by showing us its license. We can select our preferred language and keyboard layout from drop-down menus located at the top of the window. We are next asked if we would like to connect to on-line repositories in order to gain access to additional (and more up to date) packages. I agreed to enable on-line repositories, but the installer failed to connect with them, despite having an active Internet connection.
The following screen asks us to select one role from a list. We can set up openSUSE with the KDE Plasma desktop, GNOME, Xfce, or a generic minimal set of desktop packages. We also have the option of selecting a server role or openSUSE's transactional server, which uses a read-only filesystem. We can only enable one role, preventing us from choosing to install multiple desktop environments. I decided to go with the Xfce role as I was curious about openSUSE's implementation of Xfce 4.16.
The installer offers to automatically set up the distribution on a Btrfs root filesystem alongside a swap partition. Directories such as /home and /var are set up on sub-volumes of the main Btrfs partition. We can override these settings with a manual layout if we like. Though for most single-boot machines this default layout is probably well suited for most people. openSUSE's manual partition manager is a bit on the complex side. It's powerful and flexible, but offers so many tools on one page that it's likely to overwhelm less experienced users.
After that we select our time zone from a map of the world and optionally create a user account. This account can be assigned administrative access. The installer shows us a list of actions it will take and provides hyperlinks we can click to visit other pages where we can tweak specific options. I like this summary page as the links make it easier to customize settings than having us browse backward through the installer the way some distributions do. The installer then copies its files to the hard drive and automatically reboots the system when it is finished.
Early impressions
My new copy of openSUSE booted to a graphical login screen with a green theme. Signing into my account brought up the Xfce 4.16 desktop. Along the bottom of the screen is a panel holding the application menu, task switcher, and system tray. On the desktop are icons which open the Thunar file manager.
Shortly after signing in a welcome screen appears. This screen provides links to on-line documentation and support. There is also a link to a local document which includes links to an on-line wiki and instructions for gaining access to third-party package repositories and media codecs. There are also instructions for acquiring the Chrome web browser.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The welcome window
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The welcome window further provides access to a web-based software store, which I'll talk about later, and a link to the upstream Xfce documentation.
Apart from the welcome window, the desktop has a quiet, classic feel to it. The theme is relatively dull and grey. The application menu has a fairly standard two-pane layout with categories displayed on the left and program launchers on the right. The application menu has a search bar to help us find specific items.
As with many Linux distributions, openSUSE locks the desktop after just five minutes of idle time. This can be adjusted in the desktop settings panel.
Hardware
I began by testing openSUSE in VirtualBox. The distribution ran smoothly in the virtual environment. Xfce was responsive and I found it would dynamically resize to fit the dimensions of the VirtualBox window.
When I tried openSUSE on my laptop I found it would boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. The distribution was quite snappy on my laptop and Xfce was responsive. All of my laptop's hardware, including wireless card, screen resolution, and media keys were properly detected.
The operating system used about 530MB of memory to sign into the Xfce desktop. This memory usage sometimes spiked shortly after I logged in, up to about 640MB, before settling down again. I'm not sure, but I suspect this spike in RAM consumption was due to a background check for package updates. Even at the lower amount (530MB) this is still quite heavy for a distribution running Xfce. This is about twice the amount of RAM EndeavourOS uses when running Xfce and more than twice the memory consumed by Void with the same desktop environment.
A fresh install of the distribution used 5GB of disk space for the operating system, plus any space we set aside for swap space. In terms of disk consumption openSUSE is fairly average for a mainstream Linux distribution.
Applications
Browsing through the application menu we find a fairly standard collection of open source software. The Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client are available. LibreOffice and the Transmission bittorrent software are installed for us. Pidgin is present for instant messaging and TigerVNC can be used to connect to remote desktop machines. The Evince document viewer, the GNU Image manipulation Program, and Shotwell are present. I found Java is installed by default. There are simple image viewers, an archive manager, and a text editor.
openSUSE ships with the Parole media player and the Pragha audio player. Some audio codecs, including MP3, are provided by default. However video codecs are not and I will talk about this more in a moment. The distribution uses the systemd init software and runs version 5.3 of the Linux kernel.
The distribution includes the man command and manual pages, but presents unusual behaviour. Whenever I wanted to look up a manual page the man command would list any pages with similar names and ask which one I wanted. If I didn't respond for a handful of seconds, the page I'd originally requested would be shown. The man command mentions, when it shows us the list of similar commands, that we can set an environment variable to skip this unwanted and unhelpful pause before displaying the requested page.
To me this sort of behaviour seems entirely backward. New users, the ones most likely to rely on documentation, may not even know how to set an environment variable or how to make it permanent. Meanwhile more experienced users like myself don't want a long delay and a prompt effectively asking if we're sure we want to look at the page we just requested. I'm curious who this feature is supposed to help and why it was added to openSUSE as no other distributions do this. Luckily it can be disabled.
Earlier I mentioned some audio codecs ship with openSUSE, but video codecs are missing. When trying to watch a video in the Parole media player an error comes up saying the required codec is missing. We are then asked to click one button to ignore the warning or another to install the missing codec. Clicking either button does nothing other than return us to the blank Parole window.
There are a few ways a person can address this gap in functionality - varying from enabling repositories through the YaST configuration panel to trying the 1-click install method. I decided to follow the documentation provided through the welcome window as it seems likely to be the option new users, who haven't explored openSUSE before, will try.
The documentation provides instructions for enabling codecs on Tumbleweed (openSUSE's rolling branch) as well a Leap (the static branch). The instructions involve long command lines which most people will probably want to copy/paste from the website. We then need to refresh the package database, accept the new package signing key, and then we can access codecs or media players with enabled codecs.
openSUSE 15.3 -- LibreOffice and the Pragha music player
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I tried opening a video file in Parole again and it once more reported codecs were missing and offered to install them. Once more, accepting this offer does nothing. I next used the package manager to install the VLC media player from the Packman community repository. Trying to open the video in VLC immediately caused the whole desktop to lock-up. Xfce and the open applications become entirely unresponsive to mouse and keyboard input. I had to switch to a terminal and force a reboot to get the machine working again. Later on, trying to play videos in VLC worked without further problems.
Settings and options
There are two setting panels. One is part of Xfce which controls the look and behaviour of the desktop. The Xfce modules work well and can be searched. This settings panel functions the same as on other distros. There were no surprises with the Xfce panel. It is fairly well laid out and worked without any problems. The other settings panel is called YaST.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The Xfce and YaST settings panels
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YaST is the key stone to openSUSE, the central piece that links all the other pieces. YaST provides configuration modules for a great range of options and functionality. Through YaST we can manage packages and repositories, user accounts, security options, browse and compare filesystem snapshots, set up network services, manage background daemons, and handle user accounts. The list is quite extensive and, during my trial, all of these modules worked as expected.
There are some weak points in the YaST collection. Many of the tools are more geared towards experienced or advanced users than beginners. While the Mageia family has a control panel which provides easy access and beginner-friendly features, openSUSE's YaST is focused on providing many options to power users and administrators. The firewall tool is possibly the best example of this focus as it has many options, profiles, and screens, but no clear way to just enable an always-on firewall that blocks incoming traffic the way Gufw does.
openSUSE 15.3 -- Exploring firewall options
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Many of YaST's modules fit into this same pattern where we can browse through many powerful features, filters, and options, but it's sometimes an overwhelming amount of options many people probably won't use. The package management options were another good example of this pattern of offering a lot of features while making simple tasks more complicated, which brings me to...
Package management
There are a few approaches we can take for package management. The one most readily available to new users is the on-line application store which is accessible through the welcome window. The on-line repository opens in Firefox and displays a text list of categories we can browse. The page also offers a search function we can use. We can click on an entry for an application and the store shows us available download links. Typically download options for recent versions of openSUSE Leap, along with Tumbleweed, are shown.
Search results can be a bit of a mess as packages with related names, debug information, dependency data, and alternative versions are shown. For instance, searching for the Okular PDF viewer brings up over a dozen results, including: Okular5, Okular-git, Okular-dev, Okular-dbg, and Okular5-dev. I know the "-dbg" suffix is a debug package, and I suspect "-dev" is a development package. This still leaves me unsure of what Okular-git is. This seems like a mess and even if I choose the right package, then I need to select the right version of openSUSE to match it. This is likely to be a confusing mess for less experienced users.
To make matters worse, the application store kept giving me HTTPS errors due to being unable to verify the ownership of the website. Some elements on the page are not transmitted securely either, making matters worse.
openSUSE's primary local package manager is available through YaST. The software management module will assist us in browsing through available repositories and categories of software as well as listing updates. The easiest way I found to find new software was to use the package manager's search function to locate programs by name.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The primary package manager
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The package manager takes a low-level approach and tends to deliver a lot of results when performing searches so it can take a while to browse through available packages. The package manager works quickly and it has some powerful features. However, there doesn't appear to be any more modern, application-focused software centre.
openSUSE's command line package manager is called zypper. I like zypper as it is fast, has a plain, English-based syntax, shows nicely formatted output, and will optionally let us know when we need to restart programs which have been upgraded. I have no complaints when it comes to working with zypper directly. The release notes for openSUSE mention DNF, which is a Python-based package manager used by Fedora, and a C-based implementation of DNF called Micro DNF. DNF is not installed by default, but may be acquired through the distribution's repositories.
I checked for portable package support. Neither Snap nor Flatpak is installed by default. However, Flatpak is available in openSUSE's repositories. We can install it and use the command line to add new Flatpak repositories.
Btrfs and snapshots
openSUSE uses Btrfs as the default filesystem. This is one of the few distributions I am aware of to really embrace Btrfs and what it can do. Not only does it properly set up sub-volumes to make managing data easier, it also does a lot with the Btrfs snapshot feature. There are two main features openSUSE provides through Btrfs. The first is automated snapshots of the main filesystem. Whenever we make a configuration change through YaST, install a package, or download security updates, the system automatically takes a snapshot of the root filesystem. This allows us to revert changes at any time or compare differences between snapshots to see what changed and when. We can do this from the command line or through a nice, point-and-click graphical tool in the YaST panel. This means we can quickly detect and revert any configuration change, package upgrade, or file deletion. The processes involved, both the automated snapshots and working with them, happen practically instantly.
openSUSE 15.3 -- Browsing Btrfs snapshots
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The other tool openSUSE provides is the option to access Btrfs snapshots from the boot menu. We can access any past snapshot at boot time, effectively rolling back any change to the operating system by selecting an older snapshot. This makes openSUSE nearly bulletproof, short of hardware failure or someone erasing the boot loader. openSUSE is one of the only open source operating systems which offers boot time snapshot access (FreeBSD is another) and it is an unusually powerful tool which other Linux distributions have been slow to adopt.
Conclusions
I had mostly positive experiences while running openSUSE 15.3. The distribution does a lot of things well. The installer is both fairly straight forward to use and yet, under the surface, offers a lot of advanced options. This started me off with a good first impression, as did the initial welcome screen.
I deeply appreciate that openSUSE is one of the only Linux distributions to entirely embrace advanced filesystems. Its administrative tools automatically take snapshots of changes and we can rollback to previous snapshots from the boot menu. Apart from FreeBSD, I don't know of any other commonly used open source operating system which makes proper use of advanced filesystems such as Btrfs and ZFS.
Speaking of the administration tools, YaST is quite powerful. We can manipulate most aspects of the underlying operating system through YaST and, while some modules are overly complex (for less experienced users), more advanced users will find a lot of useful tools in the YaST panel.
There are some weak points in openSUSE's armour. The web-based application store, promoted by the welcome window, is really rough and overly complicated. It shows far too many package options for simple searches and depends on the user clicking on the proper link to download for the right edition of openSUSE. It will even show packages and download links for packages which haven't been built for openSUSE 15.3 yet.
The distribution offers a short support cycle. openSUSE Leap claims to be a long-term support (LTS) release, but only gets 18 months of updates. This is roughly the same as Fedora and much less than Ubuntu's community editions (which receive 36 months of support) or Ubuntu, Debian, and FreeBSD - each of which offer 60 months of support. Despite its rapid upgrade pace, the provided packages are mostly over a year old. This means openSUSE gives us the upgrade pace of Fedora along with the software age of more conservative distributions.
Not having multimedia codecs available out of the box is rare these days. This, combined with the complex command line steps outlined in the documentation and the failure of applications like Parole to find missing codecs after offering to install them (even after community repositories have been enabled), means new users have an overly complicated and confusing path ahead of them, compared against the experience offered by other distributions, if they want to watch videos.
One thing which I kept coming back to while using openSUSE is that it feels like a distribution for administrators and developers, not for regular home users. Some really complex tasks, like setting up Btrfs, working with complex firewalls, setting up network shares, comparing snapshots, and so on are quite easy (thanks to YaST). However, some basic actions such as playing video files, downloading desktop applications, or reading manual pages are unusually complex on openSUSE. It is a distribution which makes complex tasks easy and simple tasks harder than most other mainstream distributions.
The user interface is fairly polished and the newly upgraded Xfce desktop works well. The system is responsive and worked well with my test environments. I think this fairly smooth experience will entice people, particularly more experienced users, to run openSUSE. openSUSE is a little on the heavy side in terms of memory usage, but the array of convenient features that accompany it more than makes up for the difference in my opinion.
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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
openSUSE has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.5/10 from 522 review(s).
Have you used openSUSE? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Nemo gets new search capabilities, Rocky publishes status update and seeks volunteers, tips for protecting against out of memory termination
The Linux Mint team have published their monthly newsletter for May. The newsletter mentions a number of improvements and new features coming in the next version of Linux Mint (version 20.2 Beta is expected to be released in mid-June). Among the upcoming features are a bulk file renaming tool for Cinnamon and MATE along with compression options for the Warpinator file sharing tool. Plus the Nemo file manager will be able to handle content searches. "Nemo will feature content search. Until now you could only search for files. In Nemo 5.0 you'll be able to combine file search and content search, i.e. files which are named a certain way and/or which contain particular words. Regular expressions and recursive folder searches will be supported." Additional information can be found in the distribution's newsletter.
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Rocky Linux, a young clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, has published an update on their news page which provides some status information on the new project, along with suggestions as to how volunteers can contribute to the distribution. People interested in writing documentation, testing new builds, and creating tutorials or answering questions are invited to participate. "If you're interested in helping us test the Rocky Linux 8.4 RC, please join our Testing team! The Testing team meets weekly on Thursdays at 18:00 ET. There's live chat on our Mattermost server, and durable discussion on our forums. Please be sure to report any bugs you encounter."
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When a running process consumes too much memory it can starve the rest of the system, forcing the operating system to move other programs into swap space or, in more extreme cases, run a process called an out of memory (OOM) killer which terminates heavy programs. In recent years some open source operating systems, such as Fedora, have introduced background services which will monitor processes using too much memory and terminate them before the system's memory becomes overly taxed, wrecking performance.
While monitoring and terminating greedy processes can keep systems running smoothly, it also runs the risk of killing off services which are, for brief periods, intended to consume large amounts of memory. Databases in particular can consume a lot of RAM for brief periods and it is important to protect the database from being terminated during queries. Some tips on protecting heavy processes from unwanted termination are available for FreeBSD and for Linux.
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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) |
Writing an ISO directly from the web to a thumb drive
Skipping-a-step asks: Is there a way to download an ISO image and make a bootable USB thumb drive with it without first saving it? I don't have any disk space and need to get my distro ISO straight to the thumb drive.
DistroWatch answers: Yes, it is possible to download an ISO file for your preferred distribution and write it immediately to a removable drive without the intermediate step of storing it on your hard drive. The process may be a little slow, but assuming the thumb drive has enough storage capacity, you can do this.
Perhaps the easiest way to do this is with the wget command. The wget program will download a file and save it to the location of your choosing. Since thumb drives are treated as files we can write to, we can simply tell wget to save the ISO file it downloads to the thumb drive. For instance, if we are downloading a file called my-distro.iso and our USB drive is located at /dev/sdb then we can run the following command:
wget -O /dev/sdb https://example.com/my-distro.iso
If you are not sure of the device name of your thumb drive you can find it using lsblk which lists all of the storage devices attached to your computer.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the above approach is that it does not guard against files being corrupted during the download process. If your connection drops or bits of the file are lost during the transfer, the above method will not detect the problem. You will end up with a corrupted or incomplete copy of your distribution on your thumb drive without any warning.
To work around this method you could use the tee command. This allows input to be written both to a file and passed along through a pipe to another command. This means you can both write your download to the thumb drive and check its hash at the same time. The following example downloads my-distro.iso, writes it to the thumb drive located at /dev/sdb and prints the ISO file's SHA256 hash:
wget -O - https://example.com/my-distro.iso | tee /dev/sdb | sha256sum
In the above example we tell wget to save output to the file "-", which wget recognizes as meaning it should just print the contents of the file. The data is then sent through a pipe to tee. The tee command both writes the data to our thumb drive and passes it also to sha256sum to get a hash. This results in the file being written to our thumb drive at /dev/sdb and its hash printed to the console so we can verify it against the hash provided by the distribution's developers.
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Answers to other questions can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
JingOS 0.9
JingOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution for tablet computers. It can run desktop Linux applications like VS Code and LibreOffice. The project's latest release is JingOS 0.9 which features a number of key interface changes: "JingOS v0.9 updates: . Adaptive layouts: JingOS can now run perfectly on different resolution devices with adaptive layouts. Users can adjust resolutions in the Settings app. 2. Preview version of Sogou Input Method with virtual keyboard support. 3. Wallpaper settings. 4. Complex password settings: support character+number+symbol mixed password. 5. Gaussian blur effect of Notification Center and Control Panel. 6. The superposition and fusion mode of status bar and window, and solved the problem of status bar flashing when switching between apps. 7. The Files app adds support for compression and decompression (support zip, tar, 7zip, AR), also support tag, collection, sorting, OTG, etc. 8. Charging process will show on the lock screen. 9. System pop-up frame for Volume and Brightness adjustment. 10. Multi-languages support, including Chinese and English." Further details can be found in the project's release notes.
Clonezilla Live 2.7.2-38
Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 2.7.2-38, a new stable version of the project's Debian-based utility live CD for partitioning, backups and disk-cloning tasks: "Stable Clonezilla Live 2.7.2-38 released. This release includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes since 2.7.1-22: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded - this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2021-05-30; Linux kernel has been updated to 5.10.40; the systemd package was updated to 248.3 and this might have fixed this issue; added 'VGA with large font and To RAM' (using nomodeset) to the boot menu and moved 'KMS with large font and To RAM' to submenu - this can be an alternative solution for jfbterm not working in KMS mode for some VGA cards; added ocs-park-disks before rebooting or halting in Clonezilla Live; improved to process the volume header of Veracrypt; added '--force' for vgcfgrestore to force metadata restore even with thin pool LVs; added boot parameter echo_ocs_repository, so that when it's assigned as 'no', the prompt about mounting image repository can be hidden...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a full changelog.
Kali Linux 2021.2
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The distribution's team have released Kali Linux 2021.2 which includes two new significant tools: Kaboxer and Kali-Tweaks. Kaboxer allows the developers to package troublesome software in containers which are presented in a transparent fashion to the user like any other package. Kali-Tweaks helps the user customize the distribution. "Announcing Kali-Tweaks! This is our little helping hand for Kali users, with the idea to help customize Kali to your own personal taste quickly, simply, and the correct way. This should help you to stop doing repetitive tasks. Currently Kali-Tweaks will help out with: Meta packages - Installing/removing groups of tools, which may not have been available while installing Kali if you did not use the installer image. Network Repositories - Enabling/disabling 'bleeding-edge' and 'experimental' branches. Shell and Prompt - Switch between two or one line prompt, enable/disable the extra line before the prompt, or configure Bash or ZSH as the default shell..." Further information is available in the project"s release announcement.
openSUSE 15.3
The openSUSE team have announced the release of a minor update to the project's 15.x branch. openSUSE 15.3 is assembled using the same binary packages as SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) which facilitates testing and migration across both platforms. "The newest minor version of openSUSE Leap is the most recent, rock-solid addition to the openSUSE 15.x series that carries all the positive attributes of its predecessors. There is one huge change from the previous Leap versions. openSUSE Leap 15.3 is built not just from SUSE Linux Enterprise source code like in previous versions, but built with the exact same binary packages, which strengthens the flow between Leap and SLE like a yin yang." The new release features a desktop upgrade, bumping Xfce from version 4.14 to 4.16. Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
openSUSE 15.3 -- Running the GNOME desktop
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NixOS 21.5
NixOS is an independently developed GNU/Linux distribution that aims to improve the state of the art in system configuration management. In NixOS, the entire operating system, including the kernel, applications, system packages and configuration files, are built by the Nix package manager. The distribution's latest release is NixOS 21.05 "Okapi" features significant upgrades to the Linux kernel and GNU Compiler Collection, along with the GNOME, Cinnamon, and KDE Plasma desktops. "Support is planned until the end of December 2021, handing over to 21.11. In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights: Core version changes: gcc: 9.3.0 -> 10.3.0; glibc: 2.30 -> 2.32; default linux: 5.4 -> 5.10, all supported kernels available; mesa: 20.1.7 -> 21.0.1; Desktop Environments: GNOME: 3.36 -> 3.40, see its release notes; Plasma5: 5.18.5 -> 5.21.3; kdeApplications: 20.08.1 -> 20.12.3; Cinnamon: 4.6 -> 4.8.1; Programming Languages and Frameworks: Python optimizations were disabled again. Builds with optimizations enabled are not reproducible. Optimizations can now be enabled with an option. The linux_latest kernel was updated to the 5.12 series. It currently is not officially supported for use with the ZFS filesystem. If you use ZFS, you should use a different kernel version (either the LTS kernel, or track a specific one)." The project's release announcement and release notes provide more details.
Rescuezilla 2.2
Rescuezilla is a specialist Ubuntu-based distribution designed for system rescue tasks, including backups and system restoration. The project's latest version is Rescuezilla 2.2 which introduces, among other features, support for working with virtual machine disks. "Flash the Rescuezilla image to a USB stick using balenaEtcher (this will erase all data on your USB stick). Reboot your PC and boot from USB. Rescuezilla v2.2 adds the highly-requested 'cloning' feature, support for virtual machine images and more. Here is a partial list of what's changed: Implemented cloning (direct 'device-to-device' mode). Added ability to restore and explore all virtual machine image formats supported by qemu-nbd. (VirtualBox's VDI, VMWare's VMDK, Qemu's QCOW2, HyperV's VHDx, raw .dd/.img and many more). Added ability to restore and explore images created by all remaining open-source imaging frontends. (Redo Rescue, Foxclone, FSArchiver, Redo v0.9.2 and very-early handling of FOG Project images). Added ability to customize compression format (gzip, zstandard, uncompressed) and compression level. Implemented remaining Clonezilla image restore logic to improve handling of many corner cases." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
CentOS 8.4.2105
Johnny Hughes has announced the availability of an updated release of CentOS, a Linux distribution compiled from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The new version is labelled as CentOS 8.4.2105 and is derived from RHEL 8.4: "We are pleased to announce the general availability of the latest version of CentOS Linux 8. Effectively immediately, this is the current release for CentOS Linux 8 and is tagged as 2105, derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 source code. Updates released since the upstream release are all posted, across all architectures. We strongly recommend every user apply all updates, including the content released today, on your existing CentOS Linux 8 machine by just running 'dnf update'. Of particular note, this release adds the following new versions of software in optional module streams: Python 3.9, SWIG 4.0, Subversion 1.14, Redis 6, PostgreSQL 13, MariaDB 10.5. Several rolling AppStream have been rebased to newer versions: LLVM Toolset 11.0.0, Rust Toolset 1.49.0, Go Toolset 1.15.7." See the release announcement and release notes for more information.
* * * * *
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: 2,473
- Total data uploaded: 38.1TB
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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) |
Writing an ISO/IMG file to a thumb drive
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about using the wget tool to download and immediately write an ISO file to a thumb drive. While not a common approach, using wget is one of many tools which can write a downloaded file to a thumb drive. Which tool to you typically use? Let us know if we missed your tool in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on protecting a computer against physical access in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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For writing ISO files to a thumb drive I use
| cat: | 7 (0%) |
| cURL: | 5 (0%) |
| dd: | 674 (33%) |
| Startup Disk Creator: | 103 (5%) |
| wget: | 14 (1%) |
| Another command line tool: | 52 (3%) |
| Another desktop application: | 1201 (58%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 14 June 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 • Opinion Poll (by Ghost 67 on 2021-06-07 00:41:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
I ticked the 'dd' box because I always use gnome-disk-utility to burn iso's to usb, and GDU uses dd to do it if I recall right.
2 • ISO to thumb drive answer (by Mike S on 2021-06-07 00:50:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hello, you haven't actually answered the question posed by skip-a-step properly. They want the ISO converted to a BOOTABLE form. wget won't do that, it will just save the ISO as it is.
3 • ISO to thumb (by DaveW on 2021-06-07 00:59:31 GMT from United States)
When creating a bootable thumb drive with a single ISO, I use either Brasero or Etcher, depending on which is available. However, now I am using Ventoy, which allows multiple ISO files on a single thumb drive. The ISO files just have to be copied to the thumb drive.
If I had to download anything to a thumb drive, had no disk available to catch it, and needed to validate it before writing it to the drive, I would use a RAM drive (assuming there was enough memory).
4 • ISO to thumb drive (by Jesse on 2021-06-07 01:19:02 GMT from Canada)
@2: "They want the ISO converted to a BOOTABLE form. wget won't do that, it will just save the ISO as it is."
ISO files are bootable. You don't need to do anything to them to convert them. They are naturally in a bootable state.
5 • Parole (by Ken on 2021-06-07 01:19:57 GMT from United States)
I have never gotten Parole to work. Ever. Across multiple OSes and devices. I see we had the same experience.
6 • Codecs on openSUSE (by Charlie on 2021-06-07 01:39:34 GMT from Hong Kong)
I recently just know that it's just one line of command to install codecs on openSUSE:
# zypper in opi && opi codecs
This should do fine ;)
7 • An ISO file is a file. It is not arranged to boot. (by nooneatall on 2021-06-07 03:17:07 GMT from United States)
You seriously jumped the shark on this.
To actually boot from an ISO file it must be put on bootable media in a certain definite way so that the first sector is marked as executable loader that then finds the main code. Amirite?
This is so basic that Wikipedia doesn't explicitly state, but in my early days I put an ISO file on a CD and wondered why didn't boot...
8 • wrting to hybrid ISO's using dd (by vern on 2021-06-07 03:53:52 GMT from United States)
I have an alias to tell me what my sdX are. The alias echo's out my sdX', then I just copy&paste the correct 'dd' command.
alias hyb='echo "sudo dd if= of=/dev/sdc bs=8M"&&lsblk'
9 • Regarding Fedora's OOM killer (by Scott Dowdle on 2021-06-07 04:02:07 GMT from United States)
Fedora was using earlyoom but with the release of Fedora 34, they switched to systemd-oomd. systemd-oomd kills via cgroups... which is fine when you are using GNOME or KDE which have both been modified to start programs in separate cgroups. The other desktop environments and window managers... say like their new i3 spin... do not... and everything running under them are typically under a single cgroup. The practical effect of that is if anything under the DE needs to be killed, the DE and everything under it, being in the same cgroup, is going to be killed. The solution to that would be to have all of those DEs and WMs update how programs get executed such that everything is started under a separate cgroup, or to disable systemd-oomd and install / enable earlyoom... or at least that was a discussion on the #fedora IRC channel on the libera.chat iRC network last week.
10 • Poll (by Andy Figueroa on 2021-06-07 04:18:05 GMT from United States)
Not enough choices in the poll. I'm eclectic and use best too for the situation. I didn't mark anything in the poll.
11 • How did you do that Jesse (by Flyingalone on 2021-06-07 04:29:16 GMT from Australia)
How did you do that Jesse
Sometimes a Distro will freeze up and with no mouse or keyboard I'm stranded, I ask, How did you do that on the terminal because my only option is the power button when set up in setting gives a supposedly soft shut down still there is no guarantee of that soft shutdown, so your method interests me greatly.
12 • Testing OpenSUSE (by Microlinux on 2021-06-07 05:04:26 GMT from France)
OpenSUSE has always had a special focus on KDE. Currently OpenSUSE Leap has the cleanest Plasma implementation you'll ever find. As far as I can tell, testing OpenSUSE with Xfce is a bit like ordering deer in a fish restaurant.
13 • Opinion poll (by zenobit on 2021-06-07 06:03:36 GMT from Czechia)
Ventoy - A New Bootable USB Solution
14 • Writing to a thumb drive. (by Mr B on 2021-06-07 06:05:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
I use Balena Etched for a single iso, Ventoy for multiples and Raspberry Pi imager for micro SD cards inside a thumb drive reader. I have had decent results with Mind's built-in utility too.
15 • Pesky auto completion (by Mr B on 2021-06-07 06:08:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
That should have been Etcher and Mint.
16 • USB boot with ventoy. (by Alan L on 2021-06-07 06:26:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Another comment for ventoy. Having a drive of iso files makes life so much easier for me. 1 USB to rule them all.
Need to boot a distro, use ventoy USB.
Need to share an iso with a colleague, give them the ventoy USB to copy from.
Also means you can verify the iso with shasum.
17 • ISO to thumb drive answer (by Mike S on 2021-06-07 07:12:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
@Jesse that's all well and good if you want to use it in VM but not for bare metal on a machine with no OS installed yet.
nooneatall is correct, the ISO needs authoring to the USB media in a state recognisable as a bootable device by EFI or Legacy BIOS. An ISO file written to the drive as an ISO file is next to pointless.
18 • Writing to a thumb drive (by Chris Whelan on 2021-06-07 07:18:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
I use the provided tool in the distribution I use - MX Linux. It is called MX Live USB Maker, and if using it to create an MX Linux thumb drive it ensures all the Live features will work.
It also works well with other distributions, essentially providing a GUI for dd.
19 • Re: Testing OpenSUSE (by A on 2021-06-07 07:22:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
@12 - you make a fair point in that openSUSE is often seen as the "KDE distro", but Xfce is offered by them, so it's quite legitimate to test it.
Additionally, the problems Jesse encountered are fairly universal with openSUSE no matter what DE you choose to use with it - the codecs issue is not a common one with desktop-focused distros these days and I wonder why they can't just ship them. Debian with non-free disabled plays videos, but openSUSE out of the box can't.
The "packman" repo has had problems this year - it went down for a time, rendering it impossible to install or update the codecs. The opensuse-community website from which the distro gets its "list of community repositories" is also frequently up and down. Relying on what seems to be one-guy infrastructure for this stuff is what turned me off openSUSE.
20 • Jing OS (by Hank on 2021-06-07 08:00:59 GMT from France)
Tried to look at release notes, got a message box my browser is not supported so can not use page.
Firefox 89 !. is not supported, Lost interest immediately.
21 • openSUSE (by Charlie on 2021-06-07 09:00:19 GMT from Hong Kong)
@19
openSUSE, which has its roots in Germany (previously in US), has quite strict copyright law which makes them unable to ship codecs by default, it's the same as Fedora. Though I am not sure about the situation in Debian.
Packman repo has never gone down, one of its mirror did went down, not sure why many people thought it's totally down. I use the gwdg.de mirror for years, and found no problems at all. It's not until that I visited Reddit and mailing list that I know people complaining "it's down".
22 • Etcher (by Roger on 2021-06-07 09:05:21 GMT from Belgium)
I use balenaEtcher these days. After watching Christopher Barnatt on his YouTube channel ExplainingComputers I switched to it. Before I was using Rufus and before that the whatever tool that comes with a Distro or UNetbootin. Some times with mixed results. My main Distro is Linux Mint so every new one that comes like this year Linux Mint 20 I make a DVD not the updated ones like 20.1, so I have DVDs and CD's from when I started using Linux Mint years ago. Never got rid of any Distro on CD or DVD from 1998. It's a sort of collection, many disappeared, some are not even in the list on DistroWatch.
23 • @19 (by Microlinux on 2021-06-07 09:05:48 GMT from France)
I've been running OpenSUSE Leap on a few dozen client machines as well as my own workstation and laptop, and I'm using it with quite a few third party repos. They work perfectly, but unlike distributions like Ubuntu, you have to know your way around the quirks of the distribution. If you choose to go with Zypper and repository priorities, everything works like a charm.
Here's my post-install configuration script for Leap 15.2, so you get the idea:
https://gitlab.com/kikinovak/opensuse/-/blob/master/leap-kde-setup.sh
24 • For writing ISO files to a thumb drive I use (by cemunal on 2021-06-07 09:18:32 GMT from Turkey)
for a hybrid linux iso image, i use only command "cp"
25 • OpenSuse (by Mitch on 2021-06-07 09:26:55 GMT from United States)
Using Etcher these days - just works. Having settled into a decade's long single distro - just works - I wanted to try a few others since it had been so long. Fedora 34 was delightful, but video issues...meh... And the same with OpenSuse, which I too liked with Gnome 40. @6 Had I known this simple fix...maybe.... Thanks Charlie, sometimes there a visible tree within the forest one just cannot see on their own!
In the end, I went back to my - just works - distro of a decade's choice. Thanks for the input peeps - keep comments coming. As I get older, when I sit down to compute, I just want it to work without working at it; but, it is still nice to play once in awhile!
26 • fixing openSUSE with GeckoLinux (by Jürgen Klinsmann on 2021-06-07 09:44:51 GMT from United States)
It's worth noting that some of the problems encountered by non-geek users of openSUSE -- like codecs -- can be remedied by using GeckoLinux. Fonts, codecs and cleanup of patterns when you uninstall an app are all on offer from Gecko.
27 • Writng an ISO (by James on 2021-06-07 09:57:50 GMT from United States)
I used to use unetbootin but now use etcher.
28 • @11 - How did you do that Jesse (by Davide on 2021-06-07 09:59:58 GMT from Italy)
++
Switch to second text console.
Usally you can try from F1 to F7
Traditionally the F7 console is the graphic screen (opensuse)
Some distro use the first console for graphic screen (kde neon and ubuntu i suppose)
F2- F6 usually are text console
Then you can login and reboot
Or you can press ++ that usually call an init 6 or systemctl reboot
29 • writing iso files onto usb (by seryou on 2021-06-07 10:10:47 GMT from Ukraine)
etcherdroid app on android
30 • OpenSuse review (by Otis on 2021-06-07 12:23:46 GMT from United States)
I tried it again and I don't know why, as I always end up feeling bad about it after struggling to get simple things done, more than is pointed out in the review. I don't get it.. that's an old distro and they still cannot provide desktop users with a smooth experience.
The notion that it's developed for power users who are fine with not being able to do some simple things without taking extra steps because they can do complex things more easily seems like an okay way of looking at it. But does that mean it narrows OpenSuse's number of users as a base intentionally?
Okay.
31 • ISO writer (by kc1di on 2021-06-07 12:25:17 GMT from United States)
I tend to use Etcher or Mint's usb writer. both work well.
32 • @28 & @11 • How did you do that (by zcatav on 2021-06-07 12:32:01 GMT from Turkey)
@28
@11 suffered freezing with non working mouse and keyboard I think. At these stuations only two options are avaliable; power button or removing battery.
I exprienced it especially on Pop!_OS with their Lemu7. I think some touchpad or driver problems trigger it and usually occurs on battery power.
33 • ISO writer (by 99 on 2021-06-07 12:48:23 GMT from United States)
Etcher for Linux and Rufus for Windows
34 • ISO writer (by Carlos Felipe Araújo on 2021-06-07 13:18:27 GMT from Brazil)
Mint Stick is the best and easy tool
35 • Bootable USB (by John on 2021-06-07 13:52:52 GMT from Canada)
Another vote for Ventoy :-) Started using that a couple of months ago and it is awesome! Just copy as many ISO files to the USB stick that can fit, and then you can boot any of them.
36 • ISO files and frozen desktop (by Jesse on 2021-06-07 14:30:00 GMT from Canada)
@11: "Sometimes a Distro will freeze up and with no mouse or keyboard I'm stranded, I ask, How did you do that on the terminal "
Sometimes when the desktop locks up you can still use Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a terminal. Then you can sign in with your username and password. Then run "reboot" or "sudo reboot", depending on your user's access, to restart the computer.
If that doesn't work for you then you can use the "magic keys" to force a reboot if the kernel is working at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key#Uses
@7 and @17: "To actually boot from an ISO file it must be put on bootable media in a certain definite way so that the first sector is marked as executable loader that then finds the main code. Amirite?"
Sort of, but not really. An ISO or IMG file provided by a distribution is a bit-for-bit copy of bootable media. You don't need to do anything special to it, it's already in bootable form. You just need to transfer it to the drive in question.
What I think Mike S and nooneatall are getting confused with here is that if you _save_ an ISO file as a data file to an existing filesystem on a thumb drive then the ISO isn't bootable. This is because it's saved as a data file on the thumb drive. This isn't what I'm doing in the tutorial. I'm not saving the downloaded file to a filesystem. I'm doing a raw write directly to the drive itself. In this case device /dev/sdb.
If I were saving the file as a data file on a filesystem of the thumb drive my command would look like this: wget -O /media/drive/mydistro.iso https://example.com/my-distro.iso
But that's not what I'm doing. I'm writing the file bit-for-bit directly to the storage device: wget -O /dev/sdb https://example.com/my-distro.iso
These result in completely different outcomes. The first would save the file as just another file on the thumb drive's filesystem. The latter overwrites the data at the start of the thumb drive, making it bootable and setting up its own filesystems.
Basically what I'm doing in the tutorial is coming two processes into one line. Instead of doing
wget http://example.com/my-distro.iso ; dd if=mydistro.iso of=/dev/sdb
I'm just writing the file directly to device sdb as it's downloading.
I think where the confusion comes in is people get so used to hearing "Don't save the file directly to the thumb drive, download it and use tool _whatever_ to write it." This advice is intended to avoid having people write their ISO as a data file to an existing filesystem. But in truth you can just overwrite the target device and it accomplishes the same thing.
37 • Waiting List (by ArchCraft and Salient OS on 2021-06-07 15:39:40 GMT from United States)
Hi - I love keeping up on all the various distros through your site - great job. Just wanted to highlight two distros that I think are very deserving of a spot on your list, but are currently both on your waiting list. Not sure what the criteria is for making it to the main list, but just wanted to put my vote in for these two.
They're both arch-based, offer calamares installation to guide the user through the process and provide beautiful and thoughtful desktop environment customizations and package lists. ArchCraft provides heavily customized OpenBox and BSPWM window manager themes and Salient is designed for creators and gamers and is also beautiful. Both provide standout user experiences.
Thanks! Jason
38 • the comment above this (by Jason Lawrence on 2021-06-07 15:41:22 GMT from United States)
I obviously wasn't paying attention - the comment above is from me ABOUT Salient OS and ArchCraft -- not authored by them. Apologies.
39 • Live USBs (by Dave on 2021-06-07 15:46:40 GMT from United States)
Ironically, I haven't found a Linux application for testing live Linux distros that's as convenient as the Windows-only YUMI Multiboot USB Creator, especially the Portable Apps version.
40 • Writing iso files to Bootable Flash Drive (by Bobbie Sellers on 2021-06-07 16:14:39 GMT from United States)
In PCLinux OS we have ddCopy which will format, name, and write .iso files to a Flash Drive
of a adequate size. It will also write .img files that are bootable.
We have other tools to make Iso files from our working installation and run
them with persistence or to use as rescue/re-install disks/FD. We got Tools.
I used to make a lot of bootable flash drives for the LUG. I will be making fewer in
the future as I use VirtualBox to demonstrate new releases to the LUG. We did a
survey by the way on whether people were interested in trying out new distros
and the majority of the respondents were not interested in trying the new
rather preferring to use the tools they were accustomed to using.
bliss - boots & runs a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos.
On my old Dell Latitude E6540 currently running Linux 5.12.9 but PCLinux
may not be for new users of Linux or people reluctant to use the PC Linux
Forum.
41 • Not VENTOY (by vern on 2021-06-07 16:16:27 GMT from United States)
I use Ventoy also, but as stated, I don't think the poll would include Ventoy:
" Writing an ISO/IMG file to a thumb drive"
The poll is about how to get a bootable thumb drive, NOT how to execute the ISO, which Ventoy does very well.
42 • dd for ISO to thumb drive (by TheTKS on 2021-06-07 16:51:29 GMT from Canada)
I don’t always write ISOs to thumb drives, but when I do, I write with Dos Des.
- TKS, not the most interesting man in the world
43 • ISO disk space (by Elongated Mast on 2021-06-07 17:01:57 GMT from Germany)
Judging by the question, this person is already using Linux. There are many ways to reduce disk usage by the OS, by tweaking or turning off reserved space (tmp and what not), etc. If your OS never uses the swap space, you can free that up too (or reduce its size). Another workaround is, assuming the largest ISOs are around 4GiB, download it to one stick (8GB sticks are very cheap these days, if they still make them), then write to the other stick from there. I have never seen a PC or laptop with only one USB port, unless they are all borked except one. Yes, USB ports die, it happened to me once, not the actual port, the 3rd party garbage chip that controlled it. Hopefully you have USB 3.0.x ports, they're extremely fast, they are on my lappy, if you do, by USB 3.0.x or higher compatible stick(s).
44 • just ventoy (by MolnarMilan on 2021-06-07 18:25:09 GMT from Hungary)
im using just ventoy to make bootable usb. :) easy to use and just copied iso to ventoyized usb.
45 • Happy 20th year Distrowatch! (by Grey on 2021-06-07 18:33:15 GMT from Canada)
Twenty years ago you became the depository and authority on Linux. And with that introduced me to my first Linux flavour. Thank you and happy 20th.
46 • Writing ISOs to a USB stick (by eco2geek on 2021-06-07 19:19:24 GMT from United States)
There's a popular utility named Etcher (its full name is actually balenaEtcher), which people have mentioned above. It will write bootable ISOs to a USB stick after you provide a valid URL of an ISO, without having to first save the ISO to disk.
Etcher's GUI is easy to use.
Personally I usually save the ISO to my hard drive and then use Mint's ISO writing utility, which is reliable, but Etcher's "Flash from URL" feature is pretty fast (depending on your bandwidth).
47 • DD (by Basilio on 2021-06-07 21:49:00 GMT from Italy)
To burn an ISO to a pendrive I use dd. First launch:
lsscsi
to find the pendrive identifier (for example /dev/sdf), then:
dd if=xyz.iso of=/dev/sdf status=progress
To format - instead - a pendrive in fat32, I find the identifier with "fdisk -l", then as root:
umount /dev/sdf
mkfs.vfat -n "PEN" -I /dev/sdf
Of course having a program like Isodumper (mageia) would simplify things a lot.
48 • iso writing (by pengxuin on 2021-06-07 22:21:52 GMT from New Zealand)
@47. Of course having a program like Isodumper (mageia) would simplify things a lot.
absolutely.
write that ISO to USB - Isodumper does it.
need to add a persistent partition to that Live? tick that box and Isodumper does it.
Did I mention it also does a shasum check to confirm the job is done and dusted.
did you want to back up that USB? Isodumper does it.
did you want to format that USB? Isodumper does it.
not sure about writing direct from a URL, something to try!
49 • Writing an ISO to USB (by dale661 on 2021-06-07 22:52:23 GMT from United States)
dd if="path to .iso" of="usb system label" bs=(1M for BSD or 4M for Linux) conv=sync status=progress
50 • Hmm, am I straying into BIG MAGIC!? (by nooneatall on 2021-06-08 00:02:18 GMT from United States)
Searched use to directly make bootable -- doesn't seem often used, no examples specifiying ISO came up...
Don't have hardware handy so have to regard that as voodoo until can experiment more.
If works, then is dangerous! Would overwrite most key part of ANY bootable device, right? One character of woozy thinking to type "h" instead of "s" and you have to re-install all on main HD? Is that true?
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. So I tried just a web page. The binary I have rejected "-O", but the verbose worked, adding skip security:
>wget --output-document=FILE --no-check-certificate https://...
I guess thanks for enlightening with yet another way to destroy a system...
51 • OpenSUSE & Codecs (by Joseph on 2021-06-08 00:47:53 GMT from United States)
@21
All OpenSUSE needs to do is trigger a script that runs on first boot to download and install the codecs; they wouldn't actually have distributed them themselves. This is how OpenSUSE used to install Microsoft's fonts 10 years ago, firmware for a certain Broadcom WiFi chip, etc.
Over the last several years OpenSUSE has been so thoroughly infiltrated and dominated by SUSE that they live in quaking fear of their German overlords. Their overlords' obsession has been to turn OpenSUSE into SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which they've nearly done with this release. Once upon a time OpenSUSE competed squarely with Fedora; today it competes with Debian Stable. It used to be cutting but not bleeding edge; now it's antiquated even upon release. The only OpenSUSE worth using nowadays is the rolling release, Tumbleweed, which doesn't seem to have become SUSEified yet.
No one on Earth ever asked for OpenSUSE to be based on ancient SUSE packages, but here we are. OpenSUSE went from a distro that released every eight months to a distro that only has significant updates once every three years (15.3 being another incremental update).
The distro's been murdered by SUSE and almost no OpenSUSE user said a word. :-( It's been terrible to watch over the 11 years I've run OpenSUSE.
52 • Writing an ISO/IMG file to a thumb drive (by Bernard Cohen on 2021-06-08 01:13:40 GMT from Canada)
I'm here to sing the praises of an elegantly written bash script called 'bootiso' that does all the heavy lifting around creating a proper bootable thumb drive. Works well with Windows ISOs.
May be downloaded here:
https://github.com/jsamr/bootiso
53 • Using GRUB loop mount feature to boot ISO files (by kermit on 2021-06-08 02:56:19 GMT from Philippines)
An alternative to writing an ISO image to a thumb drive is to boot the ISO file directly using GRUB's loop mount capability.
Since hard drive capacity is an issue in the initial question, it is possible to download the ISO file directly to the thumb drive, then create a custom GRUB entry to boot off that ISO file.
Expanding on this, it is also possible to install grub to the thumb drive, then manipulate grub.cfg of the thumb drive to make it boot the downloaded ISO file, making the thumb drive itself bootable without actually writing the ISO file to it.
A more detailed description of this approach can be found in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multiboot_USB_drive.
54 • Thank You (by Flyingalone on 2021-06-08 03:05:26 GMT from Australia)
Truly a big Thank you to Jesse and all the other people who commented
Having read your extra notes in @36 about direct download to a stick that is something I got to try out real soon with Salient OS and ArchCraft OS
I never had the idea to try TTY when keyboard (seems to be) frozen
@37 in the Arch family mm looks like I might to go a play with oops I mean work with one or both good to know Thanks
@25 I just want it to work without working at it; but, it is still nice to play once in awhile!
So very true for a lot of Linux users
Distrowatch Newsletter is always a good read and a good way to start the week except this week the tutorials are really read thanks Jesse and everyone at DW also all the comment contributors .
Love Linux
55 • dd forever (by Jyrki on 2021-06-08 03:37:47 GMT from Czechia)
it's easy to use, it's everywhere (whatever Linux or BSD) and it just works.
The idea behind ventoy is interesting, but I never made BSD to boot this way (their ISO is not hybrid and ventoy says their img is not bootable) so it doesn't pay off. The only Linux I use is Artix.
I was surprised to see wget there. How to use it for this purpose? I assume it's mistake and it shouldn't be there.
56 • FreeBSD - dd - .iso - USB - Kali Mata come to me (by Trihexagonal on 2021-06-08 05:45:47 GMT from United States)
To use the eyes of the Dark Mother, I dd an .iso to an unmounted USB on one of my FreeBSD boxen and use that USB stick to boot a Live instance of Kali without persistence.
dd is all I've ever used and never had a problem doing it this way. I keep a txt file with commands I've used over the years as reference:
dd if=./debian-live-9.0.1-amd64-lxde.iso of=/dev/da0 bs=512k
dd if=blackarchlinux-live.iso of=/dev/da0 bs=512M
dd if=./kali-linux-1.0.9a-i386.iso of=/dev/da0 bs=512k
That command what I used to install Debian to the HDD
Kali 1.0.9 was released 2014-10-02 and the version I liked best.
57 • iso to usb stick (by Simon on 2021-06-08 11:15:47 GMT from New Zealand)
cp works just fine...i've done it with countless iso files. cp foo.iso /dev/sdb or whatever. done in seconds and boots just fine. maybe folks have lousy computers that suck at booting from usb, that they need to muck around with dd like it's the dark ages.
58 • dd (by Cheker on 2021-06-08 14:03:25 GMT from Portugal)
When using dd, if I don't specify blocksize, is it safe to assume it'll pick a sane default by itself?
Shoutouts to Ventoy, it mostly works, but Arch distros seem to not like it very much.
59 • dd (by Jesse on 2021-06-08 15:19:54 GMT from Canada)
@58:
Yes, the default block size is specified in the man page for dd. On most Linux systems the default is 512.
60 • Jesse, Opensuse Leap is an LTS distribution (by vw72 on 2021-06-08 15:19:59 GMT from United States)
OpenSuse Leap 15 is the LTS, not 15.3. The ".3" is just the most recent service pack. Normal progression is about 1 year between service packs, so beginning with 15.0, it has been around for three years. and 15.3 would be supported for 18 months giving 4.5yrs of support. However, openSUSE has announced that there will be two more service packs (15.4 and 15.5) to keep consistent with SLES, so that pushes the total support window out 6.5yrs for openSUSE 15.
The LTS status is also why the packages are somewhat outdated. While they do receive security patches and the like, they are basically the versions that were available in 2018 when Leap 15 first shipped (some teams might update to later packages, such as the XFCE team did). For those who want/need the latest packages, there is openSUSE Tumbleweed, which is a rolling release. But the purpose of Leap is to be stable as in unchanging (both Leap and Tumbleweed go through a lot of testing and are also stable in terms of not breaking).
With the exception of the misunderstanding of how the point releases related to the LTS, it was a good review.
61 • openSUSE Leap (by Jesse on 2021-06-08 15:38:08 GMT from Canada)
60: "OpenSuse Leap 15 is the LTS, not 15.3. The ".3" is just the most recent service pack. Normal progression is about 1 year between service packs, so beginning with 15.0, it has been around for three years. and 15.3 would be supported for 18 months giving 4.5yrs of support."
This isn't really an accurate view of openSUSE's releases. openSUSE 15.0 is no longer supported, and hasn't been for a while. (See https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:15.0)
Users need to upgrade to 15.1, 15.3, 15.3, etc to maintain support. You can't just install openSUSE 15.0 and leave it for 4.5 years. The user needs to keep upgrading through each point release. This is in sharp contrast to the way all other distributions which claim to be LTS operate. If you install Debian 10 or Ubuntu 20.04, you don't need to update to a new point release each year.
This disqualifies openSUSE from being considered a LTS distribution.
Another problem is LTS releases typically maintain static package versions, except for hardware drivers and security updates. openSUSE will sometimes upgrade other packages (Xfce 4.14 to 4.16 as an example). This makes openSUSE releases more akin to minor version bumps rather than a true LTS release.
62 • thanks for the magic show (by fonz on 2021-06-08 18:09:20 GMT from Indonesia)
opensuse testers who want a more streamlined experience, try gecko(linux), #37 ATM at the PHR. its like what manjaro and co do to streamline arch. thankfully suse isnt as hard to play with than fedora. i prefer having stuff working OOTB regardless of philosophy, and i dont think ive heard any lawsuits against gecko for including restricted stuff.
the magic show in the comments was the highlight for me on this weekly. huge kudos for the magic sysrq and writing the ISO directly. learning something new everyday is fun regardless of age, now time to try it for !FUN!
63 • What's wrong with Parole? (by whoKnows on 2021-06-08 18:16:17 GMT from Switzerland)
@5 • Parole (by Ken from United States)
"I have never gotten Parole to work. Ever. Across multiple OSes and devices. I see we had the same experience."
I never got it fail. What problem you're talkin' about? "XV"?
64 • DeadSuSe (by whoKnows on 2021-06-08 18:26:38 GMT from Switzerland)
@51 • OpenSUSE & Codecs (by Joseph from United States)
"The distro's been murdered by SUSE and almost no OpenSUSE user said a word. :-( It's been terrible to watch over the 11 years I've run OpenSUSE."
Maybe because there are no more WHATEVERsUsE user left? ;) :)
65 • LTS in openSUSE (by Daniel on 2021-06-08 21:44:39 GMT from Czechia)
@61: It is contrast to Ubuntu LTS and Debian. FreeBSD keeps basic system, but packages are constantly updated in ports. RHEL has minor version with major gnome/systemd updates. Centos Stream is rolling LTS. Solaris is stable base and constantly updated opensource packages.
So yes, "no maintanance LTS" is only Ubuntu and Debian. Others are LTS in meaning of backward compatibility and mix of outdated and updated compontents.
Note: I don't know how RHEL, but SLE provides LTSS, which is like "Ubuntu LTS"
66 • Re: Parole (by Ken on 2021-06-09 00:36:44 GMT from United States)
@63
The problem that it won't play videos. Even when I tell it to download the codecs. Even when I download them myself through the package manager. Nothing I've tried has ever solved the problem.
67 • Re: Re: Parole (by whoKnows on 2021-06-09 08:11:09 GMT from Switzerland)
@66 • Re: Parole (by Ken from United States)
"The problem that it won't play videos. Even when I tell it to download the codecs. Even when I download them myself through the package manager. Nothing I've tried has ever solved the problem."
Can't agree on "it won't play videos", because ...
https://ibb.co/6v6Zhys
However, in some cases, "No XV" setting might be necessary.
https://ibb.co/S7SKF6G
Please take a look at the screenshots.
68 • Parole or Codecs Issue? (by whoKnows on 2021-06-09 11:00:56 GMT from Switzerland)
66 • Re: Parole (by Ken from United States)
"Even when I tell it to download the codecs. Even when I download them myself through the package manager."
Which GStreamer version did you install? 0.10 or 1.0 series?
https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/frequently-asked-questions/getting.html?gi-language=c
69 • The "project" should die yesterday, rather than tomorrow (by whoKnows on 2021-06-09 18:09:16 GMT from Switzerland)
I wonder, how much the project leader and the few other people around him earn with open source ... otherwise I can't really explain who and why would ever restart and who and why would ever need such a "project".
The very same person/ people who "made" and screwed the CentOS, do another "CentOS 2" project ... :) :) :)
And then comes the "good" news: "Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The project's latest version is a release candidate for Rocky Linux 8.4. A FOCUS has been placed ON KERNEL IMPROVEMENTS, networking, and security."
They are NOT supposed to "focus" nor to "improve" — they are supposed TO CLONE RHEL 1:1 for NO money, so that I don't have to do it on my own.
😉
(P.S. SOME will understand what I tried to tell them here.)
70 • SUSE advice (by Dxvid on 2021-06-10 00:52:37 GMT from Sweden)
Some tips:
- If you're a regular home user just use the official VLC download for media, it just works out of the box. Here's the 1-click-link, just follow the guide that pops up:
https://download.videolan.org/SuSE/SLEap_15.3/vlc.ymp
- If you for some reason don't like VLC just google "opensuse media codecs" and you'll find several guides among the top 10 search results, one of them will be the official guide:
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installing_codecs_from_Packman_repositories
Another will be:
https://opensuse-guide.org/codecs.php
Another one will be:
https://opensuse-community.org/
The main reason why Jesse encountered problems was because he used Xfce and the community sites only makes it easy to install "illegal" codecs on KDE and Gnome. So stick with KDE or Gnome and just use google if you're a beginner.
Understand the 2 versions:
- Leap is focused on stability and pretty good security out of the box, very little or nothing needs to be tweaked to get a stable classical server, transactional server or stable KDE or Gnome desktop. Stability and security is better than Ubuntu and Debian, plus it comes with BTRFS properly configured so in case you do a mistake or install a third party software that has bugs you just do a rollback and in 30s everything is like before. There's also YAST2 which integrates many important settings and can be quite handy for sysadmins so they can work faster and need less googling for answers on stackexchange. I've found no better OS if you need things done effectively as a sysadmin and where you unlike Ubuntu actually can trust that updates won't break your server.
https://www.opensuse.org/#Leap
- Rolling release Tumbleweed is the opposite from Leap, here everything is new and cool, most packages can be found in repo within a couple of days from release, but occasionally things break when the repo maintainers try out some new packages but then you can just do a rollback and then in 30s everything is fine again.
https://www.opensuse.org/#Tumbleweed
Another great feature of OpenSUSE
- about 2 months after the release of a new version OpenSUSE adds some nice extra repos for Leap which are also maintained by employees like the main repos, but labeled Experimental as they are less tested than the official repos. They are great if you need to find the latest version of a package to make your server or desktop support the latest version of WordPress or some third party application that has certain dependencies, so that you can get the best of two worlds both stability and new stuff:
https://software.opensuse.org/search
71 • OpenSuse advice (by Otis on 2021-06-10 12:10:52 GMT from United States)
@70 some of that does not wash with my experience (and the experiences of many others, as we read reviews around the various tech sites. In particular is the notion that just staying away from XFCE and going with Gnome or KDE will yield a smooth experience with VLC (or any other codec-bound media application).
Also, that about "only 30 seconds later everything is fine/back to normal" because BTRFS captures the system as it should be is often not the case; I struggled with that several times in several distros including OpenSuse and found it to be a bit of a pipe dream, although I will concede that it CAN work as long as your start point is flaw-free.
Back to the codec thing: They often have to be activated, not just downloaded and installed. There are a few sites which show the code for doing that.. but heck, why mess with such things if one can go with a distro that (here it comes) just works out of the box in the first place? Suse of any flavor has not given me that since about 9.2, many years ago.
72 • ISO to USB disk (by Karel VdBogaert on 2021-06-10 12:56:14 GMT from Belgium)
I am using Etcher (appImage) to write ISO files to a USB disk.
I use the same appImage in openSUSE leap 15.3, Mint 20.1 Ulyssa and kubuntu 20.04.2.
As an alternative, i started testing with succes ventoy with multiple ISO files.
73 • Iso To Usb (by Stone on 2021-06-10 22:43:04 GMT from United States)
I have tried the mint writer but is full of bugs, also tried sudo dd don't like writing so many characters
Now i Am using Balena Etcher and it works well for most distributions that i have in usb; another problem that mint usb writer has it locks the usb sticks and reformatting
them is only possible with disks.
The question I have is how to use a usb stick as hard drive?
74 • dd (by z=z² on 2021-06-10 23:38:21 GMT from New Zealand)
I've always used dd. @58/@59 - I leave the blocksize alone as the USB won't boot when I get it 'wrong.'
75 • wget to write ISO to USB stick (by pepa65 on 2021-06-11 07:29:20 GMT from Thailand)
@2 @17
The command given by Jesse works, it doesn't put a file in a filesystem, it gets `wget` to directly write to the USB device (/dev/sdb in the example). And `cp` can be used in the same way, like `cp /path/to/iso /dev/sdb`.
76 • USB as HDD (by whoKnows on 2021-06-11 09:53:54 GMT from Switzerland)
@73 • Iso To Usb (by Stone from United States)
"The question I have is how to use a usb stick as hard drive?"
If you really, really want, you just need to flip the 'removable' bit.
That's usually done with a help of Hitachi Microdrive driver, or with a help of two ancient tools; one from Lexar (which is very picky on the USB devices) and another formatting tool from HP (which lost that capability in more recent versions, but the very old ones could do it with every SD/ USB).
https://www.getusb.info/usb-hack-turn-a-usb-stick-into-a-hard-drive-or-local-disk/
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-make-a-usb-flash-drive-appear-as-a-hdd
https://www.heise.de/download/product/hp-usb-disk-storage-format-tool-97463/download
77 • @61 openSUSE LTS for Jesse (by vw72 on 2021-06-11 16:39:46 GMT from United States)
Jesse,
You state in your message that openSUSE 15 is not LTS because the individual point releases are only supported for a year (actually six months after then next point release) while Ubuntu is fully supported for 5 years. That is not true.If you look at the 20.04.2 update, support ends April 2025. It was released in February 2021, so should be supported until February 2026.
What Ubuntu and derivatives do is when they come out with a point release such as 20.04.2, preceding point releases are automatically updated with the same packages (ie 20.04.1 and 20.04 all have the 20.04.2 packages).
The difference between openSUSE's method and Ubuntu's is that with Ubuntu, it is done automatically when the next point release is out, whereas openSUSE gives control to the user when to apply the update. openSUSE may refresh certain packages at that time, such as Firefox but effectively, Ubuntu and openSUSE are doing the same thing with the difference being whether or not the user gets to determine when to refresh.
Nobody would argue that SLES isn't a long term release just because they put out service packs. Same with Red Hat. Whether Ubuntu's way of updating LTS versions is better or not isn't the determining factor as to whether others over LTS versions. Some might argue that Ubuntu's way is inferior because most users will want/need updated applications (such as Firefox) and by not refreshing these packages with a point release requires reliance on third party repos which can increase instability.
Maybe you can run a poll with the question "Do you prefer a LTS version to update to new point releases automatically or give the user control as to when to update?"
78 • LTS (by Jesse on 2021-06-11 17:23:19 GMT from Canada)
@77: "If you look at the 20.04.2 update, support ends April 2025. It was released in February 2021, so should be supported until February 2026.
This isn't how Ubuntu works. The 20.04.2 "release" is basically just a media refresh with optional updated hardware support. The actual release (20.04) came out in April of 2020. It's supported through to 2025, five years of support. The media refreshes aren't new versions people need to upgrade to (the way openSUSE point releases work). People can just install Ubuntu 20.04 and keep applying security updates until 2025. The media refreshes mean fewer security updates to install, but otherwise are functionally the same.
This is not how openSUSE works. If you installed 15.0, it's now past its EOL and you need to upgrade it to 15.2 and then 15.3. This can introduce new package changes and version bumps, like with Xfce.
"Some might argue that Ubuntu's way is inferior because most users will want/need updated applications (such as Firefox) and by not refreshing these packages with a point release requires reliance on third party repos which can increase instability."
This isn't how Ubuntu works. Firefox is updated as new versions come out. Almost all distributions do this as a security measure. Keeping Firefox up to date doesn't require a third-party repo or any special effort from the user. It'll always be be brought up to date, with or without a media refresh,
79 • @78 (by vw72 on 2021-06-11 18:49:37 GMT from United States)
Jesse,
I think you are picking nits! If one installs Ubuntu and doesn't upgrade it from the original install or any point in the lifecycle, while it is technically supported, the support answer will always start with do an upgrade and see if the problem persists. The only difference between that and openSUSE is that openSUSE gives you a specific cut-off so you know you need to upgrade to get continued support instead of filing a support ticket and being told to do the upgrade at that time.
Whether one runs Ubuntu LTS or openSUSE Leap, the user must be current on the updates to get support. The difference in the process of how the user gets those updates.
With openSUSE Leap 15, the .1,.2 and .3 are service pack releases. They are not new distributions. They still have the same core as the previous version plus updated software where developers deemed important. 15.3 is openSUSE Leap with SUSE's SEL SP3 applied to it. If openSUSE and SUSE Enterprise Linux both share the same code base, how can openSUSE not be LTS and SEL is LTS?
With Ubuntu non-LTS, such as 20.10, they are developer releases and are not meant for normal use. They are test beds for implementing new features, etc. at least according to Canonical. That is not the case with the point releases of Leap, they are fully functioning versions of the base Leap version.
Even Windows uses this method. If you run Windows 10 and need support, the first thing they ask is which SP is installed and if not new enough, you must install the required one. Granted, openSUSE does offer the full point release as an install candidate, but one is free to change their repos to point to the new repos and do a distro upgrade (again, like many people do when moving between Ubuntu versions).
In the end, if one starts with the Leap 15 series and keeps it updated, they will have support for over five years, just like Ubuntu. The difference is in the processes to keep it updated, but not the support cycle, itself.
Again, I think you are picking nits, as am I, but it is frustrating when the way Ubuntu does things is considered the "normal" or "only" way.
80 • Booting dd'ed ISOs (by Justin on 2021-06-11 21:27:44 GMT from United States)
I believe dd if=distro.iso of=/dev/sdb works because Linux distros produce hybrid ISOs. This method does not work for something like a Windows 10 install disc because the ISO does not contain a bootable filesystem. The tools themselves are creating that for you, and even manual tutorials for Linux involve gparted and extracting files from the ISO. Why do these ISOs still boot in a VM? Booting from a virtual optical drive is handled differently from a mounted USB drive. I've forgotten the details but essentially the filesystem format is fixed, so I believe it's just known a priori. With a regular hard drive, the a priori location is just the first sector.
So, regarding the question, the method presented does work 99% of the time. Those claiming otherwise might be thinking of the one case I've cited above. In that one case, you can either (1) not care (using a VM, think MS sucks), (2) use the Media Creation Tool (small download, though it will save on your HDD, so this is probably out), (3) save the file on a USB and "double-click it" in Windows to have it do an upgrade, (4) save the ISO into a USB drive with something like GRUB that will loop mount the ISO as a virtual CD/DVD so that it can be booted. That last one is a pain given the DVD size exceeds the 4GB FAT32 limit for things like grub4dos, but those who can make grub2 do what they want could theoretically make this work.
Number of Comments: 80
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| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
Core GNU/Linux
Core was designed and constructed around one simple philosophy: to be the absolute minimum of what was required for a Linux operating system. Core was designed to be the basis for a larger, more complete operating system constructed by the end user. It contains only what was necessary to boot into Linux and download, compile and install other software packages.
Status: Discontinued
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| Tips, Tricks, Q&As | | Tips and tricks: Creating, removing, modifying, and ignoring aliases |
| Myths and misunderstandings: Linux Mint's security record |
| Questions and answers: Opening large files without slowing down the system |
| Tips and tricks: Adding an AppImage to the application menu |
| Tips and tricks: Copying a VCD |
| Tips and tricks: How to check the licenses of kernel modules |
| Tips and tricks: Command line weather, ionice, rename files, video preview snapshot, calendar, ls colour settings |
| Tips and tricks: Fun command line tricks |
| Tips and tricks: File encryption and cloud backup |
| More Tips & Tricks and Questions & Answers |
| 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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