 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 928, 2 August 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 30th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Fans of the Arch Linux distribution often point to the Arch community's vast collection of software as a strong reason to run the distribution. While the official Arch Linux repositories are relatively small, the community's Arch User Repository (AUR) is massive and provides access to a wide range of software. This has led some people to wonder if the same concept of community-provided build scripts could be useful on other distributions. This week we begin with a look at Pacstall, a project which aims to bring AUR-style packaging to Ubuntu. We also talk about Debian running on the M1-powered Apple Mac, openSUSE shutting down their community portal, and Haiku preparing to celebrate its 20th birthday while looking ahead of the upcoming beta 4 milestone. In this week's Questions and Answers column, we explore ways to improve performance on sluggish, modern computers. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and look ahead to scheduled releases, including the upcoming Debian 11 launch. In our Opinion Poll we would like to hear your thoughts on how we can handle projects that have already been added to the DistroWatch database which might not meet our current criteria for listing. Let us know how you think these situations should be handled in the comments. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (18MB) and MP3 (14MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Pacstall - AUR for Ubuntu
Back in May I briefly talked about Arch Linux's User Repository (also known as the AUR). Arch Linux itself has a relatively small collection of official software packages and so many members of the Arch community (and those who use its derivative distributions) run packages from the AUR. The AUR contains scripts provided by third-parties which enable software to be installed using scripts. While installing software this way manually can be tedious, there are any number of helper programs which assist Arch users in building and installing software from the AUR scripts.
As a result, Arch Linux, which has a relatively small number of official packages (11,945 at the time of writing) can offer an additional 70,500 through the AUR collection. This puts the combined collection of Arch software in a similar range as Debian and Ubuntu. In the article from May we touched on a number of methods other distributions use to augment their official repositories with third-party software. These methods included Nix, Copr, Slackbuilds, and personal package archives (PPA).
One project which has come along since then is called Pacstall. The Pacstall project aims to provide Ubuntu users with a third-party repository similar in style to Arch's, along with a convenient command line tool to automate most of the work. "Pacstall will attempt to become the AUR Ubuntu wishes it had. It takes the AUR and puts a spin on it, making it easier to install programs without scouring GitHub repos and the likes."
Pacstall can be set up using a Deb package or a single-line shell command. I decided to take Pacstall for a spin on Ubuntu MATE 21.04 to see how it would perform. Reading the description of the project I was uncertain of where third-party software scripts would be coming from. For instance, I was unclear as to whether Pacstall would use (and possibly translate) existing AUR scripts or if it would be duplicating the work of the AUR in a new approach. I was unable to find documentation which explained where these scripts came from and how many there were.
With a little looking around I discovered Pacstall learns how to install packages from another repository specific to this program. Which means it is not connected to or learning from the AUR, simply providing a similar service. At the time of writing there are about five dozen recipes for building third-party software in the Pacstall repository. So how well does it work?
Installing
The install script for Pacstall worked well enough. It appears to do some basic checks and then installs some dependencies, such as cURL and Stow. It also grabs some helper scripts from GitHub. The pacstall script is then added to our command path.
How it works
Once it has been installed, Pacstall works much the same way as other package managers. There are some basic command line flags we can use. For instance, running "pacstall -h" shows a list of commands the package manager recognizes. Running "pacstall -S name" will search for a package with a similar name.
Once we find a package we want to install we can download and build the software using "pacstall -I package-name" or remove it with "pacstall -R package-name. So far this all seems fairly straight forward. The "-U" flag will update Pacstall itself while the flag "-Up" will attempt to update software we've already installed. We can use the "-L" flag to list which programs have already been installed through Pacstall.
I attempted to install a handful of packages from Pacstall's repository. Something I appreciated was the install (-I) flag will offer to show us the build script it is going to run and give us the option of editing it before any actions are taken. This is helpful from a security perspective and means we can customize install scripts at the last moment.
One aspect of Pacstall I liked less was that it requires administrative access, but doesn't check to make sure it has the required access up front. Should we run "pacstall -I package" as a regular user (or without sudo) then the script will fail with a series of access errors rather than prompting for a password.
Pros and cons
I tried installing a series of packages from the Pacstall repository. The first thing I noticed was that several of the available packages are already in the Ubuntu repositories, making them redundant. In fact, a number of the available packages are even installed by default on Ubuntu MATE. Perhaps these are included in an effort to provide more up to date versions of the software already available in Ubuntu's repositories.
The next thing I feel is worth mentioning is Pacstall builds the open source components of packages from source code. This is a lengthy process for most packages. As an example, installing the bat package would take less than a minute using binary packages, but took over an hour when building it from source code.
In other words, Pacstall has a small repository, some of which is duplicating software already available to Ubuntu users, and it takes a long time to install, compared to a PPA or a Nix package. Hopefully Pacstall will grow quickly, possibly by importing and tweaking scripts from the AUR.
Of the packages I tried to install through Pacstall, most worked, though the Nemo file manager failed with an error simply saying there was a mismatched hash. This is probably an indication Nemo has been updated upstream while the Pacstall port has not, or something was corrupted during the download process. Either way, Pacstall bailed out after working on the Nemo port for about twenty minutes.
Conclusions
As you can gather from the last few paragraphs, Pacstall is in its early stages and still rough around the edges. It has a long way to go before it becomes as useful as the AUR it seeks to emulate, or other third-party repositories. However, if it can grow quickly then it has the potential to offer a one-stop solution for Ubuntu users who wish to either install third-party packages or who want more up to date software than what Ubuntu provides. This could, in the long run, be more convenient that the scattered, independently maintained collection of PPA repositories many Ubuntu users currently use and manage.
For now though I wonder if Pacstall is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist for most people. The AUR exists because Arch has a small official repository and its users needed a workaround. Ubuntu has a massive set of default repositories, plus Snaps, Flatpaks, and most third-party software developers provide installers or repositories for Ubuntu. It's rare to want to install something on Ubuntu that is not already packaged for the distribution. I'm curious to see what Pacstall can bring to users which the existing solutions do not provide.
I'm also curious to see how far this concept spreads. A few weeks after the Pacstall repository was announced, a similar concept for Debian appeared, called the Debian User Repository (DUR). This service aims to re-implement the AUR for Debian users. I will be curious to see if similar projects appear to offer the same service on other distributions.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
Debian runs on Apple's M1, openSUSE shuts down community portal, Haiku celebrates 20 years and plans beta 4
 Apple made a splash with one of their most recent products, a computer running the M1 ARM processor. The new platform is one which has drawn a lot of attention, but it has been incompatible with Linux distributions, until now. Alyssa Rosenzweig has posted a tweet with a screenshot of Debian running on the M1-powered Mac with a mainline Linux kernel. This paves the way for Debian, and other Linux distributions, to run on the young Apple machine.
* * * * *
 The openSUSE project has announced the openSUSE Community Portal is being shut down. Despite hosting over 20,000 active accounts, the project has been unable to find anyone to help maintain the community portal and is deactivating it. "Today, we need to announce the final shut down of our community portal. The reason is simple: while we asked multiple times for help and someone who wants to actively maintain and administrate the service, nobody stepped up. As we can not secure the application any longer without big time investments, we decided to shut it down and let it rest in peace instead." People who want to get help or collaborate with other community members can still make use of the openSUSE forums, wiki, and mailing lists.
* * * * *
 Haiku, the spiritual successor of the much-loved BeOS from the late nineties, continues its persistent march towards a usable alternative operating system. The recently-released beta 3 was an important milestone, but the developers are already planning the next big snapshot, the fourth beta, which is tentatively scheduled for release in January 2022: "After beta 3, there will be beta 4. Why are we thinking of beta 4 so soon, you might ask? Well, the time after a major release is often a time when activity tends to slump for a bit. We want to keep that momentum going, so we are thinking of what we can do for the next major release. We are considering putting on spotlight on many of Haiku's built-in apps. Many of them have been neglected for years and need a developer's TLC (tender, loving care). For example, the Mail app uses an older protocol, and the UI needs some improvement. To do this, we will put out Calls for Contributions, blog posts that let people know what needs work." In the meantime, fans of Haiku are invited to celebrate the project's upcoming 20th anniversary: "Now that beta 3 is released, the next big event on the cards is our 20th anniversary. If you go to the history page on this website, you can see that we started on the 18th of August 2001."
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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) |
Finding the performance bottleneck
Feeling-the-need-for-speed asks: I purchased two Dell Inspiron 5565 laptops for scientific use and video editing. They both have the A12-9700P APU with Radeon R7 Graphics. Both have 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD drives. I have openSUSE Tumbleweed installed as the OS.
My question is why my 10 year-old HP Pavilion G6 with an Intel i3-2310M CPU and Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 3000, 8GB of RAM, with a 500GB Toshiba HDD and openSUSE Tumbleweed runs circles around these two AMD-based laptops?
Doesn't AMD take full advantage of the Linux kernel (currently 5.12.4-1), or is there a different AMD processor that would make better use of the Linux operating system? I noticed that you use an AMD A9 for your reviews.
DistroWatch answers: My suspicion is that the CPU (Intel or AMD) is not the issue here. The processor you are running should be more than up to the task. You have lots of RAM, lots of disk space, and a strong processor in both the new machines. AMD and Intel basically use the same instruction set and I've never encountered any normal use cases where you'd see a noticeable performance difference due to the brand of CPU in the machine - all other things being equal.
What almost always turns out to be the issue in these circumstances is the combination of video driver and video card being used, especially if you are using a desktop environment which either uses 3-D features (Cinnamon, GNOME, and Unity fall into this category) or the desktop has compositing or special effects enabled.
With desktop environments, games, and visual effects which use 3-D capabilities generally one of two things happens. On systems where the video card and the video driver both support 3-D effects, the rendering of these effects is handled by the video card. This is very efficient and the visual effects render smoothly without impacting the performance of the rest of the system. However, if either the video card or the video driver do not properly handle 3-D effects then the drawing of the effect is taken on by the CPU. This is sometimes called "software rendering" and it is quite slow in comparison. When software rendering is taking place the whole system tends to feel unresponsive and the desktop tends to lag.
If you spend much time on the forums of distributions which use 3-D desktops as the default you'll soon see dozens of posts asking why top of the line computers are performing poorly. The fix is almost always to switch to a better suited video driver. This can often be done in your distribution's package manager or Additional Drivers utility. Often switching from the default open source driver to a proprietary video driver provided by the manufacturer will solve the problem.
Alternatively, if you do not want to install a non-free driver on your system, you can often avoid performance issues by turning off visual effects and compositing in your desktop's settings panel. You may also wish to switch to a classic 2-D desktop such as KDE Plasma, Xfce, or LXQt as these should perform well without the need for extra software rendering.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Grml 2021.07
Michael Prokop has announced the release of Grml 2021.07, the latest stable build of the project's live Linux distribution focusing on the needs of system administrators. It is based on Debian's "testing" branch. "Grml - new stable release 2021.07 available. This Grml release provides fresh software packages from Debian testing ('bullseye'). As usual it also incorporates current hardware support and fixes known bugs from the previous Grml release. Important changes: the Grml IRC channel moved to OFTC; the network configuration tool netcardconfig no longer prompts for uncommon wireless/WiFi options, to simplify and speed up its usage. New features: grml-terminalserver - support for UEFI PXE boot (now supporting BIOS boot via pxelinux and EFI boot via GRUB); netcardconfig - support for enabling blocked devices via rfkill; forensic mode - improved handling for block device changes and parent device handling; grml-chroot - support efivarfs in EFI environments...." Read the brief release announcement and the detailed release notes for further information.
siduction 21.2.0
Ferdinand Thommes has announced the release of siduction 21.2.0, the latest build of the project's distribution set with a choice of Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, LXDE, LXQt and Xfce desktops, all based on Debian's "unstable" branch: "The siduction team is very proud that for our 10th birthday (yes, we started out in July 2011) we can present siduction 2021.2.0 to you. This one is dubbed 'Farewell' in remembrance of our friend Axel, who passed away way too early. So no, 'farewell' does not mean we are going away. The highlight of this release is the resuscitated siduction manual, that goes back to the days of sidux, which some of you will remember as a former incarnation of siduction. What's new this time around? The flavours we offer for siduction 2021.2 are KDE Plasma 5.20.5, LXQt 0.16.0, Cinnamon 4.8.6, Xfce 4.16, LXDE 11, X.Org and noX. GNOME and MATE did not make it again due to a lack of a maintainer support within siduction." Read the detailed release notes for more information.
OPNsense 21.7
OPNsense is a HardenedBSD-based specialist operating system (and a fork of pfSense) designed for firewalls and routers. The project's latest release, OPNsense 21.7, will be the last version based on HardenedBSD and introduces a new installer with ZFS support. "21.7, nicknamed "Noble Nightingale", is one of the largest iterations of code changes in our recent history. It will also be the last release on HardenedBSD 12.1. We are planning to start the work on FreeBSD 13 as soon as next week for the 22.1 series. The installer was replaced to offer native ZFS installations and prevent glitches in virtual machines using UEFI. Firmware updates were partially redesigned and the UI layout consolidated between static and MVC pages. The live log now contains the actual rule ID to avoid mismatches after adjusting your ruleset and the firewall aliases now also support wildcard netmasks." The release announcement offers further details.
Freespire 7.7
Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of Freespire 7.7, a new update of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Xfce desktop. This version adds the ability to (optionally) incorporate various web applications into the system: "Today, the PC/OpenSystems LLC open-source development team releases Freespire 7.7. This update launches an entirely new direction for our distribution products, Freespire, Linspire and Xandros, by incorporating a cloud app approach. Since this is Freespire, our community-support build, we did not incorporate anyone's specific web apps into the distribution. The selection is entirely the user's choice. And for more traditional use cases, the core of Freespire has not changed at all - it's still a full-featured desktop OS; all of the applications and resources of the Ubuntu repositories are available, as always. The distribution includes: Xfce 4.16 desktop, Linux kernel 5.4, Synaptic, Google Chrome 92, DuckDuckGo as the default search engine and homepage, Ice SSB, KPatience, DreamChess, Geary mail client, KolourPaint, Parole, Rhythmbox, Caja as the default file manager." Read the complete release announcemnet for further details.
Freespire 7.7 - now with more focus on web apps
(full image size: 844kB, screen resolution 2560x1600 pixels)
4MLinux 37.0
Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 37.0, the new stable build of the project's minimalist distribution for desktops and servers. Its "four Ms" represent maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), mini-server (using the inetd daemon) and mystery (providing several small Linux games). 4MLinux 37.0 updates many of the popular packages to their latest versions; this includes, LibreOffice 7.1.5, GIMP 2.10.24, Gnumeric 1.12.48, Firefox 90.0.2, Chromium 90.0.4430.212, Thunderbird 78.12.0, VLC 3.0.16 and MESA 21.0.1. The Linux kernel is at version 5.10.47. "The status of the 4MLinux 37.0 series has been changed to STABLE. As always, the new major release has some new features. FluidSynth (a software synthesizer) with VMPK (Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard) have been added. Dmidecode (a tool to read hardware-related data from your SMBIOS) has also been included. HandBrake (a video transcoder) and qBittorrent (an advanced BitTorrent client) are now available as downloadable extensions. 4MLinux now uses its own servers for updating the ClamAV virus database. The Linux kernel patched to support the reiser4 file system has been added to the 4MLinux drivers collection." Here is the brief release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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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) |
Reporting on a formerly dormant distribution
A little over a decade ago, back in the early days of Ubuntu's nascent popularity and derivatives, DistroWatch was just starting to get requests to list re-spins of the Ubuntu distribution. Some of these projects that were submitted to us went on to become official community editions of Ubuntu while others faded away after a few years.
In those early days, Ubuntu-based distributions were still relatively few in number and we didn't have many rules governing what would be added to our database and what would not. However, as the number of re-spins increased and more distributions (whether based on Ubuntu or other parent distributions) exploded onto the scene, we began introducing more criteria for accepting new projects into our database. These rules include filtering out projects that violate trademark and which represent a specific political, artistic, or religious groups.
I bring this bit of history to light because one project which was added in the early days of Ubuntu-mania was Ubuntu Christian Edition. The project ran for about five years before being discontinued, as many early Ubuntu spins were. However, the spin is being revived and its developer has contacted us to let us know about an upcoming new release of Ubuntu Christian Edition (CE).
This places us in an interesting position. Ubuntu CE was accepted into our database, and then discontinued, prior to our current rules on what projects will be listed were formed. By our current standards, Ubuntu CE would not be listed in our database and we wouldn't cover its releases. It could be argued that it doesn't make sense to track and announce new versions of this project since it doesn't meet our current criteria. However, since Ubuntu CE was submitted before those rules were put into place it can also be argued that it is fair to continue updating our Ubuntu CE page and publishing announcements as new version become available.
Ultimately, our goal is to be a useful resource to our readers and so we'd like to hear your opinions on whether it makes sense to published news announcements and releases from the resurrected Ubuntu CE distribution. What do you think, should Ubuntu CE be grandfathered in, filtered out, or something in between?
Update: Watching the votes come in for this poll we soon noticed that, while most
polls receive most of their submissions on Monday and Tuesday with a few votes
trickling in later in the week, this poll was different. Voting appeared to
accelerate during the week, with options 1 and 3 quickly gaining more and more
votes while (suspiciously) no more votes were cast for options 2 and 4.
Some simple checking of our web server logs soon revealed that while a few clever
actors had found a loophole which allowed them to appear as though they were
unique visitors from different locations and therefore vote multiple times, they had not made an effort
to hide the fact all their votes were coming from the same computer and cell phone.
The votes from both the actors attempting to game the poll have been removed
from the tally. Since, apart from these ambitious individuals, voting seems to have concluded the poll will be closed for the remainder of the week. The final tally, minus the attempted fraud votes, is displayed to the right.
You can see the results of our previous poll on memory consumption in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Handling formerly dormant projects which no longer meet our criteria
| Cover new releases and updates (grandfather in Ubuntu CE): | 351 (28%) |
| Update the information page but do not post announcements (middle road): | 267 (21%) |
| Do not track or post announcements (follow current criteria): | 595 (48%) |
| Other (see comment below): | 37 (3%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
FWUL
FWUL (Forget Windows Use Linux) is a desktop Linux distribution based on the Xfce edition of Manjaro Linux. The main purpose of the project is to build a small, fast, light and hassle-free distribution for general use. It comes with a custom installation program, a cross-platform remote control utility, some Android tools, and many standard Linux applications.
FWUL 3.2 - a Manjaro-based desktop distribution with Xfce
(full image size: 3,616kB, screen resolution 2560x1600 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Pyabr OS (website in Farsi). Pyabr OS is a Debian-based distribution designed specifically for use on virtual machines, on shared cloud server, and as a live system booted from a USB flash drive.
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DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 9 August 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Ubuntu GNOME
Ubuntu GNOME (formerly Ubuntu GNOME Remix) was an official flavor of Ubuntu, featuring the GNOME desktop environment. It was intended as a mostly pure GNOME desktop experience built from the Ubuntu repositories. As of mid-2017, the Ubuntu GNOME project no longer releases new versions. The main Ubuntu flavour defaults to using the GNOME desktop. Older Ubuntu GNOME releases are still maintained.
Status: Discontinued
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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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