 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 928, 2 August 2021 |
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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.
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 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.
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 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
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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 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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redWall Firewall
redWall Firewall was a bootable CD-ROM firewall based on Gentoo Linux. Its goal was to provide a feature-rich firewall solution together with a web-based interface for all the generated log files. redWall Firewall comes with Snort, SnortSam, DansGuardian and support for fwbuilder, SpamAssassin, reporting, VPN and mail alerts. Configuration files are stored on a floppy disk or a USB pen drive.
Status: Discontinued
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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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