 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 931, 23 August 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 33rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Debian is one of the largest and oldest surviving Linux distributions. The project offers many thousands of packages that run across many CPU architectures and kernels. This week we begin with a look at the latest version of Debian, the "grandparent" of dozens of Linux distributions. Read on to learn how Debian 11 performance, what is new and what hasn't changed. Do you run one of Debian's many branches or ports? Let us know how you use Debian in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we celebrate the Haiku project turning 20 years old. We also talk about Parted Magic introducing new data wiping tools and a new subscription model. The Apple M1 processors sparked a lot of attention last year and this week we check in with Asahi Linux and the team's efforts to port Linux to M1-powered Mac computers. In our Questions and Answers column we point out ways people can keep up to date with new releases and news items in the Linux community. 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: Debian 11
- News: Haiku turns 20, Parted Magic introduces new data wiping tools, Asahi Linux project continues porting Linux to M1 Macs
- Questions and answers: Notifications of news and new versions
- Released last week: Zorin OS 16, Manjaro 21.1.0, IPFire 2.27 Core 159
- Torrent corner: BlackArch, deepin, EuroLinux, IPFire, KaOS, Manjaro, Sparky, Zorin OS
- Opinion poll: Do you run Debian?
- New distributions: Auxtral
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (16MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian 11 "Bullseye"
Debian is one of the oldest surviving Linux distributions and also one of the largest, both in terms of developers involved and packages provided. Debian declares itself the "universal operating system", able to run on many hardware architectures, with many desktop environments, and even using alternative kernels.
The project's release announcement for Debian 11 (code name "Bullseye") mentions this version features over 11,000 new packages while removing over 9,000 obsolete items. Driverless printing and scanning have been added to this release along with built-in support for the exFAT filesystem.
Debian 11 provides packages for GNOME 3.38, KDE Plasma 5.20, MATE 1.24, and Xfce 4.16, plus an array of other lightweight desktops and window managers. These graphical interfaces can be run on a wide range of CPU architectures, including x86_64, i686, ppc64el, s390x, armel, armhf, arm64, mipsel, and mips64el. The project's release notes go into greater detail about what is available for each platform.
Debian media is available in many flavours. There are a number of network install, CD-sized ISO files along with full-sized DVD media. There are also official live media ISOs. By default, Debian does not include non-free packages, including popular firmware, on its media. This means Debian will not work with many brands of wireless cards, preventing wi-fi connections from working. People who need non-free firmware can use unofficial media. The full sized official DVD install media is 3.7GB. I also downloaded the GNOME edition of the official live media (2.5GB) and the non-free, unofficial GNOME live disc (3.2GB).
Live media
When trying the live media, Debian boots immediately to a graphical environment. The GNOME desktop loads and presents us with a welcome screen. This welcome window asks us for some basic information about our language and keyboard layout. We are then asked if we wish to connect to a local network. The official live media could not detect my wireless card, making it useless in my environments. I switched to running the non-free media which detected my card and then offered to connect me with on-line cloud services such as Nextcloud. I was then handed over to the GNOME desktop to start exploring.
Debian 11 -- Adjusting items we can search for through the Activities menu
(full image size: 99kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The GNOME desktop seemed to be working okay and I could get on-line using Firefox to browse the web so I turned my attention to the install process. While the live media includes an install option through the boot menu, I decided to use the official Debian install media DVD.
Install process
The install DVD presents us with a boot menu where we can choose to run a graphical installer, a text installer, or an install process with text-to-speech for improved accessibility. Debian's installer has not really changed in the past decade and a half. It's a long process with a lot of screens which, on other installers, are usually skipped in favour of defaults or merged from several separate prompts into one screen with multiple options.
The installer walks us through picking our language, location, time zone, setting a password for the root account, making up a regular user account, and disk partitioning. There are 15 screens and prompts, not including pauses to display progress reports, before the base system is even installed. Once the base packages are in place we are asked which extra packages we want. These include a web server, OpenSSH service, and optional desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce.
The Debian installer asks if we want to install some packages from on-line sources as this will provide more up to date packages and I accepted. We are then asked which region the repository should be in and which mirror in that region to use. The install then proceeds and stops again to ask if we want to install a boot loader. When all is said and done, the installer presents us with at least 24 prompts in total (assuming we take guided disk partitioning and no advanced options) and setting up the initial packages takes over twice as long as most similarly sized distributions on the same hardware.
Early impressions
My fresh install of Debian booted to a graphical login screen where I could sign into the GNOME desktop. There was no welcome window or introduction. We are presented with a vanilla GNOME experience. A panel is placed along the top of the screen with an Activities menu and system tray. There are no icons and no task switcher. Application windows have a close button, but no minimize or maximum controls. Double-clicking on a title bar maximizes or restores the window.
Debian 11 -- Running LibreOffice and Totem
(full image size: 88kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
GNOME's default look features a lot of white and grey. Though some windows are primarily black. For instance the Totem video player offers a mostly black background while most other windows are primarily white.
Hardware support
When I installed Debian in a VirtualBox environment the distribution started out feeling sluggish. GNOME was able to automatically resize to match the VirtualBox window, but performance was not good. This was disappointing as I've had good luck with GNOME 40 recently in virtual machines, but the older GNOME 3.38 release included here still demonstrates the poor responsiveness I've found to be characteristic of the GNOME 3.x series.
Debian 11 -- The GNOME documentation
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When running on my workstation, Debian was able to boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. While plain Debian does not detect my wireless card, non-free firmware packages and media can be downloaded from the project and installed off-line. When run on my workstation performance was good, with GNOME offering average performance and responsiveness.
When running GNOME, Debian is a bit on the heavy side, using 760MB of memory. This is about on par for distributions running GNOME, but about 50% heavier than other mainstream Linux distributions running any other full featured desktop. A fresh install with just GNOME and a handful of desktop applications consumed 4GB of disk space, not including the swap partition.
Applications
The GNOME 3.38 desktop ships with a handful of applications. We can gain access to these programs by clicking on the Activities menu in the upper-left corner of the screen, then selecting the application button (at the bottom-left. This brings up a full-page grid of icons we can browse. There are three pages of icons we can navigate using the mouse scroll wheel or buttons located on the right side of the screen. Some utilities are kept in a separate container within the application grid and these containers can also hold multiple pages. This means some programs take five mouse clicks and three trips across the display with the mouse pointer to launch. Many people will probably prefer to use the GNOME Activities search feature where we can type the name or a descriptive keyword to find the item we want to launch.
Debian 11 -- The GNOME application menu
(full image size: 216kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The GNOME desktop on Debian now runs a Wayland session by default. I was wary of this at first as I've rarely had positive experiences with testing Wayland in the past, but in this case the experience was indistinguishable from running GNOME on the X.Org display server. GNOME Classic and GNOME running on X.Org are options available through the gear icon on the login screen.
Looking through the application menu we find the Firefox web browser, Evolution e-mail client, a contact manager, and a calendar. The LibreOffice suite is installed along with the Shotwell photo manager, and the GNOME Files file manager. Debian ships with the Transmission bittorrent client, a handful of games, and the Cheese webcam tool. The Totem video player and Rhythmbox audio player are included along with media codecs for playing a wide range of multimedia files.
Behind the scenes Debian ships with the usual collection of GNU utilities and manual pages. The systemd init software is used and the distribution ships version 5.10 of the Linux kernel.
The GNOME desktop ships with a polished settings panel. The panel offers two panes, one for navigation and the other for adjusting specific options. The panel worked well for me and I like its layout. I particularly like the file sharing options. Visiting the Public directory in GNOME Files, or browsing the proper section of the settings panel, will give us the option to share files in the Public directory. These settings are easy to adjust, files are easy to password protect, and it works quite well for sharing files on a local network.
Debian 11 -- Enabling sharing files over the network
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The sudo utility is available to help us run commands as other users. By default no users are permitted to use sudo, but this can be changed by adding our user to the sudo permissions group.
Software management
Debian provided me with two graphical front-ends for handling software packages. Before either of these, or the APT command line tools, can be used we first need to adjust the APT package manager's sources list. During the installation Debian uses the local install media as a source for packages and this repository is not removed when the install finishes. This removed repository short-circuits the package manager. This happens even when we choose to use on-line package repositories during the initial setup process and pick a remote repository mirror. All of which means we need to use either the Synaptic package manager or make a trip to the command line to edit the APT configuration file.
As I mentioned, Synaptic is one of the graphical package managers. It gives us a low-level view of individual packages and repositories. This makes it possible to fine-tune which items are installed, removed, and upgraded.
GNOME Software is the second software centre. GNOME Software is divided into three tabs. One offers search options, recommendations, and the ability to browse categories of programs. The second tab shows what software is already installed and gives us the choice of removing these packages. The third tab lists available updates.
Debian 11 -- The software centre
(full image size: 123kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
By default neither the Flatpak nor Snap frameworks are installed. These portable package formats are available in Debian's repositories. In the case of Flatpak, once the framework is installed we need to manually add additional repositories and (optionally) a plugin for GNOME Software if we want to use the software centre to manage Flatpak bundles.
I had some trouble with Flatpaks in the software centre. Some would install, but other times the process would hang partway through and never finish being set up. When working from the command line I never encountered any issues installing Flatpak bundles.
Other observations
I feel it worth highlighting that Debian has shifted its default for the display server from X.Org to Wayland, though X.Org sessions are still available. This is only the second time I've had a good experience with running Wayland as the default display session. In fact this was the first time I couldn't tell the difference between running the desktop (GNOME in this case) on Wayland versus X.Org. It was a pleasant surprise and it's nice to see Wayland sessions continuing to be developed and polished.
Conclusions
One of the first things that I noticed while settling into my Debian trial was how little the distribution has changed. Someone could have swapped out my Debian 11 install media for a copy of Debian 8 and I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference. The installer is virtually identical to the one that shipped with Debian 6, the GNOME desktop hasn't really changed in the past release or two, the same quirks, issues, smooth running, and manual work are the same. Whether this is good or not will probably depend on whether you're interested in new features or consistency.
Debian 11 highlights a few distinct characteristics of the overall project in my mind. I believe it demonstrates why Debian is such a popular and powerful base, both as a foundation for other distributions and for server or embedded systems. It also demonstrates why there is such a need for Debian-based desktop distributions.
On the one side, Debian is an amazing project. It is a huge undertaking, supporting a handful of CPU architectures, providing tens of thousands of packages, multiple kernel implementations, and three main branches people can run. The project offers roughly five years of support and is well known for its stability and maturity. It's a hugely impressive undertaking and the team's dedication to making a universal operating system out in the open (using issue trackers and mailing lists) is commendable.
On the other side, Debian's effort to be universal means that, as an end-user experience, it is clearly lacking in some key areas. One of my UNIX textbooks in college mentioned that software projects tend to follow one of two philosophies when it comes to design - choose good defaults and make it possible to tweak some things later, or avoid choosing defaults and make the user configure key elements. Either approach can be fine, as long as it is not taken to extremes where the user either cannot adjust anything or must configure everything. Debian falls into the latter camp, essentially giving the user a collection of parts and leaving us to craft it into the experience we want.
This turns the initial day or two with Debian into a long process of going through installer screens, adjusting the look of GNOME, downloading non-free firmware, enabling third-party and portable repositories, tweaking the desktop layout to make it more efficient, and configuring utilities like APT and sudo. These are tasks most distributions handle automatically and it makes Debian feel unpolished, at least as a desktop distribution. As a server system, Debian's relatively light approach and focus on stability are most welcome, but the basic steps users need to perform to set up and get common functionality working make it less practical as a desktop distribution. Of course Debian can be used as a desktop system, its dozens of derivatives are proof of that. However, Debian's insistence on not making any choices and forcing the user to do so much manual work up front leaves me feeling like I'm doing work for my operating system rather than it working for me.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Debian has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.9/10 from 388 review(s).
Have you used Debian? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Haiku turns 20, Parted Magic introduces new data wiping tools, Asahi Linux project continues porting Linux to M1 Macs
Haiku is an open source operating system which works to keep the vision of BeOS alive, operating on modern computers. The Haiku project turned 20 years old this week, an impressive milestone for the lightweight operating system. "Dedication asks each of its adherents to have faith even as time and energy pass through from one year to the next. Dedication brings with it a variety of challenges, but also rewards. Dedication is something most people claim to have, but few readily exhibit it in the face of adversity. As of today, Aug. 18, 2021, the Haiku Project is celebrating two decades of dedication, marking the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Haiku operating system and the start of this ride to save, maintain, and expand upon the BeOS legacy it spawned from. Many things have changed since that Aug. 18, 2001 mailing list message bringing together the teams that would found what was originally called OpenBeOS. The first version released eight months later was even just called 'app_server prototype 5.' In 2004, the name permanently changed to Haiku to avoid any conflict with the remaining trademarks on BeOS." More on the history of Haiku can be found in the project's news post.
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The Parted Magic project is unveiling a new subscription model for their commercial disk management tools. The distribution now also includes a new set of disk wiping tools to remove sensitive data from hard drives. "A major new feature has been added as well. Nwipe and a Secure Erase script called ata-erase has been added to the initramfs. This is extremely useful for headless systems and minimal setups. I don't have any special boot menu options for these yet, but you can boot directly into the initramfs with the Initrd.img option from the FailSafe menu." Details can be found on the project's News page.
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The Asahi Linux project is a community effort to bring a full-featured Linux distribution to the M1-powered line of Apple computers. This is a large effort, requiring a number of kernel patches, unusual work arounds, and reverse engineering. "In order for an OS to be bootable on Apple Silicon machines, it has to 'look' like a real macOS installation. This means it has to be an APFS container with multiple volumes within it, containing specific directory structures and files. Until now, the simplest way of doing this was to actually install macOS a second time in a separate partition, and then replace its kernel with m1n1. This is, needless to say, a major pain in the ass, as the installation process is fairly slow. It also wastes around 70GB of disk space, which is how much you need for an upgradable macOS install. It also makes it difficult to install a specific macOS version, which is going to become a problem once we start requiring the usage of specific firmware bundles. This clearly won't cut it for anything beyond early development." Details on the efforts to get a Linux distribution running on M1-powered Mac computers can be found in the project's blog.
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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) |
Notifications of news and new versions
Watching-for-news asks: Can you implement something so I can get e-mails from DistroWatch when my distro is updated with a new version?
DistroWatch answers: Sending out that many e-mails would soon get us placed on anti-spam lists and make it difficult for us to communicate with anyone. However, we do offer something similar to what you're looking for: RSS feeds.
People who want to receive a notification every time we publish a new release announcement can subscribe to our front page RSS feed. The feed icon is the little orange RSS icon at the top of our announcements list, next to the text "Latest News and Updates".
For people who wish to see updates and news items for a specific distribution rather than everything we publish to the front page, each distribution has its own feed. The same orange RSS icon appears near the top of each distribution's information page and clicking it will provide the contents (and URL) of the news feed. For instance, the Linux Mint feed is located at https://distrowatch.com/news/distro/mint.xml and the Fedora news feed is located at https://distrowatch.com/news/distro/fedora.xml. These URLs can be added to any RSS feed reader application such as Akregator or Thunderbird.
We also offer news feeds for headlines, the DistroWatch Weekly podcast, and our newsletter. Links to these feeds can all be found on our Contact page.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Zorin OS 16
The Zorin OS team have published a new version of their Ubuntu-based distribution. The project's new release, Zorin OS 16, is available in two editions at the moment: a free edition called Core and a commercial edition called Pro. Lite and Educational editions are planned for a later date. The new release offers a more responsive desktop experience and added a new Zorin Appearance application to make it easier to change the theme, layout, and fonts used by the desktop. "Zorin Appearance allows you to select a different desktop layout, change the app and icon theme, choose your desktop font, and tweak other parts of your desktop to make it truly yours. In Zorin OS 16, we've refreshed the app's layout to make it even easier to find customization options, with the category tabs moved from the top to the left side of the window. Desktop layouts have also been separated into a dedicated tab, and you can now set the size of desktop icons independently from the Files app. We're introducing an all-new desktop layout in Zorin Appearance which resembles the default interface in Windows 11. It features a modern and streamlined UI that adapts well to computers with touchpads, mice, or touchscreens. The new grid menu, activities overview button, and taskbar icons are placed front and center for easy access and effortless navigation on screens of all sizes." These, along with other new features, can be found in the project's release announcement.
Zorin OS 16 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Manjaro Linux 21.1.0
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 21.1.0, the latest stable build of the project's desktop-oriented, rolling-release distribution set with a choice of Xfce, GNOME and KDE Plasma desktops: "This release features major improvements to Calamares, including filesystem selection for automatic partitioning and enhanced support for Btrfs. For Btrfs installations, the default subvolume layout has been improved for easier rollbacks and less wasted space on snapshots. Additionally, swapfiles on Btrfs filesystem are now supported. The GNOME edition has received a major rework the update to GNOME 40. The default layout has been redesigned to follow more closely upstream defaults, with some adjustments to reduce the pointer travel for users who prefer using mouse with gnome. For users that preferred the old vertical desktop layout, we have the Manjaro legacy layout, which mimics the previous gnome defaults." Continue to the release announcement for additional information.
IPFire 2.27 Core 159
IPFire is an independent Linux distribution that focuses on easy setup, good handling and high level of security. The project's latest release features a new kernel, updated hardware support, and install media that is compressed with Zstandard compression for better performance. "This is a major update for IPFire, as it rebases the IPFire kernel on Linux 5.10, the latest long-term supported release of the Linux kernel. Arne has been working through a long spring getting IPFire ported on this release and it is now finally ready for prime-time. It features: Support for many new drivers, improved support and performance for existing drivers making IPFire more compatible with new, and powerful with existing hardware. Most notably are many network drivers as well as virtualised communication with the hypervisor in the cloud. Networking throughput has been increased through zero-copy TCP receive and UDP and Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT congestion control (BBR). Those changes will also decrease the latency of the firewall in the network when forwarding packets. Wireless will have improved throughput and better latency with Airtime Queue Limits which practically enables use of all the 'Bufferbloat' algorithms on wireless. Support for 64-bit ARM hardware has been massively improved and we were able to drop a large amount of custom patches who have been upstreamed into the Linux kernel." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
KaOS 2021.08
KaOS is a desktop Linux distribution that features the latest version of the KDE desktop environment, the Calligra office suite, and other popular software applications that use the Qt toolkit. The rolling release distribution has introduced a few new packages, some visual changes, and the system installer now copies over network settings to the newly installed system. "Updates to the base of this distribution include Systemd 249.3, Curl 7.78.0, IWD 1.16, NetworkManager 1.32.8, Mesa 21.1.7, Poppler 21.08.0, Vulkan packages 1.2.187, Udisks 2.9.3, MLT 7.0.1, and Openexr 3.1.1. Qt 5.15 does not receive updates or maintenance from the Qt company (only closed source, paid support is available). KDE has stepped up though and published a maintained 5.15 fork. KaOS now does a monthly patch update from this fork for all of Qt 5.15, so it basically is now at 5.15.3. The installer Calamares has the ability added to carry over the network settings from the Live system, so no longer a need to enter the Wifi password again on booting into the newly installed system. There now also is an option to select the preferred filesystem when using the automated partitioning. New applications added include speedtest-cli, mauikit-accounts, and bibletime. Biggest change here is the addition of Plasma Mobile Apps, which are very suitable for desktop use. They include Angelfish (web-browser), Kasts (pocasts), Kalk (calculator), and Koko (image viewer)." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
SparkyLinux 6.0
The SparkyLinux project developers a Debian-based distribution in a variety of lightweight flavours. The project has published a new stable release, SparkyLinux 6.0, which is based on Debian 11 "Bullseye". "Sparky 6.0 'Po Tolo' has been released. It is based on and fully compatible with Debian 11 'Bullseye'. Highlights: based on Debian stable 11 'Bullseye'; all packages updated from Debian 'Bullseye' and Sparky 'Po Tolo' repos as of August 16, 2021; Firefox 78.13.0ESR instead of Firefox (latest); Thunderbird 78.13.0; VLC 3.0.16; LibreOffice 7.0.4; Calamares 3.2.41.1; Linux kernel 5.10.46 LTS as default; desktop fonts set to 11; exfatprogs replaced exfat-fuse and exfat-utils to manage exFAT partitions; installed ipp-usb to allow a USB device to be treated as a network device; MinimalGUI: PCManFM replaces DoubleCMD-GTK and Firefox-ESR replaces Epiphany browser; MinimalCLI: removed multilingual from boot settings and cli installer. Sparky APTus is no loger under development and has been replaced by Sparky APTus AppCenter, introduced over a year ago." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
SparkyLinux 6.0 -- Running the LXQt desktop
(full image size: 252kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Pardus 21.0
Pardus is a GNU/Linux distribution jointly developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and National Academic Network and Information Centre (ULAKBİM). The Debian-based distribution has published a new version, Pardus 21.0, which features several key updates. An English translation of the project's release notes (in Turkish) reads: "Enjoy the most up-to-date and stable versions of software such as Firefox, Libreoffice, Thunderbird, VLC Media Player in the Pardus operating system that comes with Linux kernel 5.10. As well as these software, the Pardus Power Manager can be seen on the battery life of power management on laptops. With Pardus USB applications, you can format your USBs and write disk images. Using the Pardus Software Center, you can download very popular applications to your computer. The Debian-based package management system has special improvements, security, and innovations to Pardus thanks to the weekly updates via package repositories." The distribution is available in three editions: GNOME, Xfce, and Server.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,559
- Total data uploaded: 39.5TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Do you run Debian?
The Debian project recently turned 28 year old and was the subject of this week's review. Debian is not only popular on its own, especially in server space, it is the parent or grandparent to over 100 distributions. Do you run Debian or one of its children? Let us know how long you have been running Debian in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on CentOS Linux alternatives in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you run Debian?
| Yes - as a desktop OS: | 712 (26%) |
| Yes - as a server OS: | 166 (6%) |
| Yes - in embedded systems: | 24 (1%) |
| Yes - in a variety of roles: | 281 (10%) |
| No - but I run a Debian-based OS: | 1020 (38%) |
| No - not at all: | 493 (18%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Auxtral. Auxtral is a desktop distribution based on Debian. It features Cinnamon and Xfce editions.
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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, 30 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 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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GenieOS
GenieOS was a desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on the stable Debian GNU/Linux at the time of release. However, GenieOS attempts to be more user-friendly by limiting the system to a selected number of packages and enhancing it with many useful, but non-free applications and plugins, such as those required for viewing encrypted DVDs, Flash and Java browser plugins, and MPlayer with support for many popular audio formats. GenieOS includes the GNOME and KDE desktop environments.
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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