 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 937, 4 October 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 39th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Computers are great at automating tasks. Doing something quickly over and over again the same way is where computers really shine. However, any system administrator can tell you that some tasks become more difficult when they are spread out over multiple machines. Installing the same software on multiple computers and keeping a fleet of machines up to date can be tedious. Fortunately there are tools like Ansible which will help run the same commands across multiple machines. In this week's Feature Story Bruce Patterson talks about Ansible and how to get it set up in order to control multiple machines. This can be useful in an office or even on a small home network where you don't want to manually keep each machine in sync with the others. Do you use Ansible or another multi-machine management utility? Let us know about it in our Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about portable packages, such as Flatpak and Snap, and share a case against using these increasingly popular package formats. We also share an overview of Btrfs from Ars Technica which points out some issues with the advanced filesystem. Meanwhile some open source projects, such as Void and DragonFly BSD, are facing problems with their package managers and we explain why. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about the Wayland display technology and how to clean out old history files from the command line. 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: Getting started with Ansible
- News: A case against portable packages, diving into the status of Btrfs, multiple projects fixing certificate issues
- Questions and answers: Wayland and clearing up history
- Released last week: Q4OS 4.6
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Bluestar, GhostBSD, KDE neon, Linux Kodachi, Nitrux, Q4OS, SystemRescue, Thinstation
- Upcoming releases: Tails 4.23
- Opinion poll: Ansible and other computer management tools
- New additions: LockBox
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (12MB) and MP3 (9MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Bruce Patterson) |
Getting started with Ansible
Ansible is a Red Hat owned tool for automating system administration tasks. It is typically used in environments where an administrator wants to perform the same task, such as deploying security updates, on many computers without logging into each computer manually. Unlike many automation tools, Ansible does not require any special software to be installed on each client machine. Each client just needs the OpenSSH service to be installed on the clients and all the work and configuration is handled by one central server.
There are a lot of reasons for working with Ansible and this guide is meant to get you up and running quickly. If you're like me, I have a terrible habit of not reading the fine manual. To quote the Simpsons character Renier Wolfcastle, "I was elected to lead not to read". To follow along with this tutorial here are the basics you will need:
- Enough RAM and disk space for your virtual machines.
- Virtual apps such as VirtualBox, VMware, KVM or whatever your preference.
- Minimum number of required VMs are two, one as the primary where all the scripts/playbooks are kept and a secondary machine that will receive the changes pushed from the primary machine.
For this example I am using VirtualBox and Rocky Linux as my operating system. You can set up Ansible with almost any operating systems you want. As my reasons for doing things in this example are due to my job, which will require me to update various Red Hat servers, I am sticking with a Red Hat clone.
Getting started
Before you do anything, you need to setup an environment to use Ansible. In VirtualBox I created a primary machine named Bullwinkle and four secondary machines named Rocky One, Rocky Two, etc. Naming is not important, you can name it whatever you want. Machine One, Bruins One, etc. Again, you only need one secondary machine, for this example I created four.
Note: I did not install desktops on any of these VMs, they were strictly command line only because it is rare that you will find servers with desktops. Also, without desktops the VMs have a much smaller resource footprint.
The quickest way to create multiple VMs: create the first one in VirtualBox and once you have created the VM and updated the operating system, you can clone the first one to as many machines as you want, just be sure to rename them with unique names. Once you have the VMs in place, you will have to make sure each one has a unique IP address because the first thing you will notice is they all have the same IP address. I used the following tutorial from our friends at Dedoimedo.
Installing
I used the following instructions from Linux Techie. The steps are below:
- On your primary machine log in and make sure the operating system is up to date. For me I used the command "sudo dnf update -y".
- If there are updates, reboot your machine.
- Install Python 3.8 and other dependencies with the following command:
"sudo dnf module -y install python38"
- Next you will run the following config command:
"sudo alternatives --config python"
- You will then be prompted to choose one of three options:
There are three programs which provide Python:
1. /usr/libexec/no-python
2. /usr/bin/python3
3. /usr/bin/python3.8
Please select number 3.
- Verify the version of Python installed, it should be Python 3.8
- Following the instructions I used pip to install Ansible. This next part will take roughly 3 to 5 minutes to run depending on your machine. I ran the following three commands separately:
sudo pip3 install setuptools-rust wheel
sudo pip3 install --upgrade pip
sudo python -m pip install ansible
At this point, I stopped here in the instructions because the next steps included generating an RSA secure key and pushing it to the secondary machines. I struggled through this section without any success.
Note: The creation of secure keys is a best practice and should not be overlooked, especially if you plan to execute this in production! I was working in a controlled environment at home and I skipped this part, but the work around is provided in the video below in the next paragraph.
Once Ansible is installed you need to create an inventory file and for this I went to the folks at Simplilearn - Ansible Tutorial For Beginners | What Is Ansible And How It Works? The demo begins at the 8 minute mark of the video.
Your Ansible directory is found at /etc/ansible/ and the following files should be found in this directory:
ansible.cfg
hosts
roles (a directory)
The hosts file should have been placed in the roles directory so if you are seeing this outside of the directory just move it to the correct location. The hosts file is where you will list your managed secondary machines. You will need to update this file to create a reference point for your playbook which will follow shortly. The default hosts file has three distinct examples (Ex 1: ungrouped hosts, Ex 2: web servers, Ex 3: db servers. As my example didn't fit the last two examples, I chose the first group and labeled it "ansible_clients" The sample of what this looks like is below. I have added two of my secondary machines as noted in the lines "#rocky one machine" and "#rocky two machine" and under each commented line you see the following:
#rocky one machine
10.0.2.15 ansible_ssh_user=root ansible_ssh_pass=rockyone
#rocky two machine
10.0.2.5 ansible_ssh_user=root ansible_ssh_pass=rockytwo
A sample Ansible hosts file
(full image size: 17kB, resolution: 569x537 pixels)
Now that the hosts file has been updated we'll create a playbook. A playbook is what will push down commands to your secondary machines. The playbooks are written in YAML and is very easy to write but spacing is important so note that in the screenshot. I wanted to create a playbook that updates my secondary machines with the latest updates and also to install the EPEL repository. Using the vi editor I created the following playbook: server_updates_all_playbook.yml. It makes sense to name the playbook with what you want to run. In this case as I want to push updates to all machines, the name server_updates_all makes sense to me. Remember when you save the file, be sure the file is a dot yml file (server_updates_all_playbook.yml) The example of this playbook is below:
Instructions for installing updates through Ansible
(full image size: 8kB, resolution: 597x477 pixels)
Now that your file is in place, you always want to test it to make sure it will run properly so you will need to run the following command using my playbook as the file to check:
ansible-playbook server_updates_all_playbook.yml -syntax-check
If there are any errors you will see it in the output.
If the file is fine you will see the following result in the command line:
Playbook: ansible-playbook server_updates_all_playbook.yml.
Now it's ready to run. From the command line put in the following command:
ansible-playbook server_updates_all_playbook.yml
The screenshot below shows a successful execution of the playbook. Please keep in mind the last line of output is important because if the playbook had failed you would get output letting you know where it failed.
Progress and status report from Ansible
(full image size: 11kB, resolution: 796x594 pixels)
That is it!
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
A case against portable packages, diving into the status of Btrfs, multiple projects fixing certificate issues
Drew DeVault is perhaps best known for working on such software projects as sway, wlroots, and the Alpine Linux distribution. In an interesting blog post on software packaging, DeVault suggests portable packages and third-party repositories is not the best way to go. "There are hundreds of Linux distros and each does things differently - the package maintainers are the experts who save you the burden of learning how all of them work. Instead of cramming all of your files into /opt, they will carefully sort it into the right place, make sure all of your dependencies are sorted upon installation, and make the installation of your software a single command (or click) away. They also serve an important role as the user's advocate. If an update breaks a bunch of other packages, they'll be in the trenches dealing with it so that the users don't face the breakage themselves. They are also the first line of defense preventing the installation of malware on the user's system. Many sideloaded packages for Linux include telemetry spyware or adware from the upstream distributor, which is usually patched out by the distribution."
* * * * *
Btrfs is an advanced filesystem which allows for multi-device storage, snapshots, and boot environments. It is a powerful technology that is now the default filesystem for openSUSE and Fedora. However, despite its many capabilities, Btrfs has been criticised over the years for its reliability issues, especially when compared next to ZFS. Ars Technica has published an article which explores some of the lingering issues with Btrfs. "Although Btrfs wiki users have repeatedly struggled to soften [the] warnings - saying it should be fine for data, although not metadata, assuming you explicitly scrub after any power outage or other unclean shutdown - senior Btrfs dev and maintainer Josef Bacik wrote a much stronger warning in btrfs-progs. SUSE maintainer David Sterba merged Bacik's warning in March: 'RAID5/6 support has known problems is strongly discouraged to be used besides testing or evaluation (sic).' When a filesystem's own senior developers and maintainers tell you not to use a feature, please do not use that feature."
* * * * *
Let's Encrypt is an organization which provides free security certificates for servers and websites. Let's Encrypt provides tools to automate the installation and renewal of globally recognized certificates which is, in large part, responsible for the explosion of secure HTTPS connections becoming available for most websites in recent years. One of the Let's Encrypt root certificates expired this past week which blocks some security certificates from being recognized, especially by older networking programs and web browsers. This has affected some open source package managers with DragonFly BSD and Void users reporting their package manager no longer works due to the expired certificate. Antonio Huete Jiménez wrote for DragonFly BSD: "As you may be already aware, a Let's Encrypt root CA certificate expired today. That is causing problems with our base LibreSSL but not with the DPorts one, we don't know why yet."
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Wayland and clearing up history
Moving-forward asks: I've been hearing a lot about Wayland and how it's going to be great for the Linux desktop. What's the practical benefit for non-techies like me?
DistroWatch answers: For most of the past 40 years, Linux and UNIX-like operating systems (including the BSDs) have used a technology called X to display the desktop. The X display software was quite an amazing piece of technology for its time. In particular, it was really good at being network transparent. Which basically means you could run your desktop applications on one computer (like a central server) and have them show up on another computer. This was especially useful in computer labs and education centres. Since X could also run and display applications on the same machine it was practical in a lot of environments and became the default for most UNIX-like operating systems.
While X is flexible and powerful, it has some design flaws. Some approaches which made sense 40 years ago make less sense today. These days people want a consistent look for their desktop, performance over flexibility, and security is a bigger concern. Wayland is a protocol designed to address these modern concerns.
What tends to confuse people is Wayland is not a single piece of technology. Wayland is a protocol, a specification which can be implemented. As a result, each desktop environment (KDE Plasma, GNOME, etc) has its own version of Wayland.
The result is each implementation of Wayland on each desktop is slightly different. It should follow, at the least, the core Wayland protocol and be able to run applications built to support Wayland, but each desktop running the Wayland protocol will have its own quirks and features.
All of this is more theory than a practical overview. From a practical point of view, once your desktop's Wayland implementation is complete, you shouldn't notice any difference. The idea here is to basically replace X with something that, to the person using the technology, looks and acts exactly the same. Under the hood, Wayland-powered desktops will hopefully be more secure and offer better (and smoother) performance. However, whether this is true in practice will vary depending on how polished your desktop's implementation of Wayland is.
In short, you probably won't find there is any practical benefit (or drawback) to using a mature version of your desktop's Wayland session. However, behind the scenes your desktop will hopefully become more efficient and secure.
* * * * *
Forgetting-the-past asks: I've read that if I want to remove my shell's history I can run "history -c" and it'll be wiped. But when I then check my .bash_history file all my history is still there. Why doesn't it get erased?
DistroWatch answers: Assuming you are using the bash shell and that is why you're checking the .bash_history file to confirm whether your past commands have been forgotten, then I believe you're just missing one step.
The command you are using, "history -c", clears the current shell's memory of recent history commands. However, it does not wipe the contents of the history file, only the copy of your history stored in memory.
To both wipe the contents of your shell's history from memory and from the .bash_history file you need to first clear your history from memory and then write the blank history to disk. To do this you can run:
history -c && history -w
Some people might be wondering why those two commands cannot simply be combined, using "history -cw". I haven't looked into the details as to why this doesn't work, but I can confirm it will not have the desired effect. Perhaps it is a bug or the history command may write its memory to disk before wiping memory. Either way, be sure to split the history purge commands into two parts as shown above.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Q4OS 4.6
Q4OS is a lightweight, Debian-based distribution featuring the KDE Plasma and Trinity desktops. The project's latest version is Q4OS 4.6 which is based on Debian 11 "Bullseye". One of the project's aims is to allow both desktops to be installed alongside each other, a rare feature given the shared history of the two desktops. "Q4OS Gemini is based on Debian Bullseye 11 and Plasma 5.20, optionally Trinity 14.0.10 desktop environment, and it's available for 64bit/x64 and 32bit/i686pae computers, as well as for older i386 systems without PAE extension. We are working hard to bring it for ARM devices as well. Desktop profiler, an exclusive Q4OS tool, has custom profiles support now, so a user can export the current desktop status snapshot, modify it and even create customized profiles on his own. Any profile is importable, so a user can import and apply it later on another hardware, getting a unique possibility of easy installation and configuration of the pre-defined set of applications and packages at once. In other words, a user easily gets a fresh operating system installation configured and ready to work with a minimal post installation effort. In addition, each desktop environment may keep its own applications profiles." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
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: 2,612
- Total data uploaded: 40.2TB
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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) |
Ansible and other computer management tools
In this week's Feature Story we shared some tips on getting Ansible set up. Ansible is a computer management utility which allows a central server to send commands to many remote machines. Ansible is one tool for managing large deployments of computers and can be used to publish new packages and keep systems up to date.
Do you use a tool like Ansible to manage multiple computers, or perhaps another management tool to administer many machines? Let us know your preferred tool in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using virtual PDF printers in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Remote multi-machine management tools
| I use Ansible: | 102 (9%) |
| I use Chef: | 4 (0%) |
| I use ClusterSSH: | 17 (1%) |
| I use Puppet: | 20 (2%) |
| I use Salt: | 16 (1%) |
| I use another management tool: | 29 (2%) |
| I do not use a multi-machine management tool: | 983 (84%) |
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|
| Website News |
New distributions added to database
LockBox
LockBox (LBX) is a Linux distribution derived from Debian, Ubuntu and elementary OS. It is especially designed for storing and managing cryptocurrencies. It includes several hardened configuration changes for security purposes, a highly restrictive firewall setup, several applications designed for data backups, a password manager, and the Brave internet browser. It also ships with BTCRecover which is an open-source Bitcoin wallet password and seed recovery tool.
LockBox 1.0 -- Running the Pantheon desktop
(full image size: 2.5MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 11 October 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 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 |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Issue 984 (2022-09-05): deepin 23 Preview, watching for changing to directories, Mint team tests Steam Deck, Devuan posts fix for repository key expiry |
| • Issue 983 (2022-08-29): Qubes OS 4.1.1, Alchg Linux, immutable operating systems, Debian considers stance on non-free firmware, Arch-based projects suffer boot issue |
| • Issue 982 (2022-08-22): Peropesis 1.6.2, KaOS strips out Python 2 and PulseAudio, deepin becomes independent, getting security update notifications |
| • Issue 981 (2022-08-15): Linux Lite 6.0, defining desktop environments and window managers, Mint releases upgrade tool, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 980 (2022-08-08): Linux Mint 21, Pledge on Linux, SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan base |
| • Issue 979 (2022-08-01): KaOS 2022.06 and KDE Plasma 5.25, terminating processes after a set time, GNOME plans Secure Boot check |
| • Issue 978 (2022-07-25): EndeavourOS 22.6, Slax explores a return to Slackware, Ubuntu certified with Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 |
| • Issue 977 (2022-07-18): EasyOS 4.2, transferring desktop themes between distros, Tails publishes list of updates, Zevenet automates Let's Encrypt renewals |
| • Issue 976 (2022-07-11): NixOS 22.05, making a fake webcam, exploring the Linux scheduler, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 975 (2022-07-04): Murena One running /e/OS, where are all the openSUSE distributions, Fedora to offer unfiltered Flathub access |
| • Issue 974 (2022-06-27): AlmaLinux 9.0, the changing data of DistroWatch's database, UBports on the Pixel 3a, Tails and GhostBSD publish hot fixes |
| • Issue 973 (2022-06-20): openSUSE 15.4, collecting distro media, FreeBSD status report, Ubuntu Core with optional real-time kernel |
| • Issue 972 (2022-06-13): Rolling Rhino Remix, SambaBox 4.1, SUSE team considers future of SUSE and openSUSE Leap, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant |
| • Issue 971 (2022-06-06): ChimeraOS 2022.01.03, Lilidog 22.04, NixOS gains graphical installer, Mint replaces Bluetooth stack and adopts Timeshift, how to change a MAC address |
| • Issue 970 (2022-05-30): Tails 5.0, taking apart a Linux distro, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop |
| • Issue 969 (2022-05-23): Fedora 36, a return to Unity, Canonical seeks to improve gaming on Ubuntu, HP plans to ship laptops with Pop!_OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Magic Linux
Magic Linux was a new distribution, which was specifically designed for Chinese users. Magic Linux was a non-commercial production completely developed by Linux enthusiasts with a simple motive in mind: say farewell to endless Chinese localisations from one Linux distribution to another and bring the native Chinese support to your desktop.
Status: Discontinued
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| Tips, Tricks, Q&As | | Questions and answers: Protecting files in a user's home directory |
| Questions and answers: What an ELF is and an HTTPS option |
| Questions and answers: Display log files in reverse order |
| Questions and answers: Using systemd to hide files |
| Tips and tricks: Find common words in text, find high memory processs, cd short-cuts, pushd & popd, record desktop |
| Tips and tricks: Advanced file systems, network traffic, running a script at login/logout |
| Tips and tricks: Finding the right words, sorting filesystem snapshots, truncating audio files |
| Myths and misunderstandings: Does physical access mean root access? |
| Questions and answers: Resources for learning about computer forensics |
| Questions and answers: Gaining filesystem compression with ext4 |
| More Tips & Tricks and Questions & Answers |
| Free Tech Guides |
NEW! Learn Linux in 5 Days
In this FREE ebook, you will learn the most important concepts and commands and be guided step-by-step through several practical and real-world examples (a free 212-page ebook).
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| MALIBAL |
MALIBAL: Linux Laptops Custom Built for YouMALIBAL is an innovative computer manufacturer that produces high-performance, custom laptops for Linux. If your MALIBAL laptop is not the best Linux laptop you have ever used, you can return it for a full 100% refund. We will even pay the return shipping fees! For more info, visit: https://www.malibal.com
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Free Tech Guides |
NEW! Learn Linux in 5 Days
In this FREE ebook, you will learn the most important concepts and commands and be guided step-by-step through several practical and real-world examples (a free 212-page ebook).
|
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