 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 945, 29 November 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One interesting cycle the world has entered with regards to computers is the ever-growing capabilities of hardware along with the ever-expanding ways to use our new capabilities. Hard drives grow in size, network speeds increase, and processors get faster. At the same time we come up with more services, more data, and more calculations. When our capabilities outpace our needs, as users, then things run smoothly, but what happens when we start running into our upper limits? What happens when we run out of available resources, like memory? In this week's Questions and Answers column we talk about what happens when a Linux distribution runs out of available memory and why it behaves the way it does. Do you find your system running out of RAM often? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. First though we take a look at a young distribution called LockBox. The LockBox platform is reportedly developed with cryptocurrencies in mind and we talk about its capabilities in this week's Feature Story. Then, in our News section, we talk about Debian adjusting its APT package manager to avoid breaking essential packages and MX Linux releasing install media with updated hardware support. Plus we share a detailed overview on issues facing portable package formats such as Flatpak. We're also happy 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:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
LockBox 1.0
LockBox is one of the most recent additions to the DistroWatch database. LockBox (sometimes referred to as LBX) is a Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu and elementary OS. It is especially intended 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. LockBox is available for x86_64 machines exclusively and its install media is 3.4GB in size.
In a curious case of life imitating art, the LockBox website currently describes the project using a quote from the DistroWatch information page about the distribution.
One of the first things I discovered about the distribution is LockBox will not boot in Legacy BIOS mode. A boot menu will appear and begin a countdown from five seconds. When the countdown reaches zero, or when we select any of the boot options, the counter simply resets to five seconds again. The boot menu offers to let us "Try or install elementary OS" or "Check disks for defects" and both options simply reset the boot menu counter. When trying to launch the distribution in UEFI mode, only the Try/Install option is presented and choosing it boots the distribution's live environment.
When the live system boots we are shown a graphical window where we can choose our preferred language from a list. We are given the choice to try the live desktop, which loads the Pantheon desktop. Alternatively we can launch the system installer. I'll talk about the Pantheon desktop later in this review.
LockBox 1.0 -- The Pantheon application menu
(full image size: 616kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Installing
LockBox makes use of the Ubiquity system installer. It's a friendly, graphical installer that should be familiar to anyone who has used a member of the Ubuntu family of distributions. Ubiquity does a fine job of getting our keyboard layout and time zone, setting up a username and password for us, and partitioning the hard drive. Both guided and manual partitioning options are available and I find them quite easy to navigate. Ubiquity worked well and offered to restart the computer for me when it finished.
The only thing that stood out during the install process was, like many Ubuntu-based distributions, LockBox offers us the option of installing third-party software such as media codecs and wireless support. On this screen there is an option to toggle downloading package updates during the install process. This option is toggled on and the control disabled, preventing us from turning off the download option.
Early impressions
LockBox boots to a graphical login screen. Signing into my account brought up the Pantheon desktop. A thin panel is placed at the top of the screen and a dock holding web browsers and a few other applications sits at the bottom of the display. The top panel holds an application menu, clock, and system tray.
Once the desktop finishes loading a welcome window appears. The greeter offers to link us to online support options. Clicking these links opens a web browser and connects to the elementary OS documentation and support resources. The welcome window then offers to enable nightlight support (to adjust the screen colour during different times of the day). The wizard then offers to delete temporary files on the system, which I found odd since I'd just started using the distribution so there shouldn't have been any temporary files to remove yet.
The final two screens of the welcome window offer to launch the distribution's software centre and open the system settings panel. The welcome text refers to the distribution as elementary OS, something most of the screens and tools included with the distribution do, so the LockBox team haven't spent much time rebranding their project.
Soon into my experience with the distribution a notification appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen letting me know new package updates were available. Clicking this notification while it was on the desktop would open the software centre and show a list of available updates. However, if I ignored the notification at first, waiting until it disappeared, I could then click on the notification icon in the system tray to see the same information. I found clicking the entry in the system tray notification widget simply cleared the entry and did not open the software centre.
LockBox 1.0 -- The Pantheon settings panel
(full image size: 575kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Applications
LockBox ships with several web browsers. The Chromium browser is installed along with the Epiphany browser. Then there are two privacy-focused browsers: Brave and LibreWolf. LibreWolf is a privacy-focused fork of Firefox and is a browser I haven't previous found installed by default on a Linux distribution.
The distribution also includes a news feed reader, an e-mail client, the KeePassXC password manager, and a photo viewer. The distribution also ships with the Music and Videos tools provided by elementary OS. The Gufw firewall tool is included along with the elementary file manager.
LockBox includes a nice settings panel for adjusting the look and behaviour of the Pantheon desktop. Manual pages are includes along with the GNU Compiler Collection, the systemd init software, and version 5.4 of the Linux kernel.
I was surprised at first to find software included in LockBox is a bit on the older side. The GNU compiler, for example, was at version 7 which is about two years old. Likewise Linux 5.4 is about two years old at the time of writing. I discovered this is due to LockBox being based on elementary OS 5 "Hera" rather than the more recent release of elementary OS 6 "Odin". In short, most software included on the distribution will likely be close to two years old.
There were a handful of applications I felt stood out during my trial. For instance, this is the first distribution I can remember using that includes the Vorta backup application. This is a front-end desktop tool for creating backup archives and transferring them to remote servers. Vorta has a nice interface with simple, clear options and it feels like a good solution for people who want to schedule and transmit backups over OpenSSH to remote computers.
LockBox is unusual in that it ships with strict firewall rules. It not only blocks all incoming network connections (which is fairly common), it also blocks many outgoing connections. Web traffic is permitted to leave the system, but most other network protocols are blocked. Looking at the Gufw firewall utility we can see the default rules are to block all incoming traffic and all outgoing traffic too, apart from a few exceptions like connections to web servers. OpenSSH and most other network protocols are forbidden by the firewall unless we tweak the default rules. This is an interesting and unusual approach and it meant I had to add new firewall exceptions in order to login to remote servers, send ping requests, and transfer backups.
LockBox 1.0 -- Reviewing firewall rules with Gufw
(full image size: 768kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Perhaps the most interesting item in LockBox's toolbox is OpenSnitch. When OpenSnitch is launched it monitors all network connection requests and pops up a window letting us know when new programs try to connect over the network. We are then given the chance to permit the network connection or block it. The main OpenSnitch window offers a number of tabs with the main one displaying a list of events. This list shows recent connection attempts and their result (allowed or denied). We can then explore the other tabs to see more information about network activity and adjust the rules OpenSnitch is enforcing.
For instance, I might find that my web browser is blocked from attempting to connect to a remote website once I launch OpenSnitch. I can see any outgoing browser requests that are being stopped in the Events tab. I can then switch to the Rules tab, click the browser's entry and toggle its rule to allow outgoing traffic. This will allow the browser to resume working.
LockBox 1.0 -- Using OpenSnitch to block the Brave browser
(full image size: 185kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
OpenSnitch is surprisingly user friendly and does a very nice job of organizing its traffic events, rules, and showing us which applications are allowed or blocked from accessing the network. The pop-ups from OpenSnitch when new programs want access to the Internet can get tedious after a while, but we only need to respond to each program's request once. OpenSnitch remembers our answer and applies our ruling automatically from then on.
The LockBox website mentions crypto tools and cryptocurrency at least twice on the front page. The project describes itself as "security + privacy + crypto" and later states: "Download, burn, and install your way to a more secure operating system for your crypto." So I was surprised when I could find no crypto software on the system. There were no cryptocurrency wallets, recovery tools, or mining utilities as far as I could see. Certainly none in the application menu and nothing came up when I checked the command line for common crypto programs.
Hardware
When I began using LockBox it was in a VirtualBox instance. The distribution provided about average, or slightly worse than average, performance. The desktop resized automatically with the VirtualBox window and the system ran smoothly. When run on my laptop all my hardware was detected successfully, desktop responsiveness was excellent, and the distribution was stable.
Earlier I mentioned LockBox could boot in UEFI mode only and would not get past the boot menu when run in Legacy BIOS mode. This proved to be true when running both in the VirtualBox instance and on the laptop.
The distribution consumes about 550MB of memory when sitting idle at the Pantheon desktop. The distribution consumed about 18GB of hard drive space for the root filesystem. It also consumed a bit more disk for a swapfile which is automatically set up for us.
Software management
LockBox uses elementary OS's App Centre as its graphical package manager. This application is divided into two tabs, one for browsing available packages and one for viewing, removing, and updating existing applications. The software centre has a fairly simple layout that I found straight forward to navigate.
LockBox 1.0 -- Fetching updates with the software centre
(full image size: 387kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
LockBox pulls in software packages from Ubuntu's repositories, mostly. There are also some repositories set up for the Brave browser and the elementary OS project. As far as I can tell there aren't any repositories and PPAs specific to LockBox, which may explain why most of the artwork still says "elementary OS" on it.
Project goals
I want to talk a bit about the project's stated goals and how well it accomplishes them. The LockBox website currently lists three objectives, which I'll list here along with my impressions.
Fast: Powered by elementary OS, the customized LockBox image has been stripped to bare necessities thus making it lightweight and seemingly fast.
I am divided on this claim. On the one hand, LockBox is fast, at least when running directly on my laptop. It's a little sluggish in a virtual machine, but if we focus on the real life hardware side of things then LockBox is indeed fast. However, the distribution is not at all stripped down or lightweight. In fact, a fresh install of LockBox is a massive 18GB (plus swap file) on the disk, easily three times larger than most mainstream Linux distributions. The memory consumption is about average, around 550MB. This puts LockBox in the medium to heavy range of Linux distributions, quite the opposite of being lightweight or stripped down.
Secure: LockBox is a custom secure operating system leveraging the power of a variety of open source security and privacy tools.
I definitely agree with this description. LockBox may be one of the most locked down (from a network perspective) and privacy-oriented distributions for general desktop use. Putting aside specialty distributions such as Tails or Qubes OS, I'd say LockBox is one of the better desktop distributions for network privacy. There could have been more done to add application sandboxing, beyond what AppArmor provides, which would help, especially with the web browsers. This would certainly lock down the distribution further. Still, I really like the networking customizations like the Gufw firewall rules. OpenSnitch is a great tool for monitoring and blocking specific applications and including privacy-focused browsers like Brave is a nice touch.
Easy: Download, burn, and install your way to a more secure operating system for your crypto.
This claim puzzles me as there doesn't seem to be anything crypto-oriented about the distribution. I didn't find any Bitcoin wallet, crypto-recovery tools, mining software, or even classic crypto tools like KGpg installed. I agree the distribution is easy to install and set up. I like the Ubiquity installer and the easy to navigate settings panel. I just don't see how the project relates to crypto.
Conclusions
I had mostly good impressions of LockBox. The operating system is easy to install, has a fairly friendly desktop environment, I like the settings panel, and Pantheon offers a fairly friendly experience. I'm not a fan of the desktop effects and some of the overly simplified default applications, but I can see why they would appeal to some people. Performance, at least on physical hardware, is good and the distribution can pull from the massive Ubuntu software repositories to add anything we need.
I'm a big fan of the OpenSnitch application. Having it installed and on the dock by default was a nice touch and I'm mostly happy about the strict firewall rules. I did need to open a few gaps in the firewall to allow me to ping and use OpenSSH, but otherwise I think the default "deny in/deny out" firewall policy with exceptions for web browsing is welcome. I also like that a range of web browsers are included, from the privacy-focused Brave to the lighter Epiphany, and the more mainstream Chromium.
There are a few things I didn't like about LockBox. One is that it's basically an older version of elementary OS. The repositories, software, desktop, and branding are all provided by elementary OS 5. The whole distribution feels like we could have accomplished the same thing by installing elementary and then adding a few web browser packages and firewall rules. I don't mind LockBox being close to its parent, but I do wonder if the project (and its users) might be better served with a newer base that will receive longer support. Users may also be confused as to why they installed LockBox, but it keeps calling itself elementary OS and they get directed to elementary documentation.
Finally, my last issue is that LockBox was pleasant enough to use, but its description on the website doesn't appear to match what the project is actually accomplishing. The goals of being stripped down, lightweight, and good for crypto are not reflected in this distribution. This feels like elementary OS with a few more browsers and network security tools, not something light, minimal, or crypto-oriented. In short, LockBox is a decent desktop distribution and has some good tools for the security-minded people of the world, but it feels like it has an identity crisis where what it sets out to be is not what it is.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
LockBox has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.3/10 from 3 review(s).
Have you used LockBox? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian makes APT safer, an overview of Flatpak problems, MX Linux releases Advanced Hardware Support editions
The Debian team has made a change to the APT package manager which should make working with low-level packages safer. In the past, an attempt to remove packages essential for the operating system to function would result in a warning which the user could override. Now APT will simply refuse to take action which would break the core operating system. The change was reported on Twitter: "The solver will no longer try to remove Essential or Protected packages, any dependency problem that would need such a solution will have to be resolved manually. The 'Yes, do as I say' prompt for removing essential packages has been replaced by an error message. The appropriate command-line option needs to be used instead."
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In recent years there have been a number of new initiatives to create universal package formats for Linux distributions. Canonical has championed Snap packages, particularly for Ubuntu while most other distributions have shown interest in portable Flatpak packages. The Fedora team in particular has been strongly advocating Flatpak, especially for Fedora's Silverblue edition. Flatpak declares itself "the future of apps on Linux", but some people have concerns about its design and whether these issues can be overcome. Ludocode has a detailed look at portable packages in general and Flatpak in particular. The article covers a number of issues with portable packages and why they may not be the best option for developers or users. "Snap and Flatpak in their current incarnations have been around for at least five years. AppImage, Steam and Docker have been around even longer. None of the above is new. The problems with alternate runtimes were known from the very beginning, yet little progress has been made in fixing them. I don't believe these are growing pains of a new technology. These are fundamental problems that are mostly not fixable."
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The MX Linux team have published new install media which includes updated hardware support. These new ISO file includes newer versions of the Linux kernel and drivers. "MX-21 AHS (Advanced Hardware Support) ISO is now available. The release features all the updates and goodness packaged up with the other MX-21 releases, but with a 5.14 kernel and updated Mesa, X.Org and Vulkan drivers to produce a graphic stack more in line with newer hardware, along with a few recompiled applications that utilize the later kernel. AHS by design is a little more on the edge, and not as tested as our primary releases, and the idea is that it will receive updates to the graphics stack over time, so for those that don't need the newer open source graphics stack, there is little point is using AHS."
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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) |
Dealing with out of memory issues
Running-out-of-RAM asks: I moved to Linux a few months ago. Whenever RAM reaches its full amount the computer just stops, locks-up. What causes this, is there an update or something I can do?
DistroWatch answers: Welcome to Linux! It sounds like one of two things is happening. It could be your RAM is filling up and your computer does not have anywhere else to place data in the moment. When this happens the kernel will usually terminate one or more programs. The kernel doesn't always pick something non-essential and this could be what is bringing your computer to halt: the death of an essential process when the kernel is out of RAM to use.
The second, and in my opinion, more likely scenario is your system does have a place to store information when it runs out of RAM. This alternative data storage space is called "swap". Swap space is a special area of the disk drive (either a file or a partition) where data is placed when RAM gets full.
Often what will happen is RAM becomes full, data is (slowly) copied to the disk to free up space in memory. Then the data that got copied to swap is needed by another program and so the system needs to copy something else from RAM to the disk and read the original swapped data back into memory. This movement back and forth as different processes save information to the disk and load it back will quickly kill system performance and make it look like the system is entirely locked up. Usually the system isn't actually locked (non-functioning), it's just very very slow due to how slow accessing swap space is.
There are ways to avoid both of these scenarios. Typically what we need is an out of memory (OOM) service which runs in the background and kills off processes which are consuming too much memory. This prevents RAM from getting too full and swap from being used. Most Linux distributions do not ship with an OOM service enabled by default (though Fedora is an exception). You may want to look at installing an OOM service, such as EarlyOOM, which is fairly straight forward to set up to terminate applications when memory or swap gets too full.
You might be wondering why, given how badly the system performs when it runs out of memory, more distributions don't ship with an OOM service running by default. It's a bit of a philosophical issue.
The reason most distros operate the way they do by default is they're trying to avoid any unexpected behaviour (like killing a running process) which is considered risky. Instead the OS "hopes" the processes sort themselves out eventually and try to take a "hands off" approach to let them do that.
In some cases this is a good idea as it avoids data loss. This is especially a good thing if you're running server software in a bank. But in practice, these days, it usually makes more sense to kill or restart the offending process if you're running a desktop system. Since many Linux distributions still take the traditional "behave correctly, not quickly" approach and since many major Linux projects are server-oriented, most stick to letting processes sort themselves out, hoping they will finish their work eventually and free up memory.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Alpine Linux 3.15.0
Alpine Linux is a community developed operating system designed for routers, firewalls, VPNs, VoIP boxes and servers. The project's latest release is Alpine Linux 3.15.0 which provides version 5.15 of the Linux kernel along with updated desktops, development tools, and disk encryption from the system installer. The Alpine team have announced the sudo tool is being migrated to the Community repository and OpenDoas is now the recommended tool to use for privilege escalation. "We are pleased to announce the release of Alpine Linux 3.15.0, the first in the v3.15 stable series. Highlights: Linux kernel 5.15 (LTS), llvm 12, nodejs 16.13 (LTS) / nodejs-current 17.0, postgresql 14, openldap 2.6, ruby 3.0, rust 1.56, openjdk 17, kea 2.0, xorg-server 21.1, GNOME 41, KDE Plasma 5.23 / KDE Applications 21.08 / Plasma Mobile Gear 21.10. Support for disk encryption in installer,s support for out-of-tree kernel modules via AKMS (inspired by DKMS), initial support for UEFI Secure Boot on x86_64." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
Endless OS 4.0.0
Endless OS is a Linux-based operating system which provides a simplified and streamlined user experience using a customized desktop environment forked from GNOME Shell. The project's latest release is version 4.0.0 which introduces long-term support. With Endless OS 4, we are introducing a long-term support version of the OS, which will be supported for a number of years even after Endless OS 5 is released. By default, Endless OS 4 systems will automatically update to Endless OS 5 when it is released, as with all past versions of the OS. However, it is now possible to remain on Endless OS 4 and continue to receive critical bug fixes and security updates even after Endless OS 5 is released, keeping the same OS functionality and appearance for several years. Please see the Long-Term Support documentation for more details, including how to configure a system to use the LTS version of Endless OS. We have updated our low-level software platform, for improved hardware support, performance, and stability Linux kernel 5.11 and updated linux-firmware, bringing support for the latest PC hardware and several fixes to existing drivers and core kernel code." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
Endless OS 4.0.0 -- The default Endless OS desktop
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 1919x1079 pixels)
deepin 20.3
deepin is a Debian-based distribution which features its own, custom desktop environment - the Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE). The project's latest release is deepin 20.3 which includes an updated kernel and better support for NTFS partitions. "In deepin 20.3, the Stable kernel is upgraded to version 5.15 with better compatibility, system security vulnerabilities are fixed, some deepin applications come with new features and optimizations to meet the needs under different scenarios, and DDE issues are fixed and optimized to improve the overall user experience. The Stable kernel is upgraded to version 5.15 with better support for Intel 12th Gen processors and NTFS file systems, and better system compatibility. Both LTS and Stable kernels can be installed and manually upgraded in deepin. Album provides a better batch selection of photos and new buttons for quick actions, supports importing, previewing, and searching videos, displays the number of photos and videos separately in the status bar, and improves the interactions of main functions, making photo and video management more convenient." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement (Chinese, English).
Clonezilla Live 2.8.0-27
Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 2.8.0-27, the latest stable version of the project's Debian-based specialist live CD designed for partitioning, backups and disk-cloning jobs: "Stable Clonezilla Live 2.8.0-27 released. This release includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes since 2.7.3-19: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded - this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2021-11-17; Linux kernel has been updated to 5.14.6; Partclone has been updated to 0.3.18; the ezio package has been updated to 1.2.0; the de_DE, hu_HU, es_ES, fr_FR, ja_JP, pl_PL, sk_SK and tr_TR language files have been updated; the ocs-live-netcfg program has been improved - wireless network can be configured using nmtui and boot parameter ocs_nic_type can be used to assign if wired or wireless when configuring network in ocs-live-netcfg; update-efi-nvram-boot-entry - improved to refer to saved nvram data (efi-nvram.dat); suppress the error message about 'setterm -blank 0'; add a cache mechanism to speed up device scanning; allow reserved image names to be used in TUI and the description about reserved image names is shown in TUI." Here is the full release announcement.
EuroLinux 8.5
EuroLinux is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The project's latest release is EuroLinux 8.5. The distribution's release announcement offers highlights on the latest version: "We have released universal migration scripts. They are available at https://github.com/EuroLinux/eurolinux-migration-scripts. What's important is that these scripts update all packages of the distribution you are migrating from. No packages from the previous vendor remain after migration. This is the implementation of one of the popular requests made by our customers. In addition, the scripts have options that allow you to customize their operation to individual requirements. The migration process is described here. (New) HA and RS Repositories: EuroLinux 8.5 is the first release that includes High Availability and Resilient Storage repositories from the beginning. They significantly increase the system's capabilities and allow for easier migration, especially from very expensive cluster solutions from other vendors." The release notes for EuroLinux 8.5 offer additional details.
GhostBSD 21.11.24
GhostBSD is a desktop-oriented, rolling release operating system based on FreeBSD. The project's latest snapshot adds a new tool for tracking the version of the rolling release operating system. "This new ISO contains kernel, OS, and software updates. In addition, I added a new command-line software called ghostbsd-version that gives you the GhostBSD version, FreeBSD version, kernel version, and OS version. At the date of this release, if you run ghostbsd-version or ghostbsd-version -v, it should output 21.11.24. This version number will be increment by the date of new packages built on packages every update performed. The ISO version is now following the last package's build version instead of an ISO's build date in the hope of removing confusion about the ISO version." Additional information on the new GhostBSD snapshot can be found in the project's release announcement.
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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: 2,655
- Total data uploaded: 41.1TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Running out of space in memory
In this week's Questions and Answers column we discussed how Linux distributions typically handle running low on available memory and why. The default behaviour of most desktop distributions when running out of RAM is notorious and tends to lead to poor performance. But how common is it for a modern computer to run out of RAM? Do you find you regularly run low on memory in your day-to-day operations? Let us know how you handle low-RAM situations in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on running custom login scripts in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Running out of space in RAM
| I frequently run out of RAM: | 68 (4%) |
| I sometimes run out of RAM: | 163 (10%) |
| I rarely run out of RAM: | 417 (26%) |
| I never run out of RAM: | 933 (59%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- CalinixOS. CalinixOS is an Arch-based Linux distribution which features a desktop layout similar in style to macOS.
- Debianissimo. Debianissimo is an Italian distribution which is based on Debian. Its goal is to provide a platform for the Ordissimo desktop environment.
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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, 6 December 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Low RAM (by Guido on 2021-11-29 01:29:01 GMT from Philippines)
I have two PCs with 8 GB of RAM. It can rarely happen that there is not enough space in the memory. I set up traditional swap on the hard drive for this purpose.
2 • Lock box review (by Sean Greenhalgh on 2021-11-29 01:50:59 GMT from Australia)
Interesting defaults, brave and Librewolf. It's also great that keepass is installed too. I'm not sure why this isn't the case for most distributions. Maybe because people do not use them. But they should...
3 • memory remember (by papapito on 2021-11-29 02:00:09 GMT from Australia)
I think I am lucky enough to run everything light on my laptop and tablet with 8gb ram each. My desktop which servers very different purpose is 64gb and I often at times find myself hitting high 50's mainly due to VM usage and then gaming at same time. The more I can push into RAM the faster it feels, whether I am overdoing it with what is actually sitting in RAM alone or not... who knows.
I don't use a swap drive but then again, absolutely nothing I do on my desktop at home is in any way critical.
TLDR I don't recall the last time I ever ran out of RAM. Maybe on a 2GB RAM netbook. And that was my own fault for using a sketchy OS (XP) and browser (Opera)
4 • Keepass, etc.. (by Friar Tux on 2021-11-29 02:58:59 GMT from Canada)
@2 (Sean) I'm one that doesn't use password managers/apps. They are quite useless, to me, as they tend to break from version to version of both the OS and the app, itself. My lifelong solution is to keep a hardcopy notebook and physically write in the user name, passwords, and any security questions. This method has never failed me whereas, so far, all the password managers/apps I've tried have failed. (Also, if anything should happen to me, my family will have easy access to the stuff I leave behind.)
Re: the RAM question... I really have never run into an issue. I use whatever is default on my system.
5 • RAM (by cor on 2021-11-29 03:00:02 GMT from United States)
My desktop has 32GiB plus I have a swap partition on NVME. My laptop has 10GiB with a 2GiB swap file.
6 • keepass and memory (by Andy Figueroa on 2021-11-29 04:14:00 GMT from United States)
I dislike being dependent on an application program to maintain my secrets. Instead, I keep my secrets in a gnupg encrypted file with AES256 cipher which I am able to edit with vim and the gnupg.vim plugin. Such a file can be searched from the shell with the command "gpg -d file.gpg | grep -i keyword" where file.gpg is obfuscated by name, hidden, and permission protected.
I don't recall running out of memory since I had > 512mb, probably because I make sane choices. Out of memory is overrated as a problem.
7 • Capabilities vs needs (by Wedge009 on 2021-11-29 06:00:17 GMT from Australia)
I also cannot remember if/when I ever ran out of memory on a PC as ever since I started building them for myself I usually go for as much as the motherboard can support or as close to it as economically feasible. My upgrade cycles are long (in years), I'm not the sort to buy something new every generation.
The opening paragraph is interesting, discussing hardware capabilities vs needs. I remember the days when hardware resources were constrained and fitting things into small disk space as well as optimising for CPU efficiency were important considerations. Nowadays development time is generally seen as a more valuable resource so we (or at least the larger companies) don't baulk at executables and libraries that are several hundred megabytes large. I also wonder if there's a bit of an disincentive for the (commercial) software industry to optimise for efficiency if leaving things as they are will also promote hardware growth - why bother doing more with less if not investing the time, money and effort to do so will encourage consumers to upgrade their hardware? In some ways hardware development and software bloat can be a self-fulfilling cycle.
I'm not saying lack of optimisation is necessarily a bad thing if software is developed rapidly and correctly, but if it's possible and not too difficult I don't see why we can't look at improving software efficiency before resorting to hardware upgrades.
8 • Password managers (by Wedge009 on 2021-11-29 06:04:21 GMT from Australia)
I also prefer to record credentials manually - it's a valid option. I think it's just important to have passwords that you can't easily remember - anything of that nature is bound to be exploited by things like password stuffing. Password managers are probably more for people less inclined to go to the effort of manual processes and just want something convenient that will 'do the job for them'.
9 • RAM (by w8080 on 2021-11-29 06:15:33 GMT from Germany)
Notebook has 64Gb RAM, saw 35 GB in use max
10 • Password manager (by Ro0t on 2021-11-29 06:40:41 GMT from Germany)
For people using same username and password on almost every website is ofcorse not logical to have a pass manager.
Try be active and use random user/pass per default.
Good luck!
KeePass no life without.
11 • Debian APT Changes (by dave on 2021-11-29 07:46:56 GMT from United States)
Sounds fishy, as usual. What is 'Protected' and 'Essential' ..?? Have to learn more voodoo and jump thru more hoops to remove stuff like Pulseaudio??
12 • What's my name?! (by Someguy on 2021-11-29 08:52:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Like No.7 I specify and build (and rebuild) all my own kit. It pays to know what's in the box. Also, need to know the intended use. No point building an aeroplane with dud pitot head designs to find it drops outa da sky. Get your spec right BEFORE you press the ON switch. But, I also rebuild and refurbish old, sometimes very old kit - more fun and teaches the limitations as well as accomplishments that can be achieved with quite modest HW + ingenuity. How much memory did they use to get onto the Moon?!
And, like No.4, I still retain the ability to use of paper and pencil. Vital data is stored on paper in a form that only my immediate family would have sufficient knowledge of my background and interests to interpret, let alone have the patience to find it....
Whilst we're considering security, if you value your sanity as well as you savings, never ever use a 'smart' (stupid?) mobile phone - 'they' always know who you are, where you are and where the bodies are buried. As a former colleague, a director of a large international company explained: " Important people don't need to carry a phone with them, they have a secretary and staff back at the office to deal with the minutia while I concentrate on the business I'm handsomely paid to do."
13 • Debian APT changes (by Jeff on 2021-11-29 10:03:36 GMT from United States)
What would you bet that systemd is or will soon become classed Essential or Protected? So that even if you have and use another init it cannot be removed.
Even though Debian talks about init diversity the truth is that several of the developers are systemd only and want all others to be unusable.
14 • Fedora 32 BETA had EarlyOOM for cleaning memory (by EarlyOOM in Fedora on 2021-11-29 11:11:34 GMT from India)
Previously, I was using a laptop with 2GB of RAM, and it used get out of memory frequently. At that time, the performance will be very slow and I will have to kill some process.
When Fedora 32 Beta introduced EarlyOOM, I tried it in the live system. It was killing applications frequently because of memory issue.
15 • Advanced Hardware Support (by penguinx86 on 2021-11-29 11:52:00 GMT from United States)
How about a distro that supports ALL laptop wifi adapters? I am so sick of distros where wifi doesn't work 'out of the box' in my laptop. Ubuntu? Fugedaboudit! Debian? Nope. Fedora might work sometimes, til the next update kills my wifi. Realtek, Broadcom and even some Intel wifi adapters need better Linux 'out of the box' support. I don't care about the latest graphics driver support. I just want my wifi to work with no hassles.
16 • @13 Debian APT changes (by anticapitalista on 2021-11-29 11:59:12 GMT from Greece)
I tried to build antiX (sid repos) via debootstrap and in a chroot and I am not able to remove sysvinit-utils for sysvinit-utils-antix (in order to use antiX's implementation of runit).
It worked just fine before this latest 'improvement' to apt.
Anyone know how to 'manually' force the removal/replacement?
17 • Memory (by Mike on 2021-11-29 12:08:25 GMT from United Kingdom)
Attempting to use Fedora Workstation on a system with 2GB RAM is like trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. It will never work so it's not surprising oom was killing all your processes.
I once ran Mint 9 LXDE on a 32-bit laptop with a single core AMD Athlon XP processor, 1280MB RAM and a 32GB Geforce 4 Go GPU. It wasn't exactly the fastest but it worked well enough to have a single tab browser window open and not choke when video was playing in it. I doubt it could have still done that in 2021.
While Linux is famed for being lighter on resources than Windows, you still need to have reasonable expectations and be sensible about how many applications and browser tabs you have open on a machine.
Fairly recently Linux Mint added a kill switch to the Cinnamon Desktop process so that when it exceeds a user configurable amount of RAM it restarts the process. Why? There's been a memory leak with Cinnamon for years and they haven't been able to address it properly, so this was the workaround.
I can see why oom may be useful but if it's happening too often then clearly you either need to upgrade the machine (if possible) or replace it with a better equipped model. 8GB is really the practical modern minimum regardless of installed operating system.
18 • Debian APR changes (by dragonmouth on 2021-11-29 12:57:43 GMT from United States)
At first glance the change looks to be beneficial. However, what is to prevent developers from declaring all their favorite pet software as "Essential"? What if tracking and spying apps are declared "Essential"? Are distros going to grow to 5, 6, 7 or more GB with no possibility of slimming them down?
The first thing I do after installing a distro is to uninstall the apps I don't/won't need and those that I do not want. In most distros that amounts to 200-300 Mb. In some distros, I've had to uninstall up to 1Gb worth of extraneous apps. Yes, I know. With today's multi-terabyte drives there is no need to worry about 200 Mb, 300 Mb or even 1 Gb of wasted space. But a Gb here and a Gb There and pretty soon you're looking at some serious waste of storage space.
19 • Keepass, etc.. (by Rick on 2021-11-29 13:50:16 GMT from United States)
@4 I agree with this 103%!! The inability for people to manage their own passwords properly in a foolproof medium (the notebook) consumes a significant portion of my business. Password managers fail because they forgot the master password, someone stole the computer, the SSD failed and many other reasons. And don't get me started on these same people not keeping the recovery methods up to date so that they can get back into Dashlane or whatever.
20 • @15 - Wifi support (by Uncle Slacky on 2021-11-29 14:19:46 GMT from France)
In my experience, MX is probably the best distro for wifi support, it handles many ancient/weird devices automagically. Some manufacturers give little or no support to those trying to write Linux drivers, so it's often a volunteer effort.
21 • Memory (by Rick on 2021-11-29 14:21:47 GMT from United States)
I never run out of memory on any of my 5 Thinkpads, ranging from 4GB to 12GB of memory. However, most Linux developers have stopped writing good, efficient code with low memory requirements. With each new release memory required goes up. A really good example was with Mint 18.0 which runs at about 300-325 MB at idle on one of my Thinkpads. With suceeding releases the memory requirements jumped 50% to about 650 MB. Is this progress? No, it isn't. Some of the worst offenders have been MX Linux and Ubuntu MATE, as well as the heavy hitters such as Fedora. I was an AS/400-iSeries business developer and consultant for over 20 years and learned to write efficient code. Why can't Linux people do the same?
22 • force-remove (by Anamezon on 2021-11-29 14:25:19 GMT from Finland)
@ 16 - have you checked whether you can use the --force-remove-(package) flag of dpkg?
23 • RAM future proof (by DW pool on 2021-11-29 14:57:45 GMT from Portugal)
By mid 2006 c2duo price/performance was perfect for an upgrade. 2 GB memory was enough, mechanical HD's were the only choice. Else a new Mobo.
By 2007 bad Vista was launched. Soon after I switched to Linux, never looked back. Even using Linux, 12 years later that mix was becoming obsolete, memory being the main bottleneck.
By then Ryzen was the perfect price/performance choice for next upgrade. Memory prices were fair enough, for future proof 32 GB. I hope I'll not run out of RAM for many years to come.
24 • out of ram (by wally on 2021-11-29 18:09:13 GMT from United States)
Decades ago I ran out of ram, went to my pc and found it locked up.
It would boot but not much else, and I had sufficient free ram.
With some thought and nervous sweat, I finally discovered thousands of small system messages created by a silly reporting change I had made prior to the incident.
System messages were being creating faster than clean-up and there was no name-space left.
Lots of ram, but the file-table limits were exceeded, thus nothing could be written.
Aside from that, I really dislike Flatpak and Snap.
There's more than enough bloat already in Linux and these only aggravate it.
25 • Memory (by Mike on 2021-11-29 18:37:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
@21 MATE memory usage increased when they switched from GTK2 to GTK3 unfortunately and probably will never go as low again. It's the price of progress and LXDE is the last bastion of GTK2 now.
26 • pw manager (by wally on 2021-11-29 18:44:19 GMT from United States)
Years ago I rolled my own pw manager with ccrypt and vi.
Worked very well but eventually it became unwieldy as pw's multiplied and became more complex.
Tried a couple managers, stuck with KeePass and never looked back.
It's been many years and versions now.
Never had a problem, but I do make encrypted clear txt backups - just in case.
27 • running out of RAM (by Simon Plaistowe on 2021-11-30 00:02:07 GMT from New Zealand)
I do general office work, research, tech work, programming, and maybe watch the odd video on my laptop with 16GB RAM and a 4GB swap file on SSD. Multitasking yeah but I don't tend to leave a bunch of stuff running in the background when I'm finished with it. Never have run out of RAM and the swap barely gets touched (swappiness is set to 10). Linux Mint 20.
28 • Application writers prefer Windows, Apple & Android, instead of Linux (by Greg Zeng on 2021-11-30 00:20:10 GMT from Australia)
Interesting reading, as usual in the Distrowatch editorials, and the readers comments. Occasional mentions of GTK2, 3, 4 but no QT versions, to avoid the GTK problems. The editorial had a link to a major dilemma.
Linux has tried to "universalise" applications into competing & incompatible containers: AppImage, Snap, or Flatpak. The link, "Flatpak Is Not the Future" (6,100 words), shows that Linux has an immense problem.
Containers are slow, bulky & unreliable. Compiling from source code might be faster, lighter, more adaptable. Which compilation, however? To me, most third party creators find that the Debian packages suit most Linux brands.
The RPM-based brands are second most popular, but are generally incompatible with each other, in their compiled versions. The compiled repositories of the others (puppies, Arch, Manjaro, etc) are smaller in quantity & updatedness.
If desktop Linux moves away from the Two-Per-Centers, it needs to tidy the mess of AppImage, Snap (Canonical-triggered) or Flatpak (Red Hat triggered).
29 • lockbox, password managers, and ram (by hotdiggetty on 2021-11-30 00:30:54 GMT from Canada)
I never run out of ram. 48 gb is sufficient.
I never use password managers. I can manage them just fine.
Lockbox could be handy for the less technical user. It would certainly be safer than Windows. It would require a high level of trust if crypto resources were substantial. Smart not to include wallets. Let the users choose whatever and assume all responsibility.
30 • Lockbox, privacy, smartphones (by Anon on 2021-11-30 03:10:14 GMT from Canada)
Lockbox seems very useful for it's purpose, and it should keep one free from intrusion better than most.
Password managers I don't use, but I see why others do. Privacy focused browsers are another matter. To see how private you are, this is a good website:
amiunique.org
One would think that running Linux is better for privacy, but since fewer people use it, it gets you much closer to a unique fingerprint. Sometimes I like anonymity. I'm using Chrome on Linux right now, but my fingerprint says I am running Chrome 99 on Windows 10, from California, and my system's time matches. Not perfect, but not bad. No privacy browser needed. Better with noscript enabled. I don't understand the obsession about hiding from Google. All they want is to follow your interests to better serve their advertisers. In return they offer a large quantity of goodies. If I'm going someplace new and am not sure how to get there, how is Google going to give me directions if they don't know where I am? There are many other things Google does. Also, If one is going to surf anonymously, better to have a public persona too. Best anonymity is Tor, although inconvenient, preferably with a VPN and not run on you daily system.
Cellphones, @12, " Important people don't need to carry a phone with them, they have a secretary and staff back at the office to deal with the minutia while I concentrate on the business I'm handsomely paid to do." So how do staff and secretary contact him? Smoke signals? Jack Dorsey ran Twitter and Square from a smartphone. On the other hand, Warren Buffet used a flip-phone until last year. But they all carry phones.
https://itzone.com.vn/en/article/billionaires-in-the-world-use-phones/
31 • Running out of RAM (by Jeff on 2021-11-30 03:49:26 GMT from United States)
For a while I was having problems very similar to those described by the "Running-out-of-RAM" question. Adding these two lines to /etc/sysctl.d/local.conf solved the problem for me:
vm.overcommit_memory=2
vm.overcommit_ratio = 80
There is a pretty good explanation here:
https://www.etalabs.net/overcommit.html
32 • HP PAVILION netbook 2GB RAM (by Mrinal on 2021-11-30 04:10:20 GMT from India)
I am writing this from HP netbook with 2GB RAM (soldered on with no upgrade option) and Q4OS installed with TRINITY desktop idling around 300 MB RAM. it is my travel companion for the past 4-5 years giving me more than 7 hours of screen time for the basic work that I do. Never I had any issue with the memory being run out even i have 6-7 tabs open in the browser. the only limitation it has due to celeron n3050 processor where 60 fps youtube video is a no go otherwise 720p is running smoothly. All I have done is replaced the 500 GB HDD with an 8 year old 60 GB SSD of Transcend and using the HDD as portable drive in USB enclosure. I have also disabled virtualisation in bios and has not installed bluetooth driver in this. For the past one year it has been repurposed as a zoom classes for my child and has never been any issue till date.
33 • Swap (by Bob Hepple on 2021-11-30 05:16:03 GMT from Australia)
swapfile? swap partition?
I thought we were all using zram by now - certainly in fedora that is true.
34 • Swap (by Bob Hepple on 2021-11-30 05:17:20 GMT from Australia)
BTW - I have an 8-Gb system, not huge by any means but very adequate.
35 • Swap (by Marco on 2021-11-30 10:24:49 GMT from United States)
I have 4GB of RAM, and a 4GB swap file on an SSD. I frequently am using the swap when I have too many browser tabs open.
36 • Memory (by Tad Strange on 2021-11-30 16:10:59 GMT from Canada)
The only thing that I have to manage, or be cognisant of, memory on is my laptop when running a few VMs.
The only thing that I routinely run out of memory on is the Chromebook. Opening and closing tabs over the course of a day will eventually cause the system to lock up, preceded by graphical glitches.
That was one big reason why I switched back to a traditional laptop. ChromeOS just seems to be full of memory leaks
37 • Password managers (by Anthony on 2021-12-01 13:58:29 GMT from Czechia)
@19 > Password managers fail because they forgot the master password, someone stole the computer, the SSD failed and many other reasons.
In none of the issues you described was it the password manager that failed. These are perfect examples of people failing to remember the password (Why on earth aren't you recalling it every day, even if you don't use every day?!), or fail at making timely and safe backups. (3-2-1 rule, anyone?) Please don't shift the blame from the user when it is the user's fault.
38 • audible ram warning (by eee shepherd on 2021-12-01 16:15:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
the fan goes reeeeeee long before the ram is all used up
39 • On memory ... (by Nico on 2021-12-01 16:47:07 GMT from United States)
The only people having a 'memory problem' are those who forgot that it's time for a new PC. It doesn't help much when the OS works with 128 MB of RAM, when a couple of applications need 5 GB ...
40 • Password Managers (by cant-remember-my-password on 2021-12-02 02:23:08 GMT from Australia)
I'm with Anthony @37 regarding password managers.
Never had an issue. If you can't remember ONE password then all hope is lost.
Writing things down on paper as BACKUP is fine.. but having to look at said paper copy and typing in all those characters correctly is a pain.. Especially with corporate applications and the passwords they generate for you..
41 • password protection (by old skool security on 2021-12-02 03:54:15 GMT from France)
Forgetting passwords is a problem, yes. But writing them down in a notebook isn't foolproof either. There are hackers who can access CCTV cameras in buildings as an aid to shoulder surfing - and have no trouble in getting your password that way.
The only effective defense is to use a hood to cover your work. this is what hackers have known for ages - that's why they wear hoodies. Get a hoodie for your head and it protects against facial recognition. Get one for your laptop and it protects what you're typing and what's on screen. Get a little one for your notebook and it protects what you write. When will cyber security experts wise up?
Of course, it helps if you also use your computer in a dark, dank basement as well, where there is unlikely to be any security cameras. (And if you're a cyber-wannabe, into stuff like sexting 'n porn, then you might wanna get one for your nether regions as well!)
42 • Corporate passwords (by Tad Strange on 2021-12-02 14:36:10 GMT from Canada)
Any business that has multiple logons per user but hasn't got an IAM solution has fallen behind.
The small business I work for uses Okta. 1 password per user and 1 IT guy that never forgets his.
43 • password protection (by zcatav on 2021-12-03 20:47:09 GMT from Turkey)
I recently found this type of flood.
https://twitter.com/Evil_Mog/status/1466487358962823170
Number of Comments: 43
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| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
Bella OS
Bella OS was a beginner-friendly Linux distribution based on Xubuntu's latest LTS (long-term support) release and featuring a customised Xfce desktop. The project's primary goal was to provide a curated suite of high-quality web, office and entertainment applications on top of a desktop that combines some of the best features from several popular operating systems.
Status: Discontinued
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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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