 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 949, 3 January 2022 |
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Welcome to this year's 1st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
We are pleased to be back, sharing news and reviews on Linux and other open source operating systems. A fresh new year is an opportunity for trying new things and for reviewing what we've learned over the past twelve months. This week we begin with a look back at Jesse Smith's favourite distributions of 2021. Are there any surprises on the list? Any fantastic Linux distributions you'd like to add to the list? Let us know what you think in the Opinion Poll below. Also in this week's edition we answer questions about the PinePhone running Manjaro and talk about improvements to the device once a bug which blocked updates was fixed. In our News section we discuss new features and fixes coming to the UBports mobile distribution. We also talk about siduction trimming down its collection of desktop editions while the Chakra project shuts down its servers. CentOS Linux 8 has reached the end of its supported life, though with some exceptions, and we have the details below. Plus we're pleased to share a list of releases from the past two weeks and share the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading.
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Jesse's Top Picks Of 2021
Generally speaking, when I review a distribution the experience exists in a sort of bubble for me. That is, I'm very interested in the operating system while it is in front of me. I'm intrigued by its features, I'm curious about its infrastructure, and I try to slide into the workflow of its desktop environment and tools. However, when my week with the distribution is over I tend to put it out of my mind. I don't often dwell on a particular problem or special feature of the distribution once I've started trying something else, unless the distro presented a feature or concept that was especially useful for me.
This year though I started making an effort to keep certain distributions in mind - bookmarking them in my brain, in a manner of speaking. Recently I've had more people ask me about which distributions are my favourites or which projects I'd be more likely to recommend for someone new. I've also felt like it would make it easier for me to evaluate some projects if I had a "high water mark" of quality against which I could compare new distributions.
With this in mind, starting in the early days of 2021, I began making note of when a distribution impressed me. Sometimes a distribution would just not do anything wrong or annoy me. Other times a distribution offered a particularly nice feature or seemed unusually user friendly. As we march into 2022 I'd like to take a look back at some of the distributions which stood out this past year as especially pleasant or interesting to use and explain why. This list is more or less in chronological order (the order in which I used the distribution) rather than by alphabetical order or in order of quality.
* * * * *
The first distribution to really stand out in my mind, in fact a big part of the inspiration for starting this list in the first place, was Artix. This distribution grew out of a combination of Arch Linux and Manjaro community projects which wanted to replace systemd with OpenRC. The project later added support for other lightweight init implementations such as runit and s6. I reviewed Artix back in March and it was the first distribution I used in 2021 which really impressed me.
Artix is available in many desktop flavours and, combined with the three init options, there are over 20 editions from which to choose. I ran Artix's runit edition featuring the KDE Plasma desktop and the experience was blissfully smooth. The distribution doesn't really do anything eye-catching or cutting-edge, but it worked flawlessly for me. As I mentioned at the time: "Artix Linux is one of those distributions I really enjoy using and yet struggle to review in a meaningful way because it doesn't really go out of its way to introduce new or exciting features and everything works smoothly. The distribution is wonderfully easy to install, offers top-notch performance, and is unusually light on resources. Artix is somewhat minimal, but still ships enough software to be immediately useful right out of the gate."
Artix Linux 20210101 -- Browsing the application menu
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I wouldn't recommend Artix for a Linux newcomer. Its many editions and its lack of a graphical package manager, or really any hand-holding tools, make it a distribution better suited to more experienced users. However, it was one of my few really rock solid, error-free experiences of 2021 and I liked it a lot.
* * * * *
The second distribution to impress me this past year was Manjaro Linux. Like Artix, Manjaro is a member of the Arch Linux family, a rolling release which is available in multiple desktop options. I tried the KDE Plasma edition for my review back in April.
I know Manjaro has been controversial over the span of its life. Some people don't like its extra testing stage which slightly slows down updates, some people don't like that the project has experimented with non-free software or web applications in order to appeal to a wider audience. The Manjaro team has occasionally caught flak for their handling of security certificates. However, those are both issues of the past and, in the case of trying various features, a sign of a healthy attempt to experiment to make the distribution appealing to newcomers. So I'm not going to hold Manjaro's past decisions against it and instead focus on the present.
Manjaro Linux 21.0 -- The welcome window
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Manjaro running KDE Plasma provided a very pleasant, friendly experience. The system offered a solid graphical package manager, a feature-rich desktop, and an easy installer. I encountered one desktop crash during my trial, but otherwise Manjaro was solid and very friendly. I especially liked the way searching for programs in the menu would offer to install items I wanted that were not available on my machine but could be fetched from the software repositories.
I'm not sure if I'd give Manjaro to a complete newcomer as it is a rolling release and prone to change from time to time, but it's fairly beginner friendly and probably ideal for most people who want to try their first rolling release distribution.
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To be honest, I was surprised to find myself adding Bodhi Linux to this list. A member of the Ubuntu family, Bodhi and I have never got along well together in the past. Frankly, I don't like the Enlightenment desktop (or Bodhi's fork of the desktop, called Moksha). I wasn't looking forward to test driving Bodhi 6.0.0 in June 2021, but I gave it a shot.
Two things impressed me about Bodhi Linux. The first was that it was so amazingly small and fast. The distribution is incredibly lightweight and quick to respond. It's like driving a sports car after months of using the aging mini-vans of KDE Plasma and GNOME. The other feature I appreciated was it was really easy to install Bodhi and then add software to the system using the distribution's web-based software centre.
Bodhi Linux 6.0.0 -- The Moksha desktop and application menu
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I'm still not a fan of the Enlightenment/Moksha desktop, but Bodhi's other features make up for my personal discomfort with the desktop environment. As I wrote back in June: "Whether you enjoy Bodhi will depend largely on whether navigating Moksha feels like coming home or like you're trying to learn an alien language from a Martian with a lisp. However, maybe I'm warming up to Bodhi or maybe the distribution has polished some of its features because I found myself more at home with it this time around. I liked that Bodhi was so lightweight (with a surprisingly small resource footprint). I like that the distribution is easy to install, thanks to Ubiquity, and I like that an effort is made to provide access to popular applications through the AppCentre. I'm still not a big fan of Moksha, but I do think the new theme and default widgets are making it more appealing than the last few times I ran its parent desktop, Enlightenment."
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The fourth entry on my list is yet another member of the Arch Linux family: EndeavourOS. When I took this rolling release distribution for a spin using the Xfce desktop, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked. In the past, when I'd used Antergos, EndeavourOS's spiritual predecessor, the experience was often plagued by installer issues. Endeavour's installer worked well, in both off-line and net-install modes.
EndeavourOS 2021.04.17 -- The welcome window
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Despite being one of the younger projects on this list, Endeavour performed beautifully, offered good performance, flexibility, and a pleasantly uncluttered default configuration.
The one drawback I ran into was Endeavour doesn't ship with a graphical package manager, but this was (for me) a minor concern. The project is producing a quick, sparse, rolling release that felt remarkably stable and error-free. As with Artix, I wouldn't recommend EndeavourOS to Linux newcomers, it expects a degree of familiarity with Linux software and the command line, but it's a great platform for people who want to run Arch while enjoying an easy setup process.
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So far the distributions I've mentioned have been ones which I personally felt were useful and well-suited to the needs of many distro-hoppers, but not ones which were particularly good fits for Linux beginners. Ubuntu MATE breaks this trend by being one of the most beginner-friendly distributions I used in this past year.
When I reviewed the distribution, I found Ubuntu MATE to be very easy to set up. It has a friendly welcome screen, offers a simplified software manager which is ideal for newcomers, and it runs on a variety of hardware platforms. The desktop performance offered by MATE was excellent and I like that Ubuntu MATE ships with alternative desktop layouts, allowing the user to quickly switch between eight different desktop styles.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 -- The welcome window
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The only drawback I could come up with when using Ubuntu MATE was that there wasn't a lower-level package manager, but this is something which only affects people like me (who can install an alternative like Synaptic) and not something which will bother newcomers. I'd definitely recommend Ubuntu MATE to less experienced computer users and people looking to try Linux for the first time.
* * * * *
Also on the subject of beginner friendly distributions, I'd like to touch upon Zorin OS. I took the Pro edition of Zorin OS 16 for a test drive in August and it was a fantastic experience.
Zorin offers just a few editions: a Lite one for older hardware, a Core edition that offers a nice desktop experience, and a Pro edition which is sold in exchange for support. Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu and benefits from its parent's hardware support and massive software repositories.
There were two aspects to Zorin OS which greatly appealed to me. One was the newcomer-friendly desktop environment. The desktop is set up to be familiar to Windows users by default, but it can be adjusted to use alternative themes and layouts which imitate other desktop environments. The other point of interest was the wonderful amount of useful software included in the distribution.
Zorin OS 16 -- Creating an account in the settings panel
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Zorin's application menu doesn't feel particularly crowded, but it does have a number of applications which are either rare to find or which I have not encountered installed on a distribution before out-of-the-box. Some of these are quite useful and likely to appeal to a wide audience. The Zorin Connect application to sync files and contacts with an Android phone, the Xournal++ note taking and document editing tool, there is a tool for using networked displays, and a tool called Barrier which allows multiple desktop machines to share a keyboard and mouse. All of these are ideal for a number of people I know, especially those who work from home, and yet it's a combination I haven't encountered in any other distribution.
To top it all off, Zorin OS ships with both Snap and Flatpak support and I could find virtually nothing wrong with the distribution. It was fast, solid, super user friendly, familiar for newcomers, and shipped with polished applications the general public (not just techies) will appreciate. For the general public, Zorin OS is easily my pick of the year.
* * * * *
So far I've talked about distributions which I feel are ideal for people who want to be on the cutting edge, people who like a wide range of options, and newcomers who want a super easy first experience with Linux. But what about what I want? Personally, the distribution I felt most at home with this year was MX Linux.
While I didn't write a review of MX Linux, Jeff Siegel reviewed the distribution back in November. He and I agree on our impressions of this Debian-based project: "That MX 21, codenamed Wildflower, is such a joy to use speaks volumes about Linux and its potential on the desktop, the dedication of its users, and why so many of us never want to boot a Big Tech operating system ever again. It's not so much that MX 21 just works, but that its developers have made a serious effort to identify what would make it work even better."
MX Linux 21 -- The Xfce desktop
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MX Linux offers a relatively small number of editions (Fluxbox, Xfce, and KDE Plasma) and, on paper it might not seem to stand out from the crowd of Debian's children. MX Linux doesn't appear to do anything especially innovative or unusual, which actually might be its secret. MX Linux is, in my opinion, basically Debian customized to be specifically a desktop operating system. It has the same large package selection as Debian, plus some updated desktop applications. It has the same hardware support and performance, but without all the dozens of confusing download options. MX Linux provides an installer we can get through with about five or six mouse clicks instead of the approximately two dozen it takes to install Debian.
MX Linux is virtually unique in that it allows users to select which init system they want to run at boot time rather than at install time. The distribution uses SysV init by default, but users can select to run systemd from the boot menu if they need systemd-specific features or Snap package support. This gives MX a feature which is either rare or maybe unique in the Linux ecosystem.
MX Linux manages to share Debian's stability and responsiveness while adding polish and conveniences. It is pleasantly boring, predictable, solid, and fast. All while requiring less technical knowledge and experience than vanilla Debian typically demands of its users.
The Xfce edition of MX Linux isn't perfect, its dark theme doesn't play well with some applications and, while I like it a lot, not everyone is thrilled with the vertical desktop panel. For me, MX Linux was the distribution I decided to keep running for a while after I finished test driving it.
* * * * *
Finally, I'd like to take a moment to tip my hat to Bedrock Linux. While Bedrock isn't really a Linux distribution, it is a fascinating project. Bedrock is a meta-distro which allows the user to merge together multiple distributions. Let's say you want the stability of Debian, but the cutting edge packages of Arch, then you can use Bedrock to marry the two together.
This allows the user to use the package managers of two distributions as well as their command line tools and desktop applications. Some people complain about there being no one perfect Linux distribution and how they need to make trade-offs, choosing between using openSUSE's YaST or Arch's vast community repository. With Bedrock you can have both! Bedrock glues multiple distributions together so you can use your favourite features from each.
Bedrock Linux 0.7.20 -- Running the Arch package manager on a Void-based system
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The concept of Bedrock can take a little getting used to, and it can take some adjustment in thinking before having multiple distributions co-existing on the same partition starts to feel natural. However, for people who want to have the best features of two (or more) distributions without dual-booting, Bedrock is the way to go.
I talked more about Bedrock Linux in a review back in July and, if combining components of multiple distributions appeals to you, I suggest you take a look at my notes from the experience.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
UBports introduces new fixes and features, siduction trims array of desktop editions, Chakra shuts down its servers, CentOS Linux 8 reaches its end of life
The UBports team have been making a lot of progress on their mobile operating system. Some of the key changes include being able to re-download media from text messages, and synchronizing information with Google accounts has been fixed. "MMS patches have finally been applied. Josele and Lionel Duboeuf are thanked for their work on that. This will allow operation of a re-download, try again button when an MMS comes in and fails to download correctly. That was a complicated process to manage, involving many different components, which needed to operate together.
There has been some work done on mediahub client. This is the main mechanism for video and audio playback. Alberto has changed the media client library for it so that it is fully implemented in Qt and C++. In the future it will allow for simultaneous playback of videos. An obvious application for that would be in TELEports, where in a channel containing a lot of videos, they could auto play as you scroll. There are several more steps needed for implementation of a feature like that but what has been done provides the foundation.
Sensorfw for Android 9 has been included now. It now covers magnetometer and compass. It has already been established that it works with Waydroid. Microphone access has been incorporated into the browser. The permissions dialog has been implemented, allowing it to function.
Google accounts have been restored, allowing sync of contacts and calendar." These and other improvements are detailed in the project's blog post.
* * * * *
A situation which many Linux distributions struggle with is finding enough developers (and time) to accommodate all the requests and features their users want. The siduction team has found themselves stretched thin while maintaining multiple editions and have decided to narrow their focus. The changes regarding which editions will be supported is discussed in one of the project's recent announcements: "Those who have read our call for collaboration in the forum know that we lack the time to adequately maintain siduction in its current incarnation. Therefore, we have decided to stop publishing some desktop variants for the official release for the time being. We will stop shipping Cinnamon and LXDE in addition to MATE, which was already missing in the last release, and concentrate on KDE Plasma, LXQt, Xfce, Xorg and noX."
* * * * *
The Chakra GNU/Linux distribution was an independent, rolling-release distribution which gained a reputation for providing a customized, cutting-edge KDE desktop experience. The project has been relatively quiet in recent years and its lead developer has decided to wind down the distribution. In an e-mail to DistroWatch the Hans Tovetjärn (totte) reported: "The open source Chakra Linux operating system is no longer in development and I am in the process of terminating accounts and related services. There hasn't been much activity since November 2019, if I recall correctly."
* * * * *
The CentOS team have announced that CentOS Linux 8 has reached the end of its supported life. However, there are some exceptions which will keep a measure of activity going with the 8.x branch. "CentOS Linux 8 will reach End Of Life (EOL) on December 31st, 2021. Here's what that means. In line with the EOL of previous releases, we will NOT be automatically migrating anyone to the next version (which is CentOS Stream 8 in this case). We will be shipping a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5 once it is released, even if that means that this is released slightly after the EOL date. The release of a RHEL point release is often accompanied, immediately afterwards, by a set of zero-day updates. We will be providing this content as part of the final CentOS Linux 8 release. There will, however, be no more updates to the CentOS Linux 8 content after that time." People who wish to continue running CentOS Linux can downgrade to version 7 or migrate to another branch of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux family.
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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) |
Answering questions about the PinePhone
At the end of 2021 I shared my experiences with my new PinePhone. The trial had its ups and downs and it left some people with lingering questions about the device. This week I'd like to answer your questions about the PinePhone.
Can-you-hear-me-now asks: Terrific piece, Jesse. I've been waiting for years to find an open source phone that works, and I think you hit the nail on the head. And I assume you didn't try to make a call? Which, of course, I still have to use my phone for.
Jesse answers: Thank you. Yes, you're right, I didn't make any calls with the PinePhone running Manjaro and Plasma Mobile. In theory it should be able to. It looks like Plasma Mobile should support making and receiving calls, so long as your phone carrier supports the proper frequency range of the hardware. (See an update to this below.)
However, by the time I got around to that part of the test I was finding it hard to keep the device's screen on long enough for me to launch an application let alone dial a number. The phone kept shutting off its screen to conserve battery power, even when there was over 80% charge left and the interface would lock up if I had more than one application open. Basically, the system wasn't stable or fast enough for me to try using it to make calls.
At the time of writing I'm testing the PinePhone running UBports and, according to the project's device information, calls should work with supporting carriers. I haven't tried it yet, but the device is much more stable and responsive when running UBports. I'll report back once I've tried texting and phone calls.
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Getting-up-to-date says: I enjoyed your review of the PinePhone. It uses Manjaro Linux. If you had connectivity, it would have been to your advantage to launch a terminal and run: "sudo pacman -Syu" and update to latest.
Jesse answers: I did try that. As I mentioned in the review, trying to update the Manjaro operating system resulted in an error due to missing dependencies. This occurred whether I was using the Discover software centre or the terminal.
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Making-it-work says: Thanks for this honest review of Plasma Mobile from March 2021. We looked into the update issue and provided a fix for it. Simply use Discover and try to update again. We would be glad to hear a follow-up on the improvements you may see after updating the system.
Jesse answers: I was curious to see if this fix would allow me to upgrade. The first time I opened Discover and selected updates I made the mistake of trying to continue using the phone to run other applications and the system locked up hard and had to be restarted. The next time I stayed in Discover and asked it to acquire the 1.1GB of available updates which are bundled together as one item. No dependency errors appeared this time. It took about five minutes before the update's progress bar started to move, but then the updates started pouring in. Once the update completed Discover advised a restart of the phone.
There were some immediately notable changes. The user interface became more responsive after the update. Actions such as opening drawers and switching between applications were much smoother after the package update. The Discover software centre still reports there are over 500 updates waiting, though a check showed a total of zero bytes of packages pending. Some programs, such as the Angelfish web browser were more responsive. The settings drawer was especially faster to respond.
Some aspects stayed the same though. I didn't notice any key differences in the settings panel, for example, and I was still unable to find a way to do away with the lock screen PIN prompt, even though I had no PIN set on the device. I couldn't get Waydroid to run. Applications were still a bit slow to load, though they felt snappier once they had finished loading.
After the update completed I tried using the device as a phone (making calls and sending/receiving texts). The PinePhone running Manjaro failed both of these tests. The device showed it had a connection to my mobile network, but it failed to send texts, reporting the network wasn't available. When I tried to place a call the dialer interface reported calls could not be made "at this time" and then the phone would ring, showing the number I just called as the incoming number. Trying to answer the call would cause the phone app to immediately close the connection. In short, the device does detect an available mobile network along with its signal strength, but cannot use it for texting or calling.
The biggest issue though which I still faced after the update was the phone would immediately put itself to sleep if it was not plugged into AC power. No matter how much charge the battery was holding, Manjaro would put the phone to sleep a second after it woke up. This meant I always had to have the device plugged in when running Manjaro (an issue UBports does not share) and it made it virtually impossible to use the device as a mobile phone. It was more like a Raspberry Pi computer with a built-in screen.
In short, there have definitely been improvements in the past nine months which, thanks to the developers, I can now access through the Discover software centre. However, there are still some key limitations with regards to access and the way the phone constantly puts itself to sleep, even when going to sleep has been disabled in the settings panel.
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Earlier I mentioned I've been testing the PinePhone with an alternative operating system: UBports. I will share my experiences using the device with UBports in more detail next week.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
elementary OS 6.1
The elementary team have announced the release of elementary OS 6.1 which carries the codename "Jolnir". The new release features the same base operating system as 6.0, though with a number of evolutionary improvements. Some of these changes affect the distribution's software centre: "AppCenter continues to fill out with apps from developers - and since the move to Flatpak, all apps that have been released for OS 6 will continue to be available on OS 6.1 and beyond. You can currently find over 90 curated apps in AppCenter, and developers have continued to push out rapid and frequent updates to their apps with new features and bug fixes, as they're in control of their own update schedule. Our shift from Debian packages to Flatpak for both curated and non-curated apps also means we're able to lean more on Flatpak features, and we've been using this as an opportunity to make AppCenter much more engaging and informative right from the start - directly addressing feedback about the discoverability of the wide variety of apps in AppCenter." Additional information is available in the project's release announcement.
IPFire 2.27 Core 162
IPFire is a lightweight Linux distribution for firewalls, routers, and other security-sensitive appliances. The developers have released a new version, IPFire 2.27 Core Update 162 which will be the last version to support 32-bit x86 machines. "Once a few releases after upgrading to Linux 5.10, we have now rebased the IPFire kernel on Linux 5.15. Due to dropping or upstreaming our patchset this was a lot easier than the previous step to 5.10. The new kernel is long-term supported by the Linux kernel developers and comes with various new drivers and performance improvements. Noteworthy are various performance improvements on 'zero copy' for increased throughput and lower latency; Core Scheduling (for safer Hyperthreading), and a new drivers for NTFS. We have continued our work to take advantage of improvements in the kernel that help to decrease CPU usage when forwarding large numbers of packets. In certain environments, this enables IPFire to significantly more throughput and lower latency since more CPU resources are available when needed. This is the last release supporting 32-bit Intel-compatible processors - in our case i586 and older. Having announced this plan a year ago, the time has finally come." Additional information can be found in the release announcement.
Manjaro Linux 21.2.0
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 21.2.0, an updated version of the project's rolling-release distribution featuring the continually-improved Calamares installer and the latest versions of Xfce, GNOME and KDE Plasma desktops: "Since we released Pahvo Mid-Season this year all our developer teams worked hard to get the next release of Manjaro out there. We call it 'Qonos'. This release features major improvements to Calamares, including filesystem selection for automatic partitioning and enhanced support for Btrfs. For Btrfs installations, the default subvolume layout has been improved for easier rollbacks and less wasted space on snapshots. Additionally, swapfiles on Btrfs filesystem are now supported. The GNOME edition has received a major rework - update to GNOME 41.2. The default layout has been redesigned to follow more closely upstream defaults, with some adjustments to reduce the pointer travel for users who prefer using mouse with gnome." Here is the full release announcement.
siduction 2021.3.0
The siduction distribution is a desktop-oriented operating system and live medium based on the 'unstable' branch of Debian. The project's latest snapshot is version 2021.3.0 which introduces improvements for wireless network handling, includes OpenDoas as an alternative to sudo, and offers many package upgrades. "The flavours and versions we offer for siduction 2021.3.0 are KDE Plasma 5.23.4, LXQt 1.0, Xfce 4.16, and the X.Org and noX images, where X.Org comes with the window manager Fluxbox, while noX does without X altogether. The released images of siduction 2021.3.0 are a snapshot of Debian 'Unstable' from Dec. 23, 2021, enriched with some useful packages and scripts, a Calamares-based installer and a customized version of the Linux kernel 5.15.11, while systemd is at 249.7. The iNet Wireless Daemon (iwd), which we already shipped with siduction 2021.1.0 for the flavors X.Org and noX, is now also responsible for WiFi on Plasma, LXQt and Xfce. iwd is lightweight and establishes connections to WiFi faster than was possible with wpa_supplicant. iwd works stand alone or together with NetworkManager, systemd-networkd and Connman." Additional changes can be found in the release announcement.
siduction 2021.3.0 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
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Rescuezilla 2.3
Rescuezilla is a specialist Ubuntu-based distribution designed for system rescue tasks. The project's latest release offers file image verification and an option to override filesystem errors. "The main additional feature for Rescuezilla v2.3 is basic image verification, as well as a new 'rescue' option to force filesystem errors to be ignored. Virtually all Partclone-based tools other than Clonezilla always ignore errors using Partclone's --force option, which I think is a bad idea. Some bugs and important feature requests from Rescuezilla v2.2 continue to remain yet-unaddressed, including unfortunately the highly requested 'persistent partition' feature as it still requires further changes and testing. Here is a partial list of what has changed in Rescuezilla v2.3: implemented image verification feature; added 'Rescue' option to ignore filesystem inconsistencies and bad sectors; replaced Ubuntu 21.04 'Hirsute' build with build based on Ubuntu 21.10 'Impish' for best support of new hardware; added ability to restore and explore images created by 'Apart Partclone GUI; improved image scanning; fixed display of LVM shutdown error message...." The release announcement offers further details. The distribution is presented in two editions, one based on Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish" and one based on 20.04 "Focal".
NuTyX 21.10.12
NuTyX is a French Linux distribution (with multi-language support) built from Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch, with a custom package manager called "cards". The project's latest release offers more advanced manual installation options and a more complete automatic install option. "GRUB Installation: GRUB is now setup by default on EFI machine. Automatic installation: Version 21.10.12 introduces a first version of the installer in automatic mode. If all the conditions are met, the partitioning, formatting and installation of GRUB will be done automatically. The conditions being a single and blank hard disk therefore having no partition table. New mode of installation in live - full customable installation: If you choose the 'LIVE' mode when launching the IOS, you can now use the command 'KERNEL=your_favorit_kernel install-nutyx' to install NuTyX in a full manual mode. Partitionning, formatting, mounting the partitions are up to you. Please check the documentation. Dependency of a package are proctected: The 'cards remove' command will not let you remove a package used by another. Means it's a dependency." Additional details are provided on the project's news page.
Slackel 7.5 "Openbox"
Happy New Year! Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel 7.5 "Openbox" edition, the latest version of the project's a desktop Linux distribution based on Slackware's "current" branch, available for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms: "Slackel 7.5 'Openbox' has been released. It includes the Linux kernel 5.15.12 and the latest updates from Slackware's 'current' tree. The wicd utility has been removed and NetworkManager is now the default application for connecting to networks. Slackel can now be installed on an external 16 or 32 GB USB stick or SSD disk so you can have a portable, fast system always with you. You can also upgrade it to have the latest programs. It is a real installation. You will not notice that you run Slackel from a USB device. The system is fast. Persistence becomes slow after installing some programs. but doing a real installation on an USB stick or external SSD disk will get you a portable Slackel USB in your pocket." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
Neptune 7.0
Leszek Lesner has announced the release of Neptune 7.0, a major new version of the project's desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's latest stable release and featuring the KDE Plasma desktop: "We are proud to announce the release of Neptune 7 'Faye' named after the member of the Bebop crew in the Cowboy Bebop anime. This version comes with a new Debian base (11 'Bullseye') that offers newer and better hardware support as well as newer software and applications. KDE Plasma 5.20.5 ships with a new Neptune-specific theme that embraces the Breeze widget style for maximum compatibility and it also introduces a new subtle but modern flat look and feel to Neptune. We also updated the icon theme to our own variation of the Tela icon theme to fit with the new look of the system. The default panel has been modernized to allow pinning more apps and tasks to it as well as offering a new bigger and easier look to the eyes. Besides that, Linux kernel 5.10 offers modern hardware support as well as bug fixes." Here is the complete release announcement with screenshots.
Neptune 7.0 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
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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) |
What is your top pick for 2021?
In this week's Feature Story we outlined some fantastic distribution releases of the past year. The Linux ecosystem is varied and has something to offer virtually everyone. Which distribution did you have the most success with in 2021? Did any distributions surprise you with how good (or bad) they were this year? Let us know your favourite and worst pick for 2021 in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on sharing a family computer in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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My favourite distro of 2021 was
| Artix: | 199 (8%) |
| Bedrock: | 20 (1%) |
| Bodhi Linux: | 25 (1%) |
| Endeavour OS: | 171 (7%) |
| Manjaro Linux: | 299 (12%) |
| MX Linux: | 428 (17%) |
| Ubuntu MATE: | 98 (4%) |
| Zorin OS: | 117 (5%) |
| Other: | 1197 (47%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Circle Linux. Circle Linux is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is intended to be an alternative to the recently discontinued CentOS Linux 8 series.
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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, 10 January 2022. 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 • Favorite Linux of 2021 (by brad on 2022-01-03 01:19:43 GMT from United States)
I could have gone either way with Manjaro or MX, so I'll break it down this way - Manjaro is my Linux daily driver, and MX allowed me to create a fast, persistence Linux-on-a-stick, which I can (and have) use as a rescue/backup stick that fits on my keychain!
2 • Favorite Distro (by Cliff on 2022-01-03 01:24:23 GMT from Philippines)
Linux Mint has been my steady favorite since it first came out.
3 • Favorite distro (by zephyr on 2022-01-03 01:36:59 GMT from United States)
Star @ https://sourceforge.net/projects/linnix/
4 • Fave Linux (by cor on 2022-01-03 01:45:01 GMT from United States)
Kubuntu fills the bill for me. It's installed on my desktop and 2 laptops.
5 • DW distro search by country of origin (by 1-DOT.com on 2022-01-03 01:52:10 GMT from United States)
When we took a look at the top 75 Linux distros on Distrowatch using DW's "search by country" of origin, we found some surprises and a few bugs in this DW search (example: Debian and BunsenLabs were not included).
https://www.facebook.com/groups/linux.fans.group/posts/6768840986490959
I some ways this is just interesting trivia. Regardless of origin, most Linux distros are shaped by contributors and feedback from many countries. Even the country of origin is often shared, e.g., Manjaro.
6 • Favorite distro (by DaveW on 2022-01-03 01:58:09 GMT from United States)
Of the distros listed, I'd have to say MX Linux is the best of the bunch. However, my daily driver is Linux Mint Mate, and has been for 10 years. I haven't found any reason to change, and I have looked at a number of other distros over the years.
7 • Bedrock (by Andy Prough on 2022-01-03 02:11:45 GMT from United States)
Once I read your Bedrock review earlier this year Jesse, I tried it again and became an immediate convert. Now I use Bedrock with Void and Devuan unstable as my daily driver and couldn't be happier. I look back on all my years of only using one major package manager at a time like I was a caveman.
8 • Favorite Distro (by Sam Crawford on 2022-01-03 02:23:40 GMT from United States)
I run LinuxMint Cinnamon on my laptop. It seems work as well or better than Windows 11. My desktop runs Debian "testing" with the Mate desktop.
I would run Cinnamon on the desktop but it just isn't stable enough in Debian and terrible in Debian " stable" Mate 1.26 is barely stable in 'testing".
9 • Favorite Distro (by Steve K on 2022-01-03 02:33:17 GMT from United States)
I second Cliff's choice for Linux Mint. I have been regularly testing and using various Linux distros for around 15 years now, including most of the ones on Jesse Smith's list above, but my favorite distro and daily driver is Linux Mint Mate. It has all the features I want and need, is highly customizable, and is fast and totally stable. I've never had any problems with it unlike with most other distros I've tried, including some on Jesse's list above (e.g. Manjaro). It's also a great choice for Linux beginners and is rated very highly and near the top of Distrowatch's Page Hit List. I don't know why Jesse left this off his list.
BTW, I also don't like the vertical desktop panel that MX Linux places on the left side but this can easily be changed to placing it on the bottom or the top of the desktop. I use MX Linux as well and have put it on the bottom.
10 • Favorite Distro (continued) (by Steve K on 2022-01-03 02:43:09 GMT from United States)
I also second DaveW's assessment of MX Linux being the best distro on the list above but also use Linux Mint Mate as my daily driver have for many, many years without any problems.
11 • Ubuntu MATE (by ES on 2022-01-03 03:00:26 GMT from United States)
Shortly after it was released, I installed Ubuntu MATE 20.04 on a laptop for an older relative who knows NOTHING about computers.
It’s been rock solid, and has required next to no technical support from me, and it runs quickly on her old hardware with a Celeron processor and 4 GB ram.
The choice of desktop configurations and the menu for installing every significant browser from Chrome and Opera to Brave and Vivaldi made setup a breeze.
12 • Favourite distro Slackware Live from Alienbob (by Jorge on 2022-01-03 03:01:56 GMT from Argentina)
For daily usage on my computer and usb stick with persistence ability. A summary
SysV , fast, efficient, updated and clean. Whom need more?
13 • Favorite Distro (by Andy Figueroa on 2022-01-03 03:35:40 GMT from United States)
Although my personal primary desktop PC and server both run Gentoo, my favorite and the one I deploy for everyone else, including the school I support, is MX Linux. (Gentoo isn't really a distribution but is a distribution construction kit with a package management system.)
14 • Mint (by Jesse on 2022-01-03 03:52:48 GMT from Canada)
@9: "but my favorite distro and daily driver is Linux Mint Mate. It has all the features I want and need,... I don't know why Jesse left this off his list."
Because this list is only for distributions I used and reviewed in 2021. I didn't review Mint in 2021. Mint would have made my top three list for 2020.
15 • Favored: Mint MATE (by Greg Zeng on 2022-01-03 04:06:55 GMT from Australia)
About half the readers disagree with the Editor, on the preferred distro. The creators of Linux operating systems also disagree, very strongly: Ubuntu-core (69), and Debian-core (121), and then the various also-rans. These developer preferences are detailed by deep analysis of the Distrowatch database. This analysis shows a long term preference for XFCE: 92 0f the 275 "Active" systems listed on Distrowatch.
The foundation stones of the editor's choice are interesting. Because Distrowatch is favoured by Linux heavies, the elitist One-Percenters, then this shows the dominance here of the Arch & Debian based distributions. Being too user friendly is not valued by most elitists.
Remarkable by their absence are the many incompatible RPM-based distributions. This is not assisted by RHEL tendencies to focus mainly on Fedora, ignoring other RPM "compatibles". The only missing "victory" from Red Hat, however, is its popularity with Flatpak, instead of all the other "competitors": Canonical's initiated Snap, appimage, and all the other many brave application packages, which try to offer ready to install binary code.
Red Hat's Fedora is "leading", pretty much alone also, with Gnome, BTRFS and Wayland. As usual, the "informed press" is being very politically correct, careful to not mention that using leading edge products causes many strange things: bugs, incompatibilities, and unpredictable breakages of most kinds.
16 • Fav Distro (by ale on 2022-01-03 04:45:19 GMT from Venezuela)
Q4OS - My fav distro for replacing Windows systems. Used together with the project XPQ4 to emulate Windows appearance are the perfect match for replacing Windows for non-tech users. Plus the Trinity DE offers super lightweight hardware requirements, which is perfect for old hardware.
17 • For me Artix has become synonym for Linux (by Jyrki on 2022-01-03 04:56:19 GMT from Czechia)
I have to say I am less happy with Linux year by In 2021 I got to the point where on some PCs I am happily using BSDs. But where Linux remains, it remains thanks to Artix. I cannot even imagine running any other Linux.
18 • Favorite Distribution: Other (by c00ter on 2022-01-03 04:56:36 GMT from United States)
I run Arch, btw.
19 • 2021 favorites (by Christian on 2022-01-03 05:08:37 GMT from Canada)
KDE Neon (daily driver)
Mageia (KDE) (kids computer)
Mint (Cinnamon) (wife's computer)
Solus (Gnome) (playground)
20 • Favourite Distro (by Roger Brown on 2022-01-03 06:04:48 GMT from Australia)
I think Artix is a very poor choice simple because, unless you're going to install one of their experimental weekly builds, you're installing a version of Arch that will require nearly 6 months of updates.
That's highly undesirable in a distro designed to be updated weekly at very least.
21 • A year of change (by Trihexagonal on 2022-01-03 06:29:27 GMT from United States)
During 2021 I converted 4 of 8 laptops over to Kali and am currently running kali-rolling 2021.4a, the others still running FreeBSD.
I just updated my FreeBSD Tutorial to FreeBSD 13.0.
22 • Favorite Distro (by Buddy on 2022-01-03 07:10:17 GMT from United States)
Linux Mint, both Cinnamon (on my desktop) and XFCE (on a VM).
I hop around a lot on my “playground” partition, but I rely on Mint for getting stuff done. It works. After installing software, configuring it to my preferences, and running updates, it stays working. I trust it for development and I trust it to run software in production. Go Mint!
23 • FreeBSD (by Dale on 2022-01-03 07:21:41 GMT from United States)
I swapped to FreeBSD about 6 months ago, and I haven't ever looked back. If you're scared of FreeBSD, try to run GhostBSD.
24 • Best distro (other than Slackware /s) (by anon on 2022-01-03 07:25:15 GMT from United States)
Spoiler: https://fosspost.org/mx-linux-21-review-best-distribution-2021/
25 • Distros of 2021 (by Any on 2022-01-03 07:30:55 GMT from Spain)
I spent six months of the last year using Manjaro. It got broken three times due to updates. Then I spent another six months using Artix. At some time it got broken too due to broken dependencies. One more time the rolling release model gave me problems. So it lasted until December and then I installed Debian. One month with Debian stable and no problems so far.
I have a partition with Q4OS which I used while repairing the damages caused by Manjaro and Artix updates.
My favourite of all times is Slackware, but I got lazy and a package manager that solves things for me is welcome.
26 • Fav Distro (by DistroHopperX on 2022-01-03 07:43:23 GMT from Spain)
Still Mint. Sparky in second place: in my opinion it is now superior to MX.
27 • Best Linux distribution of 2021 (by Sean Greenhalgh on 2022-01-03 07:44:26 GMT from Australia)
I think the best distro, would have to be Mint. And in particular, Mint XFCE, because it's the most lightweight. I did try Manjaro out for gaming this year, the XFCE version, it did work well for gaming, with its up-to-date drivers. Although, I would put Linux Mint above it, for stability. I love Bodhi though, I think it's a really snazzy distribution.
28 • Meilleure Distribution (by shaitan on 2022-01-03 07:57:55 GMT from Bulgaria)
Siduction. (debian bookworm / sid)
29 • Favorite Distro (by Vukota on 2022-01-03 08:19:15 GMT from Serbia)
Still Mint either Cinnamon, Xfce or Mate.
30 • Favorite Distro (by Pawan on 2022-01-03 08:20:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
My favorite Linux distribution in 2021 has been Void Linux.
I find it very fast, stable (though rolling), simple, works perfectly and never bother me. Along with Void, I use Devuan as primary OS from few years now.
31 • Favorite distro (by bert on 2022-01-03 08:50:02 GMT from Netherlands)
On my old Dell Inspiron N5030 Linux Mint XFCE works the best. Very reliable and everything works out of the box. I have used many other distro's like Manjaro, Solus and Sparky Linux. I keep coming back to Linux Mint XFCE. Second best is Q4OS. I wonder why so many others above are choosing Linux Mint Mate. What is the difference with XFCE?
32 • Favorite Distro (by Tumbo on 2022-01-03 09:24:53 GMT from Bulgaria)
Devuan Chimaera, a systemd-free Linux, I'm back to the purity of Linux.
33 • Favorite Linux (by Hank on 2022-01-03 09:31:46 GMT from Romania)
antiX, the base of MX, comes with less flash and more performance, Two inits to chose from several supported desktops.
Want it to look somewhat windows like for a new user or one who pines for win 7, use a Transformation Pack from two forum members.
Boot in many cases to less than 200 MB RAM, Run live from usb stick DVD or smaller edition from CD.
Load entirely to memory, lightning fast running. Make a frugal install, build up from a minimal system or as I do just use full edition with ICEWM.
love it.
34 • Best Linux for 2021 (by penguinx86 on 2022-01-03 09:52:23 GMT from United States)
Linux Mint has been my favorite for years. I tried a couple of other distros as VMs in 2021, but none of them were worthy to replace Mint as the main OS on my laptop. I ran Fedora with Gnome 40 for a while. It worked ok for about a month, until an update broke my wifi. Now I'm happily back to running Linux Mint XFCE as my main laptop OS and my wifi works just fine with no hassles.
35 • Favorite Linux of 2021 (by Dan on 2022-01-03 10:27:08 GMT from United States)
Bodhi Linux is my 1st and only choice for 2021.
36 • As a hobby user (unable for using command-line), my choises are Mint & Ubuntu (by yucel on 2022-01-03 10:30:38 GMT from Turkey)
I can use command-line, I use Linux in dual boot Mint Mate (or Cinnamon) and Ubuntu Mate. They both together anough my needs. İn my other Laptop I have Windows 10 for the needs which Linux can not solve such as batch (lot) renaming of many files. (You know also "Linux can not play some programs too")
37 • Tops (by Someguy on 2022-01-03 10:55:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ah, yes, bit of a 'minty' look for the >50% with MX the solid runner up. So who's fiddling the PHR figures?!
Run MX with horizontal DTP/bottom but haven't been able to invert it yet to have date/time/etc on rhs and main menu on lhs. - appreciate advice on that one, please.
38 • favorite distro (by Ada on 2022-01-03 11:45:22 GMT from United States)
For at least the tenth year in a row, my favorite is Arch. No derivative will do. Been rolling on the same install with no reason to start over or reinstall so long I can't remember when I made it. Sent the Arch Wiki's install guide to my partner more recently, and despite very little Linux experience they figured out partitioning, installing with pacstrap, and installing their bootloader just fine. I honestly don't understand people whose distro of choice is basically "Arch but 'easier' to install somehow".
39 • Why my favorite distro (by avelinus on 2022-01-03 12:03:00 GMT from Portugal)
For the past 10 years, my favorite distro has been Fedora Mate with Gnome desktop apps installed.
I like using Caja, but I also like using Nautilus. I prefer to always install Fedora Mate and add in the command line Gnome desktop, I benefit from the Dnf package manager, but also gnome apps. I use Fedora on my Asus Tuf with Ryzen 7 4800 and on my HP 7900 with Quad core 9550 at school and HP 8300 I5 3470s at home.
They work perfectly and I can get some rpm programs from the internet and install them normally better with the gnome application tool like Gtick, Teams, Zoom Chrome.
Every year I try out the most highly rated and visited distros and the only one I'm satisfied with is Zorin 16. Zorin opens faster than Fedora on my laptop but then It's not usually more agile at handling the programs. I'm experimenting on the Desktop of the family that still has Windows 7 and Zorin has been working better on it; an HP Z210 Tower. I would add that all those desktops were purchased refurbished within the last six years. For now Fedora Mate remains my working distro. Happy new year to everyone.
40 • Favorite distro (by kc1di on 2022-01-03 12:19:52 GMT from United States)
Out of the distros that Jesse reviewed last year and the list given I would pick MX-21. But my daily driver has been mint any flavor for the past 7 years or so. It never fails me and is rock solid.
Just works.
Looking forward to what 2022 will bring in the Linux world.
41 • Favourite distro (by phil_h on 2022-01-03 12:36:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
@37 "Run MX with horizontal DTP/bottom but haven't been able to invert it yet to have date/time/etc on rhs and main menu on lhs. - appreciate advice on that one, please."
Use MX Tweak - switches the default to any position.
42 • Solus OS (by anona on 2022-01-03 12:46:50 GMT from United States)
Joshua Strobl of Solus OS resigned yesterday. Let's hope the remaining team can pick up the pieces!
43 • Jesse's Top picks of 2021... (by Marc Visscher on 2022-01-03 12:53:31 GMT from Netherlands)
I was surprised not to see Linux Mint is his list of top picks. Linux Mint has proven over the years that it's a distro that does ALWAYS works and is extremely reliable on all hardware I've ever used. On top of that it has a beautiful desktop (Xfce is my favourite still because of the flexibility) and is appealing for both novice users and experienced users.
I haven't used Linux Mint for a couple of years because I wanted to dig in deeper into Linux, but in 2019 I didn't have that much time anymore to do that. I needed a distro that was very stable and just works right away after installation because of my work. Linux Mint has been my "working horse" since then, and it really never failed on me. Since the installation I haven't encountered not even one issue! That's something, isn't it?
I also like Manjaro because of it's ease of use, but in the past I encountered some minor issues. They were resolved quickly, but when you need your computer for serious work, you just can't have issues to resolve. I have to say that I haven't had any problems lately with Manjaro, so I guess they made a progress with the distro.
Happy new year everybody! I hope 2022 will be a great year for Linux in general (once again!)
44 • distro choices (by Jay on 2022-01-03 13:33:27 GMT from Denmark)
Of the distros you listed, I like Artix, Endeavour, and MX Linux best - but Mabox is hard to beat and Arco Linux is decent too.
While I'll always prefer Arch to Debian, I find Parrot Home (which is aimed at privacy aficionados rather than security pros) worthwhile.
For those new to Linux, MX Linux and Zorin are good choices - but so are Q4OS and Linux Lite.
(Windowsfx looks interesting if one's really into refugee distros, but its UI is so similar to Microsoft's, I find it disquieting.)
45 • Favorite Distro of 2021 (by Arnaud on 2022-01-03 13:44:33 GMT from France)
My favorite distribution for 2021 is Mageia 7.
I use it even when Mageia team decide to not maintain it.
It was very stable, i have no issue.
Happy new year !
Ma distribution préféré est Mageia 7.
Je l'ai utilisé même après qu'elle ne soit plus maintenue par la Team Mageia.
Elle était très stable, je n'ai rencontré aucun problème.
Bonne année !!
46 • "Top PIck of 2021" (by Otis on 2022-01-03 14:14:43 GMT from United States)
Well... seeing most of these noted distros have been around for years, the top pick for one of those years, last year, could be any of those exceptional distros. Artix is amazing, but I may be one of many who don't need a distro that is basically or at least in part designed to run on older machines. I'm fortunate to have a modern machine with fast and efficient hardware.
So, MX and Manjaro stand out to me, but I, like many Linux folks, toy with everything from Zorin to Garuda to GhostBSD.
If I had to pick one I wouldn't.
47 • Favorite Distro of 2021 - Arch Heavy (by Justin on 2022-01-03 14:16:55 GMT from United States)
I found it interesting that most of the favorited distros were Arch based. I wonder if Arch is a better base for components to work with out-of-the-box as compared to other distros like Ubuntu or if it was just a case of Jesse reviewing mostly Arch based distros in 2021?
48 • Preferred distro... (by Friar Tux on 2022-01-03 14:20:23 GMT from Canada)
Definitely, Liniux Mint/Cinnamon, for all the reasons mentioned above. I've been using Mint for a few years and have never had a "lost-time" issue. All the other distros mentioned in Jesse's article I have tried and found wanting in some way or another. All, and I do mean all, the Arch based distros broke after the next updated; all the YAST based distros would freeze/lock up/quit when trying to install new apps/programs. Most of the Debian based distros were pretty stable, but not all worked out-of-box on installation. Linux Mint, for me, was the only one that consistently work every time after installation, and continued to work, trouble-free, every single time I re-installed it. (I would use the Mint/Mate edition, by the way, but I'm a sucker for the Cinnamon Applets and Desklets.)
49 • Recap (by DanA on 2022-01-03 14:43:25 GMT from United States)
I was pleasantly surprised by the recap of Jesse's reviewed distros in 2021. It is very well done.
I discovered that I had missed some of his reviews, and now I have two or three distros to check out.
Happy New Year!
50 • dream distri (by jw96 on 2022-01-03 14:49:43 GMT from Poland)
Artix, ftw, simple and advanced
Devuan, stable, server ideale.
51 • Favorite Distro (by Darkman on 2022-01-03 15:01:13 GMT from United States)
It was an interesting article. I don't use Arch or its derivatives but I enjoyed Jesse's comments and insights. I thought MEPIS was a great distro and I'm pleased at the success of MX. When MEPIS folded, I migrated to Mint KDE though and stayed with it until Mint dropped KDE. Now I use Kubuntu and have found it most satisfactory for daily use. Obviously, I prefer the KDE interface and having used it since the days of Corel Linux and Mandrake, I'm not interested in learning another one. But one of the many good things about Linux are the choices.
52 • Top Picks (by Jesse on 2022-01-03 15:04:08 GMT from Canada)
@43: "I was surprised not to see Linux Mint is his list of top picks."
As I mentioned before, this list is only for distros I reviewed in 2021. Mint didn't have any major releases this past year so it didn't get reviewed and couldn't be on the list. If I'd done a similar list in 2020 Mint would have been mentioned. Projects that didn't put out major releases couldn't be on the list.
@47: "I found it interesting that most of the favorited distros were Arch based. I wonder if Arch is a better base for components to work with out-of-the-box as compared to other distros like Ubuntu or if it was just a case of Jesse reviewing mostly Arch based distros in 2021?"
Most of the distros on my list were not Arch-based. Just 3 of the 8 were in the Arch family.
As to why as many as 3 of 8 were from the Arch family, I think there are two reasons:
1. Many releases of the past year were Arch-based. Being a rolling release Arch-based projects have a steady release cycle. In comparison there was no Ubuntu LTS release in 2021 so much of the Ubuntu family of distros simply didn't have any major releases. (See my comment above about there being no major Mint release this past year.)
2. Most of the Arch-based projects on this list were complimented for working without major issues, but they didn't strive to do much. Artix, for instance, is on the list because it doesn't do anything wrong, not because it does something really right. EndeavourOS and Artix are simple, minimal, there isn't as much that can go wrong.
Compare that to Ubuntu MATE, MX Linux and especially Zorin OS which were on the list for doing many things right and including lots of tools to make life easier. They're on the list as much for their features as their stability.
53 • Distro hopping (by Dr.j on 2022-01-03 15:26:47 GMT from Germany)
On the one hand, it is good that there are so many distributions, so everyone can choose the right one. On the other hand, many people who are at home in other systems do not really understand it. Even if they are interested in Linux they do not understand this universe with all its variety.
I myself gave up distro hopping a long time ago. I have been working with Archlinux for many years and will never change again. Besides, Arch has the advantage: if I want something else (like a new desktop environment), I just install it, I don't need a new distro.
Finally: Even if I appreciate the work on a distribution, my understanding of Linux is that I don't need anyone to put together a bundle of software for me (in the end a distribution is nothing else), but that I put it together myself from the available software sources just the way I need.
54 • Other, PostmarketOS and Debian, new and old (by ARM User on 2022-01-03 15:47:05 GMT from Germany)
Manjaro seemed bloated and controversial, to me, so I quickly replaced it with Kali on my Pinebook Pro asap. Mobian on PinePhone was OK, but PostmarketOS seems better (faster, lighter, longer battery life). Given the unsatisfactory performance Jesse saw with Manjaro on PinePhone, maybe it is finally time to review PostmarketOS, which has been in the waiting queue for 4+ years now. Debian Testing has been my usual goto, but after good experience from PostmarketOS, moving to Alpine may be in my future.
55 • Best Linux (by Pat Menendez on 2022-01-03 15:53:08 GMT from Canada)
In spite of being on the top side of 62 and having used Linux since the early 2000s I have found Garuda Dragonized as the best for me. I read what it's intentions were and why and agreed, They make no secrets about what and how this distro is intended to run and be used. I have since seen many distros copy some of their philosophy! I love the colorful, vibrant, and animated desktop! I run update usually every other day and kept track with over 9 gigs of updates a month for the last 2 months! I have never seen a distro that has as many and as big of updates staying absolutely bleeding edge and never having a problem after an update! That is astonishing! Definitely, some people will complain about so many updates. There are people who complain about everything which has no bearing whatsoever on a distros value!
One very overlooked and rarely mentioned distro, sadly not mentioned here again, is Rosa! If you look at the user ratings, it actually is top of the line, with good reason! It takes a page from the Debian song book and doesn't update or add a program to it's repositories without testing the crap out of it first. It is conservative and reliable as the best of the best! Singing from the Debian song book many of it's files are dated versions for the same reasons, yet the repositories have programs to accommodate whatever the user needs. I still have Rosa KDE-4 installed on an old Xeon and have no intention of removing it! It is polished, beautiful, stable, fast, reliable, ... etc. (To me, cloning the look of Windoze has NOTHING to do with a UI being modern or even attractive! I have never understood the fetish in Linux to imitate what we abandoned as rubbish!)
I have never found a distro that had the theming that completely suited me out of the box so don't hold that against a distro! That is personal preference and has NOTHING to do with the worth of a disto! NO desktop or theming will please even a small majority of users OTB! The default theming is just a starting point giving you a canvas to create your own identity. It seems that many (user) reviews are about what it is not rather than what it is, and I find that unfortunate. Running a distro in VB and then give it a poor user rating complaining about it not working after the devs clearly state "don't do that" is sickening! Testing a distro that clearly states that it uses more ram because "unused ram is wasted ram" and why then giving it a poor rating because of the greater resources it uses is truly appalling! The same applies to the size of the ISO. If the devs make it really bare bones "users" complain. If the devs do much of the work for you giving you a large ISO and c!
ustom lots of eye candy people complain about bloat, even though they knew that before they downloaded it! Sadly, people are actually complaining about distros succeeding at doing precisely what the devs set out to do! I read the user reviews and just shake my head! Are so many Linux users really that petty and small minded? There is no "One size fits all", there never will be, so quit bitching about aspects and objectives that don't please you! Fact is, what you like and want in a dstro, others will abhor, and visa versa! Look at the objectives of the devs, what the distro is intended to do, and IF you agree with those objectives, install it! The goal of "distro hopping" is to find what you like, what works for you. If it doesn't work for you or you don't like it, just move on. The real beauty of Linux is that there is lots of room to accommodate every type and mindset of user. Find what you like, what you appreciate, what works for you, and be happy!
56 • Favorite Distro of 2021 (by lincoln on 2022-01-03 16:17:13 GMT from Brazil)
My favorite distro for more than a decade is Debian because it is stable, secure, contains many packages and mainly because it is made by a large and extremely skilled community.
Happy New Year!
57 • Favorite Distro for 2021 (by Jason Schneider on 2022-01-03 16:24:32 GMT from United States)
Sparky Linux has been my favorite distro. It is Debian based, and it is fairly light. I use it as my main operating system on a Dell Optiplex and Dell Latitude, and it has worked well for all my needs. I am using the Mate desktop, so it seems like it works well for both a new person to Linux or a well-seasoned Linux user. The developers for Sparky Linux have been very kind, responsive, and active improving Sparky Linux.
I originally tried Sparky Linux installing it on an external hard drive, working as a portable OS at boot, but I came to like it so much that I used Clonezilla to clone it from the external hard drive to my Optiplex, which it has worked just fine for everything after cloning it; therefore, it very portable if a user desires to use it that way. Then I decided to do a fresh install on my Latitude, and, again, it hasn't disappointed me at all. It seems to be a very solid OS for being relatively light.
In addition, I had no problem installing languages other than English on it, too, which I use Korean at times.
58 • Favorite Distro (by B.Sellers on 2022-01-03 17:14:26 GMT from United States)
As previously noted my favorite distribution is PCLinuxOS 64 KDE5.
It comes with nearly everything I use and some things which I only
use infrequently. The PCLinux forum is unsurpassed,
bliss - brought to you by the power and ease of PCLinuxOS
and a minor case of hypergraphia
59 • Favourite distro & OS (by Nicu on 2022-01-03 17:27:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Favourite OS:
NetBSD
Favourite OS distro:
GhostBSD -> distro of FreeBSD
Favourite Linux distro:
Void Linux
60 • Solus (by Nicu on 2022-01-03 17:44:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
@42 Maybe that's the reason why Solus for more than 2 month didn't provide Linux kernel updates
Joshua Strobl mentioned that:
"In October, additional behavior brought me to a breaking point. I basically resigned from Solus at that point"
since then(October) Linux 5.14 which Solus is using, didn't have updates, and cause it is EOL, it is not safe anymore to use Solus.
While SerpentOS is having its 1st working version in systemd-nspawn,
2022 will be interesting year for SerpentOS, while it looks like Solus can disappear if nobody will step in.
61 • on absence of RPM distros in comments and distrowatch list (by nicu on 2022-01-03 18:05:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
@15 IMHO the fact that people choose anything other than RPM based & fedora based distros,
and distrowatch is full of anything other than RPM based distros,
while at the same time all the developer community is speaking about Fedora and its innovations, tells much about priorities.
People value stability and ease of use.
Corporations(RH, SUSE) value innovations and guinea pigs to test their distros...
So when RH released Gnome 40, they didn't care about breaking all existing plugins which people wrote for Gnome 3,
so most people on DW don't care about Fedora,
When people from other distros complain about breaking APIs in Gnome, people from GNOME(Fedora(RH)) tell that they are too stupid to "read the docs", same argument again and again:
- so Arch community created MATE, and Linux Mint picked it up
- so Linux Mint created Cinnamon
- so Ubuntu created Unity
- so Solus created Budgie
- so Elementary created Pantheon
- so PopOS tried to work with GNOME devs, burned, and did the same thing as others
People are not stupid, and they don't like to be treated like guinea pigs for the next RHEL release,
so maybe thats why Fedora & co isn't mentioned by anybody in comments.
p.s:
IMHO yum & dnf are the worst package managers for linux, they are very slow, and unstable,
62 • Favourite Linux Distro update (by Noor on 2022-01-03 18:06:19 GMT from United States)
This year I really appreciate the work the Raspberry Pi OS team did to update and improve their distro in 2021. It was the first distro I tried and dismissed earlier in the year on my new Pi 4 but by the end of the year it has become my daily driver desktop. Maybe not worthy of the best distro overall, but if there were a most improved category it would certainly win that.
P.s. I'm going to though some love out for Ubuntu as my actual favourite distro of 2021. I really like the 21.10 update and whenever I'm done testing and distro hopping I always come home to Ubuntu. It works well, I don't have nearly as many weird problems as with other distros, and even when I try to do something stupid it doesn't break as much as other distros. I even used it on that same Rasberry pi for a while until the Rasberry Pi OS update. When I install linux on my family's laptops I install Ubuntu so that I stop getting support calls, and it works.
63 • Favorite Distro (by d4rk on 2022-01-03 18:59:03 GMT from United States)
It has to be Puppy Linux for me. I have a whole network of old and new desktops and laptops running Puppy. It just lean, easy, and robust. It's like the old Volkswagen Beetle, built to last. It's not pretty or fancy but it get you where you need to go.
64 • LMDE for me this year, still (by MInuxLintEbianDedition on 2022-01-03 19:09:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Best to strip LMDE down to 250 packages then install what you need with apt configured for --no-install-recommends. Bring her back up to a 600 package mate desktop, she runs in less than 100MB of ram and can be squeezed onto the 1.9GB ssd of the Asus eee pc 2G surf.
65 • Favorite distro (by Mick Wandelbury on 2022-01-03 19:11:20 GMT from United States)
Nobody ever mentions DogLinux -- they now have a Debian 11 (Bullseye) edition out.
It resembles Puppy Linux; fast, small, but with all the Debian repos available and
several Desktops (I am using XFCE mostly).
66 • @20 (by Jyrki on 2022-01-03 19:12:16 GMT from Czechia)
last iso is from October. Even if it would be 1 year old, it's not a problem. It's rolling release distro. Unless there is major stepping stone in updates that makes it difficult to update, it doesn't matter how often you release ISO.
Every distro does install updates right after installation, unless you run network install.
67 • Favorite Linux Distro (by Daniel on 2022-01-03 19:49:13 GMT from United States)
@44, thank you for introducing me to Mabox. I never heard of it before, and I just installed it, and it works great.
68 • favourite - now that is hard (by Robert on 2022-01-03 19:51:38 GMT from New Zealand)
I voted Manjaro, but this is a hard one. Mint has been fantastic for me for many years and I am currently testing 20.3 in a VM. Sometime in the last 3 years or so I came to a point in my Linux journey of switching from "shorts to long pants".. and got into the Arch family as opposed to Debian. This came by way of Manjaro. Arch itself - too fiddly and even though I am a bit of a basement-type, I use my computers for things other than playing sysadmin all day long.
I have run most of the top 30 distros here on DW at some time. Many fall apart and cannot do what I expect from an OS, user interface, toolset (editor, file manager, image viewer, etc) and selection / availability of packages (NOT!!! snap / flatpak). There is a massive discard pile! This package, which I use and need? No? Dump. Can I customise this one thing? No? Dump.
MZ is slick but Debian-based. At this point I am _not_ going to lag behind the Windows users who can get DarkTable 3.8.0 right now. Mint 20.3 or other Debian-derivatives will allow you to flatpak it in. sigh. Or stay on an older version. sigh. Manjaro just updated DarkTable from the main community repos. No dance, jiggle or compromise.
Credits to Mint: i) cinnamon ii) warpinator iii) pix iv) xed
Within the Arch family I have been very impressed by RebornOS (lightning fast boot times) and Mabox which comes by default with OpenBox as the UI. I nitpick over UIs and could write pages about KDE/Plasma, Xfce, Lxqt, the Gnome/Deepin abortion, etc - I won't. Let's say I am hard to impress. OpenBox was surprisingly good.
So my "fave" vote is Manjaro, but the ballot carries fractional bits of Mint (still the #1 in the Debian stable), RebornOS and Mabox.
69 • Ubuntu (by Ostro on 2022-01-03 20:16:55 GMT from Poland)
After joining the Linux world in 2005, and after using hundreds of distros, distrolets, my favourite distro since then and now in 2022 still is Ubuntu. And, sometimes Kubuntu. Both with certain modifications. At the same time, I never stopped using Windows, started about 1995, and as I am getting older, this year for me might be Windows 11.
70 • Favorite distro (by eco2geek on 2022-01-03 20:25:12 GMT from United States)
My favorite distros used to be Kubuntu and openSUSE. I have several distros installed. However, KDE neon has slowly taken over the majority of my time since it came out. I like how it pairs a recent version of the KDE Plasma desktop with a solid Ubuntu base. Good stuff.
Happy new year, everyone. Thanks, Jesse, for all the reviews and the "Questions and Answers" section. You do good work.
71 • Favorite Distro (by Devlin7 on 2022-01-03 21:06:08 GMT from New Zealand)
I have yet to find a distro that ticks all the boxes but having said that, isn't that the great thing about linux? We have choices, lots of them! I think all the big name distros are a great starting point for linux newbies and if they get you interested then you start on the path to creating an OS that works for you.
I personally like light and lean, Arch linux + sway, 200Mb of ram at boot time, runs like a rocket, fast and stable. We are all individuals.
72 • Best Distro is....The envelope please... (by tom joad on 2022-01-03 21:59:25 GMT from Germany)
Linux Mint. It just works. I started in the 17's and never left. I have 19.3 on my tower. My laptop is running 20.1.
That said I am writing this using Linux Lite. But I have a full OS of Linux Lite installed on a USB 3.0 drive. I installed all the updates too. It boots to a log in screen in 32 seconds flat! No issues either. I am using a garden variety Sandisk drive and an HP envy laptop--nothing special. I am running the 5.6 version if I remember and it is QUICK too. Tor runs fine.
Yeah, buddy! Try that at home using windows version 56 or whatever.
My other mention is Kaisen. It is new so I have just used it a little bit. Kaisen seems to be a 'tool box' type app. I think it is a comer, too, covering most of file recovery and network troubleshooting.
Prediction; 2022 will make 2021 seem like a sunny Sunday picnic in the city park. Very much hope I am wrong.
73 • Fav distros (by Scott Dowdle on 2022-01-04 00:06:52 GMT from United States)
fedora, Fedora, FEDORA.
AlmaLinux
nuff said.
74 • Favorite (by zephyr on 2022-01-04 00:36:31 GMT from United States)
Devuan, basicly Debian on steroids without systemd(eath)
3 to choose
sysvinit
openrc
runit
75 • on absence of RPM distros (by pengxuin on 2022-01-04 00:49:28 GMT from New Zealand)
@61.
interesting read.
rpm distros generally run their entire system in-house. they provide all their own packages and maintain their own complete repos. this is very expensive in time and resources.
debian and ubuntu do the same.
how-ever, all debian and ubuntu various "children" (basically a reskinned copy, i.e. a new wallpaper) utilize their parents distros repos. some do not even maintain their own repos. so are they really distros?
re-organize distrowatch's popularity list with distros that maintain their own complete set of repos and see how many of the "top 10" are still there.
quote: "IMHO yum & dnf are the worst package managers for linux, they are very slow, and unstable"
you are welcome to your own HO, as am I.
run all of the various package managers with the "time" prefix, from the same mirror, with approx the same # of packages and total MB download and compare the times.
yes, I have done this because this FUD comes up quite often and I wanted to confirm that it is true or not.
remember, until a few years ago, debian, ubuntu and derivatives did not even do a basic # check of the download (which takes some time, and IMHO is a serious security risk, again your HO may differ on this), so yes, rpm distros would have taken longer for any given package install, as they were doing more work.
76 • Favourite Distro (by Sasi on 2022-01-04 00:49:58 GMT from India)
I have a deep love for the simplest but most stable distro—the Debian. I use the 'Testing' branch for more cutting edge technology with stability and yet with such a least footprint. In the past I have tested almost all the flavors of Linux-starting from Gentoo, Slackware, NixOS, Calculate, Arch, etc..etc to Ubuntu. Finally, I am with Debian.
77 • My favourite... (by Torsten on 2022-01-04 00:55:34 GMT from Germany)
After testing so many distros, I always come back to the good old Debian.
Stable, extremely fast and rock solid. OK, Debian is a bit outdated and had some recent issues with Firefox ESR and Chromium, but the problems are partly solved. For me, it's still the #1 distro out there.
78 • Devuan fan (by AdamB on 2022-01-04 00:59:54 GMT from Australia)
I used to rely on Arch Linux and Ubuntu derivatives, but started to have networking problems.
I have migrated two of mu main desktop machines to Devuan (with the MATE desktop) very successfully.
On my multi-boot desktop, my daily driver OS is Void, though not all of the programs I would like to use are in its repository.
Artix showed great promise, but it seems that the machine I installed it on has a firmware problem. I will try it on another machine eventually - although it does not seem to give ready access to programs from the AUR.
My great discovery for 2021 was GhostBSD - updates are frequent, but have been reliable so far. ZFS has some advantages for my use cases.
79 • Favourite distros (by UUUnicorn on 2022-01-04 01:11:35 GMT from United States)
I love Ubuntu Budgie 20.04.x. This is my first choice.
I love UbuntuDDE Remix 20.04.x. This is my second choice.
May 2022 be a MUCH better year than 2021 and 2020. Happy Holidays, and Happy and Prosperous New Year to ev'ryone.
80 • runit (by lyy on 2022-01-04 01:31:03 GMT from Brazil)
antiX runit deserved a mention, it was quite awaited and did deliver
81 • Favourites (by Gary W on 2022-01-04 01:56:39 GMT from Australia)
I've settled on MX, Just Works for me and I'm rather fond of old-school desktops, i.e. XFCE and MATE.
I ran PCLinuxOS for quite a while, very stable for a rolling release. This is what I'd give to a Windows refugee.
I have Devuan on an old EeePC with Trinity desktop (EXE GNU/Linux), a very good fit for ancient hardware.
If i needed some highly up-to-date software I'd try Debian testing or an Arch derivative like Artix, but the sheer volume of updates is off-putting (even when I'm not bandwidth constrained), and the risk of breakage makes them unsuitable for a daily driver (IMHO of course).
82 • distros (by a on 2022-01-04 02:34:49 GMT from France)
That was an interesting read, it’s good to have a short list of recommended distros for different use cases.
Personnaly, for my or others’ computers I would avoid anything Arch-based (even if systemd-free) because of the tendency of Arch to "upgrade" to new software and break things.
I’ve been disappointed by Devuan which decided to remove the network manager during an update. Needless to say after that event I installed something else (couldn’t fix it without network access anyway). It also has nearly no documentation available.
I’ve had more success with PCLinuxOS. It needed a bit of research to get all the things I wanted (for example there is no Steam package, you have to use the flatpak, so it’s more complicated to make it work). At one point an update broke something but it turned out I just had to update again to fix it.
Gentoo has been my main distro for the past 6 years and I guess I’ll keep on using it as long as updates are not too complicated to handle. But I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
83 • just what Jesse REVIEWED in 2021 (by dave on 2022-01-04 03:06:35 GMT from United States)
Oh well.. what can ya do. The poll choices clouded many of the responses here and changed the topic to "What's your favorite distribution?"
Tough choice for me-- between MX and Artix, but I'll stick with my personal bias since I've never been a big Arch user and been using MX for a while now. But if I was switching to an Arch-based OS, it would definitely be Artix.
84 • @74 - Devuan Issues (by MInuxLintEbianDedition on 2022-01-04 03:38:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Devuan is such a great idea.
Being 10MB smaller and running in 5MB less ram, sysV seems like a good choice. However, I can't live with some of the current desktop bugs in devuan. In my view, losing data is a cardinal computer sin. In Devuan land, your loss of personal settings is your opportunity to learn the command line and fix it yourself. When will they accept that most users in this decade won't be scripting, coding, hacking, their linuxes into shape, and those that don't appeal to masses, have no staff years down the line.
85 • Just FYI: LQ's annual poll (by anon on 2022-01-04 05:36:01 GMT from United States)
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2021-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-awards-133/desktop-distribution-of-the-year-4175705709/
86 • Best distros I tried for first time in 2021 (by Greg T on 2022-01-04 05:59:50 GMT from Australia)
I have some old favourites I still use, but there are 2 I tried in 2021 that I still like & use :
- ArcoLinux
- siduction
87 • Where's the love? (by Tech in San Diego on 2022-01-04 06:17:53 GMT from United States)
openSUSE Tumbleweed is a solid rolling distro and with YaST, everything is drop-dead simple, and YaST really does all the heavy lifting for you. Apart from all the usual settings and configuration options, the most interesting is probably the snapshot tool. Since the system uses the Btrfs file system, it's easy to rollback to an earlier configuration.
openSUSE Is very snappy and responsive. Unlike my experience with other distros, the processor load while idle stays very low at around 2%. Try to match that with any of the aforementioned KDE variants.
Perhaps it got overlooked with all the shiny distractions of 2021.There is a lot of love baked into this distro and is currently ranked 6th with an 9.0 average ranking!
88 • Mx followed by Manjaro (by Christian L on 2022-01-04 06:48:52 GMT from Luxembourg)
Mx has the easiest way to create snapshot, new .iso and usb livestick from here. I found no other distro providing this ease ( except dreamlinux which died many years ago)
Manjaro (rolling) is my first choice for my daily use on my laptop. It is starting up fast and provides all I need.
89 • openSUSE Leap (by suomynona on 2022-01-04 11:38:29 GMT from Australia)
@89 I sort of agree with you. I vote instead for Leap 15.3 which I suppose is technically not a new release, but was reviewed by Jesse this year. In fact that was what made me switch to it after trying everything over the past few years from MX to Arch to Void, FreeBSD and NixOS, even though the review was mixed.
All of those (and many others I've tried) were good in their own way but Jesse's line "It is a distribution which makes complex tasks easy and simple tasks harder than most other mainstream distributions" had me intrigued. I'm just a regular computer user, no guru, but making the hard things simple was what I was after (I can work out those simple things).
It has been great and I have no intention of jumping off - apart from what @89 said about Tumbleweed which largely applies to Leap as well it is stable, all those so-called openSUSE papercuts easily fixed on this machine anyway, knowledgeable and polite (read, grown-up) forum, easy upgrade without reinstalling and as a bonus the live USB has persistence and so I can keep it updated and test a few things there before doing putting them on my laptop.
My main tip when running it (I run Plasma desktop) - get rid of PackageKit (and thus Discover), as GeckoLinux does, and lock it from reinstalling. Use zypper or YaST instead for package management and everything runs much better. I also went with the more minimal Plasma install which meant none of that useless PIM/Akonadi stuff that is a real drag on Plasma.
I also like Haiku and one day when my security needs aren't so great (or it introduces encryption and log-in), it might be the one I stick with.
Anyway, thanks to DistroWatch for all the good work it does. I came here after being given a laptop about five years ago with no operating system installed (and no knowledge about computers, having never previously owned one) and have learned plenty from Jesse's articles, as well as some of the knowledgeable commenters that are here from time to time (particularly @MZ who I don't see much here any more) - comment number @55 this week hits the nail on the head perfectly though, for me.
90 • Wrong commenter (by suomynona on 2022-01-04 11:40:54 GMT from Australia)
I actually meant @87, not @89 in the comments above (Tech in San Diego)
91 • Distro reviews (by anticapitalista on 2022-01-04 12:03:56 GMT from Greece)
Jesse's list is of distros that were reviewed in 2020.
So an obvious question (actually 2) - How is a distro chosen to be reviewed? What are the/some of the criteria?
The last Distrowatch review of antiX was of antiX-15, which was released in 2015.
Since then antiX has released the following
antiX-16, 16.1, 16.2, 16.3
antiX-17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4.1
antiX-19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3,19.4
antiX-21
92 • 2021 (by anticapitalista on 2022-01-04 12:37:21 GMT from Greece)
Whoops. I meant year 2021 in comment @91
93 • Favorite Distro (by IIQII on 2022-01-04 12:43:14 GMT from United States)
I regularly download and install distro's that I see including the BSD's. I do this on current and old hardware.
The one I come back to and use daily is Debian. As always it works with everything I test and is rock solid for use as my development daily use machine and servers. It is rock solid.
94 • Top Distro Picks of 2021 (by Rick on 2022-01-04 12:51:52 GMT from United States)
I could not install Endeavor or Zorin on my Lenovo Thinkpad. Both ended with errors. Also Solus would not install. Bodhi is by far the ugliest distro I ever tried. There are other seasoned reviewers/developers in the Linux world who don't always agree with the reviews posted in Distrowatch's weekly reviews. The only two of Jesse's lineup which I would use are MX and Ubuntu MATE, both of which have good potential as a daily driver. Also Mint and Sparky, which I believe has been greatly underrated. Mint has become greatly bloated with way too many changes but is still a good choice.
95 • Favorite Distro (by Hedda Hopper on 2022-01-04 14:51:50 GMT from United States)
Bodhi got me through a difficult time. I had an old laptop that I couldn't afford to upgrade, but it was too sluggish to be of much daily use. With Bodhi, the old gal sang again and I could use it for working. I owe the Bodhi team a debt of thanks for that and I recommend them whenever the occasion arises.
Now, with better equipment, I've landed on Mint LMDE and love it. I didn't think I'd ever switch from my fav, Ubuntu MATE, but LMDE is solid in all areas for me.
96 • Favorite (by zephyr on 2022-01-04 16:20:04 GMT from United States)
MInuxLintEbianDedition wrote: "When will they accept that most users in this decade won't be scripting, coding, hacking, their Linuxes into shape, and those that don't appeal to masses, have no staff years down the line."
I agree a whole new "do it for me" generation has come into being. Snivelling, crying about how hard Linux is, and they fail to realise all these people learned the hard way, "self-taught". There are "self taught" individuals have distros in the top 100 on DW. It is very evident a new breed of Linux user requires a much easier (dumb down) distro in order to silence the squeaky wheel. While, there will be much more sophisticated distributions developed and downloaded for the majority.
cheers
zephyr
97 • Do the Distro Hop (by Tad Strange on 2022-01-04 17:31:31 GMT from Canada)
I'm running Kubuntu, only because Manjaro at the time didn't have a recent enough kernel to install on my hardware (missing storage support).
I figured I'd have it for one release cycle and be done with it, but it has upgraded fine, so I see no point in switching. I do have Manjaro on other systems, and it's the only way I'd do Arch. Not having the update churn of the other Arches, like Endeavour, leads me to trust it a bit more.
MX I would like more if they had a more recent KDE. I just don't like the old menu very much. Still I have it on an old laptop and it suffices.
I want to like Zorin, and it really seems decent. Something about the UI just doesn't quite do it for me. I don't know why. If I had to give Linux to someone who just wants a cheap computer, it would be either Zorin or CloudReady, depending. MX I do not think is an entirely refined product for the average click and go computer user - the tools are a bit messy.
I have Ubuntu 20.4 MATE running on a Raspberry Pi doing digital signage. I quite like it, which is odd since I've never been a Gnome fancier (maybe the reason why Zorin doesn't click with me). that being said, I'll only use Ubuntus MATE, since it's the only one I've seen with the "Redmond" style for MATE
I noted the mention of "opendoas" and had to look it up to see what it's all about. Is there any advantage to switching to it if you already have sudo, or is it more for distributions like PCLinuxOS that abhor and do not support sudo, where the user would like to have such a thing? All that I have gleaned that it's supposed to be simpler to configure.
98 • "Do it for me." (by Friar Tux on 2022-01-04 18:13:58 GMT from Canada)
@96 (zephyr) I do believe you got that wrong. It has nothing to do with "do it for me", but more like "let's just do it". I drive a car, but I am not a mechanic. I use a toaster, but if it stops working I cannot repair it. I turn on and off the taps in my house but I am not a plumber. By the same token, I use my laptop for a lot of stuff, but I cannot script, code, or use the terminal. Nor do I wish to. I am a wordsmith - I write. And I read. Fortunately, in this day and age, we have mechanics to fix cars, repairmen to fix appliances, and folks that fix computers. One does not need to know the inner workings of an OS to use a computer. If there were no readers, there would be no writers. If no one enjoyed viewing painting, there would be no artists - or for less of them. Some folks like coding and scripting apps/programs/operating systems, while some (quite thankfully) like using said apps/programs/operating systems without having to code them first.
It's not so much "do it for me" as it is "thank you for making this so I can get stuff done better/quicker/more efficiently".
99 • Favorite Distro (by pangelico on 2022-01-04 18:16:11 GMT from Brazil)
ArchLabs for 64bits and Crunchbang++ for 32 bits (Openbox)
100 • Favorite Distro (by Steve R on 2022-01-04 19:13:17 GMT from United States)
For newcomers I'd recommend Manjaro, but as someone who's been using Linux for 25 years, I'd recommend that experienced users give my personal favorite, Void Linux, a try.
101 • "Do it for me."@97.. (by Az4x4 on 2022-01-04 19:17:50 GMT from United States)
I agree. Today people are interested in whatever tool or service best gets the job done they need to do, in the quickest, most trouble free manner possible. That's reflected in almost half of all responses to the question about 'favorite distros', with only a select few of Jesse's picks offered as choices, coming back as "Other."
Reading through the responses it was interesting to see how many highlighted the continuing popularity of Linux Mint, commenting that of all the distros they've tried over the years that Mint consistently offers the greatest ease of installation, daily use and overall flexibility when compared to most everything that Jesse reviewed and listed as his picks for top choices this past year..
Must say that I agree. Mint has served me unfailingly since 2006, and today's Mint 20.2 Mate' (as Mint users anxiously await the release of Mint 20.3) is in the view of millions simply the 'best of the best' when it comes to Ubuntu/Debian based daily driver distros.
Thank God for all those who've invested time, money, blood, sweat and tears over the years making distros like Linux Mint and other top tier offerings (many of whom were nowhere mentioned in Jesse's article or the follow up question that was asked, except for the option to check the box on 'Other') available to the rest of us to use and enjoy for all they offer 'right out of the box, ready to go to work!'
102 • Favorite Distro (by Bill Donnelly on 2022-01-04 19:30:58 GMT from Canada)
My favorite distro is Debian. I have been running Debian for several years and find it boring but stable and reliable. I have also installed MX-Linux, EndeavourOS as well and found them suitable for daily computing needs. I have two computers, one running Debian Bullseye and the other running EndeavourOS. without issues that I cannot handle. At 86 years of age I find installing other distros to be rewarding as it keeps me mentally sharp as possible for one my age.
103 • @96 zephyr: (by dragonmouth on 2022-01-04 20:03:42 GMT from United States)
I totally agree. But then, what do you expect from users raised on Windows and/or Apple? Thanks to them, Linux is being Window-ized. They demand that Linux look, feel, work exactly like Windows and be 100% compatible with Windows.
104 • @98 Friar Tux: (by dragonmouth on 2022-01-04 20:21:39 GMT from United States)
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently. Specialization is for insects." Robert A. Heinlein
Do you call a tow truck when you get a flat tire? Do you call an electrician when you need to change a light bulb or plug in your computer? Do you always have the attendant fill your gas tank? Do you have servants that cook your meals and clean your house and do your laundry?
105 • Real distros (by Otis on 2022-01-04 21:34:40 GMT from United States)
@75 person said, "re-organize distrowatch's popularity list with distros that maintain their own complete set of repos and see how many of the "top 10" are still there."
Well, so what? That proves that a vast portion of distro users don’t give a rat’s fuzzy fanny about repo maintenance/ownership as long as the links are good and there are no ongoing proven security risks and that the repos are up to date.
106 • RIP Chakra Linux (by Jacob A. Tice on 2022-01-04 22:23:03 GMT from United States)
I knew it was coming, but the death of Chakra Linux is still a sad event. RIP.
107 • My 5 top distro of 2021 (by Synthesis on 2022-01-04 22:45:18 GMT from Italy)
1. Debian (stability is not optional, neither is the community)
2. Devuan (the alternative to Linux standardization combined with stability)
3. Opensuse (professional look, great documentation, control center, stability)
4. Mageia (stable, community distro, control center, user-friendly)
5. Fedora (innovation and research)
108 • Favorite (by zephyr on 2022-01-05 00:23:39 GMT from United States)
@ 98 Friar Tux and 103 dragonmouth
How many times have you seen a review on a very good distribution and they rag on the fact there isn't a wallpaper? A "wallpaper", It is the Windumb mentality, want it to work just like what they left behind.
The first 2 years with Linux I didn't join a forum, because of all honesty I really didn't know what the problems was to discuss in the first place, other than it didn't work. That is the fun of it, it's the challenge to find your issue and learn.
I do believe that these dumb down distros which are largely Ubu ones have vied for the first in line proprietary distros, which we now we are seeing...enter systemd and UEFI.
There is always freeBSD when Linux gets too messed up and corrupted!
109 • @104, @108, Ease of use (by Angel on 2022-01-05 02:51:06 GMT from Philippines)
@104 dragonmouth, RE: Heinlein- "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog. . . ." Big words for a man who could barely earn a subsist, even with a military pension, until he found his specialty: writing. Enjoyed his work, but it was fiction. I also enjoyed Asimov, who wrote galaxy-spanning adventures, but stood on a chair paralyzed by fear while his wife came to kill a house spider.
@108 zephyr- When I buy a car, among other things, I want a nice paint job and styling, air conditioner, power steering and brakes, and a nice sound system. None of these things contribute to the car's running. I suppose I could drive something circa 1900s, don cap, goggles and duster, and venture forth. I'd still get from point A to point B, and isn't that the basic purpose of a car? Not on your life! When I try a Linux distro, I prefer a pleasant look on my screen, automated and/or point-and-click functions that make use simpler, proper ready-to-go WiFi, graphics drivers, etc. Now if you wish to run BSDs and Model Ts, go right ahead, but don't try to tell me they are somehow superior.
110 • eye-candy vs function (by brilliant colours on 2022-01-05 06:06:29 GMT from New Zealand)
Comments like @98 give me hope. I support Linux for people in the writing and publishing arena, nice to know they are not alone. Many of the comments so far have been hard on some distros, for being just a wallpaper change. Well, I have found those don't make the top 100, nevermind the top 20 on this website. I'm after the distros that provide a real fix for a real itch. My two top mentions would be:
Mint - who make the Debuntu debacle useful. Hey, picked up my printer straight after first boot, no prompting, searching for drivers or fighting Apple's poison gift, CUPS. But, they suffer from dated software as the whole Debian tree does, also > 100 spurious fonts, and Cinnamon's screensaver which has had on/off issues for > 5 years (and currently again hangs one laptop dead). I'm not wanting to switch to xcfe after the cinnamon toolset - Nemo/pix/xed and the panel widgets.
Manjaro - for making Arch human-accessible. And it is more stable than some other quite good Arch distros like Mabox or RebornOS. I could not get joy with Artix, having spent several hours with it after this week's DistroWatch. But ... setting up the same printer in any of the Arches is, to put it mildly, a nightmare. Also I've run into random blackouts on a Ryzen7. I came very close to swearing at the laptop shop and screaming for a refund!! Then I started testing with non-Arch - early days but so far no blackout. The update deluge in the Arch tree is a bit much, but you get software years sooner than on others.
In researching (the past 6 months) on this Ryzen blackout, I have read lots of drivel as the "#1 approved and accepted answer." None of them solved the problem. Eventually I got one forum that had the real deal. Add "processor.max_cstate=5" and if problems persist also add "powersave=off" to your /etc/default/grub in the boot parameters; and run 'update-grub' afterward. If this saves just one person from pulling their hair out by the handful, it was worth it.
Wishing everyone a great 2022 (2020 replay #2), may it include an end to the politicovid circus. Peace.
111 • Favorite distro (by Michael Tucker on 2022-01-05 07:48:51 GMT from United States)
My "distro-hopping" has mostly concentrated on distros that bring older computers back to life. My favorite (after trying many included above, ) : Peppermint OS. Easy to install, easy to learn, easy to use. Haven't run it on any machines with ample resources, but can't imagine it would be anything but spectacular. There are a lot of good distros out there, but PM is my favorite.
112 • Solus & more (by distrohopper nul stopper on 2022-01-05 08:02:23 GMT from Canada)
best distro: Solus OS: fast live boot; immutable (the current security trend).
Ikey Doherty: ex-Linux Mint, ex-Clear Linux, ex-Evolve OS, ex-Solus OS, ex-Budgie Desktop, currently with Serpent Linux. He is setting a new trend of being a one-man-distrohopper developer. So users are no longer the only ones who can enjoy distrohopping - developers can now do it to !
Either that, or it's just the way that the Irish like to develop their projects :)
113 • @112 (by Ostro on 2022-01-05 08:54:04 GMT from Poland)
Because of all those ex-, I won't be checking whatever distro from Ikey.
114 • @112 - you missed one... (by Hoos on 2022-01-05 09:24:40 GMT from Singapore)
"...Ikey Doherty: ex-Linux Mint, ex-Clear Linux, ex-Evolve OS, ex-Solus OS, ex-Budgie Desktop..."
You forgot his original Debian-based, Gnome2 SolusOS version 1 from around 2012-13.
I really enjoyed that, but then Gnome3 happened, and Ikey originally intended to redo or fork Gnome3 shell (or something like that) to avoid Gnome 3 proper in Solus OS 2.0, but it didn't happen and he discontinued that distro.
The newer non-Debian Solus has been installed on my PC since its Evolve OS days, when it started as a non-rolling distro. I've gone through the non-rolling to rolling shift, the intention partway to move from gtk to Qt which never happened (for Budgie, I guess), and now there is the intention to have a new desktop environment due to theming issues with Gnome stuff. It's still on my PC among many other distros, and I do like it for what it is.
But for me, that's the last Ikey-created distro I'll be running or checking out. I'm not bothering with Serpent Linux.
115 • Distrowatch rankings favor dumping systemd (by Matt on 2022-01-05 16:24:31 GMT from United States)
Rankings according to users: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ranking
Out of the top 10 distributions currently ranked on Distrowatch, 6 of them do not use systemd. Out of the top 5, 3 of them do not use systemd. The people have spoken. You get a better user experience without the bloated mess that is called systemd. By the way, I am posting this from Devuan.
116 • Favorite distro (by Hans Strijards on 2022-01-05 17:26:11 GMT from Netherlands)
I am still a sucker for NixOS
117 • Favorite Distro (by Robert Gorajski on 2022-01-05 18:59:19 GMT from Poland)
Arch Linux because it is KISS :)
118 • Solus (by Ostro on 2022-01-05 19:17:44 GMT from Poland)
Even though, I don't use Solus, I wish best of luck to Beatrice and team. Maybe she is better leader than the "boys" who were before. https://discuss.getsol.us/d/7856-not-dead-yet
119 • Favorite distro (by Corbin Rune on 2022-01-05 19:37:23 GMT from United States)
I've used Artix as a daily driver since I first knew of it, so seeing it on the list's a definite "Yay!" moment. Although, I'm half tempted to give Bedrock a whirl, and see what kinda nutty hybrid I could cook up.
120 • Favorite distro..... (by Werewolfc on 2022-01-05 20:45:15 GMT from Romania)
Definitely not Manjaro . I tried the last Xfce release only in live mode and like it. But unfortunately when I install it (5 tries with all the options provided by the installer + GParted method) I got the same mkinitcpio error on a real hw, which previously had a Ubuntu Mate install . Manjaro is definitely not ready for a daily driver, just deploy it and use it.
Perhaps in WM everything runs smooth... but on a real hw.....not for me.
So, I'm back to Ubuntu Mate. Linux Mint and MX are also great distros in my opinion and worth mentioning.
121 • Mint's ease of use... (by Friar Tux on 2022-01-05 22:39:48 GMT from Canada)
@110 (brilliant colours) One of the reasons we have stayed with Linux Mint is that when The Wife got her hearing aids, Mint's Bluetooth config app immediately picked them up and started pumping all audio output straight to the hearing aids. She hasn't worn headphones in years.
Like you, I like the panel and desktop widgets (a left-over from my KDE days).
122 • Which distribution ? (by Roger on 2022-01-05 23:06:00 GMT from Belgium)
For me it's still Linux Mint Mate, my daily driver on every computer and laptop. Surprise but not really because based on Debian is OMW 5, yes it's a learning curve but not that hard. Disappointment PopOS, very slow at instaling, starting up and working with.
123 • Fedora (by papapito on 2022-01-06 00:17:34 GMT from Australia)
Fedora was a highlight for me
closely followed by Arch thanks to archinstall
PopOS was easily the low point for me, all that hype and I get an undercooked limp baguette
it broke my heart
124 • Which distribution (by Mike S on 2022-01-06 01:27:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
Two actually, Kubuntu on my office machine and LM Cinnamon for the media PC in the lounge and for relatives I have installed Linux for. I have just clean installed 20.3 on one machine which I downloaded this evening. It's not changed drastically but what they have been working on brings some much needed new features and improvements.
125 • Favorite eh? (by kernelmode on 2022-01-06 02:55:59 GMT from Canada)
I would have to say debian testing with a little unstable is right up my ally way. Oh and Cinnamon as a wm. God Bless ya all !
126 • Favorite Distro of 2021 (by Paul on 2022-01-06 06:26:49 GMT from United States)
Debian 11 Stable -- rock solid & functional - what you would expect from the Debian folks.
127 • FreeBSD - much more OOTB functionality than I thought (by Jimbo on 2022-01-06 08:05:58 GMT from New Zealand)
My vote would be FreeBSD - I never thought I'd be productive almost straight away. Wifi is automatically configured and working on command line and installing Xfce straight forward and painless. Configuration of Xorg was editing 2 lines + installing Slim.
I now use FreeBSD for daily tasks and Reminna into other work boxes.
Debian Testing + Cinnamon is my daily driver but FreeBSD + Xfce not far behind just on another partition ^_^
128 • openSUSE rulez (by Doc.B on 2022-01-06 11:01:03 GMT from Belgium)
I gave Fedora a shot, but did not really get warm with it.
Now using openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Desktop as daily driver. Works just great, is stable, and 'forgiving' due to the rollback option.
With LXQt desktop still running on old 32bit hardware - is there any other rolling distro that can do this?
129 • @75 RPM/DNF/YUM (by penguinx86 on 2022-01-06 12:12:05 GMT from United States)
I agree with @75. RPM/DNF/YUM are difficult to use, slow and cumbersome. DNF Dragora?
Huh? Where the heck did that come from? The only reasons I even tried these with Red Hat and Fedora was to study for LPIC exams. I wouldn't even consider these on my daily driver home laptop. Gimme Apt and Synaptic any day. They'd have to pay me big bucks to support Red Hat as a Sysadmin and deal with RPM and YUM every day. Then, the system would be locked down so tight with Selinux, it wouldnt be fun at all. No thanks!
130 • FavDistro (by Josep on 2022-01-06 18:52:57 GMT from Spain)
Arch
131 • Linux in mint condition! (by OnlyLinuxForMe on 2022-01-06 19:27:04 GMT from United States)
I like trying out alternative distros at least a couple of times a year so that I am somewhat aware of what's going on with other flavors of Linux. But, I can't imagine using anything other than LinuxMint Xfce for work or for home as I've been doing for over 10 years now.
If I was forced to abandon Mint I would probably go to Intel's Clear Linux for its performance and also the streamlining that it brings to the Linux realm.
Happy New Year Folks!
132 • Slightly off-topic (by Sean Greenhalgh on 2022-01-06 21:19:52 GMT from Australia)
I'm going to say something controversial, which is completely my opinion - take it as you will.
The modern desktop environments have only gone downhill since the early 2000's era. I usually work as a graphic designer, but have taken time off due to bad health. But, what I remember and look back at is desktops like KDE 3.5 and KDE 2 etc. These desktops were mastered. Look at the effort put into icon design and even the efficiency of space used on the taskbar. Everything was perfect, I don't know why KDE and Gnome went down this slow death of trashing their already perfect designs.
I think that modern KDE and even Gnome are nothing but a shadow of their earlier forms. Look at the lazy and poor icon design. Everyone is so concerned with lazy design - like the swanky 'flat design', which is pathetic in my opinion. It's a joke, seriously. Even modern Windows 11, the same thing, amateurism all the way.
Stop trying to reinvent the wheel... too much following of trends. People keep changing their designs like they change their undies (underpants).
133 • DE design... (by Friar Tux on 2022-01-06 21:47:35 GMT from Canada)
@132 (Sean G.) I kinda agree. I have taken to making my own themes for the DE I use. HOWEVER... if you're really into something different, try Eagle Mode. (Google it.) Quite different, but it works very beautifully. It's actually a file manager that zooms into any file you are looking for. Make sure to read the doc first before you try it, especially the keyboard shortcuts. Also, if you're using the touchpad on a laptop to navigate, make sure to have edge scrolling enabled.
134 • @132 Sean Greenhalgh: (by dragonmouth on 2022-01-06 22:04:58 GMT from United States)
"I don't know why KDE and Gnome went down this slow death of trashing their already perfect designs."
To misquote Gordon Gecko "Change is GOOD!"
"Stop trying to reinvent the wheel..."
The philosophy of Linux encourages re-inventing the wheel over and over again.
135 • Bodhi 32bit nonPAE (by EdCoolio on 2022-01-06 22:11:59 GMT from United States)
Bodhi gets the win in my book simply because of their focus on hardware compatibility. In my universe, this is the ultimate eco-universal distro by far. Why?
1. Full support for non-PAE systems (including Pentium M with the hidden PAE capability) which can keep borderline systems running and reduce e-waste. It brings new life to old systems.
2. Full support for 32bit systems. Many have left 32bit in the dust and have created a ton of e-waste from perfectly good systems for use and testing. A complete waste, hats off to Bodhi.
3. Full support for 64bit systems. Enough said. They support it all in an easy graphical point/click environment.
136 • Favorite Distro 2021 (by Joseph Ramirez on 2022-01-07 02:57:58 GMT from United States)
There are some really nice distros out there(thank you to all the devs for your work), but I have to say that MX Linux is the best combination of intuitive, ease of workflow, solidly resistant to breakage caused by updates, flexible in app install choices. The devs pretty much cover all the bases to make the users experience as good as possible. Just so good!
137 • Favorites (by Adam Drake on 2022-01-07 09:02:24 GMT from United States)
Debian testing with Gnome for myself. Linux Mint Cinnamon for the recent converts. I prefer the philosophy of Debian. I’d be tempted to switch to Mint for myself if they ever make LMDE the default. Happy new year!
138 • Favorite Distro of 2021 (by Matheus on 2022-01-07 12:00:59 GMT from Brazil)
I stay with Rosa Linux. The suport of nvidia and, the repos that have all i need win me well.
Perhaps my choice is because I think using urpmi is very easy too.
And I am still waiting for Rosa R12 XFCE or MATE.
139 • Qubes OS (by Ro0t on 2022-01-07 12:40:29 GMT from Germany)
Only Qubes OS.
And TOP 5 distros as a template VM.
140 • Favorite Distro (by Bill Donnelly on 2022-01-07 17:20:10 GMT from Canada)
As a second comment to my previous post, I have had numerous technical issues using endeavourOS. Installed openSUSE-Leap alongside Debian on my computer. No issues except getting my HP printer installed..had HP-plugin issue. This distro is a very polished one and I am finding it even smoother in operation than Debian..such a pleasant surprise.
141 • antix and the following mx - same ease (by marcos on 2022-01-08 09:26:37 GMT from Brazil)
@88 Yes, antix & mx both have the same ease, apparently unique in the linux landscape, at least in my experience.
YMMV
Number of Comments: 141
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| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
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| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
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| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
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| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • 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 | 
Bodhi Linux
Bodhi Linux is an elegant and lightweight Debian/Ubuntu-based distribution featuring Moksha, an Enlightenment-17-based desktop environment. The project takes a decidedly minimalist approach by offering modularity, high levels of customisation, and choice of themes. Bodhi releases come in several editions, including Standard (64-bit) and Legacy (32-bit) which are minimalist, only including a web browser, terminal, file manger, text editor and photo GUI applications, while the AppPack edition includes more applications and tools preinstalled. Additional software can be added with Bodhi's web-based AppCenter, Synaptic, and APT.
Status: Active
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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.
|
| 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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