 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 951, 17 January 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 3rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Everyone who runs a Linux distribution was, at one point, a beginner. No one popped into existence ready to navigate the cryptic Linux filesystem and write shell scripts - we all had to learn somewhere. But where? In this week's issue we talk about various ways to become familiar with Linux and, in particular, the command line. How did you educate yourself about Linux? Let us know about your approach to learning about Linux and its command line in our Opinion Poll. First though we talk about a young project called instantOS. The instantOS project offers a minimal desktop environment running on an Arch Linux base and we share details on this project in this week's Feature Story. Then, in our News section, we talk about Fedora's system installer, Anaconda, getting a new web front-end. Plus we share Mint's plans to streamline their Firefox package and talk about changes coming to the Ubuntu desktop in the distribution's next long-term support version. We also report on openSUSE 15.2 reaching the end of its supported life. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: instantOS Beta
- News: Mint streamlines Firefox distribution, Anaconda experiments with web interface, Ubuntu outlines desktop plans for 22.04, openSUSE 15.2 no longer supported
- Questions and answers: Where to start learning the command line
- Released last week: DragonFly BSD 6.2.1, Emmabuntus DE4-1.01, ExTiX 22.1
- Torrent corner: Emmabuntus, GhostBSD, KDE neon, SarkyLinux, Tails
- Opinion poll: Where did you start learning the Linux command line?
- New distributions: LuxOS, Ultramarine Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (12MB) and MP3 (9MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
instantOS Beta
A project that has been sitting on the DistroWatch waiting list for several months is instantOS. The instantOS project is currently in its beta stage of development, but has been around long enough to review and it claims to offer a number of intriguing features. instantOS is based on Arch Linux and strives to be both light and fast. The distribution's website reports instantOS requires less than 200MB of RAM.
The project also ships with its own graphical environment. This custom environment is called instantWM and it reportedly offers both tiling and floating window management. This window manager seems to be the centre piece of the distribution.
instantOS is available in a single edition for x86_64 computers and is provided through a 1.4GB download. Booting from the downloaded media brings up a menu which offers options for booting into "Arch Linux".
Booting into instantOS brings up a graphical environment. A thin panel is placed across the top of the screen. This panel provides access to an application menu, nine virtual desktops, a clock, and system tray. Shortly after the window manager loads we're presented with a welcome application which looks just like a simple drop-down menu. This menu lists a handful of options, including Get Started, Install, Documentation, Settings, GitHub, Support, and Close.
instantOS Beta 6 -- Exploring settings through the welcome window
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Get Started option in the welcome menu opens Firefox and offers to play videos about instantOS. The welcome menu then disappears. The Documentation option also opens a browser window and provides access to tips on using the instantWM environment. The Settings option opens a menu which gives us access to system settings where we can adjust the wallpaper, enable Bluetooth support, and adjust display resolution. The other options, apart from the Install entry, connect us to on-line resources.
Installing
The instantOS system installer is presented as a crude series of simple menus that are often sized in unusual dimensions. These menus start by asking us to pick our keyboard layout from a cryptic list of short options. Then we are asked to select our language and region from lists. We're given the chance to manually run a partition manager or take a guided partitioning option. The guided option takes over the entire disk.
instantOS Beta 6 -- Selecting our keyboard layout
(full image size: 643B, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The following screens ask us to make up a username and a password. This password will be applied to both our regular user account and the root account on the system. Once I confirmed the settings I'd selected the installer window disappeared. Nothing seemed to be happening until I switched to a second virtual desktop and could see a list of packages which were being downloaded. After a few minutes the system suddenly rebooted which, I hoped, meant the installer had finished its work.
Early impressions
The freshly installed copy of instantOS boots quickly and automatically logs in as the regular user I set up through the system installer. I found it was possible to run administrative commands using sudo and I could sign into the root account using my regular user's password.
Looking through the application menu in the upper-left corner of the screen I found just a handful of entries. These included launchers for Software, a terminal, and a settings panel. The Software option did not do anything and the Terminal option opened a simple virtual terminal. The Settings option opens a simple menu with about a dozen entries for modules such as Display, Appearance, Bluetooth, system information, and networking. The display options and appearance tweaks generally worked as expected and some of these tools I believe are imported from the LXDE and/or Xfce projects. In fact, one application on the system is the Xfce About program which tells us instantOS is running Xfce 4.16, though this does not appear to be accurate.
The Settings menu includes one entry simply called Potato. This opens a menu where we are given the opportunity to disable desktop effects. The idea is to improve performance on low-end computers (which are sometimes fondly referred to as potatoes). The performance of instantOS was good in my test environments and I never saw any desktop effects in evidence anyway, so I did not feel there was anything to be gained by turning off visual effects.
The Network portion of the Settings menu frustrated me. When I went into the Network section there were entries for seeing IP information and testing an existing connection, which seemed to work. However, the entry for launching the network applet, which would presumably allow me to connect to wireless networks, did nothing. As far as I could tell, there was no tool available to connect with wi-fi or mobile networks.
The System Information entry in the application menu opens a full screen terminal window with some information on the system's memory usage. Some other data is displayed, but it scrolled off the screen. Under the system information presented we find a list of the distribution's Patreon supporters. We can close this window by pressing Ctrl-C.
instantOS Beta 6 -- The application menu
(full image size: 241kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Something I tended to find with applications on instantOS was that there often wasn't an obvious method available to close a window. The usual window button controls were not present and many applications didn't include a Close option in their menus. Since windows are often open in a full screen configuration, this left me to either leave the window open and switch to another virtual desktop or terminate the application from a virtual terminal.
One curious feature of the instantWM environment is that clicking almost anywhere on the desktop, panel, clock, notification area, or system tray will open a large application menu arranged in a grid formation. This application menu includes a lot of software not available through the menu displayed in the upper-left corner of the desktop. This menu appears to include launchers for all graphical applications, including the welcome menu, a logout option, Firefox, the settings menu, an archive manager, the GNOME Files file manager, and a software centre.
Looking through the application menu I also found the mpv media player, three virtual terminals, an archive manager, and the Steam gaming portal. Trying to run Steam caused the system to display a window saying it was checking for Steam package updates. This check never finished and consumed 100% of the available CPU resources until I terminated the process. The other included applications worked well and as expected.
Managing software
While the Software launcher in the application menu on the desktop panel appears to do nothing, the Add/Remove Software entry of the full screen, grid application menu launches GNOME Software. This software centre provides us with access to three tabs which provide new applications, allow us to remove old ones, and see what updates are available. Each of the three tabs worked for me and I was able to install new applications as well as software updates on my system. After each update we're advised to restart the computer, even when updating unessential components.
instantOS Beta 6 -- The GNOME Software centre
(full image size: 151kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Other observations
The instantOS distribution ships with zsh as the default shell. Its colour scheme and the tiny default font makes it difficult to use the terminal on my laptop without changing the font size. The distribution ships with a fairly standard collection of command line tools and manual pages.
The instantWM environment locks up occasionally, taking down the system. This happened most of the times I'd try to open the application menu on the panel when there was already another window open on the current virtual desktop. Other lock-ups happened rarely, but I found I had to learn to switch virtual desktops before opening new programs or face a hard reset to fix the lockup.
The distribution ships with fairly up to date software, including version 5.10 of the Linux kernel. Given its Arch Linux heritage, I suspect new versions of applications will become available quickly.
As the project's website claims, the system is lightweight. The distribution uses about 165MB of RAM when signed into the instantWM environment. A fresh install takes just over 6GB of disk space. The window manager is quite snappy and most actions happen almost instantly (making the project's name feel appropriate).
I tried running instantOS in a VirtualBox environment and on my laptop. The distribution performed well in VirtualBox and was unusually fast. However, instantWM would not resize automatically and forgot its resolution settings each time I booted the distribution, requiring me to reset its desktop resolution in the settings panel.
When I tried instantOS on my laptop, the system would boot, but I could find no way to connect to wireless networks. The wireless networking applet doesn't show up when launched and there do not appear to be any other wireless networking tools available.
Conclusions
I went into this trial expecting a somewhat rough experience. The instantOS project is still in its beta phase and still ironing out details. However, this distribution was still disappointingly difficult to use, even given my low expectations. Some of this is down to the lack of configuration tools and the system lock-ups I experienced. However, the whole operating system has a crude, unfinished feel to it. The system installer is cryptic at times. In regards to the desktop environment as a whole, it's sometimes hard to tell what is supposed to be a window and what is a drop-down menu, and the flat design makes it nearly impossible to tell what is a label and what is an interactive button. This last point becomes all the more frustrating when the default action the desktop takes if we click on something that isn't interactive is to launch the full screen application menu.
instantOS Beta 6 -- Navigating the system installer
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The whole user experience and collection of default applications feels like a patchwork of components stitched together from other, more mature desktop environments that create an experience less than the sum of its parts.
The project's website says "instantOS is an Arch Linux based distro that works out of the box but is still aimed at power users. Everything is lightning fast, flexible and just works." The one thing I can say in favour of instantOS is that it is, as advertised, a very light and fast distribution. It meets that stated goal, though I feel it falls uncomfortably short in being flexible and its goal of "just works".
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Mint streamlines Firefox distribution, Anaconda experiments with web interface, Ubuntu outlines desktop plans for 22.04, openSUSE 15.2 no longer supported
The Linux Mint team is partnering with Mozilla to distribute the Firefox web browser. The effort is intended to make the Firefox browser on Mint look and perform more like Firefox running on other platforms while reducing the maintenance burden on the Mint team. "For Mozilla, the goal is to make Firefox work the same way across all platforms to ease maintenance and simplify development and bug fixing. With these changes Firefox will give the same experience in Linux Mint as it does in other operating systems. For us, this change means a tremendous simplification in terms of maintenance and development. We used to build Firefox ourselves using Ubuntu's packaging (which is set to be discontinued as Ubuntu is moving towards Snap). We now package the Mozilla version of Firefox instead." Details of the partnership can be found in Mint's announcement.
* * * * *
The Fedora distribution, along with related products such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, may soon be getting a new system installer. The Anaconda team is looking at revamping the Fedora installer and migrating it from a GTK-based technology to a web-based approach. "We will rewrite the new UI as a web browser-based UI using existing Cockpit technology. We are taking this approach because Cockpit is a mature solution with great support for the backend (Anaconda DBus). The Cockpit team is also providing us with great support and they have significant knowledge which we could use. We thank them for helping us a lot with the prototype and creating a foundation for the future development. We also decided for this step to be consistent with the rest of the system. More and more projects have support in Cockpit. By this step we should make the system more consistent between different applications. The great UX improvement should be easier remote installations compared to the current VNC solution." Details can be found in the team's announcement.
* * * * *
The Ubuntu development team have put forward some ideas of what the next version of Ubuntu will look like. Ubuntu 22.04 is currently expected to ship with GNOME 42, but with some conservative choices made with regards to the desktop's applications. A status report explains: "We are currently working on updating the gnome-shell stack to the current 41 stable version and then we will start working on the 42 updates, aiming to get that version included in the LTS. On the applications front we will be more conservative, avoiding GTK4, at least for the software we install by default for several reasons.
We don't feel like we've had enough testing of the new version since there has been very few applications ported prior to this cycle (the only one currently in the Ubuntu archive is gnome-chess).
GNOME is only landing the ports to GTK4 now, those often are not trivial changesets coming with refactoring and code cleanups in addition of the porting, which means they might introduce regressions and need more testing that normal upgrades, it's not the sort of change we want to include just before the LTS.
The core applications are being ported to libadwaita which currently doesn't allow for any theming or coloring, which means they would be visually inconsistent with our other components. We are working with upstream to try to get this resolved but it's not likely to be for this cycle.
We will update the applications which are still based on GTK3 though."
* * * * *
Version 15.2 of the openSUSE distribution has reached the end of its supported life. "Users of openSUSE Leap 15.2 will not be receiving security and maintenance updates as the version is now EOL (end of life) as of Jan. 4, 2022. EOL ends updates for the operating system minor version. Those who continue to use EOL versions will be exposed to vulnerabilities because these discontinued versions no longer receive security and maintenance updates. This is why users need to upgrade to the newer minor release; openSUSE Leap 15.3!" The project's announcement provides further information on the transition.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Where to start learning the command line
Curious-about-commands asks: Where do you recommend someone start learning the command line? I've been using Linux (not counting Android here) for two years and I've used the command line a couple of times. How do I learn to use it more as I've heard it's important to become proficient with the Linux command line?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few approaches you can take. One straight forward approach is to run a program called fortune. The fortune program displays a quote or a tip each time a person runs it and it's often enabled in a person's account to run whenever a terminal window is opened. The fortune command can be set up to display quotes or information on a variety of topics, including command line usage.
I think the FreeBSD operating system enables displaying command line tips by default each time the user logs in. On Debian there is package of fortune quotes called fortunes-debian-hints you can install. I believe Ubuntu has a similar package called ubuntu-server-tips. On Arch Linux the package for tips is called fortune-mod-archlinux. Installing the fortune program and the appropriate quote package for your distribution will display helpful tips each time you open a terminal.
That's a sort of passive way to learn, having tips slowly fed to you over time. You may want to look up the manual pages for any commands mentioned in the fortune tips.
Another approach would be to get a book. For example, the UNIX And Linux Administration Handbook comes to mind. It's got a lot of practical, hands-on information about using the command line. More specifically, it'll explain how to use the command line to accomplish tasks.
Following up on that thought, I think it's worth considering what your goal is in learning more about the command line. Is there something specific you hope to achieve or a task you want to accomplish? Do you want to automatically clean up old files, schedule backups, send status reports from your computer via e-mail, learn how to convert images and videos from the command line into new formats or sizes? Once you have a mission in mind, it will be a lot easier to tackle learning the command line.
Having a specific task in mind will give you a starting point, something to research. Approaching a large, and slightly vague, task like "I want to learn the command line" will be tricky because it doesn't hint at a starting point. But having a mission in mind such as "I want to backup files to another computer on my network daily" is much more specific. It'll be easier to perform web searches and ask for advice on how to do this sort of thing on forums and get specific responses you can try. You can further break this task into three parts: how to make backups, how to transfer files over the network, and how to schedule tasks.
My suggestion is to get a copy of the Handbook I mentioned above and, as you're reading, try to come up with some things you'd like to be able to do from the command line. Then read up on specific chapters, or perform web searches, on how to do those specific steps. This will give you practise and, over time, the practise will turn into wisdom and improved comfort in the command line environment.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
DragonFly BSD 6.2.1
The DragonFly BSD team have announced the release of DragonFly BSD 6.2.1. The new release includes NVMM hypervisor support, offers remote mounting of HAMMER2 volumes, and HAMMER2 filesystems can be resized using growfs. "DragonFly version 6.2 is the next step in the 6.x release series. This version has hardware support for type-2 hypervisors with NVMM, an amdgpu driver, the experimental ability to remote-mount HAMMER2 volumes, and many other changes. The details of all commits between the 6.0 and 6.2 releases are available in the associated commit messages for 6.2.1. 6.2.0 was not released. To see all the bug tracker issues that were closed for this release, please check here. Big-ticket items: NVMM, a type-2 hypervisor for hardware-supported virtualization, ported to DragonFly. See the NVMM Hypervisor documentation. growfs support added to HAMMER2 for changing the size of an existing HAMMER2 volume. xdisk included in build. Remote HAMMER2 disks can be mounted (Experimental!) drm/amdgpu driver imported, matches Linux 4.19 support. drm/ttm updated to match." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
Emmabuntus DE4-1.01
Patrick d'Emmabuntüs has announced the release of an updated build of Emmabuntüs, a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution designed primarily for old older and reconditioned computers donated to humanitarian organisations. Besides shipping with an updated base system, the new version also adds the Ventoy utility, an open-source tool for creating bootable USB drives from ISO image files: "The Emmabuntüs Collective is happy to announce the release of the Emmabuntüs 'Debian' Edition 4 1.01 update (32-bit and 64-bit), based on the Debian 11.2 'Bullseye' distribution and supporting both Xfce and LXQt desktop environments. This new update of our distribution brings the addition of the Ventoy utility as part of our re-use campaign launched in early September 2020 in collaboration with our friends from Debian-Facile and Tugaleres.com in France, as well as Blabla Linux in Belgium, as we have just put online a second version of our refurbishing USB flash drive now based on Ventoy. The advantage of using Ventoy instead of MultiSystem is that it allows the creation of this key on GNU/Linux and Windows." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and screenshots.
ExTiX 22.1
The ExTiX distribution has published a new release. The new version, ExTiX 22.1, features the Deepin desktop environment and can be run from RAM. The project's release announcement reports: "I've released a new version of ExTiX Deepin today (220114). This ExTiX Build is based on Deepin 20.3 released by Deepin Technology 211123. New functions: 1. You can run ExTiX from RAM. Use boot alternative 2 (load to RAM) or Advanced. A wonderful way to run Linux if you have enough RAM. Everything will be super fast. When ExTiX has booted up you can remove the DVD or USB stick. 2. You will have the opportunity to choose language before you enter the Deepin 20.3 Desktop. All main languages are supported. 3. I have replaced Deepin Installer with the Reborn version of Deepin Installer. Works better in every way. 4. I have replaced kernel 5.14.2-exton with kernel 5.16.0-exton. Corresponding the latest available stable kernel from Kernel.org. 5. Spotify and Skype are pre-installed...."
ExTiX 22.1 -- Running the Deepin desktop
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 2543x1228 pixels)
GhostBSD 22.01.12
The GhostBSD project has published an update to their FreeBSD-based, rolling release desktop system. The project's new snapshot fixes a number of issues and removes an unmaintained package from the default install. "This new ISO contains fixes, improvements, and software updates. Finally, the installer hanging at the cleaning stage for ZFS installation got fixed, and OpenRC and dhcpcd were removed from the base code. Furthermore, automation configuration for HD 7000 series and older GPUs has been added. I also added the support for os-release to show GhostBSD name and GhostBSD version in applications like mate-system-monitor, Python distros, pfetch, and neofetch and added a new set of wallpapers for 2022 and removed p7zip from the default selection since it is vulnerable and unmaintained." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,673
- Total data uploaded: 41.4TB
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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) |
Where did you start learning the Linux command line?
While the Linux command line isn't something most people will need to know how to use these days, it is still a powerful feature available in all Linux distributions. The command line can provide a great deal of useful features and trouble-shooting tools for those willing to learn it.
This week we would like to hear whether you ever learned how to use the command line and, if so, how did you get started? Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using the Common Desktop Environment in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How did you learn the Linux command line?
| Books: | 284 (17%) |
| College/University course: | 101 (6%) |
| Fortune: | 17 (1%) |
| Man/Info pages: | 266 (16%) |
| On-line written examples: | 610 (37%) |
| Videos: | 73 (4%) |
| Other: | 168 (10%) |
| I have not learned to use the command line: | 134 (8%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- LuxOS. LuxOS is a Linux distribution based on Xubuntu and featuring the Brave web browser. Registration is required to download the project's ISO.
- Ultramarine Linux. Ultramarine Linux is a Fedora-based distribution which ships with extra repositories (like RPMFusion) and closed-source NVIDIA drivers.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 24 January 2022. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Devuan GNU+Linux
Devuan GNU+Linux is a Linux distribution forked from Debian in 2015. The project's primary goal is to provide a variant of Debian without the complexities and dependencies of systemd, an init system and services manager originally developed by Red Hat and later adopted by most other Linux distributions. Devuan's initial beta release was made available in April 2016, together with an upgrade path from Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" and a possibility to switch to Devuan from Debian 8.0 "Jessie". The distribution adopted Xfce as its default desktop.
Status: Active
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