 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 956, 21 February 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 8th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While most of our attention here at DistroWatch is focused on changes and releases in the Linux community we also enjoy talking about the various flavours of BSD. As it turns out, some of you are interested in the BSD projects too. This week, in our Questions and Answers column, we clear up some confusion about how projects like FreeBSD (and its cousins in the BSD world) operate. In our News section we also start with some news from the FreeBSD community as one enterprising developer is working to make Qubes-like process isolation possible on the venerable operating system. We also share updates from the UBports project and link to an article which shares tips on how to handle software on Fedora Silverblue, an emerging flavour in the Fedora ecosystem. First though we talk about a tool called Distrobox. The Distrobox project aims to make it possible to run software from multiple Linux distributions without the overhead of a virtual machine. Our Feature Story discusses some of the benefits and hurdles that come with working with Distrobox. Have you tried Distrobox yourself? Let us know what you thought of it in this week's Opinion Poll. 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:
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) |
Running guest distributions with Distrobox
A project I recently discovered in my travels around the Linux community is Distrobox. The project describes itself as follows:
Simply put it's a fancy wrapper around Podman or Docker to create and start containers highly integrated with the hosts. The Distrobox environment is based on an OCI image. This image is used to create a container that seamlessly integrates with the rest of the operating system by providing access to the user's home directory, the Wayland and X11 sockets, networking, removable devices (like USB sticks), systemd journal, SSH agent, D-Bus, ulimits, /dev and the udev database, etc...
Why would someone want to use Distrobox? Basically it is a way to run another Linux distribution on your system without a lot of extra overhead. It's lighter than a virtual machine, for example. The container approach Distrobox uses offers us a way to test new software without cluttering the host distribution.
Distrobox also gives us the opportunity to run different types of distributions. For instance, if we usually run a conservative project such as Debian or Rocky Linux we can use Distrobox to run more cutting edge distributions such as Arch Linux. In theory the reverse also applies where we could run a cutting edge distribution as the host, but run a Distrobox container to run older software that needs a specific, long-term support operating system.
Another reason to use Distrobox is to give ourselves access to a guest distribution where we have root access, for added flexibility. In situations where we can't install or run certain software in the host environment, this may be beneficial. Though, as I'm about to discuss, we still need a certain level of access in the host environment in order to create Distrobox containers.
Installing
The first thing I noticed when reading through the Distrobox documentation is that its installation instructions skip a number of steps. For instance, there isn't a clear indication of dependencies, required permissions, how to set the shell's PATH variable. We're just told to run a cURL command to download a script and pipe it to our shell, which is really dangerous and shouldn't be done unless you trust the author. It seems to be assumed that setting up dependencies and dealing with paths and permissions are just things we will figure out on our own.
I decided to set up Distrobox on a fresh install of KDE neon. The first thing I had to handle was installing dependencies. I figured I'd need cURL to fetch the install script and then Docker. A word of warning here: on Ubuntu-based distributions there is a package called docker and one called docker.io. We need the latter. From the command line I fetched the desired dependencies:
sudo apt install curl docker.io
Next I grabbed the install script, looked it over, and executed it:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/89luca89/distrobox/main/install > install
chmod 755 install
./install -p ~/.local/bin
The install script failed at first because the directory ~/.local/bin did not yet exist and the script doesn't know how to handle this. I fixed this by running:
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
./install -p ~/.local/bin
At this point the documentation suggests we should be able to run commands like "distrobox-create" (or "distrobox create") to get started making semi-isolated containers. However, there is another step left to do: we need to add the location of the executable Distrobox programs to our shell's path. We can do this by running:
PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin
We may wish to add the above line to our shell's start-up script too so Distrobox is available the next time we login.
Getting started
Another issue I ran into was that I couldn't find an easy way to list which guest distributions are supported. The documentation tells us that Fedora is the default guest distribution and we can specify others. However, which other distributions are supported is left up to the imagination (or reading the Distrobox code). I found reference to using Arch Linux in a set of examples showcasing what Distrobox can do, but no easily accessible list of alternatives. Keeping this in mind I decided to focus on using Arch Linux as my guest during my trial.
To get started I ran the following command to grab the latest version of Arch Linux and name my guest container "arch":
distrobox create --image archlinux:latest --name arch
The above command failed with an error reporting I could not connect to the Docker socket due to a permission issue. I tried to work around this by running the distrobox command with sudo. Unfortunately the Distrobox helper programs are not in the default sudo path and distrobox doesn't know how to find them. So this workaround failed. I discovered the issue was my user had not been added to the docker permission group. Running the following command fixed this:
sudo adduser jesse docker
Once I had logged out and then back in again I was able to try again. This time running the following command worked:
distrobox create --image archlinux:latest --name arch
Less than a minute later I had a copy of Arch Linux in a container. I could start this semi-isolated copy of Arch and access its command line by running another command:
distrobox enter --name arch
At this point I was effectively running Arch Linux in my terminal. I could run Arch's programs and use its package manager to fetch the latest versions of software. Running the command "exit" left the container and returned me to my host's shell.
Distrobox -- Running Python on the host and guest systems
(full image size: 463kB, resolution: 1536x864 pixels)
While logged into the Arch terminal I could run both command line programs and desktop applications. When a desktop application is launched from the Distrobox container it integrates with our host's desktop environment. I especially appreciate how smooth this experience is as it means I can test multiple versions of desktop software, or the same package from two different distributions, on the same machine without worrying about conflicts.
Other observations
A few times now I've mentioned Distrobox containers are semi-isolated from the rest of the system. What I mean by this is the programs and libraries the guest distribution runs are kept separate from the host system. If I install and run Firefox from within my Arch Linux guest it won't interfere with programs and libraries on my host KDE neon system. However, the guest containers are not meant to be used as secure environments. Distrobox guests have access to the host distribution's filesystem, including our home directory. Distrobox allows us to install packages in a contained environment, but it doesn't wall them off from the host operating system or our files. In other words, don't count on Distrobox for protection the way we would while using a virtual machine or Firejail sandbox.
Distrobox -- Running gedit in a guest and locating its text file with the host file manager
(full image size: 486kB, resolution: 1536x864 pixels)
We can see what containers are installed on our system and whether they are running by using the command:
distrobox list
Once we are done with a guest container we can remove it by running the remove command:
distrobox rm --name arch
The first time I tried to remove a container I was told it could not be done because the container was still running. Once a container is started or entered it remains running in the background, even if we exit the guest's shell session. I could find no mention of stopping guest containers in the Distrobox documentation.
There are two approaches we can take to dealing with guest containers we no longer want to leave running. The Distrobox software doesn't appear to have a stop command, but its underlying technology (Docker) does. We can use the "docker stop" command to halt a running container:
docker stop arch
Should we wish to both stop and remove a running container we can use a "--force" flag with the Distrobox command. From the host system we can run:
distrobox rm --name arch --force
The above command forces the container to stop and then removes it.
Conclusions
My trial with Distrobox got off to a rough start and it was mostly due to a lack of documentation. The project has a quick-start guide, some examples on installing fresh guests, and entering the guest containers. However, the documentation hasn't been fleshed out. I couldn't find anything on installing dependencies, dealing with permission issues, finding a list of supported guest distributions, or stopping containers. Hopefully these items will get added later.
As it stands, I spent most of my trial trouble-shooting issues which involved getting Distrobox installed, getting its dependencies running, and trying to figure out which Linux distributions I could install through Distrobox.
Once these issues were resolved I found using the software quite enjoyable. I liked being able to quickly install an Arch or Fedora container, experiment with it, mess it up, and then delete it - all within a few minutes. I like being able to start up a container and run a few programs without the overhead or headaches of a full virtual machine. I liked how easily guest programs, even desktop applications, integrated into the host environment.
The whole experience was very similar to my trial with JuNest last year. The setup of JuNest was a little more straightforward, but it required more trouble-shooting for some guest applications once it was up and running. JuNest also focuses exclusively on running Arch environments while Distrobox should be able to run virtually any distribution as a guest.
All in all, I think Distrobox is worth checking out, especially if you find yourself wanting to experiment with new versions of software or run packages not available on your host system.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Isolating processes on FreeBSD, how to manage software on Fedora Silverblue, progress from UBports
Many people are fans of the Qubes OS project, a system which strives to improve security by strictly isolating various processes and data. The FreeBSD operating system also supplies a lot of tools to isolate processes, though they require more manual work. One project, called quBSD aims to improve the situation by automating a lot of the steps required to make FreeBSD isolate its processes and components the way Qubes OS does. The quBSD project accomplishes this using shell scripts, the bhyve virtual machine technology, and FreeBSD jails. "quBSD is wrapper for a jails/bhyve implementation of a Qubes-inspired containerization schema. Written in shell, based on ZFS, and uses the underlying FreeBSD tools.
The goal is to run all workloads inside of jails, and make [the] host merely a coordinator. quBSD comes with an installer script, which creates and configures a series of jails, and even a couple VMs for PCI device isolation. There are a set of scripts which facilitate management of the entire setup."
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The idea of a static operating system which does not change and, by normal means, cannot change, is appealing for a lot of people. Having a fixed system offers stability and a guard against corruption (accidental or malicious). But how does one navigate updating a static system and installing new applications? Fedora Magazine has a write-up which explains how to handle software on Fedora Silverblue: "When one says Fedora Linux, the first edition that comes to mind is Fedora Workstation. However, do not overlook the emerging editions Fedora Silverblue (featuring the GNOME desktop environment) and Fedora Kinoite (featuring the KDE desktop environment). Both of these are reprovisionable operating systems based on libostree. They are created exclusively from official RPM packages from the Fedora Project. In this article, I will demonstrate some common steps you might take after a clean installation of Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite. Everything listed in this article is optional. Exactly what you want to install or how you want to configure your system will depend on your particular needs. What is demonstrated below is just meant to give you some ideas and to provide some examples." The article goes on to explain how to handle system upgrades, adding new package repositories, and installing software.
* * * * *
The UBports team has published a new update to their open source, mobile operating system. The UBports team have released over the air update 22 (OTA-22) which introduces fingerprint reader support on Volla Phone X, provides video chat support in the Morph web browser, and polishes the lock screen. "For the Volla Phone X we are switching to a Halium 10 system image. This enables the fingerprint reader and fixes a few other problems. Volla Phone X is younger than Volla Phone and therefore was recommended to run with a later Android base. We originally released it with Halium 9, and now the in-place upgrade keeps us very excited: The updater has to flash a few critical system partitions. While it was tested extensively random errors could happen, resulting a soft-bricked device. In such a case please contact HalloWeltSysteme via their support." Additional details can be found in the project's blog post.
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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) |
Talking about how the BSDs do things
Trying-out-the-BSDs asks: Over the past 30 years I've installed just about every operating system except one, that being BSD. I've read your reviews of several of the flavors of BSD you tested. I've installed FreeBSD using the ZFS filesystem and found that it was not as responsive as openSUSE with the Btrfs filesystem. It also uses more system resources than I expected for a UNIX-like operating system and the hardware compatibility is also not as good, however I haven't done much research on "ports". Ports are a new concept for me but look interesting. What would be the comparable language in Linux, drivers?
My next attempt is installing DragonFly BSD with the HAMMER2 filesystem. I read your review and have one question: what do you mean by active memory vs wired memory? "In its default configuration DragonFly used little RAM (13MB of active memory and 390MB of wired memory) and little disk space (530MB)".
DistroWatch answers: Before I dive into answering these specific questions, I'd like to first be pedantic about something. Specifically I'd like to share that "BSD" refers to a family of operating systems rather than one specific operating system or set of tools. Projects like FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are each their own, complete operating system with their own kernel and userland utilities. Most of the core BSD projects offer a lot of the same functionality, however they have their own kernel, package manager, and system installer. Each core BSD project maintains its own command line programs. These utilities are all maintained by their own in-house developers.
This is a bit different from how things tend to work in the GNU/Linux ecosystem where many of the components come from separate upstream sources and are pieced together differently to form different distributions.
There are younger flavours of BSD which are basically custom versions of the core group. In particular you'll find projects like GhostBSD are essentially FreeBSD with preconfigured tools and add-ons.
Regarding the comparison of FreeBSD versus openSUSE, I would certainly agree hardware compatibility lags behind with FreeBSD (and most of the other BSDs) compared to Linux, especially on desktop machines. Most of the BSDs have fewer developers than the Linux kernel and some of them are geared more toward running on servers than, for instance, laptops.
I was surprised to hear that FreeBSD was less responsive and used more resources than openSUSE. I'd normally expect a fresh install of each (with similar components enabled) to have similar performance. FreeBSD's default configuration is one of the more efficient I've run over the years. While ZFS can add some overhead, it usually isn't nearly as impactful on performance (or memory consumption) as people tend to assume. Usually I find notable performance issues on fresh installs tend to come from either drivers (which may be a weak point if you're running a desktop environment) or background services such as file indexing. It's possible one of these is to blame for the difference in performance.
Moving on to the question about ports. A port, in this instance, refers to a recipe for fetching, building, and installing software which is not part of the operating system. Earlier I mentioned the BSDs each have their own kernel, command line utilities, package manager, and so on. These components are developed in-house by the operating system's team. Anything else, any third-party software you might want to run on your BSD installation, will come from a port.
Each BSD has its own collection of ports. These ports provide a mostly-automated approach to downloading source code, configuring it, and installing popular third-party applications such as Firefox, LibreOffice, desktop environments, network services, and games.
Most flavours of BSD build binary packages from these ports and make the software available through a package manager, much the same way Linux distributions usually use a package manager. In short, you don't typically need to use (or know anything about) ports when you run a flavour of BSD since you'll normally just use the package manager the same as you would on Linux.
If you're looking for a comparable technology on Linux to BSD ports, you're in luck. Several Linux distributions maintain their own collections of ports. Gentoo famously does this. The Arch AUR is, in a way, a collection of ports. People who run Void may be familiar with xbps-src which is approximately the same concept.
Moving onto memory - what is Active memory and what is Wired memory? The FreeBSD wiki has a write-up of the categories of memory which explain it in detail. My short and generalised summary is that Active memory refers to memory being currently used by userland programs. Wired memory is usually being used by the kernel and/or is "locked" in place and so cannot be reclaimed for something else. Typically adding Active memory and Wired memory together would roughly give you the same result as looking at the "Used" memory column from the free command on a Linux distribution.
In the example quoted, DragonFly BSD was using about 403MB of RAM which couldn't be used for anything else at the moment. A tiny amount (13MB) was being used by its userland utilities like the shell. The other 390MB was used by the kernel and, probably, the HAMMER2 filesystem cache.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
KaOS 2022.02
The KaOS distribution is a rolling-release project with a strong focus on the KDE Plasma desktop and related software. The project has announced a new version, KaOS 2022.02, which features a significant new milestone: "With the release of Plasma 5.24, a first for KaOS can be announced. Wayland on Plasma is in such a good shape that it now can be the default session for KaOS. For VirtualBox, this means some intervention is needed for auto-resize, upstream does not support this yet for a Wayland session, so you will need to set the desired screen resolution in System Settings. When you choose to use non-free NVIDIA during the boot-up of the Live session, then Wayland won't be used, for NVIDIA, it is still better to use an X session. The one application that is not ready for Wayland, is SMplayer, used in KaOS for many years as the default media player. From the many bug reports for Wayland support and SMplayer (dating back to 2017), it seems SMplayer is unable to move to Wayland, thus can no longer be the default. Haruna is the replacement. It is developed for Plasma, is QML based, has yt-dlp support, subtitle feature, and a rich set of configuration options." Additional information can be found in the release announcement.
Kali Linux 2022.1
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The project's first release of 2022 introduces several new changes which are highlighted in the project's release announcement: "Today we are pushing out the first Kali Linux release of the new year with Kali Linux 2022.1, and just in time for Valentine's Day. This release brings various visual updates and tweaks to existing features, and is ready to be downloaded or upgraded if you have an existing Kali Linux installation. The summary of the changelog since the 2021.4 release from December 2021 is: visual refresh - updated wallpapers and GRUB theme; shell prompt changes - visual improvements to improve readability when copying code; refreshed browser landing page - Firefox and Chromium home page has had a makeover to help you access everything Kali you need; Kali everything image - an all-packages-in-one solution now available to download; Kali-Tweaks meets SSH - connect to old SSH servers using legacy SSH protocols and ciphers; VMware i3 improvements - host-guest features properly work now on i3; accessibility features - speech synthesis is back in the Kali installer; new tools - various new tools added, many from ProjectDiscovery."
AV Linux MX-21
AV Linux is a versatile, Debian-based distribution featuring a large collection of audio and video production software. The project's latest release is based on MX Linux 21. "AV Linux MX-21, code-named 'Consciousness', has been released, based on MX-21 'Wildflower' and Debian 11 'Bullseye'. This new version has been completely built from the ground up, it is the first version to not be a re-spin of an existing system, and it was built with same tools that are used to build MX Linux and antiX. Because it has moved to a whole new Debian platform (from 'Buster' to 'Bullseye'), there is no upgrade path from previous versions of AV Linux and you will need to install from the ISO image. Please note that the initial releases of AV Linux MX edition are still receiving updates through the MX repositories so if you are happy where you are, there is certainly no hurry to upgrade. The work on this release has brought AV Linux much closer to MX in many ways and it is hoped that both projects will benefit from serving more users across more niches." This release also drops the legacy 32-bit build. Further details may be found in the release announcement.
AV Linux MX-21 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
pfSense 2.6.0
Jim Pingle has announced the release of pfSense 2.6.0, the latest stable version of the project's FreeBSD-based specialist operating system for firewalls and routers. Some of the changes and new features of the release include: "IPsec VTI interface names have changed in this release, configurations will be updated automatically where possible to use the new names; IPsec status page and widget are significantly faster, show more complete information, and have additional useful functionality; ZFS is now the default filesystem for installations where possible; new Disks widget to replace the disk usage list in the System Information widget - this widget is automatically added and enabled if the firewall configuration contains the System Information widget with disk usage section active; AutoConfigBackup no longer makes pages wait to load during the backup process; the default password hash format in the User Manager has been changed from bcrypt to SHA-512; improvements to the Captive Portal logout page and process; RAM disks have been converted to tmpfs." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,683
- Total data uploaded: 41.5TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Running Distrobox
In this week's overview of Distrobox we talked about how to run guest distributions in a container. Distrobox provides a method for running non-native software which can easily share access to the user's home directory. Have you tried Distrobox? Let us know your thoughts on this container technology in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on when people tried out Slackware Linux for the first time in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What do you think of Distrobox?
| I have used it and like it: | 37 (3%) |
| I have used it and do not like it: | 11 (1%) |
| I have not tried it but plan to: | 348 (33%) |
| I have not tried it and will not: | 672 (63%) |
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| Website News |
Package tracking update
DistroWatch maintains a list of over 200 open source packages which are common across a wide range of Linux distributions. These packages and their version information are tracked in our database and can be searched to reveal which distributions include versions of these packages.
This February we updated the database, cleaning out two old packages which are not typically packaged anymore: libgnome and wicd. We also added four new packages:
- dracut - the event driven initramfs infrastructure.
- hplip - Hewlett-Packard's Linux imaging and printing software.
- nuspell - a spelling checker software program.
- PipeWire - a server for handling audio and video streams and hardware on Linux.
When distributions package these software components on their install media package versions will appear in our Feature & Package table on the distribution's information page.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- MassOS. MassOS is a free (as in freedom) GNU/Linux operating system for laptops and desktops which is designed to be minimal and lightweight, without compromising on features. MassOS uses a themed Xfce desktop environment. This allows it to be lightweight on system resources while still being visually appealing and easy to use. MassOS is completely independent and not based on any existing GNU/Linux distribution. This means we are free from being tied down to distributions outside of our control.
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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, 28 February 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 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 |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Issue 984 (2022-09-05): deepin 23 Preview, watching for changing to directories, Mint team tests Steam Deck, Devuan posts fix for repository key expiry |
| • Issue 983 (2022-08-29): Qubes OS 4.1.1, Alchg Linux, immutable operating systems, Debian considers stance on non-free firmware, Arch-based projects suffer boot issue |
| • Issue 982 (2022-08-22): Peropesis 1.6.2, KaOS strips out Python 2 and PulseAudio, deepin becomes independent, getting security update notifications |
| • Issue 981 (2022-08-15): Linux Lite 6.0, defining desktop environments and window managers, Mint releases upgrade tool, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 980 (2022-08-08): Linux Mint 21, Pledge on Linux, SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan base |
| • Issue 979 (2022-08-01): KaOS 2022.06 and KDE Plasma 5.25, terminating processes after a set time, GNOME plans Secure Boot check |
| • Issue 978 (2022-07-25): EndeavourOS 22.6, Slax explores a return to Slackware, Ubuntu certified with Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 |
| • Issue 977 (2022-07-18): EasyOS 4.2, transferring desktop themes between distros, Tails publishes list of updates, Zevenet automates Let's Encrypt renewals |
| • Issue 976 (2022-07-11): NixOS 22.05, making a fake webcam, exploring the Linux scheduler, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 975 (2022-07-04): Murena One running /e/OS, where are all the openSUSE distributions, Fedora to offer unfiltered Flathub access |
| • Issue 974 (2022-06-27): AlmaLinux 9.0, the changing data of DistroWatch's database, UBports on the Pixel 3a, Tails and GhostBSD publish hot fixes |
| • Issue 973 (2022-06-20): openSUSE 15.4, collecting distro media, FreeBSD status report, Ubuntu Core with optional real-time kernel |
| • Issue 972 (2022-06-13): Rolling Rhino Remix, SambaBox 4.1, SUSE team considers future of SUSE and openSUSE Leap, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant |
| • Issue 971 (2022-06-06): ChimeraOS 2022.01.03, Lilidog 22.04, NixOS gains graphical installer, Mint replaces Bluetooth stack and adopts Timeshift, how to change a MAC address |
| • Issue 970 (2022-05-30): Tails 5.0, taking apart a Linux distro, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop |
| • Full list of all issues |
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