 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 957, 28 February 2022 |
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Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Information can take many forms and be stored in many different formats. The best way to organize and store data varies depending on what people want to do with it. In this week's Questions and Answers column we discuss web browser bookmarks and how they can be exported into various formats. We talk about transferring bookmarks from the browser to text files, to a spreadsheet, and to a database. Read on to learn more about why and how to shift bookmarks into various formats. Also on the subject of bookmarks, how large is your bookmark collection? Let us know the size of your accumulated bookmarks in this week's Opinion Poll. Before we dive into bookmarks we talk about a user friendly distribution called Pop!_OS. The Pop!_OS distribution is based on Ubuntu and developed by System76 which bundles the operating system with their own computers. Joshua Allen Holm takes Pop!_OS for a test drive and reports on his findings. Then, in our News section, we talk about the Zorin project setting up new documentation and link to steps which will install Debian on an Apple M1 computer. Plus we share a discussion taking place among the Linux kernel developers about whether to drop support for ReiserFS. We are also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm) |
Pop!_OS 21.10
Pop!_OS 21.10, released in December 2021, is the latest release of Colorado-based computer vendor System76's Linux distribution. Based on Ubuntu 21.10, Pop!_OS 21.10 provides a heavily customized experience. Most packages come from Ubuntu's repositories, but the extra System76 packages change a lot. In this review, I explore what Pop!_OS 21.10 has to offer and take a look at many of the things that make the Pop!_OS desktop experience different from Ubuntu's customized GNOME and standard GNOME.
Installing Pop!_OS 21.10
There are three different downloads available for Pop!_OS 21.10: the standard image for AMD64 systems, an image for AMD64 systems with NVIDIA graphic cards that comes with the proprietary NVIDIA driver pre-installed, and an image for Raspberry Pi 4 computers. Because my testing system does not have NVIDIA graphics, I downloaded the standard image, which is 2.6GB. I copied this image to a flash drive, rebooted my computer, turned off Secure Boot per the instructions on the Pop!_OS download page, and started Pop!_OS from the flash drive.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Running the system installer from the live desktop
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Once fully booted, the Pop!_OS installer appears. This installer asks for the same information and performs mostly the same tasks as every other Linux installer, but the installer provides a nice way of performing those tasks. Two nice things the installer does is it makes it really, really easy to enable full-disk encryption, which is actually the default when setting up Pop!_OS, and it automatically creates a recovery partition when installing.
The recovery partition is a 4GB partition that contains the installation image. By pressing space at boot, the recovery partition can be accessed and used to repair or re-install Pop!_OS without having to use an external flash drive. The recovery partition is periodically updated (updates are listed in the relevant section in the GNOME Settings application), so the recovery process can provide a fresh install or repair that is newer than the original install media.
The COSMIC desktop
System76 has plans to create their own desktop environment, but in this version of Pop!_OS the COSMIC (Computer Operating System Main Interface Components) desktop is GNOME 40 plus a series of extensions. These various extensions provide several major changes to the default GNOME user experience. The changes are obvious right from the start with the initial setup dialog providing many options for customizing the desktop experience.
The initial setup dialog provides way more options than the standard GNOME setup dialog. The first screen asks the user to pick between "No dock", "Dock extends to edges", and "Dock doesn't extent to edges". The first option turns off the dock, the second option makes the dock stretch all the way across the bottom of the screen (a significant departure from Ubuntu, where the dock is on the left by default, and from GNOME that does not have a persistent dock), and the last option makes the dock only as wide as the icons it contains. The second screen configures various things about the top panel. The third and fourth screens explain how to use the Launcher and touchpad navigation gestures. The fifth screen provides an option to toggle between a light and dark theme. The sixth deals with privacy. The seventh with timezones and location. The eighth with configuring various on-line accounts. After all that, the final screen says "All done!" with a button labeled "Start Using Pop!_OS".
I selected all the default options during the initial configuration process, which meant I had a dock at the bottom of the screen that stretched all the way to the edges, the top panel has shortcuts for accessing the Workspace selector and opening the Applications Library, and the system uses a dark theme. Even if I had selected different options, I would have still ended up with a desktop experience that has some similarities with GNOME and Ubuntu's customized GNOME, but is different enough that it provides a unique experience.
There are three major components that make COSMIC unique: the Launcher, the Application Library, and the tiling window mode extension. Each of these components alters the traditional GNOME workflow.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Launcher displaying advanced search options
(full image size: 2.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
By default, the Launcher is what opens when pressing the `Super` key. This Launcher provides a lot of keyboard control for starting applications, switching between running applications, and more. Typing "?" into the Launcher provides a large number of shortcuts for searching the web, searching for local files, performing mathematical calculations, and other advanced searches.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Application Library
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Application Library brings some refinements to GNOME's full screen applications screen. It lists applications in alphabetical order and treats GNOME's application folders as separate tabs instead of listing the groups in line with individual applications. The default groups are Office, System, and Utilities, but it is easy to create new groups or add items to existing groups. The only issue I had with the folders is that the Office folder does not automatically pick up LibreOffice Base after installing that package, so manually adding the LibreOffice Base icon to the Office group was necessary. The default list of applications included in that group include only the LibreOffice components that are pre-installed, the defaults for other folders include applications that are not always installed (e.g., the NVIDIA Settings application), so adding LibreOffice Base to the Office folder's defaults should be possible. This is a minor issue, but would be a nice bit of polish.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Firefox, Terminal, and Files in tiling layout
(full image size: 358kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The tiling window manager is the biggest change of them all. This option, which is off by default, but can be turned on by pressing `Super + Y`, turns on tiling window layout. This provides a lot more control over the layout of application windows. Want two windows on the left of the screen each taking half the height of the screen next to three windows on the right each taking up a third of the height? No problem and very easy to accomplish. The only thing that takes getting used to is the fact that almost all of Pop!_OS's keyboard shortcuts are changed from standard GNOME. Pop!_OS's keyboard shortcuts are internally consistent and work well with the tiling mode, but they do require relearning how to do things.
Default software selection
There are no real surprises here. Pop!_OS 21.10 comes with many of the same popular, open source applications included with most Linux distributions. Firefox is the web browser, Geary is the email client, and LibreOffice 7.2 (except for the LibreOffice Base component) is pre-installed. The rest of the pre-installed software is a selection of utilities and other common applications, like Evince and Totem. In short, nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing particularly noteworthy, but the software included is everything needed to perform basic computer tasks like web browsing, email, and office work.
Installing additional software
Pop!_OS relies on a combination of Ubuntu's and Pop!_OS repositories for providing additional Deb packages. In addition, Flatpak is installed and pre-configured to use the Flathub repository. The GUI application for installing new packages and performing updates is Pop!_Shop, which handles both Deb packages and Flatpaks. Pop!_Shop also lists a small selection of curated "Pop!_Picks" which are a selection of popular packages like Steam and Visual Studio Code. Pop!_OS also comes with Eddy, a GUI utility for installing Deb packages. Of course, packages can also be installed from the command line with the apt or flatpak commands.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Pop!_Shop
(full image size: 331kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I did run into one frustrating issue with installing addition software when I compiled and installed ScummVM from source. The .desktop file for ScummVM gets installed in /usr/local/share/applications, which the Pop!_OS Launcher does not recognize as a source for applications. ScummVM correctly appears in the Application Library, at least after logging out and logging in again (this is required only the first time a new application is added in /usr/local/share/applications, subsequent applications are added instantly to the Application Library), but the Launcher never detects the applications under /usr/local. Because of this, pressing the Super key and typing "ScummVM" would not work. Alternate methods for starting the program work just fine, like Alt+F2 or the icon in the Application Library. This is disappointing because Launcher clearly labels applications as "System" or "Local" (i.e., installed in ~/.local) or Flatpak, but /usr/local is not considered a valid source.
Final thoughts
While it is not perfect (no distribution is), Pop!_OS has a lot of nice things to offer. The COSMIC desktop customizations add many nice features to the GNOME desktop, and the built-in recovery partition is a welcome feature. That is not to say there are not also some drawbacks, like being beholden to whatever Ubuntu decides to do for the majority of the package selection, but Pop!_OS has plenty to offer for desktop Linux users. There are a few issues that I mentioned above that I would like to see fixed, but those issues do not stop me from recommending Pop!_OS to anyone looking for a smartly designed Linux distribution.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
Pop!_OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8/10 from 255 review(s).
Have you used Pop!_OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Zorin offers more help, installing Debian on Apple M1 computer, Linux developers consider dropping ReiserFS, AlmaLinux gains PPC64 build
The Zorin OS distribution is based on Ubuntu and features a desktop environment designed to feel familiar for people migrating from Windows. The project offers a number of technical utilities to facilitate migration and it has now added a collection of helpful documents to guide users through common tasks. The new documentation site offers guides for installing video drivers, setting up printers, installing the operating system, acquiring games, and many other tasks.
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It has been over a year since the first M1-powered Mac computers were launched. The new line from Apple caused a lot of excitement due to the M1 processor having a strong balance of performance and energy efficiency. At the time the new Mac computers didn't run alternative operating systems and it has been somewhat difficult to port other systems to the M1-powered devices. The Asahi Linux team has been making strides in porting Linux to the Apple devices and there are now instructions available for installing Debian on this hardware. Not everything works yet, but the distribution is reaching the point of being useful for people willing to go through the manual steps of installing it. "All systems are supported. But currently the USB-A Port on the Mac Mini will not work in u-boot and GRUB. Mark Kettenis is working on it, but first the other patches need to land in u-boot. The two additional USB-3 ports on the iMac 4 port model also don't work in u-boot, GRUB and Linux."
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The Reiser filesystem is one of several filesystems supported in the Linux kernel. In fact, it was one of the earliest filesystems with journaling support to be merged into Linux, back in 2001. While ReiserFS has maintained a following of users over the years, it has become less popular due to the introduction of other modern filesystems such as ext4 and Btrfs. There is now a discussion as to whether it makes sense to continue supporting ReiserFS in the Linux kernel since there has been little work done to maintain it in recent years. Matthew Wilcox put forward the idea of removing ReiserFS from the kernel: "Keeping ReiserFS in the tree has certain costs. For example, I would very much like to remove the 'flags' argument to ->write_begin. We have the infrastructure in place to handle AOP_FLAG_NOFS differently, but AOP_FLAG_CONT_EXPAND is still around, used only by ReiserFS. Looking over the patches to ReiserFS over the past couple of years, there are fixes for a few syzbot reports and treewide changes. There don't seem to be any fixes for user-spotted bugs since 2019. Does ReiserFS still have a large install base that is just very happy with an old stable filesystem?"
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The AlmaLinux OS distribution is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and one of the possible replacements for CentOS Linux. The project already supported x86_64 and aarch64 CPU architectures. Now the distribution can also be installed on ppc64le machines. The AlmaLinux OS wiki offers information on the new install media, which can be downloaded from the project's server.
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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) |
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Transferring bookmarks to database
Most of the Questions and Answers columns we run feature a simple query with a fairly straight forward answer. A lot of the questions we receive don't require further information or a deeper dive into the situation. However, occasionally we get into a more back-and-forth situation in e-mail with more unusual concerns. This week we'd like to share an exchange which involved a collection of bookmarks which had gotten too large and a solution that involved transferring them to other formats for improved search options.
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Managing-bookmarks asks: I am curious if you know of any other way to keep bookmarks other than the standard browser option? The reason I ask, is that I'm having a bear of a time figuring out why my friend's new install of Linux Mint keeps experiencing browser crashes. Now I think the bookmarks are part of the problem, the file size for the bookmarks are an astounding 32.3GB in size (HTML no less!). These are bookmarks that he and his brother have accrued over the years. He works in psychology and is constantly saving articles.
Jesse answers: Their bookmarks file is 32GB? A standard URL is usually only 1k or smaller when stored in HTML. Which suggests your friends have around 32 million bookmarks shared between them. Is that even physically possible? They'd need to be bookmarking something new every waking second for a couple of years to accumulate that sort of bookmark collection! For comparison, my bookmarks archive, after nearly 20 years of collecting, is about 47kB (their collection is almost a million times larger).
Which tells me one of three things has probably happened. Perhaps they're storing new bookmarks at an insane rate and really need to find a different way to index information. Perhaps the bookmarks file has some embedded information in it, such as the website's icon. Or the file is corrupted and it may be that exporting the file and re-importing it to a fresh profile will shrink it down to a sane size.
As for finding an alternative... Maybe a simple LibreOffice Base database? Get your friend to dump the bookmarks into a database and then optionally tag anything they need to use regularly. So their database would have two main fields (plus the index). One field with the URL and one with tags like "family, history". That would make it easier to search.
Managing-bookmarks asks: I guess simple math would have made me realize the file was corrupt sooner rather than later. Thank you for breaking it down for me. It totally makes sense!
Last week we spoke about my friends' bookmarks and you mentioned the possibility of downloading the bookmarks to a database and tagging them. When you have a moment can you go a little more into detail about how to do that? I think this is something that would be very helpful to my friends.
Jesse answers: The first thing to do is to export all the bookmarks from your friend's web browser into an HTML file. Each web browser does this a little differently. However, almost all web browsers have a menu option for "Bookmarks" or "Manage Bookmarks" which will lead to an option to Export the bookmarks to a file. This file is typically given an HTML extension and contains the URLs bookmarked, along with the titles of the websites. Category information may also be included if the user has sorted their bookmarks into separate folders.
This HTML file containing all the bookmarks can be opened in a web browser like a regular web page. It will be sparse and just look like a list of links, one per line. This gives us quick access to the bookmarks and we can search through them using the browser's Find function, like we'd search for any text in a web page.
This approach is simple, but slightly limiting because the browser's Find function will only locate text in the title of the bookmark, not the URL. It also lacks any tagging options.
So what can we do about that? Well, as I mention above, we can try importing the bookmark URLs and names into a database. The original suggestion I made mentioned using a graphical database tool such as LibreOffice which would usually be preferable to command line alternatives such as MariaDB or SQLite. With that in mind, let's explore LibreOffice.
Before we look at working with the database, we first have an interesting issue to overcome. Our bookmarks are stored in HTML format and we'd like to have the bookmark titles and URLs in organized, plain-text fields that can be imported into other programs. How do we do this?
Let's assume the bookmarks I exported from my web browser are stored in a file called bookmarks.html. In my case, my browser exported the bookmarks using a classic Netscape format which places a "DT" tag at the start of each bookmark. The bookmark's URL and title then follow in HTML format. The details may vary depending on which browser you are using, but it seems most modern browsers use the same format. We can separate the pieces of data from my bookmarks.html file using a couple of command lines:
grep DT bookmarks.html | cut -f 2 -d '"' > urls
grep DT bookmarks.html | cut -f 3 -d '>' | cut -f 1 -d '<' > titles
The two commands above separate the URLs out to one text file and then the titles for each bookmark into another file. Basically we're just stripping out the HTML code and meta data from the bookmarks collection. Now we smash the URLs and titles for each bookmark back together in a file with numbered fields using this command:
paste urls titles | nl > bookmarks.txt
Our bookmarks are now in plain-text format, with each field separated by a tab character, stored in bookmarks.txt. We can open this file in a text editor to confirm all the data is there and the fields (the titles and URLs) line up.
At this point we should ideally be able to copy/paste the information from the new text file full of bookmarks into a database. However, I ran into a problem. Specifically, it seems LibreOffice Base will not allow an import copy/paste action from a simple text file. It will, I found, accept data copy/pasted in from a spreadsheet. And the LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet will accept tab-separated data from a text file.
In short, my workaround was to open LibreOffice Calc and, in the top row, I placed the words "ID", "URL", "Title", and "Tags". It looked like this:
| A | B | C | D |
|---|
| 1 |
ID |
URL |
Title |
Tags |
| 2 |
I then copy/pasted the entire contents of the bookmarks.txt file into the A2 cell (first column in the second row). LibreOffice correctly identified the information as being Tab-separated fields and filled in the table for me.
We could stop here. We have all the bookmark information in a spreadsheet. It can be sorted, it can be searched, it can be edited. For many people LibreOffice Calc is the friendliest form of a simple database we can hope for and its fields will be relatively easy to edit. I'd recommend stopping at this point and saving the bookmark information in the spreadsheet and handing it over to your friend. However, if you are married to the idea of using a full-featured database there are more steps.
To transfer this information into a database we can click the LibreOffice File menu, select New, and then select Database. Choose the option to "Create a new database" and click Next. On the next page make sure the "Open the database for editing" box is checked and that "Create tables using the table wizard" is not checked. When you click the Finish button LibreOffice will ask you to name the database.
Now we have a database, we need to put a table in it. The database table organizes the bookmark information. In LibreOffice click the button "Create Table in Design View." This will bring up a window where we can tell LibreOffice the names and types of fields we want to track, along with a comment describing each one. We're going to want three fields for this exercise:
- url - type Text
- title - type Text
- tags - type Text
The three fields will hold the name, address, and meta information we wish to attach to the bookmark. When we click the Save button LibreOffice will ask us to name the table (I called mine bookmarks) and whether we want to create a primary key, which can be helpful for organizing and indexing information in some situations. We should agree to create a default primary key called ID.
LibreOffice 7.0 Base -- Setting up the database fields
(full image size: 180kB, resolution: 1423x791 pixels)
Now we have a table with four fields (ID, URL, title, and tags). We also have a spreadsheet with corresponding fields (ID, URL, and title). We can transfer the data from the spreadsheet to the database as follows.
First, go to the spreadsheet containing the bookmark data. Select the first four columns of data, including the headers. The fourth column (for tags) is blank, but we still want to copy it. Highlight the entire block of information, all the rows containing bookmark entries. Then go to the Edit menu and select Copy.
Next, switch over to the LibreOffice Base window. Select the Tables tab, select the "bookmarks" database. Click the Edit menu and select Paste. A window will pop-up confirming we want to append new data to the database and that the spreadsheet fields are in the same order as the database fields. When we confirm these steps the bookmark data will be imported into the LibreOffice Base database. We can confirm the bookmarks have been imported by double-clicking on the "bookmarks" table and looking at the records it contains. Don't forget to click the Save button once you confirm the operation was successful!
At this point you can browse the bookmarks and perform simple searches on the URL, Title, and Tags fields by double-clicking the "bookmarks" table. You can alternatively click the Queries tab to the left of the screen and use a wizard (or SQL) to find bookmarks you want using keywords.
Queries can be entered using a wizard or typed manually. This allows us to run queries to find URLs that belong to certain domains or that have titles with specific keywords. For instance, we can find all bookmarks which mention "family" in the title and which have a ".org" ending by running the following query:
SELECT url FROM bookmarks WHERE url LIKE '%.org' AND title LIKE '%family%';
This is quite flexible, but as I mentioned before, your friends might prefer sticking to the LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet. It'll be a lot more user friendly than a database and offer almost as much flexibility.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Slax 11.2.0
Tomáš Matějíček has released a new version of Slax, a distribution that started back in 2003 as a minimalist live CD based on Slackware Linux, but evolved into a minimalist live CD based on Debian. The new version continues to use the Fluxbox window manager and is available for both 64-bit and 32-bit systems. The ConnMann application is now the preferred network connection manager. "More than two years since the previous update, I am happy to announce the immediate availability of final Slax version 11.2.0. This release features EFI support for USB booting and a complete update of all packages to the versions available in Debian 'Bullseye'. Furthermore, it provides full Aufs support, so you can continue working with additional modules as in previous Slax versions, add and/or remove modules on the fly. The core of Slax remains the same as always. Network connection can now managed using ConnMan. Most importantly, Chrome is no longer a part of Slax, but you can still install it with a single click or two, as well as the VLC video player." Read the release announcement and the changelog for more information.
Ubuntu 20.04.4
There has been an update to Ubuntu's latest long-term support (LTS) release and its official community editions. The new install images carry the version number 20.04.4 and provide both security updates and new hardware support for the Ubuntu family of distributions. The release announcement states: "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support. Like previous LTS series, 20.04.4 includes hardware enablement stacks for use on newer hardware. This support is offered on all architectures. Ubuntu Server defaults to installing the GA kernel; however you may select the HWE kernel from the installer bootloader. As usual, this point release includes many updates, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS."
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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: 2,689
- 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) |
How large is your bookmarks collection?
In this week's Questions and Answers section we talked about migrating bookmarks to a variety of different formats, including text, a spreadsheet, and a database. Arranging bookmarks into different formats can help sort or search through large numbers of bookmark entries. How large is your bookmark collection when it's exported into HTML format? Let us know how many bookmarks you have in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on trying Distrobox in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How large is your bookmark collection?
| 1kB to 50kB: | 232 (22%) |
| 51kB to 100kB: | 81 (8%) |
| 101kB to 250kB: | 87 (8%) |
| 251kB to 500kB: | 64 (6%) |
| 501kB to 1MB: | 84 (8%) |
| Between 1MB and 5MB: | 148 (14%) |
| Greater than 5MB: | 137 (13%) |
| Unknown: | 231 (22%) |
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| Website News |
Donations and sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the forms of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $108 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Regis F | $39 |
| Thomas S | $23 |
| Kenneth L | $15 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Krz S | $6 |
| Steer PTY | $6 |
| DuCaked H | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Bizunas S | $1 |
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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, 7 March 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Bookmarks (by Donald Sebastian Leung on 2022-02-28 01:24:51 GMT from Hong Kong)
I chose "1KB to 50KB", but only because there's no option to choose "no bookmarks". I currently do not keep any bookmarks in any of my browsers since I do not need to visit too many different webpages and to keep my system clean.
2 • Bookmarks/Favorites (by Otis on 2022-02-28 01:28:53 GMT from United States)
I've had the same 25 bookmarks for years in my home browser. Pretty low file size. But material for my projects has collected ten times that now.. so.. still just the poll's minimum in size.
3 • Bookmarks (by DaveW on 2022-02-28 01:40:46 GMT from United States)
I have 1.5 MB of bookmarks, but thinking about it, there are probably only a couple dozen or so that I use regularly, or actually need. I could clean most of them out, but with a 1 TB disk there is no space problem, so why bother.
4 • Deleting ResierFS from the kernel (by Alarmed on 2022-02-28 01:46:02 GMT from Canada)
Was alarmed to see under the news section, that consideration is being given to removing support for ReiserFs from the kernel.
To answer the question posed - yes, I am very happy with a FS that has consistently proven to be stable and reliable for me over the years.
In comparison to ext4, I find more usable space provided on my drive.
The main area of concern is reliable recovery from power outages compared to ext4.
Perhaps the real answer is to put the PC on a UPS, but since this is not a regular thing, and has worked reliably for me, not about to change.
If I were to change, it might be to switch to an SSD and use Samsung's open source filing system for SSD's (sorry - brain freeze. Can't remember the name).
Re alternatives:
BTRFS - Recall there were issues with data corruption and at one time Redhat dropped support while Suse chugged along with it. Think it might have been a RAID issue (since resolved?).
ZFS - Now supported under Linux, but I don't know enough about hard drive space requirements etc.
Not sure I need many of the features for a single user home PC. The only thing of interest, was previous mention (I think on this site) by a user mentioning prevention of (I think it was called) "bit rot".
Seeing as filing systems are absolutely not my area of expertise, other users/readers comments/suggestions regarding their experiences would be of interest.
If this is not the correct place for the topic (it did show up in the news segment), please point me to the correct one. Thanks.
5 • no bookmarks for me either (by Matt on 2022-02-28 02:17:05 GMT from United States)
I just use duckduckgo to find web pages.
6 • Bookmarks (by Friar Tux on 2022-02-28 02:25:16 GMT from Canada)
I chose "101 kb - 250 kb". I have about 200 bookmarks - tech magazines, news sites, comics sites, music, video, science, sci fi, graphic/artwork, and much, much more. Plus, they are all backed up in HTML format so they can be transferred to other browsers if need be. I used to have a huge physical library (I read a lot), but since we moved into this small apartment (quite willingly) we have had to downsized said library to about 10% of what it was in its glory days. Now I have all that as bookmarks to the needed books/articles/stories/etc..
I can easily understand how one can accumulate a large bookmark HTML file, though maybe not 32 GB worth.
7 • Pop! (by Alan on 2022-02-28 02:37:55 GMT from United States)
If Pop! OS ever become the future of Linux, rest assured I will be long gone and using freeBSD.
Never use a Linux distro with OS in its name!
8 • bookmarks (by Debian-MX-Manjaro User on 2022-02-28 03:14:08 GMT from United States)
I did not vote (Opinion Pool)
bookmarks = none
9 • Bookmarks (by Pumpino on 2022-02-28 03:24:47 GMT from Australia)
32GB of bookmarks? I find that very hard to believe. I thought I have a lot and it's only 80KB. I back them up in HTML format but also use the Eversync plugin to sync bookmarks across computers and to my phone (using the Eversync app).
10 • Bookmarks (by Bobbie Sellers on 2022-02-28 04:45:29 GMT from United States)
Well I have been collection my bookmarks for over 30 years having started on the Amiga and transferred that collection to Linux. A lot of them are obsolete and when i hit one that is I tend to delete it.
bliss
11 • Bookmarks (by Andy Prough on 2022-02-28 05:07:40 GMT from United States)
I like to save the icons with my bookmarks, so the size is closer to 100kb. Not quite up to 32GB yet - that's quite an impressive accomplishment.
12 • Bookmarks (by Simon on 2022-02-28 06:00:05 GMT from New Zealand)
32GB of bookmarks is hilarious and very obviously an error...but how in the name of all that's holy do 27 (18%) of the poll respondents have MORE THAN 5MB worth?!?!
I'm looking at my bookmarks and in addition to dozens of permanent ones organised into folders, I've got dozens more temporary ones just piled up in the "other bookmarks" folder, clearly in need of a tidy up. After decades of collecting them I've really got too many for them to be useful (most of this stuff I'd find just as quickly by typing the unbookmarked site names and/or keywords directly into the search bar)... and yet, like Jesse, I'm still in the 1-50k category: how on earth can so many people have OVER 100 TIMES MORE?!?!
Aside from browsers with really shockingly inefficient ways of storing bookmarks, the only thing I can think of is that some people collect things like journal articles as bookmarks, using their browsers instead of reference management software to grab hundreds and hundreds of links organised into research categories or whatever. Otherwise, I just don't see how anyone could consider OVER 100 TIMES MORE than the huge collection of bookmarks I'm looking at here to be a manageable, reasonable amount...let alone 18% of the poll respondents. Maybe Firefox is nice and efficient at storing them, and other browsers suck at it?
13 • Bookmarks (by Tony on 2022-02-28 06:16:34 GMT from Bulgaria)
I gather bookmarks for 11 years already and the complete size of the HTML file is 4.5 MB, including the website icons. Also in browsers like Palemoon searching using keywords/tags is possible.
14 • Bookmarks and review (by nsp0323 on 2022-02-28 07:15:56 GMT from Sweden)
No bookmarks here.
Why reviewing something that was released in December 2021? For the first time in years, jumped over the whole section. Didn't bother to read it.
15 • Bookmarks (by Marc on 2022-02-28 08:09:26 GMT from Belgium)
I use ZOTERO.
https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero
*****
Saving Webpages
With Zotero, you can create an item from any webpage by clicking the save button in the browser toolbar. If the page isn't recognized by a translator, you'll see the gray webpage icon. If the page does have a recognized translator, you can force Zotero to save a Web Page item instead by right-clicking (click-and-hold in Safari) on the Zotero save button and choosing “Save to Zotero (Web Page with/without Snapshot)”
If “Automatically take snapshots when creating items from web pages” is enabled in the General tab of the Zotero preferences, a copy (or snapshot) of the webpage will be saved to your computer and added as a child item. You can also save a snapshot with this setting disabled by right-clicking (click-and-hold in Safari) on the Zotero save button and choosing the relvant option. To view the saved copy, double-click the item or the snapshot in Zotero.
Double-clicking a Web Page item without a snapshot in your library will take you to the original webpage. Double-clicking a Web Page item with a snapshot will display the snapshot instead. You can also visit the original webpage by clicking the ”URL:” label to the left of the URL field in Zotero's right-hand pane.
*****
16 • ReiserFS (by A on 2022-02-28 08:57:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
Didn't Hans Reiser kill his wife? If he hadn't named the file system after himself, it might still be active today - but who wants to participate in the development of a file system named after a murderer? Get it out of the kernel and into the history books. There are vastly superior and less morally questionable file systems out there.
17 • Bookmarks (by Someguy on 2022-02-28 10:39:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Changing my entry to 251k - 500k from unknown. Took a while to find the relevant file - not under Firefox, nor Mozilla but ffbookmarks - all very confusing! Thousands accrued over ~10yrs. Some priceless, some irrelevant - too tedious to edit on a 1Tb drive!
18 • Pop OS (by Hank on 2022-02-28 10:58:46 GMT from Finland)
POP OS
I popped in to take a look popped off again very quickly.
All flash no go,
sluggish and even worse at memory hogging than ubuntu with pure gnome.
19 • ReiserFS (by Alexandru on 2022-02-28 10:59:33 GMT from Romania)
Totally agree with @4. I am happy with ReiserFS.
- Compared with BTRFS (both based on beta-trees), ReiserFS is much more reliable when a recovery is necessary.
- Compared with Ext4, ReiserFS has better optimization of space usage and object search time in case of deep folder hierarchy or large number of files.
- Compared with ZFS, ReiserFS is much more flexible. Foe example, a ReiserFS filesystem can be shrunk to make room for one more partition, multiple ReiserFS partitions can co-exist on the same storage without difficult administration. There are more examples.
20 • Bookamarks (by James on 2022-02-28 12:55:02 GMT from United States)
28.3 K, but that is for 4 browsers on three different laptops.
21 • ReiserFS (by Samuel on 2022-02-28 13:36:34 GMT from Switzerland)
@16 Why do you care about Reisers private life and not about his FS? If, tomorrow, Linus kills his secretary, will you trow the entire kernel in the bin?
22 • bookmarkOS (by Trihexagonal on 2022-02-28 14:02:25 GMT from United States)
I have a different array of bookmarks on each machine. Among them only a few that I visit on a regular basis.
This being among a small number of sites I bookmark and can visit on any machine I use,
@7 "Never use a Linux distro with OS in its name!"
You mean like TrueOS? BTWOS, whatever happened to thatOS?
It vanished into the VoifOS and LessOS ghosted himself.
DanceDanceDanceOS! Do the limbo in limbo, jimbo, and I'll do the Eagle Rock,
23 • Pop! (by Corny on 2022-02-28 14:51:07 GMT from Philippines)
Pop_OS! is, as noted in the review, a cutified name for Ubuntu with a bunch of Gnome extensions added, one of those distros that base themselves on Ubuntu and/or Gnome and then go on to complain about Ubuntu and/or Gnome. The adjustable dock is just the dash to dock extension, which I use on my Ubuntu and EndeavourOS installs. To give them their due, the Pop Shell extension seems to be an in-house creation. Of course, that is also available for any distro running Gnome. Material Shell is another shell extension available for those who need or use tiling. The 21.10 release (reviewed) will lose support along with Ubuntu 21.10 in July of this year. I'll wait and see how they do after moving on to free themselves from Gnome and GTK as they've claimed to be working on.
24 • PopOS (by Any on 2022-02-28 15:46:11 GMT from Spain)
I had it on my new laptop with Kubuntu and Windows. But when upgrading from Pop 21.04 to 21.10 it deleted my GRUB and installed its boot loader without any message. And only booted to Pop, no Kubuntu, no Windows. No, thanks. My computer is my computer and I decide what and how to install it. No Pop, no OS, Debian please!
25 • ReiserFS (by Otis on 2022-02-28 15:51:38 GMT from United States)
@21 I, like many others, avoid that system for the reason of his behavior. As to your question: "Why do you care about Reisers (sic) private life and not about his FS? If, tomorrow, Linus kills his secretary, will you trow the entire kernel in the bin?" we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. No diversion needed, it's about boycotting a known bad person.
26 • Pop! (by falcon52 on 2022-02-28 16:06:36 GMT from United States)
Pop!. Tried it a couple of times. Sluggish and gimmicky! I won't be trying it again. On the other hand, I've been playing with MassOS and found it very interesting. My first flatpak experience. I'm using it right now. Almost simplistic installation and pretty darn fast.
27 • Cringy parsing of HTML (by Sitwon on 2022-02-28 16:42:47 GMT from United States)
I can kind of get why you took the approach you did to parsing the HTML bookmarks file, but it's a very cringy approach.
HTML is a context-free grammar, and you're using tools intended for processing regular grammars.
Any valid-yet-unanticipated occurrences of ", , or a newline character will break the parsing causing the result to be either corrupted or incomplete.
It would have been better to use tools intended for dealing with the context-free grammar, rather than ham-fisted line-oriented sub-string matching.
An example would be XMLStarlet (assuming it was valid XHTML, if not there are tools to convert HTML to XHTML, or to parse HTML directly), or export the Bookmarks as JSON instead and use JQ.
For instance, Chrome stores bookmarks as JSON and the following will extract them as pairs of titles and URLs without worry about unexpected characters appearing in either field.
$ jq '.roots | ..children | . | {name: .name, url: .url}' <.config/google-chrome/Default/Bookmarks
Using regular-grammar tools to parse context-free grammars is a leading cause of bugs, including security vulnerabilities.
28 • Bookmarks and ReiserFS (by Robert on 2022-02-28 16:50:59 GMT from United States)
On bookmarks, I have 2. 1 for a Google docs spreadsheet and one I don't even remember and so probably don't need. Might even be one of those preset bookmarks.
On ReiserFS, I don't particularly care if it stays or goes (for now), but I think other points brought up for its removal include it being an old version (I guess there's a Reiser4 and Reiser5 that were never mainlined), and it not being Year 2038 compliant.
29 • Bookmarks (by HiThere on 2022-02-28 18:02:42 GMT from Spain)
If I export my bookmarks from Firefox the file weights 5.9 MB. If I import that file to Chromium and export again the bookmarks from this browser, the files weights 1.2 MB.
Will I have to vote twice?
30 • bookmarks (by Titus_Groan on 2022-02-28 18:13:34 GMT from New Zealand)
total bookmarks =7
1 was created by distro at install.
5 created by Mozilla/fFirefox itself.
1 actual bookmark
obviously, not a big user of bookmarks.
31 • Why reconstruct a database (by RoestVrijStaal on 2022-02-28 19:27:35 GMT from Netherlands)
The Q&A section of this issue made me chuckle.
Pale Moon, Basilisk & Firefox already use a database: places.sqlite in the profile folder.
Granted, you do not want to mutate it when the browser is up and running and it contains a lot more data than just the urls with their name (I'm dying to know the use case of the rev_host-column in moz_places-table) but you do not need to export stuff to HTML and pipe the arbitrary contents through some commands.
Using Chomium-based browsers instead? Look for the JSON-formatted file named Bookmarks in the "profile" -directory of that browser in ~/.config/
Unfortunately LibreOffice does not have JSON-importing yet: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113974 Converting JSON to CSV and import that CSV would work.
32 • Reiser Filesystem (by John on 2022-02-28 20:36:44 GMT from United States)
It works well.... Recovers well....
Don't fix things that work.
John
33 • ReiserFS (by Simon Plaistowe on 2022-02-28 20:37:59 GMT from New Zealand)
ReiserFS is obsolete by today's standards. Yes I say, remove it from the kernel if it's causing maintenance headaches.
34 • Bookmarks (by Fabio on 2022-02-28 21:33:30 GMT from Italy)
Exported from Firefox 21,1 MB, imported them to Chromium and re-exported 3,8 MB
35 • My bookmarks (by Alex B on 2022-02-28 23:15:24 GMT from Finland)
About 48 megabytes:
File path: ~/Documents/Firefox_bookmarks_2022-03-01.html
Created: 2022-03-01 00:39:37
Modified: 2022-03-01 00:39:40
Characters (without line endings): 50481210
Words: 545003
Lines: 4121
File size: 50487760 bytes
This includes about two hundred folder names (just guessing, I didn't count). Started gathering them at about the same time when the first Firefox version was released.
When backed up in the native json format the file size is only a bit over one megabyte.
36 • Bookmarks (by StephenC on 2022-03-01 00:02:29 GMT from United States)
How large is your bookmark collection when it's exported into HTML format?
Well, if exported to HTML it is about 18.5 MB. My places.sqlite is 5 MB. Using "wc -l" it is just under 6,500 lines. Most of these bookmarks are in folders named after little bits of research in various subjects. Ever few years I delete most of them.
37 • Bookmarks (by Tom on 2022-03-01 08:32:52 GMT from United States)
Since I use a few different browsers, I merged all of my bookmarks into a KeePass database a few years ago. Works really well. The database with somewhere around 1,000 entries is 154kb.
38 • How large is your bookmark collection? (by Roger on 2022-03-01 11:30:06 GMT from Belgium)
How large is your bookmark collection?
I really don´t know and don´t care either, it´s just something I use across all my devices.
I use Firefox and Vivaldi sync for that reason.
Is it really necessary to know that ?
I know aproxelly how big my data is and that because I use a cloud for some five years and by managing that I could reduce the volume and now I am paying only half of previous years.
39 • Why bother? (by Roger on 2022-03-01 11:37:49 GMT from Belgium)
@3 DaveW
My sentiment as well, why bother.
Twice a year I move the folders to my needs up or down in the bookmarks.
Mostly I use Speed dial, those are the ones I use daily.
40 • Bookmark Alternative (by Dennis on 2022-03-01 12:51:46 GMT from Japan)
It's good to see someone mentions Zotero, which is a traditional alternative for browser bookmarks. For those who feel more comfortable with command-line, I would suggest buku (https://github.com/jarun/buku), which can be used cli-only (along with seamless GUI integration).
41 • Bookmarks: (by dragonmouth on 2022-03-01 12:54:09 GMT from United States)
I am an inveterate collector, you might even say a "hoarder". My Bookmarks file is about 18.5 MB so I must have a few thousands of them. The vast majority of my bookmarks are for articles that I will probably never read. LOL I read an article and think "Oh, this might be useful in the future" so I bookmark it. I have some bookmarks (articles) from the mid-2000s. I am in the process of culling them. Any article that is older than 4-5 years, I delete.
Someone mentioned downloading articles directly instead of bookmarking them. My Documents folder, where I store some of my articles, is 4.5 GB and 2,500 files in size. If I downloaded all my bookmarked articles, it is conceivable that my Documents folder could hit 1TB. I will take 18+ MB Bookmarks file over a 1TB Documents folder any day.
Out of the thousands of bookmarks I have accumulated, I use no more than 10 on a regular basis.
42 • Reiser (by Friar Tux on 2022-03-01 12:56:06 GMT from Canada)
@16 (A), et al. I think you'll find, if you do a search of all our present day conveniences and inventions, that the inventors, and builders of those things all had a dark side. Some darker than others. It's human nature. Most of us strive to keep our dark side in check, but not all of us succeed. Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford were two very evil characters. (Google it.) They both destroyed people to gain their wealth. Some of the social programs we have today were first used in Nazi Germany by A.H.. Just because the inventor of something wasn't a decent human being doesn't mean that the invention should be shunned. (And, no, I don't use ReiserFS. My preference is ext4.)
43 • @16 & 26 (by Simon on 2022-03-01 12:57:42 GMT from New Zealand)
A "morally questionable file system"?! Do you think your filesystem might sneak out of your computer and murder someone?!
I don't know Hans personally nor anything about his circumstances or convictions so frankly don't feel any need to judge him...but even if I did and agreed that he was a morally reprehensible person, how on earth would my continuing to benefit from the technologies he invented somehow constitute an endorsement of terrible but unrelated crimes? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face, if you imagine choosing an inferior technical solution and suffering the consequences of that will somehow stick it to Hans! If anything, continuing to benefit from his labours while he enjoys no rewards from them seems more vengeful. Anyway, it's GPL'd so the name's irrelevant: if anyone wanted to use the technology she or he could simply fork it and call it MorallyDecentFS or whatever s/he felt the need to call it.
It's different if you're e.g. supporting Microsoft by paying for Microsoft products while disapproving of Microsoft morally...but nobody pays for ReiserFS, so what do you imagine as the moral harm from using it? If ReiserFS were a better FS for my purposes then of course I'd use it. I prefer other filesystems for technical reasons, that's all.
44 • Getting a Reise (by Tad Strange on 2022-03-01 13:27:15 GMT from Canada)
I didn't know that ReiserFS was still a thing. It's not been in the news in ages and I figured that technology had marched on.
I stick with my distributions default, since I imagine that the maintainers know more about such things than I do.
45 • bookmarks (by Jeff on 2022-03-01 16:25:41 GMT from United States)
4.7mb is my current collection (probably should weed/prune it).
That so many say they keep no bookmarks and use a search engine to search for the site each time they want to visit it is somewhat baffling to me, I thought the idea behind using computers was to automate tedious tasks so we humans did not need to waste our time.
46 • FS "morals" (by Otis on 2022-03-01 16:36:09 GMT from United States)
@43 c'mon.. my goodness we're talking about boycotting a spectacularly abusive person's work. That's it.
47 • Reiser FS (by jc on 2022-03-01 17:52:21 GMT from Austria)
As I understand it, the suggestion to remove Reiser FS was prompted by another programmer wanting to make changes that conflict with ReiserFS. This seems like a ploy. What beneficial changes would conflict with a working system? Besides does one throw out the baby with the bath water? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Worst case, if it does get removed, one can use an earlier version of the kerne or perhaps some kind soul will provided the latest kernel with it compiled in..
48 • @43 (by A on 2022-03-01 18:07:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
@43 - "I don't know Hans personally nor anything about his circumstances or convictions so frankly don't feel any need to judge him..."
You don't need to judge him. The judge did that, guilty of murder.
49 • @47 jc: (by dragonmouth on 2022-03-01 18:58:42 GMT from United States)
" If it ain't broke, don't fix it. "
You are forgetting "New and Improved". If it ain't broke, we must break it in the name of "improvements". :-)
50 • Reise of evil (by moralreiser on 2022-03-01 22:40:22 GMT from France)
@16, 26, 43, 46, 47, 48
Agree with @42. Hans Reiser developed ReiserFS while he was on his better side. After his mind snapped, and he committed an evil crime, he was no longer developing it - because he was in jail. So ppl can still benefit from his work without any moral concern.
Should we, today, be boycotting Russian distros & softwares due its agression?
51 • Reising Up FuSsy (by Somewhat Reticent on 2022-03-02 03:28:48 GMT from United States)
Why should software be credited with activities of a contributor? Isn't it FreeD?
(What good does it do to eliminate the possibility of rehabilitation?)
Being feature-complete and well-written does not equal "not maintained".
Are filesystems based on fashion, that must-have "modern"?
Were new versions slandered for such silly foolishness as well?
…
Would it be intriguing to see a performance comparison between, say, Huawei's latest high-end laptop and this M1 - using only FreeD Open-Source, of course?
52 • Reiserfs (by Barnabyh on 2022-03-02 18:17:51 GMT from South Africa)
Does this pertain to Reiserfs only or Reiser 4 as well?
53 • Bookmarks (by Alan on 2022-03-03 02:08:29 GMT from United States)
Are we getting bored or what? Bookmarks?
54 • Bookmarks What: We Are Getting Informed (by marcos on 2022-03-03 08:32:44 GMT from Brazil)
Thanks Jesse & DW
With this info now I know I'm not standing "Out of the Curve" in Bookmarks quantity...
And I'm receiving precious "Q&Answers" showing solutions to my hoarding tendencies...
Thank You All Good People Here.
55 • Bookmarks (by buckyogi on 2022-03-03 16:52:22 GMT from United States)
The home page in all my browsers is a simple html file of bookmarks I created and edit myself in Neovim. It is divided into categories with a list of the categories at the top: click on a category, jump to the links. It gets backed up whenever I do system backups. The file is currently 35kb and 668 lines, but a handful of those lines are blank or markup only. I save the occasional bookmark in the browser itself, but those are of a temporary nature and are usually deleted within a few days; at the moment, there are 6. Any that I decide to keep permanently get added to the html file.
56 • GNOME and...spinoffs? (by Cheker on 2022-03-03 18:48:57 GMT from Portugal)
Quite noble that Pop's devs are trying to create what, in their minds, is "GNOME but good". I think this endeavor is doomed from the start (you're still tied to whatever stupidity comes from that camp). What does it say about GNOME when it needs several extensions to be (kind of?) usable? And then they'll just break 5 minutes from now when you update your system.
We already have two "GNOME but good" DEs - Mate and Cinnamon, and they're far enough from real GNOME that they're usable.
Number of Comments: 56
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
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| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Ubuntu Unity
Ubuntu Unity is a flavour of Ubuntu featuring the Unity desktop environment (the default desktop environment developed and used by Ubuntu from 2010 to 2017). Unity debuted in the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10; it was initially designed to make more efficient use of space given the limited screen size of netbooks, including a vertical application switcher called "the launcher" and a space-saving horizontal multipurpose top menu bar. Ubuntu switched from Unity to GNOME in 2017, but the desktop was resurrected again as an unofficial "Ubuntu Unity Remix" in 2020. It became an official flavour of Ubuntu during the development cycle of Ubuntu 22.10 in 2022.
Status: Active
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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