 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 961, 28 March 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A big aspect of the open source ecosystem is developers taking existing technology and customizing it to better suit their needs. A lot of code and low-level components get shared and act as a base for other, more end-user oriented releases. This week we begin with a look at Zenwalk GNU Linux, a desktop distribution based on Slackware. Jesse Smith takes Zenwalk for a test run and explores how it is similar and different from its parent distribution. In our News section we talk about strides Linux has made in the field of gaming and how games perform on Fedora. We also share a fix coming to DragonFly BSD users to address system crashes when a USB drive is unplugged while accessing the HAMMER2 filesystem. Plus we share some commentary about the new GNOME 42 release and how it is likely to affect the users of all GTK-based desktops in the coming years. Meanwhile Debian has published updated install media. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about using the doas tool to run desktop applications as the root user and distributions which provide easy installations of the Nextcloud service. Do you use Nextcloud or a similar file synchronisation technology? Let us know about it in this week's Opinion Poll? We're 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:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Zenwalk GNU Linux 15.0 - The power of Zen
Zenwalk GNU Linux is a Slackware-based GNU/Linux operating system with a goal of being slim and fast by using only one application per task and with a focus on graphical desktop and multimedia usage. The distribution offers a 64-bit platform running the Xfce desktop environment. Along with various updated components and applications the distribution has provided portable package support in the form of running Flatpak bundles.
The latest version of Zenwalk is 1.2GB in size and I was curious to see how this desktop-oriented distribution would compare with its parent which I talked about earlier this year. When I tried Slackware back in February I ran into a number of issues which, I felt, made the distribution difficult to use as a desktop platform when compared next to other modern Linux distributions. By trying out Zenwalk I was hoping to see how the project would perform with a narrowed focus (fewer default applications, one desktop, and additional package management options installed by default) while using most of the same technology present in its parent.
Installing
Zenwalk does not appear to offer any live media, it instead provides install media which boots to a text console. On the terminal screen we are asked to confirm (or set) our keyboard layout. We are then shown the same welcome text Slackware shows, advising new users to run a disk partitioning tool to prepare the hard drive prior to running the setup command to install the operating system. We can use the fdisk or cfdisk console partition management tools to divide the disk.
Zenwalk uses a series of text-based menus and prompts to perform the initial configuration which is almost identical to Slackware's installer. There are a few small differences, mostly with options being removed. One of the few differences which stood out was with regards to package selection. Zenwalk has fewer software categories from which to choose. For instance, there is no Games category and no option to install KDE software; Xfce is the only desktop option. Otherwise the installer is the same as Slackware's and walks us through the usual steps of selecting our keyboard, assigning mount points, and picking our time zone.
There are some less common steps too such as picking where to install the LILO boot loader and whether we want to add any custom kernel parameters. We are then given the task of selecting which background services (such as Samba, OpenSSH, and cron) to run, and the installer asks us which vi implementation to use. We are then given the chance to set a password on the root account and create a regular user for ourselves. Once these steps have completed we're invited to restart the computer.
Early impressions
Zenwalk, like its parent, features an unusually long wait at the boot menu of two full minutes. After that the system starts up, displaying status messages. After a few seconds the boot process seemed to conclude and then the screen flickered for a while. Eventually the flickering stopped and the error message 'Starting up X11 session manager.... INIT: Id "x1" respawning too fast: disabled for five minutes.' appeared. The system then hangs there for the five minutes specified before flickering again a few times and displaying the same message over again.
After rebooting and confirming the problem persisted, I did some experimenting and found that (when the screen was paused between episodes of flickering) I could switch to a text terminal and login. A little digging revealed I was in runlevel 4 (graphical display) and if I instead switched to (or booted in) runlevel 3 I could get a text session without the display manager attempting to load, which is what was causing the display to flicker.
Well, I say "the display manager", but there are actually a few. When it boots, Zenwalk will check for and try to launch four display managers if it can find them. It starts with gdm which is installed. It then follows with kdm and sddm, both of which are not installed by default. It then falls back to trying to launch xdm which is installed. Both gdm and xdm were failing. Why were they failing? According to the X.Org logs, the X.Org software couldn't detect my display.
While looking through the logs I also noticed the Samba service was failing to start due to a missing configuration file. I'd opted to enable Samba for file sharing purposes during the initial configuration and was disappointed to discover it was not working.
Back to the display issue - I remembered in the past I had found it necessary to adjust the driver settings in the X.Org configuration file for some early versions of Zenwalk. I tried this and, for that matter, also tried to get X.Org to take a guess at the settings required using the "X -configure" command. However, both X.Org and myself failed to find a configuration that would work and allow the display manager or startx to function properly. I also made sure all the relevant drivers were installed (more on package management later) and yet the display server always crashed at start-up.
This issue with the display surprised me as Slackware had no problems displaying the login screen and desktop on my test equipment. Zenwalk, which appears to use the same packages and installer, fails.
Other observations
Since my primary purpose for trying out Zenwalk - seeing how it compared to its parent as a desktop-oriented distribution - wasn't working, I didn't spend a lot of time with Zenwalk. I did make some observations while exploring the system though. Zenwalk detected my wireless card and was able to connect to the local network. This gave me access to the Internet and allowed me to use network-facing services (apart from Samba).
When I was signed into a terminal, if I pressed Ctrl-C or simply waited a few minutes, a message would appear in the terminal saying Flatpak had been running. It looks like Flatpak checks for portable software updates automatically in the background and prints its results to the terminal.
When sitting at the text console, Zenwalk uses about 100MB of RAM (about the same as its parent) and a fresh install consumes 6GB of disk space. This was with a full install with all software categories selected. A full install of Slackware takes about 15GB and my slightly trimmed install of Slackware (I excluded one desktop, games, and development tools) took 11GB. Zenwalk's 6GB of components includes the GNU command line tools, manual pages, the GNU Compiler Collection and the Xfce 4.16 desktop. It also features OpenSSH, Samba, and a few other background services. Zenwalk runs the SysV init software and version 5.15 of the Linux kernel.
Software management
One of the big issues I had when I tried out Slackware in February was that package management was problematic. Slackware's ships with slackpkg which didn't work for me (and continued to not work, despite some excellent troubleshooting suggestions made in the comments section following that review). To make matters worse, a lot of the Slackware documentation was out of date and the go-to software source many people use, SlackBuilds, hadn't been updated to work with Slackware 15.0 at the time I was experimenting with the distribution.
On Zenwalk the slackpkg package manager does work and, unlike with Slackware, Flatpak is enabled and ready to work out of the box. We still need to manually select a slackpkg mirror from the /etc/slackpkg/mirrors text file, but the slackpkg tool works to download new software, perform searches, and upgrade existing packages.
To be fair, while it works, it does so with a few quirks. After I enabled a mirror, I ran slackpkg to search for updated packages and was warned my "/var/log/packages" was broken as there were multiple versions of multiple packages (specifically libseccomp and xdg-desktop-portal) present. Keep in mind this was the first time I had run the package manager after taking the default package selection from the installer so realizing there were already issues was an unpleasant revelation. The package manager then told me I could ignore this issue or opt to remove one or all of the duplicate packages. Choosing to remove a package brings up a prompt where we can tell slackpkg which duplicates to remove. This prompt is a little tricky because it shows us a list of all duplicate packages, asks which ones we want to remove, and then automatically selects all versions of all the packages. Taking this default removes both versions of both packages which probably isn't what anyone wants. We then need to un-select the packages we do want to keep, which feels backward.
The slackpkg repositories are a little limited compared to mainstream Linux distributions, however it has most of the basics people will probably need. This is aided by the fact Flatpak is installed and enabled, giving us wide access to up to date desktop software. At the time of writing SlackBuilds (repository of Slackware ports) hasn't caught up with version 15.0 yet, but hopefully that will change soon.
One thing potential Zenwalk (and Slackware) users should probably be aware of is the slackpkg package manager is case sensitive. If I were running Debian and performed a search for a package using APT, it wouldn't matter if I spelled the name of the package "mplayer", "MPLAyer", or "MPlayer", the results are the same. With slackpkg the case of letters matter. This means searches for "mplayer" and "Mplayer" return no results, but "MPlayer" does find the media player in the repositories. This is unfortunate as it means we either need to browse the repository to find out the proper case ahead of time or try multiple variations when it would make more sense to just make all package names lowercase. It seems unlikely there would be multiple packages in the same repository with the same spelling and differing cases.
Conclusions
Admittedly this experiment didn't really get off the ground and I questioned whether to write about Zenwalk at all. Were it a stand-alone review I probably wouldn't have shared my thoughts on this distribution with the world. However, I felt it worthwhile because my main motivation for trying Zenwalk was to see how it would compare to Slackware Linux 15.0. Slackware felt overly large, overly generic, and overly complicated to use compared to mainstream distributions and I was curious to see how Zenwalk would work given its more specific mission of being a desktop operating system.
What I found interesting was that while Slackware set up a desktop environment and worked in multiple test environments as a desktop system without problems, Zenwalk could not. On the flip side, Slackware's package management failed completely for me while Zenwalk offered two package managers (slackpkg and Flatpak) which worked passably well.
In other words, while I had problems with both, they were entirely different issues. And, to make matters stranger, the two distributions mostly run the same software, use the same repositories, and are binary compatible.
Ultimately, while I think Zenwalk does some good work to narrow the focus of its parent and streamlines things, it also runs into similar setbacks. It's still using a verbose, text-based installer, it still forgoes using HTTPS on its website, it doesn't have a live desktop edition, and still relies on third-party efforts to fill in the package management gaps. I'm sure Zenwalk's simple engineering under the hood still appeals to some people, but I think it involves more manual work and more legacy technology than most computer users will want to deal with at this point in time.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
Visitor supplied rating
Zenwalk GNU Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 3 review(s).
Have you used Zenwalk GNU Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Gaming performance on Fedora, DragonFly BSD fixes removable media crash, GNOME rolls out new desktop release, Debian publishes updated install media
The state of mainstream gaming on Linux is always evolving and, with Valve publishing its Linux-powered Steam Deck this year, there has been renewed interest in how well Linux performs as a gaming platform. Akasheep Dhar has published a side-by-side comparison of gaming performance using Fedora Workstation and Windows 10 to see how the two differ. "On a testing bench using an AMD RDNA2-based GPU, the video game was configured to the highest possible graphical preset to really stress the hardware into performing as much as its limiting factor. If the RDNA2 architecture reminds you of something, allow me to share that it is what forms the foundation of the GPU that no other than the widely acclaimed Steam Deck makes use of. For that matter, if you factor in some performance scaling with respect to the handheld nature of the device and the optimized Proton compatibility layer, this article can be representative of what the Steam Deck is capable of when you use Fedora Workstation as a platform of your choice for playing your favourite video games." Fedora Magazine has the complete article.
* * * * *
The DragonFly BSD project has implemented a fix for a bug which could cause the system to panic (lock up) if a storage device with the HAMMER2 filesystem on it was unexpectedly removed from the computer. Justin Sherrill explains: "It's apparently possible to get a panic by yanking a HAMMER2 disk out of your system, which is only likely when using a USB thumb drive, formatting it to HAMMER2, and not bothering to unmount it. Anyway, that poorly-described-by-me problem is fixed."
* * * * *
The GNOME desktop is commonly used in the Linux community, especially in company-based distributions such as Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise. The GNOME team have published GNOME 42 which introduces some important changes, ones which are likely to impact both GNOME users and people running other GTK-based desktops such as MATE, Cinnamon, and Xfce. The OSNews website shares some commentary on these changes: "This is a very odd release. There's tons of great, valuable new features and improvements in here, and if it wasn't for libadwaita, I'd be quite excited to upgrade my various GNOME installations the moment Fedora 36 becomes available. A new screenshot UI, updates to all the core applications, a ton of performance improvements, and a lot more.
Sadly, libadwaita is incredibly problematic. Virtually all of GNOME's core applications now use libadwaita, which means they cannot be themed. They will all use the default refreshed Adwaita theme, and no matter what GTK theme you install, you can't change that. What makes matters worse, is that the various applications not yet ported over to libadwaita, such as Nautilus, will still use the old, pre-libadwaita Adwaita theme, meaning that even on a default installation without any custom themes, you're going to have to deal with a very inconsistent user interface.
Even when all of GNOME's core applications have been ported over to libadwaita, your desktop will still make use of countless regular GTK applications that will look out of place compared to all the GNOME applications. The GNOME team of course hopes that every GTK developer will adopt libadwaita - Cinnamon, Xfce, Cosmic, MATE be damned - but the odds of that happening are slim."
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The Debian project has published updated install media for the project's 10.x and 11.x releases. The new media are not for new releases, but offer install media with security fixes for packages included in the distribution. The announcements for Debian 10.12 and Debian 11.3 are listed on the project's website. The 10.12 media includes an OpenSSL fix: "The OpenSSL update provided in this point release includes a change to ensure that the requested signature algorithm is supported by the active security level. Although this will not affect most use-cases, it could lead to error messages being generated if a non-supported algorithm is requested - for example, use of RSA+SHA1 signatures with the default security level of 2."
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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) |
Working with doas and Nextcloud
Trying-to-do-with-doas asks: I've used doas quite a bit, and it works great for the most part. But some GUI programs that need elevated privileges don't seem to be able to start with it. For example, if I want to start the Synaptic package manager in a session using a minimalist window manager, I can type "sudo synaptic" to get it to start. But "doas synaptic" does not work.
Could you write something one of these days about how to get doas to be more of a complete replacement for sudo, and cover any of these kinds of edge cases?
DistroWatch answers: Graphical applications require some extra information that command line programs don't need. Most of this information relates to your user's environment variables which tell the launching program where your home directory is and on which desktop to appear. The sudo command typically provides access to this information by default, at least the way it's set up on most Linux distributions.
The doas program performs the same sort of work as sudo, allowing users to run programs as another user. Typically programs launched with sudo or doas are effectively run as the root user. By default doas blocks some information from being passed to the program you're running in order to limit the amount of data that can leak from your account to another user's processes. This prevents graphical applications from getting the environment variable information they need to operate. The doas website has this to say about launching desktop applications:
Desktop applications (GUI applications): Please be aware that, by default, doas scrubs most environment variables. In effect this means certain information about your environment will not be passed to the target user and graphical desktop applications (GUI applications) will not be able to run. To enable graphical applications to run from doas, please use the keepenv keyword in the configuration file. See the doas.conf manual page for details.
Basically all this means is the keepenv keyword needs to be added to your entry in the doas.conf file. If your doas.conf file contains a line like this:
permit jesse as root
then all you need to do to enable running desktop applications is to add the keepenv parameter:
permit keepenv jesse as root
Please note that the above works if you are running an X.Org display server. If you're running a desktop environment on a Wayland session then graphical applications typically will not run as root. This causes some programs which expect to be run as root, such as Synaptic or certain file managers, to not work. Make sure you're running a display session on X.Org before attempting to run desktop applications as the root user or with a tool such as sudo or doas).
* * * * *
Head-in-the-clouds asks: Is there a distro that already has Nextcloud configured and ready to use? Alternatively, what is the distro that allows easier installation and configuration of Nextcloud?
DistroWatch answers: I don't know of any commonly used distributions which ship Nextcloud as a default service. The only project I can think of which would enable Nextcloud out of the box is Turnkey Linux. The Turnkey project isn't exactly a Linux distribution in the usual sense. It's a collection of Debian-based images (ISOs and virtual machines) which are designed to run one specific service, like Nextcloud. Assuming you want a distribution which will run Nextcloud and not do anything else, this is probably the easiest approach.
Installing and setting up Nextcloud on most Linux distributions (apart from Turnkey) will work about the same as on most others. Assuming you're talking about the Nextcloud server software (not the desktop clients which work with Nextcloud), the process typically involves setting up a web server, enabling a security certificate, and then downloading the Nextcloud files. Detailed instructions are provided on the Nextcloud website. The instructions specifically mention TrueNAS and any distribution that offers access to Snap packages as easy methods to use for getting the Nextcloud software.
While not widely used, the UBOS distribution offers a simplified setup for Nextcloud. I had mixed results when I tried it: the Nextcloud software installed on UBOS, but produced some errors.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
4MLinux 39.0
4MLinux is a miniture Linux distribution focusing on four main capabilities. The project has published a new release, 4MLinux 39.0, which provides a series of updates to key packages along with new hardware support. There are also a few new features: "As always, the new major release has some new features. FSP (File Service Protocol) server is now included out of the box (gFTP can be used as its GUI client). Many system-wide changes has been done to improve font rendering. The 4MLinux installation script has been patched to provide better handling of JBD partitions. New applications available as downloadable extensions: Bluefish (advanced text editor), Ventoy (utility used for writing image files), TripleA (strategy game written in Java). And finally, youtube-dl has been replaced with yt-dlp for better handling of YouTube videos." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
Parrot 5.0
Parrot (formerly Parrot Security OS) is a Debian-based, security-oriented distribution featuring a collection of utilities designed for penetration testing, computer forensics, reverse engineering, hacking, privacy, anonymity and cryptography. The project's latest version, Parrot 5.0, introduces some new container options and drops the KDE Plasma and Xfce editions. "Parrot's main focus on the latest release was on making the system extremely stable and flexible. The system now follows a Long Term Support release model, but provides the latest version of all its tools via extensive backporting, and is never out of date. Parrot 5.0 was designed with cloud and customizability in mind, and provides several container options to leverage powerful orchestration tools during complex pentest scenarios. The Parrot offering has been simplified, and a new architect edition has been introduced to allow maximum customizability of the system. Parrot 5.0 keeps the former Home and Security editions, and introduces a new special HTB edition inspired by the popular PwnBox by HackTheBox. The KDE and XFCE alternatives are no longer available, and are replaced by the Architect edition, which supports also x86 32bit and ARMv8 64bit."
Parrot 5.0 -- Parrot Home's default desktop
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
* * * * *
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: 2,700
- Total data uploaded: 41.7TB
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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) |
Synchronizing files with Nextcloud
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about the Nextcloud file synchronization service and distributions which ship with it enabled. Such services provide a way to share or collaborate on files and transfer files between devices. Do you use Nextcloud or another remote file synchronization service? If so, let us know which one you use in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on tracking filesystem changes in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you sync files with Nextcloud?
| Yes - I use a cloud based Nextcloud: | 38 (3%) |
| Yes - I host my own Nextcloud instance remotely: | 46 (4%) |
| Yes - I host my own Nextcloud instance locally: | 92 (8%) |
| No - I use another file sync service: | 201 (18%) |
| No - I do not use a file sync service: | 732 (66%) |
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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 $136 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Alexandre A | $53 |
| Arwen C | $26 |
| Timothy W | $12 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Per J | $10 |
| Nicholas J | $6 |
| Robert L | $6 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Adiel D | $5 |
| J.D L | $2 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Alchg Linux. Alchg Linux is an Arch-based, desktop distribution intended to be used as a live DVD or run from a thumb drive.
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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, 4 April 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 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Tablix on Morphix
Tablix on Morphix was yet another bootable CD-based Linux distribution. As the name suggests, it was based on Morphix, a modular CD distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. What was special about Tablix on Morphix was the automatic cluster configuration. This means that all you need for a functioning PVM3 cluster was a bunch of computers and a pile of Tablix on Morphix CDs.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
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Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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