 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 962, 4 April 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
How many Linux users are there? Which distributions do they run? Are these Linux systems powering desktops, servers, phones, or the Internet of Things (IoT)? These are some questions which are difficult to answer because of the decentralized nature of the Linux community. In this week's Questions and Answers column we discuss some of the reasons it is difficult to get solid information to answer these queries and why that is a good thing. We also discuss directory permissions for the user's home and configuration files. How tightly locked down is your home directory? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. This week we also share an opinion piece on why AlmaLinux OS might be the preferred choice for people migrating away from CentOS Linux and share news of new sandboxing tools coming to FreeBSD. We also report on the Debian Project Leader election of 2022. First through we talk about two Linux distributions in our Feature Story. The first is MassOS, an independent distribution with a focus on sleek technical design and performance. The latter is Neptune, a tried and true Debian-based desktop distribution. Read on to learn more about these two projects and let us know which one you think is more appealing in the comments section. Plus we are 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 (21MB) and MP3 (15MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith and Ivan Sanders) |
MassOS 2022.03
A little while ago I got to briefly experiment with a project new to the DistroWatch waiting list. While I only had a brief chance to experiment with it, the project made a big impression during my single day of trying it and so I'd like to talk about this unusual distribution: MassOS.
At first glance, the MassOS project doesn't seem to do anything particularly special. The distribution's website describes it as follows:
MassOS is a free (as in freedom) GNU/Linux operating system for laptops and desktops which is designed to be minimal and lightweight, without compromising on features.
MassOS uses a themed Xfce desktop environment. This allows it to be lightweight on system resources while still being visually appealing and easy to use.
MassOS is completely independent and not based on any existing GNU/Linux distribution. This means we are free from being tied down to distributions outside of our control.
There are three editions of MassOS. The regular/standard edition is a typical live image with a system installer. There is a second ISO which offers the same experience, except the firmware has been removed from the download. The third edition isn't an ISO, it's a filesystem archive which can be used to manually install the distribution. This could be useful if someone wanted to perform a completely manual setup or install MassOS into a chroot environment.
I downloaded the standard ISO which is 1.8GB in size. Booting from this media brings up the Xfce desktop fairly quickly. We are then shown a welcome window which gives a quick overview of where to find application launchers and how to use the GNOME Software utility to fetch additional programs.
MassOS 21.12 -- The application menu and settings panel
(full image size: 148kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The Xfce desktop places a thin panel across the top of the display where we can find the application menu, task switcher, and the system tray. There is a compact dock at the bottom which provides quick access to tools such as the file manager, web browser, and software centre. On the desktop we find icons for opening the file manager and launching the system installer.
Installing
MassOS uses a text installer which gets launched in a terminal window. The installer looks quite similar to the one used by Slackware and Zenwalk, guiding the user through a series of menus. We're given the chance to take over the entire local disk or a single partition. We're asked to select a filesystem for ourselves and then walked through choosing our locale, keyboard layout, and location. We're asked to make up a password for the root account and credentials for a regular user account. The MassOS installer then asks if we want to enable Bluetooth support and whether it should check for other operating systems before installing the GRUB boot loader. The installer then wraps up and reboots the computer.
Early impressions
The distribution boots to a graphical login screen where we can sign into the Xfce desktop. The first time we login the desktop displays the welcome window.
The desktop is highly responsive, I'd even say unusually snappy for most modern distributions, even those running the relatively light Xfce environment. The system defaults to a dark theme which offered high contrast text and a consistent look.
The application menu has a small, yet useful, collection of software. The Firefox web browser is installed along with a document viewer, some desktop configuration tools, file manager, terminal, and GNOME Software. The Parole media player is included and plays both audio and video files out of the box.
Early on I noticed the volume control is muted by default. We can enable audio by clicking the volume icon in the system tray.
MassOS ships with a full set of GNU command line utilities, manual pages, and development tools such as GNU Make and the GNU Compiler Collection). The CUPS printing software is included and can be configured through the CUPS web portal. The distribution runs the systemd software and the version I was running shipped with version 5.16.12 of the Linux kernel.
Resource usage
The above utilities and desktop do not take up much in terms of resources. When signed into the Xfce desktop the system consumed about 380MB of RAM and a fresh install used up about 7GB of disk space. This is relatively light by modern standards.
I tried out MassOS in a VirtualBox machine and on my workstation. In both environments the distribution ran quickly, was stable, and detected all my hardware.
Software management
Apart from the base utilities and desktop environment, MassOS is fairly minimal which means most people will want to install additional software. The project's documentation suggests MassOS does not have its own repositories or package manager. Instead the project provides access to Flatpak bundles (through the GNOME Software utility) and recommends using AppImages from AppImageHub. This heavy reliance on portable packages is unusual, but it will work for many people who wish to primary install desktop software (rather than command line tools).
MassOS 21.12 -- The GNOME Software centre
(full image size: 186kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I tried out GNOME Software and confirmed the distribution does automatically connect us with the Flathub repository. Using the software centre we can fetch popular third-party applications such as LibreOffice, GIMP, Falkon, Thunderbird, and other desktop applications. This worked fairly well and, despite the large size of the installed bundles, I had no complaints. Well, with one exception: the Rhythmbox media player kept crashing and locking up when I tried to add new music. Switching to another media player worked around this issue.
The update system MassOS uses is unusual and one of the few aspects of the operating system which struck me as being inconvenient. To check for updates we first need to download a script. We then set execute permissions on the account and run the script. The process looks like this:
curl -Os https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MassOS-Linux/massos-upgrade/main/massos-upgrade
chmod 755 massos-upgrade
sudo ./massos-upgrade
The shell script checks for new versions of MassOS and, if it finds one, will offer to install it. During my trial there were no updates available. This concerns me a little as it appears the operating system is upgraded as a whole and only when new versions are published. Which means, in the meantime, any individual components which might have security flaws are not being updated. I could be mistaken about this, but I did not find any indication on the project's website which would suggest a way for us to get minor, weekly updates for security fixes, short of downloading the source code for such updates and compiling it ourselves.
MassOS 21.12 -- Checking for software upgrades
(full image size: 132kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusions
For being such a young project, MassOS impressed me in a number of ways. The developer really understands the benefit of documentation. The steps for downloading, installing, and updating the system are all documented in detail, often with screenshots. The documentation is well organized and pleasantly to the point. In other words, we're told how to do things and spared the developer's philosophical views and marketing pitch.
MassOS is super fast, I'm not sure I've ever encountered a distribution running Xfce which performed this well. The distribution has managed to disable or avoid installing almost everything it doesn't need while including the basics most people will want. For me, at least, I was able to accomplish most tasks with the software included and a couple of Flatpaks. I suspect, were I to use MassOS longer, I'd eventually run into trouble when it came time to install more obscure development tools and command line items, but I could probably work around that by using a third-party package manager such as Nix.
Finally, I really like the dark, fairly minimal interface. I like Xfce as it walks a nice line between capable and customizable. I like its balance of performance and features. I like that MassOS includes a dark theme which seems consistent across the included utilities. The desktop felt almost immediately comfortable for me - a few conveniences were presented and then it got out of my way.
There are just two drawbacks I see to MassOS after a day of use. One is that it has a text installer. Which, for me, isn't really a problem, but it gives the distribution a legacy vibe that could scare off some people. Shifting to another installer, such as Calamares, would probably attract more users.
The second drawback is the lack of a built-in package manager. We may not need one for acquiring desktop software, but it would be nice to have a way to install small security updates. Getting the user to download and execute a script isn't an ideal way to provide new versions of software. At the minimum, I think the shell script for performing updates should be included by default.
However, this lack of package manager aside, MassOS is surprisingly mature for a young project. It's fast, it seemed to be stable, it worked well with my hardware, and it's practically documented. I really hope the developer keeps working on this as, with a few small changes, I'd feel very much at home with this distribution.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Lenovo desktop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Hex-core Intel i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
- Storage: Western Digital 1TB hard drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 wired network card, Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe wireless adapter
- Display: Intel CometLake-S GT2
* * * * *
Neptune 7.0
Neptune 7 "Faye" was released in December 2021. I've been using Neptune as my daily driver for approximately six weeks - this points to the stability of the operating system. Neptune OS is a GNU/Linux distribution which is, "based fully upon Debian Stable ('Bullseye'). It ships with a modern KDE Plasma desktop with its main view on [being] a good looking multimedia system which allows for getting work done." Essentially, if you're looking for a rock solid distribution based on Debian but including the non-free drivers, more up-to-date KDE Plasma desktop, and out of the box functionality, Neptune is for you.
Installation
Installation was clean and mostly painless. The partition screen would not allow me to continue when I selected, "replace a partition," but did allow me to continue when selecting manual partitioning. This should have been a flag to me that the initial install experience was not working as intended.
Neptune 7.0 -- Partitioning the hard drive
(full image size: 1,013kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
During the first attempt at installation, Neptune never asked me for a LUKS password for the partition and the system crashed during install. This could be a one-off experience but, again, I should have stopped at this point and tried installing again.
During the second attempt at installation, automatic install was now an option, as opposed to before, and I was able to complete an install and erase the disk, as desired.
After installation I attempted to sort out my mount issues. The KDE partition manager would not allow me to auto mount my second drive (with LUKS encryption). I have had luck with the GNOME partition manager in the past (GNOME Disks, gnome-disk-utility) in getting my disks to auto-mount but I was unable to accomplish this with Neptune. In other operating systems it tells me I am going to create an unencrypted password file for the encryption of the disk (which is stored on a LUKS encrypted disk), but this dialog never appeared for me.
Neptune 7.0 -- Testing the NVIDIA driver
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
This turned into a nuisance for me because every time I restarted or powered on my computer I needed to mount, decrypt, and sudo the mounting of the drive which is inside my computer. I mostly use this drive for Steam games so this wasn't a deal breaker and it only took approximately 30 seconds after mounting. Still, unacceptable for a modern operating system. My root drive was LUKS encrypted and requested its password safely upon startup, as expected. Note: I will say I realize there are modern CLI ways to mount drives with their encryption password automatically, but I was going for a user friendly, GUI approach.
Post installation and daily operation
I loved using Neptune 7. Neptune is a great way to use an updated version of KDE Plasma on a stable Debian operating system. Everything worked out of the box after install. I did not need to download some alternative Debian "Non-Free" ISO to accomplish my goals. I was able to install the NVIDIA driver as advertised for a Debian OS. I was able to play games on Steam using my NVIDIA drivers (optiums) and I was able to browse the web with ease, like with any other modern Linux OS. Steaming videos using common streaming services worked flawlessly through browsers and HDMI support was seamless out of the box. The operating system came pre-loaded with a few extra KDE tools, but nothing out of the ordinary. Would I recommend Neptune? Yes. Despite the minimal issues I had, Neptune is great if you're looking for a stable Debian based distro with an up-to-date Plasma desktop environment that is easy to install and use as a daily driver.
Neptune 7.0 -- Locating drivers in the package manager
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Out of the box with NVIDIA drivers, Neptune used 746MB of RAM upon startup.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
Laptop - Lenovo Legion Y530
- Processor: Intel Core i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz x 6
- Storage: 256GB NVMe SSD Samsung and 1TB HDD
- Memory: 16GB
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411
- Display: 1920x1080 @ 60Hz
- Graphics: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630, NVIDIA Corporation GP106M [GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile]
Visitor supplied rating
Neptune has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.8/10 from 33 review(s).
Have you used Neptune? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
AlmaLinux OS as preferred CentOS Linux replacement, FreeBSD getting suite of new sandboxing tools, Debian opens voting for Project Leader
In 2020 it was announced Red Hat would be phasing out CentOS Linux in favour of CentOS Stream. This move caught a number of people by surprise and several community projects rushed in to fill the void. Practically overnight several distributions based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux's source code sprang to life. While each of these new clones strives to be binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), each one has its own special features, architecture support, documentation, and support options. Has one RHEL clone stood out from the others? FOSS Force has put forward an opinion piece on why AlmaLinux OS might be the long-term best option of the various replacements for CentOS Linux. "Not only does AlmaLinux seem to be in front in terms of financing, it's also ahead of the game in the technology department, where its developers have demonstrated the efficacy of their development technology twice already.
This started with the distro being the first out-of-the-gate with its first release, AlmaLinux 8.3, last March, nearly three months ahead of Rocky Linux's first release, even though they both began development at about the same time. In November, less than 48 hours after RHEL 8.5 was released, AlmaLinux developers released their own 8.5 version based on it, several days ahead of Rocky. The project has also developed and released open source software that potentially benefits anyone using RHEL or any of its clones."
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One area where OpenBSD and Linux distribution have made a lot of progress in recent years is in sandboxing applications, closing off the running program from the rest of the operating system. This is often used internally by a program to reduce its own system access or by a sandboxing utility to isolate a running program which might misbehave. One developer is working to bring these types of program isolation to FreeBSD. "Since a while I've been working on and off on a pledge()/unveil() implementation for FreeBSD. I also wanted it to be able to sandbox arbitrary programs that might not expect it with no (or very minor) modifications. So I just kept adding to it until it could do that well enough. " The mailing list post goes on to show examples of the new isolating software at work with instances of command line programs and some desktop software being sandboxed.
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The Debian project has a lot of distinguishing features. It's one of the world's older distributions, it has a huge family of child distributions, and it's a massive democratic project. Each year the Debian developers (who number around a thousand people) cast their votes for the position of Debian Project Leader. This year there are three candidates: Felix Lechner, Jonathan Carter, and Hideki Yamane. Information on these developers and their platforms can be found on the Debian website. A discussion of the candidates and their positions can be found in the project's vote mailing list.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Tracking Linux installs and adjusting directory permissions
Keeping-count asks: It seems that the best gauge on the popularity of distros is your site's count of times people click on links to them. It came to me that it might be possible to develop a much better way.
Incorporate into the Linux kernel code that would, upon installation, send a ping (or whatever) containing information on the version of distro (version, desktop, etc) to a database program on remote servers that would compile and tally the received pings.
Such could be more elaborate if desired - hardware information of the computer, software programs installed on the computer, maybe other information such as location - if possible.
This could be designed to be a one time data gathering, in which the code could become inactive after sending the data. Or, it could be possible to leave the code active and have it send the information (maybe yearly) to establish that the install is being used.
DistroWatch answers: While a lot of people are interested in finding out how many Linux users there are and which distributions they run, DistroWatch doesn't make any attempt to track this information. The page hit ranking (PHR) table shown on the front page simply indicates how many people per day look up information on a given distribution on DistroWatch. The numbers indicate an interest in some projects, but isn't a reflection of usage. Or, as the Page Hit Ranking section of DistroWatch says of the PHR table numbers:
They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch was accessed each day, nothing more.
As for placing tracking code into the Linux kernel, what you're describing is called spyware. It's highly undesirable and, in some parts of the world, illegal. It's unlikely any such tracking code would make it into the kernel and, if it were to somehow get accepted, virtually no one would use any distribution which included the feature.
There are some distributions which provide people with the option of sending a ping or hardware information to the distribution's developers, but it's (as far as I know) always a voluntary step and not baked into the lower level operating system. Debian goes a step further and invites people to submit software package statistics, but again it's entirely an optional feature. One which most people turn off.
Trying to automate this process without making it trivial to opt-out would insure virtually no one would use the distribution(s) which included the feature, negating its attempt to count users and track their software and hardware statistics.
* * * * *
Locking-down-directories asks: Should I cut off permissions to the directories under .config? Some have "rwxr-xr-x" permissions, but others have "rwx------". Shouldn't they all have their permissions stripped to protect them from other users?
DistroWatch answers: The ~/.config directory is special in that it holds a lot of information which is used by local programs. This information is specific to your user and may include relatively mundane information like your screen resolution or desktop theme. It can also hold sensitive information such as which files you've downloaded recently, your bookmarks, and passwords.
I have two answers for this question. First, in theory, all files and directories should have their permissions reduced to the lowest possible point where they are still useful. Ideally, no file or directory will offer permissions unless they are needed.
Usually the default file permissions for a new file or directory are determined using your user's umask. The umask determines which permissions a new file does not have. Most distributions set the umask to 0022 which means new files do not remove any permissions for their owner, and remove write access (value 2) for everyone else. You can check what your umask is set to by running the following command:
$ umask
0022
You can change your umask by running the command and specifying which permissions new files should not have. For instance, running the following command removes all permissions from new files for everyone except the file's owner:
$ umask 077
The umask command can be run from your shell's start-up script (typically ~/.bashrc on most distributions) so you don't need to type it each time you login.
I mentioned I have two answers and what I wrote above handles what I think the right answer is in theory. In practise, directories are only accessible to people if a person also has access to the parent directory. In other words, people can only access and see the information in the directories under ~/.config if they first have access to the ~/.config directory itself. Likewise, people can only see into your ~/.config directory if they have access to your home directory. If you simply cut off access to your home directory, then it shuts out people from seeing the information under it.
You can lock down your home directory by running the chmod command as follows:
$ chmod 0700 ~/
This will keep other users, apart from the administrator, from being able to see any of your private data files or configuration information.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus Kiosk 5.4.0
Porteus Kiosk is a lightweight Gentoo-based Linux operating system which has been scaled down and confined to allow the use of one application only: a web browser. The project has published a new release, Porteus Kiosk 5.4.0, which improves hardware decoding and enables the OpenH264 plugin for Firefox. The release announcement offers additional information: "I'm pleased to announce that Porteus Kiosk 5.4.0 is now available for download. Major software upgrades in this release include: Linux kernel 5.15.28, Google Chrome 98.0.4758.102 and Mozilla Firefox 91.7.1 ESR. Packages from the userland are upgraded to portage snapshot tagged on 20220320: link. Short changelog for 5.4.0 release: Added support for importing DER certificates through the 'import_certificates=' parameter. Hardware video decode feature is now enabled for screensaver video and screensaver webpage functions. Added support for dynamically generated remote configs. Kiosk identification and settings can be now passed through the URLs which contain an append parameters. Enabled OpenH264 plugin by default for the Firefox browser as it's needed for the WebRTC streams. Added 'cec-client' utility for controlling the displays over HDMI interfaces. Number of initial connections from the client to Porteus Kiosk Server has been reduced from 5 to 3. This optimization lowers the server overhead when multiple kiosks are booting at the same time." Further details are available in the distribution's changelog.
Finnix
The Finnix distribution is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian. The project celebrates its 22nd anniversary this month with the release of Finnix 124. "Finnix 124 includes a number of fixes, new packages and new features: wifi-connect helper utility will now display nearby access points if invoked without any command line options. ip= kernel command line network configuration now supports netmasks in addition to prefix lengths. Added a pure Python strings implementation. Explanation from the commit: I had avoided including strings because, while it's incredibly useful, it's the only desirable utility in the binutils package, which otherwise includes a bunch of compilation-related utilities, and the package itself is quite large. So in the words of the 'my mechanics' YouTube channel, I make a new one! It's not a 100% complete reimplementation of GNU binutils' strings, but is fine for casual binary checking. This is also set up so that if you do apt install binutils in the live environment, its strings will take precedence over the Python version. RISC-V (riscv64) unofficial build support added, in addition to amd64, i386, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x. (Though as a reminder, AMD64 is the only officially supported architecture with released ISOs. For more information, see Platform support on Finnix.) Replaced the running systemd finnix.target with the more traditional multi-user.target. This is not noticeable in regular live environment use, but makes it easier for people expanding upon Finnix." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
GParted Live 1.4.0-1
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live 1.4.0-1, a new stable release of the project's Debian-based specialist live CD designed for disk partitioning and data rescue task. This release updates the GParted partitioning utility to version 1.4.0: "The GParted team is pleased to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. This release includes GParted 1.4.0, updated packages and other improvements. Items of note include: includes GParted 1.4.0; add labelling of mounted Btrfs, ext2/3/4 and XFS file systems; fix detection of mount points for encrypted file systems; fix crash scrolling quickly in the drive selection combobox; add bcache detection; add JBD external ext3/4 journal detection; based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2022-03-29; Linux kernel image updated to 5.16.14. This release of GParted Live has been successfully tested on VirtualBox, VMware, BIOS, UEFI and physical computers with AMD/ATI, NVIDIA and Intel graphics." Continue to the release announcement for further details.
deepin 20.5
deepin is a Deban-based desktop distribution featuring the Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE). The project's latest release introduces support requests to the software centre and provides facial recognition as an option for signing into accounts. "In deepin 20.5, a great number of practical features collected from user feedback are developed and released, The stable kernel is upgraded to version 5.15.24, underlying vulnerabilities are fixed, and system compatibility and security are enhanced further. Face recognition, one of the biometric authentication methods, is supported on adapted devices. After enrolling your face in Control Center, next time on the lock screen and the login interface, you can log in to deepin with your face ID. By clicking 'Pin Screenshots' before taking a screenshot, the captured screenshot will be sticky on top of windows, and its position can be moved. While 'pinning' this picture to the desktop, you can use other apps at the same time to improve work efficiency." Additional information and screenshots can be found in the release announcement.
deepin 20.5 -- The Deepin desktop and application menu
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
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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: 2,703
- Total data uploaded: 41.8TB
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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) |
Is your home directory accessible from other user accounts?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about home directory permissions. Many Linux distributions default to leaving each user's home directory open and readable to other users (often with permissions 755). People who don't want to leave their files exposed for other computer users to view will often lock down their home directory permissions so only the user has access (permissions 700) or only allow digging into directories without seeing specific files (permissions 711). Is your home directory locked down? Let us know why it is (or is not) in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using Nextcloud in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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My home directory permissions...
| Allow others read and execute/browse permission: | 200 (21%) |
| Allow others execute/browse permission: | 41 (4%) |
| Block access to everyone but me: | 613 (63%) |
| Other: | 114 (12%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 11 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • As Douglas Adams said... (by R. Cain on 2022-04-04 00:41:47 GMT from United States)
..."There's always a very simple solution to every seemingly complicated problem."
I simply don't let anyone else use my computer.
2 • You really faked me out this week! (by Dave on 2022-04-04 01:18:19 GMT from United States)
When I see multiple distros being reviewed in the same issue of Distrowatch, I’ve gotten used to reading that they (or at least one of them) didn’t work, worked in the live session but wouldn’t install, froze up when you got to the login screen and wouldn’t go any further, etc., so you moved on to another test subject.
It’s great to see that MassOS and Neptune both seem to be solid operating systems with—assuming you didn’t just catch them on a good day—at least adequate quality control.
Thanks for the always interesting weekly read.
3 • Running latest KDE plasma desktop on Debian (by Andy Prough on 2022-04-04 01:21:34 GMT from United States)
This week's review of Nautilus noted that the distro includes an up-to-date version of KDE plasma on a stable Debian base. Debian users should also be aware that long-time Debian packager and project leader Norbert Preining maintains his own repos of the latest KDE plasma desktop for use with Debian (also works with Devuan in my experience). Instructions and updates for using these repos can be found on his blog: https://www.preining.info/blog/tag/kde/
4 • Running latest KDE plasma desktop on Debian (by Bin on 2022-04-04 04:58:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
@3
I think your information is a little out of date
https://www.preining.info/blog/2022/01/future-of-my-packages-in-debian/#comments
5 • User permissions (by Maury the Mole on 2022-04-04 08:36:14 GMT from United States)
All my users are me, so if I find someone has been nosing about where they don't belong, I just give myself a stern talking-to.
6 • user permissions (by Kazlu on 2022-04-04 08:46:31 GMT from France)
Outside of my main one, I have a couple of purpose driven users that I am the only person using. I am also the only person with Linux knowledge in my home. So all in all, locking down permissions would not be of much use against other users, and would add some inconvenience in the rare occasion where I need to browse a home directory while logged in from another user.
Now, there is still the risk of a rogue program or curious website sniffing into my /home folders. To prevent that, I use Firejail.
@5 Don't be too hard on yourself, you probably had no mischievous intentions towards yourself :D
7 • Permissions (by james on 2022-04-04 09:59:55 GMT from United States)
My home directory allows others read and execute/browse permission, but I am the only user of my laptop.
8 • Home Directory (by penguinx86 on 2022-04-04 11:53:08 GMT from United States)
I run Linux Mint Xfce on an old Dell laptop. Linux Mint is the ONLY distro that supports my Wifi adapter out of the box. Want me to use your distro? No wifi, no deal! Linux without Wifi support is totally bogus!
I'm the only one who ever uses this laptop, so home directory permissions aren't really an issue. My family is too busy with their iPads and iPhones (using Wifi of course) to care about my laptop or what's in my home directory.
On a corporate network, sysadmins can still look at my home directory anyway. In fact, corporate policies make it mandatory that they can monitor everything I do. Permissions don't really matter when Big Brother is watching you.
9 • AlmaLinux (by Otis on 2022-04-04 13:16:22 GMT from United States)
It is interesting to me that AlmaLinux made the news wrt replacement of CentOS as stated by FOSS Force, with the remarks highlighting AlmaLinux being "..ahead of the game in the technology department" along with being financially stable.
I downloaded it and installed it via USB flash and found it refreshing in many respects and I have high hopes for its success.
10 • Home alone (by Trihexagonal on 2022-04-04 13:17:24 GMT from United States)
I'm the only user on my machines but still limit permissions for the user account.
I cannot mount a drive from the user account or unmount it, can copy files from a USB stick to the Home directory but not write to the USB drive.
11 • Corporate network (by Friar Tux on 2022-04-04 14:09:05 GMT from Canada)
@8 (penquinx86) That reminded me of the last place I worked at. Each employee had their own computer/work station. Due to the enforced monthly password change, and people forgetting their passwords, our boss kept a hardcopy of all employee names and work station passwords. Often, when an employee left the company, the new recruit would get the old employee's name and password to carry on on the same work station. Or if the boss needed to quickly do something on a work station he would use an old employee's name and password. IT still had not caught on when I retired.
12 • Neptune 7 (by Wogus on 2022-04-04 14:47:43 GMT from Germany)
Neptune7, the only one based upon Debian Stable ('Bullseye') working on my Fujitsu Livebook
13 • User permissions.. (by Otis on 2022-04-04 16:06:01 GMT from United States)
sudo pw is in my head and nowhere else. Actually I could have it magic markered on the wall and nobody here would care, being as how the only other ones here are my non-Linux wife and my cat, Arnold Ziffel, who likes Linux but has trouble with typing. File access and permissions are not an issue here, but are at the lab where we have no spouses or cats but do have visitors/clients who are restricted to the Windows mess over there on an old ping-pong table.
14 • @8 Linux without Wifi support is totally bogus (by anticapitalista on 2022-04-04 16:22:44 GMT from Greece)
@8 Linux without Wifi support is totally bogus! Really?
I'm sure there are many linux users that prefer wired to wireless.
In fact, my job insists that we all connect wired and not wireless.
15 • Support, hardware (by Somewhat Reticent on 2022-04-04 17:05:10 GMT from United States)
Perhaps it should be "Wifi (hardware) without FreeD-Open-Source support is totally bogus!"
After all, why buy hardware that won't work?
16 • Alma Linux as Centos Replacement (by Abe Froman on 2022-04-04 18:25:33 GMT from United States)
I've used both since their initial release. They are RHEL clones. They both have the support of major players in the industry. For the majority of users, they are functionally indistinguishable. Now there are some niche functionality that one offers and other doesn't that will determine best use cases. But overall, only time will tell if one eventually becomes the default replacement for CentOS.
17 • @14, @15 WiFi support (by Maury the Mole on 2022-04-04 22:09:01 GMT from Philippines)
@14, "I'm sure there are many linux users that prefer wired to wireless." The magic word is "prefer". Unless I want to rewire my house, or run long wires along the baseboards, or in the case of laptops, across the rooms or out to the yard, I will prefer WiFi, thank you! Other than some philosophical idea, there's no reason a Linux distro cannot be competent at both, as you should well know.
@15, "Wifi (hardware) without FreeD-Open-Source support is totally bogus!" If it involved combing the world for hardware by manufacturers tht decided to invest money and resources on firmware required by < 1% of users who feel their principles violated, I would change OS, not hardware. My OS is a tool. I own it. It does not own me.
18 • Directory Access (by john on 2022-04-04 23:33:35 GMT from Canada)
For my own personal System, I block access. On my workstation at work, the same. Some people can login via ssh via keys (no Passwords) on the local network.
On the servers at work I support, I allow people to browse and have execute permissions for my home dir.
19 • @8 @14 @17 (by dave on 2022-04-05 01:32:47 GMT from United States)
I'm pretty sure the key words are 'totally bogus' and 'old Dell laptop' .. Linux without out-of-the-box support for some legacy wireless adapter might be inconvenient for a few people, but it's definitely not 'totally bogus', nor is it an insurmountable obstacle. I've never encountered a modern Linux distro that is incapable of using wifi (not that I care, since I don't use it) ..it's simply a matter of whether or not functionality is included for a particular controller. The issue of what people 'prefer' goes in both directions and both can be construed as philosophical choices.
Forcing ancient hardware to use Linux Mint is quite a contradiction to reconcile in my opinion. If @8 learned how to configure his wireless device (probably not that difficult) he would have the freedom to use leaner, more vintage-appropriate distros, instead of being shackled to a relatively resource-hungry distro, such as Linux Mint. Heck, he might even help fellow users in the process. Heck, if he asked for help, someone would probably even figure it out for him.
If I may employ the same exaggeration, I would argue that any house that isn't wired for ethernet is 'totally bogus' .. and that it's 'totally bogus' to blanket ones home in radio pollution when the router is probably a few feet away 99% of the time you're using the computer. I'm sure the birds and bees probably feel that wifi is 'totally bogus'.
20 • MassOS (by mrkrell on 2022-04-05 01:49:30 GMT from Tajikistan)
Sounds cool and sounds desktop oriented so I will give this a try even though I don't distrohop uch these days, Happy Fedora 34 user here,
21 • Neptune Plasma? (by R Hoagland on 2022-04-05 02:48:33 GMT from United States)
The Plasma desktop version appears to be the same as the default Bullseye release, or am I missing something?
@4: KDE/Plasma 5.24 for Debian
https://www.preining.info/blog/2022/02/kde-plasma-5-24-for-debian/
22 • Alma/Cent (by Otis on 2022-04-05 13:06:45 GMT from United States)
@16 Yep, and those similarities are predictable in that with AlmaLinux having a downstream position in development, this will likely continue unless the team makes some pretty important development changes, perhaps with an eye toward different versions or perhaps even becoming gradually more independant (unlikely, of course, given their CloudLinux relationship).
FWIW I have a different feeling navigating Alma than I do Cent and Fedora, etc. There's another sort of energy.. can't put my finger on it yet but I think it may have to do with it being 1:1 binary compatible with CentOS versions previous to CentOS Stream and that they're building from there.
23 • @15 (by Alex on 2022-04-05 13:39:15 GMT from United States)
My personal computers are generally second-hand and price (free is good) is higher on my criteria than specific wifi adapter. I am typing this from a non-descript Dell Inspiron running Linux Lite (a Ubuntu derivative) - I am happy that the linux kernel now includes Broadcom support. It was a pain running a cable to my router until I could download the right package to get wifi running in the old days.
24 • Permissions (by Robert on 2022-04-05 15:48:37 GMT from United States)
My home directory is 755. If it was a shared computer I would lock it down more, but since the only access to the machine is my user or root, changing the perms wouldn't accomplish much.
25 • Permissions (by Dr.J on 2022-04-05 16:00:30 GMT from Germany)
My home directory is 711. My notebook is a single user machine with hard disk encryption, so there is no need for more restrictions when the system is up.
26 • Could wireless be the new wire? (by Tad Strange on 2022-04-05 18:42:42 GMT from Canada)
Though it might prove shocking, wifi has suddenly become the dominant form of home and soho networking.
Dominant to the point where consumer and small business devices are increasingly not being provisioned with RJ45 sockets.
Even worse, for lovers of CAT6 UTP, these new fangled mesh APs mean that less and less is cable being run to disparate access points in a building.
I need to pull out my crimper now and then, just to lubricate it and check it for rust.
And to give it some love.
And before anyone thinks that old-laptop guy gets off easy - Jumping through hoops, or researching some esoteric workaround to get old equipment working with new software is the price that you pay when your price is free.
And that is certainly not a problem with only the Linux ecosystem.
K..done being grumpy
27 • @15 (by Alex on 2022-04-05 21:46:15 GMT from United States)
My personal computers are generally second-hand and price (free is good) is higher on my criteria than specific wifi adapter. I am typing this from a non-descript Dell Inspiron running Linux Lite (a Ubuntu derivative) - I am happy that the linux kernel now includes Broadcom support. It was a pain running a cable to my router until I could download the right package to get wifi running in the old days.
28 • Faye (by Tech in San Diego on 2022-04-06 04:57:38 GMT from United States)
I installed Neptune 7, "Faye", and was very impressed with the distro, and that's saying a lot for a diehard openSUSE Tumbleweed fan. It's surprisingly quick, has a small footprint, and discovered all my hardware flawlessly. It's very similar to Debian "non-free". It also uses ZSwap instead of ZRAM which I found interesting. Note: More research needs to be done on my part to understand the potential benefits of ZSwap vs ZRAM on my system.
The only complaint that I have is that it does not notify me when I make a change to the system settings. You have to remember to click "apply" after making any changes, otherwise they won't be saved and there is no warning message, like other distro's provide, if you forget to apply any changes. The other issue I discovered was that the Firefox browser did not automatically update. You have to go to Help, About, and then it would notify you that there is a newer version and then perform the necessary update.
Overall it was a very good experience.
29 • wireless @ 26 (by Loup on 2022-04-06 23:51:35 GMT from Canada)
Even worse, for lovers of CAT6 UTP, these new fangled mesh APs mean that less and less is cable being run to disparate access points in a building.
For shure ... a business owner will risk security with wireless guizmo lol
Just to inform you, for a business cabling and install is a direct fiscal deduction ... so why would a business chose wireless over wire ?
Let me think .... bad consultant maybe
Anyway not worth being grumpy, that i agree with
30 • AlmaLinux (by RetiredIT on 2022-04-07 12:16:52 GMT from United States)
I have tested AlmaLinux twice in the past several months. Despite installing OK I found a huge deal breaker: it will not recognize a USB flash drive! I don't have time to scour the web and look up what to do to fix that problem which I have NEVER seen while testing dozens of different distros. It also fails when trying to install and run packages using Flatpak. Rocky Linux installs and works fine with flash drives and Flatpak. Just in those two things Rocky does rings around Alma! Need I say more?
31 • AlmaLinux & RockyLinux (by zcatav on 2022-04-07 16:06:39 GMT from Turkey)
@30 • AlmaLinux (by RetiredIT
I guess AlmaLinux is made for server and Rocky Linux Desktop. ;-)
32 • MassOs (by Maou on 2022-04-07 18:48:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
MassOs looks promising, I'll have to wait for the new improvements.
About home directory permissions, me is the only user so no worries here also using FDE.
33 • Audio transcription (by Yamato on 2022-04-08 18:54:29 GMT from Sweden)
Thanks for the audio format, it's awesome when you want to work on something hearing the DW on phones.
Number of Comments: 33
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
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| • 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 |
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| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
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| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
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| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
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