 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 964, 18 April 2022 |
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Welcome to this year's 16th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
How long software and hardware should be supported is a matter of considerable debate. Consumers obviously want their purchases to have a long life, supported with security fixes for years while business would prefer to cut support short to reduce costs and drive new sales. One open source project is working to try to extend the life of mobile hardware by providing a lightweight operating system that runs on multiple phones and tablets. This project is postmarketOS and we report on it and how this Alpine-based distribution works in this week's Feature Story. In our News section we talk about the Fedora project considering phasing out the DNF package manager for the lighter Microdnf alternative while EndeavourOS tests out a new window manager called Worm. Plus we talk about running a Raspberry Pi computer with free software components only. Then we discuss running macOS software on Linux and how to reduce bandwidth consumption in this week's Questions and Answers column. Last week we talked about Fedora phasing out Legacy BIOS support in favour of UEFI. We'd like to hear how many of our readers still use the classic BIOS approach to boot their operating system. Let us know why you still use the Legacy BIOS mechanism in the comments. Plus this week we are thrilled to welcome Zephix, a Debian-based live distribution, to our database. 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:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
postmarketOS on the PinePhone
In recent months I have talked about what it is like to run a mobile version of Manjaro with Plasma Mobile and UBports on a PinePhone. There are benefits and drawbacks to both operating systems, but one thing which stood out for me (during both trials) was both operating systems struggled with performance on the minimal device. Both operating systems ran and, in their own styles, made the PinePhone a useful, portable, low-spec computer. I was curious to see how the PinePhone would work with a mobile operating system specifically geared to lower-end (and older) hardware. It seems our readers were too.
After taking a break for a while, I turned my attention to other, mature, and open source operating systems which work with the PinePhone. One which stood out was postmarketOS. This project describes itself as "A real Linux distribution for phones and other mobile devices." The project goes on to talk about its focus in terms of privacy, sustainability, and security for older devices:
We are sick of not receiving updates shortly after buying new phones. Sick of the walled gardens deeply integrated into Android and iOS. That's why we are developing a sustainable, privacy and security focused free software mobile OS that is modeled after traditional Linux distributions. With privilege separation in mind. Let's keep our devices useful and safe until they physically break!
Background
The postmarketOS project is based on Alpine Linux and currently supports two main devices, the PinePhone and the Librem 5, along with a just over 20 other devices being worked on. Since virtually all features, including SMS and calls, are supposed to work on the PinePhone, this seemed like a good match.
There are three editions of postmarketOS for the PinePhone: Phosh, Plasma Mobile, and Simple X Mobile Interface (Sxmo). These seem to be updated about once every week or two. I decided to try out Phosh since I haven't experimented with this interface before. There are two builds offered: a live edition (434MB) and one with an installer (640MB). The former is recommended for casual testing while the latter is recommended for people who plan to use postmarketOS on a regular basis and want to set a custom password on their account. I decided to download the image with an installer.
Installing
The compressed installer image expands to 5.1GB and I then wrote this image file to my microSD card. Once this card was inserted into the appropriate port on the PinePhone the phone booted to a screen which informed me it was running postmarketOS with the Phosh interface on the aarch64 CPU architecture. I was then informed I was about to install a new operating system.
The postmarketOS installer offers to place the operating system on the PinePhone's internal storage or on the microSD from which we booted. The former is probably a good idea for long-term use. I chose to use the SD card as it meant I could unplug it later to revert back to running the device's default Manjaro operating system.
We are next asked to create a password which will be used for authentication and unlocking the device. We cannot skip creating a password and the password we make needs to be at least eight characters long. This is unusual for a mobile operating system and proved to be inconvenient later.
We are next given the chance to enable disk encryption, which will require a boot password if we enable it. I decided to skip the disk encryption. We are then shown a progress bar while the installer sets itself up. This final stage took almost exactly 30 minutes on my device.
The phone stops installing and displays a text login screen followed by the symbols "^@" which are written to the screen several times. After waiting a minute the PinePhone rebooted and told me it was resizing its filesystem. A few minutes later I was shown a lock screen which displayed the current time (for the UTC time zone) and the date (which was off by about six weeks). We can slide a finger up the display to bring up the unlock prompt and enter our eight-character password.
postmarketOS 21.12 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 180kB, resolution: 720x1440 pixels)
Early impressions
The first time I signed in postmarketOS showed me a welcome message. This provided some tips regarding connecting to wireless networks, opening the settings menu by tapping the top panel, and where to find software updates. The welcome window also explains how to power off the device.
The user interface places a thin panel at the top of the display. Tapping this panel (not dragging it) brings up a small settings widget where we can toggle networking, the flashlight, Bluetooth, screen rotation, volume levels, and screen brightness.
In the middle of the home screen we find launchers for several applications which I'll talk about later. When we have an app open, pulling up from the bottom of the display shows us a split view. At the top of the screen we are shown a list of open apps we can select or close (by swiping up). At the bottom of the split display we see app icons we can tap to open a new program.
postmarketOS 21.12 -- The home screen showing one open application
(full image size: 124kB, resolution: 720x1440 pixels)
The interface is fairly responsive. Phosh running on postmarketOS feels a lot faster and more responsive to touch than Plasma Mobile running on Manjaro. It's probably about the same speed, or maybe a little faster, than what I experienced when running UBports on this same device.
One of the first things I tried to do was adjust the screen brightness. The slider in the settings widget is slow to respond and I discovered that it's possible to accidentally turn the display off entirely by moving the slider too far to the left. Once the screen is off we can't see the slider to move it back. In fact, once the screen is dimmed that far the only way to do anything with the device is hold the power button until it reboots, which resets the brightness level.
The icons on the home screen offer us access to programs for making phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, Firefox, a clock, calculator, and an image viewer. There is a media player (called Lollypop), a software centre, camera, and text editor. We also have a Settings app, a Tweaks app (which is sort of an extension for Settings which focuses on the visual aspects of the operating system), and the Portfolio file manager. There is also a terminal app which I ended up using frequently.
These applications tended to work well for me. The Portfolio file manager was a highlight and quite responsive. The camera app appears to be the same one used by Plasma Mobile running on Manjaro and it worked, though it's a bit slow. The image viewer works, but doesn't have a default location where it will browse and show us thumbnails of pictures. The image viewer works more like a desktop application where we need to browse to the location we want and select an image file.
The one application which did not work was Firefox. The browser would load, but it is too large to run on the PinePhone. Even with all other applications closed, Firefox is so large and slow it took over 30 seconds to type a short search or URL. The browser was unable to load any web pages. This was similar to my experience with Manjaro on the PinePhone, though the Morph browser paired with UBports worked smoothly on the same hardware.
Quirks and problems
I could not find a way to take a screenshot using the Phosh interface or the buttons on the PinePhone. I found documentation which explains there is no screenshot function built-in. We have the option of using the command line to install a package called grim and then run it (usually with a delay) to take screenshots which are then saved to our home directory. This approach (running "sleep 10 ; grim" from the command line) is an awkward way to handle capturing images and I hope a more convenient method is introduced.
postmarketOS 21.12 -- The Settings application
(full image size: 91kB, resolution: 720x1440 pixels)
Something I noticed early on was postmarketOS was not detecting my wireless networks. A little poking around in the Settings app revealed airplane mode was on by default, blocking all connections. I then found wireless connections were also turned off in a separate section of the interface. Once the wi-fi toggle was pressed the device found my local networks. This is an unusual set of defaults, but in line with the project's goal of improving mobile privacy.
The postmarketOS platform, at least with Phosh as the interface, enables physical feedback (vibrations) when the user types. I find this quite irritating and soon went looking for a way to disabling it. This led me down a series of modules in the Settings panel and in the Tweaks tool, looking at notifications, sound, keyboard, and language options. None of them presented me with a clear way to disable keyboard vibration feedback. Eventually I found a forum post which explains how to disable the vibrations using the command line. This works (which is great), but the setting is lost whenever the phone restarts (which is bad).
I was hoping to disable the feedback by disabling or removing the feedbackd process which runs in the background. Unfortunately the feedbackd service is not registered (cannot be managed using the service manager) and killing the process causes it to automatically respawn. I tried removing its package using the apk package manager, but feedbackd is a dependency of the Phosh interface, the calling app, and the messaging app, making it effectively impossible to remove. All of which to say is it is possible to turn off feedback vibrations, but it requires command line experience and issuing the command on each start-up.
Earlier I mentioned the installer enforces an eight-character password which is used for everything (logins, sudo, remote shell sessions, and authentication in the Tweaks panel). It's very inconvenient to enter eight characters every time one picks up the phone and I went looking for a way around this. At first I tried removing the password in the Settings app, but the account manager refuses to allow empty passwords. I then enabled auto-login, but it has no effect.
I turned to the command line and did what I did with Manjaro's mobile platform: I ran "sudo passwd -d user" which deletes the account password. This had mixed results. The lock screen would still prompt for a password, but I could enter anything (as long as I typed at least one character) to unlock the phone. This was better, though still a speed bump in using the device.
Deleting the password raised new problems though. Up to this point I'd been able to remotely login to the phone using OpenSSH (more on that later). Deleting my password blocked remote logins. It also made it impossible to change some system settings as the phone will occasionally prompt for the admin password and, with my password deleted, all prompts would fail. This locked me out of various parts of the Tweaks panel, for example.
postmarketOS 21.12 -- The Tweaks interface adjustment tool
(full image size: 150kB, resolution: 720x1440 pixels)
In the end, I compromised with a single-character password which slowed me down a minimal amount while allowing OpenSSH and the Tweaks panel to work. This requirement of needing a user password and forcing an unlock prompt, even when no password exists, feels like a poorly thought out design and one which was a constant irritant during my trial.
I ran into some other problems while trying out various options. For instance, when I went into the Keyboard module in the Settings panel selecting most of the available options did nothing. At another point I went into the Accessibility module and selected the blinking cursor toggle. This brought up a dialog window with a slider. The dialog doesn't fit onto the screen and there is no direct way to close it or switch back to the main Settings app. This effectively locks the app until we either reboot or bring up the window list and close the offending dialog window.
Sometimes trying to open new applications would cause a new window to appear, then close as if the program was crashing. There was no corresponding error, but I suspect the system was running low on memory. Usually trying to launch the app again would cause it to work properly.
Alpine under the hood
The postmarketOS operating system is, at its heart, Alpine Linux. The distribution ships with some command line programs such as ps, scp, and the bash shell. The Busybox software is used to provide a good deal of this functionality, including the operating system's init service. There are no manual pages installed by default.
We can use the sudo command to run administrative tasks and Alpine's apk package manager to install and update programs. For instance, I followed a guide in the wiki which shows us how to enable remote command line access using OpenSSH. This, combined with the phone's built-in ifconfig command to find my IP address, made it possible for me to remotely manage the phone.
The ability to use Alpine's package manager and service manager makes the underlying operating system more flexible and provides access to a wider range of packages. I especially like that the root filesystem is writable, meaning we do not need to remount or do any fancy work arounds to make changes to the operating system the way one does with UBports.
Managing software and updates
Apart from Alpine's apk package manager, postmarketOS also ships with the GNOME Software application. This tool offers three tabs: Explore, Installed, and Updates. Even after pressing the Refresh button in GNOME Software the first two tabs did not show any entries. The Updates tab did though and a dozen new packages were offered. I selected and installed all available updates and they applied cleanly without problems.
postmarketOS 21.12 -- The GNOME Software centre
(full image size: 149kB, resolution: 720x1440 pixels)
I checked to see which repositories were enabled and found there were three listed in GNOME Software, though their names were truncated. The repositories were named "Remote repository c", "Remote repository m", and "Remote repository v". All three are enabled, but no entries could be found in the Explore tab or in search results for common application names.
Other observations
I made a few more observations during my brief trial with postmarketOS. One was the PinePhone's battery drained at around 10% per hour with medium-level use while running postmarketOS.
A challenge arose when I tried to use the device as a phone. When I placed a SIM card in the phone postmarketOS was unable to detect an available mobile network. I faced similar problems with the PinePhone when I tested Manjaro and UBports on this same device - UBports couldn't detect any networks while Manjaro could detect networks without successfully connecting. This surprised me since, during my previous trials, I've used UBports with my current mobile provider in past years.
I found some information on the PINE64 forum which talks about issues getting the PinePhone to talk with mobile networks. This led me to a page on the PINE64 wiki which talks about common mobile network settings which may need to be entered by the user in order for the phone to connect. I looked into this, but the Access Point Names (APN) section wasn't an option which appeared in my mobile settings under Phosh.
At this point I confirmed all hardware switches were toggled on and that the same SIM card would work in another phone. This ongoing problem seems to suggest there is an issue with my PinePhone talking with my mobile carrier's SIM card - possibly due to a hardware issue or carrier compatibility since mine isn't on the list of networks known to work with the PinePhone - rather than any shortcoming in the three operating systems I've tested.
Conclusions
In some ways I feel as though postmarketOS is the best of the three mobile operating systems I've tried so far on the PinePhone. It has a friendly and slick installer, it offers three user interfaces, and it has a nice welcome screen with helpful tips. The Phosh interface running on postmarketOS is probably the closest of the three to more mainstream mobile experiences, such as Android. The icons, top panel, and Settings app all seem fairly close to their Android counterparts. The names of pre-installed programs are some of the most clear as far as determining their utility - a problem I regularly faced when navigating the Plasma Mobile interface.
The performance of postmarketOS was the best of the three and the interface is fairly responsive. Considering the limited hardware of the PinePhone this is probably as good as one can hope for. It's not snappy compared to a medium-level phone running Android, but it's better than most other alternatives.
I also like that while Phosh provides a fairly familiar mobile interface, postmarketOS stays close to its roots behind the scenes. It's entirely possible to run postmarketOS on the PinePhone similar to how we would run Raspberry Pi OS on the Raspberry Pi. We have all the tools we need from the Alpine base to install packages and enable services should we wish to do so.
There were a number of problems I ran into while exploring postmarketOS. Putting aside the mobile network connection issues which seem to be consistent with my PinePhone, there were a number of issues which vexed me. It's unusually difficult to perform some common actions, such as disabling vibration feedback and taking a screenshot. There weren't any applications listed in the software centre, and some settings haven't been implemented yet.
My biggest issue though was dealing with passwords. There is no reason for a mobile device to force its user to have a password and, even if one wishes to debate that, I find it hard to imagine someone appreciating being forced to type an eight-character password every time they wish to use their phone. For someone who often picks up and puts down their phone (maybe a few dozen times a day) this is prohibitively annoying. To make matters worse, doing away with the password locks the user out of adjusting some settings.
The postmarketOS platform looks like it has a solid base and some good polish in places thanks to the Phosh interface. There are still issues - unfinished pieces and some bugs, but of the three mobile distributions I've tried on the PinePhone so far, I think postmarketOS will provide the best experience for someone coming from an Android background or someone wanting to run a small home server on a low-power device.
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Visitor supplied rating
postmarketOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.5/10 from 2 review(s).
Have you used postmarketOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora considers move to Microdnf, EndeavourOS tests new window manager, running a Raspberry Pi without non-free firmware
Microdnf is a lightweight package manager which offers the functionality most people experience with DNF with less overhead. The Fedora team is considering replacing the existing DNF tool with Microdnf in a future version of Fedora. "The new major Microdnf will provide huge improvements and in some cases better behavior then DNF. In the future, the new Microdnf will replace DNF. The new Microdnf will be accompanied by a new library (libdnf5) and a new DNF Daemon." Details on the benefits Microdnf plans to bring are covered in a Fedora change proposal.
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Along with the latest snapshot of EndeavourOS, the project shared some interesting news. The EndeavourOS project now offers a custom window manager called Worm. "This release is also shipping with a brand-new Window Manager developed by our community editions team member Codic12 and we are more than proud to present you this WM that was developed a little bit under our wing. Codic12 decided to develop this WM to satisfy his need for a lightweight window manager that worked well with both floating and tiling modes and had window decorations with minimise, maximise and close buttons in any layout desired and that could run on a semi-embedded system like the PIZero. Worm is written in Nim and is based on X11, a Wayland version isn't in the pipeline in the near future, according to him."
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The Raspberry Pi single board computer has been a favourite hobbyist tool in the open source community for the past ten years and its popularity has sparked the creation of a lot of similar low-end computers, ideal for small projects and educational environments. One thorn in the side of the Raspberry Pi community has long been the requirement of non-free firmware to boot the device. Gunnar Wolf checks in on the progress being made to replace this key piece of non-free firmware. "Raspberry Pi computers require a piece of non-free software to boot - the infamous raspi-firmware package. But for almost as long as there has been a Raspberry Pi to talk of (this year it turns 10 years old!), there have been efforts to get it to boot using only free software. How is it progressing? Michael Bishop (IRC user "clever") explained today in the #debian-raspberrypi channel in OFTC that it advances far better than what I expected." The blog post goes on to talk about running a Raspberry Pi machine exclusively with free components.
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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) |
Running macOS software and reducing bandwidth
An-apple-a-day asks: Is there a compatibility layer for macOS software like WINE does for Windows? Seems it would be easier given Linux and macOS are both UNIX-like.
DistroWatch answers: There is compatibility software for Linux which assists in running programs built for macOS. The project is called Darling. It's not as advanced at this time as WINE, but it has made progress in getting some macOS software to run.
It may be a little easier to translate some concepts between macOS and Linux, but even though both are members of the UNIX family a lot of the technology involved isn't intended to be compatible. There is also a problem of scale.
The macOS community is around a tenth the size of the Windows community and the platform has many fewer exclusive applications. This makes demand for a compatibility layer for macOS lower than the demand and attention for a Windows layer. For these reasons, Darling has made less progress and attracts fewer developers than its WINE counterpart.
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Running-out-of-bandwidth asks: Been running Arch for a while and my slower Internet speeds mean it takes ages to update the system. Would a non-rolling distro be better?
DistroWatch answers: A fixed release distribution does tend to require fewer updates. A rolling release distribution will typically upgrade every package as new upstream versions of software become available. This puts the user on a rapid treadmill of new packages.
A fixed release distribution will usually only release package updates to handle security issues or minor changes, like timezone and certificate information. This means, if there are no security issues found, a package might not be updated at all during the lifetime of the distribution, even if the upstream project is pumping out new versions with new features.
With a rolling release of a desktop distribution you might end up replacing hundreds of packages each month, consuming hundreds of megabytes of data. With a fixed release, you're likely to end up with less than a dozen security updates per week that require a fraction of the bandwidth.
This isn't to say every month you'll always see less bandwidth consumption from a fixed release platform versus a rolling release. However, on average, you're likely to save yourself a lot of bandwidth over the course of a year if you stick with a fixed release distribution.
The trade off though is that with a fixed release you will need to download a new ISO (or massive set of package upgrades) about once every two to five years to install the new version of the distribution. The total bandwidth is still probably a lot lower with the fixed release, but keep in mind how long a distribution is supported and how large it is when you're considering which one to install. You probably don't want to download an entire new distribution every six months if you're worried about bandwidth consumption, but a new distribution version every five years will probably put a minimal strain on your Internet connection.
Another approach to take would be to run updates while you're asleep. Since you're running Arch Linux, I'd assume you're somewhat comfortable with the command line. You could run a scheduled job which installs new packages while you're not using the computer and then puts the machine to sleep. Then you could keep using your existing distribution without the amount of time to run updates being much of a factor.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
EndeavourOS 22.1
Bryan Poerwo has announced the release of a brand-new version of EndeavourOS, an Arch-based Linux distribution featuring a customised Xfce desktop. Code-named "Apollo", the distribution's 22.1 version comes with various enhancements and bug fixes: "We changed the internet check not to rely on GitHub or GitLab and preventing a failed internet connection error in countries where either GitHub or GitLab is blocked; a fix when Xfce and i3 are both selected for installation; community editions now install with their dedicated display manager; different order for desktop environment option and package chooser; fix to Firefox getting installed when not chosen; Qogir icons and cursor are used in live environment and offline Xfce install; new info button for customised installation; rewritten custom EOS modules for better Calamares integration; when using a custom user_pkglist file, those packages are now displayed on the 'netinstall' page so you can confirm what will be installed...." Continue to the release announcement for a detailed list of changes.
EndeavourOS 22.1 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 3.5MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Turnkey Linux 17.0
Jeremy Davis has announced the release of TurnKey Linux 17.0, a new stable version of the project's highly-specialised, single-purpose set of server appliances. The project's version 17.0 is based on Debian 11 and includes an experimental build for Raspberry Pi 4 computers: "I'm excited to finally announce the stable release of Turnkey 17.0. It has been a bit of a slog, taking way longer than I had hoped and there are only two this time. Regardless, we've finally made it to the stable release milestone, at least for Core and TKLDev. Hopefully we can keep the momentum up and have more v17.0 appliances ready really soon! In the meantime, these two new version 17.0 appliances are published to our mirror network and are also available for download direct from their relevant appliance pages or launched directly from the Hub. Finally, whilst I can't take any credit at all, I'm super excited that community member Yannick has produced 'preliminary' Raspberry Pi 4 builds." See the release announcement for further details.
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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: 2,709
- 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) |
Legacy BIOS or UEFI
Last week in our News section we talked about the Fedora team planning to phase out support for booting on Legacy BIOS machines. The idea being to support UEFI exclusively going forward.
While most modern computers support both methods, or UEFI exclusively now, many older machines use BIOS to boot or run into compatibility issues with some distributions when trying to boot in UEFI mode. We would like to hear which approach you use: do you boot in UEFI or Legacy BIOS mode?
You can see the results of our previous poll on spinning disks versus SSDs in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you boot in UEFI or Legacy BIOS mode?
| Legacy BIOS: | 850 (33%) |
| UEFI: | 824 (32%) |
| I use both across multiple machines: | 887 (34%) |
| Unsure: | 47 (2%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
Zephix is a live Linux operating system based on Debian's stable branch. It runs totally from removable media without touching any files stored on the user's system disk. The aim of Zephix is to provide a free modular operating system that users can carry with them and use wherever there is laptop or a desktop system available. The default ISO image comes without any graphical desktop, but a "desktop" module (with LXQt) is available separately, together with a "firmware" module and various popular application modules.
Zephix 4 -- Running the LXQt desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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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, 25 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 • UEFI/Bios (by Brad on 2022-04-18 00:39:29 GMT from United States)
I have one older laptop which is a "Hybrid" BIOS/UEFI, back when UEFI was in it's infancy.
It's a challenge to dual-boot this laptop between Windows and Linux.
I have another even older laptop which is BIOS-only (Linux-only, since it was designed to use Windows XP).
All other laptops are UEFI.
2 • Poll (by Otis on 2022-04-18 00:58:01 GMT from United States)
There's a choice on both this machine and the other one I use at home which is older. I run legacy on the older one, even though I could run it on UEFI, because I fool around with distros on that one which brag about being for older hardware. That one also has a spinning HDD and this one has an SDD/NVME.
3 • Mac software availability and quality (by Dave on 2022-04-18 01:17:01 GMT from United States)
> The macOS…platform has many fewer exclusive applications.
I’ve actually found the opposite to be true, at least in terms of the applications I care to run. I’ve also found the quality and polish of Mac programs to be superior to those available for Windows.
Linux software developers and their users would benefit from spending time running macOS and the best software available for that platform. Too many who have never actually spent substantive time using it and mastering its intricacies write it off as simplistic and dumbed down for the masses, but there are reasons so many developers and other power users use the platform and prefer it to Windows and to Linux in its current iterations. Its Unix base I makes it more pleasant to use than Windows, especially on the command line, for anyone who’s already familiar with Linux.
4 • Follow up to comment @3 (by Dave on 2022-04-18 01:31:40 GMT from United States)
Follow up on my comment @3:
I’m completely aware of the critiques of the Mac, Apple, and proprietary operating systems and software from open-source and free-software perspectives, and I’m sympathetic to them.
But A) there’s something to be said for knowing your “enemy,” and B) L Desktop Linux and free software can’t win though extensive user share appeals to ideology or claims of technical superiority under the hood. It also has to win on the quality of its user experience and its available software applications.
5 • @3 (by Andy Prough on 2022-04-18 01:38:36 GMT from United States)
>"Linux software developers and their users would benefit from spending time running macOS and the best software available for that platform. "
They would also benefit from not spending thousands of dollars to run a proprietary hardware and software that they aren't going to be using longterm.
6 • postmarketOS (by Jeff on 2022-04-18 01:45:51 GMT from United States)
postmarketOS certainly will protect your mobile privacy.
They will make it so inconvenient to use that you will power it down and leave it at home in a drawer; voila total privacy.
...
There does seem to be a trend with Android phones to require more security as well, my current phone would not let me set it up without a password or fingerprint to unlock it, my old phone would just nag me about it every few weeks.
7 • UEFI (by V on 2022-04-18 01:45:55 GMT from United States)
I use UEFI to boot. It (right now) is the current standard for firmware. Legacy BIOS is likely going to be deprecated eventually, probably within 10-15 years. Fedora is removing legacy support, which will likely spread through all distros except ones that haven't been updated in a while or that are intended to run on old machines.
I don't think the Linux kernel is going to ditch BIOS support ever, considering that some almost 35 year old machines use that firmware and some of them can run modern Linux.
8 • UEFI (by falcon1952 on 2022-04-18 02:10:55 GMT from United States)
@7 above is right on! Even on my machines that are capable of UEFI, I still choose to run in BIOS mode. I don't have any technical reason for avoiding UEFI, I just feel more comfortable with the BIOS.
9 • WINE (CROSSOVER) answer (by Greg Zeng on 2022-04-18 03:11:57 GMT from Australia)
From Wikipedia: "CrossOver is a Microsoft Windows compatibility layer available for Linux, macOS, and Chrome OS. This compatibility layer enables many Windows-based applications to run on Linux operating systems, macOS, or Chrome OS."
If you need to change the above entry, have a Wikipedia editor, such as myself, to make the necessary changes.
Crossover is the commercial version, which also has administration of the "free" version called "WINE". This has been since the two independent products were soon created. Both emulators generally are imperfect, but the attempts to work are noted in the several possible cases.
10 • Legacy BIOS or UEFI, but both also, (by Greg Zeng on 2022-04-18 03:27:57 GMT from Australia)
On all our laptops, we run both booting systems. The "F12" or similar key will expose these choices. This enables different operating system menus, running any combination and numbers of Windows, Windows-11, Linux & BSD operating systems. "Grub Customizer" and its kind however only recognize either NTFS and the EXT4 partitions.
There may sometimes be complications, with the numbers and types of partitions labelled "boot" and "Esp", for each computer. The last installed operating system generally determines the availability of the menu choices offered in each booting system. This last installed operating system can be used to correct or modify the menu repairs as needed. General purpose Linux systems seem best for this, such as Mint, instead of KDE Neon.
11 • (U)EFI (by Romane on 2022-04-18 04:56:20 GMT from Australia)
Fairly recent in booting through the EFI interface. Mainly because my BIOS is dated from 2015. Though there is an entry in the BIOS to boot in both BIOS and EFI mode, if I set it for that it appears _only_ compatible with booting via BIOS, while utilising the setting for EFI seems only compatible with EFI - which is perfectly fine now that that is my choice of means.
The implementation has a few small kinks around the edges (because older implementation, I assume) but nothing for the nonce which is causing me any concerns or issues in practice.
12 • BIOS vs UEFI (by Tux_Raider on 2022-04-18 08:27:46 GMT from United States)
I seen UEFI break too many times requiring a reinstall of tbe OS so i prefer legacy BIOS
13 • BIOS or UEFI (by Someguy on 2022-04-18 08:42:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Prefer to avoid UEFI except on gifted (needfull of repairs!) HW without the BIOS options.
In the bad old days of using the devil's OS, there used to be utilities to access and alter hidden BIOS functions. Was a lot of fun if occasionally dangerous! Haven't found anything compatible for Linux (please let me know if there is such). Frankly, not troubled if one of the hidden features kills the BIOS or other parts of the machine as they're all replaceable!
14 • Apple (by Dave Fogg Postles on 2022-04-18 10:12:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2019/12/17/apple-and-tesla-among-tech-giants-being-sued-over-the-deaths-and-injuries-of-child-cobalt-miners-in-drc/?sh=6e5a38273107
https://actions.sumofus.org/pages/apple-stop-using-forced-labor/?akid=101412.1615051.4tT1pk&rd=1&source=fwd&t=1006
(Uyghurs)
Possibly affects other producers too, but one of the many reasons why I avoid Apple (others are its tax avoiding strategies and the markup, the latter as noted above too).
15 • Re: Using BIOS or UEFI (by Lost in Documentation on 2022-04-18 10:32:31 GMT from Canada)
For anyone interested in learning more about the subject, 2 books:
Harnessing the UEFI Shell: Moving the Platform Beyond DOS
By Michael Rothman, Vincent Zimmer, Tim Lewis
Beyond Bios: Developing with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
By Michael Rothman, Vincent Zimmer, Suresh Marisetty
Don't recall if purchased from Amazon, or Barnes & Noble
Probably more information than most will want to know.
For a basic intro, checkout:
https://gparted.org/documentation.php
At the bottom, the 2 items:
The EFI System Partition and the Default Boot Behavior
UEFI boot: how does that actually work, then?
Most laptops nowadays seem to only support UEFI boot.
And then there's the fun of booting Linux on a Chromebook.....
16 • BIOS vs UEFI (by MichaelH on 2022-04-18 11:02:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
The majority, probably the vast majority of people who use Linux, are only doing so because their hardware is not good enough to run the latest version of Windows. Nothing wrong with getting a bit of extra life out of old hardware, but it does mean the BIOS will be more familiar or the only choice for most.
I personally think if people are restricted to a BIOS and 32 bit, they're flogging a dead horse and should just admit defeat - you can't save or re-purpose them all.
I like to change with the times, so I use UEFI where possible, but the U which stands for Unified (pause for derisive laugh) is anything but in appearance. Even with the advantage of mouse control, it can be a pain navigating and finding the exact option you want whereas the old BIOS was familiar and a pretty standard layout across different brands of motherboard.
Like it or not UEFI is the future, at least until something better comes along.
17 • EFI (by Tad Strange on 2022-04-18 12:00:46 GMT from Canada)
I generally prefer EFI, though in my one test machine where I had used several SD cards to test distros, the EFI menu contains many defunct entries that I do not know how to purge (though I've not really looked up on it, since it doesn't bother me).
On my main work laptop I left the Windows drive alone and installed Linux, with it's own EFI partition, on the second drive (It has an NVME and SATA). Keeps things nice and simple, and I'm not concerned about some Windows update breaking things.
18 • BIOS or UEFI... (by Friar Tux on 2022-04-18 14:00:10 GMT from Canada)
To be honest... I really don't care. It's the OS I'm interested in. How my computer boots to that OS doesn't matter to me so long as it boots. I have several laptops of varying ages, so both BIOS and UEFI are present, but again, so long as I get to the OS to do what I need to do, I'd use the old crank to start the engine.
@16 (MichaelH) As for flogging a dead horse... the horse actually ain't dead, yet. I have a couple of laptops that are both BIOS and 32 bit. It says a lot about a company when their products don't age and die on you. All my laptops (by the same company) have out lasted those of most of my kith and kin. And yes, one of the reason I switched from Windows 10 to Linux IS because Windows was not compatible with my ancient hardware. That ancient machine is still working beautifully - and doing the same stuff I would do on Windows quite nicely, and using less resources. (It's no wonder companies with hundreds of computers were reluctant to switch. Buying hundreds of new machines just isn't in the budget.) Don't tell I need new hardware to run your OS when the hardware I've been using still works quite well. If your OS won't run on it I will find an OS that will. (Kind of an elitist view, I would think.)
We have the resources and technology to build products that don't die, yet we build them to deteriorate in a few years. No wonder our landfill sites are overflowing and consumer confidence is at an all time low. I still have and use a fridge built in the sixties. It still works flawlessly. I wish I could say that of a lot of other products. *End of rant.*
19 • BIOS or UEFI (by Didier Spaier on 2022-04-18 14:54:45 GMT from France)
If a machine can boot in EFI mode I have no reason to use the BIOS (or legacy) mode.
I only boot in Legacy mode for testing as I intend that the Slint distribution that I maintain stays able to boot in both mode if the user's machine allows it, or is just not UEFI-ready.
20 • Looking across the fence (by CS on 2022-04-18 16:20:05 GMT from United States)
@3
>> Linux software developers and their users would benefit from spending time running macOS and the best software available for that platform
iTerm2 makes running a terminal on Linux feel like a trip to the stone age. I wish half of the energy spent creating, rewriting and reimagining desktop environments went into making a great terminal emulator.
21 • UEFI or Legacy BIOS (by Roger on 2022-04-18 17:39:27 GMT from Belgium)
I use both across multiple machines was my answer, that is because we run a lot of computers from 2005 to 2010.
As long as those work they will be used and that can be another 10 years.
22 • About Endeavour (by linex on 2022-04-18 20:44:53 GMT from Portugal)
Antergos to Endeavour worth a case study. Arch based desktop is complex, not easy to set up to common users. Wish they keep up working and progress further from "smartass" Arch's.
23 • BIOS forever (by David Walser on 2022-04-18 20:46:06 GMT from United States)
UEFI is a braindead, broken design. Forcing the use of a VFAT filesystem rather than a reliable journaled Linux/UNIX filesystem, so it can get corrupted, making your system unbootable? No thanks. There's also the extra unnecessary added complication of the EFI menu (which can be managed manually with efibootmgr) which I've seen get corrupted before at work. I don't ever choose UEFI as long as I have a choice.
24 • BIOS (by dave on 2022-04-18 22:38:25 GMT from United States)
I still have yet to own a machine that has UEFI. Never owned a laptop either.
25 • BIOS forever (by Didier Spaier on 2022-04-18 22:50:19 GMT from France)
@23 David Walser: quite the opposite, the choice a VFAT file system was very wise: every OS on earth has a support for it, it is simple (thus not costly) to implement, robust enough for this use case: you need to write to the ESP only to install a new OS loader, shim or other stuff, so chances of halting the system while writing on the ESP are very slim. And bear in mind that EFI is for all kinds of OS, not only Linux. Not only the choice of a journalised file system would have been an overkill in this case, it would have needed more time to develop compliant firmware. All this being said I am fine with you not choosing UEFI as long as you have a choice, of course.
26 • Guy (by UEFI on 2022-04-18 23:37:18 GMT from United States)
Gotta go with UEFI. It's just so nice to be able to boot up with EFI stubs. Nothing to install, no dependencies, no bloated GRUB, nothing sitting between the firmware and the Kernel to screw things up. Wouldn't ever want to go back to the old way.
27 • BIOS (by kz4 on 2022-04-19 01:08:34 GMT from Turkey)
Many of us cannot even buy a new computer. The old computers we use are only legacy BIOS.
Remember the Linux based mainstream OS's. One of them was Ubuntu with its icon resembling that OS will be for everyone. So, I hope that at least some of them will keep supporting legacy BIOS systems.
28 • BIOS (by penguinx86 on 2022-04-19 01:58:21 GMT from United States)
My preference is to use BIOS. It helps me get the system up and running quickly, plus its easier to troubleshoot if things go wrong. I will continue to avoid UEFI and use BIOS as long as I have a choice. Taking away BIOS is almost as bad as uppity IAU scientists like Niel de Grasse saying Pluto is no longer a planet.
29 • BIOS vs UEFI (by Andy Figueroa on 2022-04-19 03:34:21 GMT from United States)
In my experience, UEFI has been a buggy, convoluted, and inconsistent mess. When I set up my new desktop five years ago, I purposefully disabled UEFI and chose to use BIOS/Legacy mode with MBR partitioned disks.
I could have also answered that use both across multiple machines, but those machines at the school where I am the system admin that are booting with UEFI are doing so only because the BIOS firmware was so buggy that legacy mode would not work. All my computers at home boot with the BIOS..
Those who wrote that those who use Linux only do so because their computers are old are rude and naive. Virtually every supercomputer in the word runs Linux.
30 • Zephix (by Andy Figueroa on 2022-04-19 03:39:48 GMT from United States)
Exactly what is the excuse for bringing something like Zephix into the database. Here we have another small hobby project masquerading as a Linux distribution that brings nothing to the table, and less. BTW, their web site is asleep.
31 • uefi and bios (by Huan louis on 2022-04-19 07:45:35 GMT from France)
i use both,
becouse i have a pc from 2004 , and a few modern machines.
my 2004 pc has still ribbon data cables , the bios is from American Megatrends,
32 • UEFI and BIOS (by DachshundMan on 2022-04-19 09:52:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am writing on a Lenovo i5 7th gen that uses UEFI as it needs to be able to dual boot with Win10 in case the machine my wife uses for her voluntary work fails as they only support Microsoft SW. I inherited this machine when it needed a minor repair that I was able to make and when I installed Win10 it set the boot to UEFI so I left it like that.
I also use a Samsung 3rd gen i5 that was fine with BIOS boot but when I changed the disk to SSD I stupidly switched it to UEFI boot and triggered a bios bug so now I need to boot to a live USB and then select the "boot from internal disk option". I have tried everything I can think of to reset the bios to no avail so probably I will need to ditch the machine........shame as it is much more solidly made than the Lenovo. Obviously I should have left well alone and used legacy boot.
33 • Horses for Courses (by AdamB on 2022-04-19 10:44:20 GMT from Australia)
I use UEFI on machines which support it, and am happy to use BIOS on older machines (of which I have quite a few).
I use UEFI, when available, partly to get experience with the system, some aspects of which are still a mystery to me - multi-boot setups are particularly problematic.
When creating a VirtualBox virtual machine, the default format is a BIOS/MBR setup, which keeps things delightfully simple. I assume that the same would apply to a QEMU virtual machine.
I like GPT partitioning, and on one of my BIOS desktops I have managed to get it working by using a BIOS Boot Partition; but on another, even older, desktop, I couldn't get that setup to work.
One advantage of BIOS/MBR systems is that GRUB can use chainloading, so that the correct kernel command line switches are applied - but I haven't been able to get chainloading working on a UEFI system - maybe I need to learn more about EFI boot management.
In my experience, both BIOS and UEFI firmware can be buggy. The UEFI user interface is poorly laid out on some motherboards.
34 • Recent UEFI switch (by uz64 on 2022-04-19 10:47:49 GMT from United States)
I have a 2013/2014-era Lenovo laptop that, for most of my time owning it, I ran in either "Both, Legacy First/Preferred" or "Legacy Only" mode. I just didn't trust UEFI.
However, it's 2022 now. Linux's support of UEFI should be much improved by now, to the point of being just as reliable as the BIOS. It might even offer some improvents somehow. So at some point recently, I believe it may have been last year, I switched to "UEFI Only" mode once and for all, and reinstalled/updated the system using the GPT with dedicated UEFI partition in the setup.
It's been working fine ever since, although there's something about there being a special "UEFI" partition with kernels instead of them being in the / partition that I don't like. It lost some simplicity and elegance in my opinion, and even worse, it doesn't give you much freedom in how you set up that partition. For example, I think it has to be FAT--even on a system that Windows is never going to be on. You know... for supposed "compatibility" reasons...
35 • My Mac experience (by AdamB on 2022-04-19 13:10:42 GMT from Australia)
Back in the day, although already a Linux person, I was attracted to the Macintosh hardware, and joined a Mac user group to find out more about Macs. I eventually became the Treasurer of the group, and remained in that position for quite a few years. I purchased a MacBook Air (mid-2013) to take to meetings, and so as to gain experience in running applications on Macs, I gradually moved all my work related to the group (including its website) onto the MBA.
I love this machine; it is still the machine on which I do a lot of my work. It is highly portable, the screen is excellent, and printing works! Having a good screen is important for photo work, and I have become dependent on iPhoto - though I also load all my photos into Shotwell on one of my Linux desktops. I have more recently acquired a second-hand 2011 MacBook Pro, upgraded to 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
Mac OS integates well with my Linux machines, and I use rsync heavily to move files to and from my Linux machines, and my hosting service.
That said, I have become disillusioned with Apple's direction - everything now is a non-upgradeable sealed unit, and priced out of my reach. So I have been looking for alternatives, and have recently found a second-hand Lenovo ThinkPad with 1920x1080 IPS screen, which was affordable, and is looking quite promising.
36 • Pine Microcomputer (by R. Cain on 2022-04-19 13:47:00 GMT from United States)
We all need to 'dial back' our expectations of projects from Pine Microcomputer, including Pine itself.
History has shown that Pine can put together very impressivehardware, and then it focuses its attention on the 'next, great hardware idea', leaving "the community" to get along, on its own, as best it can.
We all absolutely need to recognize, and admit to ourselves---no matter how painful it may be---that Pine makes great projects (not 'products', but 'projects') for hacking purposes, but not much else.
Quotes from Pine regarding the introduction of the PinePhone Pro, and PinePhone:
"...Now that software has reached a higher degree of maturity, introducing a fast smartphone with premium features makes sense..."
"...We cannot wait to see what the community comes up with..."
"...The PinePhone Software Releases page has a complete list of CURRENTLY SUPPORTED phone-optimized Operating System images THAT WORK WITH THE PINEPHONE as well as other related software information. As soon as more patches get mainlined and distributions ship with the updated kernel, they will also be able to run unmodified on the device..."
Perhaps the best indication that "the community" has awakened to reality of Pine's modus operandi is contained in the poll results of Distrowatch's own poll---"Will you buy the PinePhone Pro?", where only three percent of the respondents indicated a positive acceptance of the device---"will order later", and "undecided" are NOT open to be interpreted as positive answers..
37 • No UEFI allowed (by Bob McConnell on 2022-04-19 14:12:45 GMT from United States)
As long as the UEFI code and keys are controlled by Microsoft, there is no way I am going to trust it. First of all, I gave up fighting their bug ridden garbage three decades ago when I found Linux (SLS). Secondly, the only thing I can see that it was actually designed to protect is Microsoft's cash flow. Finally, It appears to be just another lock-in tool enabling them to control what OS can run on every PC. Even if they released the code under the GPL and turned the key management over to a neutral third party, it would be a long time before I could accept it, but not at all under the current conditions.
38 • UEFI (by vmc on 2022-04-19 16:10:01 GMT from United States)
@37 "The UEFI standard was created by the UEFI consortium which consists of over 140 technology companies. UEFI was developed to allow support for new technologies during the booting process before the operating system loads It is based on the EFI 1.10 specification that was originally published by Intel®."
Microsoft does not control UEFI.
39 • Do I use BIOS or EFI/UEFI? (by Ted H in Minnesota on 2022-04-19 16:25:17 GMT from United States)
I have 10+ notebook computers. Most of them have BIOS, not EFI/UEFI on them.
I prefer to use BIOS computers, because in most cases they are adjustable to how I want them to boot, boot order etc, and it is straight-forward on how to do so!
EFI/UEFI, on the other hand, is a total mystery to me. Don't know how to set anything (if it's possible?) and have no idea what does what.
Ted H
40 • UEFI (by Bobbie Sellers on 2022-04-19 16:54:47 GMT from United States)
I have been using this for some time. I had problems understanding it at first of course.
You object to using FAT 32 but have no problem using the Microsoft Boot Record?
I fail to understand why you balk at FAT 32 but swallow the MBR..
As for Secure Boot turn it off. It is only a marketing device.
The new system of locking the Windows installed disk is easily defeated by using
either a proprietary partition manager or the partition manager on the Windows install.
The main problem is that when Windows receives Kernel updates, it will re-write the startup data. An easy way to avoid this is to avoid connecting Windows to the Internet and if you must run it install Windows to Virtual Box without internet access. If you must have updates maybe use a cheap machine to run nothing but Windows
There are plenty of documents both textual and video on the 'net to help you with using
UEFI.
You may have trouble with multiple Linux distributions on the same disk and again the answer
is to try them out in Virtual Box or other emulation machine.
bliss - brought to you by the power and ease of PCLinuxOS
and a minor case of hypergraphia
41 • Basic I/O System (by Justin on 2022-04-19 20:16:28 GMT from United States)
I use BIOS wherever I can. I have UEFI on one laptop because it's not possible to boot non-UEFI from the internal storage. Everything is easier with BIOS booting, especially multiboot. It's grub1/grub4dos, syslinux, isolinux, etc. were made for humans to work with. I never could get grub2 "configured" with the setup I wanted. I switched to rEFInd because the autodiscovery was able to overcome whatever grub2 couldn't for me. It's still not ideal, and I'd edit a menu.cfg file over the voodoo I had to do with UEFI.
I agree with @37: I think the only problem UEFI was really made to solve was Microsoft's loss of control on PC hardware. I have always found UEFI booting to be more complicated than is necessary, and at best I've only seen parity with BIOS. Whatever features and advantages there are, I have yet to need them.
42 • MBR is Master boot record (by Adam on 2022-04-19 22:14:00 GMT from Canada)
@40 just a fact-check, via quote from wiki "The concept of MBRs was publicly introduced in 1983 with [IBM] PC DOS 2.0. "
43 • BIOS (by Trihexagonal on 2022-04-19 23:53:23 GMT from United States)
All my computers are laptops from the Vista/Win7 era and have BIOS. Two of which are 32bit machines, one runs i386 FreeBSD and the other i386 Kali Linux, and both do so nicely.
I don't plan on ever upgrading to newer hardware.
44 • Legacy (by Debian- Manjaro user on 2022-04-20 09:17:15 GMT from United States)
Love my Legacy Bios
45 • MBR (by mdisaster on 2022-04-20 10:14:16 GMT from Italy)
A person can be perfectly able to carry sacks of gravel under the sun, and still not feel inclined to do so. Same logic applies to UEFI - next time I feel the urge to install Linux on a UEFI PC I'll make sure to allocate an inordinate amount of time to googling around for all the required tricks and hacks. In the mean time I'll be distro hopping on my legacy Linux-friendly machines.
46 • rEFInd (by AdamB on 2022-04-20 13:22:07 GMT from Australia)
Thanks to poster @15 for the link; the site "UEFI boot: how does that actually work, then?
" greatly improved my knowledge of how UEFI works, and led me to rEFInd, which, so far, looks like solving all my problems with multi-booting on UEFI machines.
No need to configure chainloading, as on BIOS/MBR machines.
rEFInd seems to honour the original kernel command line switches.
47 • @18 (Friar Tux) (by Stefan on 2022-04-20 20:11:03 GMT from Brazil)
>> We have the resources and technology to build products that don't die, yet we build them to deteriorate in a few years. No wonder our landfill sites are overflowing and consumer confidence is at an all time low. <<
Industrial trash piles are growing insanely higher in my country, too. Then I try to Reduce/Reuse/Recycle in a very conscious way. Regarding to computers, my attitude is doing a substantial UNDERCLOCK in both the CPU and RAM. It not only extends the lifetime of the hardware, but also saves energy.
Any computer will last too much when UNDERCLOCKED. BTW, nobody needs a superpowerful Ryzen 7 just to do trivial tasks like surfing the Web, managing e-mails, or editing texts/photos/videos. Only gamers should be "forgiven" for such a waste of resources.
Believe me: Overclocking is an ecological crime! It kills CPUs and RAMs by overheating them to death...
48 • waste/clocking etc (by Otis on 2022-04-20 23:07:05 GMT from United States)
@47 Sometimes I feel like we're sparrows pecking at the Rock of Gibralter with our efforts as individuals to recycle and use sustainable things, let alone underclocking to make computer hardware last longer. Heck I heard a lecture several years ago on the futility of individuals trying to make a difference in the face of corporate waste world wide (it used to just be the Americans, now corporate and government generated waste is on every continent).
In short, we'd have to have a HUGE cooperative effort at boycotting all corporations that pollute the environment and waste resources. Never going to happen. Look at us.
So... now we're watching as new tech is coming around to deal with the waste itself (rather than cause it to not happen in the first place).
49 • Zephix (by Chris on 2022-04-21 08:26:06 GMT from Luxembourg)
I saw that zephix has moved to
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zephix-linux/
Interesting project, will monitor. Thx for having shared here.
50 • Wasted (by Friar Tux on 2022-04-21 13:57:26 GMT from Canada)
@47 & @48... Corporate, and other waste will keep piling up, until someone figures out a way to seriously monetise the removal of it. It's the human way. Most people want quick convenience and don't think past the immediate NOW. This is why Microsoft and Apple are so profitable.
As for making your machine last longer, underclocking is great, especially, as @47 said, " just to do trivial tasks like surfing the Web, managing e-mails, or editing texts/photos/videos..." which is what 90% of us do. My laptop is on about 16 hours a day - it goes on at 6:30 am and goes down at 10:30 pm. It is my library (books, newspapers, magazines, technical journals), recipe box, encyclopedia, writer's tool (stories, poems, articles, etc.), graphic artist's tool (painting, drawing), communications device (talking to/messaging kith and kin), and much, much more. Yet, I still have and use my original laptop I got in, about, 2007. And it still works beautifully running an older version of Lubuntu/LXDE. You can tell, on it, which keys are most used and where my wrists rest which I type by the wear marks on the keyboard. The battery doesn't hold a charge anymore but who cares, it never leaves the house so it can stay plugged in. (When we had a desktop unit IT had to stay always plugged in. When we discovered laptops that desktop unit was donated to a university Computer Science student - NOT the landfill - with the promise to pass it on to another student when they were done with it. Hopefully, it's still making the rounds - maybe as an antique.)
51 • BIOS vs UEFI? (by penguinx86 on 2022-04-21 15:06:53 GMT from United States)
Many devices don't seem to have BIOS or UEFI: my Chromebook, my son's M1 MacBook, my daughter's iPad, my Android phone, my wife's iPhone and my Kindle Fire Tablet to name a few. All of these devices just boot to the GUI with no need to configure anything on a command line level. In fact, it's difficult to even get to a command line these devices. Is this the future of computing? Maybe the WinTel x86/64 architecture with BIOS/UEFI is going extinct?
52 • BIOS vs UEFI (by pengxuin on 2022-04-22 20:38:22 GMT from New Zealand)
@51 "Many devices don't seem to have BIOS or UEFI... In fact, it's difficult to even get to a command line these devices."
They have a BIOS, just not the same. It is just DNI to access after the system has been installed.
Number of Comments: 52
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| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Full list of all issues |
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