 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 970, 30 May 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
In a world increasingly full of companies and organizations spending great amounts of time and money to track Internet users, it can feel as though someone is always looking over your shoulder. There are a handful of Linux distributions which try to improve a person's privacy while they are on-line. One such distribution is Tails, a Debian-based project which filters its network traffic through the Tor network. We begin this week with a look at Tails and some of the new improvements which have gone into Tails 5. Do you use a privacy-focused distribution? Let us know which is your favourite in this week's Opinion Poll. Speaking of privacy, users of Linuxfx will be disappointed to learn the project exposed its database of users to the public and we share details on this in our News section. We also share plans the Budgie developers have for their desktop environment and talk about a configuration issue which is terminating processes on Ubuntu. While we often talk about minimal distributions where users can add extra software as needed, we rarely talk about the reverse process. In this week's Questions and Answers column we discuss taking apart a heavy distribution to make it smaller. We are then 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) |
Tails 5.0
The Tails distribution, also known as The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is a Debian-based project which seeks to provide anonymous web browsing and on-line communication for its users. The project connects to the Internet through the Tor network, making it more difficult for other people to identify and track users running Tails.
Tails 5.0 (and later versions of the 5.x series - there are new releases scheduled at the rate of about one per month) are based on Debian 11 "Bullseye". There are some key changes in the 5.x series and I've picked out what I feel are the highlights. One is the introduction of the Kleopatra key and certificate manager:
We added Kleopatra to replace the OpenPGP Applet and the Password and Keys utility, also known as Seahorse. The OpenPGP Applet was not actively developed anymore and was complicated for us to keep in Tails. The Password and Keys utility was also poorly maintained and Tails users suffered from too many of its issues until now. Kleopatra provides equivalent features in a single tool and is more actively developed.
Another change concerns adding extra software to persistent installs of Tails:
The Additional Software feature of the Persistent Storage is enabled by default to make it faster and more robust to configure your first additional software package.
Another point which stuck out in the project's announcement was the use of driverless printing and scanning to support more devices:
The new support for driverless printing and scanning in Linux makes it easier to make recent printers and scanners work in Tails.
Tails is available in two flavours. One is a disk image disk (IMG) which can be written to a USB thumb drive and used for persistent storage. The other download option is an ISO file which can be burned to a DVD or more conveniently run in a virtual machine. Both files are approximately 1.2GB.
Early impressions
The Tails media boots to the GNOME desktop and opens a configuration window that offers to help us set the desktop's language, keyboard layout, and locale. There is also a button at the bottom of the window which opens a second settings panel. This one offers more toggles and options such as setting a root password, disabling networking, enabling/disabling MAC address spoofing, and enabling the Unsafe Browser - a browser that does not try to keep you anonymous, but can be used to sign into network portals (like the ones used by many businesses).
I discovered changing my preferred language also caused the keyboard layout to change. This is an inconvenience for me since my desired language is Canadian English, but my keyboard is US English.
The next page of the welcome window asks if we want to connect to Tor automatically or manually. The automatic approach may make it more apparent that Tor is being used if someone is monitoring our network traffic. Tails will attempt to connect to Tor and then let us know when our network connection is ready.
Tails 5.0 -- Connecting to the Tor network
(full image size: 120kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Tails runs the GNOME 3.38 desktop environment with a thin panel across the top of the display. This panel holds the Activities button, the system tray and two classic GNOME style drop-down menus called Applications and Places. These two menus provide access to a classic application menu and shortcuts which will open the file manager in commonly accessed areas. On the desktop we find three icons. One is called Trash and opens the GNOME Files application. The other two, labelled "Report an error" and "Tails documentation", open a web browser to provide access to documentation, support options, and bug reporting tips.
Tails 5.0 -- The Applications menu
(full image size: 65kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The bug reporting documentation mentions a convenient tool called WhisperBack which is installed on Tails. This tool helps us organize bug reports and collect system information we can include in issue tickets.
Tails 5.0 -- Collecting data for an error report
(full image size: 125kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Special applications
What makes Tails an interesting and useful platform is its collection of software designed to assist users in their efforts to communicate and browse the web anonymously. The distribution includes the Tor Browser, which is essentially Firefox under another name which connects to the Internet through the Tor network. This hides our IP address from websites we visit.
Tails 5.0 -- Testing the Tor Browser
(full image size: 142kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The distribution also ships with a useful file transmission and sharing tool called OnionShare. This application is split into three tabs. The first tab will allow us to select files we want to share over the network. The application then generates a unique URL for the file which allows the file to be accessed by other users through the Tor Browser. After the file has been transferred once OnionShare stops sharing it.
The second tab in the OnionShare application performs the opposite task, generating a unique address that will allow people to connect to our computer and send us a file. The third and final tab sets up a web server (again with a unique URL) which other people can access using the Tor Browser.
Tails 5.0 -- Sharing a file over OnionShare
(full image size: 62kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
OnionShare may be my favourite application included in Tails. It's wonderfully simple to use, it has a streamlined interface, and it automatically closes its connections after a file as been transferred. This is a great way to send or receive files over the Internet without requiring any additional software, opening firewall ports, or configuring anything. It's entirely a point and click experience and anonymous. As long as the other user has a copy of Tor Browser all that is required is sending them our unique Tor address in order to share files.
Tails also ships with a tool to open Veracrypt archives and access the encrypted volume's files. This is also a friendly point-n-click tool.
The distribution includes the KeePassXC password manager which is handy for keeping track of passwords in an encrypted vault. We're also given the GtkHash application which will generate multiple hash values for a given file. This helps us verify if a file has been corrupted or altered.
One final program which stood out during my trial was Kleopatra. This is a general purpose desktop application for generating security keys, signing files, encrypting data, and decrypting files. Kleopatra has evolved nicely in recent years and I found it pleasantly friendly to use while still offering a Swiss Army knife collection of encryption functions.
Tails 5.0 -- Generating security keys with Kleopatra
(full image size: 155kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Common applications
Along with its special collection of security and privacy tools, Tails ships with some common applications as well. These include the Unsafe Browser (which is essentially Firefox under a different name), Thunderbird, and LibreOffice. We're also treated to the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a simple image viewer, and the Brasero disc burning software. I found the Pidgin messaging software, the Totem video player, and Audacity for editing audio. The distribution includes media codecs, allowing Totem to play audio and video files.
Tails ships with the Synaptic package manager in case we need access to additional software. However, Synaptic's connection to remote repositories can be quite slow since its traffic is routed through Tor. We can also run the usual collection of GNU command line tools and read their accompanying manual pages. Tails runs the systemd suite and, in the background, we find version 5.10 of the Linux kernel.
Hardware
I experimented with Tails on my laptop and in a VirtualBox virtual machine. When running in the virtual machine Tails performed well. It was stable, desktop performance was okay (not great, but practical). When running on my laptop the distribution ran a bit smoother, offering average desktop performance and detecting my machine's hardware.
Something I found curious was system alerts and the Totem media player would both play audio perfectly, but the Tor Browser would not play audio when I tried watching videos on-line, even when launched in Unsafe mode. I'm not sure if this was intentional or a bug, but other applications played sound out of the box.
The Tails distribution consumed about 645MB of memory when sitting idle at the GNOME desktop. This is actually a little better than some other desktop distributions featuring GNOME that I've tried recently.
I ran into a few quirks with the live media. For instance, my laptop wouldn't boot from the ISO file, just the thumb drive image (IMG) file. I also discovered that, despite the IMG file being just 1.2GB in size, Tails will refuse to boot if the thumb drive it is stored on is less than 8GB in size. I suspect the extra space is required to support the persistent storage feature, but it's required even if we don't enable the persistent storage option.
Conclusions
In the past I've felt as though Tails was one of the better distributions available for people who wanted to communicate anonymously or visit websites without giving away their location. It was a solid tool, if somewhat held back by two issues. One was that some of the included software was either geared more toward technically experienced users or hadn't yet matured. Early versions of OnionShare come to mind as software which still had some problems when it was first introduced in Tails. The other issue was performance. GNOME is one of the heaviest open source desktop environments and early versions of GNOME 3 were particularly cumbersome, especially when run on lower-end hardware.
What I have appreciated about Tails 5 is it feels like a polished, evolutionary step forward without (as far as I can tell) any regressions from the 4.x series. GNOME 38 still isn't as responsive and smooth as later versions of GNOME (40 and newer) have been for me, but it feels a little better than past releases.
I really like the new Kleopatra tool which acts as a one-stop application for all our encryption key management, file signing, and encryption needs. Kleopatra is another tool I feel has become more polished in recent years and I enjoyed having it in Tails 5.
Both Tor Browser and OnionShare worked beautifully for me. I think Tor Browser has always been a solid experience and it continues to be good. OnionShare was a good idea in the past, but I sometimes encountered stability issues with it. The current version feels easier to use and entirely stable.
I like the initial configuration screen Tails displays when the distribution starts. The default settings lock down the system (using MAC randomization, locking the Unsafe Browser option, and locking admin functions). However, we can toggle these features if we wish to give more flexibility. This walks a careful line between being secure by default while allowing users latitude to perform more actions.
Last, but not least, I appreciate the detail and honesty of the Tails documentation. There are a lot of tips and guidelines on the project's website. I especially appreciate the project is transparent about both the features Tails offers and the limitations. Some projects boast they will prevent all viruses or will keep people safe on-line, or will keep you anonymous. Tails doesn't make wild marketing claims. The developers explain how their tools work and how they help, but also warn there are limits and nothing is guaranteed. I appreciate this balanced approach to keeping users informed.
In short, if you need to browse the web or want to share files without giving away your location, then Tails is probably one of the most secure and easiest to use distribution to do this.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Tails has a visitor supplied average rating of: 5/10 from 17 review(s).
Have you used Tails? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Linuxfx exposes user database, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop
The Linuxfx project makes a number of questionable claims. This Linux-based system reportedly runs Android applications along with its native GNU/Linux applications. The project's website also claims there are over one million Linuxfx users in the world with over 15,000 downloads per week. Unsurprisingly these claims are not true. One of Linuxfx's features is an on-line registration and activation process, similar to the one used by Windows. This registration process collects information, such as a license key, IP address, and e-mail address which it then uploads to a server. This information, until recently, was publicly exposed and one enterprising user pointed out the database of user information was available for anyone to read. The database lists about 20,000 entries for users. "The fxkeys table contains the metadata for all registered Pro licenses for Linuxfx, consisting of the license key, email address and some other stuff (expiration, quantity of machines licensed, etc.). The machines table contains the metadata for all Linuxfx installations that has phoned home for the first time. It contains the IP address of the machine, some other metadata ripped off a IP geo-location service (set by the client), and the license key (if activated). There are only over 20,000 entries in this file, a far cry from the 1M number claimed by the company. With this information, anybody can correlate an activated installation along with its IP address with its owner's email address, which is not good."
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Some people running the new 22.04 version of Ubuntu have reported a problem with the way the distribution now handles low memory situations. In the past, Ubuntu (like most Linux distributions) would allow processes to consume as much memory as they wanted. This would sometimes result in applications gobbling up memory and then swap space, resulting in more disk access and poor performance. Ubuntu now employs the systemd out of memory (OOM) service which will kill processes when memory gets close to full. Some people are feeling the side effects of this change, specifically finding applications (and their related processes) are suddenly terminating without warning. "Ubuntu 22.04 comes with the systemd-oomd service enabled by default, which has been 'helpfully' killing my IDE and/or terminals whenever I try to compile an application using an abundance of threads/memory. What is the right way to either turn this off, or configure the service to not shoot random processes in the face while I'm using them?" The new behaviour can be turned off using the command "sudo systemctl disable --now systemd-oomd" and a bug has been filed for this issue.
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While the Budgie desktop environment is mostly associated with the Solus project, the desktop has been picked up and packaged for other Linux distributions. Development of Budgie has been fairly quiet recently, but that looks to be about to change. Joshua Strobl has published an overview of plans for Budgie, both the current version (10) and the upcoming Budgie 11. Some of the plans involve switching from old technologies running behind the scenes to new ones: "Deprecate our use of libwnck and separate our 'Abomination' application tracking library into a dedicated library for use in both Budgie 10 and 11. The immediate priority will be supporting X11 directly in this library but an important objective for it for Budgie 11 is supporting Wayland. While it is not guaranteed to happen for Budgie 10.x, if we happen to be in a position with Budgie 10 and the library that we support both X11 and Wayland, with no other hard deps on X11, it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility to have a Budgie 10 under Wayland." The detailed report has a lot more information.
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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) |
Taking apart a Linux distro
Tear-it-all-down asks: Lots of Linux distros let you build from the ground up - LFS, Arch, Gentoo, etc - but I want to know about the reverse process. How hard is it to take a fully functioning distro like Ubuntu and deconstruct it? Any tips or common steps involved you can share?
DistroWatch answers: While it is possible to start with a full featured distribution and whittle it down to something smaller, the process is longer and often more tricky than starting small and working up. This is why it's more common to find distributions which start from scratch, or with a minimal base and encourage users to add more components, rather than having a large project offer tools to trim down the installation.
In fact, with most distributions it will be easier to start from a minimal base and work up. If you have the urge to reduce an Arch-based system you can start with Arch itself (or one of its many minimal children) instead. If you want to get a minimal version of Debian or Ubuntu there are net-install and Core editions of these two, respectively. The same applies for openSUSE with its network image. In fact, almost all of the major distributions offer some form of minimal install base, or have a parent distribution which does. This means it's rare someone would want or need to start with a large install and work backwards to minimize it.
While starting with a full install and trimming the fat from it is harder, it's certainly possible. I think there are three important things to keep in mind if you're going to try to slim down an existing distribution:
- Figure out why you want to remove something before you remove anything. Don't just rush in, slicing pieces out of the distribution. It's likely to break something and probably won't offer a practical benefit. Identify a specific problem or issue and then look toward addressing that issue. For example, if you want to improve boot times, don't just remove a handful of packages, you can accomplish just as much by disabling unwanted services or starting them later. If your desktop environment is taking up too much RAM, don't just remove it and replace it with something else. Look at what services the desktop is starting and disable or remove the extra components. You can make most systems faster and lighter without removing anything entirely. It's often more efficient to reduce the number of items which start automatically than replace them.
- Use the package manager. Some people want to dive in and remove items by hand, removing executable files or libraries they feel are no longer necessary. This usually leads to disaster. Most distributions include a package manager which can not only remove software cleanly, but it can also warn you if the package you are removing will break other components. You might believe you don't want or need the Samba software package since you don't use network shares, but your file manager might use it as a run-time dependency. Removing Samba might remove your file manager or cause it to stop working. Your package manager will warn you of this.
- Test your changes often. It can be tempting to start cutting out packages you don't want anymore and just keep slashing out the cruft. However, I recommend keeping notes of what you're doing and rebooting often to test each major change. You don't want to remove twenty different packages only to find out your system no longer boots and you don't know which change broke it. Try removing one or two packages, then restarting, then remove another package, then restart again. That way it'll be clear which package was necessary and caused the Jenga blocks to all come crashing down.
While these steps will allow you to shrink an existing distribution, your efforts will probably yield better (and faster) results if you start with a minimal spin of your distribution (or its parent) and add just the items you need.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Alpine Linux 3.16.0
The Alpine Linux is a lightweight distribution well suited to server and container workloads. The Alpine team have announced the first release of the 3.16 series. "We are pleased to announce the release of Alpine Linux 3.16.0, the first in the v3.16 stable series. Various improvements in the setup scripts: Better support for NVMe. Administrator user creation. Possibility to add SSH keys. New setup-desktop script for easy install of desktop environment. Go 1.18, LLVM 13, Node.js (current) 18.2, Ruby 3.1, Rust 1.60, GNOME 42, KDE Plasma 5.24 / KDE Applications 22.04 / Plasma Mobile Gear 22.04, Python 3.10, PHP 8.1, R 4.2, Xen 4.16, Podman 4.0. Significant changes: sudo has been moved to community repository, which means that only latest stable release branch will get security updates in the future. Suggested replacement is doas or doas-sudo-shim." This release also removed PHP 7 and Python 2. Additional details are available in the release announcement.
Clonezilla Live 3.0.0-26
Clonezilla Live is a Debian-based live CD containing Clonezilla, a partition and disk cloning software. The project's latest version, Clonezilla Live 3.0.0-26, is based on Debian's Unstable branch and includes version 5.17 of the Linux kernel. "The underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded. This release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2022-05-22; Linux kernel has been updated to 5.17.6; Partclone has been updated to 0.3.20; this release supports APFS (Apple File System) imaging/cloning now; added LUKS support; a better mechanism than dd is implemented; it's recommended to encrypt the image when saving the LUKS device; updated the de_DE, el_GR, es_ES, fr_FR, ja_JP, hu_HU, pl_PL and sk_SK language files; added wavemon, memtester, edac-utils, shc and uml-utilities to the live system; removed s3ql from the live system; a better mechanism to check GPT/MBR format of a disk has been implemented - this is a workaround to deal with ChromeOS Flex partition table." Additional details are in the release announcement.
AlmaLinux OS 9.0
The AlmaLinux OS team have announced the release of a new version of their Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone. The project published AlmaLinux OS 9.0 which includes support for four CPU architectures and runs version 5.14 of the Linux kernel. "AlmaLinux OS 9.0 is based on upstream kernel version 5.14 and contains enhancements around cloud and container development and improvements to the web console (Cockpit). This release also delivers enhancements for security and compliance, including additional security profiles, greatly improved SELinux performance and user authentication logs. Other various updates include Python 3.9, GCC 11 and the latest versions of LLVM, Rust and Go compilers to make modernizing the applications faster and easier. You can read more about it by checking out the release notes." Additional details can be found in the release announcement.
LXLE Focal
Ronnie Whisler has announced the release of a brand-new version of LXLE, a lightweight distribution based on Ubuntu and featuring the LXDE desktop. The new version is based on the long-term supported Ubuntu 20.04: "After many weeks of tweaks, adjustments and issues addressed, the final version of LXLE Focal is being released for public criticism. This version is based on Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS with LXDE. This release concentrated on keeping the distribution light yet providing full-featured apps and utilities necessary to deal with today's computing demands. Issues addressed: Image Writer updated; Stick Formater updated; Driver Manager updated; Languages Installer updated; Input Method updated; PPA Library Additions updated; Xarchiver Contextual Menu fixed. Replaced Applications: Arista replaced with HandBrake; Pinta replaced with GIMP; Pluma replaced with Mousepad; SeaMonkey replaced with LibreWolf; AbiWord/Gnumeric replaced with LibreOffice; Mirage replaced with Viewnior; Linphone/Pidgin replace with uTox." Continue to the release announcement for a full list of changes, known issues and screenshots.
LXLE Focal -- Running the LXDE interface
(full image size: 5.7MB, resolution: 2560x1600 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: 2,727
- Total data uploaded: 42.1TB
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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) |
Favourite privacy-focused distro
We started this week with a look at Tails, a privacy oriented distribution which strives to make on-line web browsing and communication anonymous. While Tails is one of the better known privacy focused distributions, there are others. Which of the privacy oriented distributions is your favourite? Let us know yours best and worst experiences with anonymity protecting software in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on the Unity desktop environment in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Which is your favourite privacy-focused distro?
| Linux Kodachi: | 45 (3%) |
| Septor: | 24 (2%) |
| Tails: | 355 (25%) |
| Whonix: | 66 (5%) |
| Other: | 72 (5%) |
| I do not use privacy distros: | 855 (60%) |
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| Website News |
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the forms of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $84 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Robert H | $19 |
| Kevin W | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Greg M | $10 |
| Guilherme C | $10 |
| Warren C | $5 |
| John H | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| P.B. C | $2 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 6 June 2022. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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