 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 972, 13 June 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 24th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are a lot of editions and spins of Ubuntu. There are official community editions of Ubuntu featuring almost every major open source desktop. There are server editions, plus editions for embedded devices, and cloud deployments. One variation of Ubuntu we usually do not get to see is a rolling release spin. This week we are going to turn our attention to an unofficial rolling edition of Ubuntu called Rolling Rhino Remix. Read on to learn more about this edition and its custom update tools in our Feature Story. What do you think of a rolling version of Ubuntu? Let us know in our Opinion Poll. This week we share a look at a second distribution, this one called SambaBox, which is intended to act as an open source alternative to Active Directory. We share more details on this distribution's features and setup process below. In our News section we talk about the future of SUSE Linux Enterprise and the possible effect this will have on openSUSE's Leap branch. We also share updates from both the Haiku and Tails projects as the developers of these two projects refine their operating systems. Then we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and share 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) |
Rolling Rhino Remix
While Ubuntu has a lot of users and a reputation for being easy to get up and running on both workstation and server machines, one thing Canonical has never done with the distribution is offer a rolling release platform. The team behind Rolling Rhino Remix are working to change that by creating a rolling and constantly updated spin of Ubuntu.
Rolling Rhino Remix is an un-official Ubuntu flavour which converts the Ubuntu operating system into a rolling release Linux distribution by tracking the devel series.
While the idea of a constantly up to date version of Ubuntu probably appeals to many people, the Rolling Rhino Remix team offers this warning:
It is important to note that Rolling Rhino Remix is a Linux distribution for those who are already experienced with Linux, it is not recommended to use this distribution as a beginner.
The Rolling Rhino project ships with four key tools which set it apart from the typical Ubuntu experience. These are utilities which help initialize the rolling aspect of the distribution, manage its features, and keep the system up to date. These four utilities are:
- rhino-init. This is a command which will initialise Rolling Rhino Remix. It will replace /etc/apt/sources.list with the Ubuntu development repositories (as opposed to the next Ubuntu release). Once it has completed this step it will automatically update all other packages via APT.
- rhino-config. The tool rhino-config offers two ways of changing your configuration. A non-interactive mode, where you can use flags to toggle options in the command line, and an interactive mode which is recommended for newcomers. Interactive mode will walk you through the enabling/disabling of features. Once an option has been enabled you will not see it reappear in rhino-config.
- rhino-update. The rhino-update command will be the command that you will use to update your system. It will update your system via APT as well as provide the latest tools that the project develops.
- Pacstall. Pacstall is a piece of software intended to bring the experience of the Arch User Repository to Ubuntu.
The Rolling Rhino Remix (henceforth called Rhino) install media is 3.4GB in size. At first, Rhino has the appearance, feel, and experience of Ubuntu 22.04. It has the same customized GNOME desktop, the same Ubiquity system installer, and virtually all the components and branding are the same. The project's installer does link to Rhino's own release notes, but otherwise the initial experience is entirely like running the latest version of Ubuntu.
Early impressions
Once I had installed Rhino and signed into the GNOME desktop I followed the project's documentation to switch the repositories over from Ubuntu's to Rhino's. The documentation mentions we should immediately run rhino-init from the command line. I found out that this is an instruction to be taken literally (we should run "rhino-init" and not "sudo rhino-init"). The system will prompt for our sudo password as necessary.
The rhino-init tool adjusts repositories and then appears to fetch updated repository information. I then rebooted the machine to make sure everything was still functioning properly, which it was.
I'm not sure why the distribution doesn't ship with its repositories already set up on the install media, or run a script when we first get signed in to perform the rhino-init tasks automatically. This feels like something which could be accomplished without user intervention and perhaps that will become a feature of the project in the future.
Something I feel is worth mentioning is rhino-init and rhino-update are not programs or shell scripts. They are shell aliases and therefore tied to the Bash shell. This is important for a few reasons. One is that if we switch shells these tool may stop working. The other point I want to make is these shell aliases string commands together, sometimes prefixing commands with sudo. This should be fine in theory, but it doesn't always work in practise. If we mistype a password or a process doesn't gracefully handle displaying the password prompt then the system appears to hang or will fail to perform its requested task. I ran into these problems a few times and I found myself thinking how using these two Rhino tools could have been better if we'd been asked to run them as scripts, possibly with elevated privileges. I'll give some examples of the Rhino tools working and failing in a moment.
Rolling Rhino Remix 2022 -- Examining the rhino- aliases
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Things started out fairly well. After performing the rhino-init step and rebooting, I next opened a terminal and ran rhino-update to fetch available updates. This caused several Deb packages to be fetched and, when the command finished, it advised I restart the computer. In fact, rhino-update always recommends we perform a restart, regardless of how minor the package upgrade process was. This might be prudent, but it's often unnecessary.
Using the configuration tools
The experience was going well so far and my next step was to login and try running rhino-config. As the documentation mentions, rhino-config can be run in one of two ways. We can run it in interactive mode where rhino-config will ask us if we want to toggle on/off certain features. We can also run "rhino-config enable" or "rhino-config disable" followed by the name of a feature to turn one feature on or off.
Rolling Rhino Remix 2022 -- Adjusting the system configuration
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My first time through with the rhino-config utility did not go well. Unlike the other two rhino- utilities, rhino-config is not an alias, it is a compiled command line program. When I ran it I was asked a few questions and the first time I tried to answer "yes" to a change (in order to remove Snap), the utility tried to run a command using sudo. However, something apparently wasn't set up correctly or the keyboard input wasn't cleared successfully, because sudo immediately failed without prompting for my password and aborted the configuration process, returning me to the command line. I next tried running sudo first with a simple command ("sudo id" in this case) and then re-ran rhino-config so sudo would remember my credentials.
This seemed to work, but since rhino-config has already been run, it skipped over the questions I had been asked before, including the step which had failed to make the change on my first run. This meant I ended the second run still without having changed anything.
Running "rhino-config help enable" will present us with a list of flags the rhino-config tool supports when run in non-interactive mode. This will allow us to toggle one feature on/off at a time.
The first switch I tried to change was swapping out the Snap framework (snapd) for Flatpak. The documentation says we can do this by running "rhino-config enable --snapdpurge" to remove the snapd package and install Flatpak. However, when I tried running either "rhino-config enable --snapdpurge" or "rhino-config enable -s" the utility returned an error saying "Mainline kernel is already installed!"
This is a problem for two reasons. The first is the mainline kernel option is associated with the "-m" and "--mainline" flags, not "--snapdpurge". The second problem is the mainline kernel was not installed, it was a feature I had disabled. In fact, running "rhino-config disable --mainline" returned a similar error reporting "Mainline kernel is already disabled!" Basically most of my attempts to enable or disable features through rhino-config were failing.
Since Snap was still installed I tried a form of "turning it off and on again". I ran "rhino-config disable --snapdpurge" to install Snap. (This command looks backward, but it's disabling the removal of Snap, which just means it installs Snap). Since Snap was already on the system this was a quick procedure and simply marked the Snap software as installed by APT. Then I ran the removal command again, "rhino-config enable --snapdpurge". This seemed to work at first, rhino-config got to work, but it eventually failed while reporting authentication errors, though I was not prompted for my password. In the end, Snap remained on the system.
Pacstall
I had better luck setting up Pacstall. I enabled the Pacstall framework by running rhino-config. Pacstall provides a series of scripts which assist the user in installing third-party software.
Rolling Rhino Remix 2022 -- Searching for software with Pacstall
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I started out by running "pacstall -S <package-name>" in an effort to find new software I could install. (The "-S" flag searches for available packages.) However, I found most searches either didn't return any results or would hang. Searching for "firefox", for example, immediately returned no matches, but searching for "falkon" and "doas" caused Pacstall to lock up. When this happened there was virtually no network or disk activity, the system would just sit and wait for me to terminate the Pacstall process.
I found an on-line listing of Pacstall recipes. From this list I was able to install a few items, including the neofetch and tmux packages. These installed without any problems and just paused to prompt me for confirmation prior to running the specified script and fetching dependencies.
Conclusions
The concept of Rolling Rhino Remix is one which I feel is worthwhile. A lot of people have been saying for years that Ubuntu could benefit from a proper rolling release branch, not just a development repository. However, few developers have taken on the task, trying to make it work. Rhino is a decent attempt at making this a working option.
Some things are definitely working and working well. The initial configuration command (rhino-init) and the update command (rhino-upgrade) seem to work properly to set up the system and bring all packages up to date. These functioned as expected and I was pretty happy with them.
The Pacstall framework seems to be getting larger and more polished since I first tried it last year. There are still some issues when searching for packages, but installing new items seems to work without any problems.
The one sore spot in my experience was the rhino-config command line program. Running rhino-config rarely worked properly. Sometimes the tool falsely reported the status of features, sometimes it failed due to problems in calling sudo, and sometimes it incorrectly interpreted command line flags. It was an ongoing problem in what was otherwise a mostly smooth experience.
I will say though that making the two of the rhino- commands aliases rather than scripts strikes me as a problem. As I mentioned above, using aliases will break the tools if the user switches shells and it seems to cause issues when some commands try to run sudo, especially if sudo doesn't already have our cached credentials.
In short, I think Rhino is off to a promising start. It needs a few things worked out and maybe a few things automated before I'd say it's ready for general consumption, but it's off to a decent start. I especially think Ubuntu could benefit from a rolling release in the way Rhino is trying since it supports working with ZFS which allows the administrator to take filesystem snapshots before each upgrade. I'd love to see tools like boot environments or Timeshift added to Rhino in order to make its rolling upgrades bulletproof.
One final point I'd like to mention is Rhino's documentation. Rhino is a fairly young project, but the remix-specific documentation which covers installing and using the rhino- utilities is clear and detailed. Not many young projects pay attention to documentation this early in their development and I tip my hat to the developers for making this a priority. It helped me a lot when I was trying to sort out some of the workings of rhino-update and rhino-config.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
SUSE team considers the future of SLE and Leap, Haiku porting more drivers, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant
While much attention this past week was focused on openSUSE 15.4 Leap, many in the openSUSE community have concerns about the future of this branch of their distribution. openSUSE 15.4 is the penultimate release of Leap and it looks like 15.5, likely to be released next year, may be the last of the line. Much of this concern has come in the wake of an announcement from Lubos Kocman which read, in part: "Since the announcement of next-gen SUSE Linux Enterprise has already landed, I'd like to take a moment and talk a bit about our last openSUSE Leap 15.X release and set some expectations."
Stefan Behlert has stated the next release of SUSE Linux Enterprise will look a lot different than the current offering, which shares its code base with Leap. "The connection between Leap and SLE has changed. And while some bits and pieces got better, we firmly believe we can do better. SLE 15 is a great general purpose operating system, yet challenges with some use cases, new places of deployment, and the type of enhancement requests show that it's time for a successor."
While SUSE has been quiet about what exactly will happen next, it looks like SLE will become a minimal, transactional base, downstream of openSUSE Tumbleweed. Meanwhile Leap may be phased out, though confirmation has not yet been published about these plans.
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The Haiku project has published a status update which includes a summary of work which has gone into the operating system over the past month. Key points include porting OpenBSD wireless drivers, making it possible to identify monitor manufacturers more easily, and progress going toward ARM and RISC-V ports. "PulkoMandy fixed text in the status view being cut off in Installer. Jim906 improved window cascading in FileTypes. jadedctrl added per-track scripting support to MediaPlayer. Now you can use hey (or another interface to Haiku's scripting suites system) to control MediaPlayer's playlist. korli added more vendor identifiers to Screen preferences, so that it can identify monitor manufacturers more accurately. apl fixed version date updates in HaikuDepot. He also fixed more properly a crash which waddlesplash had implemented a workaround for last time. dcieslak fixed locale-aware display in DeskCalc, which had been somewhat broken by his changes last time. Jim906 fixed WebPositive to not display the '...' icon on the bookmark bar when the overflow menu would be empty." A detailed summary is available in the status report.
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The Tails project has published their monthly newsletter, detailing progress made during the month of May. Some of these changes improve the Tor Connection Assistant, offer new documentation for the Unsafe Browser, and include improvements to the download mirrors. "We implemented many improvements to the Tor Connection Assistant. This makes is much easier for people in Asia to circumvent censorship. For details, see the Tails 5.1 release notes. We wrote a new homepage for the Unsafe Browser when you are not connected to the Tor network yet. This new version makes it easier to understand how to sign in to the network using a captive portal. We started organized training and usability tests sessions for August in Brazil."
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Software Review (by Jesse Smith) |
SambaBox 4.1
I was asked by the makers of SambaBox if I'd be willing to give their distribution a try. I agreed and they sent me a download link and license key. (At the time of writing it looks like SambaBox is currently a commercial-only distribution and, similar to Red Hat, requires an account or subscription.)
In case you haven't heard of SambaBox before, the project's website describes the distribution as follows:
Developed by Profelis, SambaBox is an integrated active directory, domain name (DNS), dynamic computer configuration (DHCP), and orchestration server built on the Linux operating system.
The website goes on to claim SambaBox can be used to manage Linux, Windows, and macOS client computers. The software also offers centralized user management and DNS services. According to the project's website SambaBox can sync with Microsoft's Active Directory and even replace Active Directory, working alone to manage the network.
Administration of SambaBox mostly happens through a web-based portal which runs on network port 80 (the default HTTP port).
Installing
I downloaded SambaBox which is provided as a 960MB ISO file for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. Booting from this media brings up a menu asking if we want to boot an existing operating system from the hard drive or launch the SambaBox installer. Taking the latter option brings up a short series of text-based menus. We are shown the project's license agreement, followed by a screen asking us to confirm we accept the license.
The next screen warns we are about to wipe all data on our hard drive. Assuming we agree, files are then copied from the removable media and then verified. We are not asked any partitioning questions, asked to create user accounts, confirm the time, or set locale information. The only two questions are whether we accept the license and if we want to proceed and wipe our disk.
After the installer copied its files to my drive the screen went blank and disk activity stopped. The computer then stopped responding to keyboard input entirely. I couldn't switch terminals or perform a clean reboot. I ended up forcing a restart in order to see if the installation completed successfully.
First impressions
The system booted and presented me with a welcome message and a login prompt. The default credentials for signing into the text console and web portal are covered in the distribution's documentation. For the text console the credentials use "root" for the username and "SambaB0X" for the password (the 0 is a zero, not the letter O).
Signing into the root account opens a text-based series of menus. This turned out to be a console-based configuration panel which gives us access to a few functions. Along with options to restart or poweroff the computer, this control panel has three main parts. One menu offers to show us resource usage information, including our IP address, disk space, and system load averages. At this point I learned a fresh install of the distribution consumes 2.9GB of disk space.
Another screen offers to help us configure networking and edit our hosts file. I'll come back to the networking section in a moment. The third page of settings give us the chance to set a new root password and enable/disable the web interface running on port 80. The web portal is enabled by default.
The network configuration screen offers to let us enable DHCP or manually enter an IP address and netmask. It seems networking is disabled by default as, when I brought up the screen showing network status, only the loopback device was active. I enabled DHCP to automatically obtain an address at which point the text interface locked up. I was able to switch between local virtual terminals, but signing into those as the root user just brought up new copies of the text-based settings panel. There doesn't appear to be any way to gain access to a command line shell.
I decided to restart the machine, hoping DHCP was enabled. Trying to boot caused the system to lock up during the boot sequence. I forced a shutdown and tried again. This time SambaBox booted, but it had failed to acquire an IP address, blocking me from accessing its web portal. I went into the text console and went into the network settings once more. I chose to provide a static, manually applied address. Here I ran into another issue: the keyboard and locale settings didn't match my computer. Whenever I tried to type a period ("."), an accented "C" would appear on my screen. I tried various other keys, but without making any headway in being able to type out a complete address/netmask set.
The text-based control panel doesn't have any options for changing the keyboard layout or locale and the system installer doesn't provide any options, apart from accepting the license agreement. The web-based portal wasn't accessible because my server didn't have an IP address yet. I tried switching back to DHCP, but this once more caused the system to lock and necessitated a forced reboot. Other systems on my network were using DHCP without any problems so the DHCP issue seems to affect SambaBox only.
After browsing the distribution's documentation in search of a solution, I contacted one of the SambaBox representatives and asked if there was a way to change settings, apart from the text-based control panel, as I wanted to adjust the time zone (so SSL would work) and change the keyboard layout issue so I could assign IP addresses to the server. He responded:
You can set your timezone while creating a domain. Locales [are] set while creating a domain. Configurations can be made via web interface. Therefore, you don't need to set locales and keyboard layout.
Which would be useful if I were able to access the web interface, but since SambaBox's DHCP client wasn't working and my locale settings were preventing me from assigning an appropriate IP address the web interface was not reachable. I had come to an impasse and I had to retire from my SambaBox trial.
Conclusions
This is unfortunate because the documentation and the feature set promised by the SambaBox team are quite attractive. I've often worked in environments where a web-based, easy to configure alternative to Active Directory would have been ideal. Most of the existing open source alternatives to Active Directory are not at all user friendly or drop-in replacements for Microsoft's offering. SambaBox looks like it could be. However, without being able to configure an IP address, locale, or system clock up front it's basically a digital paperweight in my environment.
This is a shame too because all I would have needed to fix this issue was access to a command line shell. Being able to run commands such as ip and loadkeys would have solved all my problems. Unfortunately, SambaBox blocks access to the command line, forcing us to use its menu-driven control panel rather than a shell. This seems to be a case of the developers trying to make things simple for newcomers while making them harder for people who want to fix things.
I like the idea of SambaBox, I want a central, web-based solution to managing networks of multiple machines and users. However, it needs to be more flexible in its setup and more robust in its networking before I can find it useful.
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| Released Last Week |
openSUSE 15.4
The openSUSE team has announced the launch of openSUSE 15.4 Leap, the latest version of their distribution which shares a package base with SUSE Linux Enterprise. One of the points of focus for the new version is easier access to media codecs and hardware drivers. "This version of Leap simplifies multimedia codec installation. Progress has been made to bring Cisco's openh264 video codecs to users via a repository present by default on the system, which will come in a maintenance update. The release not only gains muiltimedia improvements; it gains open-source driver support. Besides AMD's and Intel's continual open-source Linux graphics drivers commitment, users of modern NVIDIA GPUs will benefit from it signing firmware images for the latest-generation GeForce 30 series GPUs." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and on the features page.
openSUSE 15.4 -- The welcome window
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EasyOS 4.0
EasyOS is an experimental Linux distribution which uses many of the technologies and package formats pioneered by Puppy Linux. The project's new EasyOS 4.0 release makes adjustments to compression, structural changes to the system, and avoids writing data to the hard drive - normal system operations happen in RAM. "Significant structural changes since then have warranted a major-version number bump, now 4.0. Not a complete list, nor detailed, just some brief highlights of new features since 3.4.7, in no particular order: The download file is 'easy-4.0-amd64.img' -- no longer compressed, which simplifies writing the image to a drive. During normal usage, everything happens in RAM and there are no writes to the drive. This potentially means that a cheap flash stick (likely without wear-leveling) will last 'forever'. Squashfs files, including 'easy.sfs', are now lz4-hc compressed. This, in combination with running totally in RAM, results in noticeable speed improvements. App startup and container startup now very fast. There is now a 'save' icon on the desktop. You choose when to flush your work from RAM to drive, or not, or let it happen at shutdown. Note, it is possible to flip back to the old mode, direct writes to the drive, without a 'save' icon. An old problem of unclean filesystem shutdown, due to the layered filesystem on "/", has been solved." Further details are presented in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
MidnightBSD 2.2.0
Lucas Holt has announced the release of MidnightBSD 2.2.0, an updated version of the project's FreeBSD-derived operating system optimised for desktop use: "I am happy to announce the availability of MidnightBSD 2.2 for amd64 and i386 architectures. This release focused on updating third party software in the base system and some smaller enhancements. Bug fixes and new features: use md library sha256 implementation for lzma; /bin/sh updated based on FreeBSD 12-stable sources; root shell changed to tcsh from csh - this adds history to the root user's interactive shell; introduce a patch to dummynet from pfsense to increase max value to 4Gb/s instead of 2Gb/s; mport 2.2.0; fixed issues with desktop startup and created an initial .xinitrc file for GUI installs; a Hyper-V vPCI emulation change can cause SR-IOV (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) and DDA (Discrete Device Assignment) devices to fail to operate correctly under Hyper-V; Netcat - add sctp support from FreeBSD; add ptsname_r to libc...." Continue to the release notes for a full changelog, upgrade instructions and known issues.
MakuluLinux 2022-06-10
MakuluLinux is a member of the Debian/Ubuntu family which is presented in a wide range of options, both free of charge and commercial. The project's latest release, MakuluLinux 2022-06-10 "Shift", presents a number of key features, including the ability to work with multiple package formats through one software centre. "The Software Center in Makulu Shift fully supports both Flathub and Snaps, Users can install from a selection of thousands & thousands of great software and games with a few easy clicks. Shift sports a Huge selection of preinstalled drivers, from GPUs to USB devices to Printers. Most, if not all your plug and play devices should work out of the box on Shift without much fuss. Various extensions have been included, some used by various layouts and a few additional that users may want to enable, Because Shift is designed on the GNOME framework, it supports the use of GNOME extensions, either make use of the current extensions or install your own, there is a huge selection available at the GNOME extension web hub." The release notes provide additional details.
postmarketOS 22.06
postmarketOS is an Alpine-based Linux distribution for mobile devices. The project offers three mobile interfaces: Phosh, Plasma Mobile, and Simple Mobile X Interface (Sxmo). The project's latest release is version 22.06 which includes a handy upgrade feature. "First of all, we are happy to announce that one can now upgrade from one release to the next one. We made it work for Sxmo, Phosh and Plasma Mobile. A script that runs every night ensures that this doesn't break for v21.12 -> v22.06 (and v22.06 -> edge to prepare for the next release). While we don't officially support it, the script even allows switching between all possible versions. Say from postmarketOS edge to v22.06 if you are tired of living on the edge. Thanks to Alpine's package manager apk it works fast and reliable. For now this is CLI based, in the future it should be possible to hook this up to graphical apps like GNOME Software and KDE Discover. More on upgrading in the wiki." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement. A list of supported devices and download options can be found on the project's download page.
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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: 2,732
- 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) |
A rolling edition of Ubuntu
In this week's review of Rolling Rhino Remix, an unofficial, rolling release flavour of Ubuntu we explored some of the features of this distribution and how users can keep it up to date using custom tools. Ubuntu has a fixed, but rapid, release cycle and some people have suggested Ubuntu's short-term support releases could be replaced by a rolling development branch. What do you think of the idea of running a rolling variant of Ubuntu? Do you like the idea of Ubuntu technology in a rolling edition or do you prefer the official, fixed releases?
You can see the results of our previous poll on dedicated gaming machines in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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A rolling flavour of Ubuntu...
| Is something I tried and liked: | 79 (6%) |
| Is something I tried and did not like: | 25 (2%) |
| Is something I would like to try: | 524 (39%) |
| Is something that I do not want to try: | 713 (53%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Static Linux. Static Linux is a distribution based on the Alpine Linux, musl libc and BusyBox. It comes with JWM, Firefox, Transmission, data recovery tools ddrescue, testdisk, photorec. The kernel and the root filesystem are assembled in a single file to boot on systems with UEFI (Secure Boot is not supported).
- SpiralLinux. SpiralLinux is a selection of Linux spins built from Debian GNU/Linux, with a focus on simplicity and out-of-the-box usability across all the major desktop environments. SpiralLinux serves as an alternative live installation method for a highly reliable customized Debian system using only official Debian package repositories.
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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, 20 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 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Centrych OS
Centrych OS was an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that provides a unified look & feel, as well as support for both KDE/Qt and GNOME/GTK+ applications. It uses the Xfce desktop environment with two distinct profiles - one that has the Oxygen/Qt look of KDE, while the other provides the Greybird/GTK+ look of Xubuntu. Some other interesting features of the distribution include the ability to do a simplified sign on and quasi two-factor authentication for systems with full-disk encryption, and the availability of the latest versions of certain high-profile applications, such as GIMP or LibreOffice.
Status: Discontinued
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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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