 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 974, 27 June 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 26th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Computer systems, especially complex computer systems, are constantly being improved. Software is steadily being developed to improve performance, include more features, or address flaws. This week, in our News section, we talk about two projects quickly addressing problems. The GhostBSD project published a fix for its live media while the Tails project quickly rolled out a fix for a problem in the Tor anonymity software. Also in our News section we report on the UBports project improving its ports, particularly the operating system's port to the Pixel 3a phone. We have details on how UBports runs on the Pixel 3a below. First though we dive into AlmaLinux OS. Jesse Smith recently took this clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a test drive and he reports on his findings in our Feature Story. Do you run Red Hat Enterprise Linux or one of its many clones? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. A few issues ago, people raised questions in the comments section about how information in the DistroWatch database changes over time and we address these questions below in our Questions and Answers column. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
AlmaLinux OS 9.0
This week I wanted to take a moment to talk about Red Hat's new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0. Hidden among the buzz words and marketing hype ("Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 is designed to drive enterprise transformation in parallel with evolving market forces and customer demands in an automated and distributed IT world,") there were a few key elements which caught my attention. For instance, this is the first version of RHEL which was built from CentOS Stream and I was curious to see if there were any benefits or drawbacks to the new development flow.
This release also introduces integrity measurement architecture (IMA) which helps administrators verify files have not been tampered or corrupted. System roles at install time have been expanded and I'll touch on those later. The web console, called Cockpit, can been improved upon and now includes the ability to live patch the kernel of a running system.
Originally I was going to download and test RHEL 9.0 itself, but the combination of digging through the Red Hat website looking for the proper download and the hassle of registering a fresh install was unappealing. Since AlmaLinux OS 9.0, a 1:1 compatible clone, was released within eight days of Red Hat's upstream offering I decided to just take AlmaLinux for a spin since the project doesn't put up any barriers to downloading and installing its distribution.
AlmaLinux is available for four main architectures (x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x). These are presented in three editions of various sizes: Boot (763MB), Minimal (1.4GB), and DVD (7.6GB). Apart from the number of packages on the media there doesn't appear to be any serious difference between one edition and another. According to the AlmaLinux release announcement there are also live desktop editions for GNOME, GNOME Mini, Xfce, and KDE. These range from 1.4GB for GNOME Mini and 1.6GB for Xfce to 2.0GB for KDE and GNOME. Upon closer examination these live ISOs turned out to be for versions 8.5 and 8.6 of AlmaLinux, not 9.0. There does not appear to be any live media for version 9.0.
Further expanding the range of download options, there are images for cloud services including Amazon, Azure, Google, and Open Nebula. There are Docker images and, Raspberry Pi disk images. The Raspberry Pi images, like the live desktop images, are still built for AlmaLinux OS 8.6 at the time of writing. It feels confusing to have an announcement that talks about editions as if they were up to date and available for version 9.0 when they are for the older 8.x series. I'm not sure why the Pi and live editions were mentioned at all in the 9.0 release announcement.
Further on the subject of downloads, I ran into another problem when I tried to download AlmaLinux using the project's official torrent. All three editions of the ISO are included in the torrent. Two of the three editions would download along with their manifest file, but one manifest file and the checksum file were missing from the torrent and the torrent got stuck at 99.9% finished. Even after two days that last 0.1% was never provided. Seems the seed mirrors might be missing a few files as, even a week after release, I couldn't get the AlmaLinux torrent to finish downloading. So much for my idea of AlmaLinux not having any barriers to downloading and trying the distribution.
I eventually decided to download the DVD edition of the x86_64 build. The project describes its new release as follows:
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.
Installing
The DVD edition of AlmaLinux boots directly into the graphical Anaconda installer. The install process is similar to Fedora's but with more options. Particularly there is a module in the installer for selecting a role. Roles determine which packages will be installed and roles include: Server with GUI, Server, Minimal, Workstation, Custom, and Virtualization Host. On top of a selected role we can select specific groups of additional software too. These include things like network shares, a web server, remote management tools, GUI tools, development tools, container management, and an e-mail service.
There are other installer modules, apart from the role selection. These include toggles for enabling kdump and enabling security roles. It looks like GNOME is the only available desktop environment. Choosing to install a graphical set of packages installs GNOME 40.
Anaconda offers us custom or guided desk partitioning. The guided option sets up three partitions: root, /boot, and swap. These are set up on an LVM volume and the root partition uses XFS as its filesystem.
The installer copies its files, tells us the location of the distribution's license agreement, and then offers to reboot the system. The Anaconda installer is a little more disjointed and slower than other graphical installers I typically use, but it got the job done.
The first time the system boots it brings up a first-run graphical wizard. This application offers to enable location services and link us with on-line accounts (Google, Microsoft, and Nextcloud are supported). We are then asked to make up a username and password for our regular user. We are then presented with the GNOME 40 desktop.
Early impressions
The graphical login screen for AlmaLinux is pretty straight forward. Once we select which account we want to use we can select a session option. There are several choices, including GNOME (on Wayland), GNOME Classic (apparently also on Wayland), and then X11 sessions for both GNOME Shell and GNOME Classic.
AlmaLinux OS 9.0 -- Browsing available applications
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I tried the default GNOME on Wayland session first. It functioned, but it was relatively slow to respond and I kept running into a bug where the mouse pointer wouldn't click on the same part of the screen where the pointer was displayed. This resulted in several situations where I'd move the mouse over a text box or button, the element would highlight, but when I clicked a different control (usually about an inch away) would be activated. When I switched to the GNOME on X11 session the desktop's responsiveness improved and the bug with the mouse pointer was fixed.
GNOME is presented with a thin panel at the top of the screen. This holds the Activities button, notification area, and system tray. When the Activities area is opened a dock appears at the bottom of the screen with the application menu and launchers for commonly used programs. This is an awkward design as it means to browse the application menu for a program we want we end up moving the mouse to the upper-left corner to hit Activities, then to the bottom-right to open the application menu, then to the upper-centre to click a launcher. There are ways around this with shortcuts or a combination of the mouse and keyboard, but it's a weird setup and much more suited for touch screens than keyboard & mouse environments. It also bothered me that the Activities screen will open if the mouse moves to the upper-left corner of the display, whether we click on the button or not. This can be jarring if we didn't mean to open the overview.
As others have pointed out, it feels weird to use a desktop without minimize buttons or a normal task switcher. I often feel like GNOME is trying to hide my work from me when I'm switching between tasks and I never quite get used to it.
The distribution is set up to automatically check for updates and, when new packages become available, we will be told through the notification centre. We can visit the software centre to install updates. However, AlmaLinux also enables automatic updates by default. This means new packages are downloaded and applied without user intervention. I discovered this the first time I restarted the computer. During the restart process a display opened to tell me updates were being applied to the system and I should not turn off my computer. Then the system restarted. This made for a relatively long update process and a jarring one which put a pause in my workflow. I don't mind automatic updates so much, but forcing the user into a pause and reboot cycle feels like the worst parts of the Windows experience and is something I don't encounter with any other Linux distribution. It feels like a big, unnecessary step backwards and I soon disabled the auto-update feature from the software centre's preferences panel.
Hardware
I tested AlmaLinux on my workstation and in VirtualBox. When running on the workstation all my hardware was detected. I had no problems getting connected to the network through my wireless card, video performance was average, and the system was stable.
When I was testing the distribution in VirtualBox there were a few drawbacks. The main one was that AlmaLinux would not integrate with the host environment. In other words, the VirtualBox window would capture and hold the mouse pointer and the guest desktop would not dynamically resize with the VirtualBox window. I could adjust the guest desktop resolution through the settings panel.
AlmaLinux OS 9.0 -- The settings panel
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The distribution consumed about 825MB of memory when signed into GNOME. This is more memory than most distributions use, though not unusual for systems running GNOME. My fresh install took up about 4GB of disk space, plus a swap partition. This disk usage statistic probably won't be representative of other installs though. At install time we can pick a role and additional software to install with a role, which will cause disk usage to vary quite a lot. I was using a Server with GUI role (which was the default), plus a few system utilities and a web service, and Cockpit, making my system probably a bit heavier on disk than average.
Included software
Along with GNOME 40, AlmaLinux ships with a fairly minimal collection of software. We're given the Firefox web browser, the Cheese web cam utility, a text editor, calculator, and document viewer. The GNOME Files file manager is installed along with the Totem video player. GNOME Software handles finding and installing software and I'll talk more about this utility later. The distribution ships with manual pages, the GNU command line utilities, and systemd init software. The whole system runs on version 5.14 of the Linux kernel.
The Totem media player cannot play videos and it was unable to play my MP3 files. Trying to play a video caused an error to appear letting me know Totem was missing codecs and it offered to launch GNOME Software to find them. Since the codecs aren't in the default repositories this search fails. I added the RPMFusion add-on repositories and tried playing a video again. This time, when Totem failed to play the video and launched Software, the software centre reported the necessary codec had been found and was already installed. This is, of course, not accurate. I then installed all available gstreamer plugins and tried again, and was once more told by Totem the codec was missing, but told by Software it was installed.
AlmaLinux OS 9.0 -- Trying to install media codecs
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This loop of misery continued until I gave up on Totem and enabled the Flathub repository for Flatpaks. (The Flatpak framework is installed on AlmaLinux by default, though no repositories are set up for us.) I then installed the VLC player from Flathub. This allowed videos and audio files to play, but VLC was unable to produce any sound. I was more interested in the capabilities of AlmaLinux as a server so I decided to give up on multimedia support and moved on to other things.
Software management
Earlier I mentioned GNOME Software which does a decent job of being a software manager. This utility can handle working with both RPM packages and Flatpak software. The software centre also handles package updates and can be used to manage whether we see notifications about software updates. As mentioned earlier, GNOME Software can toggle automatic updates on and off.
On the whole, Software worked passably well for me. Despite the issues with the missing/installed codecs and the default setting enabling automatic updates, the software centre mostly did a good job.
We can also manage packages from the command line using the DNF package manager and the Flatpak command line utility. I find DNF to be unusually slow compared to other package managers, but it worked without any errors the handful of times I used it.
Cockpit and server software
One of the elements of AlmaLinux I was most interested in was Cockpit. This service, which was installed by default, was not enabled out of the box. I checked the AlmaLinux documentation and could find no mention of the web-based service in the project's wiki. I checked the upstream project's documentation which provided some key information like the admin portal's default network port, but not how to enable it. This is covered in the Red Hat documentation. I was able to enable the service by using systemctl on the command line.
AlmaLinux OS 9.0 -- Accessing the Cockpit portal
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We can sign into Cockpit, once the service is running, using our regular user account's name and password. Cockpit begins by showing us a dashboard of the server's resource usage.
When accessing Cockpit the software's web portal shows categories of controls down the left side of the screen and, over on the right, we can see specific items we can control. The layout is fairly clean and the interface is responsive. Using Cockpit we can view and control background services, create and manage user accounts, apply updates and toggle automatic updates. We can also manage containers. The whole environment feels pleasantly straight forward and well organized.
I used Cockpit to create a new user, remove some unnecessary services, and enable the Apache web server. With a few clicks I had a basic web service up and running.
Conclusions
Looking back on my experiences with AlmaLinux, there was such a lot of ground covered in under a week and with such varied results. Getting started was a painful experience. The release announcement for AlmaLinux OS 9.0 talks about multiple editions which do not (at the time of writing) exist, cutting off avenues of testing live media and running the distribution on Raspberry Pi computers. The torrent I tried to download was incomplete and there are some key pieces of documentation missing that I had to find upstream. To make matters worse, Anaconda is one of the least friendly graphical installers I have used in recent years with awkwardly placed controls and overly complicated screens.
Once I was up and running, there were several problems on the desktop side of things. GNOME on Wayland is relatively slow and had some problems compared to the GNOME on X11 session, automatic updates are slow and interrupt the flow of using the system. It feels like a functional step backwards to be using a Windows-like update system which is less convenient than virtually any other Linux distribution of the past two decades. To top it off, I couldn't get the Totem player to play videos (despite the software centre claiming I had the proper codecs) and VLC wouldn't play sound, though it works fine on other distributions on the same hardware.
I'm sure some people will write to me to point out AlmaLinux is not primarily intended to be used as a workstation platform, its main duty is as a server distribution. I agree with this idea, but the project claims (inaccurately, it seems) to offer live desktop editions of AlmaLinux and the system installer has multiple workstation and "Server with GUI" roles we can select. Running as a desktop system might not be the distribution's primary role, but it is one which is advertised and encouraged. Running GNOME is even the default role selected by Anaconda, so it would be foolish to overlook how the distribution functions in this, its default role.
On the server side of things, AlmaLinux performed better. Despite some missing documentation I had to hunt down elsewhere, it was fairly easy to get Cockpit up and running. From there, it's also pretty easy to set up containers, printing, and network services. I've said before that I like Cockpit and the positive experience continued with this review.
The two main selling points of AlmaLinux are its long-term support (of around ten years) and its stability. While I haven't used AlmaLinux long enough in this trial to properly comment on its stability, I will say that I encountered no problems in this area. Ideally, we should be able to "set and forget" AlmaLinux, and just let it run day after day and year after year. That's the appeal of AlmaLinux and, apart from the nifty Cockpit utility, it's one of the few appeals. The distribution feels awkward, slow, heavy, and the workstation side of things feels incomplete at best. The server side is a lot more promising, in terms of stability and administration tools. But it doesn't seem to offer much over other server-oriented distributions, apart from the length of its support cycle.
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Visitor supplied rating
AlmaLinux OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.9/10 from 58 review(s).
Have you used AlmaLinux OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
GhostBSD and Tails issue hot fixes, UBports makes progress on the Pixel 3a
The GhostBSD project released a new snapshot last week which carried the version number 22.06.15. A problem was found with the operating system's live media which has resulted in a hot fix being published and the live media being replaced. The new version is labelled 22.06.18. "The last change to automount was untested, and the live ISO was [automounting] all internal drives and caused serious partitioning issues and installation problems. I am sorry to everyone who tried to install GhostBSD and had issues."
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The Tails project also published a quick fix this week, uploading new media (Tails 5.1.1) to address a problem with the Tor software. "This release fixes a high severity security issue in Tor, that affects performance and possibly anonymity." Details on the vulnerability have not been published as the Tor project is waiting for distributions to update their packages. However, the issue can cause denial-of-service or even loss of anonymity.
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The UBports team have published a new Q&A column in which they talk about development work going into various parts of the project. Of special note: the Pixel 3a phone now has much improved compatibility. "Starting with what is happening with the existing 16.04 based version of UT, Alfred was very pleased to announce the first port of Halium for a device which achieves 100% feature coverage! The device is of course the Pixel 3a, which Alfred has been working on for a long time. Since device development is continuous, this covers a greater number of features than were present when Canonical presented UT phones with a full feature set. The device initialization is much improved on previous devices. It uses UDEV in Java keyboard. It is using only one partition and does not run an initramfs like other devices. There are no audio issues now when the device goes into sleep mode, so you can listen to music in the background without it cutting out." These changes along with other updates on the mobile operating system's progress can be found in the project's blog post.
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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) |
The evolving data of DistroWatch
A few weeks ago we received some interesting questions in the comments section about DistroWatch data, users, and our database trends. Here are the queries and our responses.
Watching-for-types asks: I can't help but wonder what Ladislav thinks the future holds. This site is still just as valuable as the heady days when he hatched it, but the world has changed a lot. The names/particulars change, but for, say, the top 25 on the hits-per-day list, it seems this pattern of "types" of distros has held more or less steady. When you guys look at your own site data, are you seeing any noteworthy differences?
Jesse answers: I can't speak for Ladislav, but I can chime in with my own thoughts.
Off the top of my head one of the biggest changes I have noticed in the last 15 years is the rise of rolling releases. When I started with Linux (back in the 90s) a rolling release would be almost impossible. The barrier was due to bandwidth limits and many distros not having modern package management. New distro versions came on physical CDs often times and mostly just got security updates.
Now rolling releases are common and bandwidth is relatively plentiful. It is common to download whole DVDs of data and then upgrade almost every package every month.
Rolling releases - particularly easy to set up rolling releases like EndeavourOS, Manjaro Linux, and openSUSE Tumbleweed - are quite popular these days and would have been nearly impossible to maintain (as a developer) and run (as an end user) when I got started with Linux.
As for what the future holds, my crystal ball is cloudy. My guess is we're going to see more distributions set up with minimal, read-only bases with portable packages (or containers) running on top of the fixed base. Something similar to Android, Fedora's Silverblue, and openSUSE's Transactional Server. In the next ten years I think a lot of distributions, or at least the commercially backed ones, will use a minimal, immutable base and run almost all applications in portable sandboxes or containers.
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Where-are-we asks: Not sure it's answerable, but I was wondering about geographical/location changes in interest. Secondly, I was wondering if the interest in types of data reflected anything you might conclude about shifts in visitor interests. Are we all just the same people that keep coming back (and did we learn to ask different questions of DW)?
Jesse answers: If I understand correctly, the first part of this question is asking where our readers are located. And if the concentration of where users are located has changed over the years. I can't really answer that as we don't do much in the way of logging or tracking users. We don't have any sign-in sections of the website and we don't keep long-term data or lookup geolocation of users, beyond taking a guess at the location of an IP address for the comments section.
I will say though that, in the past few years, VPN services have become much more popular. It used to be that I'd sometimes be browsing through logs and recognize blocks of addresses from Canada or the USA or Germany. At the time I could be pretty sure that was really where the visitor was located. Now, regardless of where the IP address appears to be from, there is a good chance the visitor is behind a VPN or proxy.
The second part of this query asked about visitor interests and this question I do have a more solid answer for. When I got started with DistroWatch most of the questions I received were of a technical, often low-level nature. People tended to ask me:
Over the past five or six years many of the questions I have received in my inbox are directed not at solving technical problems or finding things, rather they are from people who want to avoid things. The common queries I get now are:
- Which distributions do not ship with systemd?
- How can I know which distributions will spy on me?
- How do I find a good distro that doesn't contain proprietary blobs?
- How do I detect and avoid distributions which phone home?
- Can I search for distributions which are not backed by commercial interests?
A lot of the questions I get these days are from people looking to avoid distributions from specific countries, with ties to certain agencies, or that are associated with companies. People want to avoid software that phones home or spreads outside its original scope. People are more keen on avoiding Snap, closed source blobs, and spyware. People these days seem less focused on getting their computers to work and are more worried about their computers being used to work against them.
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Historically-speaking asks: It would be interesting to see the DB summary graphed over time (1/5/10 years?) and see what trends might be picked up from the data.
Jesse answers: I like the way you think! I did a dive into the stats for the past dozen-plus years (June 2010 to June 2022) and graphed the summary numbers for our database. The Y-axis shows the number of projects in a given category while the X-axis displays the number of weeks since June 2010. You can click the image below to see a higher resolution version.
Summary of DistroWatch database stats 2010-2022
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It's probably not at all surprising that the number of Discontinued distributions (projects which are no longer maintained and do not have websites) has grown steadily. Most projects eventually die off and very few are resurrected, causing the pile of abandoned projects to slowly grow over time from 289 to 611.
The number of Active projects has stayed roughly static over the past dozen years. This is mostly due to a natural flow of the ecosystem and partly by design. In any given year we might receive notes of 30 to 50 new distributions which get added to our waiting list. Most of those do not survive their first full year. Generally around 5 to 10 new projects take root and prosper, surviving multiple years. Most of these get added to our database. However, at the same time, around 10 old projects will fade out of existence. A sort of natural balance seems to be maintained with around 300 projects surviving.
While this is mostly a natural flow, I find 300 is a comfortable number of projects to track and cover with news headlines and announcements. When the number of Active projects grows over 300 I have occasionally slowed the number of new projects moving in from the waiting list until a few Active projects became Dormant. Then I've "caught up", adding more projects from the waiting list once the number of Active projects has dropped again. I don't apply this approach often, maybe two or three times over the past decade, but it helps keep the amount of work required to keep up with Active projects manageable. This adjustment to the rate of projects being added to the database doesn't affect which projects get added to our database, just when they get added.
The number of Dormant projects has consistently stayed in the range of 50 and I believe this is also a reflection of the natural flow of the ecosystem. We define Dormant projects as those which are not publishing new stable releases in a set period of time. This means most projects which enter the Dormant category are usually transitioning through limbo. Either they die off in another year or two, or they publish a new stable release and get marked as Active again.
The Waiting category summary has the most variety. This is the odd category in the bunch because it's the one which reflects my work pattern as much as what is happening in the Linux community. New projects are regularly added to our waiting list, as I mentioned before we average around 30 to 50 new projects per year. However, projects only get removed from the waiting list - either due to inactivity or to be added as an Active distribution - when I find spare time to browse the list.
This is why you'll see the Waiting list summary climb slowly for a few months, then suddenly drop. Then slowly climb again and drop once more. The drops are me cleaning up the list, removing dead projects or adding promising ones to the main database.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
KaOS 2022.06
KaOS is an independent, rolling release distribution which focuses on providing a polished KDE/Qt desktop environment and associated applications. The project's latest snapshot is KaOS 22.06 which ships with KDE Plasma 5.25 and an updated Calamares system installer. "Calamares now uses the 3.3 branch. There are no releases with it yet, but it comes with enough improvements that it is a better fit for KaOS. The integration with KPMCore has improved, LUKS support is more robust and there is now an option to not encrypt the boot partition when encryption is chosen for the install. Some GUI improvements have been implemented too. But for most, the biggest news for this release will be Plasma 5.25. KDE Plasma 5.25 redesigns and enhances how you navigate between windows and workspaces. The Overview effect shows all of your open windows and virtual desktops. Gestures on touchpads and touchscreens put Plasma at your fingertips. The dominant colour of your background picture can be applied to all components that use the accent colour." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
TrueNAS 22.02.2 "SCALE"
iXsystems has announced the release of TrueNAS SCALE, version 22.02.2. The new release of this network attached storage platform improves deduplication performance, allows multiple containers to use the same Intel GPU, and improves the pool importing process. "The details of TrueNAS SCALE 22.02.2 are in the release notes. There are over 160 new bug fixes and improvements that will provide another significant quality jump from the RELEASE version. Notable inclusions are: Increased Dedup performance with SHA-512 checksum default. Improved pool importing in corner case situations. Allow multiple containers to use same shared Intel GPU. Cloudsync Azure Custom Endpoints enable the use of Government Clouds. UPS Monitoring and Reporting fixes. Clustered SMB APIs. TrueCommand uses these APIs to simplify cluster deployment. Middleware Performance Improvements with increased drive counts." Further information is provided in the release announcement.
TrueNAS 13.0 -- The web-based dashboard
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SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4
SUSE has announced the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 SP4, the fourth service pack of the company's enterprise-class Linux distribution designed mainly for developers and administrators to deploy business-critical workloads. The new service package includes extended search for packages across repositories (even those not enabled) and 389 Directory Server replaces OpenLDAP. "The OpenLDAP server (package openldap2, part of the Legacy SLE module) has been removed from SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4. The OpenLDAP client libraries are widely used for LDAP integrations and are compatible with 389 Directory Server. Hence, the OpenLDAP client libraries and command-line tools will continue to be supported on SLES 15 to provide an easier transition for customers that currently use the OpenLDAP Server. To replace OpenLDAP server, SLES includes 389 Directory Server. 389 Directory Server (package 389-ds) is a fully-featured LDAPv3-compliant server suited for modern environments and for very large LDAP deployments. 389 Directory Server also comes with command-line tools of its own." Further information is provided in the company's release notes.
EndeavourOS 22.6
Bryan Poerwo has announced the release of EndeavourOS 22.6, the latest stable version of the project's Arch-based, "terminal-centric" Linux distribution featuring a customised Xfce desktop. Code-named "Artemis", the new release brings an improved support for the ARM architecture: "We are proud to present the 'Artemis' release, named after the upcoming NASA mission to the moon and I do refer to that mission for a reason, but more on that later. Artemis is our regular ISO refresh release, so users who already are running EndeavourOS don't have to install this release, you already are up-to-date. Besides the regular updates and improvements on the ISO image and the installation process is this release the first ISO that brings EndeavourOS ARM closer to the main release. Just like NASA's Artemis mission will be to go back to the moon and also lay the foundation for the future (Mars) missions, the Artemis release is laying the foundation for the future of EndeavourOS ARM. From the launch of our ARM branch in 2020, it was always our goal to integrate the ARM install process as an option on the main ISO release. After a lot of brainstorming and perseverance, we are proud to present you with our first milestone step in bringing the two projects closer together." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
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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: 2,736
- Total data uploaded: 42.2TB
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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) |
Do you use RHEL or a clone?
This week we began with a review of AlmaLinux OS, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In the past few years, the number of Red Hat's clones has increased a lot. Meanwhile Red Hat has made it possible to run its official Enterprise Linux distribution free of charge in many situations. Do you currently run Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or one of its many clones? Please tell us which clones you run, if any, in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on openSUSE Leap versus openSUSE Tumbleweed in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you run RHEL or a clone?
| I run RHEL: | 50 (3%) |
| I run a clone: | 229 (13%) |
| I run multiple clones: | 73 (4%) |
| I run RHEL and a clone: | 25 (1%) |
| I run RHEL and multiple clones: | 28 (2%) |
| I do not run RHEL or any clones: | 1404 (78%) |
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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 $89 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Daniel-Michael W | $21 |
| Franz W | $19 |
| Eduard W | $15 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Richard P | $9 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| P.B C | $2 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- Talos. Talos is a minimal, immutable operating system for running Kubernetes.
- Orchid Linux. Orchid Linux is a Gentoo-based, French Linux distribution which offers a text-based system installer and multiple desktop environments.
- DAT Linux. DAT Linux is a Linux distribution for data science. It brings together a collection of open source data science tools and apps into a ready-to-run desktop environment. The distribution is based on Ubuntu. The custom DAT Linux Control Panel provides a centralised one-stop-shop for running and managing dozens of data science programs.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 4 July 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 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 |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Semplice Linux
Semplice Linux was a simple, fast and lightweight distribution based on Debian's unstable branch. It includes a small collection of up-to-date applications running on top of the Openbox window manager.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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