 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 980, 8 August 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
It seems to be increasingly common that we see open source projects experiment with multiple base operating systems on which to build. In recent weeks we have talked about TrueNAS running FreeBSD and Debian branches, Slax running Debian and Slackware editions, and this week we report on Peppermint OS experimenting with both Debian and Devuan editions. We also report on SparkyLinux updating classic (and classic-looking) desktop environments in this week's News section. Before we get to those stories, we share a look at Linux Mint 21. Linux Mint is a popular, Ubuntu-based operating system (which also offers a Debian branch) that features its own, custom desktop environment: Cinnamon. We talk about what it's like to set up and run this distribution with the Cinnamon desktop in this week's Feature Story. Then we turn our attention to a security tool for Linux which has its roots in OpenBSD. This utility, called Pledge, creates a sandbox which reduces the access to resources a program has in order to prevent it from doing damage or phoning home. Do you use any sandbox software, such as Pledge or Firejail, to limit what your applications can do? Let us know about your sandboxing utilities in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Mint 21
Linux Mint is one of the better known, beginner-friendly Linux distributions. The project's main branch is based on Ubuntu's long-term support (LTS) releases with an alternative branch based on Debian. The project's main branch is further split into three editions: Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce.
The latest version of Mint features a handful of key features. This long-term support release will be maintained through to 2027. It includes a new rebase of the Muffin window manager to import improvements from the upstream Mutter window manager. It also includes a switch from the Blueberry Bluetooth software to Blueman for better cross-desktop support. This release also includes a process monitor which will let us know when automated tasks are running in the background and may impact system performance. A few other improvements and cosmetic changes are mentioned in the project's What's New document.
I downloaded the Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint 21 which is approximately 2.8GB in size. Booting from this media brings up a menu asking if we want to launch the live desktop, launch the desktop in compatibility mode (in case of video card issues), or launch the OEM installer. Taking the default quickly launched the Cinnamon desktop. On the desktop we find icons for launching the file manager and system installer. At the bottom of the display is a panel where we can find the application menu, task switcher, and system tray. The system was responsive and my hardware worked fairly well out of the box so I dived into installing the distribution.
Installing
Linux Mint uses the Ubiquity system installer. It's a friendly, graphical application which streamlines the initial install process. Ubiquity walks us through selecting a language, optionally viewing the project's release notes, and picking a keyboard layout. We're also asked if we'd like to install optional media codecs.
The next screen asks if we'd like to use guided or manual partitioning and here I ran into my first issue. If I opted for guided partitioning there was a button to press to see more options, such as using LVM or ZFS storage volumes. Clicking the Cancel button to back out of this menu disabled the button to proceed to the next screen of the installer. Switching to manual or back to guided partitioning also left the button to start the install disabled. I had to go back a step to the media codec selection screen, then step forward again to enable the button to proceed past partitioning.
On the subject of partitioning, the guided option defaults to using an ext4 filesystem for the root partition. As I mentioned, we can also use LVM or ZFS. There is no option for automated Btrfs partitioning which I found odd as some of Linux Mint's core utilities make use of Btrfs features. I tried going into the manual partitioning screen which, to be fair, is pretty easy to use. However, when I chose to take over the disk with a Btrfs volume the partition manager crashed and sent me back to the previous screen of the installer.
Eventually I got through the partitioning section, made up a username and password for myself, and the installer got to work. I feel it worthwhile to mention Mint allows users to encrypt their home directory, something most distributions have dropped in favour of full disk encryption. When the installer concludes its work it offers to restart the computer.
Early impressions
Mint booted to a graphical login screen where I could sign into my account. Once signed in a welcome window appears on the Cinnamon desktop. This window is divided into tabs which give us quick access to on-line documentation and release notes along with links which connect us with the Mint community forum and the project's IRC support channel. Most links open in Firefox with HexChat providing access to the IRC channel.
Linux Mint 21 -- The welcome window
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The bulk of the welcome window's functionality can be found under a tab called First Steps. The First Steps tab features a handful of settings we can toggle which allow us to change theme colours, switch between dark and light themes, and change the style of the desktop panel. This tab also offers buttons which will launch various utilities. These include Timeshift for taking snapshots, a driver manager, an update manager, the system settings panel, the software centre, and the Gufw firewall tool. The firewall is turned off by default.
I feel it is worth saying that I really like how the Mint welcome screen is presented and the configuration tools it launches are pleasant to use. The design is clean, information is clearly presented, the style feels consistent to me. I like the easy access to theme customization and the quick access to updates and the suggestion of making snapshots. It's a good early impression of the distribution and makes it easy to complete common tasks right from the start.
Software management
Mint's update manager is a pleasantly streamlined tool which still allows for some flexibility. By default, the update manager shows us a list of packages waiting to be updated and we can click a button to fetch them all. The update manager also allows us to do some neat things, such as filtering and sorting the list of available updates. We can unselect updates to prevent specific packages from updating. The update manager will also try to find faster mirrors for us and can be used to launch the Timeshift utility to take snapshots of our filesystem.
Linux Mint 21 -- Fetching software updates and creating a Timeshift snapshot
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I've mentioned Timeshift a few times now. It's a graphical utility which will take snapshots of our filesystem (using either rsync or Btrfs snapshots). These snapshots can be stored somewhere for quick access later, assisting us in recovering data files or rolling back the operating system to an earlier point.
After performing the first wave of updates and restarting the computer, the system failed to boot. At first I suspected there was an issue with the new kernel version (the new kernel was why I restarted the machine). Selecting the older kernel from the boot menu did allow the system to start, which seemed to confirm my suspicions. However, later I tried booting the newer kernel again and it worked. Which means I don't know why the system failed to start and both kernels booted without further problems during the rest of my trial.
Mint's software centre has a modern layout and approach. The software centre begins by showing us featured, popular applications at the top of the window and categories we can browse underneath. We can either browse through available packages or perform key word searches to find items we want. We can queue software to be installed in the background and items are added or removed while we can continue to browse the centre.
Linux Mint 21 -- Installing new applications
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Mint pulls software from Deb package repositories and Flatpak packages from Flathub. These packages are displayed side-by-side and Flatpaks have their repository name displayed next to the package name. For example, the VLC Flatpak is shown with the name "VLC (Flathub)" to distinguish it from the VLC Deb package.
Mint's software centre is one of the few, perhaps the only, software manager I have used in the past year which works smoothly with both classic and portable package formats without locking up, throwing errors, or crashing. It's an unusually fast and smooth experience and Mint's software centre is probably my favourite modern software centre just for this trouble-free experience.
Included software
Mint ships with a collection of popular and capable open source software. Included in the application menu are Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and a calendar application. The Transmission bittorrent software is included along with the HexChat IRC client. The Celluloid video player and Rhythmbox audio player are included along with the IPTV client Hypnotix. The media players were able to play all the audio and video files I threw at them. There is a drawing tool and an image viewer. The Nemo file manager is featured too.
Mint ships with Java and the GNU Compiler Collection. On the command line we have access to GNU utilities along with corresponding manual pages. In the background we find the systemd init software and version 5.15 of the Linux kernel.
Linux Mint 21 -- Browsing channels through Hypnotix
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The software included with Mint tended to work and work well. Both the third-party applications and the in-house Mint utilities worked smoothly for me. One of the rare glitches I ran into came about when trying out Hypnotix, the IPTV client which provides us with streaming access to TV shows and movies. I could use Hypnotix to browse available channels and movie categories. However, sometimes when selecting a channel the application would get stuck trying to load the stream. I also found that sometimes I'd be watching a stream and try to close the player window only to have it lock up. I had to terminate the Hypnotix process or use xkill on its window to close it.
Hardware
I began by running Linux Mint in a VirtualBox virtual machine. The distribution ran smoothly in VirtualBox and quickly. The Cinnamon desktop resized dynamically with the VirtualBox window, the desktop was responsive, and the system was stable. When I switched over to running Mint on my laptop the distribution ran well, detecting my hardware and running quickly.
While there were virtually no bugs while running the distribution on my laptop, there were defaults which I felt were not ideal. For example, Cinnamon does not detect touchpad taps as clicks by default, though this can be adjusted in the settings panel. Likewise, mouse and touchpad scrolling using the "natural" or "inverse" style which I've yet to adapt to and so I changed it. Interestingly, mouse wheel and touchpad scrolling can be adjusted independently of each other. At one point I had my mouse using classic scrolling while my touchpad was still using natural scrolling. Personally, I found this confusing until I synchronised them, but if you're someone who wants these behaviours to be handled independently, Cinnamon will accommodate you.
Linux Mint 21 -- The settings panel
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On the subject of default settings I didn't like, changing the volume level using media keys produces a chirping sound. This quickly grows annoying and can be disabled in the sound settings.
The one issue I ran into which classified as a bug in my mind appeared when I enabled desktop scaling. Most desktop elements scaled as expected at 1.25x. However, the application menu collapsed, showing just three icons and taking up a tiny corner of the desktop, until I logged out and back in again. The rest of the desktop resized gracefully while I was still logged in.
The distribution took up about 8GB of disk space for a fresh install, plus some space set aside for a swap file. In total Mint took up 10GB of my disk. When signed into Cinnamon Mint consumed 640MB of memory (plus a little more when the welcome window was open). This put Mint around the boundary between medium and heavy, compared to other distributions - Xfce and KDE Plasma are usually lighter while GNOME is heavier.
Conclusions
Linux Mint is one of the more beginner friendly distributions I have used. Everything about it feels unusually polished, consistent, and considered. It has an easy to use system installer, one of the best software centres I've experienced, and Cinnamon has become both faster and more flexible over the years. It's an unusually smooth and easy experience.
Linux Mint 21 -- Running LibreOffice, Nemo, and Firefox
(full image size: 168kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I especially like the welcome window and the various utilities it connects us with. The firewall manager, the Timeshift snapshot utility, and the settings panel are all simple to use and easy to understand.
One of my few complaints was it feels weird the default filesystem is ext4 with ZFS as a guided option. It's difficult to set up Btrfs in a way which works with Timeshift and, when I tried, the partition manager crashed. Yet Timeshift is a recommended tool to use from the welcome window and pairs with the update manager. I feel it would make sense to have Btrfs as the default filesystem since Timeshift works best with it and it would make all the tools work together seamlessly, much the way openSUSE connects Btrfs, boot environments, and YaST.
Apart from this, and one glitch when the system didn't boot after updating (then seemed to fix itself), my experience with Linux Mint 21 was problem free. The distribution is fast, easy to set up, and unusually convenient to use and customize. I especially like the software centre. It's unusually fast and error-free and I'd like to see more distributions adopt it (swapping out Discover or GNOME Software).
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Lenovo desktop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Hex-core Intel i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
- Storage: Western Digital 1TB hard drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 wired network card, Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe wireless adapter
- Display: Intel CometLake-S GT2
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Visitor supplied rating
Linux Mint has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.8/10 from 559 review(s).
Have you used Linux Mint? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan-based branch
The SparkyLinux project has published a blog post which contains information on several updates to the Debian-based distribution. These include the end of life of SparkyLinux 4, the inclusion of updated Spanish and Italian language support, and updated packages for some classic-style desktops. "Italian locales updated of the all Sparky tools, thanks to Yodel Sinatra. Started adding es_ES locales to all Sparky tools, thanks to depaz. Common Desktop Environment (CDE) updated up to 2.5.0; amd64 only. Not so Common Desktop Environment (NsCDE) updated up to 2.2 to all Sparky archs. Browsh browser updated up to version 1.8.0 for all Sparky archs, after more than 3 years of break of development."
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The Peppermint OS team is experimenting with a new, Devuan-based branch of their distribution which is being released alongside the project's existing Debian-based offering. The new Devuan-based ISO files are available on the distribution's download page in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. A brief release announcement mentions minor changes to the Devuan builds.
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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) |
Pledge on Linux
People who are familiar with the OpenBSD operating system, particularly those who have written code on the OpenBSD platform, are probably aware of a tool called pledge. On OpenBSD, pledge is a function call applications can use to voluntarily restrict themselves. Basically, an application can choose to give up access to certain system resources and capabilities in order to make the program less dangerous.
For instance, if your application is going to analyze some local data and has no reason to access the Internet, it can drop its ability to access the network. This way, even if the software is compromised, it won't be able to download a trojan or phone home. A program might also lock down its ability to create files or edit existing files, effectively making it so it can only read information in a directory, but not make any changes.
This sort of sandboxing can be quite useful. It is especially helpful if we can force other applications to respect these same limitations, not just rely on programs to restrict themselves. People who use Linux distributions now have the option of sandboxing applications using similar restrictions to OpenBSD's pledge without needing to edit source code or make changes to existing applications. This ability is due to a command line program appropriately named Pledge.
This new Pledge program "Will work on all Linux distros since RHEL 6. Root privileges are not required. You just use it to wrap your command invocations. It's so tiny and lightweight that it only adds a few microseconds of startup latency to your program. It's great for shell scripts and automated tools."
Pledge for Linux is a userland utility (it doesn't need any changes to the kernel or a kernel module). We can download the Pledge source code to build it ourselves or download a pre-built binary copy.
The Pledge utility works in a similar fashion to Firejail. Pledge runs as a sort of wrapper around other programs, determining which functions the target program can perform and how many resources it can access. I decided to try Pledge on a copy of MX Linux I already had running to see how it would perform.
One of the things I like about Pledge is, when it is run without any parameters, it displays a list of options and a summary of permissions it can grant programs it is sandboxing. The default behaviour is to block all access, apart from reading filesystem information (called rpath) and benign system calls (stdio).
It might be easiest to understand how Pledge works by looking at some examples. First, let's look at what happens if I run the ls command in my home directory. We end up with output which looks like this:
$ ls
abc def xyz
Now this is what happens if I run ls in a sandbox with Pledge's default restrictions:
$ pledge ls
abc
def
xyz
The output is mostly the same, but each entry is on its own line when ls is invoked from Pledge. In the Pledge sandbox the ls command is able to read the local directory and print output to the terminal. However, it is unable to access terminal information to see, for example, how wide the terminal is. This means ls falls back to putting each entry on its own line rather than trying to guess the width of the terminal. We can grant the ls command the ability to get this terminal information and format its output more effectively by passing it the tty permission. This, along with the default rpath and stdio permissions, gives the ls program all the access it needs to behave normally:
$ pledge -p 'stdio rpath tty' ls
abc def xyz
We can use the same restrictive permissions if we want to open a text file in read-only mode, preventing any edits to the file:
$ pledge -p 'stdio rpath tty' vi abc
In these examples, the commands (ls and vi) are unable to access the Internet, unable to edit the files they are accessing, and unable to create new processes of their own. All they can do is read files and display them on the terminal.
The Pledge documentation mentions we can grant Internet and DNS access to programs. I tried this, but none of the utilities I tried to use to download information, such as cURL and wget, were able to look up hostname information for remote servers, even when the DNS feature was granted. The documentation uses the following example, which doesn't work on my machine, resulting in an error saying the DNS lookup failed:
$ pledge -p 'stdio rpath inet dns thread' curl https://distrowatch.com/
Despite this drawback, any command line programs which only needed local access to work properly ran well.
Which means, I think, some issues still need to be sorted out. There are also limitations when it comes to running graphical applications. I wasn't able to get any desktop programs to run, even when granting the full range of permissions Pledge recognizes. It looks as though Pledge is intended primarily to run and sandbox command line utilities while Firejail is geared toward desktop applications.
In short, Pledge is a really powerful tool and one which can lock down a program's access a lot. It's certainly something we can use to avoid leaking any information or overwriting files. However, it takes some practise to get used to the cryptic shorthand permission codes Pledge uses. It also has some limitations in the types of applications we can sandbox. Firejail is a bit more polished and a little more permissive by default and more geared toward desktop applications. Pledge has a niche in restricting command line tools and background services which should only be reading information or only accessing certain parts of the operating system.
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| Released Last Week |
Q4OS 4.10
Q4OS is a Debian-based distribution which features KDE Plasma and Trinity desktop editions. The project's latest release, Q4OS 4.10, upgrades Trinity to version 14.0.12 of the classic desktop. The announcement was made on the project's blog: "Q4OS 4.10 'Gemini', stable. We have released a major update to the Q4OS 4 'Gemini' LTS. The new Gemini 4.10 series receives the recent Debian 'Bullseye' 11.4 updates, updated Debian stable kernel and important security and bug fixes. After a careful review and testing we have concluded to include the full upgrade of the Trinity desktop environment into this release as well, so Q4OS 'Gemini' now features the most recent Trinity 14.0.12 version. For more details see the Trinity desktop environment website. This release brings along improvements of Q4OS specific tools and cumulative upgrade covering all the changes from the previous stable 'Gemini' release. We are currently pushing all the changes mentioned above into the Q4OS repositories, automatic update process will take care about to upgrade for current Q4OS users."
Emmabuntus DE4-1.02
Emmabuntüs is a desktop Linux distribution with editions based on Debian's Stable branch with the Xfce and LXQt desktop environments. The project's latest update fixes a number of boot time and install issues. It also includes updated versions of packages, particularly web browsers. "For this version 1.02, the following and improvements and fixes have been implemented: based on the Debian 11.4; added 64-bit UEFI boot with a 32-bit ISO and vice versa; added installation of boot in UEFI 64-bits with a 32-bits ISO images and vice versa; added MemTest86+ launch in UEFI mode; fixed not launching keyboard selection in SysLinux and GRUB; Fixed Zenity crash when installing new language packs; fixed language change script due to Calamares; fixed APT cache creation script; updated Debian Beginner's Handbook 11.3; updated Calamares slideshow by adding a slide about the reuse campaign and an updated version of the computer rooms map in Togo; updated a new version of DWService agent and implemented a package; updated gSpeech to version 0.11.0." Further details can be found in the release announcement.
NetBSD 9.3
The NetBSD project creates a highly portable operating system which runs on a wide range of processors. The project has published a new version in the 9.x series: NetBSD 9.3. "Aside from many bug fixes, 9.3 includes backported improvements to suspend and resume support, various minor additions of new hardware to existing device drivers, compatibility with UDF file systems created on Windows 10, enhanced support for newer Intel Gigabit Ethernet chipsets, better support for new Intel and AMD Zen 3 chipsets, support for configuring connections to Wi-Fi networks using sysinst(8), support for wsfb-based X11 servers on the Commodore Amiga, and minor performance improvements for the Xen hypervisor." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
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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: 2,753
- Total data uploaded: 42.4TB
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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) |
Running sandboxing tools on Linux
In this week's software review we talked about a tool called Pledge which sandboxes software on Linux. This can greatly reduce the amount of access a program has to its host system. Sandboxing software can block programs from accessing sensitive information, prevent applications from transmitting information over the network, and block programs from writing data they shouldn't to the filesystem. This week we'd like to hear whether you use any sandboxing software such as Pledge or Firejail. Let us know about your sandboxing setup in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on waiting for stable point releases of distributions in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Sandboxing software for Linux
| I run Firejail: | 126 (11%) |
| I run Pledge: | 10 (1%) |
| I use containers (LXC/Docker): | 115 (10%) |
| I use another sandboxing tool: | 43 (4%) |
| I do not use sandboxing tools: | 882 (75%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- FreedomOS. FreedomOS is an Arch Linux-based distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop.
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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, 15 August 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)
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| Linux Foundation Training |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • OpenBSD's pledge (by Michael on 2022-08-08 01:21:15 GMT from United States)
I use OpenBSD as my primary workstation, so tools security tools like pledge and unveil are included by default with my browsers and some other programs.
2 • Linux Mint (by Jimbo on 2022-08-08 02:11:23 GMT from United States)
I found the phrases "everything about it feels unusually polished" and "it's an unusually smooth and easy experience" amusing, as if there is something suspicious about Mint not being the rough-around-the-edges, Frankenstein-concoction that most other distros are.
3 • @2 and Linux Mint (by justworking on 2022-08-08 02:43:06 GMT from Australia)
@2 well said, says it all about what people want/expect from an operating system. Heaven forbid it actually works well out of the box, wouldn't give us anything to tinker with now, would it?
By the way I tend to run Firejail on third-party applications that don't come through the package manager. Works well (Jesse has a good guide on here somewhere to setting it up) in a just-in-case scenario.
4 • @2 (by Simon on 2022-08-08 04:11:56 GMT from New Zealand)
Well, it's a third generation distro with two of the very biggest distros as its parent and grandparent (Ubuntu and Debian), so it's standing on the shoulders of giants... it starts with a parent that's already a polished up version of Debian. As such it's a major distro that doesn't have much to do except polish up (some more) what's already been polished up by others... so frankly it ought to be a pretty smooth experience for users, by that stage! Fortunately it is: Mint not only works with fewer technical hassles, it also makes sane, sensible design decisions that fit with user intuitions, instead of trying to be "innovative" (like some Ubuntu and GNOME devs) in ways that have contempt for normal user experience. Mint deserves its place near the very top of the Distrowatch hit list: it's a fine distro.
5 • @3 - Jesse's firejail how-to (by Andy Prough on 2022-08-08 04:16:39 GMT from United States)
@justworking >"By the way I tend to run Firejail on third-party applications that don't come through the package manager. Works well (Jesse has a good guide on here somewhere to setting it up) in a just-in-case scenario."
Jesse's firejail how-to is in the February 22, 2016 DistroWatch Weekly.
On antiX GNU/Linux, I presently need to install both the firejail and firejail-profiles packages to use firejail. I think that may be the current setup for Debian and all its sub-distros.
6 • Yes and No on Mint (by Dave on 2022-08-08 04:24:26 GMT from United States)
Mint is functionally solid and I often recommend it to Windows users interested in trying Linux.
But I personally dislike Mint’s Windows-clone UI, and Cinnamon lacks the customizability to take it in a different direction the way you can with Plasma.
7 • Qubes OS (by ro0t on 2022-08-08 05:45:51 GMT from France)
I use qubes os for sandboxing :D
8 • Timeshift: the dust under the carpet (by Patroclo on 2022-08-08 09:33:21 GMT from Italy)
"I've mentioned Timeshift a few times now. It's a graphical utility which will take snapshots of our filesystem (using either rsync or Btrfs snapshots). These snapshots can be stored somewhere for quick access later, assisting us in recovering data files or rolling back the operating system to an earlier point."
With Debian and Mageia I never needed to use a "snapshot manager", because updates never make the operating system unstable. Probably Ubuntu's lack of care for desktop distributions ends up infecting Linuxmint as well. I hope Linuxmint will soon break away from Canonical to become a curated and easy-to-use Debian Stable derivative (LMDE).
9 • UX on mint (by Charlie on 2022-08-08 09:38:43 GMT from Hong Kong)
I noticed from mint's blog that their developers focus on many little things that few distros pay attention to.
Like how they design the update widgets to remind users to update their system without disrupting their normal routine, how timeshift helps users to backup, and many little tools just to make daily operation more smooth.
While most major Linux distros work on major technology advancements like file systems, init, package managers etc, it is the UX that affects general and desktop users' experiences. Their working attitude reminds me of Apple Inc in the old days.
It's a shame that their tools gain little attention and credit outside their own circle, no one wants to port them to other distros. I'm not a Mint/Mate/Cinnamon fan actually and I'm already more accustomed to other distros. But it's really a pity that they work on their own with all those useful little tools and gadgets.
10 • Linux Mint (by Simon Plaistowe on 2022-08-08 11:25:41 GMT from New Zealand)
Linux Mint gets my vote as daily driver. My distro-hopping days are done. I've been running Mint on all my workstations for over a decade now, with very few problems. Can't say the same for many other distros I've tried over the years.
11 • Mint Should Hide Timeshift's BTRFS Capability (by joncr on 2022-08-08 11:34:27 GMT from United States)
What the Mint team should do is just hide, or eliminate, the BTRFS capability in Timeshift.
Ordinary users, of the "just works" variety Mint correctly targets, don't need to, and should not be expected to, understand the difference between filesystem schemes and should never be expected to have the skills needed to manually create any kind of partitioning and filesystem arrangement.
Professional users, and folks who use Linux to scratch a tech itch, can always create BTRFS or whatever they wish, with or without a GUI installer's assistance.
12 • Mint (by Otis on 2022-08-08 12:54:48 GMT from United States)
@6 @10 I have no true "daily driver," as there are several distros that are perfect for me at different times on different machines. And I'm not sure I understand the remarks about some distros having a "windows like desktop," such as Mint's default. It's also Zorin's default. Gentle reminder: We can immediately cause our linux desktop to have any appearance and functionality we want it to have, pretty much no matter the distro. I'm running Zorin right now, the distro that brags about looking like Windows, and on my desktop it looks nothing like windows at all; and that took me all of five minutes or so.
13 • Mint (by Adihash on 2022-08-08 14:58:00 GMT from Croatia)
meh.
no KDE, no interest.
Can't use distro with no decent desktop
14 • Linux Mint 21 (by jean on 2022-08-08 15:49:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
I installed Mint 21 on a new HDD and had no issues at all. After the initial installation, I was asked to reboot, which I did and it rebooted smoothly.
15 • no KDE (by Andy on 2022-08-08 15:53:59 GMT from United States)
@13 you could always install it later. Cinnamon though is a great DE!
16 • No KDE (by Friar Tux on 2022-08-08 16:19:24 GMT from Canada)
@15 (Andy) I agree. I used to be a KDE fan until a few of years ago when KDE just would not work. I found Cinnamon, and have never looked back. I find Cinnamon far superior to most other DEs including KDE. Now-a-days, IF I'm going to test out a newish distro, I'll only test one that comes with the Cinnamon DE.
17 • no KDE (by Andy on 2022-08-08 17:32:33 GMT from United States)
@16 I couldn't agree more, I loved KDE years ago but now that I'm a cinnamon user I don't look back either.
18 • Timeshift and other backup utilities (by Bobbie Sellers on 2022-08-08 20:58:41 GMT from United States)
Someone says they do not need Timeshift on other distributions.
Just wait until something happens, whether you or a download causes it
and you will be very happy to have backups whatever utility you use to
create them.
Hardware wears out. Sooner or later you will want to have made backups.
Timeshift is very good but you have to tell it what to do.
I have mine set to backup my "/" after every boot.
I have to make more backups of /home/bliss/Documents as it seems my
beginning of my bio was somehow lost. Also a short stack of downloaded
.pdf files on all sorts of matters of interest to me.
bliss - brought to you by the power and ease of PCLinuxOS
the Perfect Computer Linus Operating System(for me),
and a minor case of hypergraphia.
19 • @13 Mint KDE (by kc1di on 2022-08-09 10:40:51 GMT from United States)
At the time several release ago Clem gave the reasons Mint was dropping KDE/Plasma from it's lineup.
Many at that time who loved KDE moved to Kubuntu or KDE neon. Other as I did learned to love Cinnamon. The best part is we have choices. and Though KDE is a good solid Desktop It's not for everyone. If you are a KDE fan you have other choices Many of them you don't need to bash Mint because it's devs made a choice.
20 • Mint... (by Vukota on 2022-08-09 11:29:33 GMT from Serbia)
I haven't seen in the review much about ZFS. Does ZFS now support (through installer) side by side installation with other partitions (it used to require whole disk)? Does it allow native ZFS encription and compression (how it works with boot/swap partition)? Is ZFS supported now by Timeshift? Did they solve the problem with boot partition snapshots that gets created with every package(kernel) install (to overfill boot partition)? If anyone knows I would appreciate if they shared this info.
I haven't seen in the review much about upgrade from the previous version either. With Mint, it used to work seamless in the past (and that is why I preferred it over rolling distros).
I agree with @18 there is no distro I worked with that occasionally wouldn't require restore to previous working state. Mint is close to it, but it was handy in the past even with Mint.
@8: There is nothing wrong with "snapshot manager". I can get around with ZFS from command line, but would appreciate nice GUI over command line any day (as I don't have often to do restores and other snapshot manipulations). About "unstable", I don't think I ever had OS "unstable" (didn't step on a land mine called BTRFS), as there is always a way to "fix" the problem, but the thing is how much effort does it take you to fix the problem (boot issues, wrong package that breaks something, etc.).
@4: Well said. I call Mint "It just works". My son was surprised when he was able to update Mint install after a year of not touching laptop in a matter of minutes (as he had painful experience with many other distros Arch/Debian/*buntu based after a couple of months of inactivity).
21 • @9 great Mint tools (by qwas on 2022-08-09 13:26:26 GMT from Australia)
I agree with you, Mint does have some great tools which make life easier for its users but they don't get adopted anywhere else - seems only Red Hat stuff gets picked up by other distros these days (even Ubuntu's developments struggle to gain traction outside its world).
Anyway others can put up with RH and the eons it seems to take to get its software working as it should - I'll stick with Mint and take advantage of the improvements in the little things that matter for an end desktop/laptop user. Much less frustration, much more actual work done...
22 • Sandbox (by Panther on 2022-08-09 15:22:16 GMT from United States)
I have used selinux sandbox for years when needed. Simple to use no need for any additional tools. IMO selinux is a huge advantage of Fedora although seldom mentioned these days as it is so polished.
See https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/selinux_users_and_administrators_guide/chap-security-enhanced_linux-securing_programs_using_sandbox
I agree backups are critical, however, personally I back up only /home , any server data (www / samba shares / etc), and any system files I edit, otherwise it is sort of pointless (IMO) to back up system files as they all come with a fresh install.
I have been lucky in that I have not had a system upgrade break Fedora in years. I only had those sorts of problems with Arch and Ubuntu which is part of the reason I switched to Fedora (from Arch). Never had that sort of problem on Debian or Slackware. Of course it is not too difficult to break gentoo if you go crazy with some of the flags.
23 • Sandboxing tools (by Bulldozer on 2022-08-09 17:46:19 GMT from United States)
The idea is very attractive, but how hard are they to use. It's gotta be simple or I have to figure out how it works every time i touch it.
24 • Mint - no complaints here (by CS on 2022-08-09 20:08:48 GMT from United States)
My longest running Mint install is up to about 3 years now, no major complaints. Mint almost works out of the box and seldom fails to update itself properly. Wish that was the norm among Linux desktop distros but everything else I've tried has been one form of disaster or another.
25 • Linux Mint (by Feng Lengshun on 2022-08-10 02:24:55 GMT from Netherlands)
I feel like Pop OS now carries the torch for "Ubuntu, but sane defaults -- Linux for newcomers." The 'Factory Reset' is a really useful thing especially for newbies as it's accessible from both inside the session and from the boot menu.
About the only thing missing is Btrfs + Timeshift or otherwise some sort of easy snapshot. That thing *literally* saved my butt just now, because Manjaro messed up the kernel update and none of my kernels were listed, so only the Boot to UEFI and Snapshot was on the menu when I checked Grub and it kept sending me to UEFI.
Linux Mint is still one of my recommendation for just a "boring, just works Windows replacement," but it's really aging and I feel like they're going too far on the boring side.
26 • Linux Mint (by Dale on 2022-08-10 03:19:28 GMT from United States)
Linux Mint and LMDE both are great for what they do which is provide a solid desktop based on Ubuntu or, in LMDE's case, Debian. After having tinkered around with however many thousands of distributions there have been over the last 15 years or so, Mint is still at the top for me if I want to use a derivative that "just works" in Linux. Snaps suck in my opinion, and Flatpak comes setup out of the box in Mint.
Personally, I still like using pure Debian Unstable with XFCE if I am running Linux. At the same time, I love Mint, and I have it on several machines. I'm mainly still a FreeBSD user.
27 • PHR Mint etc (by Otis on 2022-08-10 14:06:07 GMT from United States)
@4 Just an aside but I'm curious as to how the list rankings are actually compiled. I'm always clicking around the listed distros, and around the first week of July I got interested in Fedora/RedHat spins/forks etc (Alma, Ultramarine, etc) and landed in the Ultramarine section here. In subsequent days I must have clicked into the DW Ultramarine page ten or twelve times as I kept using it to navigate to the Ultramarine site for various reasons. It is not on the DW top 100, and lists itself as of today as having zero hits in all time categories (a year, six months, etc) despite my own cruising in there several times as mentioned.
Is there a threshold of minimum hits before it registers as a PHR? Is there a time algorithm of some sort that disallows registered hits until a certain time between the first and next? Curious.
Incidentally I've been using Ultramarine for several weeks now and find it to be quite the solid distro.
28 • Ranking (by Jesse on 2022-08-10 14:36:41 GMT from Canada)
@27: Everything about the PHR table is explained on the Page Hit Ranking section of this site: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
29 • PHR (by Otis on 2022-08-10 15:26:44 GMT from United States)
@28 I'm with you, as I've mentioned that a time or three in here me own self. ;) BUT... so the line in the distro's DW page here may not reflect the data in the overall list, as the one for Ultramarine is thus:
Popularity (hits per day): 12 months: (0), 6 months: (0), 3 months: (0), 4 weeks: (0), 1 week: (0)
..all zeroes. Whereas in the list it's got ranking and page hits for each time category.
30 • I use FreeBSD jails (by Eddy on 2022-08-11 13:58:04 GMT from United States)
I run FreeBSD, which has had jails as a built-in feature since version 4.0 back in March 2000. Linux is late!
31 • HPD ranking (by M.Z. on 2022-08-11 17:40:44 GMT from United States)
@29
Two key points I see in the DW Hits Per Day ranking that likely explain your question:
" Only one hit per IP address per day is counted."
&
the numbers "...represent the average number of hits per day (HPD) for the specified period."
So even if one IP address hit the same page 1000 times a day over the course of three days you really only have 1 IP X thee days over 7 for the week to get an average of about .43 hits per day over the course of the smallest HPD measure, which of course rounds to zero. The most any one IP could do is increase HPD by 1, and for the week you would have to hit on at least 4 days to do that.
Of course the best thing to do for both the HPD, and more importantly the Distro, would be to tell a friend or two who was into that kind of thing to check it out on DW & tell a friend or two if they like it. That way you get a chain of people with different IP addresses poking it on DW & more importantly using the Distro.
32 • Mint Touchpad Support (by AdrienM on 2022-08-11 22:58:08 GMT from United States)
This might be hardware related, or it might be an issue only on bare-metal. I've been playing with Mint21 since its release in VBox on a Mac (BigSur) host and it has always recognized tap-to-click from my touchpad both in the LiveCD mode and after install. I haven't tested it on bare-metal though.
33 • Mint21 is making my decision tough (by AdrienM on 2022-08-11 23:03:48 GMT from United States)
I'm currently testing distros in VBox to decide on an eventual replacement for MacOS on my Late '14 Mini. (cutoff as of Ventura, so Monterey will be my last upgrade) I have a few years left of official support though and I'll run it til the last, but I foresee the day I'll need to migrate to Linux again. So far, Ubuntu, Pop! & now Mint (as of the 21 release) are my three finalists. It is already a tough decision, and I'm interested to see how they stack up in a few years when I have to make the switch. Mint21 is quite impressive so far.
34 • Mint Touchpad (by Jesse on 2022-08-11 23:11:31 GMT from Canada)
@32: When you run a distribution inside VirtualBox it interprets things like clicks based on what the host operating system provides. In other words, if your host OS registers taps as clicks, then it will pass the clicks on to the guest OS. The guest OS doesn't get the "raw" input (taps on in this case) from the touchpad, it just knows it gets a click from the host.
You could be using anything, a mouse, a touchpad, an accessibility type-to-click utility and the guest OS doesn't know. It just gets a "click" through VirtualBox.
35 • PHR "0" (by Otis on 2022-08-11 23:33:57 GMT from United States)
@31 Yep, thinking you're right, the partial average or whatever it is is the only thing that occurred to me that could account for the zeroes on the distros page. The only other thought that came to mind was that perhaps the data on the distro page is entered manually at certain intervals and they hadn't gotten to it for the updated figures.
Number of Comments: 35
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