DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 983, 29 August 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 35th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Sometimes people ask why there are so many Linux distributions, hundreds of them. One of the reasons is there are so many different possible ways of doing things, so many different styles of computing which suit people, and so many different priorities on which people want to focus. This week we talk about a wide range of projects and priorities, starting with the Qubes OS platform. The Qubes project creates a platform which isolates components and tasks from each other, securing elements of an operating system from exploit from other parts. We also talk about Alchg Linux, an Arch-based project designed to use a small amount of resources while being run from removable media. In our News section we explore how some distributions, such as Quarkos, are adopting classic desktop environments like Trinity (a fork of KDE's legacy version 3.x series). Meanwhile, the Debian project is considering how to best handle firmware, specifically non-free firmware, in future versions of the distribution. We also report on an issue with Arch-based distributions which can prevent systems from booting. Plus we share background on immutable operating systems, what they are and why people use them. We're also pleased to share the releases of 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) |
Qubes OS 4.1.1
Qubes OS is an unusual project which strives to perform two difficult tasks in parallel. First, it attempts to isolate various tasks and elements of the operating system to prevent the compromising of one component from affecting other components. Second, it attempts to make this experience virtually seamless for desktop users.
The idea here is that the user should be able to use their applications in a way which allows each application (or a group of applications) to be isolated from the rest of the system. If our web browser is hijacked it shouldn't give access to our office documents, for example.
I downloaded the latest version of Qubes OS, which is provided as a 5.4GB ISO for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. Booting from this ISO displays a boot menu where we can immediately launch the system installer or run a self-check on the media and then start the install process. There is no option to launch a live desktop environment.
By default, Qubes runs Fedora software. This includes getting up and running using the Anaconda system installer. The installing experience is virtually identical to setting up Fedora 36 Workstation with the exception the default software selection uses the Xfce desktop instead of GNOME.
The Anaconda installer presents the steps we take to set up the operating system as a series of modules we can access in the order of our choosing from a hub screen. After going through the modules and (mostly) taking the defaults, the installer refused to continue. At the bottom of the page a message informed me that I'd need to complete all the steps currently marked with an alert icon. The problem was none of the modules was marked with an icon.
I went through the modules again and ran into the same warning without the ability to continue. I restarted the computer and tried again. This time I took all the defaults. This caused the partitioning module to complain, saying the automated partition layout wouldn't work. I set up partitions for booting, swap, and root. Then returned to the hub screen where I was shown the same warning about completing all marked modules before continuing, despite no modules being marked.
I attempted another reboot and tried again. This time trying to take the defaults, apart from changing the disk layout to a Btrfs volume. Once again all modules showed clear and yet the installer refused to continue to proceed, reporting I had to address errors first.
At this point I gave up. There are few things worse than inaccurate error messages when trying to troubleshoot problems and I figured my time would be better spent elsewhere. To my mind this experience really highlights just how bad the notorious Anaconda installer is. It's inconsistent, slow, and (in this case) just plain buggy. I think it calls into question both why Fedora continues to use it and why Qubes insists on using the fast-moving Fedora as its default platform for software packages.
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Alchg Linux
I decided to move on to one of the relatively young projects on the DistroWatch waiting list. Alchg Linux is an Arch-based Linux distribution which reportedly provides a minimal desktop environment which runs from a live disc. The operating system is intended to perform simple desktop tasks on 64-bit machines (an experimental 32-bit build is in testing at the time of writing). The distribution reportedly requires less than 1GB of RAM and is distributed as a 1.4GB ISO.
Early impressions
I found Alchg will boot in both Legacy BIOS and UEFI modes on my laptop. When starting in BIOS mode the system displays the Arch Linux boot screen with options to load the live desktop or load the whole operating system into RAM before launching the live desktop. When booting in UEFI mode the system displays a similar menu with less branding. The countdown timer on the menu is accompanied by a loud beeping sound from the speaker which will quickly draw attention (and anger) from anyone nearby.
When the system finished booting it presented me with the Openbox window manager which places a panel across the bottom of the screen to display the application menu, task switcher, and system tray. The user interface, I was surprised to find, used the Japanese language in most places. The application menu and most graphical tools displayed Japanese characters while the terminal (QTerminal) displayed most information using English.
This surprised me as the project's website, boot menu, and status messages during boot had been in English. I went back and restarted the system to discover that, during the boot process, a menu quickly appears and asks us to press "1" for Japanese or "2" for English. The default is to use Japanese after a few seconds if we do not manually make a selection.
Alchg Linux 2022.06.25 -- A mixture of English and Japanese text
(full image size: 143kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
This language selection prompt posed a problem when I was using my laptop because my keyboard was not yet initialized when the menu was displayed, meaning I could not make a selection before the menu timed out, resulting in the system using Japanese. When I booted the system in VirtualBox I could make the language selection. When I did this most of the desktop would display English menus and graphical components used English. However, whenever I visited websites in the default web browser (Vivaldi), any international websites such as YouTube, Google, and DistroWatch would be directed to display text in Japanese. This meant, despite me selecting English at boot time, I still ended up viewing many websites in Japanese. I suspect this is a bonus for people fluent in Japanese, but I am not among their number and it was frustrating to not have my language selection respected by the web browser.
Included software
As already mentioned, Alchg uses the Openbox window manager to provide its graphical user interface and the Vivaldi web browser. It also ships with the QTerminal for accessing a command line. There are a few other programs for configuring Openbox and a couple of applications which are buried in the application menu. They can be accessed by going to the Application menu -> Config -> Alchg -> All Applications. Some of the launchers work and some do not. The ones which do provide access to an image viewer and a remote desktop tool, and some configuration options.
Digging deeper we find manual pages for the command line tools, the systemd init software, and version 5.15 of the Linux kernel.
Additional software can be installed using the pacman command line package manager. To install new packages we need root access which is granted using the su command and the password "root". The sudo utility is installed, but does not appear to be set up to work with the default user.
I found it interesting that when I installed alternative web browsers, such as Firefox, they displayed international pages in English, while Vivaldi displayed these pages in Japanese.
Hardware
When running Alchg in a VirtualBox instance the system ran smoothly. It worked well, though did not integrate with the VirtualBox host. When running on my laptop Alchg mostly worked well. It could detect my wireless card, sound worked, and the system ran quickly. However, the keyboard did not initialize quickly enough to respond to the language selection prompt. As previously mentioned, booting in UEFI mode caused five loud beeps to accompany the boot menu countdown. I also discovered my laptop's media keys were not recognised when running Alchg.
The distribution is fairly light and runs a minimal window manager. This results in both fast performance and a small memory footprint of about 200MB.
Conclusions
Alchg Linux is still a young project and some rough edges are to be expected. In this case though there are a lot of rough edges. The basic functionality of a live medium is present. The distribution boots, can connect to local networks, and browse the web. However, that is about all it does and it does even these limited functions with some caveats. The language support is minimal and (on my laptop) buggy and, in the case of the Vivaldi browser, inconsistent. The loud beeping at boot time and the lack of support for media keys is unfortunate. The application menu is a bit disorganized.
Most of these problems are not deal breakers, but they are pretty standard bits of functionality which other live distributions usually handle gracefully. I think Alchg needs another few releases to get these items sorted out before I'd suggest using it. Though I will say that the lightweight Openbox environment is small and fast, making it an appealing feature of this project.
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Visitor supplied rating
Qubes OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.8/10 from 36 review(s).
Have you used Qubes OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Canonical offers Wayland implementations through Mir, Quarkos introduces new Trinity edition, Debian considers non-free firmware stance, Arch-based systems encounter GRUB issue
One of the in-house projects to appear in Canonical's line-up over the years is Mir, a display server which attempted to address issues with X.Org in a similar fashion to Wayland: by replacing it. Over time, Mir shifted focus from its own protocol, which was used in Ubuntu's Unity 8 interface, to being a more flexible display server. Mir is now capable of being a Wayland implementation and may provide key building blocks for developers of desktop environments which want to implement Wayland's protocol, but who lack the time or resources to start from scratch. Alan Griffiths explains: "The Mir project provides libraries for creating Wayland compositors. The design is intended to make it easy build something simple and easy to customize the compositor in a number of ways. Within the Mir codebase there are four different Wayland compositors each demonstrating a different behaviour. There are additional compositors maintained and written by the Mir team in a number of Snaps. Most notably, Ubuntu Frame. Outside the Mir codebase there are at least four compositors based on Mir that support different uses."
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It might seem unlikely for any young Linux distributions to adopt a classic desktop environment which has been mostly static for over a decade. However, that is what the Quarkos (previously Quark) project is doing. Quarkos is introducing a new edition featuring the classic Trinity desktop, a fork of KDE 3, which will complement its existing KDE Plasma desktop. "At the occasion of the completely new Quarkos release, we have made a few important changes to the project. The project and operating system name has been slightly modified, it is no longer Quark, now Quarkos. New official dedicated Trinity desktop live media is now available too, so there are two download options for Quarkos, Ubuntu based Trinity 14.0.12 desktop and the still default Plasma desktop live media." The announcement offers details and download links.
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The Debian project takes a strong stance in favour of open source and free software, choosing to avoid the use of software or firmware that is proprietary or not freely licensed. While beneficial in some ways, Debian's approach means there is no non-free firmware on the official Debian media. Since non-free firmware is often used to make wireless networking cards function, this effectively blocks many users from being able to get on-line. The project currently maintains unofficial install media with the non-free firmware included and many people use this alternative media, but it is not always obvious this alternative approach exists. The project is currently considering how best to approach the use and distribution of non-free firmware by way of a general resolution.
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The EndeavourOS project is reporting on an issue users of Arch-based systems are facing. According to the Endeavour project, many people running distributions based on Arch Linux are running into a problem where their systems will no longer boot. "Since the recent grub issue has impacted a lot of people, we wanted to provide full transparency based on the information we have so far. The situation with this package is still evolving and we will update this post with more information as it becomes available. After updating to grub 2.06.r322 many users reported that their machines could fail to boot or booted directly into the BIOS or another OS." Details on what caused the issue and links to tips on fixing the problem are provided in the news post. At the time of writing no news post addressing the problem has appeared on the Arch Linux website, however there is a bug report filed against the issue.
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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) |
All about immutable operating systems
No-desire-to-change asks: What is an immutable operating system and what benefits would one achieve by using such an OS? Would this be appropriate for the average desktop environment, or is it better suited to servers and containers? Other than Fedora Silverblue and openSUSE MicroOS what other distributions use this approach? Are security updates allowed with an immutable OS?
DistroWatch answers: In practical terms, an immutable operating system is one where the base system (the core of the operating system) is fixed and unchanging. The underlying operating system is not altered and the root filesystem is typically read-only, meaning you can't edit its files.
Rather than editing the core of the operating system to change its configuration or upgrade packages, changes to services, applications, and data files are added on top of the base operating system. Imagine the core of the operating system as an unchanging foundation and any customizations or new programs we run on it are layers we stack on top of the base.
The Fedora Silverblue project sums up the concept as follows:
Unlike other operating systems, Silverblue is immutable. This means that every installation is identical to every other installation of the same version. The operating system that is on disk is exactly the same from one machine to the next, and it never changes as it is used.
Silverblue's immutable design is intended to make it more stable, less prone to bugs, and easier to test and develop. Finally, Silverblue's immutable design also makes it an excellent platform for containerized applications as well as container-based software development. In each case, applications (apps) and containers are kept separate from the host system, improving stability and reliability.
The idea here is that, since the base operating system doesn't change, we can upgrade to a new version by simply overwriting the old copy with a new one. The base system gets swapped out, but the layers (our files, configuration, containerized services, and customizations) live in separate layers and are not mixed into the base operating system.
What is achieved by such a system? In theory there is an added layer of security since the core operating system is read-only. It's also easier to test and develop, in some aspects, because my copy of the immutable core should be identical to your copy of the immutable core. There are no blurred edges between the original operating system and changes I made to my copy because my changes are in a separate layer.
In theory this also makes updates a more simple concept because instead of checking each package for changes and then trying to upgrade them in place, we can throw away the old core layer and replace it with a new one.
Would this be appropriate for a desktop environment? Some people think so. Fedora Silverblue is intended to look and act very similar to Fedora's Workstation edition. Again, quoting from the Silverblue website: "Silverblue is a variant of Fedora Workstation. It looks, feels and behaves like a regular desktop operating system, and the experience is similar to what you find with using a standard Fedora Workstation."
While it is intended to work the same for most tasks, people who try Silverblue need to get used to doing some things a little differently. Package management and configuration changes are handled differently than on a traditional operating system. These differences are covered in the Silverblue documentation.
The openSUSE MicroOS team takes a different stance. openSUSE's immutable platform is intended specifically for servers and container platforms:
Installing openSUSE MicroOS you get a quick, small environment for deploying containers, or any other workload that benefits from transactional updates.
Which other distributions use this approach? I don't think there are many Linux distributions which run immutable operating systems. There is more of a draw to do this sort of thing on commercial platforms than community ones, probably in part due to the reduced variation between systems and associated support costs. Some NAS systems, like TrueNAS, tend to act like immutable operating systems (intending to act like a fixed platform), even if they are not entirely read-only, immutable platforms. Android and other mobile operating systems, such as Murena, are typically immutable. If you have an Android phone and look at its mount points you'll see its root filesystem is read-only and the base operating system is updated as a fixed image. Likewise, UBports, by default, uses a read-only filesystem though it is possible to override this and make changes to the underlying operating system.
Immutable operating systems can be applied anywhere, but they tend to be used in situations where people want a small, unchanging base operating system that will run containers or portable packages (like AppImages or Flatpaks) on top of the core operating system. This makes immutable platforms ideal for servers that run containers, mobile devices, and embedded devices.
As to whether an immutable operating system can receive updates, they can and typically do. The difference is, with a classic operating system the individual components or packages are updated. With immutable operating systems you'll typically get the entire base system updated as one big piece. Then the containers or portable packages you installed on top of the immutable base are updated separately. If you've ever updated an Android phone you will have experienced this where the apps are updated as separate components, but the base system is updated as one big change.
This process probably feels more familiar to people in the BSD communities as projects like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD (while not immutable) draw a distinct line between the core operating system and third-party packages which are added on top of the system. The base operating system is upgraded separately from the third-party programs which run on it.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
Tails 5.4
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based Linux live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The project's latest release, Tails 5.4, introduces an updated kernel with newer hardware support, along with some kernel-related security hardening. This release also disables forced HTTPS connections to make it easier for users to connect to wi-fi networks where a sign-in is required. "Harden several aspects of our Linux kernel. Disable HTTPS-only mode in the Unsafe Browser to make it easier to sign in to Wi-Fi networks. Update Tor Browser to 11.5.2. Update tor to 0.4.7.10. Update the Linux kernel to 5.10.136. This should improve the support for newer hardware: graphics, Wi-Fi, and so on. It will also fix an important vulnerability. For more details, read our changelog." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
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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: 2,762
- Total data uploaded: 42.4TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Do you run an immutable operating system?
This week we talked about immutable operating systems in our Questions and Answers column. An immutable operating system can provide a number of benefits when it comes to security, stability, and testing. To date most immutable systems have been used on mobile devices and container servers, but they are slowly expanding to more servers and desktop systems. Do you currently run an immutable operating system on your laptop or desktop computer? If you are, let us know which one in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on getting notifications about security updates in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Running immutable operating systems
I run an immutable system on my laptop/workstation: | 60 (4%) |
I run an immutable system on my phone: | 155 (10%) |
I run an immutable system on both: | 18 (1%) |
I do not run any immutable systems: | 1163 (76%) |
I do not know if my systems are immutable: | 129 (8%) |
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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 $1,514 in contributions from the following kind souls:
Donor |
Amount |
Anonymous | $1426 |
Edgar C | $23 |
Brian K | $11 |
Kevin W | $10 |
Sam C | $10 |
Eric G | $9 |
Adiel A | $5 |
Chung T | $5 |
DuCakedHare | $5 |
Matt | $5 |
J.D. L | $2 |
PB C | $2 |
Stephen M | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Metis Linux. Metis Linux is a fork of Artix Linux which strives to be more minimal and resource efficient.
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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, 5 September 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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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • immutable OS vulnerabilites and show stopping bugs? (by shep on 2022-08-29 01:12:06 GMT from United States)
The immutable OS concept has been implemented by Android with project Treble. The underlying vendor (core) interface does change with the exception of bug/security fixes.: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-modular-base-for.html You can change the Generic System (Android 11 to Android 12) and the apps you're running.
The article does not address a big question? What happens when a security vulnerability or show stopping bug is in the immutable part.? Andoid would update.
2 • Debian and non-free firmware (by JeffC on 2022-08-29 01:17:36 GMT from United States)
Does Debian intend to exist as a distro to be installed, or only as a provider of parts for others to build a distro with?
A few weeks ago I watched a YouTube video in which an experienced Linux user went through installing Debian and after the trouble he had finding the ISO that worked with his hardware he wondered if the Debian developers actually intended for people to install it.
No doubt someone will try the lame excuse that you should pick hardware that is compatible with the distro, but some of us do not have access to a time machine.
3 • Arch grub issue (by Gifted Hater on 2022-08-29 01:20:24 GMT from United States)
Strange how such a widespread, boot breaking upstream issue that requires intervention hasn't been addressed on the main Arch site yet. EndeavourOS has posted about it, but the instructions aren't thought out very well, as the guide for those who hadn't updated yet doesn't consider how there was also a kernel upgrade the day before, and the instructions still lead to an unbootable system if you do them simultaneously. And sure enough there was a kernel update exactly 1 day before the bad grub update. I saw it before I updated so I thought I was in the clear, but I still had to chroot in to fix it in the end. It was a frustrating weekend.
4 • @2, and Qubes (by Andy Prough on 2022-08-29 01:41:09 GMT from United States)
@2 said: >"No doubt someone will try the lame excuse that you should pick hardware that is compatible with the distro, but some of us do not have access to a time machine."
Well, it's not exactly a "lame excuse" given that anyone who has ever installed any OS has had the responsibility to ensure that they had compatible hardware. You certainly can't install MacOS or Windows on incompatible hardware - the same is true of any GNU/Linux distro or any of the BSD's. This has always been the case. The person who made the Youtube video should have done their homework ahead of time.
Qubes OS - it's a real shame to read about the disastrous installation fails by Qubes. I was hoping to try it at some point this year, because the security concepts are very intriguing. But the fact that it is based on Fedora and uses Anaconda are complete deal killers for me. I've never had a good experience with either, and it doesn't sound like things have improved.
5 • EndeavorOS (by anomie on 2022-08-29 03:21:37 GMT from United States)
Was hit with my EndeavorOS system not booting this week. Had happily been using the system for at least a year. For me, this kills my interest in the project indefinitely. But I hope they recover soon.
6 • Grub Issue (by R Hoagland on 2022-08-29 03:34:13 GMT from United States)
@5 It's not just EndeavourOS, it's other Arch systems as well. It happened on my Arch desktop and my laptop running EOS.
7 • Metis Linux (by Simon Plaistowe on 2022-08-29 04:20:54 GMT from New Zealand)
Metis Linux looks interesting, might give it a try, perhaps I can keep some more of that old junk out of the landfill for a while longer.
8 • MicroOS (by Charlie on 2022-08-29 05:04:15 GMT from Hong Kong)
MicroOS has a desktop version, but it's based on Tumbleweed and currently only GNOME reaches the RC stage:
https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:MicroOS/Desktop
9 • immutable OS (by user on 2022-08-29 05:15:55 GMT from Bulgaria)
I do not run and will not run, I've already ditched the distro enforcing me into immutable OS.
10 • Immutable OSes and what's this about Debian? (by Kinoite user on 2022-08-29 06:50:51 GMT from United States)
Have been using Silverblue since last December and am quite happy with it. Actually, a couple months ago I switched to Kinoite, which is the KDE Plasma version (Silverblue is Gnome). It's working out great.
Hardest part was getting used to the new way of doing things, but it turns out to be very flexible. You install software in containers using "toolbx" (included) or distrobox (separately installed). They are essentially docker containers but made a lot simpler. Software can also be installed via Flatpak or layered on top of the image (in practice, mostlysimilar to installing packages on a traditional distro). Updates are frequent.
"Immutable" is not the best marketing term, but there are more than just theoretical advantages. Traditional Linux distributions tend to creep towards chaos overtime, with packages being installed and uninstalled, and bits of no longer relevant configuration lying all over the place. Outside of your home directory, that doesn't really happen on an immutable OS.
Speaking of traditional Linux distributions, what is this about Debian? Have they taken up GUIX's policy of not including even the most basic necessities in the official release (e.g. AMD graphics being unusable), or is this just the same old problem that's always existed with newer wireless cards? GUIX only includes the "Linux-libre" kernel, but I didn't think Debian every went that far.
11 • Debian Issues (by Hank on 2022-08-29 06:58:31 GMT from Netherlands)
Hopefully Debian will change its stance
Installing Debian has sadly become a very disturbing experience, most more modern hardware including my 12 year old device needs closed source additions to boot and function as designed. Being a long term user I was loathe to change to another distro but at present using a derivative called antiX and loving the experience.
Breakage of NVIDIA drivers is also seemingly becoming a regular occurrence, experienced quite often within a group of users. One recent case, a bug was fixed and calmly reintroduced a few weeks later in unstable sid and backports. Debian was famous for unstoppable reliability, seems only to be for base system these days. QA ?.
I was told I should change to Radeon graphics, nice advice, GPU is soldered to the board in laptops.
12 • Debian non-free (by Fabio on 2022-08-29 07:02:20 GMT from Italy)
I am an expert debian user on servers and laptops. Also if i know that a usb stick with non-free firmware should be ready when installing debian i often forget this (i have no usb in my pocket or no network connection, etc) and in many cases I have lost a lot of time during debian installation for this reason. The old decision of Debian to put non-free firmware out of the installation files was against the users and against debian itself. Many people yet believe that their hardware (with almost the same kernel version) runs with ubuntu or other distro but not with debian just for missing firmware files. Thus I am happy the debian decided to change this policy.
13 • Possible Qubes install workaround (by GPZ on 2022-08-29 07:38:20 GMT from South Africa)
I recently watched a Qubes review on YouTube in which the presenter also mentioned having issues with the installation. Can't say for sure if it was the same issue, but in that case the presenter reportedly first booted with another OS, deleted all partitions so the entire disk was "free space" and was then able to successfully install Qubes. I fully agree that inaccurate error messages are really bad. The issue might be actually be really easy to resolve if provided with enough accurate information.
14 • Immutable OS (by Kazlu on 2022-08-29 08:43:05 GMT from France)
Unless I am mistaken about the definition, there is a family of well-known distros that are immutable OSes and have not been told here: the Puppy Linux family and derivatives. The core OS is indeed read-only and only whatever the user adds will change from one installation to another.
In fact, I am not so sure of that, but don't you get a de facto immutable OS whenever you install your OS via frugal install?
15 • "Immutable" is a bit misleading term here (by deleatur on 2022-08-29 09:00:46 GMT from Argentina)
Puppy Linux, Fatdog64, Porteus, Dog Linux... are some metadistros based on that approach. And yet, you can modify your system any way you want. Moreover, besides security (believe it or not), one collateral advantage is the simplicity to make working backups of your system (by good old-fashioned "copy-paste").
16 • Re 14 Puppy as immutable OS (by Kinoite user on 2022-08-29 09:04:31 GMT from United States)
That's an interesting observation. Of course, they're different in both implementation and purpose. The "immutable os" is intended to be installed, not run as a live cd. And it's updated in place. In reality, it's not very immutable at all. It's only the distribution-managed part which is immutable, but even it is not immutable in the absolute sense.
Puppy Linux, DSL, Dynaebolic, and similar, were actually more "immutable" than what's being called immutable now... They were ahead of their time.
(I miss Dynaebolic especially.)
17 • Grub issue and Qubes OS (by Brad on 2022-08-29 09:10:33 GMT from United States)
Hmm...I've not encountered the issue on Manjaro, but perhaps in the name of safety, I'll decline any updates for now, until the problem seems to have been fixed.
Sorry to hear about the installation issues with Qubes - like others here, I was willing to try it out when I had some free time, but it looks like this too, will have to be postponed...
18 • Grub issue (by Marco on 2022-08-29 11:24:17 GMT from United States)
@17 This is an example of a benefit of Manjaro holding back updates. Also, the grub issue seems to only affect EFI installations, and maybe not even all of them.
19 • Arch and GRUB (by jesuiswiizzz on 2022-08-29 11:32:31 GMT from France)
No problem with the GRUB version currently under investigation. My three Arch- and Plasma-based computers (desktop with UEFI, laptop with BIOS, laptop with BIOS and Endeavour) restarted flawlessly. Am I an exception?
20 • Immutable OS (by Mehdi on 2022-08-29 11:47:34 GMT from Algeria)
I am surprised that most of the poll participants chose `I do not run any immutable systems`, don't they use phones?
If I am not mistaken, If you are using an Android phone then you are using an immutable OS.
21 • Installing a native Debian system ... (by Gerhard Goetzhaber on 2022-08-29 12:09:53 GMT from Austria)
... is real horror to any user and most time infeasible for newcomers! This isn't just because of missing network devices' support but as well the effect of early (during post) failing the boot process of the freshly installed system if just having a common mid-range graphics card (evenly a "historical" model) as part of one's machine: As a workaround, you may either change the Grub boot line by adding a simple digit "3" to force the system to boot in text mode only and then install the necessary package in terminal mode, or choose chrooting into your new Debian from another system (for example from a USB stick) and continue as proposed before. Honestly however, who of you guys has knowledge mastery over Grub boot lines' manipulating or even chrooting? Which newby has?? Debian will do very well by performing a big change!
22 • Arch and special grub (by vmc on 2022-08-29 12:29:04 GMT from United States)
@19 no your not. I have 3 EndeavorOS installed along side Windows and Ubuntu. I do have a special grub.cfg in place. None of my OS's fail to run properly.
23 • grub and arch based distros (by Otis on 2022-08-29 12:31:19 GMT from United States)
@19 Talk about your hardware. Doing that may help others. Especially if enough users of Arch based distros do that.
My Manjaro on a one year old Acer (intel) has shown no issues.
24 • Endless OS (by Christian on 2022-08-29 13:58:11 GMT from Canada)
How about Endless OS? Anyone using it? Seems to be tailored for the desktop and non-technical users.
25 • Debian (by Mitchell on 2022-08-29 14:06:48 GMT from United States)
@2 With Debian, I also found it difficult to locate an .iso: it was much easier to find out 'how difficult it was' than to actually locate any given .iso. I do wonder if a bit of hubris sets in due to familiarity for some of these projects. The concept of bringing in someone from the outside to look over the project's online setup makes so sense to me. It's hard to step away from it in your mind when one is so familiar with it. Ask yourself, "Can a child or Grand Mum navigate our site and find a downloadable .iso or .img file?" Keep it simple in order to serve the needs of others, not the indulgent side of self. Not to be blinded by one's own importance is a character trait well worth having. KISS
26 • Debian as desktop OS (by Terryn Serge on 2022-08-29 14:34:51 GMT from Belgium)
The original Debian site is indeed not the best way to look for an iso. I always use https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ to get my iso's.
27 • CUBES and immutablity (by Bobbie Sellers on 2022-08-29 14:48:38 GMT from United States)
Well back before Covid-19 hit I ran CUBES on my old Dell laptop. It worked then. Maybe the Team lost members before this release and cannot do the necessary work. That was only an experimental install and I never got used to it. But it worked however the tools I wanted to use were awkward on a 15 inch screen with multiple tools open.
Immutable I have Android on an old tablet and I hate ti.
I run PCLinuxOS which is a Rolling Release and suits me much better at this older stage of hardware accessibility.
bliss
28 • I like Debian's installer (by Matt on 2022-08-29 15:34:58 GMT from United States)
Compared to some of the Debian children (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.), Debian is hard to install as a desktop OS for a new user. However, compared to "enthusiast" distributions (Arch, Void, Gentoo, etc.), Debian is easy to install.
My main desktop has an SSD drive for root and two identical SATA drives in mirrored RAID configuration for home. My laptop has an encrypted NVME drive for root and an encrypted SATA SSD drive for home. Try setting up either one of those, or any machine with an atypical partitioning scheme and you will see how Debian's installer is very flexible and saves time.
29 • @26 Debian design (by Tad Strange on 2022-08-29 17:29:53 GMT from Canada)
That page isn't much better, honestly, especially once you start browsing the 1990's throwback ftp-ish folder trees.
The single biggest roadblock to using Debian has always been their utterly rubbishy and disorganised web presence.
I'm surprised to not find a hit counter and a "proudly created in vi" button somewhere in there.
I'm with #2 - they really don't want the bother of appealing to the average user.
30 • Imutable OS (by Werner Claassen on 2022-08-29 19:50:01 GMT from South Africa)
I run Endless OS Basic as my only daily driver on my laptop. It is all that modern Linux needs to be. Secure, Fast, Easy and Unbreakable!!! Awesome work developers of Endless OS
31 • Anaconda installer (by Scott Dowdle on 2022-08-29 19:58:36 GMT from United States)
The fine article said, "this experience really highlights just how bad the notorious Anaconda installer is". Being on the Fedora Respin SIG, I do a ton of installs... mostly in KVM VMs... but also in the real world on physical hardware. I generally do not have any issues with Anaconda and believe your characterization of it with the quoted words above... well... I guess your milage varied. :) Anaconda is my preferred distro installer.
One occasion I've seen a user have issues, although it was a few years ago... was someone who does lots of distro installs and they had a partition table that was very non-standard with out-of-order partitions. Whether that was in any way related to your issue, I have no idea.
32 • Immutable... (by Tech in San Diego on 2022-08-29 21:42:02 GMT from United States)
Many thanks to the author of this weeks "Questions and Answers". Over the past few months I have switched 20 of our Lab instruments from Windows to openSUSE MicroOS (KDE). The research and development department absolutely agrees with my position that this is the best approach in keeping our equipment within compliance with federal regulations. The fact that the underlying O/S can not be modified and that all desktops attached to the test equipment are identical will ensure that the technicians performing the tests will have a high confidence that their test results are accurate.
33 • Debian firmware stance (by Ted on 2022-08-29 22:32:42 GMT from Luxembourg)
Why do people who don't care much about software freedom try to install official Debian images on incompatible hardware? Is it so hard to read the release notes? I hope Debian developers vote against the proposed changes. Otherwise it'll be an absurd situation: no official GNU documentation in official images (because it's non-free according to Debian Free Software Guidelines) but tons of non-free executable firmware instead.
34 • Debian firmware (by JeffC on 2022-08-30 00:08:08 GMT from United States)
@4 When you buy a computer most of them come with Windows pre-installed, there is no need to check if it is compatible. The same is true with MacOS, they sell their hardware with the OS on it. In neither case is there any research needed. Or for that matter need to install an OS themselves.
What do you want to do? Keep people from repurposing hardware? Tell them to throw it away and buy an new expensive computer to run Linux on?
The harder Linux is to install a working distro the fewer users there will be. The fewer users there are the less attention the hardware makers need to give.
35 • Firmware (by Ted on 2022-08-30 01:08:00 GMT from Iceland)
@34 The number of people who give up to install GNU/Linux after trying to install Debian from official media is neglible, certainly irrelevant to influence decisions or practices of hardware vendors. People (especially novices) usually use Ubuntu or its derivatives for desktops and laptops. Debian users know what they are doing and can click the right download link.
36 • Qubes, Debian, Immutable OS's (by eganonoa on 2022-08-30 01:17:57 GMT from United States)
Qubes has a VERY limited hardware compatibility list: https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/. I wonder whether that was the underlying issue that Jessie faced (the hardware used wasn't listed). Agree entirely on Anaconda, which is just horrible. And generally agree on Fedora. Having to update your various fedora VMs so frequently is, at a minimum, annoying.
Am a bit surprised about all the discussion on Debian. I think it is great that there is commitment to free sotfware in such an important distro, especially when there are plenty of other distros that use Debian as a base that add in the non-free stuff. I think this is exactly what we should be looking for with linux. Debian focuses on what it does, perfecting the base. Ubuntu and others can come in on top on things like broader hardware compatibility, etc. Don't see a problem with the current position.
A couple years ago I tried Silverblue. Spent quite a whole getting the system how I liked it and needed to rely on overlays more than I would have liked. But eventually I got it there. Found the experience frustrating. But strangely enough, it is the one system I've stuck with. Once it was set up, it has been utterly rock solid. I love that not matter what I do, I can't break it. Roll it back or update. Simple.
37 • @35 (by Ted on 2022-08-30 01:17:57 GMT from Iceland)
I meant "give up installing" and "negligible".
38 • @33 (re Debian and non-free components) (by Simon on 2022-08-30 03:45:11 GMT from New Zealand)
Exactly. People who complain about the absence of non-free components in an explicitly free software project are... confused, to say the least... especially when there are so many Debian derivatives (Ubuntu and all its derivatives, for example) that already layer on the non-free components they're so upset about not finding in a *free* OS. If the Debian developers give in to all the whining and abandon their founding principles, they're morons. Just use Ubuntu if you're upset that you have to use (gasp) an installer other than the default installer to install Debian with non-free components: to expect a project that explicitly exists to avoid what you're wanting, to do what you want regardless when there are countless projects already doing that, is almost unbelievably entitled... it's like going to a baseball game and whining that they're not playing football because you like that better. Maybe go to a football game, then...?
39 • Alchg Ouch!, And let's beat up on Debian (by Dr. Hu on 2022-08-30 06:46:47 GMT from Philippines)
"Alchg!" How do they come up with these names? My fingers recoil from typing it and my spellchecker thinks I've gone rogue. Maybe it means something in Japanese, like: "I stubbed my toe, Alchg!!" But seriously, why Vivaldi on a supposedly very light distro? Especially so if it's to be used live. Is one going to configure Vivaldi at every boot? The Japanese web-page thing, as long as you are quick enough with "2" and "enter," can be solved in Vivaldi's settings, but then you'd be doing that also at every boot. To be fair, they also bill themselves as an Arch install CD. Don't know how well that would go.
By comparison, I've got a copy of Star, based on Devuan, which after install idles around 240 MB, and It includes the XFCE desktop on an ISO about half the size of Alchg's. And everything seems to work, in English no less. It can also be used live and boot to RAM. From the same page at Sourceforge, one can download versions with Openbox or i3.
About Debian: I'm running it right now. I installed from a SpiralLinux ISO, just to try it. Easy as pie. SpiralLinux is not really a separate distro, it's just ISOs all set up to install Debian just about any way you want, with no fuss. Years back I kept copies of several drivers which were needed to install just about any distro. Today I keep one, for WiFi, and I use it whenever I install from the Debian installer. No big deal.
I care less than little whether the software I use is proprietary or not, but free software is supposed to be Debian's raison d'être. So why pick on them when their repos, software and all else is available to anyone? And when there is an excess of derivatives with so many ways to install? Try telling the people at Arch that you want granny or the kids to be able to install their OS, and that they should adapt it. They'd probably laugh. There might even be obscene gestures involved. If I were Debian, that would be my reaction too.
40 • Debian iso... (by Ron on 2022-08-30 07:29:39 GMT from United States)
I remember about 3 or 4 yrs. ago downloading an ISO from Debian which was a live ISO that had the wireless pre-installed so that all I had to do was install it all and it was up and running when I signed in. It was a real pleasure. I have PureOS (Debian based) on a laptop and it was a real pain having to download the Debian package and install it with the ethernet cable. I can see them not wanting to include other stuff, but something like wireless which just about everyone uses is necessary in my opinion. Debian seems like a cranky old person set in their ways that refuse to change. I guess it is the Grandparent of Linux...Despite it all, I still like Debian and wish them well...Oh, I still hate Anaconda after all these years, although it seems to have gotten easier to use over the years. I remember my 1st time trying to install Fedora with Anaconda, and it was a nightmare...
41 • @40 PureOS (by Dr.Hu on 2022-08-30 09:13:15 GMT from Philippines)
"PureOS uses free and open source software exclusively and is endorsed by the Free Software Foundation" I fail to understand why you'd expect it to include proprietary software exclusively for you. To save future misunderstandings, why not bookmark this web-page, since none of these will include your WiFi firmware:
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html
"Debian seems like a cranky old person" Not all these "free" distros are based on Debian. As for cranky old persons, one word: mirror.
42 • debian install (by dony hendratmo on 2022-08-30 10:45:03 GMT from Indonesia)
contrary with popular opinion, debian free iso image works better for me. i have bad experience using debian non-free iso image. it failed to boot. whenever i use free iso image, it succeed to boot, i hope debian team will be careful with their decision.
43 • Anaconda (by Otis on 2022-08-30 11:44:59 GMT from United States)
@40 (and others) I confess to wondering what the issues are, specifically, with Anaconda. I remember as a complete noob to Linux and finding that there was this thing called an "installer" and it had a name. It had step by step directions and a "next" button. Then "finish." Then you restart the computer and voila an installed alternative to Windows right there on my screen. I recall having to struggle with other things in those early days, but never the installer.... on pretty much any distro I tried. The "nightmare" installers were the ones that I had no experience using and needed to practice.
Hardware was the issue for me then. Even the keyboard after the reboot. But never Anaconda. It just lead me through the process. Glad to see it's still around.
44 • Debian install, non-free, user friendly etc (by zcatav on 2022-08-30 11:58:31 GMT from Turkey)
Please try SpiralLinux (https://spirallinux.github.io/). All goodness + Debian. Thanks to builder and maintainer of SpiralLinux and GeckoLinux.
45 • Qubes (by Udo on 2022-08-30 12:20:20 GMT from Germany)
Qubes is actually my daily driver for several years now. Currently I am using a standard Intel NUC (Core i3 with 32GiB Ram) as the base hardware. Works like a charm - on a 4K screen :-)
In this very moment I am typing this comment into a Firefox inside my "untrusted" Domain. Neighbor Desktops run a "private", a "work" and a "company" (debian-) Domain. Each one has an isolated Firefox instance running. Copying the clipboard is trivial, data files are on a NAS.
That said: I have more than one computer reachable - some others are running plain Ubuntu with Wayland/Sway and sometimes Gnome. And several others are living pure virtually in my basement :-)
46 • Debian non-free (by Fabio on 2022-08-30 13:56:41 GMT from Italy)
@33 : non-free firmware are not "tons of non free executable". In a server/desktop or in a laptop there are often just one or two particular components (often the wifi or a fiber optic ethernet card in servers) that need special firmware. For example my laptop has an intel wifi card and could not run properly without the debian non-free "firmware-iwlwifi" package. The fact that this package is installed does not make me less "free" and indeed the package is in a official debian repository. In fact without it i should obliged to use windows10 in place of Linux if i want to work with my laptop. Debian does not make available this file or other similar at installation (but easily after enabling the non-free packages) and so people that is not expert, but want to try debian, is immediately deceived for lack of knowledge.
47 • Immutable OS (by Robert on 2022-08-30 18:19:03 GMT from United States)
I use an immutable OS on my fileserver (not a poll option). In the opens user installer there is an option for "transactional server" which mounts the root filesystem as read only. All updates and modifications are made in a snapshot which you then reboot into, while the running system is unchanged. I think this is the same tech as used in MicroOS, just not explicitly minimal and intended for containers.
I prefer this approach as it is more flexible and familiar compared to something like Silverblue. There aren'tmany, but there are things that are difficult or impossible to do on Silverblue.
48 • Firmware (by Ted on 2022-08-30 21:24:02 GMT from Austria)
@46: please just ask your laptop manufacturer to ship the required firmware on the EFI partition Or just use the unofficial installer or buy a USB Wi-Fi dongle. And please don't confuse "confused" and "deceived".
49 • debian (by dave on 2022-08-31 01:09:21 GMT from United States)
Years ago, when I was still using Ubuntu (or Xubuntu) I had a nagging concern that perhaps one day, Canonical might close up shop and then Debian would be left holding the bag, so to speak. I used to imagine a situation in which Debian consumed Ubuntu's 'user friendly' developments and absorbed its userbase.
Later I became a Debian user and realized what an undesirable situation that would be.
Nowadays I have no fear of that ever transpiring, because even if Ubuntu went away, there would be some project like Mint to take the brunt of the blow to the audience.
Debian should always remain free by default. It shouldn't have to be 'user friendly' in the modern (non-free) sense of the term. As others have said-- that's a responsibility for the Ubuntus and Mints. If someone wishes to modify a Debian install, it's easy enough to do.. if you're not up to the task or don't want to do that amount of work, there are plenty of Debian-based distributions who provide excellent 'out of the box' solutions.
If Debian ever has the resources to provide an official non-free variant, fine.. but the default should be free and free is where their priorities should lie; the project's founding principles shouldn't be betrayed.
Complaints about the way they organize the website etc are sort of a side issue. Confusion about how to download the version you need ultimately comes down to user ignorance. Their website has actually gotten sort of bloated with modern soydev design choices in recent years and I would support a move back to a simpler 'old school' layout.
50 • Debian (by dude on 2022-08-31 03:02:39 GMT from United States)
i really like Debian. But I don't use it, because it's incompatible with my laptops wifi adapter.
51 • @50 incompatible laptops wifi adapter (by zcatav on 2022-08-31 09:56:46 GMT from Turkey)
@50 • Debian (by dude >"i really like Debian. But I don't use it, because it's incompatible with my laptops wifi adapter."
Did you try SpiralLinux or MxLinux as a live system?
52 • Qubes OS and the Anaconda Installer collab (by Scott Dowdle on 2022-08-31 21:19:11 GMT from United States)
@Jesse Smith - I've used QubesOS before just to try it out on a laptop, but it has been a while... so I talked to a co-worker who uses it regularly to have him review what you wrote. He said that QubesOS definitely requires LVM and that if you go with the default partitioning scheme, they have altered Anaconda so that it'll produce the partitioning scheme that is needed.
As you (hopefully) know QubesOS is not a general purpose distro and it has some strict requirements and should not be treated like a general purpose distro where you can partition things with the freedom you would have on other distros. QubesOS has not modified the Anaconda installer enough that it'll keep the user from making bad decisions with the partitioning tool... satisfying Anaconda but not QubesOS... which is in line with there not being any warning icons in the spokes but the distro still not being happy. I guess it could have tried to do the install with the given parameters and just failed... but in this case... it just provides a non-informative and invalid error message rather than proceeding. I'm not sure which is better but at least what you encountered took less time than going through with the install and failing at some point down the line.
So, if you want to read up a little bit more on QubesOS and the install process, I'm sure you can get through an install (assuming the hardware you are using meets the requirements) and give it a try... but it definitely ain't a typical desktop distro with a lot of install flexibility. QubesOS is really a complex Xen-based VM-as-application-appliance system with security at the forfront and advanced features like driver VMs that manage access to networking, etc. It is definitely worth all of the trouble if its use case is your thing.
53 • @52, Qubes OS and the Anaconda Installer collab (by Wally on 2022-09-01 11:29:33 GMT from Australia)
Conclusion: Anaconda sucks more on Qubes but that's on purpose.
54 • Wish they would invert it (by CS on 2022-09-01 21:29:28 GMT from United States)
Instead of a base distro that doesn't work, where downstream "usability" distros like Mint have to come along and shape it into a working distro I wish the base distro was usable and the fanatics could derive downstream non-working distros that only they would use.
This has been going on for 20+ years and it hasn't solved a thing. Broadcom and Nvidia are making money hand over fist, they have no incentive to change. Give your poor suffering users something that works better please.
55 • @54 (by Ted on 2022-09-02 00:07:27 GMT from United States)
"No incentive to change"? And yet Nvidia have recently open-sourced kernel modules for certain models of their GPUs.
"Poor suffering users"? Whining "for 20+ years" "hasn't solved a thing". Investment of time or money coupled with determination has.
56 • @54 • Wish they would invert it (by Wally on 2022-09-02 09:39:49 GMT from Australia)
"Give your poor suffering users something that works better please." Suffering with Debian here, but it's my cross to bear. And besides, I love pain and suffering.
Number of Comments: 56
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• Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
• Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
• Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
• Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
• Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
• Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
• Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
• Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
• Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
• Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
• Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
• Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
• Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
• Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
• Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
• Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
• Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
• Full list of all issues |
Star Labs |
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Random Distribution |
TrueBSD
TrueBSD was a general purpose live media based on FreeBSD. It includes Xfce and Ion window managers, media players and codecs, several server applications, and other useful tools.
Status: Discontinued
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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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