 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 985, 12 September 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 37th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
In the Linux community, some distributions strive to push the limit, test new technologies, and be on the cutting edge of software development. Others stick to a tried and true approach, opting to adhere to established standards and familiar ways of doing things. This week we share views on both ends of the spectrum, starting with Garuda Linux, an Arch-based distribution on the cutting edge. Garuda Linux implements filesystem snapshots, compressed RAM for swap space, ships with a modern, cyber-punk theme, and strives to make it easier to access a wide array of games. Our Feature Story offers details on this interesting project. Then, in our News section, we talk about other projects on the forward edge of development. We discuss Fedora upgrading the project's package manager and elementary OS implementing responsive application design. On the more conservative side of things, Slackware is overriding a change to the GNU grep package in order to stick with traditional standards. Plus we report on UBports becoming an official operating system on the Fairphone 4 while Debian updates its install media. Next, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about using the root account for system administration versus using an authentication tool like sudo. Do you run a distribution which uses the root account for system administration or is your root account locked? Let us know 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 wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Garuda Linux 220808
Garuda Linux is a rolling distribution based on the Arch Linux operating system. Unlike Arch Linux, Garuda Linux comes with a graphical installer (Calamares) for easy installation, and other advanced graphical tools for managing your system. Garuda includes several tweaks and custom tools. Some of the many tweaks include using zRAM, a performance CPU governor, and automated Btrfs snapshots. Garuda Linux has striven to provide system stability by including the Timeshift backup utility.
The project's website mentions some of the other key features which Garuda offers:
While being a rolling release distro, our goal is to ensure that your system will not be left in an unbootable state after a problematic update. Thus, we use the Btrfs filesystem integrated with Snapper which employs an automatic snapshot feature, backing up the system configuration before each update. You can access recent snapshots directly from GRUB.
The project also reportedly ships with a custom web browser: "We ship our own browser, FireDragon which is forked from LibreWolf. Amongst its features are privacy-friendly defaults, enhanced KDE integration and a small collection of useful addons."
Garuda ships with the Zen build of the Linux kernel and includes custom tools for managing both kernels and drivers. It also offers a graphical utility for installing a wide selection of games.
The project offers several desktop editions, including: KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, Xfce, MATE, LXQt, Wayfire, Sway, i3, Qtile, KDE Lite, and KDE-git. I took the first KDE option as it seems to be the default. The download for the KDE edition was 2.4GB in size.
Live media
Booting from the live media gives us the option of booting with proprietary NVIDIA drivers or with open source drivers only. I don't have any machines currently with NVIDIA cards and felt safe taking the open source drivers only option. Then the KDE Plasma desktop loads. The desktop has an icon in the upper-left corner which will launch the Calamares system installer. At the top of the display is a thin panel which holds the application menu and system tray. This top panel also holds a unified menu bar - applications display their menu bar in the top panel rather than inside the application window. This may take up less total screen space, but it means we need to move the mouse further whenever we want to transition between a window and that window's menu. At the bottom of the display is a dock with application launchers.
Application windows place their control buttons (such as close and maximize) to the left side. The whole layout gives a certain Ubuntu-running-Unity feel with a dose of macOS thrown in.
Straight away, a window opens which offers a cross in functionality between a welcome screen and a settings panel which can be used to launch configuration tools. I'll come back to this window later as it also runs on the distribution once the operating system has been installed.
Garuda Linux 220808 -- The welcome window
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Early on, I noticed that the system was sluggish to respond and was running a bit hot (ie the fan on my laptop was running more than usual). I'll talk about this in more detail later, but what I found was the KWin window manager was consuming a lot of CPU cycles and causing my system to run hot. This can be fixed by changing the default theme.
Installer
Garuda uses Calamares as its graphical system installer. This makes the initial install a smooth and quick process. We're quickly walked through the usual steps - selecting our language from a list, picking our time zone, and confirming our keyboard layout. We're offered a friendly, manual partitioning screen along with a guided option. The guided approach offers to take over available space and set up the distribution on a Btrfs volume. The guided approach does not set up a swap file or swap partition. Then, once we make up a username and password, Calamares installs packages to our hard drive and offers to restart the computer.
Early impressions
When booting into my installed copy of Garuda I noticed the boot menu has options for booting into older snapshots (boot environments) of the distribution. To date, openSUSE and FreeBSD have been two of the few projects I have used which have supported booting from filesystem snapshots. It's nice to see another open source system support boot environments, and it's especially nice to see it happen with a rolling release platform like Garuda where things change quickly.
Garuda boots to a graphical login screen. Signing in brings up the same dual-panel desktop as we saw in the live environment. The welcome window also opens again and will continue to appear at each login unless we dismiss it.
As mentioned before, the two-panel, left-aligned layout reminds me of macOS and modern versions of Ubuntu's Desktop edition. The system defaults to using a dark theme with white text. I like this contrast. However, the icons (and some text) tend toward low-contrast or reddish colours which I find hard to read on the dark background. This is compounded by the font being relatively small. The theme, icons, and font can be changed, but it makes for some hard to read and hard to distinguish visual elements out of the box.
Hardware
When I first started experimenting with Garuda I was running the distribution in a VirtualBox instance. I found Garuda didn't integrate automatically with VirtualBox and its KDE Plasma desktop wouldn't resize dynamically with the VirtualBox window.
More concerning for me was the fact the KWin window manager constantly consumed more than 50% of the available CPU resources, causing the host computer's CPU to run hot and its fan to run hard. The Garuda desktop was sluggish. A quick investigation revealed the default theme was the problem. Switching from the default Sweet theme to the dark Breeze theme reduced CPU consumption to below 5%, even with transparency, window animations and visual effects still enabled. This makes me think there is something flawed in the Sweet theme which causes it to consume ten times more processing power than other themes.
Garuda Linux 220808 -- The window manager consuming resources
(full image size: 571kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
When I was running Garuda on my laptop computer the system didn't consume nearly as much CPU power (top showed my CPU consumption was closer to 10%) and the desktop was more responsive. However, my system was still running hot, which makes me think the strain on the CPU was merely offloaded to the video card. Again, switching the theme from Sweet to the dark Breeze theme fixed this and allowed my laptop to cool.
Garuda takes about 730MB of RAM when logged into the Plasma desktop which makes it one of the heavier distributions I have run recently. It takes up 6.3GB of disk space for a fresh install. This statistic seems to factor in the zstd compression the distribution reportedly offers by default.
Garuda doesn't set up swap space, preferring to enable zRAM - a compressed section of memory held in RAM which acts like swap. This sort of arrangement can be useful and faster than traditional swap space, but it risks poor system behaviour if a memory leak fills swap (zRAM). To counteract this potential issue, Garuda ships with systemd-oom, an out of memory service which will try to kill off memory-hungry processes before they cripple the operating system. During my trial I didn't run into any situations which would trigger the out of memory (OOM) service.
Custom tools and features
Garuda ships with several configuration utilities, along with custom tools and features. Most of these are presented to us through the welcome window. This welcome window provides links to on-line resources, such as the project's website, wiki, and source code. It also provides launchers for accessing Garuda's many utilities along with some configuration tools. Some of the more common configuration tools include a network manager and partition manager. There is also a launcher for the project's package manager.
Then we have the custom tools such as a system cleaner, Garuda Assistant, Garuda Gamer, Btrfs Assistant, and the Garuda Settings Manager. These are the key features of the distribution which set it apart from the few dozen other Arch-based, Calamares sporting spins. I'd like to give a quick overview of these custom tools as I think most people will find them to be useful.
The Garuda Settings Manager is a small control panel which provides us with access to other tools. Specifically tools which help us adjust low-level settings like changing the keyboard layout, removing old kernel versions, installing language packs, and creating user accounts. These functions all worked for me without any issues.
The System Cleaner tool started by launching a virtual terminal to run the pacman package manager. I was asked to confirm it was okay for the system to install the Stacer package. I agreed and then this program was installed and launched. Stacer is a system monitor so I wasn't sure, at first, why it was being installed when I'd selected the "System Cleaner" utility. I realized, with a little poking around, one of the tabs in Stacer handles finding and removing cache files. This doesn't seem to be explained anywhere, we're just expected to search around until we find the right tab in the system monitor utility.
The Btrfs Assistant tool is one of the more useful, in my opinion. It will help us create, browse, and restore Btrfs snapshots. This is particularly useful if a package upgrade breaks something on the system. The snapshots can also be used to restore damaged or deleted files. All of this is handled through a fairly nice, streamlined desktop application.
There is a tool called Garuda Gamer which presents us with a window split into three tabs. The first tab lists several gaming portals and tools used for gaming such as Steam, WINE, and Lutris. We can click a box next to each entry to queue it for installation. The second tab works the same way, but lists games (mostly open source games) we can install directly. These install such items as SuperTuxKart, Endless Sky, Nethack, and many classics.
The third tab also works the same way (we can check boxes next to items we want to install). The third tab lists game emulators and related tools such as ZSNES, Anbox, and DOSbox which will help us run games (and other programs) built for other platforms.
I tried installing a few items and they mostly worked. I ended up with a few games and emulators. However, the Steam launcher gave me trouble. The Steam package installed, but when I tried to run it from the application menu the Steam installer/updater window appeared and failed to fetch the Steam software. In short, it looks like I successfully fetched the Steam installer tool, which would run, but failed to complete the Steam setup process.
Garuda Linux 220808 -- Fetching games with Garuda Gamer
(full image size: 266kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I like that the Garuda Gamer window will show us a brief description of each package it makes available. All we need to do is hover the mouse pointer over an entry to see its write-up.
The final custom utility I want to talk about is Garuda Assistant. This seems to be an eclectic grab bag of functionality - things which didn't fit anywhere else. The window is divided into six tabs. There is a Maintenance tab which offers to clear caches, re-install all packages, reset package configurations, and find fast repository mirrors.
Garuda Linux 220808 -- The Garuda Assistant window
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There is a Btrfs tab which reports its functionality has moved to a separate tool (the Btrfs Assistant I mentioned before). There is a button in this tab we can click to try to launch the Btrfs Assistant. This fails with a report the utility we are trying to launch requires root access.
There is a System Components tab which appears to be a random collection of services and programs we can install by checking a box next to each item we want. This works much the same way the Garuda Gamer program functions. Some of the items we have access to include sound servers (ALSA and PulseAudio), virtual machine tools (libvirt and VirtualBox), printing support, Bluetooth, firewall front-ends, media codecs, and Samba for network shares.
There is a Settings tab which helps us adjust low-level settings. These include picking our user's shell, choosing which DNS service to use, enabling the systemd out of memory service (this is actually on by default). There is an option to enable a guest account (which works beautifully), and an option just called "Performance tweaks" with no explanation.
There is a System Specs tab which just dumps hardware and configuration data. I suspect this is intended for use during help requests and bug reports. The final tab provides access to system logs, such as the systemd journal and the package manager log.
Applications
Along with the custom utilities I mentioned above, Garuda also ships with a customized web browser. This browser is a member of the Firefox family, through LibreWolf, which has been further tweaked and renamed FireDragon. As far as I can tell is basically Firefox with a dark theme, a different default search engine, and some privacy features enabled.
Garuda Linux 220808 -- The FireDragon web browser
(full image size: 483kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The distribution also ships with the Okular document viewer, the Dolphin file manager, and KDE Connect for syncing with mobile devices. The MPV media player is included along with codecs for both popular audio and video formats. The KDE System Settings panel is included to help us customize all aspects of the desktop. There are a few text editors included and the Snapper Btrfs snapshot manager. Digging deeper we find the GNU command line utilities, manual pages for included programs, and the GNU Compiler Collection. Garuda runs the systemd suite and version 5.18 of the Linux kernel.
The amount of software included with Garuda is relatively small. I found it generally worked well too. Most people will end up added more applications later (more on software management in a minute), but what is included mostly worked without any problems.
I say "mostly", because I did run into a few issues, almost all of them involving the virtual terminal. The distribution uses the fish shell which includes about 40 command line aliases. Some of these are probably useful. For example, using the command "untar" will extract almost any archive. There are some directory listing shortcuts too which might be useful. Other aliases are there just to be cute. For example, "please" is an alias for the sudo command. A few aliases got in my way. For instance, "wget" gets translated to "wget -c" which can produce quite different results and I found "ls" is aliased to "ls -la" which usually isn't what I want. Likewise, running "cat" gets translated to the bat pager which acts differently and it's a bit jarring to realize I'm using a pager, not dumping text to the terminal. All of this is to say, I'd prefer if distributions stopped including so many aliases by default which break (or greatly alter) common command line functionality. I don't like to debug basic Linux commands to find out why something isn't working.
By default, the fish shell uses a colourful, mostly red scheme. I didn't like looking at this and so tried to change it in Konsole's colour profile. I soon found fish didn't respect the Konsole profile colours. The bash shell does. However, changing shells isn't entirely straight forward. There are a few ways to change which shell a person uses. As an example, I tried the low-level approach of running the chsh (change shell) command and passing it the complete path of the bash shell. (The bash shell is stored at /usr/bin/bash on Garuda.) Trying to change the shell this way failed because /usr/bin/bash is not listed as a valid shell in the system's /etc/shells file. That file lists the bash shell as /bin/bash which, according to chsh isn't valid. This is odd as /bin/bash does exist and is identical to /usr/bin/bash. I had to manually edit the /etc/shells file to include the proper path before chsh would work. Even then, when using a virtual terminal such as Konsole, we need to change which shell it runs separately as fish is set as our shell in the default settings profile for Konsole. As a footnote to this exploration in changing shells, we can also change which shell we use in the virtual terminal in the Garuda settings panel.
Software management
Apart from the custom tools for adding applications mentioned earlier, Garuda ships with the Octopi graphical package manager. Octopi has a fairly simple layout and acts as a low-level package manager. Octopi will perform basic searches for packages and we can right-click on a package name to queue it for installation or removal. Octopi is also able to upgrade packages.
Garuda Linux 220808 -- The Octopi package manager
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While Octopi is fairly basic in its functionality and not much to look at (compared to modern software centres), it works quickly and I encountered no errors while using it. Even on the first day when I upgraded 151 packages, Octopi worked smoothly and quickly.
Should we wish to, we can also run the pacman command line package manager. Flatpak and Snap support are not included by default, but Flatpak is in the main repositories if we wish to install it.
Conclusions
One of the things I find fascinating about using Linux distributions, especially ones with smaller development teams, is it gives insight into the mindset of the developers. Where a distribution places its focus tells us about the priorities, interests, and maybe hardware of the developers.
As an example, Garuda ships with a utility entirely dedicated to installing and setting up games. There seems to be a strong assumption that we're going to want access to a wide range of games, kernels configured for performance, and gaming portals. There is no office suite, e-mail client, video conferencing software, or tools for installing such items. Garuda defaults to not using traditional swap space, instead taking up room in RAM for compressed memory (zRAM). The default behaviour to is enable CPU-consuming themes and effects. In short, it seems this distribution is targeting people with higher-end equipment that spend a lot of their time gaming and probably not a lot of time using their computer in job-related tasks. It may not be stated explicitly that this is the case, but that seems to be the niche of the distribution.
In a similar vein, the distribution looks like it belongs in a high-tech dystopia (the interface would fit right into cityscapes of recent episodes of the Obi-wan Kenobi series or The Orville). The dark backgrounds, neon colours, and small fonts all suggest a young, cyberpunk-loving target audience.
I'm not young, a gamer, or interested in flashy desktop effects and my hardware leans toward the more modest end of the spectrum. Which means I'm not the target audience of this project. However, I did still find a lot of things to like about it once I got the desktop to settle down, switched to a theme that didn't cook my laptop, and switched to a command line shell that wasn't trying to outsmart me.
Garuda Linux is one of the few Linux distributions which is trying to drag the community (or the Linux ecosystem) forward. A lot of Linux developers (and users) are my age or older and we're often set in our ways, or adverse to change. As such the community at large has been reluctant to adopt newer approaches and technologies, even when the benefit is obvious. For example, Garuda is one of a very few number of projects adopting automatic Btrfs snapshots to help protect data files and system functionality. Not only does the system automate snapshots for us, but also when we boot into an older snapshot (to recover the system) a window will pop-up and ask if we want to restore this snapshot, rolling back the operating system to an earlier point in time.
Garuda Linux 220808 -- Managing Btrfs snapshots
(full image size: 310kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Garuda also does something else differently that I found key. Most Linux distributions ship with a lot of third-party (upstream) packages such as Firefox, LibreOffice, and VLC while offering very few custom utilities. In other words, what we can get from one distribution we can often get from another. Garuda does the opposite, shipping lots of custom configuration tools and assistants while leaving us to install third-party software from the repositories. This works fairly well, especially with the custom assistants which help us install more software. It's a refreshing approach as it highlights what Garuda does as opposed to what we can find on almost every other distribution.
Some aspects of Garuda are quite well thought out, like the filesystem snapshots we can select at boot time. There are others too. For example, when I noticed Garuda defaults to using zRAM instead of classic swap space options, my first thought was to worry about memory leaks bringing the system to its knees. But then I found an out of memory killer is enabled which takes care of this concern. The developers were already anticipating the issue.
On the other hand, I ran into little issues like problems with the fish shell not respecting Konsole settings and errors when switching shells. Having the Garuda Assistant try and fail to launch the Btrfs utility was a clear issue and one which made me wonder if anyone had tested the launch button before the code was shipped.
In the end, I came away from using Garuda with mixed feelings. The distribution is not one which is targeting me or people like me who mostly use their machines for work. It's not aimed at people like me who want quiet, efficient user interfaces. It's not aimed at middle-aged and older people who need to squint to see small text and flat, neon icons. In short, a lot of the distribution's presentation rubs me the wrong way.
On the other hand, Garuda is probably one of the better distributions for appealing to gamers. It's probably one of the few which is truly embracing both rolling release cutting-edge technology and the security of boot environments. It's one of the few which is trying to look like it's modern and aimed at people under the age of 40. It may not suit my desires, but Garuda is filling an important niche: trying to drag the ageing Linux community - kicking and grumbling - into the future where features, fast machines, colourful animations, and integrated components are common.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Garuda Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.4/10 from 244 review(s).
Have you used Garuda Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora plans to replace DNF, elementary OS introducing responsive design in its apps, UBports to be officially supported on the Fairphone, Slackware reverses change to GNU grep, Debian updates install media
Next year we may see a version of Fedora with an upgraded package manager. The DNF package manager, which has often been criticised for its poor performance, will likely be replaced by DNF5. "The new DNF5 will provide a significant improvement in user experiences and performance. The replacement is the second step in [the] upgrade of Fedora Software Management stack. Without the change there will be multiple software management [tools] (DNF5, old Microdnf, PackageKit, and DNF) based on different libraries (libdnf, libdnf5), providing a different behavior, and not sharing a history. We can also expect that DNF will have only limited support from upstream. The DNF5 development was announced on Fedora-Devel list in 2020." Details on the change can be found in the DNF5 proposal.
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The elementary OS team have published a newsletter which provides an overview of work going into the distribution. One of the key areas being worked on is with responsive application layouts. "Firstly, if you're not familiar with the term 'responsive design' it refers to designing interfaces in a way such that they respond to changes in the size of the window or display. Typically when folks talk about responsive design, they're thinking in terms of shrinking things down to fit on mobile displays, but it can also mean making them work better for large desktop displays including ultrawide formats, and for us it means designing for resizable windows - including tiling. We've heard, both from people who use elementary OS and from our downstreams like System76, that there's a desire for tiling both simple and complex apps and even on smaller laptop displays. We've also heard for many years a desire to run elementary OS on tablets and phones, which would require us to make apps that can work on even smaller displays and in vertical layouts as well. So I'm excited to say that we've started to make progress towards this goal and future designs will keep responsiveness in mind."
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The UBports team have announced the Fairphone 4 will not only run the UBports mobile operating system, UBports will be an officially supported operating system on the Fairphone platform. "It was announced not just that the Fairphone 4 will have UT but that UT will be officially supported by Fairphone for that device. That is great news! The phone has a notch and the corners are very round, so we have a bit of UI work still to do. When the build is at a 'retail ready' standard, it will go into the official Fairphone store as a pre-installed option. The phone has 5G connectivity. There are two size variants. It also can operate with an eSIM. That is not something we have worked out how to support but that is another challenge for us. It has great camera modules. A point of interest is that it is based on Halium 11, so a big advance. Another exciting and unusual feature is that the FP4 has a USB display port! Sad news, no headphone jack. To support the FP4, the installer will be updated." Further information on UBports running on the Fairphone, along with other developments, can be found in the project's newsletter.
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The GNU project raised some eyebrows earlier this month with the release of GNU grep 3.8 which altered the normal functioning of egrep and fgrep that included a message telling users to no longer use these commands and, instead, use plain grep. While most people are changing their scripts and workflows to match, Patrick Volkerding plans to restore the commands to their normal, functioning status: "Folks, I rarely veto upstream, but I'm not going to entertain this nonsense. The egrep and fgrep commands were part of Unix since the 70s, continue to be included with the BSDs, and frankly, aren't hurting anything. GNU grep declared them deprecated in 2007 and when they were changed into shell scripts around 8 years ago I figured that's where it would end. I can see no logical justification to have these scripts start making noise and then to eventually pull the rug out from under any code that might be using them, so I've placed non-noisy versions of them into the package sources and will be installing those during the build. Given that the -F and -E options are part of the POSIX standard, these scripts will continue to work fine."
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The Debian team have published updated install media for both Debian 10 "Buster" and Debian 11 "Bullseye". The new media do not offer new versions of Debian, but provide install media with updated packages and fixes. "The Debian project is pleased to announce the thirteenth (and final) update of its Old Stable distribution Debian 10 (codename Buster). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available. After this point release, Debian's Security and Release Teams will no longer be producing updates for Debian 10."
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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) |
Using a root account versus sudo
Granting-access asks: When installing Mint it asks you for one password. You will use this password for logging in to your account and for doing sudo stuff. Manjaro, on the other hand, gives you the possibility to create a separate admin password. I did this, but sudo commands would still only take the user password. When using Mint should I also set a separate root password?
DistroWatch answers: When you are installing the Linux Mint distribution it asks for just one password, for your regular user, because the root account (the traditional system administrator account) is locked. The idea behind this boils down to two main points. One is that most home users will just need one account and they'll do everything from that one account. Therefore using sudo to perform administrative actions makes more sense than having the added complexity of second account.
Having a separate root account gives attackers a well known target
for a brute-force attack. When you have one user account, with a custom name you selected, it means remote attackers need to guess both your username and password if they want to break into your account.
In short, locking the root account and using sudo instead keeps things simple and locks down an avenue of attack. The Ubuntu documentation has an overview of the benefits and drawbacks of using sudo.
Some other distributions, including Manjaro Linux, give people the option of having a password protected root account. This can be useful if you want to keep more of a barrier between your regular account and the root account. It also means that if your regular account gets locked out (perhaps due to a forgotten password) the root account and its admin powers will still be available to you.
In short, there are trade-offs. For most environments I feel it makes sense to lock the root account and use authentication tools such as sudo and doas to perform administrative actions. These tools offer more flexibility (such as passwordless access to certain common functions) and logging of commands.
In my opinion, for most people it makes sense to stick with Mint's default behaviour of locking the root account and using tools like sudo to perform admin tasks.
I'd also like to clarify that authentication tools such as doas and sudo always use the password of the user running these utilities, not the credentials of the target user. In other words, when using sudo always provide it with your password, not the root user's password.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Salix 15.0
Salix is a Slackware-based Linux distribution that is simple, fast, easy to use and compatible with Slackware Linux. The distribution has published Salix 15.0 which includes the Xfce 4.16 desktop, much larger package repositories, and Flatpak support. "On a high level, this release includes Xfce 4.16 as the main environment! This is now based on GTK+ 3 and almost everything else that comes with a default installation has been upgraded to use GTK+ 3. This includes all our graphical system tools, which have received significant updates and a more modern look. The default software selection hasn't changed much, but of course everything has been upgraded to their latest releases, including Firefox 102ESR, LibreOffice 7.4, GIMP 2.10 and more. Whiskermenu is used as our default panel menu now. There have been extensive discussions in our forums with respect to how the new release will look and everything has been revamped, including a new GTK theme, a new icon theme, a new window manager theme and a default wallpaper, especially tailored for Salix 15.0. While the light versions of the above are used by default, dark versions are readily available. In general, our users will find themselves in a modern but familiar environment." Details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Salix 15.0 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 146kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,769
- 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) |
Is your root account unlocked?
In this week's Questions and Answers section we talked about using sudo to manage system administration tasks versus logging into a root account. Many distributions these days lock the root account to prevent common avenues of attack against the operating system. We'd like to hear if your system leaves the root account locked or if you can sign in as the root user.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using the Linglong repository provided by deepin in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Is your root account unlocked?
| Yes - I can sign in as root: | 810 (50%) |
| No - I cannot sign in as root: | 491 (30%) |
| I use some systems with an accessible root account and some without: | 333 (20%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 19 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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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
Elastix
Elastix was a Linux distribution that integrates the best tools available for Asterisk-based Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) into a single, easy-to-use interface. It also adds its own set of utilities and allows for the creation of third-party modules to make it an excellent software package available for open source telephony. Based on Debian since version 5.0.0 released in November 2017 (previous versions were was based on CentOS).
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| 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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