 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 986, 19 September 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Base distributions, independent projects which serve as the foundation for other distributions, are often reassembled into all sorts of unexpected shapes and applied to a wide variety of purposes. This week we begin with a look at Porteus, a Slackware-based project which strives to be as desktop-friendly and modern as Slackware is server-focused and conservative. Jeff Siegel takes us for a tour of Porteus in this week's Feature Story and reports on his findings. Then, in our News section, we talk about an unofficial software centre being developed for Ubuntu which strives to overcome the problems in the existing Ubuntu Software Centre. We also report on a handy tool from Proxmox which offers offline updates in a variety of scenarios. Plus we talk about how to handle protecting data on a stolen laptop. Do you have a way to remotely connect to your laptop, possibly to track it or remotely wipe its disk? Let us know about your approach to gaining remote access in this week's Opinion Poll. In this issue we're pleased to welcome the young SpiralLinux distribution to our database. SpiralLinux provides a series of desktop spins based on Debian and is a spiritual sibling to GeckoLinux. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and share the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jeff Siegel) |
Porteus 5.0
Porteus is based on Slackware, which may be the most old-fashioned, command line-driven distro in the Linux community, including and particularly for installation. Nevertheless, Porteus' developers have come up with a live desktop distribution (with eight desktops for x86_64) that is portable and aims to be persistent. In other words, so much of what Slackware is not -- and does not want to be.
Does your brain hurt yet? Because mine does.
I spent a couple of weeks with three of the desktops - Xfce, KDE, and Cinnamon - and found that, yes, a Slackware-based distro can offer a live desktop that is portable and snappy. But it's far from straightforward to use or configure, and especially if you want to do more than marvel at how slick the desktop looks and acts. Package management, to quote from the Porteus forum, ain't pretty: "Package management (and dependency resolution) is a perpetual issue in this Slackware based Porteus."
And getting persistence to work? Just writing that sentence made my brain hurt yet again; I was never able to do it. Maybe the best way to explain the difficulty is with this analogy: You may be able to troubleshoot how to save changes to a Porteus USB stick so they'll be there the next time, but it's like walking around the block four times in order to cross the street - a lot of effort for something that should take almost no effort at all.
Getting started
I downloaded the three desktops and installed each on a 32GB USB stick. They're part of Porteus 5.0, which uses the 5.18.8 kernel and is based on Slackware 15.0. It can run on as little as 36MB of RAM, but probably needs 512MB to load into memory and to run effectively. The downloaded ISO files are stunningly small - 348MB for the Xfce desktop, 359MB for Cinnamon, and 417MB for KDE. By comparison, the current Mint Cinnamon ISO is 2.4 GB.
Porteus 5.0 -- The Cinnamon desktop and application menu
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Boot times, as advertised, are about 15 seconds - again, amazingly quick. Each desktop looks as it should (though the Xfce dark theme is a bit muddy) and responds quickly and easily. I wasn't surprised to see this with Xfce, but it was impressive with Cinnamon, which sometimes gives me trouble, and especially impressive with KDE - the latter truly acted as it was running on a high-end machine, and not from a generic USB stick on my decade-old, 4GB memory Asus laptop.
The software is also modern and top-notch, as opposed to the lighter and older (and sometimes ancient) apps that many portable distros use to save space and memory. There is the underrated Audacious media player, the MPV video player, the Dconf settings editor, and GParted to manage partitions. Interestingly, there are few strictly KDE apps for that desktop, no doubt to keep duplication of functions and bloat off the USB. Also convenient: a root terminal for each desktop and launch-as-root icons for the Thunar, Nemo, and Dolphin file managers.
Which, unfortunately, was about all of the good news. I should have figured something was up when I couldn't find a printer manager for any of the desktops, so no way to print to my networked Canon MX-920. Contrast this with EasyOS, which has turned network printing into a one-step app. Plus, there isn't a word processor or office suite and no email software.
Porteus 5.0 -- Trying to find printer settings
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
It's not so much that package management is so difficult and that persistence is even more complicated; it's that, since Porteus is based on Slackware, no one seems to worry about those things. There is very little documentation, and what there is - to quote again from the post on the Porteus forum - is often wrong: "Some of our documentation is outdated, [the] usm [package manager] is no longer with us." Hence my frustration when I tried to use the Porteus FAQ, loaded in the distro, and which called for USM to install new packages -- and couldn't find it.
Porteus 5.0 -- Exploring the project's documentation
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Problems, problems, problems
The problems started with Porteus' "Browser Selection and Update Tool," which offers to install any of eight browsers (including the Lynx terminal browser). You can also choose between specific versions of some of the browsers, like the current Firefox or Firefox ESR. The tool mostly works - except when it doesn't. One forum user said the Porteus server wouldn't download Firefox despite repeated attempts. The solution? He needed to go the mirror, download the package, and install it himself.
Porteus 5.0 -- Selecting web browsers to install
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Technically, these are not packages, but what Porteus calls modules. The idea is to avoid traditional package building, instead relying on modules that can be turned on and off. Don't need the word processor module you just loaded? Then click it again and turn it off, with the goal of keeping Porteus small and compact. This seems to be a change from previous versions of Porteus, which used the USM package manager and was relatively straightforward, but may have used too much USB space. In addition, there are a variety of scripts - called Porteus cheat sheets - that are supposed to help with packages, persistence, and the like.
Porteus 5.0 -- Trying to move a module
(full image size: 950kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The catch, of course, is that it's not clear how to build a module, though there is a module app with a handful of modules awaiting installation. Apparently, module building involves using a wrapper called pmod in conjunction with the Slackware package tool, slackpkg. There is also a script called pkginfo, which is used to check for missing dependencies as well as to find out if the package is already installed. All of which, frankly, makes typical command line package installation - the scourge of new Linux users - seem simple. Or, to quote from the same forum post one more time: "Beware - [slackpkg] is far from intuitive."
So yes, my brain is starting to hurt again.
I didn't have any trouble downloading and installing the Firefox module, and it worked most of the time I clicked on it. And it was snappy, too. And I could turn the module off, as well. But, of course, there was another catch. The module is loaded into /tmp, and needs to be moved to the /porteus/modules folder on the USB. Otherwise, it won't be there the next time you run Porteus.
How to move it is a mystery. I tried several approaches - dragging and dropping, cutting and pasting, and using the Porteus save manager to create a saved space on the USB. And I tried using the root account, as well.
All of which failed with the error message: "Error while copying to modules." And why not? The modules folder is there, but it has no space in it -- 0 bytes.
A few words about persistence
Persistence is not difficult. Puppy Linux has been doing it for years with a couple of mouse clicks, while Puppy successor EasyOS works even more smoothly. And Ubuntu's Ubiquity-driven persistence, despite having a couple of hurdles to overcome and the need to use a USB with enough space to account for the size of the Ubuntu ISO, is not all that difficult to work with.
It's not like I didn't want it to work, either. I'm just geeky enough to love this stuff, and I love to find something that is so different and so unique that I can tell people about it - and bore them in the process, since it's Linux. And maybe it was me; maybe the answer was in front of me the entire time and I just didn't see it. But I tried everything I could think of to make persistence work with Porteus, short of using GParted to force space on the USB. And the reason I didn't was simple - if I needed to do that, what's the point of persistence? Who else would bother except someone who wants to batter their brain with the pain of Slackware?
It's also why I didn't try to install any of the desktop ISOs on my laptop. If I couldn't get persistence to work, what was the point of installation other than making me even crazier?
Porteus 5.0 -- The KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 2.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In the end, persistence in Porteus is past infuriating, maybe even more than package installation. Is that because of its Slackware roots? Is it a lack of resources for development? Porteus 5.0 was three years in the making, which speaks to some difficulties on that end. Or it is just the idea that the people who will use Porteus will figure it out for themselves?
Maybe. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea - or that I'll give up my copy of EasyOS.
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Hardware used for this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an Asus UX31A laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Core i5-3317U, 1.7GHz
- Storage: 128GB SSD
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless
- Display: Integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000
When he is not testing out new versions of Linux distributions, Jeff Siegel can be found writing about all things related to wine at Wine Curmudgeon.
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Visitor supplied rating
Porteus has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.5/10 from 17 review(s).
Have you used Porteus? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Unofficial new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline mirroring
Though it is not official yet, it looks as though Ubuntu users may soon be given a new software centre. The current software centre, which ships with the Ubuntu Desktop edition, is often criticized for being slow and locking up during operations. An effort to create a more responsive, more reliable software centre is underway. A brief overview of the new software centre along with screenshots can be found on the project's GitHub page.
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The Proxmox project has announced a new mirroring tool to help administrators keep up with software updates in a variety of scenarios. "We are proud to announce the first release of our new Proxmox Offline Mirror tool. With the Proxmox Offline Mirror tool, you can manage a local APT mirror for all package updates for Proxmox and Debian projects. From this local APT mirror you can create an external medium, for example a USB flash drive or a local network share, to update systems which cannot access the package repositories directly (or proxied) via the Internet. Such systems might be restricted by policies to access the public internet or are completely air-gapped. Finally, you can also manage subscriptions for such restricted hosts." Additional details can be found in the project's announcement.
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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) |
Remotely wiping hard drive
This-hard-drive-will-self-destruct asks: I'm looking to set my laptop up so that if it's ever stolen I can remotely access it and wipe the drive. I am using Btrfs as a file system, which I know shred won't work properly on. Any ideas?
DistroWatch answers: I have a few thoughts on this sort of setup. The first thing which comes to mind is it is true tools like shred won't work on files contained in copy-on-write filesystems such as Btrfs and ZFS. The attempts to overwrite these files before they are erased will fail under normal circumstances. However, this limitation is just for individual files within a filesystem. You can use tools like shred to erase entire disks. When you use shred on a whole disk it doesn't matter which filesystem you are using because the operation isn't working through the filesystem, it's operating on the raw disk.
In other words, using shred to erase each file individually on a Btrfs volume will fail. However, running shred on the disk device itself will work. For example, if your laptop's hard drive was called sda then you could run the following:
shred /dev/sda
In short, you can use shred for wiping a disk clean. However, there are a number of problems with the plan of logging into the laptop remotely and running a command to wipe the hard drive. In no particular order, these are some challenges you'll face:
- The laptop needs to be powered on and connected to a network. This means the person who stole it has been able to login to an account and make a network connection.
- The laptop needs to not be blocked from making (or accepting) networking connections, for example by a local firewall.
- The person who stole the laptop must not have removed your user account or changed your password, or replaced your operating system while still leaving your user data intact.
- You need to have a method in place for you to make the network connection happen. In other words, your laptop either needs to initiate a connection when it connects to a network, or it needs to be able to accept a network connection. If the former, your laptop will probably be opening a remote forwarding port using OpenSSH and connecting to a server you control. In the latter case you need some way to know the IP address of your laptop, maybe by having it send a ping or connecting to a remote service.
In short, this plan of remotely connecting to your laptop is probably not going to work. For it to be successful the person who stole it will need to be technology savvy enough to break into a local account and connect to the network on a Linux machine, while also not being savvy enough to know this is a bad idea. You're also relying on them not making backups or installing a fresh operating system before making themselves vulnerable to your plan. The thief also needs to stay on-line long enough for you to detect the laptop is on-line, sign in, and run the wipe command.
Chances are anyone who steals your laptop will either just wipe it immediately, change your login credentials, or make a backup before taking it on-line. In most cases trying to remotely wipe the disk won't help you. Not to mention you'd need to enable remote access and monitor for the laptop after it was stolen. This can be done, but it's a relatively large amount of work.
An easier approach is to set up disk (or home directory) encryption. Most Linux distributions make disk encryption a single-click process at install time. Simply click the "Encrypt disk" box during the initial install and enter a password. After that, your files are protected. As long as no one steals your laptop while you're logged in and the system is powered on (ie not in sleep mode) your information should be secure. This is an easier form of security to enable, it's more likely to work, and prevents anyone who steals your laptop from reading your files.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
SME Server 10.1
Terry Fage has announced the release of SME Server 10.1, an updated version of the project's specialist distribution for home servers. This version continues to be based on CentOS 7 and will be supported until June 2024: "The Koozali SME Server development team is pleased to announce the release of SME Server 10.1. This release is based on CentOS 7. CentOS 7 has an end of life on 30 June 2024. Koozali SME Server users are encouraged to upgrade production servers to this release. Major changes in this release: httpd access control using httpd 2.4 syntax; improve handling of logs between journalctl and rsyslog; improve logrotate scripts; better handling of pseudonyms; improve yum update without reboot; upgrade bglibs and cvm-unix to latest version; Contribs data are now part of core backup, improved handling of SSL certificates; increased level of security in term of encryption for all services; FTP is only available over TLS by default to avoid clear text exchanges on the network; PHP module is not used anymore by Apache server, we now use php-fpm 7.4 by default...." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information.
IPFire 2.27 Core 170
IPFire is a lightweight Linux distribution for use with firewalls and routers. The project has released a new update which introduces publicly supplied IP block lists. "he next Core Update is released: IPFire 2.27 - Core Update 170. It features new IP blocklists for the firewall engine, significant improvements to Pakfire, modernizes the default cryptographic algorithm selection for IPsec connections, as well as a new kernel, and a plethora of bug fixes and security improvements under the hood. IP-Reputation Blocking to keep known threats out: Based on prior development by Tim FitzGeorge, Stefan brought a new feature to the firewall engine, which allows the easy activation of various public IP-based blocklists, just by a single click." 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: 2,771
- 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) |
Remotely accessing your laptop
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about protecting a laptop's hard drive contents from capture. One of the options touched on was remotely accessing the laptop, which could lead to finding or erasing the stolen computer. We'd like to hear if you have a way to remotely connect to your computer when it's not in your home or office. Do you have a remote login option set up using dynamic DNS, a proxy, or utility which phones home to you? Let us know how you remotely access your machines in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using a root account versus sudo in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Remotely accessing a computer outside the LAN
| I use dynamic DNS: | 114 (9%) |
| I use a phone home service: | 5 (0%) |
| I use a proxy: | 13 (1%) |
| I use a third-party connection app: | 150 (12%) |
| I use another solution: | 67 (5%) |
| I do not have remote access outside the LAN: | 239 (19%) |
| I do not have remote access at all: | 651 (53%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
SpiralLinux
SpiralLinux is a selection of desktop spins built from Debian GNU/Linux, with a focus on simplicity and out-of-the-box usability across all the major desktop environments. SpiralLinux serves as an alternative live installation method for a highly reliable customized Debian system using only official Debian package repositories. Unlike Debian's official install media, SpiralLinux includes non-free firmware. It also provides popular media codecs out of the box.
SpiralLinux 11.220628 -- The Plasma application menu
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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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, 26 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 • Persistence (by Matt on 2022-09-19 01:35:07 GMT from Austria)
Why is persistence implemented differently on USB flash drives? A thumb drive is not really a read-only medium anyway, why do they make a read-only LiveUSB plus some writable space for persistence?
2 • Porteus (by Simon on 2022-09-19 01:38:53 GMT from New Zealand)
Oh, looks like the first legit post, as the only existing one is a ridiculous ad. Porteus sounds like a bit of a headache. I think Slax is back to basing (at least one variant of) its portable OS on Slackware... so Slax might be a better option for a portable Slackware.
3 • Dangnation (by Simon on 2022-09-19 01:39:40 GMT from New Zealand)
Foiled again! One day, Matt from Austria... one day
4 • Proteous (by SMS on 2022-09-19 02:06:04 GMT from United States)
Thanks for doing the hard job of keeping us informed of the poisnous mushrooms to avolid!
5 • Remote access to Linux desktops (by Roger in Lawrenceville on 2022-09-19 02:10:48 GMT from United States)
I use Teamviewer and Splashtop to access my Linux desktops remotely. They are proprietary commercial programs though. Both will connect to the login screen once the device is on a network.
6 • Remotely wiping a HD (by shep971 on 2022-09-19 02:17:05 GMT from United States)
How well you "wipe" a HD is a matter of degree. Making a hard drive inaccessible to low level thieves can be done quick and easily by zeroing out the boot sectors. This is how the Michelangelo Virus functioned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_(computer_virus)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 bs=512 count=100 will zero out the first 100 sectors,
You ould script this to run on a remote command or with several failed logins.
Note that newer hard drives put a backup gpt on the last sectors. gDisk, which can reside on the hard drive can also completely remove mbr/gpt boot partitions.
If you are worried about State level data retrival (GRU, FBI, CIA, G6 ....) you pretty much have to perform 2 passes of random bits like BleachBit. This can take several hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BleachBit
7 • Spiral Linux (by Heinrich on 2022-09-19 02:40:34 GMT from United States)
I’ve never used Spiral Linux, but Jack Wallen gave it a very positive review on ZDnet in July: https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-spiral-linux-and-why-it-could-easily-become-a-top-contender-for-users-new-to-linux/
8 • Spiral Linux - you've missed out the important bit! (by Bin on 2022-09-19 05:48:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Spiral Linux is set up to use Debian Backports AND Debian Fasttrack by default. This means that although it is running Stable, it is also getting the latest it can have from Backports and extra goodies via fasttrack. The software selection is what you would get from the Debian installer just using the selected DE rather than Debian Desktop this makes it much lighter. You don't get loads of tweaks and tools and developer specific stuff, it just works. Heartily recommend!
9 • Shtredding (by Any on 2022-09-19 06:08:53 GMT from Spain)
It is useless to expect you could connect to your stolen laptop and delete/shred files. If encrypting is not an option then you could make a script to check at boot if a specific hardware is connected to your laptop and if not to destroy the data. For example checking for a USB drive, mouse or certain key word in a text file on the pen drive. To make things easier you could do a partition for /home and shred the entire partition. Maybe this will get around the BTRFS shred problems.
Or just use a large veracrypt container.
10 • Porteus, Kiosk edition, Slax (by eM-13 on 2022-09-19 06:28:05 GMT from Poland)
I've used Porteus few years ago. It's a nice concept to have a bloat free minimal portable Linux iso with ability to add your own customizations. I've stopped using it because it wasn't reliable. Same with other distros like Slax. They randomly forget settings after reboot. File gets corrupted or for some reason is not loaded during next boot and you are forced to start from scratch again. Very, very annoying. But my worst experience was with kiosk version. Very hard to setup. They make sure you won't be able to make your customizations like adding extensions to the browser straight from iso. No no, you have to do them hard way by remastering iso by hand from other distro. It is supposed to be a secure rolling realease distro but is distributed without latest version of browsers. Worst thing was still to come because bad sound harware initialization with max volume noise comming out of laptop speakers destroyed them in one of my laptops.
11 • Thief proofing a PC (this week's reader question). (by Greg Zeng on 2022-09-19 07:06:39 GMT from Australia)
Some comments have been made on shredding the SSD, or HDD, totally (slowly) or partially (quick). Distrowatch suggested Disk or Partition encryption (fast). Writing zeros into the first sections of the storage medium is foolproof? Comments are welcome.
Some operating systems and hardware units offer alternatives: third-party accessories (Wifi, Bluetooth, devices, connections) for immediate access, otherwise destruction of the data.
My Dell Inspiron (recent model) offers inbuilt firmware security encryption. This inbuilt security can be avoided, by the system administrator. Otherwise, various types of "standard" software encryption can be chosen, solely or with other types simultaneously. Linux and most operating systems have these encryption types.
The automatic destruction of the data (SSD, HDD, etc) upon improper entry (theft, security agencies, etc) is not possible AFAIK in most operating systems or hardware types. So "smartphones" etc claim to offer such protection. Most security investigators might physically separate the data storage units, for off-site hardware analysis of the data, rather than allow any inbuilt operating system or apps have any chance to destroy the data.
12 • remotely accesssing a stolen computer or phone (by Simon Plaistowe on 2022-09-19 07:18:10 GMT from New Zealand)
I use AnyDesk, maybe I could log into my laptop if it were stolen, but better to encrypt anything important & be sure to backup. Much easier on an Android phone with Google's built-in tracker, also I have an app which emails me photos & audio if it detects dodgy activity. Years ago a thief stole my phone off my kitchen table while I was mowing the lawn. Within half an hour I'd tracked him down. Imagine his surprise when I rocked up & threatened to shove various parts of his anatomy up various other bits. Got my phone back without any further drama. But I digress :-D
13 • Persistence in a distro (by Hank on 2022-09-19 08:09:27 GMT from Denmark)
Porteus is pretty good in a kiosk function but as noted difficult as a fully fledged live environment.
the king and queen of lightweight configureability,
speed and if wished for persistence is antiX. All the reliability of debian stable, backports can be easily added, the system remastered to keep startup fast. Change repos to sid for most up to date software. Easily,Make a snapshot and write it to usb or dvd all with included tools. Run live or if you feel like it install to disk. Configue add or remove packages Make an ISO from your installed system, as a personal backup or stripped of personal data for friends. easy peasy.
I ran antiX full runit version live on a system with no drive for months without any issues.
SysV init is just as reliable. No systemd, big plus, no dependancy chaos, no waiting minutes for a startjob to finish, no slow shutdowns, Love it.
14 • Spiral Linux (by Pete on 2022-09-19 08:33:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have used this distro and it seems pretty good to me. I'm no expert but it did everything I asked of it.
Very sad day here in the UK.
15 • stolen PCs (by Any on 2022-09-19 08:58:37 GMT from Spain)
@12 I assume the author of the question did not mean protection against "Most security investigators" as this implies specific knowledge and equipment and a normal user would not deserve such an attention. I think he just needs a method to destroy his data just "in case of". And destroying the data has an advantage over encrypting because of the trendy "harvest now, decrypt later" concept. A stolen today encrypted disk could be decrypted later. Better give them pain in the a.. with a shredded encrypted disk/partition. But then again a normal user should be out of scope for such time and efforts investments.
16 • SpiralLinux (by zcatav on 2022-09-19 12:23:04 GMT from Turkey)
SpiralLinux is the best Debian option for all level users.
I'm writing this comment from a laptop that SpiralLinux is installed on it. Second option is may be MxLinux.
17 • remote access (by zcatav on 2022-09-19 12:44:42 GMT from Turkey)
Simly secured ssh.
18 • SpiralLinux (by Zipslack on 2022-09-19 13:12:24 GMT from United States)
Glad to see SpiralLinux finally making it into the database. It's an excellent Debian-based KDE Plasma distro. Also be sure to check out it's "sister" distro, GeckoLinux, based on OpenSuse.
19 • Stolen data (by Friar Tux on 2022-09-19 13:29:41 GMT from Canada)
@15 (Any) My thoughts, exactly. This topic usually sends my into grumpy Grandpa mode...
Two things:- one, I NEVER keep anything of value on my machine. No matter how good you think your computer security is, anything on that machine is open to anyone with the right tools and knowledge. And most of those tools and knowledge are easily available.
Two, I have always viewed my laptop as quite personal. It rarely leaves my house. On the rare occasion that it does, it never leaves my grasp/sight. (I have a bag made just for the laptop that, once slung over my shoulder, it would require the removal of my head and one arm to get the bag, in which case I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care what happens to the laptop after that.)
20 • SpiralLinux (by zcatav on 2022-09-19 14:51:04 GMT from Turkey)
Builder edition is minimalist version with IceWM desktop. Low resource devices use it easily. Maintainer mentioned it for "advanced user" but it has only required software and IceWM (A bare KISS example). Anyone can shape it for own needs.
21 • Remote Access (by Trihexagonal on 2022-09-19 15:02:33 GMT from United States)
I don't even allow myself remote access.. I have physical access.
Nobody else could get past an empty workspace and an unplugged USB mouse with an unattended FreeBSD machine or the login screen on a Linux box.
***Free wallpapers I created available now at my updated site with many more to post.***
22 • Spiral (by Tad Strange on 2022-09-19 16:29:46 GMT from Canada)
I'm liking Spiral on an older laptop where I wanted an LTS type of distro.
I've tried Gecko in the past, but something about SuSE always fails to keep my interest. Maybe I just like the Debian ecosystem best because it was the first that I really got into.
23 • spiral linux (by man on 2022-09-19 18:11:43 GMT from Netherlands)
Fanbois here, not me it uses systemD. Yet another so called distro riding on the flexibility of debian.
See if it is around in a couple of years. My experience indicated it to be like an unripe pear. Tastless
24 • Automatic destruction of data (by Matt on 2022-09-19 18:36:06 GMT from United States)
@9, @11: Automatic wiping is a bad idea unless you back up very often. It is better to have a disk decryption key on an external device, so that in the absence of this device your data is inaccessible.
25 • Re: Persistence (by eco2geek on 2022-09-19 19:16:51 GMT from United States)
@1 "Why is persistence implemented differently on USB flash drives? A
thumb drive is not really a read-only medium anyway, why do they make a
read-only LiveUSB plus some writable space for persistence?"
Because they're making the USB stick emulate a CD/DVD, using a CD's read-only file system. The writable space is in a separate partition.
If you want a USB stick *with persistence* that doesn't require any effort, try openSUSE's live media. It automatically sets up persistent space on whatever space is left on your USB stick.(However, persistence slows the whole thing down.)
26 • SpiralLinux (by SpiralLinux on 2022-09-19 19:18:08 GMT from United States)
@23 Hi there, SpiralLinux creator here. I'm not going to try to convince you to use it, but notice that SpiralLinux is *not* a "so called distro", per the very first line of the description on its website:
> SpiralLinux is a selection of Linux spins built from Debian GNU/Linux...
Unlike many Debian-based distros that modify Debian packages and/or maintain their own supplemental repos, SpiralLinux has chosen not to do that so as to not make installed systems dependent on the SpiralLinux project (i.e. me). So SpiralLinux is effectively an alternative installation method and configuration of Debian, and the resulting installed system is entirely dependent on Debian.
@Everyone else: Thanks very much for your kind comments, glad to hear it's working well for you!
27 • SpiralLinux & systemd (by zcatav on 2022-09-19 20:03:34 GMT from Turkey)
@23
If you want SpiralLinux without systemd (Devuan based) you fallow link;
https://github.com/SpiralLinux/SpiralLinux-project/discussions/53
28 • SpiralLinux (by poiuyt on 2022-09-20 00:27:55 GMT from Australia)
@26 Thanks for your work on both Spiral and Gecko. A lot of people on this forum complain about the endless distros based on something else instead of being something new and while I don't agree with that (people should do whatever they want), I reckon you've got it right by making alternative more user-friendly installation methods of the parent distro instead.
29 • Artix Linux (by Otis on 2022-09-20 12:44:19 GMT from United States)
@27 etc... So far down the DW PHR list, and yet resolves nearly every issue brought up in this space. Artix just may be the best Linux distribution there is for non-systemd init and solid, very fast, secure computing.
30 • Stolen laptop (by dragonmouth on 2022-09-20 14:01:30 GMT from United States)
If this-hard-drive-will-self-destruct wants to protect his data he needs to encrypt it. Were I after the data on that laptop, the first thing I would do upon obtaining it is to physically separate the laptop and the drive, thus obviating any attempts at remote deletion/destruction.
Were I after the laptop itself, I would either replace the drive or do a low-level format. Then I would install an O/S. This would never give this-hard-drive-will-self-destruct a chance to try to access his stolen laptop.
31 • @19 FriarTux: (by dragonmouth on 2022-09-20 14:12:43 GMT from United States)
"I NEVER keep anything of value on my machine. "
/GRIN/
Unfortunately you NEVER know what hackers/crackers might find valuable on your machine. What you may deem innocuous, a bad actor can find useful for his purposes. Then there is the data you don't even realize is automatically collected by the software you use.
Just sayin'.
32 • SpiralLinux (by Geronimo on 2022-09-20 15:16:31 GMT from Italy)
I installed it and it seems to me a very good customization of Debian Stable: great fonts, good choice of preinstalled software, attractive appearance. The most significant difference from Debian Stable is the preinstalled Backports repository.
33 • systemd (again) (by Gary W on 2022-09-20 16:19:11 GMT from Australia)
systemd is a popular topic for discussion (@23, @27).
I often wonder, is there any practical difference between Devuan, and those widespread prescriptions for removing systemd from Debian?
Disclaimers: MX user (with a Devuan box), and I'd rather run a BSD than anything polluted with systemd.
34 • SpiralLinux (by northivanastan on 2022-09-20 22:23:04 GMT from United States)
As an avid Debian user, I never liked the options available to me (and other users) for installing the system. It's either an ancient installer with several unnecessary steps, or an unpolished live system that includes all the (mostly unnecessary) localization packages by default. So SpiralLinux makes me very happy.
There are some things I'd do differently with it. I do not like the look of the Numix+Faenza theme and there are much better themes in the Debian repo, and in my opinion Plasma and GNOME distros should stick to the vanilla layout and theme (so users can set that up themselves). But there are also some great decisions, like the default btrfs filesystem configuration, and the inclusion of both Backports and Fasttrack repos.
From now on I think I'll recommend it to new users who I'd otherwise recommend Debian and close Debian derivatives, i.e. people in need of an unchanging, secure system that can be easily customized.
35 • Remotely wiping a drive (by JeffC on 2022-09-21 03:45:05 GMT from United States)
Now imagine if it were routine to have the ability to remotely wipe the data out on a drive...
How many would be asking how to keep some bad people from erasing their drive?
36 • What hackers find... (by Friar Tux on 2022-09-21 13:38:21 GMT from Canada)
@31 (dragonmouth) "... you NEVER know what hackers/crackers might find valuable on your machine."
So true...
I use my laptop for just about everything. It is my library (books, newspapers, magazines, technical journals), recipe box, encyclopedia, writer's tool (stories, poems, articles, etc.), graphic artist's tool (painting, drawing), communications device, and much, much more. If they wish to read the same stuff I read, they are more than welcome to my "unwiped" drive. Maybe my recipes might inspire them to eat better. As for the stuff I've written/drawn, if they can stomach it, good on them. If they wish to communicate with my family, I wish them luck.
Regarding SpiralLinux, THIS is one of the things I like about Linux. Debian is a pain to install, so, in true Linux fashion, someone fixes that and the sun shines more brightly. Love it. (@26 (SpiralLinux) Keep up the good work.)
37 • systemd (again) or BSD (by zcatav on 2022-09-21 17:40:31 GMT from Turkey)
@33
If you don't need k8s and/or extra 30K additional programs then BSD will be the right choice.
38 • Artix (by zcatav on 2022-09-21 17:56:30 GMT from Turkey)
@29
I tried artix linux. Because it was a rolling distribution, it was getting very frequent and intense updates. Therefore, it was not very stable. In addition, it did not have the diversity of over 60K programs that Debian had. I couldn't find some apps I needed.
39 • Artix Linux updates (by Otis on 2022-09-21 20:01:31 GMT from United States)
@38 Artix users need not install updates until they peruse them and decide whether or not it would be prudent to do so. Artix is a clever and intuitive system, and updates are not released until they're deemed stable, unlike some other rolling release distros (OpenSuse is good at that as well, and a few others).
Artix is stable.
60 thousand Debian programs? Have fun. Love the diversity of Linux.
40 • Artix and Stability (by David on 2022-09-21 21:07:38 GMT from United States)
Arch is unstable, due to a constant barrage of (untested) software updates. Artix is based on Arch. Therefore, Artix should be unstable too.
41 • Artix and Arch Stablility (by rb on 2022-09-22 03:02:02 GMT from United States)
Arch is a cutting edge distro, as well as the derivatives by nature. As soon as a package is updated upstream, it takes very little time for it to make it to the distro. This gives you the ability to have newer kernels, newer hardware support, newest software features and bug fixes. While this is not ideal for everyone, it is definitely not unstable. When there have been rare major issues, such as with grub recently, it is easy to downgrade to fix the problem if you know what you are doing. If you need extremely stable stick with Debian, but the software is old and out of date in most cases. The kernel is also outdated and does not support a lot of newly released hardware, in my case wifi. 5.10 is not new enough to support some of my hardware. As for Debian having more software, that is definitely not true. When you combine Arch and the user repositories, Arch has just as much software as Debian. Arch Linux has the largest number of packages among all Linux distros. Debian leads by the number of non-unique packaged projects. If you did not find what you were looking for in Arch, then you must have blinked and missed it.
42 • Remote Access (by penguinx86 on 2022-09-22 03:19:26 GMT from United States)
I don't have remote access to my laptop, and I don't want anybody else to have remote access either. It's a big security hole. Remote access is the first thing I disable with my personal home laptop. In a corporate environment, I may not have a choice who has remote access. The less people, the better.
43 • @41 re "definitely not unstable" (by Simon on 2022-09-22 08:57:16 GMT from New Zealand)
Arch is definitely very unstable. You're forgetting what "stable" means (fixed in place, not easily moved) and confusing it with one of the effects of stability (applications that work without bugs/crashes/etc). You may be right that Arch works most of the time, but it's not stable, so there's no guarantee it will continue working: you just hope it will, and (according to you and many other Arch users) most of the time what you hope will happen does indeed happen.
It's different with a stable OS. The software doesn't change so you know it will keep working the same way, day after day, year after year. Stability is about minimising change: as you say, Arch is a "cutting edge" rolling release distro, so it is the opposite of a "stable" distro (like Debian stable, Red Hat, Ubuntu LTS, Slackware, or any of the others that release occasionally and then keep that platform stable, only updating it with necessary security and bug fixes).
44 • Debian vs Artix (by zcatav on 2022-09-22 11:42:59 GMT from Turkey)
@41
I don't prefer use someone else's repo (I think it called something UAR). Official repositories are the way. The following line shows my kernel version on SpiralLinux.
Linux localhost 5.18.0-0.deb11.4-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 5.18.16-1~bpo11+1 (2022-08-12) x86_64 GNU/Linux
As you can see Debian Backports and Debian Fasttrack by default, SpiralLinux is not same thing with vanilla Debian stable.
All of these are IMHO.
45 • for what its worth... (by tom joad on 2022-09-22 16:10:01 GMT from Greece)
I long ago discounted the idea or concept of connecting remotely to a stolen computer. Yeah, you can, maybe, but there are way to many hurdles to jump. Once the computer is gone...its bye-bye.
The path I followed is to make sure as best I can what is on the computer will never, ever be found. I use full disk encryption. Yeah, it is a pain. But the world is a dangerous place even for average folks. I employ a very long passwords, over 20+ characters of all types. Yeah, you can brute force them but it will take a while even for the feds.
Example as per GRC.com. brancHtreegauze77+round => 3,106,266,216,369,922,375,245,484,442,102,782,269,741,626,495 or 3.11 x 1045, the 45th power. That is the search space where the password is hidden. Scramble those words a bit to account for entropy and yeah, busting that will take a bit of time.
Next I do redundant back ups including real time cloud storage. And my zip drives with personal stuff on them are encrypted too.
Next, I set all of my power settings to the shortest time frame possible. For instance close my laptop and it immediately shuts down. I have tested that a few times. It works. When I leave my laptop I always 'lock' it. Yes, my user password is long too. Good luck.
Is all that a gaurontee? No. But it will keep 'them' at bay for a long time, maybe even forever.
In the real world a thief likely doesn't care about the info on your computer. All they will do is wipe it and keep it or sell it to someone else. Thieves are lazy. The Feds will attempt to crack your passwords. If that is not easy and or fast they will throw YOU on in the s*****r until you tell them the password(s). The FEDS are pretty lazy too.
That is how I look at it. But connecting to a stolen laptop to wipe it clean...Forgetaboutit!
46 • Curious... (by Friar Tux on 2022-09-22 19:24:40 GMT from Canada)
I'm just wondering... why not attack the "remote wipe" question from a different angle. A timed wipe. If you use your computer at least once in so many hours, why not set it to wipe itself if not turned on by then? Or wipe itself if not turned on with a specific USB key drive it the slot? Also, I thought I read somewhere about a distro that will wipe itself if something is entered wrong. (SuicideOS ???) Not sure. Anyway, just some ideas.
47 • Porteus Persistence (by Mitchell on 2022-09-22 23:42:47 GMT from United States)
Persistence is the easy part with Porteus. Software package management is the difficult part. Annoyances include the root file manager auto-mounting every partition on my hard drive despite booting with "noauto" in the boot configuration file along with always needing to adjust the hardware clock and system time. "noauto" only seems to work with the regular user file manager.
Anyway,persistence is achieved by simply creating a "save file".I created mine as Porteus_Save_File.dat.It's installed on an ext3 partition.Which,by the way,that partition contains a traditional install of a different distribution. Installing Porteus can be done right into / of the partition without impacting the existing install of another distribution (as long as "vmlinuz" does not already exist). The Porteus install just creates a folder in / called "porteus" and a "syslinux" folder along with "initrd.xz" and "vmlinuz" files in /boot.
For persistence,just add the context to /boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg which points to the save file. For example , the last line in my porteus.cfg entry reads : APPEND copy2ram changes=/Porteus_Save_File.dat noauto
Installed to the hard drive with existing linux,I just made a custom entry in my existing GRUB bootloader to chain-load the Porteus syslinux bootloader.
48 • Persistence, wiping (by Wally on 2022-09-23 02:56:36 GMT from Australia)
Tried Porteus back when it billed itself as an OS for kiosks. Skipping it this time, as I see no use for me. I do have a light OS live with persistence on USB: Star. Small and light on resources, Star is based on Devuan, so it should please those who break out in hives at the thought of systemd. I know it's heresy, but I use Rufus (Windows) to create the live USB. I have not found anything else as easy and reliable for Debian/Devuan/Ubuntu persistence.
@46 Friar Tux, There are varied reasons for not using a timed wipe, no need to go into it here. I question the whole "wipe" idea. AES 256 encryption is still rock solid, just ask the corporations and governments that pay large ransoms to hackers for keys to retrieve their encrypted data. Worried? Encrypt! Don't worry, your friendly neighborhood hacker most probably doesn't own a quantum computer.
In almost any case, someone who steals your computer is not after your data, they just want your hardware. (Unless you are Hunter Biden or some other high muck-a-muck with deep secrets.) If I wanted your data, I can simply boot from a live USB to access it. If that avenue is closed, I can remove the drive. But I'd still have no access if the drive is encrypted.
49 • Passwords (by Matt on 2022-09-23 23:26:03 GMT from United States)
@45: Your example password probably has about 5 * 15 = 75 bits of real entropy, or circa 10^23 search space. That's possible to crack practically, though perhaps still expensive. The generation process needs to be more random, "scrambling a bit" is not enough. 20+ characters can have 160 bits of entropy or more, just generate them randomly.
50 • Passwords (by Matt on 2022-09-23 23:52:21 GMT from United States)
@49: Well, if length is 20 and only ASCII Latin letters and digits and two punctuation symbols are allowed you can get 20 * 6 = 120 bits of entropy. I have to say that your example password is perhaps not crackable even if its entropy is relatively low because Linux LUKS disk encryption uses PBKDF2 to derive the actual key (but maybe intelligence agencies have unpublished attack methods and/or custom hardware against PBKDF2).
Number of Comments: 50
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