 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 988, 3 October 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Debian is sometimes referred to as the grandparent distribution because so many Linux distributions are, directly or indirectly, based on it. Debian's base offers a great deal of flexibility and it allows the distribution's software to be reformed into all sorts of shapes and for all sorts of purposes. This week we begin with a look at SpiralLinux, a Debian-based desktop distribution from the creator of GeckoLinux. Read on to learn of Jesse Smith's first impressions of the distribution. While GeckoLinux has two main branches, Static and Rolling, SpiralLinux currently has just one fixed release branch. Do you like the idea of a rolling edition of SpiralLinux? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about SUSE showing off prototypes of the new Adaptable Linux Platform (ALP) edition which is expected to replace SUSE Linux Enterprise sometime in the future. We also share news of Fedora dropping some codec support from the Mesa package and the legal rational for this change. Plus we share some new features coming to the Linux Mint distribution and a change coming to Debian's install media. Many people visit DistroWatch in order to find distributions with specific characteristics or which are suited for a key purpose. We offer a number of ways to find all sorts of distributions and we share tips on locating distributions based on common search criteria in this week's Questions and Answers segment. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we welcome the Ubuntu Unity distribution to our database. Ubuntu Unity is the latest official community edition of Ubuntu and features the Unity 7 desktop environment. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
SpiralLinux 11.220628
SpiralLinux is a young distribution which appeared on the DistroWatch waiting list in the middle of 2022. The project is described on its website as follows:
SpiralLinux is a selection of Linux 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.
If the description sounds familiar it may be because SpiralLinux is developed by the same person who created GeckoLinux, a desktop-oriented spin of openSUSE which strives to be easy to set up and use out-of-the-box. The two projects, SpiralLinux and GeckoLinux, share a common developer, common goals, and the same philosophy. They just use different parent distributions to provide their packages.
SpiralLinux is available in seven desktop flavours (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, Budgie, GNOME, LXQt, and KDE Plasma) along with a more minimal Builder edition. The Builder edition offers a minimal graphical interface based on IceWM and is intended to help people start with a small operating system foundation and work up with just a few desktop tools. I decided to try the KDE Plasma edition which is 2.0GB in size.
SpiralLinux (which I'll usually refer to as Spiral) booted from its live media to the Plasma desktop. The wallpaper is green and there are icons on the desktop for handling language support and launching the system installer. A panel sits at the bottom of the screen where it is home to the application menu, task switcher, and system tray.
SpiralLinux 11.220628 -- The Plasma application menu
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The language support icon launches a utility which will offer to install or enable language packs. These two options then help us generate locale information or install new language packages. When we choose to install new language packages the system opens the Synaptic package manager to display a filtered list of language packages. This is a bit of a mixed list as the packages we are shown can be tagged as being related to language in a variety of ways, whether it's for the base system, LibreOffice, Firefox, or another application. In short, we get a pile of unorganized language packs through Synaptic and it's not a user friendly experience or easy to navigate. Still, it is nice to see language support presented front and centre on the desktop.
Installing
Spiral uses the Calamares graphical installer. Calamares is a lot more streamlined than Debian's installer. It's faster, easier to navigate partitioning, and uses about a quarter of the screens required to do a basic install of Debian. The one flaw in the experience, for me, was clicking the Release Notes button on the first page of the installer did nothing.
Calamares quickly helped me set a keyboard layout, pick a time zone, and set up a user account. Manual and automated partitioning options are provided. The manual approach is simple and easy to navigate. The automatic approach takes over all available drive space for a single Btrfs volume. No swap file or swap partition are created. Instead, Spiral sets up compressed memory (zRAM) to be used as swap space.
The installer completed its work quickly and then offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My newly installed copy of Spiral booted to a graphical login screen. From there I could sign into the Plasma desktop. The default look uses a simple black on light-grey font and a green background. The fonts are small, but usually high contrast. The green theme often reminded me of using openSUSE or GeckoLinux.
The system is quiet, by default, not displaying much in the way of notifications or pop-ups and there is no welcome screen. I did not see any notification about security updates or offers to configure the desktop.
Hardware
I began my trial by running Spiral in a VirtualBox environment. The distribution ran smoothly and was responsive in the virtual machine. The desktop automatically resized and was stable. Actually, the Plasma desktop was a little too quick to resize itself inside VirtualBox. The desktop kept getting the resolution wrong, even when I was running it in full screen mode. In fact, if I set the Plasma desktop's resolution manually, it would immediately change to another, seemingly random, resolution.
My experience with running Spiral on my laptop went well. Again, the distribution was stable and responsive. All my hardware was detected, including wireless networking (an area where official Debian usually fails due to its stance against non-free firmware), and even my media keys were recognized.
Something I found interesting was Spiral would boot into a live session running the 5.18 kernel when it was launched in Legacy BIOS mode. When I switched to UEFI mode the boot menu offered me two versions of the Linux kernel: 5.18 and 5.10. Shipping with 5.10 makes sense to me as it's the same kernel which Debian 11 "Stable" uses. The 5.18 kernel though is not the same one included in Debian's Testing branch (at the time of writing) and it has reached its end of life. The 5.19 kernel is the current stable kernel at the time of writing.
A fresh install of Spiral consumed 6GB of disk space. When signed into Plasma, the distribution used about 520MB of RAM, putting it comfortable in the mid-weight category.
I ran into an interesting quirk of the distribution when I decided to confirm the system's use of zRAM in place of traditional swap space. Running the command swapon returned the unexpected response that the command could not be found. However, the manual page for swapon was installed. I found out that, unlike many other children in the Debian family, Spiral does not include the directory /usr/sbin in the user's path. This is the location of the swapon command and a number of other useful tools. This means several common utilities are invisible to regular users. The commands do become part of our path when we prefix commands with "sudo". Meaning running "swapon" fails, running "/usr/sbin/swapon" succeeds, and running "sudo swapon" works. This is not a bug in Spiral, necessarily, but it is unusual to hide the /usr/sbin directory contents from the user's path.
Applications
Spiral ships with a handful of popular open source applications, including Firefox, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, and Transmission. The Pidgin messaging software is included along with the VLC media player. Clementine is available for playing audio files. In the KDE Plasma edition of the distribution there are some other members of the KDE family, such as Okular for document viewing, Gwenview for photo viewing, and Dolphin for managing files. The KDE System Settings panel provides access to thousands of configuration adjustments and tweaks.
The distribution includes manual pages for most command line utilities, such as ls, grep, and swapon. The GNU Compiler Collection is installed, however its manual page is not. The distribution runs the systemd init software and version 5.18 or 5.10 of the Linux kernel.
The included applications generally worked well and operated quickly for me. I particularly liked that Konsole is set up with a fairly dark, high-contrast theme without a blinking cursor. It's a classic look which made me feel right at home.
A less pleasant colour combination popped up in the System Settings panel. Almost all of the panel uses black text on a light grey background, which I find easy to read. However, there is a module in the panel for handling systemd services. This screen displays light-blue text on a white background which is difficult to read. The systemd module seems to be the only screen of the panel which uses this unfortunate font colour combination.
I also found that trying to stop a systemd service from within the KDE System Settings application would cause the panel to lock up for a few seconds and then crash. Other settings, such as adjusting the compositor, tweaking visual effects, creating user accounts, and changing the theme worked without any problems.
SpiralLinux 11.220628 -- Browsing systemd services
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
One minor, yet unusual problem I ran into came about when trying to take screenshots. I took a handful of screenshots with the Spectacle utility and it worked properly, at first. After a while, when I tried to save images of my desktop, the tool reported it had saved my image, but the image didn't show up in my Pictures directory, the way earlier ones had. I tried again and again, confirming Spectacle was set to save in my Pictures directory, but the file didn't get created. Or at least it wasn't created in my Pictures directory and didn't show up in ls listings or in Dolphin. I tried closing and relaunching Spectacle, but it continued to fail to create images, despite reporting my screenshots had been saved. Running the find command under my home directory tree also failed to turn up any newly created files.
Software management
At first glance, Spiral appears to ship with a lot of software management tools. The distribution includes the Synaptic low-level package manager, a firmware installer/updater, and the Discover software centre. There is also a tool called Software & Updates which handles which repositories we access and how Spiral reacts to finding updates in the Debian repositories.
SpiralLinux 11.220628 -- Installing software with Synaptic
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I did not have cause to use the firmware updater and cannot comment on it. Synaptic is a classic, powerful package manager and it worked well. Synaptic was able to fetch updates and install new packages without any problems. It's not an attractive, modern application, but Synaptic works quickly and without fault, even when asked to install 127 package updates totalling 381MB in size.
Discover appears to be the main software manager. Not only is it featured in the application menu, it's also listed in the Favourites menu (twice). One launcher opens Discover as your own user and the other will launch Discover using root access. The idea here, I think, is launching Discover as our normal user is typically the way to go, but it means we regularly need to put in our password to perform actions (such as installing and removing packages). Launching Discover as root means we put in the root password once, but are not prompted for a password again. This is probably a reasonable approach, but it's somewhat undercut by Discover warning us that running the software centre as the root user is dangerous and should be avoided.
SpiralLinux 11.220628 -- Checking for updates with Discover
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
This warning aside, Discover worked well for me. The software centre has come of age in the past year or so and works a lot faster and more reliably now than it has in the past. Discover makes it easy to browse categories and sub-categories of software, install new items and remove old ones. Discover can also install software updates.
Discover seamlessly gives us access to both Flatpak packages (through Flathub) and Deb packages from Debian. When both types are available there is a toggle in the upper-right corner of the Discover window to switch between the two package formats. I quite liked using this software centre.
Conclusions
While the creator of SpiralLinux has worked on other projects, most notably GeckoLinux, I believe this is one of the first releases of Spiral. For an early release, the distribution (or at least the KDE Plasma edition of the distribution) performed quite well. The live session worked, the installer helps the user get set up quickly, and the included software was useful. I feel Spiral finds a nice balance between modern hardware support (with a newer kernel) and stability, thanks to Debian's base. The system is stable, responsive, and seems to make a point of staying out of the user's way.
There were a few rough edges, such as the crashes I ran into when trying to manage systemd services through the System Settings panel, the Release Notes button in the installer not working, and the screenshot utility ceasing to save images after a while. However, each of these presented only small issues and were not significant to the operation of the distribution.
In short, I feel SpiralLinux is offering a solid first release where things are mostly going well. However, the flip side of my evaluation is I don't feel SpiralLinux is doing anything innovative or different compared to other desktop-oriented members of the Debian family. At a few points, thanks to the green wallpaper, I forgot I was using Spiral and lapsed into thinking I was running Linux Mint Debian Edition. Running Spiral isn't all that different from running MX Linux, Linux Mint, or SolydXK - all Debian-based projects which offer a nice installer and a polished desktop experience.
I didn't run into anything truly bad that put me off of using Spiral, but I also didn't discover any must-have features. It's good, it's solid, it feels well done the way a handful of other Debian-based desktop systems do these days. I'm hoping to see some feature or gimmick in a future release which will set Spiral apart from its peers.
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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
SpiralLinux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.7/10 from 32 review(s).
Have you used SpiralLinux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Fedora drops support for some codecs in the Mesa package, Mint presents new features, changes to Debian's install media
The developers of SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE have been talking about a new edition of SUSE called the Adaptable Linux Platform (ALP) for a few months now. While details have been vague, it sounds as though ALP will eventually replace openSUSE Leap. Prototypes of ALP are being worked on to give potential users a taste of the new edition. "All of the ALP Workgroups are working towards delivering promised the September ALP prototype with the codename 'Les Droites'. SUSE will continue using a mountain naming theme for all upcoming prototypes, which will be delivered on a three months basis from now.
Adaptable Linux Platform (ALP) is planned, developed, and tested in the open so users can simply get images from OBS and see test results in openQA.
As far as 'Les Droites' goes, users can look forward to a SLE Micro like host OS with self-healing abilities contributing to our OS-as-a-Service/ZeroTouch story. The Big Idea is that the user focuses on the application rather than the underlying host, which manages, heals, and self-optimizes itself. Both Salt (pre-installed) and Ansible will be available to simplify further management.
Users can look forward to full disk encryption (FDE) with TPM support by default on x86_64." Additional details can be found in the openSUSE news post.
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A change to the Mesa graphics library has highlighted a potential legal problem for the Fedora distribution. Namely, the Mesa package can enable access to media codec code which is covered by patents in the United States of America. Since Fedora does not have a license for these patents and is backed by the American company Red Hat, the project is looking at disabling support for the patent-encumbered code which, in some instances, will reduce video playback performance. As Frantisek Zatloukal wrote: "Since this Mesa change in F37 and rawhide, the Mesa package lost support for vaapi accelerated encoding and decoding of h264, h265 and decoding of vc1. It seems like a big regression from F36 for users with GPUs with open source drivers (mainly AMD, maybe NVIDIA/other non x86...), that affects common use-cases of Fedora Workstation, like watching videos, in-house game streaming, attending online meetings and many more." The change and discussions around the patent encumbered issue can be found on the Fedora development mailing list.
The openSUSE distribution has followed Fedora's example and disabled patent-encumbered codecs in the project's Mesa package.
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The Linux Mint distribution is making it easier to verify install media and acquire new hardware drivers. The project's September newsletter explains how the ISO verification tool works and shares updates to the Driver Manager utility. "We made the manager run in user mode so you no longer need a password to launch it. Debconf is now properly supported. This was an issue for NVIDIA drivers when Secure Boot is enabled. This scenario was fixed. PackageKit was patched to receive the ability to purge packages (i.e. to not only remove them but to also remove their configuration files). The driver manager now purges removed drivers. This fixes a niche issue with NVIDIA drivers when switching between different versions of the drivers. The user interface was improved. Offline support was redesigned. The Driver Manager now shows a dedicated screen if you are offline: And a different screen if it detects a live USB stick (or DVD). The way it mounts the live USB stick and adds it as a source to install drivers is more robust than before. These improvements make installing Broadcom wireless drivers easier than before."
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The Debian project has been debating whether the official Debian install media should include non-free firmware, bits of code required to make some hardware work. Up to this point Debian has provided two sets of install media: the official media without non-free components which often would not work with certain wireless cards and other key devices, and unofficial media which included the necessary code. Following a debate and vote on the subject it looks as though future versions of Debian will allow non-free firmware to be installed as needed from the official media.
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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) |
Finding distributions for older equipment and other purposes
Recently we've recently received a number of e-mails from people looking for specific types of distributions, or different ways of sorting popular distributions. In particular, we've heard from people who want to know which distributions are the highest rated, which ones still support 32-bit computers, and which do not run the systemd init software.
DistroWatch provides a number of ways to find distributions and to sort projects by various criteria. Most of our tools for discovering distributions can be found on our Search page. From this page you can find distributions with specific versions of a package, find projects dedicated to certain tasks, or search for projects that run on a specific architecture.
As an example, you can find all Linux distributions that support the 32-bit i686 CPU architecture using this search. Projects which either do not include systemd, or which offer alternatives to it, can be located using this search. If you want to find Linux distributions which place a strong focus on supplying free software only, you can use this search. Distributions which are known to ship the latest version (5.19.x) of the Linux kernel can be found with this search.
Some people have asked us about finding projects which are highly rated in reviews, or which have been reviewed frequently. Those projects can be found on our Project Ranking page. The drop down menu changes how the results are ordered, based on the number of votes or the average rating.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
CRUX 3.7
CRUX is a lightweight, Linux distribution for computers running on 64-bit x86 processors. The distribution is targeted at experienced Linux users. The primary focus of this distribution is "keep it simple". The project's latest release is CRUX 3.7 which features version 5.15.55 of the Linux kernel along with updates for the X.Org display software and for Wayland. "CRUX 3.7 comes with a multilib toolchain which includes glibc 2.36, gcc 12.2.0 and binutils 2.39; CRUX 3.7 now includes Wayland 1.21.0; ports continue to default to X.Org, but Wayland can easily be installed alongside and run in either pure Wayland or Xwayland mode; if you decide to run a Wayland session, you will need to enable the 'contrib' collection and rebuild a few ports (for example xorg/mesa) to make it fully available; the ISO image is processed with isohybrid and is suitable for burning on a CD and putting on a USB drive; UEFI support is available during installation with dosfstools, efibootmgr and grub2-efi/syslinux is available during installation; because all bootloaders are in our opt collection now, no bootloader is installed as a core port by default; to give the possibility to select a bootloader we have added a new menu to setup." Additional information is provided in the project's release notes.
SpiralLinux 11.220925
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. The project has published an update which introduces usability and hardware support improvements. "Built from the latest Debian Stable 11.5 release. Users with prior installations of SpiralLinux can simply update their system to receive the 11.5 release directly from Debian. Firefox ESR from Debian Stable now at version 102.3. Smoother two-finger scrolling with touchpads enabled in Firefox via environment variable. Realtek r8168 WiFI theoretically supported out-of-the-box. Testing and reporting by users with any Realtek WiFI hardware would be appreciated. Substituted newer firmware-iwlwifi package from Debian Testing to fix major connection problems with the Debian Stable firmware version on AX20x Bluetooth hardware. Bitmap fonts disabled to avoid poor font rendering, such as in HTML emails. SecureBoot support. Note: SecureBoot support may not work out-of-the-box on all systems due to variations and quirks in different UEFI implementations." Additional details are listed in the release announcement.
Linuxfx 11.2.22.04.3
Rafael Rachid has announced the release of Linuxfx 11.2.22.04.3, an updated version of the project's Ubuntu-based Linux distribution featuring a KDE Plasma desktop themed to resemble either the Windows 10 or the Windows 11 user interface. This version is based on Ubuntu 22.04: "It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of Linuxfx version 11.2.22.04.3. This release is based on Ubuntu 22.04.3 'Jammy Jellyfish'. Support for .exe and .msi applications has been improved with Wine 7.18; Linux kernel 5.15 is also present in this release, improving support for more modern hardware. We updated KDE and the entire application base which is now downloaded directly from the Neon repositories. WxDesktop, all its tools and themes have also been updated. Support for Android games and apps has been improved. What's new in this version: system base up to 22.04.2 LTS; Linux kernel up to 5.15; KDE up to 5.25.5; Wine (Windows .exe/.msi application support) up to 7.18; WxDesktop tools is updated to 11.7; all system packages updated." See the distribution's news page to read the 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: 2,775
- 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) |
Should SpiralLinux offer a rolling release edition?
This week we talked about SpiralLinux, a Debian-based project from the creator of GeckoLinux. GeckoLinux is based on openSUSE and there are two main branches of the distribution, a static release based on openSUSE Leap and a rolling release from openSUSE Tumbleweed.
At the time of writing, SpiralLinux offers a fixed release only, based on Debian's Stable branch. Do you think SpiralLinux should also have a rolling release branch, perhaps based on Debian Testing or Debian Unstable? If you like the idea of a rolling version of SpiralLinux, let us know which branch you think it should be based on (Testing or Unstable) in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on running openSUSE's MicroOS in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Should SpiralLinux have a rolling release?
| Yes - based on Debian Testing: | 319 (37%) |
| Yes - based on Debian Unstable: | 131 (15%) |
| No - focus on one edition: | 401 (47%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
Ubuntu Unity
Ubuntu Unity is a flavour of Ubuntu featuring the Unity desktop environment (the default desktop environment developed and used by Ubuntu from 2010 to 2017). Unity debuted in the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10; it was initially designed to make more efficient use of space given the limited screen size of netbooks, including a vertical application switcher called "the launcher" and a space-saving horizontal multipurpose top menu bar. Ubuntu switched from Unity to GNOME in 2017, but the desktop was resurrected again as an unofficial "Ubuntu Unity Remix" in 2020. It became an official flavour of Ubuntu during the development cycle of Ubuntu 22.10 in 2022.
Ubuntu Unity 22.10 Beta -- Running the Unity desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Crystal Linux. Crystal Linux is an Arch Linux based distribution featuring a custom GNOME session.
- Loc-OS Linux. Loc-OS Linux is a Debian-based distribution which features the LXDE desktop.
- CachyOS. CachyOS is an Arch-based Linux distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop and a custom kernel for improved desktop performance. The distribution can be installed using a text installer or the graphical Calamares installer.
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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, 10 October 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
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Your own personal Linux computer in the cloud, available on any device. Supported operating systems include Android, Debian, Fedora, KDE neon, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Manjaro and Ubuntu, ready in minutes.
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| Random Distribution | 
Bicom Systems
Bicom Systems' PBXware is a Gentoo-based single-purpose distribution that serves as a telephony platform. It supports a wide range of PSTN and VoIP technologies. Creation of enhanced voicemail, ACD queues, IVR auto attendants, conference bridges, music on hold, least-cost routing, national and global voice networks are all deployable as a single unit or redundant network.
Status: Active
|
| Tips, Tricks, Q&As | | Tips and tricks: Basename, for loop, dirname, aliases, bash history, xsel clipboard |
| Questions and answers: Splitting up and merging files |
| Questions and answers: Implementing KDE Connect functionality for PCs |
| Tips and tricks: Using GRUB with XFS |
| Tips and tricks: Working with images from the command line |
| Tips and tricks: Running Android applications on GNU/Linux with Anbox |
| Questions and answers: Release cycles |
| Tips and tricks: Shell switching, battery charge, getting the system's IP address and dealing with stubborn processes |
| Tips and tricks: Copying columns of text, organizing files, creating torrents |
| Questions and answers: Trying different file systems |
| More Tips & Tricks and Questions & Answers |
| 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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| 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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