 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 988, 3 October 2022 |
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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: 9.1/10 from 55 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 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Resala Linux
Resala Linux Project was a single-CD distribution based on Fedora Core. The main objective was to: (a) create an Arabic-ready distribution to make it easy for computer users to use Linux in the Arabic-speaking countries, and (b) to open the door for all developers to contribute to a regional distribution. Resala Project was supported by Linux-Egypt.org where it will be maintained as a standalone project to allow contributions from everywhere and by everyone who can contribute.
Status: Discontinued
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