 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 995, 21 November 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Progress happens all across the open source landscape, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in highly visible and practical ways. This week, in our News section, we explore a number of areas where developers are seeing useful progress and open source projects are growing. We talk about the Unity desktop getting ported to more Linux distributions, particularly the Arch Linux family of distributions. We also talk about the lightweight Haiku project improving USB detection and support while UBports calls for testers to try out new features. Plus we talk about Murena adding support for five new mobile devices which can be made to easily run the /e/OS platform with a simple installer. Before we dive into these stories, Joshua Allen Holm takes Fedora 37 for a test drive and reports on his experiences with the project. Read on to hear his impressions of the latest version of Fedora. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we explore the pros and cons of using a swap file versus a swap partition. Both can be useful and both extend a computer's memory with on-disk storage, but there are situations where one works better than the other and we talk about these scenarios. Do you use a swap file or a swap partition? Let us know in our Opinion Poll which best suits your environment. Plus we are pleased to share details of the many releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm) |
Fedora 37 Workstation and Silverblue
A little later than originally intended, Fedora 37 was finally released on November 15th. Like always, there are a lot of different Fedora 37 images to choose from. The official versions are Workstation, Server, IoT, Cloud, and CoreOS. The experimental versions are Silverblue and Kinoite, which feature the GNOME and KDE Plasma desktop environments respectively. There are also a selection of "spins" featuring different desktop environments and "labs" that focus on specific functions.
For this review, I will be looking at Workstation and Silverblue, which both use GNOME 43 as their desktop environments. All variations of Fedora 37 ship with version 6.0.7 of the Linux kernel and a plethora of updated packages providing up-to-date development tools for many programming languages.
Installing Fedora Workstation
I opted to start with the Workstation version. I downloaded the 1.9GB ISO and copied it to a flash drive. Rebooting the computer and starting it from the flash drive brought up a live desktop with a dialog giving me the options to try or install Fedora. I opted to start the installation process right away.
Fedora 37 Workstation -- Live desktop with Try or Install options
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The installer for Fedora is Anaconda, and in Fedora 37 the process has been much the same as it has been in recent Fedora releases. Anaconda handles only a small subset of the configuration, namely keyboard layout, date & time, and partitioning. Networking can be configured using the live desktop's Settings application. A new user with administrative rights is created when booting the installed system for the first time. There is no option to customize the software selection during installation, so Fedora's curated selection of software is what every installation of Workstation ends up with. For my installation I let the install automatically handle the partitioning options, so I ended up with an ext4 formatted /boot partition and a Btrfs partition with sub-volumes for root and home.
Fedora 37 Workstation -- Anaconda installation options
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On first boot, the initial setup process configured privacy settings for location services and automatic problem reporting, gave the option to enable third-party repositories, connect Google, Nextcloud, and Microsoft online accounts, and create a new user and password. After the initial install and user configuration, but before downloading package metadata and installing updates, Fedora Workstation used 3GB on the Btrfs partition.
Fedora 37 Workstation-- Post-install user setup
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GNOME desktop and default software in Fedora Workstation
Fedora 37 Workstation comes with a selection of GNOME applications and utilities, most of which are version 43, and a small selection of other applications. The included web browser is Firefox 106. LibreOffice Calc, Impress, and Writer 7.4.1.2 are pre-installed. LibreOffice Draw and Math seem fully functional, but there are no icons for those components. Installing the libreoffice-draw and libreoffice-math packages only installs two additional packages of a little over 20kB each. Adding in the LibreOffice Base component installs more packages. I can understand not including Base and all its dependencies, but not including the Draw and Math packages saves less than 50kB on the install image.
Fedora 37 Workstation -- Default software
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GNOME 43 brings a few interesting changes. The most notable of these are the Quick Settings panel and the new Device Security panel in the Settings application.
Fedora 37 Workstation -- Quick Settings panel
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The Quick Settings panel enhances the functionality of the upper right menu. Large buttons provide quick access to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Power Saving, Nightlight, Dark Mode, and Airplane Mode. Smaller buttons display the battery status (which will also open the Power panel in Settings), open the screenshot tool, open Settings (which will bring up whichever panel in Settings that was last used, unlike the Battery button, which always opens the Power panel), lock the screen, and power off/log out. There are also sliders for adjusting screen brightness and volume.
Fedora 37 Workstation -- Device Security settings panel
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The new Device Security panel in GNOME Settings shows if Secure Boot is active and displays which of three security levels the device meets the requirements for. My laptop shows "Not Valid" for the Intel Management Engine Version, so my device is not even level 1 compliant.
Beyond these two major changes, there have been plenty of improvements and enhancements throughout the various GNOME applications and desktop. For the most part, these changes improve the user experience, but I am still confused why in recent GNOME releases the default sort order for applications in the full applications list is seemingly random. Reading from left to right, the top row of applications currently on my system are Contacts, Weather, Clocks, Maps, Photos, Fedora Media Writer, Videos and Calculator, but that order can change. I cannot understand why they are in that particular order, and the other rows are likewise jumbled. If there is a pattern, I am not seeing it. The change that allowed users to reorder their applications by dragging them around was nice, but when that was first introduced, the icons were still in alphabetical order by default. Now, if I want to alphabetize my applications to facilitate finding less often used applications quicker, I have to manually alphabetize all of my icons.
The default software included in Fedora Workstation is a well rounded collection, but Fedora cannot include certain patent encumbered packages, so to get full functionality out of Fedora it is almost a requirement to install the RPM Fusion repositories and the various multimedia codec packages from those repositories. Fedora has little choice in the matter, but this requirement still makes setting up Fedora a little more complex than some other distributions.
Installing additional software on Fedora Workstation
Fedora Workstation comes with repositories for traditional RPM packages and a Fedora-specific Flatpak repository enabled by default. The Fedora Flatpak repository contains a selection of GNOME applications, several popular open source games, and a few other common applications. Aside from the games, most of the Fedora Flatpaks are for software that is pre-installed on Fedora Workstation from RPM packages. If third-party repositories are enabled, a Copr repository for PyCharm, a repository for Google Chrome, two limited RPM Fusion repositories that only offer Steam and NVIDIA drivers, and a filtered Flathub Flatpak repository are added to the software sources. The filtered Flathub repository only offers Bitwarden, Postman, Microsoft Teams, Minecraft, Skype, Zoom, and various FreeDesktop platforms and SDKs.
Fedora 37 Workstation -- GNOME Software
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Installing additional software on Fedora can be accomplished in a few ways. GNOME Software can be used to install packages using a graphical user interface. It is even possible to install the RPM Fusion repositories using GNOME Software to install the RPMs downloaded from the RPM Fusion site, though some of the RPM Fusion instructions for installing appstream metadata and codecs are easier to do on the command line. To install additional packages from the command line, the dnf command is used to install RPM packages and the flakpak command can be used to install Flatpaks.
Even without adding additional repositories, Fedora 37 comes with a lot of packages available. I am sure some people will be able to list one or two must-haves that Fedora does not offer, but chances are those applications, assuming they are Linux applications, provide some form of RPM package that is compatible with Fedora. Failing that, enabling the full Flathub repository instead of Fedora's limited one would probably provide access to some of the missing applications.
Installing Fedora Silverblue
After trying out Workstation, I wanted to give Silverblue a try. Silverblue features the same GNOME 43 desktop, so much of the user experience is identical to Workstation, but there are some notable differences underneath.
Fedora 37 Silverblue -- Terminal with toolbox information
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Silverblue makes use of an immutable core layer that is updated as a single unit. Flatpak is the preferred way of installing individual applications. If needed, RPM packages can be layered on top of the base image, and Toolbox can be used to install development tools, libraries, and other packages in a containerized environment. Overall, the experience is similar to the standard Workstation version, but different enough to probably require most users to make some workflow adjustments.
Silverblue's ISO is 2.8GB, which does make it a little larger than Workstation. I copied the image to my flash drive, rebooted, and started installing Silverblue. Even the installation experience for Silverblue is almost the same as Workstation. The end result of the partitioning and installation process will be different, but the Anaconda experience is practically identical. The only key difference is that Silverblue's ISO does not have a live desktop. There is only an install option. Post-install and user setup, but before updating anything, Silverblue used 4.4GB of its Btrfs partition.
GNOME desktop and default software in Fedora Silverblue
As already noted, Silverblue and Workstation are near identical in their graphical user interface features, so I am not going to rehash those things. However, there are a few key differences in the bundled applications. Silverblue lacks several applications that come with Workstation. Silverblue is missing Photos, Videos, Document Scanner, LibreOffice, Boxes, Rhythmbox, and Cheese. However, it adds a graphical program for managing GNOME Shell extensions. Unlike Workstation, most of Silverblue's are applications from the Fedora Flatpak repository. The only non-Flatpak GUI applications are Firefox, Files, Software, Tour, Settings, System Monitor, Terminal, Help, and Disks.
Installing additional software on Fedora Silverblue
Installing additional software on Silverblue is almost the same for users who use GNOME Software, but only Flatpaks are available. On the command line, the rpm-ostree command can be used to install additional RPM packages, which is what you will want to do if you want to install RPM Fusion's repository packages and codecs. For packages that do not need to be layered in, the toolbox command will create a toolbox container that behaves more like the traditional RPM-based Fedora experience. Packages can be installed in a toolbox using the dnf command just like on Workstation. The toolbox can be used just like a normal Fedora command line environment, but changes to packages in the toolbox do not alter the base system. Technically, toolbox is pre-installed on Workstation, and works the same way there, but on Workstation it is not a necessity. Because of the way Silverblue works, any updates to the base OS or new layered RPM packages require a restart before they become available, so adding additional RPM packages is not something you can do as casually as you can on Workstation. Flatpak applications can be updated and used without a restart.
Fedora 37 Silverblue -- Software updates
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Final thoughts
Fedora 37, both Workstation and Silverblue, are very well done. The only drawback to using them is the extra work needed to get around the issues with patent encumbered software. If I had to pick one truly negative thing to say about Fedora 37, it would be that the default volume level for system beeps is way too loud, and it does not help that the default beep is the FreeDesktop default bell instead of the nicer sounding options in GNOME Setting's sound options. Once I changed the sound to one of the GNOME options it was less grating, but 100% volume for system sounds and the overall volume set to somewhere around 75% was still too loud for my system. When the worst thing I can say is that the system beep sound annoys me and the default volume is too loud, I can safely say I am very happy with Fedora 37.
The choice between Silverblue and Workstation depends entirely on the needs of the individual user. There are plenty of people who will probably want or need to stick with the more traditional Workstation version. Others might be perfectly happy with Silverblue. For me, I think Silverblue with RPM Fusion's codecs (so even non-Flatpak applications have access to them) and the full Flathub repository installed with the pre-installed Fedora flatpak replaced with their Flathub versions (so all the Flatpak applications come from one source) might be an ideal configuration for the laptop I use for writing and other general purpose tasks.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
Fedora has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.2/10 from 256 review(s).
Have you used Fedora? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Unity desktop running on Arch, Haiku improves USB support, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for five new devices
One of the common complaints against the Unity desktop was that it was not particularly portable, relying on custom patches to make it work on its native Ubuntu distribution. Now that Unity is a separate community project, work is progressing which will allow the desktop to run on other distributions, particularly Arch Linux and its many children. The Unity website now offers instructions for installing Unity on the Arch family of distributions.
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The Haiku team have published their monthly newsletter for October. The newsletter features key updates to the project and work going into applications, drivers, and infrastructure. One of the key changes mentioned is an adjustment to detecting USB devices. "korli switched all the USB host drivers (i.e. USB1/2/3 interface drivers) to use the 'new'-style driver model (which has really been around in the Haiku kernel for many years) instead of the 'legacy' one inherited from BeOS that they were using until now. He then made their 'explore' thread always get invoked when new USB busses are attached (which mostly happens during early boot), to ensure as many devices as possible are detected in case the boot device is far down, and export all devices to the 'new'-style device manager (which means USB devices finally appear in the Devices application now.)"
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The UBports team have put out a call to get help testing the next update of their mobile operating system. The project has outlined some of the key changes coming in the next over the air (OTA) update: "Fingerprint reader: Prevent locking with too many failed attempts; Lomiri: Improve drawer performance with interactive blur; headset media buttons work now; Upgrade QtWebEngine to 5.15.10; initial gesture support (double-tap to wake screen) on capable devices; Messaging app: various improvements for MMS and SMS." Additional details are presented in the project's blog post.
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The Murena team have announced their installer now works to install the Murena /e/OS operating system on five new mobile devices. "We have just released the /e/OS Easy Installer for five new phones! The Easy Installer is a desktop application that helps to install /e/OS on your phone with a few clicks. No need for command line or other complex processes to switch to /e/OS. Just install the right package depending on your computer, follow the steps on screen, and you'll be all set in minutes. This tool runs on Linux, macOS and Windows OS. The newly supported devices are: Fairphone 4, OnePlus 8, OnePlus 8 Pro, OnePlus Nord, Pixel 4A 5G." A complete list of supported devices 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) |
Swap files versus swap partitions
Swapping-one-for-the-other asks: I've heard the modern approach to doing swap is to use a file, not a partition. What are your thoughts on the difference? What do you recommend?
DistroWatch answers: Swap space, for people unfamiliar with the term, is an area of the disk that is used to store information that was in memory, but is not currently needed. Usually swap space gets used when the computer's RAM is nearly full. Instead of the kernel terminating a process and kicking information out of memory entirely, information from RAM is copied to the disk. Swap space can be thought of as an extension of RAM, but tends to be a lot slower and therefore not something to be used more than absolutely necessary.
The traditional way to set aside disk space to hold overflow from memory is to use a disk partition. A disk partition sets aside a fixed amount of swap space to be used and keeps the swap information away from the rest of the operating system's filesystem. A swap partition is usually convenient as it's typically a set-and-forget experience and there is relatively little to think about when setting up the swap partition, either than selecting a size.
On a side note: traditionally people tended to recommend swap space should be double the size of the computer's RAM. In other words, if you had 1GB of RAM, people would suggest making a 2GB swap partition. As memory gets larger though, outpacing the memory requirements of most computing tasks, swap space tends to get used less often. A modern computer with 16GB or more of RAM might never need to dump data out to a swap partition. Because of this, these days administrators tend to set up smaller swap partitions, typically equal to or sometimes even smaller than the size of RAM.
In recent years the idea of using a swap file has become more popular. A swap file performs the same role as a swap partition, holding overflow from RAM on the disk. However, a swap file offers a few benefits. One is that it doesn't require the use of a separate partition. When using a swap file we can set up the entire disk in one big partition for the distribution which simplifies the initial setup of the operating system.
Another benefit to using swap files is it simplifies changing the size of swap space. If, at some point, we realize we need more swap space, we can just create a new, large file and add it to our system's pool of swap space. On the other hand, if we want to lower the amount of disk space dedicated to swap, we can do that too by removing the old swap file from the pool, deleting it, and then making a new, smaller swap file. This can all be done while the system is running. Replacing swap files is a lot more flexible than trying to resize a swap partition which typically needs to be done when the operating system is off-line.
In short, swap partitions are typically less flexible, involve more care when setting up the operating system, and the performance should be the same whether we're using a swap file or a swap partition. Which raises the question: why someone would want to use a swap partition rather than a file?
In most cases it makes sense to use a swap file. However, there are a few filesystems, particularly advanced filesystems such as Btrfs and ZFS, where there have been problems with the filesystem features not working well with swap files. The swapon manual page mentions considerations for working with swap files on Btrfs. There have also been reports of swap on ZFS volumes causing lockups.
It is also worth considering the space requirements of multiple swap files if you're running multiple operating systems on the same computer. If your machine runs one operating system, then a single swap file will be the same size as a swap partition and more flexible. However, if you're running six Linux distributions, you probably don't want each one to hold a separate, multi-gigabyte swap file on its root partition. You're going to save a lot of space if you set up one swap partition to share among all the different distributions. In theory, you could set up a swap file on a separate data partition that is shared between all the operating systems, but that brings us back to the issue of juggling more partitions and sharing mount points between the operating systems. In short: a swap partition will be less work to set up and require less total space when dual-booting.
To summarize the situation: swap files are usually ideal when running a single distribution on a traditional filesystem, such as ext4 or XFS. When using an advanced filesystem (such as Btrfs) or when booting multiple distributions on the same computer then it is more convenient to use swap partitions.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Fedora 37
Matthew Miller has announced the release of Fedora 37. The latest release includes two new editions: Fedora CoreOS, which replaces Atomic Host, and Fedora Cloud returns. "Fedora Workstation focuses on the desktop experience. As usual, Fedora Workstation features the latest GNOME release. GNOME 43 includes a new device security panel in Settings, providing the user with information about the security of hardware and firmware on the system. Building on the previous release, more core GNOME apps have been ported to the latest version of the GTK toolkit, providing improved performance and a modern look. With this release, we've made a few changes to allow you to slim down your installation a bit. We split the language packs for the Firefox browser into subpackages. This means you can remove the 'firefox-langpacks' package if you don't need the localization. The runtime packages for gettext - the tools that help other packages produce multilingual text - are split into a separate, optional subpackage." Additional details can be found in the release announcement and in the release notes.
Fedora 37 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
EuroLinux 8.7
The EuroLinux team have announced the release of EuroLinux 8.7, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7 with binary compatiblity. The new version includes a number of updates and new packages: "General updates and improvements: Among the others, the following packages were updated and enhanced: Qt5 toolchain and utilities were updated from 5.15.2 to 5.15.3; Opencryptoki was updated to version 3.18.0 from 3.17.0; Libva was updated to version 2.13.0 from 2.5.0; Chrony was updated to version 4.2 from 4.1; Unbound was updated to version 1.16.2 from 1.7.3; Fapolicyd rebased to 1.1.3 from 1.1; Mariadb-java-client rebased to version 2.7.1 from 2.2.5; open-vm-tools rebased to 12.0.5 from 11.3.5" Addtional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
BackBox Linux 8
BackBox Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution developed to perform penetration tests and security assessments. The project's latest release is BackBox Linux 8 which is based on Ubuntu 22.04. The release announcement lists the short list of new features: "The BackBox team is happy to announce the new major release of BackBox Linux, version 8, code name 'Sara'. As usual, this major release includes many updates. These include new kernel, updated tools and some structural changes with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. What's new: updated Linux kernel 5.15; updated desktop environment; updated hacking tools; updated ISO Hybrid with UEFI support. System requirements: 64-bit processor; 1024MB of system memory (RAM); 20GB of disk space for installation; graphics card capable of 800x600 resolution; DVD-ROM drive or USB port (3GB)."
BackBox 8 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 398kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Rocky Linux 8.7
Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The project's latest release is Rocky Linux 8.7. The distribution's release announcement coveres the new version's highlights: "Notable changes: NetworkManager has been rebased to 1.40. Notes for this version of NetworkManager are available here. New module stream versions include node.js 18, mercurial:6.2, maven:3.8, and ruby:3.1. New compiler toolset versions include GCC 12, LLVM 14.0.6, Rust 1.62, and Go 1.18. The default value of the LimitRequestBody directive in httpd has been changed from unlimited to 1GiB to fix CVE-2022-29404. SSSD now supports direct integration with Windows Server 2022. Cloud images: Official Rocky Linux images are now available on Oracle Cloud Platform. Artifacts behind all images built are now exported for development use. LVM variants of the generic, EC2, and Azure images are now available." Further details can be found in the project's release notes.
AlmaLinux OS 9.1
AlmaLinux OS is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux which strives to be entirely compatible with its upstream parent. The distribution's latest release is AlmaLinux OS 9.1. "The AlmaLinux 9.1 Stable provides a more stable foundation for open hybrid cloud innovation, new enhancements and features to deliver workloads, applications and services for multiple environments more efficiently, security features and updates for risk reduction and better compliance maintenance. This release also includes PHP language updates and new features. New automation and management functionality provided to make additional manual tasks automation, performing standard deployment processes at scale easier and simplify day-to-day system management. These enhancements include adding several system roles and the web console new options and features. As for containers, Sigstore technology was built into the container tooling. You can read more about this release by checking out the release notes." Information on available editions of the distribution can be found in the release announcement.
ALT Linux 10.1
The developers of ALT Linux, an independent Russian distribution originally from the Mandrake Linux family, have published version 10.1 of their project. The new release includes both Live and Install editions, offers the systemd out of memory monitoring service, and offers Btrfs support at install time. "New features [in] 10.1: Support for installing the system by the Ventoy added. Webkiosk mode added: it is possible to install the system for limited use where only a web browser is available to the user. LiveCD added to the install image for opportunity to check the operability of the bootloader before installation. The distribution includes the systemd-oomd free memory monitoring service. It is a component that improves system behavior related to lack of memory. At the same time, for the convenience of tracking oomd actions a user notification is implemented when applications are aborted by the oomd service. BTRFS subvolume support during installation. It is a modern copy on write (CoW) filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while also focusing on fault tolerance and easy administration. The security benefit of using BTRFS is the creation of a restore point before updating the system. Automatic disk partitioning profile for Timeshift added. This program is designed to create snapshots of system files and settings. In the event of a system failure system files are restored, and user data remains up to date, if it was not damaged. Discover App Center can launch System Restore when upgrade failure is detected." Additional information is provided in the distribution's release announcement.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1
Gil Cattelain has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.1: "RHEL 9.1 builds upon the previous enhancements introduced in version 9.0, including advanced automation and management features, such as the RHEL web console and system roles, which make it easier for customers to automate manual tasks, standardize deployments at scale and simplify the day-to-day administration of their systems. Enhanced capabilities added to RHEL 9.1 help simplify how customers manage system security and compliance when deploying new systems or managing existing infrastructure. Organizations can now take advantage of new Ansible tooling, access RHEL systems using identities stored in an external source, implement multilevel security (MLS) to match their needs and remotely verify the integrity of their operating system's boot environment. RHEL now gives you more time to plan your life cycle needs by supporting upgrade paths for two-year Extended Update Support (EUS) periods." Read the rest of the release announcement and the detailed release notes for more information.
wattOS R12
Ron Ropp has announced a new release of wattOS, the first in several years. The new version, wattOS, is based on Debian 11 and features access to many extra software repositories, including Debian's Backports and Flatpak. The project's release announcement provides an overview of the distribution's features: "wattOS has been rebuilt in 2022 with Debian 11 Bullseye as the basis for the OS. Giving you a stable and reliable foundation. Based on Debian 11 Bullseye - Stable release. LXDE 11 as a lightweight desktop. Kernel 5.10 for 64bit PC installation. Flatpak support out of the box. Debian backports added to apt so you can add newer packages and firmware if needed. Contrib and non-free added to APT to ease installation of other items if needed. Calamares as the installer for a simple streamined install from a live session. Inclusion of gdebi ease install of .deb packages. Inclusion of GParted to ease disk partitioning and management. Additional configuration to enhance the out of the box experience."
wattOS R12 -- Running the LXDE desktop
(full image size: 2.4MB, 1918x1436 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,793
- Total data uploaded: 42.6TB
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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) |
Swap file versus swap partition
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about the differences between using a swap partition and a swap file. Both options provide an area on the disk to temporarily hold information that was stored in memory, and each have pros and cons. We'd like to hear if you use a swap file or a swap partition on your computer.
You can see the results of our previous poll on testing done with a distribution before installing it in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Swap file vs swap partition
| I use a swap file: | 297 (20%) |
| I use a swap partition: | 834 (56%) |
| I use both: | 95 (6%) |
| I use neither: | 273 (18%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 28 November 2022. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. 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 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 |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Issue 985 (2022-09-12): Garuda Linux, using root versus sudo, UBports on the Fairphone 4, Slackware reverses change to grep |
| • Issue 984 (2022-09-05): deepin 23 Preview, watching for changing to directories, Mint team tests Steam Deck, Devuan posts fix for repository key expiry |
| • Issue 983 (2022-08-29): Qubes OS 4.1.1, Alchg Linux, immutable operating systems, Debian considers stance on non-free firmware, Arch-based projects suffer boot issue |
| • Issue 982 (2022-08-22): Peropesis 1.6.2, KaOS strips out Python 2 and PulseAudio, deepin becomes independent, getting security update notifications |
| • Issue 981 (2022-08-15): Linux Lite 6.0, defining desktop environments and window managers, Mint releases upgrade tool, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 980 (2022-08-08): Linux Mint 21, Pledge on Linux, SparkyLinux updates classic desktop packages, Peppermint OS experiments with Devuan base |
| • Issue 979 (2022-08-01): KaOS 2022.06 and KDE Plasma 5.25, terminating processes after a set time, GNOME plans Secure Boot check |
| • Issue 978 (2022-07-25): EndeavourOS 22.6, Slax explores a return to Slackware, Ubuntu certified with Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 |
| • Issue 977 (2022-07-18): EasyOS 4.2, transferring desktop themes between distros, Tails publishes list of updates, Zevenet automates Let's Encrypt renewals |
| • Issue 976 (2022-07-11): NixOS 22.05, making a fake webcam, exploring the Linux scheduler, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 975 (2022-07-04): Murena One running /e/OS, where are all the openSUSE distributions, Fedora to offer unfiltered Flathub access |
| • Issue 974 (2022-06-27): AlmaLinux 9.0, the changing data of DistroWatch's database, UBports on the Pixel 3a, Tails and GhostBSD publish hot fixes |
| • Issue 973 (2022-06-20): openSUSE 15.4, collecting distro media, FreeBSD status report, Ubuntu Core with optional real-time kernel |
| • Issue 972 (2022-06-13): Rolling Rhino Remix, SambaBox 4.1, SUSE team considers future of SUSE and openSUSE Leap, Tails improves Tor Connection Assistant |
| • Issue 971 (2022-06-06): ChimeraOS 2022.01.03, Lilidog 22.04, NixOS gains graphical installer, Mint replaces Bluetooth stack and adopts Timeshift, how to change a MAC address |
| • Issue 970 (2022-05-30): Tails 5.0, taking apart a Linux distro, Ubuntu users seeing processes terminated, Budgie team plans future of their desktop |
| • Issue 969 (2022-05-23): Fedora 36, a return to Unity, Canonical seeks to improve gaming on Ubuntu, HP plans to ship laptops with Pop!_OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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