 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 998, 12 December 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 50th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
People are often looking for the best operating system, with the category of "best" changing with a person's priorities. An operating system might be considered the best at being small, fast, feature-rich, modern-looking, or having the largest collection of software. Today we turn our gaze to an open source operating system which is arguably the best when it comes to security. OpenBSD has an impressive track record when it comes to both security and correct documentation. This week we begin with a look at OpenBSD 7.2 and report on some of its key features. Then, in our News section, we talk about Asahi Linux getting video hardware acceleration working, which offers much better performance for 3-D desktops and games. Plus we report on Fedora 35 reaching the end of its supported life and Manjaro adjusting its Mesa package to avoid proprietary codecs. In our Questions and Answers column we explore options for installing a Linux distribution without a user account set up by default. These userless, so-called OEM installs are relatively rare, but offered by a handful of Linux distributions. Does your current distribution offer an OEM install option? Let us know about it in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to list the new releases of the past week and share the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are pleased to welcome the risiOS distribution to our database. risiOS is a Fedora-based project with a number of convenient tools included to help setup and customize the operating system. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
OpenBSD 7.2
The OpenBSD project develops an operating system which is lean, clearly documented, and has a proactive approach to security. The project is also the source of such popular software packages as OpenSSH and LibreSSL which are included in many open source operating systems. OpenBSD's latest release was version 7.2 which can run on over a dozen CPU architectures.
The install media for OpenBSD is available in separate formats for optical media (ISO files) and USB thumb drives (IMG files). The ISO file for the x86_64 architecture is 556MB while the IMG file is 664MB. Booting the OpenBSD media brings up a text console where we are asked if we'd like to install a new copy of OpenBSD, upgrade the operating system, perform an auto-install, or run a command line shell.
The command line shell provided on the install media offers a limited environment. There is just enough command software available to perform some tests and get the system installed. There isn't a full array of tools provided like you'd get on a full install of OpenBSD or from most Linux live discs.
Installing
Choosing to run the installer brings up a series of text prompts where we are expected to type our answers, or simply press Enter to take the default option. The defaults are generally quite sensible and we can get through a lot of the installer's steps by simply pressing Enter.
The installer walks us through selecting a keyboard layout, hostname, and enabling network cards. We are also asked to make up a password for the root account. We're asked if we want to enable remote access through the OpenSSH service (the default is to run the service). We can then optionally create a regular user account. The installer also asks us to confirm our timezone.
We are next asked to select which disk will hold OpenBSD. We can then accept a default disk layout or manually divide up the disk. This is probably the most complex part of the installer, if we go the manual partitioning route, as there isn't a lot of help or any friendly graphical or menu-driven partition manager. In the last step of the installer we are asked to select which components to install. These include kernels, the base userland system, manual pages, games, and graphical (X) display software. Once these packages are copied to our hard drive the system offers to restart the computer.
Early impressions
OpenBSD boots to a graphical login screen, if we installed the X packages, or to a text console if we did not. I opted to use X and, upon logging in I was presented with a very minimal window manager in the form of fvwm. This is a simple window manager with just a console running on the desktop. We can access the fvwm menu by left-clicking on any black section of the desktop. There are virtually no other applications or desktop components installed. There's no application menu, dock, wallpaper, or system tray. There is a graphical calculator, but otherwise we're pretty much just left with a virtual terminal and a virtual desktop switcher.
There is no option to shutdown or reboot the computer from within the graphical environment. Both fvwm and the login screen lack these options. We can switch to a terminal and sign in as the root user to reboot from the command line.
Hardware
OpenBSD is unusually lean. The operating system consumes about 1.5GB of disk space, which is quite small compared to mainstream Linux distributions. The operating system uses about 70MB of RAM when logged into the text console and 83MB when signed into the window manager. It can be made even lighter if we're willing to disable the X display software entirely.
When I started exploring OpenBSD in a VirtualBox environment the operating system mostly performed well. It booted fairly quickly, it was stable, and it was able to automatically connect to my network. The one downside was I could not get OpenBSD to make use of higher screen resolutions. I experimented with a few video drivers, and some of them improved video output from 800x600 pixels, but none of them could make full use of my display size of 1680x1050 pixels with the default settings. I ended up manually tweaking the X display configuration to set higher, custom resolutions when running the operating system inside VirtualBox.
When running on my workstation's hardware, OpenBSD performed about the same. The system was light and responsive. My one serious issue was that OpenBSD didn't recognize my computer's wireless networking card. Wired connections worked out of the box, but wi-fi did not. I also found text output on the console was a bit misaligned. The left-most character of each line was displayed off the edge of the screen until my monitor settings were adjusted. I haven't encountered this issue with any other operating system to date on this equipment.
Another issue I ran into was I could install media players and play media files, including videos. However, OpenBSD didn't produce any audio. I installed a sound mixer and confirmed it detected the audio output of the application, but I didn't get any audio from the player. I ran into the same problem when trying to watch videos in Firefox - videos would play, but no sound output reached my speakers. I checked my sound settings using sndioctl as per the documentation and everything appeared in order, yet my system remained mute.
OpenBSD 7.2 -- Browsing the web with Firefox
(full image size: 297kB, resolution: 1600x1200 pixels)
Software management
OpenBSD logically splits its software into two distinct areas. The OpenBSD operating system is one cohesive unit, made by a unified team. Its kernel and utilities are treated, in a way, as an atomic unit. Security updates and other fixes to the core operating system (and its documentation) can be handled using a tool called syspatch. Running the syspatch utility with the "-c" flag, as in "syspatch -c", will check for any available updates to OpenBSD and list them on the command line. Running "syspatch" without any argument will install these waiting updates. I tested this, discovered four updates were waiting for me, and they were applied without any issues.
Third-party software, applications and utilities which are not part of the base operating system, are handled with a separate set of tools. Third-party software, sometimes referred to as ports, can be queried by running a tool called pkg_info and downloaded using a tool called pkg_add. In order to find a package we want we could run a command like "pkg_info -Q firefox" or "pkg_info -Q rsync" in order to find relevant matches. We can then install these matches using pkg_add, for instance: "pkg_add rsync". We can later upgrade these third-party applications using pkg_add with the "-u" flag: "pkg_add -u".
These tools for finding and installing ports are terse in their output and the syntax may be a bit unusual for people coming from most Linux distributions. However, they worked quickly and without problems during my trial.
Managing services
I could say the same thing about managing services on OpenBSD. The syntax and tools provided are terse and a little alien for people coming from a Linux background, but they work and are well documented. Service management is mostly handled by the rcctl command line program. Some simple commands to remember are "rcctl ls" to list available services, "rcctl start" to start a service, and "rcctl stop" to stop a service. A complete list of options is laid out in the rcctl manual page.
This seems like a good time to point out that OpenBSD is still, in many ways (perhaps most ways) still a command line and text file oriented operating system. Almost all configuration changes, package management, firewall setup, and user account management tasks are expected to be done at the command line level. Often we're running short, sometimes cryptic, commands or editing simple text files. You won't find much in the way of graphical tools or even menu-drive text tools on OpenBSD. The operating system is meant to be technically simple which gives it a light, clean approach, but does mean more of a learning curve for potential users.
Desktop environments
The OpenBSD documentation doesn't talk much about graphical environments or the steps required to set up a full featured desktop environment. If you're new to the process, a lot of the third-party guides for setting up a desktop environment on OpenBSD are out of date and refer to older desktops such as KDE4 and GNOME 2. However, there are guides out there, including a well written one for multiple versions of OpenBSD. It'll walk readers through setting up the Xfce desktop, though similar steps can be used to install other desktop environments.
OpenBSD 7.2 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 146kB, resolution: 1600x1200 pixels)
In short, we end up running the command "pkg_add xfce xfce-extras" and letting the package manager sort out the dependencies for us. Then we add a line to the ~/.Xsession file which will start the Xfce desktop, or another desktop we have installed. Should we wish to be able to shutdown the computer from within the desktop environment we should also add our user account to the operator group.
This will give us a bare bones desktop environment with just a panel, dock, and application menu. Adjusting the appearance, resolution, and wallpaper will be up to us to sort through. New applications we install will be added to the desktop's application menu - this happened automatically, in my experiment with Xfce.
Other observations
While on most Linux distributions people use sudo to perform administrative commands, OpenBSD offers different avenues. We can either log into the root account directly or run the doas command. The doas program works almost identically to sudo, but doas is smaller and uses a clearer configuration syntax in an attempt to reduce possible errors.
One of the few features I would have enjoyed seeing on OpenBSD, but didn't see (and probably won't see in the future), is support for ZFS. The advanced filesystem is supported almost everywhere, to some degree, these days but there are a number of reasons it isn't available on OpenBSD, even as a port.
Conclusions
When evaluating an operating system I think there are two different, key viewpoints to consider: Does the project meets its stated goals? And does the project fit my needs?
The OpenBSD project lists several goals on its website, though most of these are more "behind in the scenes" in nature. There are items on the list which talk about making source code available, which licenses to use, standards to be followed, and avoiding politics. All which are perfectly valid, but tell us little about the sort of operating system the project aims to produce. There are a few more practical goals such as "Try to be the #1 most secure operating system," "Support as many different systems and hardware as feasible," and "Make a release approximately every six months." Basically, OpenBSD is trying to make a highly portable, secure operating system, with new versions twice a year.
Since OpenBSD regularly puts on new releases on schedule, has a well deserved reputation for a default secure installation, provides unusually correct documentation, and runs on over a dozen CPU architectures I'd say the project is achieving its own goals remarkably well.
When it comes to looking at OpenBSD as an outsider the experience is perceived through a different lens. OpenBSD is an unusually niche operating system with a specific focus on code and documentation correctness. It is highly minimal, it is highly terse, it is highly portable. It does not hold the user's hand, it doesn't provide much in the way of default services, it has virtually no point-n-click components. The operating system is meant to be lean, out of the way, and modified using a combination of command line knowledge and text files. It's an operating system probably best associated with firewalls, routers, specific-purpose network servers, and professionals.
This is not a platform for beginners, or casual desktop users. If you want a desktop you better learn how to install it yourself. If you want to set up a printer, the same applies. If you want to enable a web server with PHP support, you'll probably want to read a manual or two. This is a platform created by security professionals, mostly for security professionals (or at least people who want security to be the primary focus of their platform). There isn't anything wrong with this, in fact OpenBSD has given birth to technologies many of us use daily, but potential users need to know they're walking into an environment that is minimal, without frills to the point of being sterile. OpenBSD is stable, secure, and will expect you to do almost all of the work.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Lenovo desktop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Hex-core Intel i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
- Storage: Western Digital 1TB hard drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 wired network card, Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe wireless adapter
- Display: Intel CometLake-S GT2
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Visitor supplied rating
OpenBSD has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.3/10 from 26 review(s).
Have you used OpenBSD? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora 35 reaches end of life, Asahi Linux enables hardware acceleration on Apple's ARM machines, Manjaro disables proprietary codecs in Mesa
Tomas Hrcka has published a reminder that Fedora 35 will be reaching the end of its supported life this week. People still running Fedora 35 are advised to upgrade. "Fedora 35 will go end of life for updates and support on 2022-12-13. No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 35 after the said date. All the updates of Fedora N being pushed to stable will be stopped as well. Fedora 36 will continue to receive updates until approximately one month after the release of Fedora 37."
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The Asahi Linux project seeks to run GNU/Linux software on Apple's ARM-powered hardware. While the project has faced many challenges, one of the most visual hurdles has been proper video card support. The Asahi team has made great progress in this regard, enabling hardware acceleration. This allows users to run modern desktop environments smoothly and play 3-D games. "We're excited to announce our first public Apple Silicon GPU driver release! We've been working hard over the past two years to bring this new driver to everyone, and we're really proud to finally be here. This is still an alpha driver, but it's already good enough to run a smooth desktop experience and some games. Read on to find out more about the state of things today, how to install it (it's an opt-in package), and how to report bugs! This release features work-in-progress OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support for all current Apple M-series systems. That's enough for hardware acceleration with desktop environments, like GNOME and KDE. It's also enough for older 3D games, like Quake3 and Neverball. While there's always room for improvement, the driver is fast enough to run all of the above at 60 frames per second at 4K." Additional details are provided in the project's announcement.
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Following the examples of Fedora and openSUSE, the Manjaro Linux team have decided to disable proprietary codecs in the Mesa package. This change disables hardware acceleration for some video codecs on some video cards. "Mesa is now at 22.2.4. [It] includes a notable change which disables hardware acceleration for proprietary video codecs (most commonly H.264 and H.265) when using the Mesa drivers stack. Open video codecs (VP8, VP9, AV1 - based on your hardware capabilities) are unaffected and can still be hardware-accelerated out of the box. This change mainly affects AMD graphics cards. (Intel GPUs don't use Mesa for video acceleration, NVIDIA cards use the proprietary driver, and Mesa video acceleration mostly doesn't work properly with the open source Nouveau driver). You can read more about hardware video acceleration here and about that topic in general here."
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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) |
Install Linux without a user account
Sending-this-one-away asks: I'm soon going to be selling a computer and the new owners asked if I could install Ubuntu on it. Can I do that without creating a user account so it's a fresh install for them?
DistroWatch answers: I believe what you're looking for is called an OEM Install. Ubuntu, and some related distributions, display a boot menu entry when launched from live media which includes the option: "OEM Install (for manufacturers)".
Selecting the OEM Install option will walk you through the usual install process, except you won't be asked to create a username or password. These steps will be held in reserve until the first time the newly installed operating system boots.
The Linux Mint distribution also offers an OEM Install option. The Pop!_OS distribution treats all new installs like OEM installs, saving user account creation until one of the final steps of the setup process the first time the operating system boots.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
FreeBSD 12.4
Glen Barber has announced the release of FreeBSD 12.4, the fourth update to the project's legacy 12.x branch: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE. This is the fifth release of the stable/12 branch. Some of the highlights: the ena(4) kernel driver has been updated to 2.6.1; the if_epair(4) driver now allows multiple cores to be used to process traffic to improve performance; the unbound(8) utility has been updated to version 1.16.3; the telnetd(8) daemon has been deprecated; the tcpdump(1) utility now allow users to set a number on rules which will be exposed as part of the pflog header; OpenSSL has been updated to 1.1.1q; OpenSSH has been updated to 9.1p1; the LLVM toolchain suite has been updated to version 13.0.0; the dma(8) utility has been updated to snapshot 2022-01-27; the file(1) utility has been updated to version 5.43. FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, armv6, armv7, aarch64, and riscv64 architectures." See the release announcement and the release notes for further information.
Kali Linux 2022.4
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The Kali team have released Kali Linux 2022.4 which officially brings the distribution to the PinePhone along with several new utilities: "It would not be a Kali release if there were not any new tools added! A quick run down of what has been added (to the network repositories): bloodhound.py - A Python based ingestor for BloodHound; certipy - Tool for Active Directory Certificate Services enumeration and abuse; hak5-wifi-coconut - A user-space driver for USB Wi-Fi NICs and the Hak5 Wi-Fi Coconut; ldapdomaindump - Active Directory information dumper via LDAP; peass-ng - Privilege escalation tools for Windows and Linux/Unix* and macOS; rizin-cutter - reverse engineering platform powered by rizin. This is new tools, there are numerous updates to existing tools." Additional information and screenshots can be found in the project's release announcement.
Kali Linux 2022.4 -- Exploring the Kali menu application for tools
(full image size: 625kB, 1920x1080 pixels)
deepin 20.8
The deepin project has published a new update to the distribution's 20.x series. The new version, 20.8 introduces a number of key package updates and includes a new application called Deepin Home. "In deepin 20.8, a new application Deepin Home is added, which breaks the 'information barrier' between the deepin team and users, and will work on product quality, software and hardware ecology to better serve deepin users. What is more, we have upgraded Qt to version 5.15.6, updated the DTK development library, fixed the underlying vulnerabilities, and further improved system compatibility and security. Besides that, we have developed and integrated a great number of practical functions based on the community users' feedback. Welcome to try it! The new self-developed information-aggregation application Deepin Home, in V1.0.0, has gathered important information platforms, such as GitHub, Wiki, forum, and social media, which supports deepin ID login and sending messages. Here you can receive community news in real-time, interact and communicate with others, participate in questionnaires, etc. In the future, we will establish a perfect tracking system for requirements and bugs, and special feedback channels for software and hardware to make it better for community users." The release announcement offers further details.
Puppy Linux 22.12
The developers of Puppy Linux, a lightweight distribution which can be assembled to be compatible with a variety of parent distributions, have published a Slackware-based version of Puppy. The new version is compatible with the Slackware 15.0 and Salix software repositories. The project's release announcement shares key details: "S15Pup is built from Slackware-15.0 binary TXZ packages, hence has binary compatibility with Slackware and access to the Slackware and Salix repositories. It is available in both 64-bit and 32-bit versions. Features include: Traditional Puppy Linux look and feel and features. Kernels from the LTS branches of 5 series - 5.15 for 64-bit, 5.10 for 32-bit. Abiword and Gnumeric word processing and spreadsheet. FFmpeg and supporting programs including Pmusic and MPlayer. Joe's Window Manager 2.4.3 (JWM). LXDE addon by ydrv. Lightweight web browser in adrv. Browser installer for heavyweight browsers such as Chromium, Firefox and Palemoon. Samba, used to share files with Windows included. Evince PDF viewer."
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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: 2,802
- Total data uploaded: 42.7TB
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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) |
Does your distribution offer an OEM install option?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about Linux distributions which can be installed without setting up a user account. This approach of installing an operating system without a default user account is referred to as an OEM install. Does your distribution include an OEM install option? Let us know which distributions you know of which offer OEM installs in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on removing special characters from filenames in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Does your distro offer an OEM install?
| Yes: | 290 (29%) |
| No: | 317 (32%) |
| Some distros I use do but not all: | 180 (18%) |
| Unsure: | 219 (22%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
risiOS
risiOS is a Fedora-based Linux distribution which runs the GNOME desktop environment and includes a number of graphical setup and tweak tools to help initialize and customize the desktop experience. risiOS includes wizards for adding media codecs, Flathub repositories, and popular open source desktop applications.
risiOS 37 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 365kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Vanilla OS. Vanilla OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution with an immutable root filesystem, intended to lock down unwanted changes and problems due to updates.
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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, 19 December 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 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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gNOX
gNOX was a Linux Operating System that you run from a CD without the need for installing. gNOX was based on the Slackware Linux distribution, and uses Dropline GNOME 2.6 as its default desktop manager, with XFce also available as the lightweight alternative. gNOX also employs a modular system. This means it was very easy to add extra software applications to gNOX by the means of modules (a growing selection available in the downloads section ) that you can permanently add to the ISO image OR run 'on the fly' from a stored location (hard drive/CD/USB drive). gNOX can be customised to suit YOUR needs, and any changes you make to the look of your gNOX can be saved, then restored again next time you use it!
Status: Discontinued
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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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NEW! Learn Linux in 5 Days
In this FREE ebook, you will learn the most important concepts and commands and be guided step-by-step through several practical and real-world examples (a free 212-page ebook).
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