 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1014, 10 April 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 15th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Sometimes people ask me what is the most important quality of a distribution - what is it I mainly look for? Is it security, the availability of a wide range of software, up to date packages, the use of a particular desktop environment? My answer is always that what I require most from my operating system, is it must run on my hardware. The greatest package manager, desktop environment and filesystem become nothing more than a bunch of nice ideas if the operating system running them fails to cooperate with the underlying hardware. I mention this because there are a lot of good, interesting and promising projects which work really well (in theory) or which do amazing things (for some people), but can be tripped up in the wrong environment. This week, in our Feature Story, we talk about some projects which sound amazing on paper, but run into implementation problems in practise in my test environments. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about a project which does not suffer any such problems and why it holds so much appeal for this author. We also discuss how to test to see if a specific program or process is running. In our News section we discuss three distributions which are trying to improve the end user experience with little tweaks and polish. We talk about new theme changes to Linux Mint, full disk encryption options coming to Fedora and elementary OS improving its handling of third-party applications. In our Opinion Poll this week we touch upon the Kodi media centre. We'd like to hear whether you make use of Kodi and, if so, in what sort of environment. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
carbonOS 2022.3
As a new week dawned I was struck with the urge to visit the DistroWatch waiting list to see what new and interesting projects might offer engaging experiences. My eye was drawn to a project called carbonOS which reportedly has some attractive features:
carbonOS is designed to be minimal and intuitive. It gets out of your way and lets you focus on your work. Powerful features like system-wide search and the control center make it easy to accomplish quick tasks without opening any other apps. Features like do not disturb and the overview let you separate work and play.
All system files are locked and read-only, making it difficult for anything to tamper with or hijack the OS. Apps you install are kept isolated from each other, limiting the impact of any vulnerabilities or malware.
Update your systems confidently! carbonOS's innovative design makes sure that updates are completely safe to install. In fact, updates happen in the background while you're working and all it takes is a reboot to apply them. If something does somehow go wrong, carbonOS will automatically undo faulty updates! You can also undo updates manually if necessary.
In short, carbonOS appears to offer an immutable root filesystem and uses OSTree to handle software management and updates. The project tries to offer a central utility for managing the operating system and offers search functions to assist users in finding things. All of this is provided in a 2.2GB ISO file. So far, carbonOS sounded promising.
I soon discovered carbonOS boots in UEFI mode exclusively, Legacy BIOS mode is not supported. Booting from the live media brings up a menu offering to launch a live session, either running from the removable media or from RAM. Selecting either option immediately fails, causing the screen to briefly go blank and then display the menu again. In short, carbonOS did not boot to a point where I could try using or installing it.
To be fair to the carbonOS developers, they seem to agree the distribution is not yet ready for daily use. The project's download page carries a warning: "Please be aware that this is an early development build of carbonOS. carbonOS is still unfinished. There will be breaking changes." I'm planning to try this interesting project again when it has had more time to mature.
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LibreELEC 11.0
While I was looking for another distribution to explore, a friend messaged me to ask about lightweight software they could run as a media centre attached to their television. They wanted something they could run on a Raspberry Pi, low-end mini PC, or laptop. I suggested we take a look at LibreELEC which is, "Just enough OS to run Kodi." Kodi is a media centre which, thanks to a huge array of third-party plugins, can access and play both local audio and video files and stream remote media.
LibreELEC 11.0 was published recently and I suggested we give it a try. The latest version of LibreELEC runs Kodi 20.0 on top of version 6.1 of the Linux kernel. The project supports a range of hardware, including several single board computers, generic workstation and laptop computers and virtual machines. The version for generic personal computers is a compressed, 226MB download. When expanded, LibreELEC is 549MB in size. This image can be written to removable storage like a thumb drive.
When booting LibreELEC on my laptop, the system briefly displayed a boot menu which disappeared too quickly for me to have read what all the options were. Then the screen cleared and displayed the text "LibreELEC (official) 11.0.0" across the top of the display. Then nothing happened. I waited several minutes with no change. There were no alternative text consoles or graphical terminals running.
After forcing a reboot I managed to catch the boot menu (pressing a key will pause the automatic countdown). There are three options:
- Installer - this launches the LibreELEC installer.
- Run - runs the distribution from the USB thumb drive.
- Live - runs the system from RAM and uses RAM for data storage.
The Live option appears to be the default and it had already failed to boot properly. I tried Run next and it produced the exact same result - the distribution's name and version were displayed and then nothing happened for several minutes.
Taking the installer option got us further ahead. At first the same empty console with the distribution's name and version across the top appeared. Then, a few seconds later, a menu-driven installer launched. It asked which hard drive should be used to hold LibreELEC. We were then given two chances to abort the install before LibreELEC took over the entire disk. The installer reported it completed successfully less than a minute later and offered to reboot the computer.
Booting from the hard drive showed the same empty screen with LibreELEC's name and version number printed across the top. Then the system locked up and did nothing.
This result was, of course, disappointing, but not surprising. I had run into similar issues with the past few versions of LibreELEC. Both when running the distribution on various laptops and attempting to install it on a Raspberry Pi machine. This time around I decided to try taking hardware issues out of the equation and tried again with LibreELEC's dedicated virtual machine build. This build can be imported into virtual machine managers such as VirtualBox. Unfortunately, the distribution, running in VirtualBox gave the same experience discussed above and brought our experiment with LibreELEC to a close.
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Kodi 20.1
Since our primarily goal was to run media centre software and it didn't really matter which distribution acted as a base, we next explored using a more mainstream distribution, such as Linux Mint and installed the Kodi Flatpak on it from the Flathub repository. The package, tv.kodi.kodi, was about 480MB in size and installed without any problems.
When Kodi launched on my laptop it was in full screen mode and it seems the software miscalculated my screen resolution. About 20% of the right side of the Kodi player was off the edge of the screen and not visible. Likewise, about 10% or so of the bottom of the application was cut off at the bottom of the display. I tried changing the screen resolution, but this caused Kodi to blank the screen and stop responding. I had to switch to a text console to terminate Kodi. (Kodi did not respond to the regular termination (TERM) signal and had to be removed using the forceful kill (KILL) signal.
Kodi 20.1 -- The system settings modules
(full image size: 618kB, resolution: 1488x839 pixels)
Once Kodi had been restarted we got around the resolution issue by switching Kodi to windowed mode and maximizing the window rather than running it in full screen mode. We could then navigate with either the keyboard or mouse pointer. By default, Kodi makes clicking sounds while navigating menus and whooshing sounds when switching between screens. This gets annoying quickly when doing a lot of scrolling and we disabled the sound effects through the settings screen under the Audio module.
Navigating Kodi mostly involves exploring categories of options, add-ons, or features on the left side of the screen and specific items or controls on the right. The interface feels verbose and slow to navigate on a personal computer and I believe this is largely a side-effect of Kodi being designed for televisions. The Kodi software can be controlled with a TV remote. As a result there tends to be few options on each screen and virtually everything we want to do is handled using simple yes/no, up/down, left/right controls.
Beyond the simplistic navigation though, I still found it challenging to understand the organization of Kodi. I never found it intuitive and I'd often find myself hunting for screens I'd been using just an hour before. I'm not sure if it is the depth of the menus or how many areas are labelled similarly that throws me. As an example, a lot of Kodi's functionality is provided through add-ons and there is a repository of official add-ons we can browse. This worked fairly well for me. However, later I wanted to clean-up add-ons I wasn't using anymore. I could not find any screen which would show me just add-ons I had previously installed so I could remove them. I could find a general list of add-ons which were available, but they included a long list of built-in items as well as ones I had installed. And I could find a list of add-ons available in the repository and I found settings related to add-ons. But no screen which would just list items I had manually installed earlier.
Likewise, I found it weird that when I was browsing and playing music I could find no option for enabling "shuffle" mode. That was until I switched the player to full screen mode. Then the "shuffle" button appeared, but it wasn't available in the normal player mode. In short, Kodi organizes features differently than most desktop applications and it took me a while to adjust.
Kodi 20.1 -- Browsing add-ons
(full image size: 793kB, resolution: 1488x839 pixels)
Getting back to add-ons for a moment, Kodi offers a wide range of them. Unfortunately most official add-ons require account keys or account credentials in order to work. In other words, we can't just install the CBC add-on or the YouTube add-on and start watching content from the CBC stream or YouTube website. We need to visit the corresponding website from a web browser, sign up for an account and then put our new credentials into Kodi. Some "video" add-ons don't actually offer access to videos either. For instance, the Formula One (F1) add-on will show a text summary of race results, but no video, despite it being listed as a video add-on. This makes finding and setting up access to services a bit frustrating and time consuming. This isn't Kodi's fault, it's just the platform on which these troublesome add-ons are running.
Also on the topic of add-ons, I decided to try some unofficial add-ons. A lot of services, such as Netflix, do not have an official add-on, but there are some out there which report to work. I downloaded a few of these add-ons, but ran into an issue. Kodi would only offer to install add-ons (which are provided as Zip files) if they were in my Music or Video directory. Kodi refused to see my Downloads directory or any other directory on my account. Then, even when I'd moved the Zip files into my Music directory, Kodi still failed to see and install the add-on package. This greatly limits us as it meant I was only able to install add-ons from the official repository.
Kodi 20.1 -- Importing music files
(full image size: 800kB, resolution: 1488x839 pixels)
I had hoped to be able to control Kodi's playback and volume from KDE Connect, software which can be used on a phone to remotely control desktop media players. Kodi was not recognized by KDE Connect. The next best thing I could do was enable KDE Connect's remote input extension which would let me remotely control the mouse pointer on Kodi from my phone. This was less elegant than using the media player controls from my phone, but it worked as long as I was in a position to see the Kodi interface on the TV screen.
On the whole, my friend decided they might be best served by VLC running on the laptop and remotely controlling the experience by using KDE Connect. It was faster, required less menu navigation and integrated with the laptop's (and KDE Connect's) existing controls better. Maybe it would be a different story if the media centre was also going to be playing a large library of music or playlists, which Kodi is better equipped to handle.
I'd like to clarify that I have used and enjoyed Kodi in situations where it is running directly on a TV or dedicated media player. It can be quite useful with it is set up properly in advance. However, it struggles when running on a workstation or laptop, in large part due to its style of interface. It's best suited to environments with simple controls (like a TV remote) and, ideally, in situations where any required add-ons have been pre-installed and configured for us.
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Visitor supplied rating
LibreELEC has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.3/10 from 9 review(s).
Have you used LibreELEC? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Mint polishes its themes and icons, Fedora plans to offer encryption by default, elementary OS improves sideloading experience
The Linux Mint team have published their March newsletter which focuses on visual tweaks and improvements coming to the distribution. The Mint team are refining the look of the desktop, its themes and icons in response to user feedback. "The huge variety of themes and color variants created clutter and made it harder for users to locate a particular theme. Some icon themes work well with some control themes but not with others. The welcome screen provides a way to quickly switch from light to dark and from one color to another but it has its own limitation: It only works with the Mint-Y theme and only in our distribution. With this in mind we decided to design a solution which could work for any theme and any distribution and which would make it much easier to browse and pick without having to go through long lists of installed themes and without worrying about compatibility." The newsletter includes screenshots and examples of changes being made for future releases.
* * * * *
Owen Taylor has posted an overview of work going into Fedora's Workstation edition which will improve data encryption and device security. In particular Taylor is looking at making home directory and system encryption default settings at install time. "For quite a while, the Workstation Working Group has had open tickets to improve the state of encryption in Fedora - and in particular get to the point where we can make the installer encrypt systems by default. In order to move that forward, I've been working on a requirements document and draft plan. In very brief summary, the plan is:
Use the upcoming Btrfs fscrypt support to encrypt both the system and home directories. The system by default will be encrypted with an encryption key stored in the TPM and bound to the signatures used to sign the bootloader/kernel/initrd, providing protection against tampering, while home directories will be encrypted using the user's login password." Details are provided in Taylor's mailing list post.
* * * * *
The elementary OS developers have been making tweaks and polishing their distribution based on user feedback. One of the key features being adjusted is how the distribution handles installing third-party applications. "Since sideloading is an expected and important part of installing apps on elementary OS, we've made a couple of changes to help you stay informed and be in control. Instead of describing sideloaded apps as 'Untrusted', we've updated interface copy to instead ask for your trust. Additionally, we now show some basic feedback about the kinds of broad system permissions that a sideloaded app may request. This will likely get more fine-grained in the future, but for now we can warn about apps that request advanced permissions and let you know when an app is more tightly sandboxed." Additional changes are outlined in the project's monthly newsletter.
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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 processes, WINE security, favourite distributions
Seeking-just-one-process asks: Is there a way to see if a specific process is running? And then maybe do something once it is confirmed?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few different ways to check if a particular process is running. The easiest approach is probably to use the pgrep command. This checks for a program with a specific name and, if any matches are found, it will print the process identification number (PID) of the matching processes.
When run with just the name of a process to find, pgrep will seek out all matching names on the system. For example, this will return all of the PIDs of bash shells running on my system:
pgrep bash
I can be more specific and have pgrep list just the PIDs of bash running that were started by me. This is accomplished with the "-u" flag, followed by my username:
pgrep -u jesse bash
The pgrep command returns "true" or success when it finds a match and "false" or failure when no match is found. This allows us to follow up a match with another command using the shell's "&&" operator. Basically, the "&&" symbols will cause a second command to run only after the first command reports it finished successfully.
In the following example, we search for any processes with "firefox" in the name and print a message if one is found:
pgrep firefox && echo "Firefox detected!"
We can run any command we like after the "&&" symbols. Just keep in mind that, if we are not careful, we can get unintended matches. For example, the system on which I'm typing this has one process named "init" and another named "kdeinit5". Using the command "pgrep init" will return successful matches for both. It might be a good idea to narrow the search, either by only checking for processes I own, with the "-u" flag, or using pattern matching to narrow the results. The next example will only return matches for a process named "init" run by the root user:
pgrep -u root "^init$"
In the above example the "^" indicates the start of a line and the "$" indicates the ending. This means only processes which start with "init" and have nothing after this text will match. Processes with names like "kdeinit" or "init-something" will not match the command in the above example.
* * * * *
What-is-in-my-wine asks: Can I get malware if I run infected Windows applications through WINE?
DistroWatch answers: Yes, in many instances you can. WINE is quite good at running Windows applications and it has no way to separate "good" behaviour in an application from "bad" behaviour. Further, since WINE typically grants access to your home directory for any application it runs, malware you run in WINE could potentially access your personal documents.
* * * * *
Peeking-behind-the-curtain asks: A few weeks back you wrote about Bedrock and said:
This impressive collection of features again raises the question of why I'm not currently using Bedrock. Really, at this time, it's simply a case of not needing it. I have a distribution which does everything I need it to - stable base, large collection of software, access to portable applications, convenient setup and most of the tools I want installed for me. It's not often I look at other distributions with envy for their approach or utilities.
Not sure if you've talked about this already, but which distro do you run?
I touched on this briefly at the start of the year in our 1,000th edition of DistroWatch Weekly. When I'm not testing other distributions, I mostly run MX Linux these days. It's a responsive, medium weight distribution which runs very quickly. MX mostly runs software from the Debian Stable repository, making it quite reliable and the project offers backports for newer desktop software. Due to Debian's massive repositories there are rarely any packages I cannot find and, in the rare case there is a game or application I want which is not offered through the Debian and MX repositories, I can use a Flatpak bundle.
On a style level, MX Linux is well suited for me, personally. It tends to take the middle ground on a lot of issues which, for me, feels like finding a series of good balancing points. It's a mid-weight distro running mid-weight desktop (Xfce), with some good applications and tools, but there aren't so many programs it would make the application menu feel crowded. It has a stable core with optional backports. It's flexible, but has a solid personality and doesn't require that I change much to settle into my preferred workflow.
I'm not saying it's for everyone. Not all people like the classic Xfce look or the desktop panel aligned vertically, or a conservative base. But, for me, it's been a really good experience for the past few years.
On the server side of things, these days I'm running FreeBSD almost exclusively. There are a few projects I've worked on lately that used a flavour of Debian or a legacy version of CentOS, but those are rarer for me these days. Most of my ongoing projects and new work take place on FreeBSD.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
ExTiX 23.4
ExTiX is a deepin-based (previously Ubuntu-based) distribution. The latest version is ExTiX 23.4 which previews changes coming to the deepin distribution. "I've released a new version of ExTiX Deepin today (230403). This ExTiX Build is based on Deepin 23 Alpha 2 (latest version) released by Deepin Technology on 2023-02-08. Please read the release notes. As you can see, the developers urge people to try Deepin alpha 2 in a non-production environment. I must say, though, that I haven't discovered any bugs. And the installed programs won't crash or anything like that. On the contrary, ExTiX Deepin 23.4 with the Deepin DE 23 works pretty well I would say. I have nevertheless kept ExTiX 22.12 with Deepin 20.8 on the server. Deepin 20.8 is the stable version released 221208. ExTiX 23.4 uses kernel 6.3-rc4. ExTiX 23.4 works in the same way as all other ExTiX versions, i.e. you can install it to hard drive while running the system live. Use Refracta Installer for that." Additional details are offered in the release announcement.
* * * * *
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: 2,851
- Total data uploaded: 43.1TB
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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) |
The Kodi media centre
In this week's discussion on LibreELEC and Kodi, we talked a bit about the flexible Kodi media centre. Kodi is a popular choice for people who want to set up a video or music playing service on their TV or on a dedicated personal computer. The Kodi software gets a lot of its power through a large collection of add-ons which can fetch information, play audio streams and download videos. We'd like to hear if you use the Kodi software and, if so, in what sort of environment?
You can see the results of our previous poll on where people run the Alpine Linux distribution in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Where do you use Kodi?
| On a Smart TV/TV accessory: | 84 (7%) |
| On a workstation/laptop: | 63 (5%) |
| On my phone/tablet: | 5 (0%) |
| On a single board computer: | 90 (7%) |
| A combination of the above: | 54 (4%) |
| Another type of device: | 18 (1%) |
| I do not run Kodi: | 892 (74%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Rhino linux. Rhino Linux is an Ubuntu-based rolling release distribution featuring the Xfce desktop.
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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, 17 April 2023. 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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| Tip Jar |
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Status: Discontinued
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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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