 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 8 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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: 2,851
- 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 |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
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| Linux Foundation Training |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Why review broken stuff? (by Roger Brown on 2023-04-10 01:39:37 GMT from Australia)
I can accept that an important part of the Distrowatch function is to explore the new stuff as it appears. But is there any point in publishing reviews that simply report that the distro or software in question failed?
I suggest that detracts from the site. I'd rather see reviews of stuff that DOES work.
2 • "if a specific process is running" (by Greg Zeng on 2023-04-10 02:16:19 GMT from Australia)
In the old Linux, CLI only, this current Distrowatch gave the correct answer. For the current users, the answer is: Graphic User Interface (GUI) users: NO !!
This arrogance explains why most users of Linux based systems, avoid Linux. The best GUI based system is Gkrellm. A very crippled version exists for Windows. In Linux, the best version is available only in PCLOS, a spastic version of an unpopular RPM based system, IMHO. GKrellm however only allows the top three processes to be displayed, instead of the default top two processes.
HTOP and its versions is extremely difficult to use. It is available for most (all?) Linux systems. However clumsy it is, it uses only alpha-numerics, because GUI & graphics are not used in old Linux systems. Linux coders are too negligent and lazy to care about the potential bulk of operating system users, as the history of Linux shows, in my professional opinion.
3 • system reviews. (by Bobbie Sellers on 2023-04-10 02:30:48 GMT from United States)
Jesse kindly tries out everything in order to write the column and to tell us which distributions are not yet working as advertised. How can you tell if a distribution is not working unless you
try it. If is not yet working very well then that information is quite useful.
I used to try out distributions for SF-LUG so that I could post notes to the members about
what was not working.
4 • @1 Why review broken stuff? (by Greg Zeng on 2023-04-10 02:35:32 GMT from Australia)
Australia, New Zealand read Distrowatch first, world-wide. Distrowatch is mainly a lone, weakly resourced publication, that cannot use any multi-talented publishing team of researchers and writers, at these current times. There are other web sites trying to slowly move into the Distrowatch niche, but also lack the necessary management talent.
My fellow Australian is expecting a level of technical journalism that does not yet exist in the computer world. The wealthier technical areas (armaments & finances) do have this. The lesser talents prefer only commenting, in a "nice" way, about the small fry. Less litigation, less likely to handle any kind of hostility & backlash.
Linux has very major flaws, obvious to all Chief Information Officers. Linux cannot handle GUI, User-friendliness, advanced hardware, nor needs of real human users. Hence the extreme popularity of the alternatives to Linux: Windows, Apple and Android.
Senior technical writers know that these lesser Linux operating systems show the weaknesses and necessary cures that might bypass the major Linux brands. Some of these writers dare to allow the general public know about the serious flaws in Linux operating systems. Snap, appimage, BTRFS, NTFS, EXT 4, htop, gkrellm, RPM, X and Wayland display systems, etc. Privately we know this. Publically we are afraid to tell this to the open world.
5 • Kodi (by denflen on 2023-04-10 02:40:36 GMT from United States)
I have been using Kodi on my linux desktop (Lubuntu) for several years. I don't use the package from Lubuntu, prefering to get the PPA from the Kodi website. And, yes, it is confusing at first. But like everything else, it gets easier from usage. Adding and removing addons can be time consuming and redundant. But there are plenty of helpful websites to be found. I have never found anything that comes close to a full feature media center when finally set up and configured to my taste and need.
6 • Response to denfien's comments on Kodi (by Steve K on 2023-04-10 03:03:11 GMT from United States)
Have you tried Jellyfin? It's a totally awesome media center and runs on on Linux, Windows and MacOS. I absolutely love it and it's way better and more intuitive than Kodi which I've used in the past, with a lot of frustration!
7 • More on Jellyfin media center (by Steve K on 2023-04-10 03:11:45 GMT from United States)
P.S. Jellyfin is very adaptable and the Jellyfin client software can run on Linux, Windows, MacOS, Smart TV's, Amazon Fire Stick and Roku!
8 • Distribution (by Linuxseekers on 2023-04-10 03:29:04 GMT from Malaysia)
Lately, only Leap and Tumbleweed are the best for all old and new desktop PC and notebooks. Religiously use MATE because i can resize icon folder individually AND ESPECIALLY stretch .png or .jpeg files as big as possible to refer to tables of information swiftly, so that my customer would think that i have all the info at my fingertips.
9 • Re: Kodi KDE Connect controls (by Pat on 2023-04-10 05:15:16 GMT from United States)
You do not need to use KDE Connect to control Kodi from a mobile device - the developers maintain their own remote control application called Kore which can be found in all major app stores, including F-Droid. Kore gives you full control over playback, as well as the rest of the user interface.
10 • grep (by Any on 2023-04-10 05:21:58 GMT from Spain)
pgrep bash
3359
ps aux | grep bash
hp 3359 0.0 0.0 9860 3680 pts/1 Ss 07:20 0:00 /bin/bash
hp 3366 0.0 0.0 8748 644 pts/1 S+ 07:20 0:00 grep bash
11 • Kodi (by Dave on 2023-04-10 05:34:04 GMT from Australia)
I have, since the olsd Windows Media Cente days, tried pretty much every configuration of media PC used for watching live TV or streamed movies.
The conclusion? What I use now, a PC with a web browser. Don't worry about addons, apps with ads etc. Forget Android, LibreElec, Mac Mini, just get a generic x86_64 PC. Put your OS and your browser of choice on it with an ad blocker and everything will just work. And without ads. Use an air mouse style remote with a keyboard on it and you're sorted.
12 • LibreELEC & Kodi (by Simon Plaistowe on 2023-04-10 06:29:09 GMT from New Zealand)
Well I definitely recommend Kodi as a set-top media player. My household runs three LibreELEC boxes (two old desktop boxes & one old laptop with the screen amputated). One for the lounge & one for each bedroom TV. Our music & movies are stored on my server for common access from all 3 boxes, also we get on-demand & live TV via add-ons. Easy to install, configue, upgrade & duplicate once you know what you're doing. Never had any major issues for many years now, although Jesse has obviously proven that "mileage may vary".
13 • To Peeking Behind The Curtain (by Dan on 2023-04-10 07:56:55 GMT from United States)
There is another distro that does everything besides MX Linux (which I don't use), and that one is Salix.
14 • @4 Why review broken stuff? (by Roger Brown on 2023-04-10 09:26:53 GMT from Australia)
@4 You say "Linux cannot handle GUI, User-friendliness, advanced hardware, nor needs of real human users" however I disagree. There are many distros that do all these things and THEY are the ones we should feature with our DW reviews.
There are also distros that are not really ready for public consumption and IDEALLY they should not even be listed on the DW site, far less reviewed.
I do however recognise that fully vetting every potential new listing may not be possible for the site owners though the IDEAL situation would be that if it doesn't work, it doesn't get listed.
15 • Broken Stuff (by DachshundMan on 2023-04-10 09:32:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
@1: I am happy to have Distrowatch review broken stuff sometimes. It means that I know (1) not to try it or (2) if I have tried it and had a problem then I am not alone. Hopefully the developers of the broken distros read Jesse's reviews and say to themselves, Houston we have a problem.
As a more general point, broken distros do not help the cause of trying to convert people to using Linux.
@4: Linux distros are not always perfect but neither is Windows. However, I find it does all I need and given that it is used to run most of the internet so do many professional organisations.
16 • LibreELEC (by Peter on 2023-04-10 10:26:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've been using LibreELEC for years and years, without major issues (On R-Pi's). I tend to wipe and reinstall at every major release ...My rating would be 10/10 actually ... all the best, Pete
17 • Kodi (by James on 2023-04-10 11:46:52 GMT from United States)
Tried Kodi, don't use it. For myself I just didn't see a need for it.
18 • Kodi (by Dr.J on 2023-04-10 13:13:33 GMT from Germany)
I tried Kodi on a Lubuntu computer for some time years ago and was also quite enthusiastic about the look and operation at the beginning. The playback of HiRes audio files was also convincing. But in the long run, the programme had too many weaknesses at that time, if you compare it with good Windows programmes like Media-Monkey or JRiver. In particular, the administration of large collections was very weak (creating and managing playlists, checking the consistency of the MediaTags, adding artwork, etc.). In addition, the handling of all the add-ons was annoying, skins suddenly no longer existed, etc. Unfortunately, typical Linux programmes (from Amarok to Foobar to VLC) have not convinced me either, so today I have a combination of MediaMonkey (for administration via a Windows10 virtual box) and NeutronMP (for playback on an Android tablet).
19 • Kodi (by Friar Tux on 2023-04-10 13:21:31 GMT from Canada)
@11 (Dave) Good to see I'm not the only one to use the PC/browser combo. Like @17 (James), I tried Kodi - even before it was called Kodi - but found it quite overbearing and complicated for what it was supposed to be. (It did seem to do well as a separate, unique desktop environment, but would require a bit of re-learning to properly use.) LibreELEC I have not heard of till now. I'll check it out when I'm done here. For offline media, I use VLC media player (Audacious for offline music only). For online media it's Vivaldi browser on my laptop. I also have/use the Spotify app (of course), and an AppImage app that plays YouTube music videos. Finally, if I'm working on my laptop and still want music, I have an old laptop hooked up to a speaker set that can play offline, from my collection of music, or online with one of the mention apps. (It's a great little system, if I say so myself.)
20 • Linux Media Player SMPLAYER works well on Fedora (by Jeffersonian on 2023-04-10 14:40:18 GMT from Poland)
Linux Media Player SMPLAYER (mplayer frontend) from rpmfusion-free (fedora repos)
works quite well on Fedora for several years.
Once in a while it creates ffmepg dependencies issues, then the brute force solution to remove it reinstall later works.
The subtitles feature is great but does not always work, then do it manually.
Now I rarely use VLC, still a great app.
21 • RPM packages issues (by Jeffersonian on 2023-04-10 14:54:40 GMT from Poland)
1) They don't always work well across RPM based linux distros.
Why an RPM package for OpenSuse (for example) would not work on Fedora ? (Often)
It seems that dependencies and softlinks are part of the issue.
2) Is anyone aware of an RPM validator program ? If it does not exist it would be useful.
3) Many Linux related magazines and very popular commercial Linux apps now don't even support RPM packages, which is a shame, because (my opinion) RPM based Linux Distros are often the best, the easiest to to use, maintain, update etc...
Note that this relate to #2, where OpenSuse was in the past a good activist (Is it still true?)
4) It was a (long) time when creating a reliable RPM package from a tarzipped file using checkinstall worked very well. No so true anymore.
5) Would "distrowatch" care to write about this? Ideally do a bit of follow up on apps, (foss & corprate) as it does for distros etc... ?
22 • RPM packages (by David on 2023-04-10 15:53:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
@21: If APT packages generally work on different distros, it's because the dirstos that use it have based their repositories on Debian's. RPM distros are a diverse bunch that have been independent since the last century, even if they started as forks in the first place. The problem is that dependencies are naturally given not as the files needed but as the packages which contain them. Thus the Suse and Red Hat families may both contain a particular library, but it comes in differently-named packages. There's no way to solve this, other than persuading all RPM distros to co-ordinate their package names. At server level this happens, with Suse and Red Hat using the Linux Standard Base, but it's never going to happen with the vast amount of software used on PCs.
23 • Using TAB TAB autocompletion to see running processes (by K.U. on 2023-04-10 16:11:35 GMT from Finland)
Try this:
killall TAB TAB
Doing this shows the names of the running processess which can be killed in concise format.
One can use this trick just to see the running processes even in case one doesn't want to kill anything.
24 • psgrep (by Steve on 2023-04-10 16:47:04 GMT from United States)
If you have access to psgrep the suggestions above have potential.
I didn't even know the command existed as I created a simple script a while back to accomplish a somewhat similar task that fits my needs (and maybe yours as well). I suppose the key line could be simplified in some way but it does what I want the way it is so I've never bothered to tweak it further
I stick this in the /usr/local/bin/ sub-directory and fix ownership and permissions as needed, though other options work too:
#!/bin/bash
#
# ps2
#
# list filtered process status with correct column headers
#
# Author: Steve
# Date: 17 Oct 2006
#
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 17 Oct 06 - v1.0 - sml - initial creation
# 20 Oct 06 - v1.1 - sml - remove grep and ps2 from output
# 01 Aug 12 - v1.2 - sml - made grep case insensitive
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo ""
if [ $# = 2 ];then
ps $1 | head -1 ; ps $1 | grep -v grep | grep -v ps2 | grep -i $2
exit 0
else
echo "Usage: $0 SWITCHES STRING"
echo ""
echo " SWITCHES - i.e. -aux or -ef"
echo " STRING - string to filter ps command on, i.e. mail"
echo ""
exit 1
fi
#---eof---
25 • psgrep (continued) (by Steve on 2023-04-10 16:53:29 GMT from United States)
When I saved my comment above the indenting in my script was lost when leading spaces were deleted. Honest... the indents were there when I pasted the script in the comment field... 8^(
26 • Broken Distro's (by bittermann on 2023-04-10 17:35:34 GMT from United States)
I have to agree with some of the other comments. If a distro is truly broken just trying to install it I say don't waste the website/author's valuable and finite time. Just a sentence or two in the weekly about the fail and move on. There are plenty of others to test.
27 • distro reviews (by rolls up sleeves on 2023-04-10 22:10:06 GMT from New Zealand)
I find the reviews useful as reading about the struggles and pitfalls borders on entertainment. However, the reviews I really dig into are those where a serious distro gets a new release given a workout.
The hey-look-i-built-my-first-iso cases, fraught with comedic failures, get old after about the third laugh. And yet sometimes these crazy edge case distros have some good ideas that could advance Linux and which some mainstream ones could learn from.
I agree with @26 that a short set of notes would be useful, much like the ideal reviews - list pros, list cons... and then let us move on to feast on the good distros (in the top 50 at least).
My 2c, now 4c due to inflation..
28 • defining a Broken Distro (by Simon Plaistowe on 2023-04-10 22:29:29 GMT from New Zealand)
Stuff's been said about broken distros & wasted review time. All valid points I'm sure, but my point is this: should I bypass a distro because it's received a "broken" verdict from a reviewer?
For example, after reading Jesse's review in this issue of DW, many of you may have decided not to bother trying Kodi or LibreELEC. Yet my entire household has been using LibreELEC daily for many years, also I've on occasion used Kodi on a Linux Mint desktop. I'd rate it highly, fulfils my needs and never had any problems to speak of. No "broken" distro in sight. So... mileage may vary!
29 • ouch words (by 8-ball on 2023-04-11 02:49:28 GMT from New Zealand)
@4 : "Distrowatch is mainly a lone, weakly resourced publication, that cannot use any multi-talented publishing team of researchers and writers, at these current times."
That is very harsh Greg. Maybe you should then make some effort and go and create something better. Methinks very soon you will find out just how much hard work and long hours go into such a labour of love.
A review of a broken distro serves all of us as a warning beacon. The tests are not all that demanding, so a distro should at least meet these minimum standards. Many don't.
Jesse & team - thank you for keeping this valuable resource going all these years.
Just this month the Ferengi Monster of Acquisitions has dumped two websites that were the industry go-to in their fields: DPReview (photography) and BookDepository (books). May DW never get acquired and absorbed by some conglomerate.
30 • DW Reviews, Linux Satisfaction (by Otis on 2023-04-11 20:27:36 GMT from United States)
@4 What an arrogant crock. Listed in that post are all the successful aspects of many Linux distros. That post up there has an air of attempting ot herd users away from Linux in the direction of Windows, Mac, and Android.
Those are fine OSs in their own right, for the most part, so enjoy. But coming here to tear down the distro family that is the focus (with BSD) of this site is arrogant indeed.
As to the review(s) of some distros that are not (yet) up to snuff, good on Jesse et al for providing that to us, serving the obvious purpose of a bit of a warning, and in addition, serving the community at large one of the best aspects of DW: Showcasing the full range of what is offered out there in the Linux/BSD world. Why on Earth whittle it down to just fully polished fully functional works? Let it all be shown.
31 • Linux and DW reviews (by Albert on 2023-04-11 23:03:43 GMT from United States)
I fully agree and support the opinion expressed by @29 and @30.
Every week I look forward to reading the DW issue which I've come to like very much.
Good job, Jesse, please keep on this and thank you so much.
32 • Reviewing the good AND the Not quite ready (by artytux on 2023-04-12 10:55:44 GMT from Australia)
It's great to read Jesse's reviews about the not ready Yet distros, as many other have commented,
knowing Jesse had a storm within the distro helps all of us here,
Recently 2 weeks ago got to install MXLinux and this desktop computer finally complied,
why now and not several times in the past few years, Don't know why, just grateful.
Hardware IS a big factor in Linuxland.
Some of the above comments do read as trying to get Linux user to move away from Tux, not likely.
To all the DistroWatch team Thank You.
=- "Keep on keeping on doing what you do best !"
33 • As promised... (by Friar Tux on 2023-04-12 13:16:37 GMT from Canada)
As promised in @19, I gave LibreELEC a quick run around the block. It appears, as advertised, to be a minimal OS to just run Kodi, which appears to be used as the desktop environment. Cool. I found that out before I even knew what LibreELEC actually was. I liked playing with Kodi as a file manager and DE, but I prefer my "daily driver" DE to be of a more traditional type. I only spent a short time on LibreELEC and Kodi - I'll leave a more detailed review to Jesse and Company.
And, yes, I also think DW does a fantastic job of reviewing Linux, BSD, etc.. The good and the "not-ready-yet". I look forward to Sunday night (here in Regina, Canada), at about 7:30, when the new "DW Weekly" pops in. Keep up the great work DW, a lot of us actually DO appreciate it.
34 • @4 What? (by Kazlu on 2023-04-13 14:12:40 GMT from France)
"Linux cannot handle GUI, User-friendliness, advanced hardware, nor needs of real human users. Hence the extreme popularity of the alternatives to Linux: Windows, Apple and Android."
I *strongly* disagree. You talk about Linux as if it was still in the same state as in the early 2000s. This time is long gone. In my personal experience (IT profesional as well, using both Linux and Windows), most big Linux distributions are better than Windows on all the aspects you mention. Yes, you read that right!
- handling GUI: Windows graphical environment crashes so much more than any Linux equivalent. It cannot handle its own, unique GUI, while most big Linux distributions are stable despite the fact that they handle several desktop environments.
- user-friendliness: this is a subjective area. However I find that since Windows 7 (which was very fine), Windows' user-friendliness has decreased. Every instance of Windows since 8 seems to be the old one with new elements stacking on top of it, sometimes duplicating functionality, sometines generating conflicts. It becomes a mess to adjust settings as simple as power management.
- advanced hardware: you are right... as long as we are talking about *new* hardware. And, well, that hardware is generally designed for other operating systems, so Linux developpers need time to retro-engineer what has been done for Windows for example (except in the rare cases where Linux drivers are also provided by the manufacturer, but that is not very frequent). During that period of time, sure, Windows works better. But in my experience, for almost every piece of hardware Linux support gets better and better over time while Windows support gets dropped, up to the point where the hardware is better managed in Linux than in Windows. And then the intrinsically better resource management of Linux VS Windows enables you to do more than with Windows with the same hardware.
- needs of real human users: what do real human users need, in your opinion? I am a real human user and I find my needs are far better covered by Linux than by any other operating system.
I can see only three situations in which you would feel limited by Linux, compared to Windows:
- You absolutely need some software only available in Windows
- You absolutely need to use some very recent hardware, you cannot use a replacement that would be 2 years or so older and you are ready to see support be dropped 5 years after.
- You have decades of experience with Windows and have only used Linux for a couple of days.
Now you may have noticed I mostly spoke about Linux VS Windows. That is because Linux is generally used on hardware designed for Windows. MacOS and Android work way better than Windows but have their own application environment that makes comparrison harder. Android does a pretty good job at being a quality operating system working well on a large variety of hardware (thank you, Linux kernel!), but I feel the available software is still not enough to fully replace a Linux computer. One day, maybe. MacOS is very good quality but you have very little choice of hardware and software is all or nothing: either it's great or it does not exist for Mac. And when support for your Mac is dropped, you're in dire straits.
"Snap, appimage, BTRFS, NTFS, EXT 4, htop, gkrellm, RPM, X and Wayland display systems, etc."
I don't understand. Are you quoting every Linux item that has ever been criticized by at least one person? Oh, well, no, you are mentioning NTFS which is actually a Windows technology... So what do you mean? And what could you possibly have to hold against ext4, or even btrfs or X?
"Privately we know this. Publically we are afraid to tell this to the open world."
It is fine if you think that yourself. But again, I strongly disagree.
Number of Comments: 34
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