 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1015, 17 April 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 16th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Some distributions try to be all things for all people while others take a narrow focus and attempt to do one thing well. We often see distributions strive to support every desktop and scenario on every CPU architecture in an effort to appeal to everybody. At the same time, other projects will try to excel at one function in one environment, offering a speciality. Distributions such as Debian and Fedora fit into the general purpose category while distributions such as KaOS attempt to shine in one key area. This week we begin with a look at two projects: Manjaro Linux, which is a general purpose operating system that runs in a wide range of environments; and Trisquel GNU/Linux, which finds its specific niche in offering a desktop platform for people who want to run free and open source software exclusively. Our Feature Story provides a quick look at both of these projects. Then, in our News section, we talk about the flexible Arch Linux distribution running on PINE64's new line of ARM tablets. We also share notes from the KDE Connect project as it attempts to improve its multi-device connecting software. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about trying to achieve filesystem compression on Linux and how to gain compression when running the ext4 filesystem. Does your filesystem support compression? Let us know in our Opinion Poll below. 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) |
Manjaro Linux 22.0
Manjaro Linux is a desktop-oriented operating system based on Arch Linux. It is designed to be general purpose - offering multiple architectures, with focuses on gaming, development, and productivity software.
I have generally had good experiences with Manjaro and feel it tends to be one of the more polished, Arch-based distributions. I usually find Manjaro offers a practical, lightweight experience with all the features I want (and sometimes a few I don't want). The reason I decided to venture into the Manjaro experience this week is I'd had a few poor experiences in recent weeks with lesser known or younger Linux distributions and I was looking for something that would just work as expected.
Manjaro offers a lot of different download options. For 64-bit (x86_64) computers there are three official editions (KDE, Xfce, and GNOME), plus five community edition editions, and a Docker edition. To make matters more interesting, almost all of the desktop spins have both a Full and a Minimal edition. There are over a dozen options in total, just for x86_64 systems. There are other editions for ARM-based computers and mobile editions of Manjaro for phones. I'm going to focus exclusively on builds for desktop machines for the purposes of this review.
I decided to start with the Full Cinnamon edition which is 3.6GB in size. Technically this is a community spin and I selected it because I rarely get to use Cinnamon outside of reviews of Linux Mint.
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The Cinnamon media brought up a boot menu which offered to start a live session with either open source or proprietary drivers. I opted for open source drivers. During the first boot attempt I was simply shown a console with the systemd version and a message which read: "Welcome to Manjaro Linux!" The system then locked up and failed to boot.
I forced a restart and this time the live session managed to load the Cinnamon desktop and display a welcome window. The welcome window features many buttons, most of them intended to display information about the distribution. Clicking most of the buttons will open a web browser to show us the project's wiki, community support resources, release notes, and mailing lists. There is also a button for launching the installer.
One of the buttons offers to open a software centre. Clicking it launches the Vivaldi web browser and displays an alphabetical grid of open source applications. We can click a button on each application's entry to add it to a queue. We can then click an install button on the page to attempt to fetch the selected programs.
I ran into a few problems right away. One is that whenever Vivaldi is opened it gets stuck in a loop for a while prompting us for our keyring password. After dismissing this prompt several times the browser will launch. The next issue was, when I tried to install software from the web portal, Vivaldi would prompt me for permission to open the link and then nothing would happen. I thought perhaps this was a limitation of the live disc and moved on.
A third issue I ran into was the minimize button in Vivaldi didn't work. Other applications could be minimized and restored, but the minimize button in Vivaldi did nothing.
One final issue I ran into when exploring the on-line software centre was searches always failed. Performing any search would cause the page to refresh and the entire catalogue to be displayed in alphabetical order again.
After I closed Vivaldi I noticed the Cinnamon desktop panel had crashed and was no longer displaying properly. Instead of a bar with icons it was just a grey blur across the bottom of the screen. I tried launching the system installer and nothing happened.
At this point I reconsidered my decision to run a community spin and switched to the KDE Plasma edition which was the first one listed on Manjaro's download page. The Plasma edition is 3.3GB in size. Booting from this media worked the first time, presenting me with the Plasma desktop and the same welcome window.
Manjaro Linux 22.0 -- Exploring the KDE Plasma desktop and welcome window
(full image size: 607kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
I tried opening a few links using the welcome window. The Plasma edition uses Firefox instead of Vivaldi, but Firefox failed to load the first few times I asked it to open links and crashed. It worked the third time though. Unlike Vivaldi, Firefox did not ask for a keyring password.
I tried the software store again in Firefox and the experience was almost identical. However, when I tried to download programs this time, a pop-up appeared letting me know the package database was being synchronized. Then nothing happened. The process always stayed at 0% complete.
I tried launching the system installer from the welcome window and nothing happened. I then tried closing everything on the desktop and tried launching the installer from the desktop and it opened, then immediately crashed. I rebooted the KDE Plasma edition and was able to launch the installer from the welcome window.
Installing
Manjaro uses the Calamares graphical installer. It's a streamlined, friendly installer which walks us through selecting our time zone and keyboard layout. We're asked to select guided or manual partitioning. The manual approach is fairly straight forward and is done through a nice, built-in graphical utility. The guided option will let us take over the whole disk or a partition of it. We have the option of picking a filesystem (ext4 is the default with Btrfs, fsfs, and XFS offered). We can also pick whether we want a swap partition, swap file, or no swap space. We're asked to make up a username and password for ourselves and then a confirmation screen is displayed. When we accept the options we've selected we're shown some progress information while files are copied to the hard drive. An animate spaceship flies through the window while some feature highlights are listed.
About halfway through the install process Calamares crashed and left my hard drive in an unbootable state. At this point I'd booted Manjaro media four times and had no success in fetching packages or getting the operating system installed. I decided to try once more, downloading the Xfce Minimal edition which is 3.0GB in size.
The Xfce edition of Manjaro booted quickly and presented me with the now-familiar welcome window. The desktop was quite a bit more responsive than its KDE Plasma and Cinnamon counterparts. I hadn't noticed the other two being sluggish to respond until I had run Xfce and could compare the three.
Manjaro Linux 22.0 -- Exploring the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 712kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
I dived right into the installer, skipping other exploration. I quickly ran through the same steps, took automated disk partitioning, and confirmed my setting choices. Calamares crashed immediately after the confirmation screen, before even copying any files to my hard drive.
This made for a total of five attempts across three editions of the distribution which had all failed. While each edition failed in fairly dramatic fashion, I found it interesting that the three editions didn't fail in the same way. There wasn't one failing, like the distribution not recognizing my network card or sound not working. The editions each had their own bugs, their own issues. The Cinnamon edition had problems with Vivaldi, window management, and the desktop panel crashing. The Plasma edition had the on-line package store lock-up and crashed toward the end of the install process. The Xfce edition ran faster and more smoothly, but crashed at the beginning in the install process.
This was unusual for me. Most of my past experiments with Manjaro have gone well and offered mostly positive experiences. This time around it was one disappointment after another and so I decided to move on.
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Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0
The Trisquel GNU/Linux distribution is based on Ubuntu and its main focus is being a purely free (libre) operating system. Trisquel ships with open source and free software only with no non-free firmware, applications, or drivers. The distribution is available in four editions. The main edition offers users the MATE desktop environment. There is a Mini edition which provides the lighter LXDE desktop, and there is a Triskel edition which ships with KDE Plasma. There is also an edition called Trisquel Sugar TOAST which offers the Sugar learning environment.
I decided to use Trisquel's main edition which is 2.9GB in size. Booting from the media brings up a menu asking us to select our preferred language from a list. We're then given the option of launching the distribution in live mode, running a graphical installer, or launching a text installer.
Taking the live option launches the MATE 1.26.0 desktop. The MATE environment is set up with a panel across the bottom of the screen and a few icons on the desktop for opening the file manager and system installer. The application menu does a nice job of seamlessly merging the traditional three MATE menus: Applications, Places, and System. Even when running from the live media, the MATE desktop was responsive and smooth.
The system installer
Trisquel uses the Ubiquity system installer, which it inherits from Ubuntu. The installer is quite easy to navigate. We're walked through picking our preferred language and offered a link to view the Trisquel release notes on-line. When it comes to partitioning we can take an automated or manual approach. The manual option offers a very friendly, graphical partition manager where we can create partitions and assign them to mount points. The guided approach, by default, creates one encrypted LVM volume. We can disable encryption and, if we wish, swap out LVM for a simple ext4 partition. A swap partition is also set up for us.
The next screen of the installer asks us to select our time zone from a map of the world. I did this and, the first time through, was shown a cryptic error and asked to try again. Selecting the same time zone a second time worked and allowed me to proceed. We then make up a username and password for ourselves and Ubiquity goes to work copying files to the hard drive. When it finished it offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
Trisquel boots to a graphical login screen. A screen reader is available and enabled on both the login screen and after we sign in. If we do not need it, the screen reader can be disabled in MATE's Assistive Technologies settings module. However, even with the reader disabled in MATE's settings panel, it would still turn on and loudly start reading the screen every time the computer was started. I could not find a solution for this (short of uninstalling the Orca screen reader) as the screen reader was turned off under Assistive Technologies and not present in the list of programs to start at login.
Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0 -- Disabling the screen reader
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
As it happened, the first time I booted Trisquel I ran into another accessibility issue: my keyboard didn't work. I could not type anything or switch between virtual terminals from the login screen. I was able to enable an on-screen keyboard from the top panel of the login page and used it to sign in. This was the only time my keyboard did not work. When I installed Trisquel in another environment, and during future boots on the same test environment, my keyboard worked as expected.
When we sign into our account we're greeted once more by the MATE desktop which looks much the same as on the live media, but without the system installer icon on the desktop. The icons for opening the Caja file manager remain in the upper-left corner. Shortly after signing in, a notification pop-up appeared to let me know new package updates were available. We can click an icon in the system tray to launch the update manager and install available patches. There were 117MB of updates waiting for me on the first day of my trial and these were fetched without any issues.
Hardware
At least packages were fetched without any problems when I ran Trisquel in a VirtualBox virtual machine. As I mentioned earlier, Trisquel does not ship with any non-free components and this means hardware support is somewhat limited. In particular, wireless cards and 3-D (or gaming) features of video cards will often not be supported. I was not able to use wireless networking, which effectively turned Trisquel into a typewriter on my workstation. Everything else functioned on my workstation, including audio, and the operating system was very responsive.
Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
When running in VirtualBox, Trisquel was quick and ran smoothly. I could also access the Internet and had no trouble navigating websites, downloading files, and playing media.
A fresh install of the distribution took just over 6GB of disk space and, when newly logged into the MATE desktop, Trisquel consumed about 470MB of RAM. This puts the distribution toward the low-to-medium end of the scale when compared to mainstream Linux projects.
Included software
Trisquel ships with a fairly standard collection of open source software, though with a few minor changes to avoid licensing concerns or trademark issues. For instance, instead of the Firefox web browser, we're given Abrowser which removes non-free items and trademarks from Firefox. Similarly we're given Icedove instead of Thunderbird.
Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0 -- Running the Abrowser application
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
We're also treated to the Transmission bittorrent software, the Pidgin messaging client, the Caja file manager, and the Brasero disc burning software. The Cheese webcam manager is included along with the VLC media player, and the Rhythmbox audio player. The GNU Image Manipulation Program is available along with the Atril document viewer, and LibreOffice. The Jami distributed communication network client is available along with the Back In Time backup manager.
Trisquel ships with manual pages and the usual collection of GNU command line tools. The init software is supplied by systemd and the kernel is a libre version of Linux 5.15.
Most of the software which shipped with Trisquel worked well for me. As I mentioned before, my wireless card didn't work, but most other components functioned smoothly. I did find that systemd would sometimes hang when shutting down or rebooting the computer with its infamous message about waiting for a job displayed on the screen.
Software management
Trisquel uses the APT command line package manager along with two graphical utilities. The first is Synaptic, which is a classic, low-level package manager. It is quite powerful and flexible, able to manage repositories, install updates, and perform batches of install/remove operations.
The other graphical software manager is labelled Add/Remove Applications. It deals with desktop software. Down the left side of the window are categories which match those found in the application menu. On the right side we find a list of programs and a brief description. We can check a box next to each program to queue it for installation or removal. Actions are again handled in batches, locking the software manager, rather than processed in the background.
Both tools work well and I didn't have any direct issues with either software manager front-end. I did find it annoying that I could not remove software which shipped with Trisquel when using the Add/Remove Applications utility. For instance, I couldn't remove any of the games from the application menu, or the disc burner. These packages are set up as a dependency for a low-level package (actually a meta package) and cannot be removed unless we switch to the command line APT utility or Synaptic.
Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0 -- Attempting to remove a default application
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Trisquel does not ship with support for Snap or Flatpak packages. The Flatpak framework can be found in the repositories if we wish to install portable package support later, but Snap is not available.
Conclusions
While using Trisquel, two reoccurring ideas kept coming to mind. The first was that Trisquel is not only one of the most user-friendly, polished libre distributions available, it feels like one of the more friendly and polished Linux distributions in general. Even with the main edition (as opposed to the Mini edition), the system is unusually light and fast. Trisquel finds a pretty good balance between providing useful applications for a wide range of tasks and not making the application menu crowded. The system looks fairly nice, in a classic way, and I find it easy to navigate.
Trisquel often manages to present pop-ups and update indicators in a way that draws attention without being annoying. Its installer is easy to set up and the settings panel is a breeze to navigate. One of my few issues was having the screen reader enabled by default. This is, of course, a good option for people who are visually impaired, but for someone who doesn't need the screen reader (and who hasn't used MATE before) it required digging down about four levels in the settings panel to find the toggle to turn off the reader. Even then, the reader re-enabled itself every time I logged in, despite it being clearly turned off in the settings panel and this is likely to frustrate anyone who has their speakers turned on.
So that was my main train of thought with regards to Trisquel - it's nice, fast, polished, and easy to use. However, the second thought was that it's a shame I'll probably never be able to use Trisquel as my daily operating system. It's unfortunate, but most devices these days need non-free firmware to access the Internet and are not much use without this key feature. I suppose the alternative would be to buy a USB wireless card which works with free firmware, but I've found those to be rare and they take up one of a limited number of USB ports available.
In brief, I think Trisquel is doing a great job presenting the world with what can be achieved by using free software only. However, using it also reminds me of the (sometimes harsh) limitations a free software only system imposes. People wanting wireless networking, video drivers for gaming, a 3-D desktop, or possibly access to other non-free items like some printer drivers, are out of luck with Trisquel. Likewise, anyone wanting to use a non-free browser or service like Steam will also need to venture outside their default repositories.
This is, of course, the point of Trisquel, being a beacon of free-only software. People who download Trisquel probably are not interested in non-free components (software or hardware). This distribution offers a narrower path to walk, but it is a very smooth, pretty path.
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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
Trisquel GNU/Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.3/10 from 24 review(s).
Have you used Trisquel GNU/Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Arch Linux powering new PINE64 tablets, KDE Connect getting an overhaul, Ubuntu introduces live patching for HWE kernels
PINE64 is a company which develops open hardware platforms which can run a variety of open source operating systems, typically flavours of Linux. The company has published plans to soon ship two tablets, the PineTab2 and the PineTab-V. The former is powered by an ARM CPU and runs a custom flavour of Arch Linux while the latter is a rare RISC-V powered device. "On the outside the only thing that differentiates the two devices is the colour of the chassis: the PineTab-V is deep matte black while PineTab2 is silver-gray. But the real difference between the two resides on the inside. The PineTab2 features the well supported RK3566 64-bit Arm SoC, which has been a part of our line-up for over a year, and the tablet ships with a build of DanctNix Arch Linux for ARM. The software can be best described as early but very serviceable, and there is little doubt that before long improvements will be made and additional functionality enabled. Like the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro before it, the PineTab2 will reach a high degree of functionality in time and make for a great work or entertainment travel companion." Both devices sell for $159 USD and additional details can be found in the company's announcement.
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Albert Vaca has published a blog post about new improvements coming to the KDE Connect application. KDE Connect links together multiple devices (often Android phones and Linux desktops) on a network, allowing them to share files, remotely control media players, share clipboards, and send text messages from the desktop. Despite the name, KDE Connect runs on all Linux desktops (and several other operating systems), and the improvements should make the application more reliable and more secure. "The strength of KDE Connect (compared to some of the non-free alternatives that popped up in these last 10 years) is that KDE Connect only uses your local network for communication and doesn't need intermediary servers in 'the cloud'. This adds a challenge: devices running KDE Connect have to discover each other in the network before they can talk to each other.
Discovery is possible in the current protocol using UDP broadcasts, but the state of the art nowadays is to use multicast DNS (mDNS) instead, which is more reliable and less often blocked by the network configuration. We wanted (and tried) to adopt mDNS for a while, but it was a bigger endeavour than what we could tackle."
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Canonical has announced it will be expanding its support for live kernel patching (an option which allows systems to patch a running kernel without rebooting). Up to this point, Ubuntu users have been able to use live patching on LTS kernels. With this new change, hardware enablement (HWE) kernels, which offer support for newer devices, will also receive live patching. "We've listened to your feedback and are pleased to announce that Livepatch will now be available on HWE kernels. This will debut with the release of kernel version 6.2, which will initially accompany Ubuntu's interim release of 23.04 Lunar Lobster, in April 2023. Thereafter, it will be made accessible as an HWE kernel for the 22.04 LTS release, Jammy Jellyfish, starting July 2023." The announcement offers additional details.
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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) |
Gaining filesystem compression with ext4
Packing-data-in-tight asks: I've been running ext4 and am wondering if I can squeeze more capacity out of the drive by using compression. Are there any solutions for enabling compression on ext4?
DistroWatch answers: I am not aware of any built-in method for compressing data on an ext4 filesystem. It's not a feature I have heard advertised. The ext4 and tune2fs manual pages do not mention compression. The kernel.org ext4 page is also mute on the subjection of compression.
While ext4 might not have a solution for compressing data, Btrfs does. Btrfs is an advanced filesystem which provides features such as filesystem snapshots, compression, and multi-device volumes. How does this help us? You can either perform a fresh install on a Btrfs volume or you can make use of the fact an existing ext4 partition can be converted to a Btrfs volume.
To convert an existing ext4 volume to Btrfs, we should first perform a few tasks:
- Backup any important data on the ext4 filesystem.
- Verify the backup of the data worked.
- Fetch a live distribution and copy it to a DVD or USB thumb drive.
We need the live distribution because the ext4 volume cannot be converted to Btrfs while it is in use. Assuming we want to convert our root partition this means we need to perform the conversation from another operating system. In this case, we'll run the necessary steps from a live distribution running on the same computer.
From the live media we can open a terminal and check to see which device we want to convert by running:
lsblk
The lsblk command will provide a list of hard drives and partitions attached to our computer. The partition we want to change will likely be the largest and will typically have a name like /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2. Let's assume the partition I want to convert on my machine is /dev/sda2. We can then convert the partition from ext4 to Btrfs by running:
btrfs-convert /dev/sda2
When the command finishes, assuming it did successfully, we will want to change our fstab file to make sure our installed operating system knows the volume is now a Btrfs volume and no longer ext4. We can do this by opening fstab on the altered partition and changing the third column for our root (/) partition from "ext4" to "btrfs". We should also make sure the last column in the line for our root partition is zero (0).
To mount the new Btrfs volume and change the fstab file we can run the following commands:
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
nano /mnt/etc/fstab
Please note that if your system uses UUID tags to identify the filesystem you may need to update yours in the first column of the /mnt/etc/fstab file. You can find the new UUID for your filesystem by running the following command from the live distribution:
lsblk -f
The above command lists all connected storage devices and prints their UUID labels.
There are some other considerations to take into account. For instance, you may need to update your boot loader (typically GRUB) before you try to boot from the converted filesystem. The Arch Linux wiki has a helpful page which explains the many items we should check when performing an ext4 to Btrfs conversion.
After the above steps have been completed we can reboot and start enjoying the additional features. If there is a problem and the system fails to boot, we can try to recover our original ext4 partition by booting from the live media again and running the command to revert the process:
btrfs-convert -r /dev/sda2
Later, assuming it seems the conversion worked properly, and we've been able to boot and access our files from our normal distribution, we can clean up the old restore data off the drive by running the following from own main (not live) distribution:
btrfs subvolume delete /ext2_saved
At this point we've converted the filesystem, but it may not be compressing data for us. Once more we need to edit the /etc/fstab file on our system and change the fourth column. It probably says "defaults" and we want to change it to say "compress". Then save the /etc/fstab file. The next time we boot, compression will be enabled.
Details on compression levels can be found in the Btrfs wiki.
Keep in mind, there are a lot of steps and it's quite easy for something to go wrong during the conversion process. Always make sure you have working backups in place before you attempt to change your filesystem from ext4 to Btrfs.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
OpenBSD 7.3
Theo de Raadt has announced the release of OpenBSD 7.3, the 54th release of the security-oriented operating system. Some of the key features include providing ksh acccess from the system installer, the use of LibreSSL 3.7.2, and OpenSSH 9.3. "We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 7.3. This is our 54th release. We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than twenty years with only two remote holes in the default install. As in our previous releases, 7.3 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system." The release announcement goes on to provide a long list of technical changes, including: "Installer, upgrade and bootloader improvements: Made installer answers ! and (S)hell drop into a ksh(1) environment rather than the more limited sh(1). Added support for configuring interfaces by lladdr (MAC). Made the installer skip interface configuration questions when no interfaces are available. Fixed resizing partitions on an auto-allocated disk that had a boot partition. Stopped the installer from asking to initialize disks that have softraid(4) chunks. Made efiboot fdt support device trees with NOPs in them (like the kernel version). Improved the default choice for the installer's install media disk question to show the first disk that (a) is not the root disk and (b) is not a disk with softraid chunks (hosting the root disk, for example). Stopped offering WEP in the installer if not supported. Fixed lock file error on installer exit/abort." Additional information is provided in the changelog.
4MLinux 42.0
4MLinux is a miniature Linux distribution focusing on four capabilities: maintenance, games, multimedia, and servers. The independent project's latest release is version 42.0 which introduces a few new applications and a series of updates. "4MLinux 42.0 stable released. The status of the 4MLinux 42.0 series has been changed to stable. As always, the new major release has some new features. Krita (raster graphics editor) and Hex-a-Hop (video game) have been added as downloadable extensions. 4MLinux 42.0 comes with improved support for many image, audio and video formats. AlsaPlayer, Baka MPlayer, GNOME MPlayer, GNOME MPV, mp3blaster are now available out of the box. Big work has been done to adopt famous (but quite old) XMMS as the default media player in 4MLinux; it is able to open modern audio and video files (support for MOD and MIDI music is also included). One can also download a rich set of XMMS skins with one click." The new release comes with LibreOffice 7.5.2, AbiWord 3.0.5, GIMP 2.10.34, Gnumeric 1.12.55, Firefox 111.0, Chromium 106.0.5249.91, Thunderbird 102.8.0, Audacious 4.3, VLC 3.0.18, SMPlayer 22.7.0, Mesa 22.2.3, Wine 8.3, Linux kernel 6.1.10, Apache 2.4.56, MariaDB 10.6.12, PHP 8.1.17, Perl 5.36.0, Python 3.10.8, Ruby 3.1.3. The release announcement has more details.
4MLinux 42.0 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 3.8MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
FreeBSD 13.2
Colin Percival has announced the release of FreeBSD 13.2, the latest stable version of the popular BSD-derived operating system that focuses on features, speed and stability: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE. This is the third release of the stable/13 branch. Some of the highlights: OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.2p1; OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1t; the bhyve hypervisor now supports more than 16 vCPUs in a guest; Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is now enabled for 64-bit executables by default; ZFS has been upgraded to OpenZFS release 2.1.9; it is now possible to take snapshots on UFS filesystems when running with journaled soft updates; the kernel wg(4) WireGuard driver is now available; the kernel netlink(4) network configuration protocol is now available. FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, armv6, armv7, aarch64 and riscv64 architectures. FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures also support installing from a USB memory stick." Please read the release announcement and the release notes for more information.
TrueNAS 22.12.2 "SCALE"
TrueNAS SCALE is a Debian-based operating system developed by iXsystems for providing network attached storage solutions. The company's latest update to TrueNAS SCALE is version 22.12.2 which includes some enhancements to administration and authentication. The release notes state: "22.12.2 includes many new features and improved functionality that span SCALE Enterprise High Availability (HA), applications, rootless login administrative user, enclosure management, and replication: Adding sudo options to user and replication configuration screens. SSH service option for the administration user. Application advanced settings changes that add a force flag option. Replication task improvements that add reasons why tasks are waiting to run. (Enterprise only) Applications new Kubernetes passthrough functionality. (Enterprise only) New enclosure management for the R30 and Mini R platforms. It also implements fixes to pool status reporting, application options, reporting functions, cloud sync and replication tasks, iSCSI shares, SMB service in HA systems, various UI issues, UI behavior related to isolated GPU and USB passthrough in VMs, and changes to setting options and failover on HA systems."
Tiny Core Linux 14.0
Tiny Core Linux is a minimal Linux distribution which runs from memory. The Tiny Core Linux project has released a new version, 14.0, which is available in three editions: Core (for a command line only experience), TinyCore (which provides a minimal graphical environment), and CorePlus (which provides a wider range of desktop software). The release announcement reads: "Changelog for 14.0: kernel updated to 6.1.2; glibc updated to 2.36; gcc updated to 12.2.0; binutils updated to 2.39; e2fsprogs base libs/apps updated to 1.46.5; util-linux base libs/apps updated to 2.38.1; busybox updated to 1.36.0; tce: allow script to exit normally without stdout from bdantas; autologin: Remove unneeded lines from nick65go; filetool.sh: having colors from alphons; rebuildfstab: remove relatime, it has been the default since 2.6.30; rebuildfstab: small speed optimization; rebuildfstab: reorder for findutils find warning; tce-load: add to install if extension is downloaded from aswjh; provides.sh: backup path patch from CNK; depends-on.sh: various from rarost, bdantas; select: dynamic sizing: from nick65go; rebuildfstab: rewrite: from Rich; rebuildfstab: remove the tmp file just in case; rebuildfstab: replaced "/mnt/$DEVNAME" with "$MOUNTPOINT": from Rich; tc-functions: alias in useBusybox: from bdantas; rm etc/init.d/busybox-aliases; tce-update: add option to skip dependency check: from GNUser; add update-everything: from bdantas; update-everything: better names for variables and functions: from bdantas."
* * * * *
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: 2,852
- 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) |
Do you use filesystem compression?
This week we talked about filesystem compression on Linux, which is often achieved using the Btr filesystem. This week we'd like to hear whether you use filesystem compression. If you do, please let us know which filesystem you are using in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using the Kodi media centre in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you use filesystem compression?
| Yes: | 148 (12%) |
| No - but my filesystem supports it: | 340 (27%) |
| No - and my filesystem does not support it: | 554 (44%) |
| Unknown/Unsure: | 225 (18%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- RefreshOS. RefreshOS is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop and popular open source applications.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 24 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Manjaro (and Vivaldi) (by Brad on 2023-04-17 00:37:57 GMT from United States)
Sorry you had so many issues - I've installed (and used) Manjaro on a number of different laptops without issue.
I recently tried the Cinnamon spin, because I wanted to see how the experience compared with Linux Mint. I was pleased with the experience, and I am now using the spin on all my laptops.
I was especially pleased to see that Vivaldi was the default browser (I've been using it for a while now), and it's such a refreshing change from Firefox, which seems to be the default for most distros. I've found Firefox to be (over)burdened with ads, whereas Vivaldi's ad and tracker blockers are easy to enable on first use.
The best part of Vivaldi is the "built-in" mail client. No need for Thunderbird any more! One app to rule them all...
: - )
2 • Manjaro (by Pumpino on 2023-04-17 00:53:48 GMT from Australia)
I've run Manjaro Cinnamon (unstable branch) on two devices for several months (and priot to that, years with XFCE) and I've never experienced similar issues to what Jesse described.
Interestingly, I received Nemo 5.6.5 in Manjaro this morning and it's still not available for Vera or Vanessa in Linux Mint; nor has it been built at packages.linuxmint.com. I'm not sure how Arch/Manjaro manages to build and release it before the creator of Cinnamon does in his distro.
3 • Manjaro (by rich52 on 2023-04-17 01:00:04 GMT from United States)
Sorry to see you had nothing but failures. . . I used Manjaro for a couple years but have moved on to EndeavourOS Linux using Cinnamon. It has been a great experience. Manjaro would be a backup if I ever needed one but the last time I installed the OS things didn't feel too familiar and changes weren't too appealing. Maybe next time things will work out. Software is always evolving and sometimes changes don't work as well as expected.
Rich;)
4 • Manjaro (by mnrv-ovrf-year-c on 2023-04-17 01:23:21 GMT from Puerto Rico)
What I think is that Jesse responded basically to one guy commenting last week and then a whole bunch of answers were directed at that user accused of being half-ignorant. "Next time review a popular distro so they settle down!" LOL. I'm just kidding.
The review of Manjaro is much appreciated because that OS often brings about mixed feelings. This was the very first distro with KDE Plasma that embraced me, and I still have an installation although I had to redo it six times at least. I'm going to be frank here: Pamac is being requested for all other Arch-based distros, but it's not an advantage for Manjaro. There are other things that make me hesitate checking out Big Linux and Mabox further than I actually did, besides the fact they are more bloated than eg. EndeavourOS. The "non-official" flavors of Manjaro aren't getting as much love, permanently discouraged me with GNOME as well because it was significantly slower on my system than EndeavourOS and RebornOS.
5 • Install issues (by fenglengshun on 2023-04-17 01:56:22 GMT from Malaysia)
At this point, there's pretty much a hardware/install issue every week for the DistroWatch reviews. As a recent ex-Manjaro user, I know it has its issues, but this doesn't talk about any of that, and it is frustrating to read.
It's honestly distracting -- it stops being a review of distro and more "talk about hardware/install issue for a third up to half of the review section, then finally found one that works well enough to make a long enough review section.
I don't know if it's a curse thicker than LTT's curse with Linux or what have you, but I'd rather have actual reviews, please.
6 • @5 install issues (by Titus Groan on 2023-04-17 04:17:07 GMT from New Zealand)
to quote Jesse:
"This was unusual for me. Most of my past experiments with Manjaro have gone well and offered mostly positive experiences. This time around it was one disappointment after another and so I decided to move on. "
If it wont install,and I appreciate the efforts that Jesse went to to try, this is what he reported. He says that he has not had issues installing Manjaro previously, so it appears that there has been a significant failure here. He also issues with the Live experience. Either poor QA or a poor build. S&#t happens.
As mentioned in last weeks comments, those now wishing to try Manjaro have some pointers and traps to be aware of.
Trisequel: I have often thought about installing, but all my h/w requires non-free drivers, so it appears to be a hard pass for me.
7 • Manjaro (by Roger Brown on 2023-04-17 04:23:07 GMT from Australia)
Certainly you'd think Manjaro would be a "safe" choice for a review - like others, I've always found this an excellent distro. But there do seem to be issues with 22.0.
I tried the XFCE edition on a VirtualBox VM with 2Gb RAM allocated (yes that was optimistic) and encountered the same installer crash issue that Jesse reported.
Increasing RAM to 3Gb did overcome that issue but then the installed version failed to boot - simply hung. Disappointing and out of character - hopefully that will soon be sorted by the Manjaro devs.
@5 You can't start to review a distro (or actually use it) if you can't install it. Obviously a failed installation, especially of a popular distro like Manjaro, needs to be written about.
8 • Manjaro (by Tran Older on 2023-04-17 04:30:02 GMT from Vietnam)
I have installed Manjaro Cinnamon on a Ryzen based entry-level HP laptop with a reiser file system and has not experienced any issues as above mentioned. However, when I tried a Qt-based desktop on the same Cinnamon spin (sudo pamac -S cutefish), I could only log into the cutefish desktop and everything got stuck. Tried to install ukui desktop, I got the same problem. IMHO, there was something wrong either with the implementation of Qt or with the co-working between Qt and gtk. Vivaldi, on the other hand, is a remarkable choice of browser for an office laptop, although the Translator as powered by Linvanex was far from being perfect, text translation from English to Chinese and Vietnamese was either incomprehensive or, at times, sarcastically humourous. Also, the inclusion of Microsoft Office Online (JAK) to the Cinnamon spin is a plus.
9 • Enjoying Manjaro (by all manjo banjo on 2023-04-17 04:33:00 GMT from New Zealand)
I have almost all my machines running Manjaro with the Cinnamon desktop. The only issue so far is fresh installs on some newer model high-end HP laptops - no sound. You have to add 'sof-firmware'. Somewhere, someone missed a checkbox :) to include it in the default install. I add the 'sof-tools' for good measure.
If you asked me 4 years ago, everything was Mint, Mint, Mint. Today I enjoy and demand the latest software, no 6 week or 3 year delays.
10 • Manjaro (by Tran Older on 2023-04-17 04:46:21 GMT from Vietnam)
Sorry, that should be sudo pacman -S cutefish. Also, I have tried to install the cutefish desktop on the Manjaro Mate spin of another laptop and met with success. Problem pinpointed, there was something quite wrong with the implemention of the Gnome 43 library files on the Cinnamon spin. I also installed the Epiphany browser and it refused to be launched.
11 • Recommending Trisquel KDE (by eco2geek on 2023-04-17 05:42:26 GMT from United States)
Let me recommend the KDE version of Trisquel.
To be honest I think the RMS way of thinking about how everything has to be free/libre software to be somewhat religious, and I'm not into religion. But it doesn't matter. Trisquel KDE is polished and easy to use.
A wireless card would probably have the same issues in the KDE version as the MATE version, but my wired internet connection works just fine.
If you want to add extensions to Abrowser from the Firefox collection, head on over to extensions.mozilla.org and have at it. You're not limited to Trisquel's collection. Likewise, Trisquel comes with VLC Media Player, which plays just about any audio/video format, so you're not going to have much trouble playing movies.
No screen reader starts by default in the live environment (in the KDE version).
And finally, there's a really nice touch in that if you put it on a USB stick with enough room, it'll automatically save your changes, making it persistent.
IMHO Trisquel KDE is not just for believers in free software; it's a good general purpose distribution.
12 • Manjaro as a "safe" distro, and RMS (@11) (by Simon on 2023-04-17 08:04:51 GMT from New Zealand)
Manjaro is based on Arch, so it's not "safe": occasional problems should be expected. A curated snapshot of a rolling release distro is still nothing remotely like a stable, well-tested (by thousands of users with identical package versions) release, in one of the many genuinely safe distros. "Somewhat safer than Arch" is a better description.
Re Stallman's staunch software freedom stance as "religion", that's like calling a staunch refusal to smoke cigarettes "religious" because it refuses to compromise (just a few puffs each day, what's the big deal?). It amazes me that so many people enjoying the free software that they have thanks to Stallman's genius (both in terms of his creating software tools like the GCC to create free software, and his creating the GPL to make sure we continue to have access to it all) treat him as though he's an idiot for refusing to compromise his perfectly sensible principles re software freedom. The problem is not RMS being "religious": the problem is that not enough of us take him seriously. If we did, and bought only freedom-respecting hardware, hardware manufacturers would eventually have to respect our freedom because their sneaky closed proprietary crap would sit unused on shelves, being bought by nobody. Of course nobody's going to do that (who's going to give up a better gaming experience for themselves right now, just for the sake of a long term improvement in the experience for everybody?), so everyone laughs at RMS and continues to shell out money for tech that serves its manufacturers instead of us. Stallman's like a non-smoker in a city full of smokers, inhaling our smoke: he may look like an idiot, sticking to his principles despite the fact that he's going down with rest of us because nobody's listening, but I admire him for at least having the integrity to practise what he preaches, and to model what we'd all be doing if we had the collective brains to do what was in our own collective interest.
13 • convert from ext4 to btrfs (by Didier Spaier on 2023-04-17 08:12:10 GMT from France)
A basic recommendation is to have plenty of space in the partition where that hosts the ext4 file system to be converted, as btrfs-convert stores a copy of each file it compress in a backup subvolume while processing them and that needs a lot of space.
As it is highly recommended anyway to back up all files to be converted before proceeding, my recommendation is, instead of using btrfs-convert, to just use wipefs to get rid of the ext4 file system after verification of the backup, then partprobe to make the kernel aware of that change, create the btrfs file system with compression, mount it and copy recursively the files from the backup to the new file system. This has several advantages:
- It is safer.
- It works even if initially the partition was almost full.
- The files are automatically compressed (according to he compress option of the mount command, like "compress=zstd:3") during the copy, no need for post-processing.
Of course edit /etc/fstab after copy.
I have had success using btrfs-convert (The Slint distribution that maintain use btrfs for installation at least in case of auto-partitioning, so had to experiment) but just copy from a backup into the new file system is more straightforward and safer in my opinion.
14 • Trisquel (by Dave Postles on 2023-04-17 08:12:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have Trisquel on a Star Lite. I just use a USB to Ethernet adapter.
15 • 4MLinux (by Dan on 2023-04-17 09:36:08 GMT from United States)
I just recently installed the 42.0 version of 4MLinux, and as usual, no problems with installation. Probably the quickest installation of any distro.
16 • Trisquel and wi-fi (by Tagalo on 2023-04-17 10:02:43 GMT from Italy)
To use wi-fi with Trisquel you need a Wireless N USB Adapter with chipset AR9271 (a wireless pci card Qualcomm Atheros for desktops should work also).
17 • Manjaro (by Ian on 2023-04-17 10:24:44 GMT from Ireland)
I can get Manjaro to run live, I install it then it refuses to boot - never mind
18 • Manjaro (by Former on 2023-04-17 11:42:23 GMT from United States)
Quite non-tipycal for Manjaro that every flavor would fail. Maybe you could use two different computers for testing? :-)
About a year ago, I couldn't get something to work on my main, Debian based computer, so I dual boot Manjaro and Endeavour on a second computer to get that thing going. Between the two, I liked Endeavour much better. (same experience with super nice and friendly Endeavor forum users) At that time, there were quite a lot of experienced users at Endeavour that moved over from Manjaro, based on forum posts. I have no clue what situation is now.
Since I'm too noob for 'with rolling distro, it is expected to sometimes some things go wrong' I stopped using both as soon as I got all sorted out on my main distro.
That being said, I wish Manjaro all the best, and I hope they sort their problems out.
19 • Manjaro (by RetiredIT on 2023-04-17 12:52:09 GMT from United States)
Like so MANY other distros of the past several years Manjaro has turned into a convoluted mess! My recent experience confirms that. It wouldn't even recognize my flash drive which I use just about every day. I will stick with MX Linux 21 and Linux Mint 20 for the time being.
20 • Manjaro as a "safe" distro (@12) (by fox on 2023-04-17 13:12:20 GMT from Canada)
I agree with @12 that no rolling-release distro is safe, unless one is ready to do extra work to keep it this way. I really like Manjaro, and I have keep it twice as a "test" distro. The first time it lasted about six months before it failed after an update. Most recently it lasted two years before failing after an update; now when I boot up it cannot find the partition it resides on. I had a backup and I could have used that until the problem was fixed (if it was), But it was a good reminder as to why I don't depend on a rolling release distro.
21 • Manjaro (by Dan on 2023-04-17 14:11:00 GMT from United States)
I never really had problems with Manjaro, but for me the definative Arch based distro is Artix.
22 • Reviews are becoming useless by the day (by AmG on 2023-04-17 15:09:00 GMT from Germany)
Buy an old hardware if needed and give us good reviews. We dont come here every monday to see how various distros.. one after the other, fail to work on your miserable hardware. You might as well use win 11 on your latest and greatest H/W.
23 • Hardware (by Jesse on 2023-04-17 15:15:07 GMT from Canada)
A few people have commented wondering why I don't use multiple machines for reviews to avoid hardware problems, or use multiple environments.
The thing is, I do. Those familiar with my reviews are already aware I test virtually everything in at least two environments, one computer and a virtual machine to avoid hardware-related quirks. If a distro doesn't work on one machine, like my workstation, I'll typically try it on a laptop too in order to confirm if the problem persists across environments.
In other words, the experiences mentioned here are typically the result of trying in two, sometimes three, environments and on machines I've confirmed run all the mainstream distributions. If a distro is failing on multiple machines where Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Arch all function well, that is very much a problem for the smaller distro to sort out.
24 • Jesse Manjaro Cinnamon and KDE (by Carlos Arigós on 2023-04-17 15:52:35 GMT from Argentina)
I have tried to reproduce the drawbacks found by Jesse Smith, both with Manjaro Cinnamon and KDE (live sessions only), without success. Both with proprietary and free drivers.
My desktop is an i7700K, 32Gb, and an Nvidia 1660 super.
The contribution of a veteran, and satisfied, Manjaro KDE user.
25 • Manjaro - safe? (by Roger Brown on 2023-04-17 15:58:29 GMT from Australia)
To be fair to Manjaro XFCE 22.05 which I reported as hanging at bootup - trying again on a different machine with more memory and allocating the recommended 4GB to my VirtualBox VM was much more successful.
Installation flew and with a change of VirtualBox driver settings (to VBoxVGA) the installed machine booted and ran perfectly.
26 • Reply to 22 (by Heinrich on 2023-04-17 15:59:35 GMT from United States)
You’re right, we’re paying Jesse so much for his reviews, we should get to demand he do his reviews our way and buy the test hardware we think he should be using.
Wait…we’re not paying him anything unless we choose to donate, and he’s putting in hours and hours of time basically for free as a long-time volunteer. As far as I can tell, he’s using hardware he paid for out of his own pocket.
If you think he should be using particular hardware, you can offer to buy it for him.
I enjoy Jesse’s reviews, but if you don’t, no one is forcing you to read them.
27 • @20 fox: (by dragonmouth on 2023-04-17 17:15:57 GMT from United States)
While I know it is anecdotal but I have been using PCLinuxOS (rolling release distro) for over 5 years and never had it hiccup. So I cannot agree with your or Simoin's statements.
28 • Trisquel (by Pecka on 2023-04-17 18:06:16 GMT from Sweden)
Isn't Trisquel RMSs distro of choice?
He's a bit extreme to say the least, I read somewhere that he's "browsing" the web via e-mail.
29 • Manjaro (by Otis on 2023-04-17 22:13:33 GMT from United States)
Good to see Manjaro reviewed these days. A few years ago that was my go to distro, but the systemd thing and bad luck with updates chipped away at my loyalty and I moved to MX (very happy with that choice).
I wonder about the review being maybe hardware specific in its reported problems (at least partially). My main issues with Manjaro early on had to do with an old HP and things went fine with a newer Acer. But, as I mentioned, updates seemed poison the experience quite often, plus I'm one of the non-systemd users (putting up with it being there in MX but not deployed by default).
30 • manjaro & hardware (by radu on 2023-04-17 22:13:52 GMT from Moldova)
It is very strange that Manjaro failed in this review, cause it is top 5 on distrowatch,
but it is not uncommon for an old live cd of any arch based distro to fail if user is very active with live session.
Usually you need to `pacman -Syu` and abort before you wanna do something when installing stuff inside the live session....
Then the distro will work as expected..
p.s:
Also maybe all the circumstances collided, and Manjaro released a batch of new .iso that suck,
it rarely happens, but it sometimes happens to every complicated arch based distro out there.
Myself was succesfully using Manjaro Mate (with .iso generated in December, and .iso generated in January)
I am sure they will fix this soon with new .iso files.
I myself had problems with Manjaro, Antergos, Endeavor & Garuda during the ages, but not wasting time for setup of X and Deskop every time is priceless (cause it is already not funny for me to install Arch nowadays from scratch after I think 10 times for 2009-2015 years)
31 • Manjaro (by fiona on 2023-04-18 01:37:39 GMT from United States)
I like to switch between distros, and still need Windows for some applications. As such, I dual boot, and rely a lot on grub2 to switch between my installed OSes. Late in 2022, I installed Manjaro on my machine and it overwrote my existing configuration when it wrote to the MBR. I was able to recover, but this was rather annoying. It also crashed during the installation, and I was forced to hard reboot into the live distro to repair the install. I definitely don't recommend Manjaro for dual-booting users.
32 • Testing Linux operating systems. BTRFS file compression. (by Greg Zeng on 2023-04-18 04:08:17 GMT from Australia)
Fanboys claim that the latest and greatest hardware shows no problems with {brandname} operating system. This is standard, predictable fanboy behavior.
Most amateur users might have a medium powered machine, with medium specs. So the default Distrowatch setup might be ok. However, to avoid the tedious and time-wasting tasks, I suggest fast ports, including fast SSD main drive.
Experienced testers here know by numerous tests, that the systems with large teams of alpha and beta testers, have better, more reliable final releases. The small and one person creators cannot have the diversity of hardware & software that their final releases really need for testing. Largest development teams are Red Hat (extremely conservative), Debian, Canonical & Mint. So their final products work with the greatest variety of hardware & software settings, with OEM limitations (legal and international legal compliance).
Worthwhile operating systems have many legal & illegal “derivates”, imitators, look-alikes, and work-alikes. These derivatives are much more adventurous, legally and otherwise "careless". Most Linux creators choose their derivative foundations, in order of numerical numbers: Ubuntu-base (which is derived from Debian), Debian-base, Red Hat base, Arch-base, Mint-base, Fedora-base, Puppy-base, and assorted non-Red Hat base settings. This has been demonstrated by myself a few times here in these messages, over the years, using the standard Distrowatch database.
Most Linux systems can easily & reliably use either of the Microsoft NTFS file system for non-operating system files. This has fast compression, similar to ZIP compression. However, defragmenting and file system repair usually means modifying these NTFS-compressed partitions within any appropriate application in the Windows operating system. All our external partitions are NTFS-compressed. Multi-booting with many Windows & Linux operating systems is best and simplest with Linux's Grub-customizer type applications.
BTRFS partitions vary with the usability of Grub-customizer type applications. Later versions of installing Linux, Grub & grub customizer have better reliability & predictability for most users. BTRFS is the problem ,because it needs further development & refinement, especially with its necessary GUI utilities (multi-booting, defragmenting, indexing, compression settings, etc).
In this issue's review, this distro offered the option of two types of installation. Both are very different. "Normal" using the assigned & previously determined "flagged" boot partition, or using the grub installation method. Using this "normal" method, the boot flag can be set with ,
Both methods differ greatly, but I have yet to know which to use, or why. Unsure why none have noticed these strange features with many Linux operating system installations.
33 • Installing Linux operating systems: "virtual", flagged "boot", or grub? (by Greg Zeng on 2023-04-18 04:43:05 GMT from Australia)
Distrowatch unfortunately does not allow editing posts here in the comments from readers like myself. Continuing from my INSTALLING LINUX comment above.
Distrowatch Weekly showed as usual the virtual box, and the hard mounted installation. Virtual box is possible in a few other ways, besides using any of the few “virtual box” applications.
Some Linux systems are designed to not be installed on any main hardware. These run on the temporary software memory systems only. Sometimes these systems use the installation medium as a “slow” cache, instead, or as well as just the dynamic main memory.
Most mature Linux systems allow test-driving to be done with any installation to the main computer, provided that the raw memory is enough to hold the operating system files. Some of these mature test-driving can also allow modifying the various files of the main system, with or without the administrator's permission of the main system.
The Manjaro installation as tested by myself offers the test-drive system above, and at least two types of direct installation to the main hardware. “Normal” requires at most one-only partition top be officially “flagged” as the “boot partition”. KDE partition makes this almost impossible to do. Gparted is much better.
Another Linux installation choice uses the “grub” option. Which to use, and why, is not known to me. If one does not work, the other might. Wikipedia:
"The EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) system partition or ESP is a partition on a data storage device (usually a hard disk drive or solid-state drive) that is used by computers having the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).
Some (most, or all?) hardware computers offer one or both booting choices, with or without EFI.
Some Linux operating installations then offer other choices after the above irreversible are selected. No easy on-screen help boxes are available, for installing staff. These next options include: Installing alongside, replacing and “customizing” choices. Multi-booting experts like myself choose the last option.
Most published reports of Linux installations pretend that the above traps and barriers do not exist. Installing Linux systems is not easy for beginners to computers.
34 • Trisquel does have non-free software scattered through it, so what about NetBSD? (by Weallslipupasahypocrite on 2023-04-18 07:35:18 GMT from Australia)
I am writing this on Firefox Developer Edition, on Trisquel GNU/Linux 11, now. There are references to Vivaldi Web Browser in the .cache or .local directories in the /home/user partition, Matlab support in the Matlab2Tikz program in Synaptic or apt description, and I suppose you could run Matlab/Mathematica but I tried Smath Studio and that didn't work. I expect Zoom wouldn't work either. A commercial proprietary anti-malware product Dr. Web for Linux (its European) runs perfectly well on my system as I learn how to use Clamav to get rid of a disappearing UEFI/BIOS screen after a phishing scam that I didn't fully fall for under Fedora 37 (my previous OS) just because I clicked a link in a Seafood online store, (oh well we all make mistakes!), but I didn't fall for the $2 iPhone 14 in the scam, but it seemed to clobber my UEFI memory test/setup screen.
NetBSD is nearly approaching version 10 and you can't install Adobe Flash Player for obvious reasons (as its not used anymore on the web since pre-COVID times, lol!). Version 9.2 of NBSD had improved Wifi support in the installation but I think that is free-software drivers. Unless it is used in Raspberry Pi binary blob environments I can't see how it is impossible to get non-free firmware into the system so RMS ought to take a good look at NBSD if he thinks Trisquel isn't fully free (as the last FSF-recommended distro on the list is 100% complete free)?
35 • To add insult to injury, Trisquel 10 runs VMWare (by Weallslipupasahypocrite on 2023-04-18 10:18:13 GMT from Australia)
Yep, Folks. Version 16 of VMWare Workstation Pro. With Windows 10 (whatever edition) at the most, so I suppose Trisquel 11 probably runs version 17 and Windows up to 11.
Yeah, I know NetBSD's Xen will probably run Windows too, but on what platform as described by its distrowatch user reviews that some said the X Server crashed at version 9.2. Sorry my bad, version 9.3 (the current version) has improved Wifi drivers in the current install.
You know if one could run freedom distros forever the GNU buck would come one's way, but it has no monetary value. Just to stick on your wall! haha
36 • manjaro & cinnamon (by joncr on 2023-04-18 12:00:56 GMT from United States)
My experience with Manjaro has been problematic so I've stopped considering it for use. If any distribution does not work correctly in live mode, I'm not about to install it.
Fedora's Cinnamon spin is polished and over several releases has performed well for me. Its maintainer participates in Cinnamon's development and package versions are kept very current, as usual for Fedora.
37 • This and that (by EL Guapo on 2023-04-18 13:20:53 GMT from United States)
Tried Trisquel KDE and ended up installing it to a free partition. Quick and easy install except that the installer was mostly unreadable no matter what I did, so had to take a couple of informed guesses. Runs quite well. Since I don't plan to use it as just a typewriter, I got my handy copy of iwlwifi which i keep on a flash drive for Debian net-installs, and all is honky-dory. Of course I run the peril of excommunication from the RMS-GNU congregation , but so be it. A little fiddling with Bluetooth took care of that also. It's really quite a nice distro, but then so are Kubuntu and neon.
Ran Manjaro for a while, but never comfortably. Not so much the installing, but little problems here and there, and especially bothersome was that it got itself in a panic unless it's own grub was in charge. Not helpful for multi-booting and frequent new distros, which I always do. I was more comfortable with EndeavourOS, but I don't run Arch-based anymore because I don't want to be updating all the time.
@32,33, "Installing Linux systems is not easy for beginners to computers." Installing any system is not easy for 'beginners to computers'. They usually buy a computer with an OS installed. There are plenty of distros which are pretty easy to install, but's hard to drive a nail if you don't know what a hammer is for. Much of the rest of your posts are way beyond my comprehension.
38 • Installing Linux (by Otis on 2023-04-18 17:31:15 GMT from United States)
@32, @33 Efforts to deligitimize the Linux family, once again, using the sort of logic that could do that to any subject at hand, any science, any discipline, any honorable endeavor; filling the room, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with semi sense and tech talk which only obfuscates.
@37 It is beyond comprehension because it is meant to be so, not because it is over your head.
Also, this site has ads from companies which provide pre-installed Linux distros, for those who do not wish to enjoy the choices offered by most distros as to installation procedures (so simple in 90% of cases).
I have a Macbook Pro 16 inch, an Acer 17 inch with MX Linux as the sole OS, and a Dell Inspiron with Windows 11. Choices abound, but Linux is the best and always will be for its simplicity and intuitively crafted installation and overall maintenance schema, no matter which distro (although I have landed on MX as day to day).
39 • Sounds familiar... (by GT on 2023-04-18 19:24:18 GMT from United States)
"This made for a total of five attempts across three editions of the distribution which had all failed. While each edition failed in fairly dramatic fashion, I found it interesting that the three editions didn't fail in the same way."
...but I thought this was going to be the year of the Linux Desktop going mainstream, lol.
This sort of stuff is why I cannot rely on Linux beyond tinkering for fun. On three different occasions, an Arch update rendered my computer unbootable, requiring me to chroot from the live ISO to repair it, which is why I gave up on Arch. On a Debian 11 install, the icons would occasionally be missing from the taskbar but for some reason would return after rebooting...never did figure that one out. I could go on and on, but there is always some annoying quirk that rears its ugly head no matter what distro I try out, and often before I even install any extra software.
Linux is a mess, a hodgepodge of constantly changing software, and even the biggest distros can't manage to keep massive bugs at bay. Linux will never be a contender for desktop computing except for those who are willing to accept all the user issues and headaches.
40 • @39 (by Reyfer on 2023-04-18 23:43:59 GMT from Venezuela)
Thank you for your TED talk.....as someone that has been using Linux (Debian) exclusively for the past 7 years both in my personal machines and in my office machines, I never realized what a "mess" LInux is, maybe because it isn't? It is not perfect, far from it, but man at least for me and my company it works a ton better than the other alternative
41 • "user issues... (by Friar Tux on 2023-04-19 00:03:15 GMT from Canada)
@39 (GT) "User issues and headaches" is why I switched to Linux in the first place. With the version 10 of that proprietary OS (we all know which) I had nothing but issues and headaches. The Wife and I, both, switched to Linux and have had no lost-time issues or headaches in the last seven years. None what-so-ever. My Linux distro has worked flawlessly. All the apps and programs I use have no issues. Most are a version or two behind, but, to me, that's fine as it guarantees stability and I don't really need the latest and greatest. The longest update took one minute and ten seconds to complete, to date, but that was my fault as I hadn't updated for a while. This opposed to [proprietary OS] that took an hour for a "short" update - and this ever other day.
I rely on Linux as my daily workhorse and must days I'm on my laptop from 6:30 AM to 10:30 at night.
42 • @33 (by Reyfer on 2023-04-19 03:35:38 GMT from Venezuela)
" Installing Linux systems is not easy for beginners to computers. ".....my 70 years old dad may differ with this statement
43 • Ease of install (by artytux on 2023-04-19 04:55:19 GMT from Australia)
Although most distros are just point and click to install these days,
and those distro that need a bit of manual intervention If you take the time to Read The Fantastic Manual supplied on the distros site for installation help, it can be done and not difficult.
Linux even a complete computer beginner can do that , as I was back then, it just take a little patience from the beginner oh and research.
Over the last twelve ? years the only problems with installs was 1 out of 3 rolling distros I installed gave repeated small to medium breakages all after updates on occasions, not that bad that I would leave it,
I found that an interesting part of the learning curve of open source/Linux AND not a problem where I would go back to THAT other OS.
most other distros (static) run on most hardware properly or just wont install,
you always get what you want,
using mainly KDE the biggest problems for me stemmed from pebcak ! customizing.
And if anyone thinks Linux is a stinker full of problems Hmm
No-one is forced to use Linux.
Freedom of choice
simply go back to that installed OS (( yeah THAT OS with no problems ) cough cough) the one on the computer/laptop when you bought it. LOL
Have used my Linux machine everyday for many years (bit over 12 years) for graphic design work voluntary and paid, music meta tags editing for easy searches of my music library and never had down time from an install not working properly or updating when it wants to,
Linux gives me my computer and the freedom to do what I want, most important when I want .
44 • Typo (by artytux on 2023-04-19 04:58:20 GMT from Australia)
you always get what you want,
you don't always get what you want,
45 • manjaro (by hulondalo on 2023-04-19 11:25:57 GMT from Hong Kong)
i've got nothing against manjaro but it's putting too many entries at booting, even simple tasks that can be done with cron, resulting in very long boot times. i just wanna get to desktop as soon as the computer starts. putting it to sleep or hibernation modes is not a solution cause it's dual boot with windows 11.
46 • @39 (by Jay on 2023-04-19 14:03:31 GMT from United States)
Try using more "mainstream" Windows computers set up and maintained by older users. It'll drive you crazier. Windows has just as many weird problems but for some reason it stays afloat. Macs are the same. I hated using one for the first like 5 years because it felt like the worst of both Windows and Linux (BSD is not Linux, and Macs aren't GNU systems). Eventually people adapt and put up with it. The public perception is better and the public perception of Linux is "it just doesn't work." And most of the time it's true because of some stupid proprietary, inferior solution. Most people hate to tinker and would rather just install random crap until something works than understand anything. It's the sad truth.
47 • Trisquel Wi-Fi Free firmware (by Yes on 2023-04-19 19:52:01 GMT from Germany)
There aren't many models of "USB wireless card which works with free firmware", but one that does, the AR9271, is actually widely available and affordable.
But unless you have an at least somewhat old Intel iGPU (or an Nvidia card older than the 900 series and 750Ti) you're indeed going to struggle with 3D graphics.
48 • Why didn't you test out Trisquel's new Server features, Jessie? (by Weallslipupasahypocrite on 2023-04-20 01:53:01 GMT from Australia)
Trisquel 11 released its "press" release saying it had new support for architectures (like I think ARM for Mac M1s(???) and somethings that run on desktops, which Jessie Smith has, but could use for a Server), and other explicit Server architectures (which I and he and many developers may regret not having, as they are probably freedom-delivery Servers). Anyway, they also said they improved text-mode installation for Servers on pre-existing architectures (like AMD64, as long as you have a network setup that supports it, on a Server that could be USB-ethernet to a hub/switch to share connections and a ethernet cord to a Range Extender with OpenVPN to get Wifi to work, for example?), or (well not necessarily new) introduction to other architectures, but he didn't test text-mode?
I mean, I haven't tested these things either yet cause my use case, like many others, for Trisquel, and recently Fedora 38, is the MATE desktop (or whatever spin). But oughtn't a new review, which it mainy does, test out the new features from the release announcement?
Btw. The bit about running Xen on NetBSD I mentioned above, (I think I only did it once with a Linux OS as a guest in version 6.1.5 and my skills weren't all that successful), my bad, from reading the documentation doesn't it dual-boot the Virtual Machine with the NetBSD OS host and if graphics are needed, use the (back then XFree86, yes ladies/gentleman/LGBPQTI+ even NetBSD was that old) X-Window system and its Window/Desktop manager and/or and X-Clients to display visuals? I came across a comment that 6.1.5 was the most stable version of NetBSD around, but of course, not on SSD hard drives, or USB 3.0 devices.
49 • Manjaro (by Andy Prough on 2023-04-20 02:06:26 GMT from United States)
I wanted to try it a couple of times, but it wouldn't boot on the Asus laptop I was using. To be fair, Asus has a weird UEFI setup and a lot of distros won't boot on it, but unless there's something compelling about the distro I don't work hard to get it past failure to boot problems. And there was nothing compelling about Manjaro.
50 • Manjaro (by Hoos on 2023-04-21 06:22:28 GMT from Singapore)
I wonder if they made some Manjaro-specific changes to the installer that aren't working out as well as they hoped.
I have 3 separate installations of Manjaro, created 8, 6 and 3 years ago respectively. All are running well. They are not the only distros I run on the machines (also MX and Artix), but since they are problem-free, I am happy to continue using them.
However, less than a year ago I decided to test their then latest iso release on Virtualbox just for the heck of it. Installing didn't go well.
The live system ran just fine, but about 2 seconds into the installer writing files onto the virtual machine drive, the installer just closed (crashed??) without any warning or error message. After it happened a few times, I checked the integrity of the iso file. Seemed to be fine. I then downloaded a different iso variant from that Manjaro release. Same problem. I gave up after that.
While I am satisfied with the instances of Manjaro currently running on my machines, if I had to install a rolling distro today (I stick to MX for non-rolling), I wouldn't choose Manjaro.
Number of Comments: 50
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