 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1027, 10 July 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 28th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While Android, a Linux-based mobile operating system, has dominated the smart phone market for many years, a lot of people within the Linux desktop community take issue with the mobile platform's privacy issues. In our News section we talk about Murena - an organization which offers a privacy-focused, de-Googled version of Android - launching a new device in North America. The new phone is a repairable, upgradable Fairphone 4 which is paired with Murena's open source flavour of Android. We also share word on Red Hat extending the support life cycle for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 7 while Canonical draws the LXD container management software further under its control. Meanwhile elementary OS is introducing new security and privacy tools to its software centre and the Fedora community is debating the merits of adding desktop usage telemetry. First though we report on two distributions: Crystal Linux, an Arch-based project with some attractive features and the Jade installer; and embassyOS (now called StartOS) which makes setting up a personal server quite easy. We have details on both projects below. This week we also talk about custom filesystem mount options and how to set them once the operating system is running. Do you use any custom filesystem features? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and torrent we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Crystal Linux 2023-03-16
Crystal Linux is a young, rolling release Linux distribution which is based on Arch. The distribution has a focus on desktop usage and features the Onyx desktop, a customized version of GNOME with a Windows-like panel and layout. The other key feature the Crystal Linux website mentions is Timeshift, which is available for making optional filesystem snapshots.
I downloaded the sole edition of Crystal which is 1.7GB in size. The live media was able to boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes and quickly loads the GNOME (Onyx) desktop. A panel is placed along the bottom of the display which holds the application menu, task switcher, and system tray. The desktop has a dark, purple theme.
Installing
Once the desktop loads the system installer is automatically launched. Crystal uses the graphical Jade installer which is quite streamlined and reminds me of mobile setup wizards in its visual style.
Jade walks us through picking our keyboard layout, confirming our timezone, and picking a locale. On the locale screen, my first time through the install process, the installer crashed. I opened the Onyx application menu to see if I could find the installer's launcher to try again and the entire desktop crashed, sending me to a login screen.
Crystal Linux 2023-03-16 -- Running the Jade installer
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The login screen helpfully tells us the login password is "crystal" and we can select our user with the mouse. Once I signed into the desktop session again Jade automatically launched and I tried again. This time I got through the first three configuration screens. The fourth screen asks us to create a username and password combination and gives us the option of enabling a root account.
Next we're asked which desktop environment we want with the options being Onyx, GNOME, Plasma, Xfce, Sway, and i3. We can pick just one of these options and I chose to stick with Onyx as it was the default. We're then given the option to enable Timeshift and Zramd. I chose to turn on Timeshift and disable Zramd. We're then asked if we want to manually partition a hard drive or let Jade take over an entire disk.
The final page of the installer shows a summary of actions Jade will take. I noticed that, despite disabling Zramd, it was listed as enabled on the summary page. I went back and toggled Zramd on and then back off, returned to the summary page and confirmed it then showed as being disabled.
Jade goes to work, downloading the necessary packages over the network and shows progress information in a mini terminal while it works. The installer crashed early on in the download process and failed to finish installing its packages.
I tried five more times to install Crystal Linux. On the third attempt the installer crashed on the desktop selection page. The fourth time through it crashed while I was making up a username and password. On the fifth attempt the installer remained stable, listed the packages it was going to download and then locked up. It never managed to download anything, though it also didn't crash, it just remained locked up.
A reboot later, I tried a sixth time. This time the installer crashed while I was making up my username. The seventh time through the installer began downloading packages and reported it would be fetching 445MB of files. It then almost immediately crashed.
In short, Jade managed to die on almost every screen at one point or another and Onyx managed to crash on me too, for good measure. Hopefully the developers will work out their issues with Jade before the next release.
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StartOS (previously embassyOS) 0.3.4.2
I almost didn't get a chance to review the next project I wanted to look at. I'd been hoping to review a server-oriented distribution on the DistroWatch waiting list called embassyOS. However, when I went looking for it, I ran into some confusion. The project had changed its name in recent months from embassyOS to StartOS, which makes it difficult to find accurate information about the distribution since this is also the name of a Chinese Linux distribution featuring the GNOME desktop.
Once I found the new StartOS (formerly embassyOS) website, I found the following description of the distribution:
StartOS is a browser-based, graphical operating system for a personal server. StartOS facilitates the discovery, installation, network configuration, service configuration, data backup, dependency management, and health monitoring of self-hosted software services. It is the most advanced, secure, reliable, and user friendly personal server OS in the world.
It's generally not a good start when developers clearly over-hype their creation this much. It makes the distribution feel more like a prop in a Monty Python skit than a serious operating system. However, I endeavoured to dig deeper and, while I found a handful of screenshots, I couldn't find much documentation or other information which would indicate what features StartOS offers or how it achieves its lofty goals.
StartOS is available for Aarch64 systems, Raspberry Pi single-board computers, and x86_64 machines. I downloaded the final option, which offers free and non-free builds. There aren't many details offered, but I think the two flavours offer free firmware and non-free firmware, respectively. The ISO file I downloaded was 1.0GB in size.
The distribution boots through a series of text consoles which appear to display systemd status messages. It also looks as though the distribution is based on Debian, judging by the status information and package data I could see.
StartOS boots to a graphical environment and launches the Firefox web browser. There is no window manager and desktop environment on display, just the web browser taking up the whole screen. Firefox is connected to a web service running on the local machine. The web page we are shown asks us to select an available disk from a list. Once we pick a local disk we are shown an Install button which, we are warned, will wipe the local drive when it is clicked.
I clicked the Install button, accepted a second warning, and a pop-up appeared to tell me the distribution was being installed. No progress information was shown and, after several minutes with apparently nothing happening, I was returned to the first page and asked to select a disk which would hold the distribution.
I went through the same steps again (picking the appropriate disk and clicking the Install button). This time the system worked for a couple of minutes and then popped up a message saying the install had finished successfully and I was shown a button I could click to reboot the machine.
Early impressions
What is interesting about StartOS is we can access the system locally, using the distribution's built-in web browser. We can also connect to the distribution remotely using a browser on another computer. So long as we know (or can learn) the IP address of the machine running StartOS we can connect to it from virtually anywhere.
The first time I booted StartOS it asked me if I'd like to perform a fresh setup or recover an old install. I chose to start fresh. The next screen asked me where it could save data and I was invited to select a disk. We're then asked to make up an administrator's password which must be at least 12 characters in length. The distribution then goes to work, performing its initial configuration.
The first time I tried setting up StartOS, the web browser popped up an error which read: "No key available with this passphrase." Closing the error just caused the pop-up to reappear, then appear again and again and again in a loop. I forced a reboot and was walked through the initial setup steps again. I took all the same settings and, this time, the initial configuration completed successfully. I was shown a "Setup Complete" message with a red, Matrix-like rainfall in the background. A button appears inviting us to login.
From this point onward, visiting the IP address for StartOS (or sitting at the console of the machine running StartOS) brings up a login page where we are asked for our password only, we don't need a separate username to sign in.
Signing into the StartOS web portal brings up a grid of six icons. These icons give us access to a variety of information and features which I'll quickly outline below:
StartOS 0.3.4.2 -- The home screen
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- Visit the marketplace - provides a friendly overview of available web-based modules we can download. These mostly fall under the categories of Bitcoin, communications, data, and lightning. By clicking package entries we can bring up more complete descriptions of packages and the option to install the selected module. There are not a lot of these packages, maybe around ten in each category with some overlap across categories.
I installed a few items and they mostly worked well. Sometimes they'd run into an error during the install process and need to be re-fetched. Once installed the items I grabbed could be activated/enabled. Then the web-based service would be left running in the background, awaiting someone to connect to it. I will talk a bit more about these web services later.
StartOS 0.3.4.2 -- The software Marketplace
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- Secure LAN - this page simply provides us with a button which will download the server's self-made certificate. This can be added to our list of known certificates on client machines to provide secure connections to the StartOS server.
- Create backup - this page gives us the option of backing up our data to a network share, such as a Samba share.
- Server info - This is a fairly simple information page which shows the operating system's version details, Tor address, and local IP address.
- User manual - connects us to the on-line user manual. I'd had trouble finding the project's documentation through its website, but this button takes us straight to it. The documentation offers a good overview of features with accompanying screenshots.
- Contact support - opens a browser tab which connects us with social media, e-mail, and community support channels.
StartOS 0.3.4.2 -- The Files web service
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Apart from these six icons on the main page there is also a menu near the top of the portal with the following options:
Services - opens a page to display a list of installed modules. We can select modules to run or access.
Marketplace - this opens the Marketplace software centre I mentioned above.
Updates - checks for system and module updates. No updates were available at the time of writing.
Notifications - this page displays a list of messages and warnings the distribution wants to share with us. Typically it'll be an error message.
StartOS 0.3.4.2 -- Checking notifications
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System - this page is a sort of a catch-all. From this screen we can access a number of other features such as creating and restoring backups, checking for updates, and managing OpenSSH keys. The System page will also help us connect to wi-fi networks. We're also given the chance to monitor CPU, memory, and disk consumption. I found, for instance, a fresh install of StartOS uses around 700MB of RAM and 400MB of disk space. The System page also provides us with access to system logs, a link to contact community support, and buttons to shutdown, restart, and logout.
While there are a number of tools built into the web interface, I feel the main focus of StartOS is to provide us with a platform where we can easily add web-based modules. Specifically there are a few dozen packages modules for us which can be used to set up Nextcloud, Bitcoin, file sharing, communication, and information storage. There isn't exactly a wide range of functionality offered through the official software modules. However, the handful of modules I installed to test functionality worked fairly well. Hopefully the collection will be expanded over time as, at the moment, there isn't a lot in the Marketplace.
StartOS 0.3.4.2 -- Checking for updates
(full image size: 100kB, resolution: 1640x1025 pixels)
As I said, despite there being a limited selection, what was available generally worked well. I like that we can go into a service's information page and launch its interface from within the StartOS portal, this makes it easier to find services. I also found that most services have default credentials built in which we can typically find by opening a module from the Services page and clicking a button to view its "properties".
StartOS doesn't do a lot on its own, it's mostly there as a platform from which we can quickly install and launch services, and mostly services geared toward home use. This means there isn't a lot to look at, but the platform is a base we are meant to extend.
On the whole, I think StartOS does a pretty good job at its core mission. Despite having a few missteps when I was first setting up the distribution, once it was up and running, StartOS was stable and unusually easy to navigate. I found it quite natural, browsing items, checking their settings, and launching them. StartOS makes the progression through these steps flow naturally and the interface is uncluttered.
There were a few issues I ran into. The installer died and I had to restart the initial install process. Then I had to perform the post-install configuration twice. This got things off to a rough start, and these glitches were made worse by the lack of clear errors or guidance. Once the system was installed, I sometimes ran into situations where modules would fail to download the first time, but they always worked the second or third time I tried to fetch them. Again, there usually wasn't any useful information presented when these errors occurred.
Conclusions
When I'm testing a new distribution I tend to look at three basic criteria: does it work at all, is it useful for me, and does the project fulfill its stated goals or description?
StartOS certainly works. As I mentioned, there were a few rough edges, but on the whole it functioned pretty well. It was easy to set up and navigate. Despite some early problems, which were typically solved by simply performing the task again, StartOS generally worked and made the experience of setting up new web services easy.
Is StartOS something I would use? In most circumstances, I wouldn't. For two reasons. The first is I feel the Marketplace store is a bit limited. There are some good items there now, like Nextcloud, but not a lot of functionality is present yet. I'm hoping this will get expanded over time. The second is StartOS is geared toward providing an appliance-like approach to service management. It's friendly, it's streamlined, but it's also fairly rigid. We're not meant to explore the command line, pull in services from Debian's repositories, or enable our own backup scripts. Which, for many people, is probably a perk. I like something that's a bit more customizable, a bit more general purpose.
Finally, I'd like to examine the project's goals and comment on whether I think it is achieving them:
- "StartOS is a browser-based, graphical operating system for a personal server." This is accurate, StartOS does provide both a local and remote web-based management portal.
- "StartOS facilitates the discovery, installation, network configuration, service configuration, data backup, dependency management, and health monitoring of self-hosted software services." I'd say this statement is mostly accurate. There aren't any low-level service or health monitoring tools. There are tools for monitoring and managing the web-based services StartOS provides.
- "It is the most advanced, secure, reliable, and user friendly personal server OS in the world." This statement is more subjective, but I'd say it's pretty obviously empty hype. While well executed, there isn't anything about StartOS which feels particularly advanced compared to other server distributions with web-based services. Further, security seems to be lacking and there were some reliability issues. StartOS is pretty friendly for a newcomer though, so I'd say the above statement is one-fourth accurate.
I think this project might need a little more time in order to polish the setup process and add more web services. Once it does it will be a very attractive home server platform for people who want to set-and-forget a couple of services.
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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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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Red Hat extends the life of RHEL 7, Canonical pulls LXD in closer, elementary adds security warnings to the software centre, Fedora discusses new desktop telemetry
Murena, an organization which sells phones with a de-Google version of Android (called /e/OS), is bringing a new product to North America. Murena has announced this week they have begun selling the Fairphone 4 in the United States. "Built with a focus on sustainability and privacy, Murena Fairphone 4 is the ultimate smartphone for those who value ethics and still want premium smartphone features.
The Murena Fairphone 4 is a 'Google-free' Android smartphone that runs on a privacy-oriented Android ecosystem, /e/OS. This not only includes a privacy focused operating system, but a range of default Murena Cloud apps including email, cloud storage, calendar etc, and your own murena.io email address. It also has a dedicated app store with privacy ratings and advanced privacy widget to give you more visibility and control of how various apps are tracking your online activity.
Like all Fairphone models, it's built with a modular design so that individual components can easily be repaired and replaced with just a screwdriver, increasing the phone's longevity and reducing waste at landfills. The Murena Fairphone 4 will retail for $599. Details on the Fairphone 4, along with other devices sold by Murena, can be found on the organization's shop page.
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) customers still running version 7 of the distribution received some good news this week. The Red Hat team has extended support for RHEL 7. Originally RHEL 7 was set to reach the end of its supported life at the end of June 2024, however the deadline has been extended by four years to 2028. "As we near the end of the standard 10-year life cycle of RHEL 7, some IT organizations are finding that they cannot complete their planned migrations before June 30, 2024. To support IT teams while they catch up on their migration schedules, Red Hat is announcing a one-time, 4 year ELS maintenance period for RHEL 7 ELS."
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LXD is a technology which provides a unified user experience for managing system containers and virtual machines. The software was originally created by Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, and placed under the care of the Linux Containers project. There, LXD has been maintained for the past eight years. However, Canonical has decided to consolidate LXD with its own infrastructure and is drawing LXD under its own umbrella. A message on the Linux Containers website states: "Canonical, the creator and main contributor of the LXD project, has decided that after over 8 years as part of the Linux Containers community, the project would now be better served directly under Canonical's own set of projects. While the team behind Linux Containers regrets that decision and will be missing LXD as one of its projects, it does respect Canonical's decision and is now in the process of moving the project over."
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The elementary team published a newsletter this week in which they highlighted new changes coming to the distribution. One of the key adjustments is giving users more warning when an application might misbehave or engage in questionable behaviour. "This month we've rolled out a new set of app sandbox warnings to help you better assess risk when installing apps. AppCenter will now inform you if an app can read your location without asking first, if it can access system folders or your home folder, if it can read and write system settings, or if it could possibly escape the sandbox altogether and gain advanced permissions. For certain types of administrative apps, having advanced system permissions makes sense, but our goal is to keep you informed and ensure that apps are always operating with your consent."
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The Fedora team has opened a discussion on the subject of collecting telemetry on desktop usage to be given to the Red Hat Display Systems Team. "The Red Hat Display Systems Team (which develops the desktop) proposes to enable limited data collection of anonymous Fedora Workstation usage metrics. Fedora is an open source community project, and nobody is interested in violating user privacy. We do not want to collect data about individual users. We want to collect only aggregate usage metrics that are actually needed to achieve specific Fedora improvement objectives, and no more." A debate on the proposal is ongoing in which it is stated the data collection would be opt-out if implemented.
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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) |
Changing the options on a mounted filesystem
Already-attached asks: Is there a way to change mount options for the root filesystem after the system has already booted? I only have ssh access to the server.
DistroWatch answers: You can change basic mount options and flags after the operating system boots, even on filesystems which are already mounted. This will work in most instances where a filesystem is mounted and cannot be unmounted, as is the case for the root filesystem.
Changing the flags associated with a filesystem will change its behaviour or tune its performance.
The changing of mount flags is accomplished with the mount command and an option called remount. The remount option is described in the mount manual page as follows: "Attempt to remount an already-mounted filesystem. This is commonly used to change the mount flags for a filesystem, especially to make a read-only filesystem writable. It does not change device or mount point."
Most of the mount options we might want to use from the command line are listed in the mount manual page under the section titled Filesystem-Independent Mount Options. Let's look at a few examples.
In the following example, we use the "rw" flag to change the root (/) filesystem's write status from read-only, to read-write:
mount -o remount,rw /
In this next example we disable the users' ability to run executable files found on the /home filesystem. This is a handy way to lock down the running of programs a user might download from the Internet or compile themselves:
mount -o remount,noexec /home
Once the above command has been run, users trying to execute binary files or scripts stored in their home directories will encounter a "permission denied" error.
Please note that when the operating system reboots, changes you made to filesystem flags will be lost. Each time the system boots it checks the /etc/fstab file to see which flags should be applied to each filesystem. Specifically, filesystem flags are listed (and separated by commas) in the fourth column of each /etc/fstab entry. You should update this file if you want your changes to filesystem flags to be permanent.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Fatdog64 Linux 814
Fatdog64 Linux is a small, desktop, 64-bit Linux distribution. Originally created as a derivative of Puppy Linux with additional applications. The project's latest release, Fatdog64 814, is the final version in the 8xx series with future releases moving on to a 9xx base. Though it is the last of the series, version 814 still includes some key updates and new features. The release notes list these changes: "This is the final release of Fatdog64 800 series. No further release is planned. Fatdog64 will however continue with a new base, the 900 series. Changes from 813 - updates: Linux-5.19.17, low-latency, 1000Hz, dynamic preemption; Microcode as of 2022.10.09; tzdata 2022.e; iptables 1.8.8 with nftables support; Bluetooth Manager fixes; vlc-3.0.18; rox-jun7 2022.12; apfs-fuse 2023.03; pfilesearch 2.3; UExtract 4.11; Avidemux 2.8.1; mdview 2023.04; yad_gtk2 0.42.782023.04; SMB Browser 2.2.2. New Features: fzf-0.35.0; geany-themes-1.24.22; apply LFS 11.3 patch to recognise ext4 filesystems created by newer e2fsprogs; add DJVU thumbnailer for ROX; fatdog-drive-mounter.sh: support UDF labels, add support to mount by label and numerous bug fixes and fine tunings."
Q4OS 5.2
The Q4OS project develops a Debian-based desktop distribution which features editions for the KDE Plasma and Trinity desktop environments. Q4OS has published a new stable version, Q4OS 5.2, which is based on Debian 12. "A brand new stable Q4OS 5.2 version codenamed 'Aquarius' is immediately available for download and use in production environments. This is a long-term support LTS version to be supported for at least five years with security patches and software updates. Q4OS Aquarius is based on Debian Bookworm 12 and Plasma 5.27.5, optionally Trinity 14.1.1 desktop environment, and it's available for 64bit/x64 computers. A 32bit/i686pae edition for older i386 systems with or without PAE extension will follow soon, in a few days. We plan to bring Aquarius for ARM devices as well. The objective is to provide rock stable, as lightweight as possible, Debian based operating system with added value thanks to unique Q4OS tools." Additional information is presented on the project's blog page.
Solus 4.4
The Solus project has released its first new stable release in two years. The rolling release's latest version, Solus 4.4, offers four desktop editions: Budgie, KDE Plasma, MATE, and GNOME. "All our editions feature: Firefox 114.0.1, LibreOffice 7.5.3.2, Thunderbird 102.12.0, For audio and video multimedia playback, we offer software out-of-the-box that caters specifically to our desired experience for each edition. Budgie, GNOME, and MATE editions all ship with Rhythmbox for audio playback, with the latest release of the Alternate Toolbar extension to provide a more modern user experience. Budgie and GNOME ship with Celluloid for video playback. MATE ships with VLC for video playback. Plasma ships with Elisa for audio playback and Haruna for video playback. Hardware and Kernel Enablement: This release of Solus ships with Linux kernel 6.3.8, enabling us to provide support for a broader range of hardware, such as: Secure Boot support. See our documentation for enablement." The release announcement has additional information.
Solus 4.4 -- Running the Budgie desktop
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blendOS 3
blendOS is an Arch Linux-based, rolling release distribution which automates installing software from supported distributions into containers. Version 3 of the distribution introduces wider support for source distributions (nine now in total) and seven desktop environments. "blendOS v3 introduces two new command line utilities, system and user, and both of these are designed to make the lives of developers much, much easier. system allows you to install packages on the host itself, such as drivers and virtualization software from the Arch Linux repositories (system install and system remove). Speaking of which, unlike quite a few other immutable distributions, blendOS supports software such as VirtualBox if installed on the host. user is a replacement for the old blend CLI (was deprecated in v2). It allows you to create and manage containers and associatiions, as well as generate and move dotfiles and containers between different blendOS machines, as touched upon in the previous section." The release announcemnt offers additional information.
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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: 2,884
- Total data uploaded: 43.4TB
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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) |
Using special mount flags
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about using mount flags to enable or disable filesystem features. Mount flags can be used to tune performance or provide additional functionality. Some distributions disable features, such as access time (atime) stamps, in order to reduce the number of writes to the disk. Do you have any non-default flags set on your filesystems? (Filesystem flags are listed in the /etc/fstab file.) Let us know which flags you set in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on whether our readers' distributions are affected by Red Hat's source code distribution policy change in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you have any filesystem flags set?
| Yes - my distro set custom flags: | 67 (8%) |
| Yes - I set custom flags: | 215 (25%) |
| No - my filesystems use default settings: | 582 (67%) |
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| Website News |
Cleaning the waiting list
The DistroWatch waiting list is the first step for new distributions in their journey to being added to our database. The list contains young projects which are then evaluated and either added to our database or sorted into categories for future consideration.
A lot of new Linux distributions do not survive beyond their first year and are often dropped from the waiting list when they become dormant. This past week Ted P combed through the waiting list, identifying over 20 projects which are no longer maintained and which could therefore be pruned from the list. Thanks, Ted, for your diligent work and assistance.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- openKylin. openKylin is a Chinese distribution designed to run on a wide variety of computers, including x86_64 machines, single-board ARM computers, and RISV.
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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 July 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 • Filesystem flags (by DC on 2023-07-10 01:09:29 GMT from United States)
Wait a minute. You have to list what all of the default mount options('filesystem flags') are before we can tell if our distros are using custom mount options (flags) or not...
2 • Filesystem flags (by Jesse on 2023-07-10 02:15:52 GMT from Canada)
@1: >> "Wait a minute. You have to list what all of the default mount options('filesystem flags') are before we can tell if our distros are using custom mount options (flags) or not..."
If you have any custom flags set, they'll be in the /etc/fstab file. If no custom flags are set, the feature column will say (literally) "defaults".
3 • Solus, Respect & Trust (by CorpSouth on 2023-07-10 02:53:59 GMT from United States)
I've been reading testimonials about Solus going back to before the project had stagnated for two years. One has to understand that respect and trust are two way streets, and the attitudes of the maintainers haven't been representative of those tenants, apparently. They're going to need to be aggressive about moving the project forward.
4 • Crystal Linux (by Olexander on 2023-07-10 02:57:46 GMT from Ukraine)
Unfortunately Crystal's iso on their Gitlab is old.
And yeah, it's buggy.
(actually I couldn't managed it to boot on my laptop)
But after I joining Discord channel I've got link to the fresh iso.
It booted and even installed without crashes.
I can say guys are working hard to clean bugs.
So please give them another try.
5 • Mount-Flags (by Dr.J on 2023-07-10 08:09:29 GMT from Germany)
I use a lot of mount flags, because it's like you say: you can use them to customize your system to your needs, which is especially useful if you have a lot of mounts (two disks, multiple partitions, mounting network or NFS drives, etc.).
6 • Mount flags (by nsp0323 on 2023-07-10 09:45:58 GMT from Sweden)
Voted: "Yes - I set custom flags" but, it's a bit of a lie.
Everything is default, except for "noatime" and "nodevmtime"
7 • Fedora's telemetry (by Bluecow on 2023-07-10 17:46:37 GMT from United States)
Red Hat's closed source, Fedora's spying their users (100% anonymously, of course).
I can imagine some ads coming to Fedora's start menu soon after that. Things like Disney+ and Outlook 365 promos, just like in W11.
8 • Fedora Telementry (by nickydi on 2023-07-11 01:41:46 GMT from Australia)
Red Hats love child "Fedora" wanting telemetry inside there distro. OMG what has happened to the Linux World... it has gone completely mad. Lets tell them at first we are only collecting a lttle bit of data like such and such, then the next few releases we will really ramp up the game and get there info just like all the other no good company's trying to harvest peoples data. Linux used to be great but now its just like all the rest, "Corrupt".
9 • Tweakers (by Trihexagonal on 2023-07-11 05:47:49 GMT from United States)
"Mount flags can be used to tune performance or provide additional functionality."
The biggest mistake people new to Linux or BSD by far was tweaking this and fiddling with that when they don't yet have the learned skills to fix what didn't need fixed in the first place.
Then some will become frustrated, find something about the OS to mumble about (Because what else could it be?) Kick rocks at Tux and go back to Windows.
Which is all good and fine with me as long as I'm not the one who has to fix it. Chaff from the wheat, Natures Way and all that..
10 • Fedora telemetry (by Christian on 2023-07-11 12:05:44 GMT from Canada)
Back in Fedora 7 there was "smolt" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolt_%28Linux%29). It was included by default and I can't remember it raising many concerns in the community. A few years later Ubuntu started something similar, but it was not very well received.
I've not being using used Fedora for a while, but, I would share telemetry from my system to contribute with the project.
11 • Smolt (by Otis on 2023-07-11 14:47:34 GMT from United States)
@10 yes Smolt seemed to usher in that mindset (of devs working with other entities to harvest hardware info on linux machines). It's usage info that made me nervous, but that's another conversation.
I see that only 5 distros shipped that little piece of ware, but the philosophy of it is now commonplace, of course.
12 • telemetry (by GrumpyGranpa on 2023-07-12 02:50:32 GMT from Australia)
One reason people came to linux was to get away from the privacy nightmare that is Windows and its data collection.
As soon as IBM became involved with Redhat, we allsort of guessed that down the road they would want to recoup their investment. Selling licences is fine, but data harvesting is another revenue stream.
Fortunately, we are swamped with choice. Don't like data collection, no problem. Don't like systemd, no problem. Don't like desktop xyz, no problem.
Fragmentation of distros is an issue from a dev pool point of view, but also a blessing for the rest of us who can pick and choose what we want to use.
13 • Opt-in works, just ask Debian (by Andy Prough on 2023-07-12 14:19:52 GMT from United States)
Fedora's argument against opt-in telemetry is based on a lie, claiming that opt-in never works.
Debian's popularity-contest package (popcon) has always been completely opt-in - you have to install the package for it to work. It has hundreds of thousands of users and has been giving a vast amount of Debian usage information for the past 25 years now.
14 • Fedora telemetry (by Dan on 2023-07-12 15:37:53 GMT from Israel)
I fully support developers' right to collect telemetry, as long as it's not invasive, described in an honest transparent way in the UI, and there's a way to fully disable it. It all depends on the type of information that is collected. Anyone who cries about their "privacy" just because there *is* telemetry collected, without having not even a *single* look into the type of data collected, is an idiot.
15 • Telemetry opt-in vs. opt-out (by Dan on 2023-07-12 15:52:43 GMT from Israel)
@13
"Fedora's argument against opt-in telemetry is based on a lie, claiming that opt-in never works."
I've had a brief look and that's not what was said.
"Debian's popularity-contest package (popcon) has always been completely opt-in… It has hundreds of thousands of users and has been giving a vast amount of Debian usage information…"
First, this is an anecdote. Second, Debian and Fedora might have users with completely different mindsets. And third, this doesn't refute the argument that people who uncaringly use default settings could contribute telemetry using an opt-out scheme but not using an opt-in scheme, while users who do care about settings would contribute the same telemetry regardless of whether it's opt-in or opt-out. Objectively, opt-out is better.
16 • @15 (by Andy Prough on 2023-07-12 17:41:10 GMT from United States)
>"I've had a brief look and that's not what was said."
Here's what is said in the Fedora proposal exactly: "This is to ensure the system is opt-out, not opt-in. This is essential because we know that opt-in metrics are not very useful."
I said that they said "never works", they actually said "not very useful". Not much difference between the two, but ok you are right that there is a difference, but the same outcome in their decision making.
>"First, this is an anecdote."
No, it's a decades long test with vast quantities of data. An anecdote is a single data point.
>"Second, Debian and Fedora might have users with completely different mindsets."
Why? What is potentially different about their mindsets? You haven't written a refutation, merely that you aren't willing to consider the point that Debian has collected vast amounts of useful data with an opt-in system. Unfortunately for your argument, the facts tell a dramatically different story.
>"And third, this doesn't refute the argument that people who uncaringly use default settings could contribute telemetry using an opt-out scheme but not using an opt-in scheme, while users who do care about settings would contribute the same telemetry regardless of whether it's opt-in or opt-out. Objectively, opt-out is better."
Wrong. Opt-out is better if Fedora wants to sneakily trick some people into not disabling telemetry who are trying to quickly install the system without reading all the verbiage. But once again, Debian's 25 successful years of popcon proves that undoubtedly opt-out is not inherently better.
17 • telemetry @15 (by Anthony on 2023-07-12 19:15:04 GMT from Czechia)
@15 Objectively, opt-out is better.
Funny you should appeal to objectivity, when your statement isn't true. Opt-out is worse from a privacy-focused viewpoint. It is better if you *only* consider the viewpoint of the one collecting (and supposedly "needing") the data. Nice fallacy. =)
@14
Another nice fallacy. No-one has the *right* to collect someone else's information. Information should be voluntarily given, not taken. That's one huge difference between the legal systems of the US and the EU. Arguing for unregulated and opt-out data collection is idiocy, especially if you make fallacies like you. (How the *supposedly* different mindsets of Debian- and Fedora users come into the topic of data collection is beyond reason...)
Keep up the circus show, folks. :)
18 • It seems that some people think they're smarter than logic (by Dan on 2023-07-12 20:17:27 GMT from Israel)
@16
"No, it's a decades long test with vast quantities of data. An anecdote is a single data point."
Irrelevant. You cannot deduce anything from this data, you can only induce, and induction isn't a logical way to get conclusions, it uses intuition, and thus it's prone to failure. (Deduction is prone as well to failure, if the method or the base assumptions are wrong, but with induction, there's *never* a guarantee that the conclusion is true, unlike deduction where it could be guaranteed to be true.)
"Why? What is potentially different about their mindsets? You haven't written a refutation, merely that you aren't willing to consider the point that Debian has collected vast amounts of useful data with an opt-in system. Unfortunately for your argument, the facts tell a dramatically different story."
What is potentially different about their mindsets is lots of things. This should be quite obvious to you, but apparently isn't. In any case, it is your responsibility to prove that their mindsets are universally always identical, and not my responsibility to prove that their mindsets aren't identical, because (surprise to you!) that's how logic works. I haven't refuted your data, because there's no need to; I've refuted the core of your reasoning (and also later provided a logical proof that opt-out is never worse than opt-in for collecting representative statistics). Unfortunately for your argument, you're just plain wrong and illogical. And unfortunately for you, facts tell different stories depending how you process them, and this is why the reasoning you use to conclude on the basis of facts is important as well.
"Wrong. Opt-out is better if Fedora wants to sneakily trick some people into not disabling telemetry who are trying to quickly install the system without reading all the verbiage."
Wrong. Out-out has nothing to do with the aspect of being "sneaky" (read: dishonest) nor with the actual data that's being collected. Apart from the opt-out aspect, there's also the aspect of how telemetry and the options to control telemetry are presented to users, and the aspect of whether the data that's ultimately collected contains anything that could be linked to an individual user or a group of users. There's not yet any proof that any arbitrary piece of information could be linked to the user(s) it was collected from, meaning that it's possible that telemetry could respect the privacy of the users it was collected from. Additionally, regarding the opt-out/opt-in aspect and the aspect of dishonesty in how telemetry is presented to users and given control of, the burden of proving that these two aspects are inherently linked together somehow is, again, on you.
"Debian's 25 successful years of popcon proves that undoubtedly…"
You're using words like "proves" and "undoubtedly" without understanding the most basic things about logic, thinking that you're convincing. Maybe others, but I see past your logical fallacies. Funny.
----------------
@17
"Funny you should appeal to objectivity, when your statement isn't true. Opt-out is worse from a privacy-focused viewpoint. It is better if you *only* consider the viewpoint of the one collecting (and supposedly "needing") the data. Nice fallacy. =)"
Funny that you're speaking of fallacies. The burden of proving that the aspect of opt-out/opt-in and the aspect of whether data collected breaches the privacy of the users it was collected from is on you. Since you've mindlessly assumed this unproven base assumption without backing it up in the first place, you've just ironically made fallacy! Congratulations. I, in contrast, have *proven* that opt-out is always at least as good as opt-in for gathering representative statistics, so yeah, it is objectively better than opt-in schemes, because there's nothing to lose and it unlocks the potential for better stats.
"Another nice fallacy. No-one has the *right* to collect someone else's information. Information should be voluntarily given, not taken."
Of course it is a right. Nobody forces you to run any privacy-invasive free-as-in-freedom operating system.
"Information should be voluntarily given, not taken."
You have already volunteered, the moment you chose to install that operating system. Perhaps you think that because the operating system is free as in freedom, you have the right to run the OS and hold the developers legally or morally responsible for whatever you dislike in it. Perhaps you forget that the OS is given to you under a license; it doesn't even matter which license, because the mere concept of licensing is based on the principle that somebody gives you access to their copyrighted creation provided that you agree to their conditions. It is the creator who has the right to design their creation however they like. And perhaps you forget that you cannot hold developers liable for any damages that occur to you rising from your use of the software.
"That's one huge difference between the legal systems…"
Funny that you talk about law.
"Arguing for unregulated…"
I didn't argue about any regulation. I had argued about morals, copyright law, and technical advantages and disadvantages of opt-in and opt-out telemetry schemes.
"…and opt-out data collection is idiocy…"
Idiocy? Prove that I am an idiot. You'll have a hard time doing it, because I ain't one.
"…especially if you make fallacies like you."
lol
"How the *supposedly* different mindsets of Debian- and Fedora users come into the topic of data collection is beyond reason..."
Perhaps the reason is beyond you, so here it is: Users either seek or don't seek telemetry collection settings, and (assuming that there's telemetry collection and a setting to control it, which is a fair assumption because it's exactly relevant to the topic at hand) are presented either with an already enabled setting ("out-out") or already disabled ("opt-in"). Given that all other aspects of the telemetry collection is the same in all evaluated cases (which again is a fair assumption because it's relevant to the argument at hand), users that do seek telemetry settings will get the same result with either opt-in and opt-out schemes, while users who don't seek will get different results and affect the amount of telemetry that the developers ultimately collect. The question is, which users fall into the category of the users who do seek such options, and which users don't? This question is directly relevant to the discussion because, as I've explained, the natural categorization of users into these two categories is what changes whether the telemetry collected could be more complete or less complete. Mindsets of users is what makes them fall into one of these two categories, which is the reason why "the *supposedly* different mindsets of Debian- and Fedora users come into the topic of data collection".
19 • @18 (by Andy Prough on 2023-07-12 22:06:29 GMT from United States)
>"You cannot deduce anything from this data, you can only induce, and induction isn't a logical way to get conclusions, it uses intuition, and thus it's prone to failure."
That's a nice word salad that amounts to nothing, just like the rest of your responses.
I've refuted Fedora's claim that "opt-in metrics are not very useful" with solid evidence from a successful and robust opt-in telemetry program that's been run for decades. The vast quantity of data is available for all to view in the beautiful charts at popcon[dot]debian[dot]org. I'll rest my case and let the jury decide.
20 • @19 Debian Fedora data (by Mr. Moto on 2023-07-13 09:01:39 GMT from Japan)
I'm undecided. I use both Fedora and Debian. When I boot Fedora I get a strong urge to share all my data. When I boot Debian, I suddenly dear for my privacy. Gonna have to choose one or the other as I'm already in the early stages of dissociative identity disorder.
21 • IBM and Red Hat sources (by Jan on 2023-07-13 09:17:24 GMT from Poland)
It seems that IBM is making the same mistake with Red Hat it did with OS/2.
Instead of encouraging Red Hat's even wider adoption and forgetting a bit about enforcement of strict licensing behaviour (forgetting about the short term fiscal goals as Microsoft initially did with Windows)) it clamps down on the user community alienating any good will towards themselves or their product.
If we exclude the possibility of poor judgement, intentional unprofessional behaviour and lack of basic product knowledge, we must assume this IBM's move is exactly the extinguish part of the process of eliminating Red Hat (and Linux in the long term) from existence. We know that linux will never go away, and IBM will exist for as long as the governments need to control their citizens, but it is very likely that IBM will loose its place in the linux world the same way it lost the PC and PC operating system markets. And opt-out telemetry in Fedora is just a confirmation of a complete disregard of everyone's right to privacy and to a complete control over their personal data.
22 • Fedora Telemetry vs. Privacy (by Cubehead on 2023-07-13 14:12:49 GMT from Netherlands)
I definitely am not against the "submit telemetry data switch" in Fedora—without collecting some reliable telemetry data, it is nowadays impossible to develop a reliable product. There is some new HW product almost every day, and one cannot rely on users to be willing to send bug reports, and even less that they are even capable of doing it—even less if it then needs some bug-report account somewhere. Check out the Steam forums to better understand what I mean. "I can't interact with objects (because I skipped the literally very first thing I saw—screen setup)." ;)
Such collecting of telemetry data might have worked in the case of Debian, but Debian and Fedora users are two completely different worlds and mindsets. Many servers across the world run on Debian, and probably the majority of those who sent telemetry data were some Debian admins who have an interest in improved reliability. Fedora is not used as a server platform, and "privacy-aware Joe average," who doesn't understand how the stuff works, won't bother helping the product's development.
It is also important to understand that collecting the telemetry data isn't an attack on your privacy—you lost your privacy that moment when you connected to the internet. Namely, at that moment when you start installing your OS and you have an internet connection, one could start logging server calls, and on each update or software install one would get more data; you'd be again connecting the same repositories, and at the end, if those calls are connected together, one could make an exact profile of each single PC if one only wanted to—they could track you until your entrance doors. What they can't see is that out of 1 million users, gnome-shell crashed 700'000 times on startup, and that's the exact point of telemetry.
This is how the standard setup routine works in Fedora:
https://ibb.co/qpmCCqY
After the OS installation is finished and upon reboot, the user gets the following 8 screens to read, answer, or enter the data. One switch more wouldn't make the day.
23 • Wow (by Dan on 2023-07-13 21:34:16 GMT from Israel)
@19
"word salad that amounts to nothing"
Could you please do what I've done (and still do, right here right now)? That is, back up your argument with details, instead of putting a shallow response like a "word salad"? Take claims I wrote and answer them directly instead of labeling them without backing up with reasoning and details. There's no use in labeling arguments without directly addressing what's brought up in them (or not brought up, in your case). You've got to try a bit harder to be convincing.
"I've refuted Fedora's claim that "opt-in metrics are not very useful" with solid evidence…"
Except our argument here wasn't about that. Whether opt-in schemes are good or useful is completely irrelevant. Reminder: We were comparing opt-in telemetry schemes to opt-out, we weren't discussing whether opt-in schemes are good by themselves. Objectively, opt-out is better than opt-in. Again, perhaps you have limited comprehension skills, so I'll say it again: Opt-out is proven to be *at least* as good as opt-in schemes of telemetry in practice, and objectively it's *always the better choice* because it unlocks the potential for better statistics.
----------------
@20
"…I use both Fedora and Debian. When I boot Fedora I get a strong urge to share all my data. When I boot Debian, I suddenly dear [sic] for my privacy…"
…
"I use both Fedora and Debian"
Seriously? Seriously?? The mindsets of Debian and Fedora users are different because the userbase is different. This should have been obvious. Are you really that stupid to misunderstand the argument as if I was speaking about an intersection of the Debian and Fedora userbases together, implying that switching operating systems causes them to mentally think differently? What the hell dude? Let's see what my first mentioning of this was:
@15 "…Second, Debian and Fedora might have users with completely different mindsets…"
Did you really read this and think I was talking about users who use both Debian and Fedora and have different mindsets for each? Either you're stupid af or you're a next-level troll.
@22 "…but Debian and Fedora users are two completely different worlds and mindsets…"
At least this commenter gets it.
Number of Comments: 23
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| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
Maui Linux
Maui Linux was a desktop Linux distribution based on KDE neon and featuring KDE's Plasma desktop. It was created in August 2016 as a continuation of Netrunner's Kubuntu-based "Desktop" edition, but it was re-based on KDE neon which was a more cutting-edge project with frequent updates and a semi-rolling release model. Besides providing a KDE-centric distribution with many popular KDE packages included on the live DVD, the project also focuses on integrating non-KDE software, such as Firefox, Thunderbird or VLC with the underlying infrastructure of the Plasma desktop.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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