 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1033, 21 August 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 34th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
When you're on the go, it isn't always convenient to travel with a computer. Sometimes you arrive at a destination and discover you really could benefit from using your preferred Linux distribution, however you don't have your laptop with you. For situations like these, it's helpful to have a thumb drive with a desktop Linux distribution queued up and ready to go, then any handy computer is a reboot away from running the operating system you need. This week we begin with a look at MiniOS, a Debian-based distribution that is intended to be run live. Read on to learn more about MiniOS and the experience it provides. In our Questions and Answers column we explore system user accounts, why they exist, and whether they can be removed. How many user accounts, in total, are on your main desktop system? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we provide an update on what all of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones are doing now that Red Hat is no longer freely providing source packages for its distribution and we share improvements coming to Haiku. We're also thrilled to wish the Debian project a happy 30th anniversary! Then we're pleased to share a summary of last week's releases and the torrent we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
MiniOS 20230606
One of the more recent additions to the DistroWatch waiting list is the MiniOS distribution. Which has actually been around for a while, in one form or another. The project's website describes the MiniOS distribution as follows:
MiniOS is a lightweight and fast Linux distribution designed for installation on a USB drive. The MiniOS project was launched in 2009 as a Linux distribution for USB drives based on Mandriva Linux. However, in 2013 it was suspended due to the liquidation of Mandriva. The modern version of MiniOS has been released since 2020 and is based on Debian - one of the most popular and stable distributions.
The distribution's website mentions MiniOS is designed to be run from a USB thumb drive without being installed to local storage. In other words, it's a portable distribution for people on the move. There are six editions of MiniOS, ranging in size:
- Flux - A compact version with Fluxbox window manager, 295MB in size.
- Minimum - Based on a previous version of Debian. Compressed with xz to take up less space. The ISO is 305MB.
- Standard - A balanced edition with the Xfce desktop and compressed with zstd for faster performance. The ISO is 515MB.
- Maximum - Offers a full desktop environment plus media player, office suite, virtualization tools, and web browser. 685MB in size.
- Ultra - An all in one edition with many applications installed. 1.3GB in size.
- Puzzle - The system-constructor, in its basic version, is an analogue of the Standard version with the possibility of expanding the system to Ultra functionality. This edition ranges in size from 460MB to 1.5GB.
The first three editions listed above offer both 32-bit and 64-bit builds while the Maximum and Ultra editions are 64-bit only.
I downloaded the current release of the Standard edition which is based on Debian 11 "Bullseye". At the time of writing there doesn't appear to be a version of MiniOS based on Debian 12 "Bookworm" yet.
Early impressions
Booting the MiniOS media brings up a menu offering to start the distribution in Persistent storage or Static mode. There is also an option to load MiniOS into RAM rather than run it from the thumb drive.
MiniOS boots to the Xfce desktop. The version of Xfce is 4.16, a major release behind 4.18 which is what most distributions use these days. The differences in this older version Xfce are small, but there are a few elements which feel outdated now and some features appear to be missing. Still, the Xfce desktop is quite responsive and the environment feels light and snappy.
MiniOS 20230606 -- Exploring the Xfce desktop and its application menu
(full image size: 467kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Xfce places a desktop panel across the bottom of the screen. Icons are placed on the desktop which will open the Thunar file manager. While the panel itself is dark, most of the distribution uses a lighter theme.
Included software
MiniOS ships with Firefox 102 ESR, the Thunar file manager, and a task manager. There is an entry for an e-mail client in the application menu, but none is installed on the Standard edition. The Mousepad text editor is included along with an image viewer and a remote desktop client.
MiniOS 20230606 -- Exploring the settings panel and running Firefox
(full image size: 491kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
These tools are available alongside the Xfce settings manager, which is a great all-in-one panel for handling desktop settings. The usual GNU command line tools are installed for us along with their manual pages. In the background we find the systemd init software and version 5.10 of the Linux kernel.
Typically distributions which focus on running live, from a thumb drive, place a focus on providing system administration tool. These may be disk partitioning tools, data rescue utilities, or network troubleshooting applications. MiniOS doesn't include any of these in its standard edition. This distribution appears to be geared toward being a portable desktop distribution rather than a collection of sysadmin utilities.
Hardware
MiniOS ran well in the VirtualBox environment I provided for it. The distribution was fast, stable, and presented no problems when I wanted to resize the desktop, play audio, or browse the web. MiniOS could boot whether I had VirtualBox set up to run in Legacy BIOS or UEFI mode. However, the distribution completely failed to boot on my laptop, simply presenting me with a GRUB boot loader prompt.
When running in VirtualBox and signed into the Xfce desktop, the distribution consumed about 420MB of RAM. This was when MiniOS was running from the thumb drive; running the whole distribution from RAM would take more memory.
Configuration
One of the features of MiniOS which intrigued me was the ideal of setting up configuration options which would help create modules and customize the operating system. The project's website explains:
MiniOS differs from most classic flash distributions in that some parameters can be set before boot in a fairly simple configuration file minios/minios.conf, which minimizes the amount of work required when creating your own modules to create embedded systems. Optionally, some of the parameters can be set in the boot parameters.
Details on the configuration file and the options it offers can be found in the MiniOS documentation. This documentation is a little vague on the location of the configuration file, which is called minios.conf. The documentation mentions a copy of the file being placed in /etc/minios, but not where the original file comes from.
There is no minios.conf file in the home directory or in the root directory of the live session. I eventually discovered the original configuration file is stored in the top level of the ISO file. It looks as though this file is copied into the live system's /etc/minios/ directory when the operating system boots.
MiniOS 20230606 -- Checking the settings in the configuration file
(full image size: 456kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Changing this file isn't immediately straight forward. ISO files are set up to be read-only archives by default and even writing the MiniOS image to a thumb drive retains this read-only nature. This means we need to dig a bit and possibly create a new ISO image to set up a new minios.conf file. There is probably an easier way to do this through the distribution's tools, but I didn't find any clear documentation for dealing with minor configuration changes. The documentation does hint that, "On first boot, it is copied to the /etc/minios folder, then the /etc/minios/minios.conf file is automatically monitored and, when changes are made, overwrites the configuration file on the flash drive, if it is writable." However, I tried this approach and the changes didn't survive a reboot.
When we do edit the minios.conf file, it gives us a chance to customize which services are run, our hostname, and login credentials along with a few other options.
Conclusions
MiniOS seems to do what it sets out to accomplish, being a live desktop distribution with a variety of editions in different sizes. It provides a portable, desktop flavour of Debian which can be quite minimal or fairly robust. While I found MiniOS wasn't able to boot on my laptop, it did a fine job in a virtual machine and offered a smooth experience with no surprises. With this in mind, it's tempting to declare "mission accomplished" and give MiniOS a gold star.
On the other hand, MiniOS's website says the project has been around for over a decade (in one form or another) and, to date, there is very little in the way of useful documentation or infrastructure. There is almost no documentation on the distribution's concept of modules or setting up a configuration file. There is very little in terms of explaining what these optional modules are or why we would want to use them compared to other package/service formats. The discussion forum is almost empty, which feels weird for a project claiming over a decade of experience.
The current release (at the time of writing) is still based on Debian 11 which means the most up to date software in MiniOS is about three years old. This might not be a problem, exactly, but it does make the distribution look dated compared to some other live desktop distributions.
None of these concerns I mentioned is a critical problem, the distribution still accomplishes its core goal. However, it feels like there are some pieces missing - user support, documentation, newer hardware support - which could make running the distribution go from merely usable to a powerful, customized experience.
I'd also like to acknowledge that it seems the project quietly publishes new ISO files semi-regularly. There have been a few updates in the week I've been writing this overview of the project. So it looks like development is quite active. It's not always clear if the new snapshots are offering complete new versions of the distribution or minor fixes as there do not appear to be any release notes. However, I am hoping this activity indicates there were be more improvements and refreshed documentation in the future.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
How Red Hat clones are responding to the company's source code distribution changes, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 years old
A lot has been going on over the past few months in the communities of clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. These clones, most of them made available to the public free of charge, recently had to deal with Red Hat changing the way it distributes source code and to whom. Since then a lot has happened, with various organizations scrambling to find solutions or workarounds to losing access to Red Hat's source code in the middle of a release cycle. It can be challenging to keep up with all the developments and the solutions each clone is trying. FOSS Force has a summary of what has happened so far and what the major clones are doing to stay running and compatible with Red Hat's distribution. "I'd been covering this story since before there was an AlmaLinux. Actually, longer than that. I'd been covering this story since CentOS, as a downstream version of RHEL, seemed to have a long future. I had been covering this story since the days when CentOS's existence was proof that Red Hat understood that the vision that gave birth to free software, FOSS, and open-source was about much more than computer software, but was born out of a cultural awakening that transcended the brief revolutionary renaissance that was the 1960s, an awakening that went all the way back to the mystery schools that were still around at the end of the dark ages to protect knowledge from the coming inquisition."
* * * * *
The Haiku team published their monthly newsletter for July and one of the key points mentioned concerns application performance, particularly when running WINE. An overhaul of some code and an implementation of BSD's kqueue() functionality has addressed the concern. "Many years ago, hamishm wrote a partial implementation of such an API, but it was not very well tested, and also Haiku-specific. Last month, waddlesplash dusted off the old patches, reworked them around the kernel refactors that have occurred since then, cleaned them up, and implemented the BSD kqueue() API on top of them. This then required multiple rounds of testing (mostly against the testsuite of libuv, the event-handling backend for node.js and other projects) and rewrites, until the final result was sufficiently robust to be merged (and the implementation, by that point, differed greatly from hamishm's original patches.)
The new API provides only a subset of BSD kqueue: it only supports EVFILT_READ, EVFILT_WRITE, and EVFILT_PROC. There are some other limitations, too (for example, the amount of data readable or writable is not generally returned in the data field.) However, it is already sufficient for libuv, .NET, WINE, and a number of other projects that use like APIs.
(This also crossed off a few items that had been on waddlesplash's personal to-do list for multiple years, and had been requested by kallisti5 and others working on porting Rust applications.)"
* * * * *
The Debian project is one of the world's oldest surviving distributions. It is also one of the largest projects, with around a thousand active developers. Debian is not only a popular distribution on its own, especially in the server market, it is also the basis for many of the world's most commonly used distributions, such as Ubuntu. This week Debian turned 30 years old. "Over 30 years ago the late Ian Murdock wrote to the comp.os.linux.development newsgroup about the completion of a brand-new Linux release which he named 'The Debian Linux Release'.
He built the release by hand, from scratch, so to speak. Ian laid out guidelines for how this new release would work, what approach the release would take regarding its size, manner of upgrades, installation procedures; and with great care of consideration for users without Internet connection.
Unaware that he had sparked a movement in the fledgling F/OSS community, Ian worked on and continued to work on Debian. The release, now aided by volunteers from the newsgroup and around the world, grew and continues to grow as one of the largest and oldest free operating systems that still exist today." Happy birthday, Debian!
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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) |
Removing system user accounts
Kicking-out-unwelcome-guests asks: Can I delete default users I don't use? Accounts like mail, games, news, nobody?
DistroWatch answers: Almost all Linux distributions (and other members of the Unix family) ship with a handful of default accounts. These accounts are sometimes called service accounts or system accounts. You can see a list of all user accounts on the distribution by looking in the /etc/passwd text file. The file usually begins with the user root, which is the administrator, and typically ends with regular user accounts that people use to sign in.
In between the root user and accounts created after installation there will often be anywhere from half a dozen to about 40 accounts with names such as daemon, games, man, lp, and mail. We cannot sign into these accounts, they exist to own files and run background services.
Typically when a utility or service wants to run in the background or needs to share resources, it will be run with its own special user account. This makes it easier to set up file permissions so that services can access specific files or resources. Giving services their own dedicated user account also means background tasks and network services do not need to run as the administrator where they would have too much power over the system.
In short, these system accounts make it easier to share data, maintain good file permissions, and run background services without granting them too much power. The special accounts have limited access (compared to the root user) and save us from running background tasks as our own user.
These accounts are typically created by packages installed on the system. For example, the PulseAudio package might add a user called pulse and the OpenSSH service package may add a user called sshd. Typically these service accounts will be removed when their corresponding package is deleted from the system.
Some people may look at the list of a few dozen service accounts and wonder if they are really needed or if it might be more secure to clean them off the system. Typically if the accounts are there it means a package has added them and removing the account may break the functionality of the corresponding package. As for the security risk, service accounts almost always have their login shell (the last field in the /etc/passwd file) set to be "nologin" or "/usr/sbin/nologin". This means people attempting to access your computer cannot sign into these accounts. Attempts to sign in locally or remotely will be denied. The account exists to perform specific tasks, but cannot be accessed by people or scripts attempting to break into the operating system.
In short, it is not a good idea to remove these accounts from your system. They don't do any harm, usually perform important background tasks, and cannot be used by attackers to login. It's best to leave them alone.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Devuan GNU+Linux 5.0.0
Devuan GNU+Linux is a Linux distribution forked from Debian in 2015. The project's primary goal is to provide a variant of Debian without the complexities and dependencies of systemd. The project's latest release is Devuan 5.0.0 "Daedalus". The release notes share highlights of the new version. "xserver-xorg-core now uses libseat1 to control rootless startx and access to input and video devices - this has several advantages, the most significant being that it removes the dbus dependency from xserver-xorg-core; libseat1 can use either seatd or elogind as a backend; if you need to override the default choice (autodiscovery), use the LIBSEAT_BACKEND environment variable; if you are using seatd as the backend, ensure the user is a member of the video group - this is only relevant to running startx as a user, X.Org run as root by a display manager is unaffected; users can now enjoy a Wayland desktop without elogind by installing libpam-ck-connector, sway and seatd; ensure the relevant user is a member of the 'video' group and run Sway from the terminal."
siduction 2023.1.0
Ferdinand Thommes has announced the release of siduction 2023.1.0, the new stable version of the project's distribution based on Debian "Sid" (the "unstable" branch) and featuring a choice of KDE Plasma, LXQt and Xfce desktops: "The siduction team is very proud to present an unscheduled release for a special occasion. Debian, whose unstable branch some of us have been following for over 20 years, celebrates its 30th birthday on 2023-08-16 and we think that is worthy of all honor. Debian is the second oldest distribution after Slackware, and is solely supported by the people involved, without a company standing in the background or someone at the top deciding where things go. Debian is considered the 'universal operating system' because of the many architectures supported to this day and the stability of their releases is legendary. The flavours we offer for siduction 2023.1.0 are KDE Plasma 5.27.7.1, LXQt 1.3.0, Xfce 4.18, X.Org and noX. GNOME, MATE and Cinnamon did not make it again this time because there is no maintainer within siduction for them." Here are the complete release notes.
siduction 2023.1.0 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 5.1MB, resolution: 2880x1800 pixels)
* * * * *
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: 2,899
- Total data uploaded: 43.5TB
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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) |
How many user accounts are on your desktop system?
In this week's Questions and Answers article we talked about user accounts on a Linux system and how some accounts are important for running background services. How many user accounts, in total, are on your distribution?
You can get a quick headcount by running the following command on your distribution:
wc -l /etc/passwd
You can see the results of our previous poll on arranging new windows on the desktop in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How many user accounts are on your system?
| 1-10: | 852 (62%) |
| 11-20: | 19 (1%) |
| 21-30: | 36 (3%) |
| 31-40: | 198 (14%) |
| 41-50: | 186 (14%) |
| 51-60: | 50 (4%) |
| 61-70: | 6 (0%) |
| 71-100: | 5 (0%) |
| 100+: | 19 (1%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 28 August 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 • Live distributions (by Bobbie Sellers on 2023-08-21 04:14:23 GMT from United States)
Well MiniOS might be nice but if you are going to need such a portable OS you have
two other prominent ones, EasyOS and Knoppix. Both have a lot of tools. Knoppix
will still boot on 32-bit systems and I chose Knoppix 9.1 to test the capabilities of
two other computer. I bought a Dell Precision 7730 17.3-in Laptop with a 6 core i7
refurbished to like new condition and I reduced the Windows 10 on it as much as
possible then created partitions, UEFI/GDP, and installed my favorite Linux distro
but it failed to boot. Last night I updated that on one of the machine a E7450 which I
had messed up and did very little work on it this morning to create some needed
bookmarks. Then I plugged it into the 7730 and verified that my bookmarks worked
and that the camera was functional. I hope I do not have to use the Knoppix for
this for long but I have a LUG meeting on jit.se coming up so I needed to be sure
that I had a working machine. This one look great right now but it suffers from
shaky video and I have not been able to get the Audio working in some time.
That is why I bought a used Refurbished device though a major online retail
shop.
But such distributions as Knoppix and EasyOS can be extremely useful when
problems arise. I don't know about MiniOS but if it can be configured with
persistent memory on the Flash Drive it can join the ranks. Knoppix
is also based on Debian by the way and EasyOS has containers.
bliss - Dell E6540- PCLinux 2023.07- Linux 6.4.11- KDE/Plasma 5.27.7
2 • logins (by logmeout on 2023-08-21 04:30:04 GMT from Singapore)
logins and passwords are the oldest method of security on a computer. As such they have been thoroughly worked-over by hackers for decades. To the point where it seems trivial for some hackers to obtain login credentials. So 2factor authentication was required to improve security. But now that's not considered secure enough anymore, and we need an expensive security key with either 2fa or multifactor authentication.
Isn't it time that the login-password system was completely redesigned? What about an option to have a "nologin" set for remote sign-ins, while keeping local sign-ins functional? Or what about a mini-login-VM, that's isolated from the rest of the system and network?
3 • logins @2 (by BlsckCode on 2023-08-21 04:45:48 GMT from Italy)
Check allowedisers for ssh...
4 • logins (by BlackCodec on 2023-08-21 04:47:10 GMT from Italy)
Sorry @2 I have some problema with keyboard, check AllowedUsers in sshd_config
5 • How many user accounts ? (by eb on 2023-08-21 07:41:29 GMT from France)
Only 2 physical users on my Slackware (without desktop),
but when I run 'wc -l /etc/passwd' the result is 40 !
I answered 2 to the poll : was I right ?
6 • @2 passwords (by Jeffrey on 2023-08-21 09:29:44 GMT from Czechia)
@2 Nothing in general is trivial about obtaining passwords, unless they are easy to guess and/or they are handled carelessly -- which is *not* the password's fault. (And by the way, "criminal" ain't spelled "hacker". Get your nomenclature straight.) Long, random, unique passwords stored in an offline, encrypted password manager are safe for most uses. (Master passwords/passphrases can be stored "in your head" or on password cards.) Please don't spread misinformation.
7 • User accounts (by James on 2023-08-21 09:49:53 GMT from United States)
I am the only one that uses my laptop, but always have 2 user accounts, both with sudo privileges. I almost never use the second account unless I have problems with the first account I that I need the second account to fix the first account. That has rarely happened to me, but has been a life saver a couple of times early in my Linux life when I was more prone to stupid mistakes.
8 • Knoppix? (by e bye on 2023-08-21 10:36:10 GMT from Italy)
@1 I'd like to know Knoppix is an option, I've used that as a live distro lots and lots of times... Until it was alive and fresh. If DW states that as Dormant, there's very good reason for that.
P.S.: I presently use Debian Live, it's nice, but it would be nicer if only I could get a weekly release just as for testing.
9 • puzzle me this; who is 'nobody?' (by tom joad on 2023-08-21 14:22:32 GMT from Austria)
I am using Mint. I ran Jesse's command which gave me a result of 50!!!! Only three are mine. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot!?!?!?!? One is 'nobody.'
Who is 'nobody?"
I have long known 'nobody' is there...WHY??????
Tell me who is 'nobody' and what does *he* or *she* do on my laptop that is important?
And don't tell me Linux has its 'own' pronouns!!!!!!!! Also, don't tell me 'nobody' is on First Base!!!!!
10 • Number of users (by Denis on 2023-08-21 18:45:53 GMT from Canada)
You should count your users with something like this.
I see no reason to count "system" users...
sudo cat /etc/shadow | grep -v "[!\*]" | wc -l
This should only count users that can login.
My 2 cents...
11 • Nobody's somebody with no body (by Friar Tux on 2023-08-21 19:31:07 GMT from Canada)
@9 (Tom) I think it's a case of, "Who's using that account?" "Nobody." I haven't checked my Mint/Cinnamon, because, well, I really don't care, though I think "Kicking-out-unwelcome-guests" in Q+A has a legitimate question if he has a lot of folks with accounts on the machine. I think the absolute simplest way would be the list on the log in screen when you first log on, or the Account Details screen in Settings. (At least in Mint/Cinnamon.)
Re: minios... I think it would be interesting if it used, instead of XFCE, the desktop app called Eagle Mode. This lets you zoom into the file you want. It took me about a day to get used to but it's quite a bit of fun. There's this little "universe" and you simply zoom into what ever you want. If it could be turned into a WM it could really reduce the OS size. (I'm guessing here.)
12 • logins (by logmeout on 2023-08-22 07:23:27 GMT from Singapore)
@6 " Nothing in general is trivial about obtaining passwords."
Some countries in WWII thought their encrypted messages were foolproof, but early computers were able to break them.
Early Wireless developers thought that WEP password encryption was satisfactory, but now it's considered easily cracked. That was replaced with WPA - but now that's considered too week. The latest iteration is WPA2 - but how long will that last?
And quantum computers are expected to be able to break today's encryption methods - rendering them useless. How useful will the login-password system be then?
@6 "(And by the way, "criminal" ain't spelled "hacker". Get your nomenclature straight.)...Please don't spread misinformation. "
Please don't be sanctimonious, even the media uses the term "hacker" for ppl who break into computer systems.
There are many tricks to breaking into systems: keyloggers, screengrabbers, CCTV hacks to overlook workstations, hacks via smartphones, etc. Today, there's even an ex-convicted hacker-cracker who demonstrates that he can hack into any wireless system using a (readily available) hacking device and an antenna.
Computer security is a moving target, and it needs to improve with the times. And the login-password system could do with some clever reworking. One can't remain an old-school hacker die-hard forever.
13 • Mini OS checksum?? (by Gary on 2023-08-22 13:40:47 GMT from Canada)
re: MiniOS
I was looking for checksums to verify against their .iso to download. I found none!
I looked here: https://minios.dev/en/#downloads
I looked here: https://github.com/minios-linux/minios-live/releases/tag/v3.2
I shrug and back away!!
14 • Making changes to minios.conf in MiniOS Linux when running from ISO (by crims0n on 2023-08-22 08:39:28 GMT from Russia)
In MiniOS it is possible to change the contents of the ISO with the minios-geniso command. It is necessary to make changes in /etc/minios/minios.conf and then run the command without parameters, it will create ISO with changed data.
15 • @12 - hackers (by Andy Prough on 2023-08-22 20:23:58 GMT from United States)
>"Please don't be sanctimonious, even the media uses the term "hacker" for ppl who break into computer systems."
The media is very very wrong to do that, we should not be the ones who are forwarding their terrible lies which have resulted in disasters like the vilification and untimely death of Aaron Swartz. Every time we try out a new config option or write a small bash script we are hacking. GNU/Linux usage is all about hacking, and we should be holding it up as something for young people to aspire to.
16 • Off Topic: Grub's os-prober disabled since 2021 in Ubuntu? (by Ennio on 2023-08-23 06:32:16 GMT from Netherlands)
Reading Bodhi's release notes it seems that, following Ubuntu security settings, Grub no longer offers a multiboot menu out of security concerns. Julian Andres Klode at Canonical talks about this in "os-prober is disabled in grub 2.06 and where to go from here". I didn't know - and would not have imagined - because my limited hopping here and there didn't touch Ubuntu-derived distros. But, darn!, how could I miss such a news?
Did anybody stumble on that already?
PS Also Debian [unstable] did the trick???? It seems so... Need to start hopping more!
17 • @16 (by Cheker on 2023-08-23 10:45:02 GMT from Portugal)
Yes, several distros switched the prober off by default, you can just turn it on again though.
In theory it can be used to execute malware when it goes looking for other OS', but I think the odds of that happening compared to the multi-boot systems you're gonna temporarily break... the whole thing was a little silly in my opinion
18 • Hackers/Criminals (by Otis on 2023-08-23 18:17:02 GMT from United States)
@15 I see the "hackers" term, as used by news media, similar to when they say whatever tool may have been used to either break in to a target (building, car, etc) or to rescue someone from such a place. Hacking = Tool(s)
Criminally hacking is its own category, similar to criminal damage via hammer or crowbar to burgle a location, etc.
19 • @ 16 • Off Topic: Grub's os-prober disabled (by lincoln on 2023-08-23 19:36:19 GMT from Brazil)
Thank you very much, now I have a probable cause of why, in the update to Devuan5, the multiboot menu of grub only shows the Devuan option.
20 • 16 OT grub's os-prober (by jon on 2023-08-24 02:15:36 GMT from United States)
+1 Thank you Ennio.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2021-December/041771.html
21 • How many user accounts are on my desktop system? (by nicetoknow on 2023-08-24 20:16:11 GMT from Germany)
In total, 23 user accounts are on my distribution - Arch Linux, the arch way
22 • Counting user accounts (by pepa65 on 2023-08-25 00:35:34 GMT from Thailand)
People who answered 1-10 (63% as of now) obviously didn't understand the idea of the question and didn't follow the instructions to do `wc -l /etc/passwd`... Oh well.
Number of Comments: 22
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| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
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| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
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| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
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| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
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| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
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| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
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| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
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| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
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| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
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