 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1039, 2 October 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Slackware Linux distribution is well known for its rock solid, conservative, dependable approach to computing. Both Slackware and its children have reputations for dependability. But what happens if a distribution is run as a rolling release platform with Slackware as its base? This week Jesse Smith takes Zenwalk GNU Linux (a desktop-focused, Slackware-based distribution) for a test drive and reports on the experience. Read on to learn about some of the strengths and problems with Zenwalk's rolling Current branch. In our News section we report on Peppermint OS test driving a Mini edition while the Raspberry Pi is getting an upgrade later this month. Plus System76 is adding new features to its COSMIC desktop, including a new approach for switching between application windows. We also report on a security incident which is affecting Canonical's Snap repository. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about how to find the total length of a collection of media files. We dive into a few approaches, including a scripted command line solution. Last week we reported the Reiser filesystem is gradually being phased out of the Linux kernel and a few people commented they still use ReiserFS. Do any of your computers still store files on ReiserFS? Let us know about it in the week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Zenwalk GNU Linux Current-230909
Around a year and a half ago I reviewed Zenwalk GNU Linux 15.0. It was a mixed experience which improved on my experience with vanilla Slackware 15.0 in some ways while also introducing some fresh problems.
Near the start of September the Zenwalk project published new install media for the distribution's Current branch. The Current branch offers a rolling/development release and an alternative to the ultra-conservative Stable branch which usually only receives significant updates once every few years. The latest snapshot for the Current branch is 1.4GB in size (Zenwalk 15.0 was 1.2GB) for the x86_64 CPU architecture. There is just one edition that offers a system installer and a text-based console environment. There is no live desktop available to test the distribution against our hardware before attempting to install it.
Installing
As far as I could tell, Zenwalk's menu-based installer hasn't changed since version 15.0. Once the distribution boots we're asked to set up disk partitions using one of two console-based partition managers. Then we run the setup command and are guided through assigning mount points, picking a keyboard layout, and making up a username and password. We're also asked which background services (such as cron, CUPS, and OpenSSH) we want to run.
The installer has a classic 1990s look to it, works quickly, and finished its work successfully. When it had completed setting up the distribution I rebooted and was presented with a graphical login screen. From there I could sign into the Xfce desktop. This was a pleasant step forward from my experience with Zenwalk 15.0. At the time, the distribution had been unable to start a graphical session, either a session manager or a desktop environment. Having the graphical environment work out of the box was a welcome treat.
Early impressions
I found the login screen used a wallpaper which was mostly black and black text. This makes it hard to see the labels on the text boxes for the username and password.
Zenwalk GNU Linux Current 230909 -- The Xfce desktop and application menu
(full image size: 707kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The first time I logged into my account, the Xfce desktop appeared. It uses a dark theme with dark wallpaper. A panel is placed down the left side of the screen with quick-launch icons and the application menu. Another panel sits at the top of the screen, holding a clock and the system tray. Immediately a terminal window opened and announced (mostly in red text) it wanted to download a series of packages which were listed. No context was given for this action and I guessed these might be software updates, though the prompt is not particularly clear. The options we are given are "run Forest" and "abort". It feels odd to use a 25 year old movie reference as a package manager response, but I took it. The system appeared to fetch a few packages and then the terminal window closed.
Included software
The distribution ships with Firefox, some media applications, and the suite of Xfce settings modules. There are common tools like a text editor, and virtual terminal. In the background we find the GNU command line tools. The SysV init software is installed and the snapshot of Zenwalk I was running shipped with version 6.1.52 of the Linux kernel.
I found the sudo program for running administrative commands was installed, but our first user is not allowed to use it by default. We can either use the su command to switch to the administrator account or edit the sudo configuration file to grant our user admin access.
Last year when I used Zenwalk 15.0 I found the Samba service, when enabled at install time, would fail to start. This appeared to happen due to a missing configuration file. I found Samba still failed to start on the latest snapshot of Zenwalk and it was discouraging to see this behaviour persists.
Hardware
A fresh install of Zenwalk consumed about 7.2GB of my hard drive and, when signed into the Xfce desktop, took up about 450MB of RAM. This is about average for a Linux distribution running an Xfce session. The desktop's performance was quite good, above average, with the windows and menus responding quickly.
Zenwalk worked alright with my hardware, though it didn't integrate well with VirtualBox. The distribution didn't resize my desktop to match the VirtualBox window.
Software management
Package management on Zenwalk uses the slackpkg package manager. Trying to use the package manager notifies us that we first need to select a mirror from a configuration file. This hasn't changed from my experience with Zenwalk 15.0, but it did make me wonder how the distribution appeared to fetched packages at the start of my trial since I had not yet selected a mirror at that time.
At any rate, I selected a nearby mirror from the list and tried to run a check for updates. This failed with an error saying the /var/log/packages file was broken and contained duplicate entries. This also happened during my trial with 15.0 and it concerns me that the package manager is effectively broken right from the start. The package manager then asks us if we want to fix the issue and remove duplicate packages or ignore the error. Taking the Ignore option simply causes the error about duplicate packages to be repeated and slackpkg refuses to proceed.
When I took the option to remove the duplicate packages I was shown a text menu with a list of the duplicated packages and asked which ones I wanted to remove. As with my Zenwalk 15.0 trial, I selected which items I wanted to remove. This seemed to work and slackpkg would then allow me to fetch new packages to install. So far, this was all going just as it had with my previous review.
Where my experience with the latest snapshot varied came next, when I asked slackpkg to check for fresh updates. I didn't expect any since I'd been prompted to download fresh packages when I signed in. However, I was presented with at least a few hundred updates. In fact, it looked as though, based on the lengthy alphabetical list, that every package (or nearly every package) on the system was awaiting an update. It was difficult to verify this as slackpkg doesn't display a total count of the items it will update.
Hundreds of packages were downloaded and then the process came to a halt, reporting slackpkg was one of the items being updated. This caused the process to abort with a message saying we should run the update process over again. I did this, running what I assumed was an updated version of slackpkg, and again accepting the lengthy list of updates.
Zenwalk GNU Linux Current 230909 -- The package manager failing after glibc is removed
(full image size: 740kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The update process failed a few minutes later with a report helper programs could not be run because the glibc library could not be found. This was concerning as glibc is the system's C library and, without it being recognized, virtually no programs (command line or desktop) will run. I quickly confirmed no programs could launch, each of them giving link errors about not being able to find the C library.
Scrolling back through the slackpkg status messages it looks like what happened is the package manager removed an old version of the system's C library and then, because the library no longer existed, slackpkg was unable to install a new version as none of the helper programs (like the copy and move commands) could launch.
This problem did not happen during my trial with Zenwalk 15.0. It was disappointing to run into this error with the snapshot for a few reasons. The obvious, immediate issue, was that my system was entirely broken at this point, unable to even shutdown or boot. A more long-term concern is that it appears any major update to the C library of this rolling release branch of Zenwalk can destroy the system as the package manager isn't equipped to handle upgrading this core package.
Conclusions
I had planned to go into this experience with the Zenwalk rolling snapshot to take just a quick glance at the distribution, mostly to compare it to the 15.0 release. In particular, I was wondering if the bugs (such as the display issues and Samba service) had been addressed in the past year and a half.
At first, it looked promising. The video display issues I'd had with 15.0 were no longer there and the desktop session was responsive. The installer doesn't look as though it has changed, but it feels a little faster than before.
Beyond that point though, I mostly encountered disappointment. There are some minor issues such as the Samba service still not working out of the box and VirtualBox integration not being in place. The much larger issue (or issues) though are with the package manager. It doesn't work out of the box, requiring the user to manually select a mirror. Most distributions do this automatically - picking a nearby mirror or one at random. After that, the package log is broken fresh out of the box (a problem that existed 18 months ago too) and it is discouraging this hasn't been addressed.
The biggest problem, of course, is the package manager destroying the installation, apparently by wiping out the C library during an update. Completely rendering every application and command line program inoperable during the first update is a major problem and probably the worst error I've encountered in a package manager. This makes it impossible to keep a fresh copy of Zenwalk's Current branch updated and is a critical problem I hope is corrected quickly.
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Visitor supplied rating
Zenwalk GNU Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 3 review(s).
Have you used Zenwalk GNU Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Peppermint tries out new edition, Raspberry Pi gets an upgrade, COSMIC gains new features, security incident in Canonical's Snap repository
The Peppermint OS project is testing a new edition of its distribution. The new branch is called Peppermint Mini and offers two flavours, based on Debian and Devuan. The new Mini edition uses a network installer which is launched from a sub-200MB ISO file. "The mini builds utilize the Debian installer for a net install. You can select from 64/32 bit Debian or Devuan. The ISOs are about 100 - 180MB. These builds are intended for that user who really wants to control how their installs are conducted. If you are familiar with the Debian installer you will be right at home here, but with a Peppermint take. At a point during the install you will be able to select, whether or not you want the Peppermint standard install or you can select from other Desktops available. If you use Devuan you will be able to choose the init system that you prefer (SysV, Runit, or OpenRC)" The new branch is in beta testing with the ISO files available from CodeBerg.
This week Peppermint OS also published new Devuan-based media for the distribution. This version is very similar to the project's recent Debian-based release, but with the option of choosing one of three init implementations: SysV init, Runit, or OpenRC.
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The popular Raspberry Pi single-board computer is getting an upgrade this month. The new device, the Raspberry Pi 5, features a 64-bit ARM processor, wi-fi, Bluetooth, and up to 8GB of RAM. Details on the new Pi specifications and features can be found on the foundation's announcement page. The new device will require a new version of the default operating system: "You will need the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, Bookworm, for your Raspberry Pi 5. Bookworm will launch in mid-October."
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The System76 team is continuing their work to develop a custom desktop environment for Pop!_OS. The new desktop, called COSMIC, has a new way to switch between active windows. "Pop!_OS and COSMIC DE are built to stay out of your way so you can focus on getting things done. With Auto-tiling, new windows arrange themselves automatically on your screen to reduce the hassle. It's important, then, that rearranging tiled windows manually feels as seamless as possible. COSMIC's new window-swapping mode helps facilitate this seamlessness with, as the name suggests, an easy way to swap windows with your keyboard. Pressing and holding Super + X creates a small version of your selected window, signaling that you are now in window swapping mode! While holding Super + X, use your arrow keys to hover this tiny window over the window you'll swap it with. Release the keys, and presto! A swapped window." Other new features are outlined in the company's blog post.
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Canonical has removed a number of Snap packages from its software repository and temporarily blocked new uploads from publishers following a security incident. "On September 28, 2023, the Snap Store team was notified of a potential security incident. A number of snap users reported several recently published and potentially malicious snaps. As a consequence of these reports, the Snap Store team has immediately taken down these snaps, and they can no longer be searched or installed. Furthermore, the Snap Store team has placed a temporary manual review requirement on all new snap registrations, effectively immediately." Details can be found on the Snapcraft forum.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Finding the length of media files
How-long-will-this-take asks: Is there a program on Linux that can calculate the length of a series of video files?
DistroWatch answers: Some desktop media players, such as Rhythmbox and VLC, will calculate the total play duration of the selected library or playlist. This is entirely automated and the play duration is typically displayed in the status bar (in the case of Rhythmbox) or next to the playlist's name (as VLC does). This is probably the easiest approach.
However, if you are using an assortment of media formats or do not have access to a desktop media player, what are the options? When dealing with a single video or audio file we can use the ffmpeg command line program to get the play time of a media file. For example, to find the length of a song called my-song.mp3 we can run the following command:
$ ffmpeg -i my-song.mp3
One of the fields in the information ffmpeg displays will be for the duration of the song. We can tidy up the output to show only the duration of the song track by using the grep and cut commands to filter out everything except the duration of the song. The grep command isolates the line of information containing the word "Duration" and the cut command whittles the information down to just the word "Duration" and length of the track, removing extra data like the bitrate. We can see this in the following example:
$ ffmpeg -i my-song.mp3 2>&1 | grep Duration | cut -f 1 -d ','
Duration: 00:03:37.06
The above example is fine for finding the length of one media file, but what if we want to find the length of multiple media files. This gets a bit tricky. In theory, we could pass multiple files to ffmpeg, each one prefixed by the "-i" flag to indicate it's an input file. Then use grep and cut as we did above to get the combined file lengths. That ends up looking like this:
$ ffmpeg -i my-song.mp3 -i another-song.mp3 2>&1 | grep Duration | cut -f 1 -d ','
Duration: 00:04:01.42
Duration: 00:03:37.06
This is not ideal because we just have a list of each track's duration, not the total length. For that we need another step, probably a program like awk which will accept lines of information and perform calculations on them. I'm not going to dive into all the details, but the following awk command keeps track of the number of seconds of play time in each media file, then outputs the total hours, minutes, and seconds the provided tracks will play:
$ ffmpeg -i my-song.mp3 -i another-song.mp3 2>&1 | grep Duration | cut -f 1 -d ',' | awk -F ':' 'BEGIN {total=0} {total+=$2*3600; total+=$3*60; total+=$4} END {minutes=int(total/60); hours=int(minutes/60); minutes=int(minutes%60); seconds=int(total%60); print hours":"minutes":"seconds}'
0:7:38
This is a messy line, but we could put it in a script to avoid typing it each time and we'd be all set. However, there is one problem which prevents the above solution from scaling up well. Specifically, command lines are limited in length which means there are a limited number of files we can pass to the ffmpeg program at one time. We can give it one or two files to process, but if we try to hand a few dozen tracks to ffmpeg the shell will complain our command is too long. Plus, it's awkward to try to put the "-i" flag in front of each path name; we cannot simply use something like "ffmpeg -i *.mp4" because the "-i" flag needs to go in front of each filename.
How can we work around this limitation? One approach would be to run the ffmpeg command several times, once for each file we want to examine, and dump the duration information for each track into a temporary file. Once the duration information for each track has been put in a file, the awk command can come along and read all of the individual times and calculate a total for us.
The following script, which I call media-duration will accept a list of audio and video files and tell us the total run time for all the files combined.
#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
echo "Please provide at least one media file."
exit 1
fi
tempname=$(mktemp)
while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do
ffmpeg -i "$1" 2>&1 | grep Duration | cut -f 1 -d ',' >> $tempname
shift
done
awk -F ':' 'BEGIN {total=0} {total+=$2*3600; total+=$3*60; total+=$4} END {minutes=int(total/60); hours=int(minutes/60); minutes=int(minutes%60); seconds=int(total%60); print hours":"minutes":"seconds}' < $tempname
rm $tempname
How does this work? The first few lines of the script do some sanity checking to make sure we are trying to get information for at least one media file. Then we run the mktemp command to create a temporary file and store its name in the tempname variable. The pieces are all in place at this point.
The while loop then runs the ffmpeg command for every file we've specified on the command line. The output from ffmpeg is run through our dual grep and cut filter and the duration information is dumped into the temporary file. We then move on to the next file in the list using the shift command.
When we've gathered the duration data for all of the media files, it's then awk's turn. The awk program reads in all of the duration data from the temporary file, adds up the seconds of play time, and displays a total.
The last line of the above script removes the temporary file.
In practise, how does this work? From the user's point of view we can run the script as follows:
$ media-duration *.mp3 *.mp4
3:13:22
In the above example, we find the total run time for every MP3 and MP4 file in the current directory. The script runs for a few seconds, then declares the total run time is 3 hours, 13 minutes, and 22 seconds.
What if we want to get a little more fancy and get the duration of all the video files in a directory tree, including sub-directories? We can use command line substitution for that and use the find command to search all the directories below ours for files. Here we use find to gather a list of MP4 media files and pass them to our media-duration script to get the total run time:
$ media-duration $(find . -type f -iname "*.mp4")
10:52:12
This is one of those situations which highlights how powerful and flexible the Linux command line can be. With a handful of common programs we can string a few commands together to calculate meta data for dozens or hundreds of files and print out the calculated total duration of our media library.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus 5.01
The Porteus development team has announced the release of Porteus 5.01, an updated release of the project's Slackware-based Linux distribution with several popular desktop environments and window managers, available for both x86_64 and i586 architectures: "Porteus 5.01, a bug-fix and security-patch update of 5.0 is now released. Main changes include: Linux kernel 6.5.5; Core is based on Slackware 15.0 plus updates from Slackware-15.0-patches (as of 2023-09-21); eight desktop options to choose from (seven for i586); Perl has been moved to 05-devel; Slackware package managers included - slapt-get and slackpkg (in core) and slpkg (in 05-devel); a simple wrapper for slapt-get - slapt-mod, to produce a module of the package (a revision of getmod by babam); SysVInit static binary updated to 3.07 (and corresponding Slackware package to match); a simple script - convertz, to convert a folder of xz compressed modules to zstd compressed modules; updated the onboard FAQ documents regarding package management; BusyBox in initrd updated to 1.36.1...." The release announcement.
Zephix 7
Robert Spiteri has announced the release of Zephix 7, a major new release from a project that develops a small, modular operating system based on Debian's "stable" branch. Zephix 7 is based on Debian 12 and it is available as a set of pre-built desktop modules with several popular desktop environments: "Zephix 7 was released with major enhancements. Updated base to Debian 12.1; heavily redesigned module creation and manipulation scripts; renamed scripts for better convention; added three new scripts - to create a custom core module, to merge two modules together and to extend swap space when building large modules; added the default behaviour to automatically move the newly created modules to the correct location; removed further unnecessary bloat from the final ISO image, reducing size to 380 MB; removed firmware module and instead included a tool named isenkram (this can be used with USB tethering to install required missing firmware)...." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement.
Zephix 7 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Linux Mint 6 "LMDE"
The Linux Mint team have announced the launch of a new version of the project's Debian-based branch. The new version 6 (codename "Faye") of Linux Mint Debian Edition offers most of the same technology as Linux Mint's main, Ubuntu-based branch, but using Debian "Stable" as the core operating system. "LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for 'Linux Mint Debian Edition'. Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint would be able to continue to deliver the same user experience, and how much work would be involved, if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. LMDE is also one of our development targets, to guarantee the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu. LMDE aims to be as similar as possible to Linux Mint, but without using Ubuntu. The package base is provided by Debian instead. Known issues: to install LMDE on an existing LVM partition you must first remove it from the LVM volumes and groups to which it belongs; in manual partitioning mode, note that the installer will auto-mount all swap partitions, these partitions will also be placed in /etc/fstab in the installed system." The release announcement and release notes offer additional information. Upgrade instructions to assist users migrating from version 5 are also provided.
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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: 2,908
- Total data uploaded: 43.6TB
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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) |
Storing files on ReiserFS
Last week we reported the Reiser filesystem (ReiserFS) is being removed from the Linux kernel. ReiserFS was an early example of a journaling filesystem and adopted by a few distributions as their default filesystem. However, other filesystems have since overshadowed ReiserFS in terms of performance and features and the filesystem is no longer maintained in the Linux kernel.
We are curious if any of our readers still use ReiserFS. If you still use ReiserFS to store files, let us know why you have stuck with it in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on running desktop Linux in the cloud in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you still use ReiserFS?
| Yes - for my OS partition: | 9 (1%) |
| Yes - for my home partition: | 3 (0%) |
| Yes - for another partition: | 15 (1%) |
| Yes - for multiple partitions: | 15 (1%) |
| No: | 1325 (97%) |
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|
| Website News |
Adblock extensions blocking legitimate links to distribution websites
Over the past few weeks we have received a handful of reports from visitors to DistroWatch who have reported pieces of the website, usually tables or rankings of things, like the Summary section of distribution information pages and the user supplied ranking page, are missing or appear incomplete due to hidden entries. This was surprising to us as we hadn't made any changes to how these information pages are displayed.
Some investigation and the kind help of people reporting the issues revealed that, in each case, the information we were trying to display on DistroWatch was getting blocked by browser extensions. Specifically the culprit was usually uBlock or a member of the AdBlock family. This is a bit frustrating because the sections of the site being hidden by these extensions are not areas of the website where we display advertising. There are often a lot of links on the aforementioned pages, but they are legitimate links to distribution websites and related information resources like documentation, not ads or affiliate links.
This makes it difficult for us to provide a fix, because it seems the ad blockers are specifically targeting and blocking links to legitimate Linux websites such as the Debian project, Pop!_OS, and TUXEDO OS. The bug also doesn't appear to affect all users or all ad blocker extensions.
We bring up this issue for two reasons. The first is: if parts of DistroWatch appear hidden or to not be working, then chances are it's a browser extension making a table or group of links invisible. We're unable to fix this as the issue is in the extension running on the visitor's computer, and not something we can control. The only known fix at the moment is to disable the adblocker while on DistroWatch.
Second, we appreciate people letting us know when they have a problem accessing DistroWatch. However, as this is a situation we cannot control, if you discover one of your extensions is limiting access to information on this website, please send a bug report to the developers of the extension. They are probably unaware a recent change is causing their extension to be overzealous. Letting them know which pages no longer display properly will help them make their software better for all of their users, not just DistroWatch visitors.
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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, 9 October 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 • Reiserfs (by What tO Believe on 2023-10-02 01:03:59 GMT from Canada)
You asked if any readers use Reiserfs. After seeing a comparison of file table performance on Phoronix, I switched to Reiser 3 and found better use of disk space, and no need to worry about running out of inodes. The main point of interest was, according to Phoronix data, Reiser had a more graceful data recovery from power failures than other contenders at the time. This was a while ago and just going by memory re the Phoronix results.
Once Hans Reiser was found guilty of murdering his wife and imprisoned,apparently development did not stop, but slowed. Last I recall reading, Reiser4 had issues, and the lone remaining developer was working on version5, and complaining he couldn't get any support.
In addition to the old Phoronix tables (think they were looking at version3 at the time?), there was an excellent reference on Wikipedia about filing systems in general. Clicking on any area will bring up lots of interesting details.
Seem to recall finding that reference to Reiser5 on one of the podcasts you link to, but can't recall which one.
For anyone worried about data integrity and "bit rot", the comments I've seen indicate using BTRFS (which has a checkered history re destroying data), and ZFS (which had licensing issues under Linux, but supposedly resolved under oppenszfs?).
Not clear if IBM's XFS monitors for bit rot.
For the moment, due to unreliable local power utility, have gone back to ext4 and purchased a UPS, and make regular data backups, with data on a separate partition. That way I only have to backup data on a regular basis, while keeping an image of the OS partition.
Speaking of data integrity, now have questions about maybe I should get a better mother board that supports buffered, error-checking memory?
How do large corporations handle the issue of data integrity where a flipped bit in the wrong place can have dire consequences?
Any comments, corrections, and related tips re the above appreciated.
One thing I DO know for certain, my OWN memory "ain't so good" anymore. Finding an old-fashioned pencil and notepad slowly taking over. And my brain does not seem to have sockets to replace failing memory. Sigh.....
2 • length of media files and advertisement on DW (by Guido on 2023-10-02 01:06:06 GMT from Philippines)
I am using rhythmbox 3.4.4 at the moment, it has no status bar any more and will not show the length of all media files. But audio players like audacious, qmmp, deadbeef and others can do it and show the length of the files in a certain folder.
Please a bit lesser advertisement on your website. Then no ad-blockers are needed.
3 • ReiserFS (by Ken Miller on 2023-10-02 02:59:17 GMT from United States)
I was using ReiserFS when Hans went crazy and killed his wife. Many, if not most of us desktop casual users switched soon after. To think Ext3, which was en vogue at that time, IIRC, but things are starting to get a bit fuzzy.
4 • Length of Playlist (by Simon Plaistowe on 2023-10-02 03:47:51 GMT from New Zealand)
For my music collection I use Clementine, which definitely totals up the total length of the playlist. Strawberry is a fork of Clementine, it does the same.
My multimedia player is Celluloid (standard in Linux Mint these days), which doesn't seem to be able to give me the total playing time on a playlist. Same goes for LibreELEC, which I use in the lounge to watch stuff on the big screen. If I ever need a video playlist length I reckon I'll just reach for VLC.
5 • Data integrity (by Michael on 2023-10-02 04:09:26 GMT from Australia)
In the corporate environment, servers will always be purchased with ECC memory, and duplicate power supplies, NICs, fans, local boot drives and whatever else the manufacturer can supply which will provide redundancy.
In the past there would also be duplication of entire servers, but this has generally morphed into server virtualisation where a running virtual server can move seamlessly from one virtual host to another to cater for failure of a host, or to make server manitenance easier.
The environment will also have redundant network infrastructure, fibre intrastructure and power, and large-scale power redundancy with UPSs and generators. There will also be duplication of the entire data centre, with alternate data centres geographically distant, to cater for major disasters.
One thing which isn't duplicated is the user interface, with a single rack having just one keyboard, mouse and monitor, and somestimes not even that - these are often mounted on a wheeled trolley and carted around the data centre to be plugged in when required.
Data centres are cold, noisy and mostly empty of humans...
6 • Length of media files script (by Head_on_a_Stick on 2023-10-02 04:54:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
@Jesse: why are you using a bash shebang in a script that contains no bashisms? Do you want it to run slower for any particular reason? If not then a /bin/sh shebang would probably be better. Debian and several other distributions use dash for /bin/sh, which will be faster, lighter and less buggy than bash.
7 • ReiserFS (by Alexandru on 2023-10-02 06:12:06 GMT from Romania)
I was using ReiserFS not for journalizing, but primarily for its tree filesystem structure. BtrFS also is designed having Beta Tree concept in its heart. In my opinion, BtrFS tries to take the same niche as ReiserFS. However, as I said last week, I had no success with fsck.btrfs unlike reiserfsck.
I know, there were problems with integration of ReiserFS in Linux kernel, Reiser4 support did not land in Linux. I know, before being found guilty, Hans Reiser had many different opinions on the way software should be designed, tested and integrated, which led to never ending debates (wars) about code quality and so.
I only claim I did not found a true replacement for ReiserFS, BtrFS being the closest one. I run Linux (Debian) on ReiserFS as long as It was supported. When Linux could not more boot off ReiserFS (root on ReiserFS), I used it for my data partition. Then I switched to BtrFS. I understand, that regardless of the quality of initial code, with no support it is almost useless. It's a pity.
8 • opion poll about ReiserFS (by always-curious-about-foss on 2023-10-02 06:25:59 GMT from Germany)
I missed the two mainly answers in this poll:
1. I never used ReiserFS (how long is Ext4 in use? )
2. I am using my distro without knowimg the journaling filesystem
9 • Zenwalk (by uz64 on 2023-10-02 09:17:21 GMT from United States)
I used to really like Zenwalk. It was the very first distro I settled on back when I decided to ditch Windows almost, if not, about two decades ago. It used to be a very simple Slackware-based distro with a very standard Xfce desktop (which was part of its charm), no ridiculous graphical effects added, one application per task was its philosophy, and their own custom dependency-tracking package management system on top.
I don't know what the hell they've done, but the Zenwalk of today is nowhere close to the Zenwalk I used to enjoy using. They seem to release date-based "snapshot" images instead of point releases, and the desktop... it's an incredibly ugly, highly customized mess with unwanted effects.
RIP, old Zenwalk... well at least Salix is still somewhat close to Zenwalk's original vision.
10 • Zenwalk (by kc1di on 2023-10-02 10:54:52 GMT from United States)
sorry to here that Zenwalk has fallen so badly of late. Have not used it in a while. but as @9 said it used to be solid and functional in the old times. I also use Vector linux which is now defunct too bad because that was a solid Slack desktop also. Now a days I'm lazy and LMDE 6 is great.
Cheers!
11 • Adblocking (by BadWolf on 2023-10-02 12:20:57 GMT from United States)
I use uBlock Origin and I have no issues. All parts of the site are accessible to me. No part of this site is blocked. I did some testing myself on this and if any user of uO has issues here, it's due to their own personal settings. They'll need to go into uBlock Origin settings and click on 'Reset to default settings'. As they may have blocked something on another site that is causing the issue here.
BW
12 • ReiserFS (by eb on 2023-10-02 12:32:21 GMT from France)
I still use reiserfs on a 20 years old hardware, with a 20 years old Suse with Blackbox window manager, that run a 20 years old but excellent professional software !:-D.
13 • File system choices (by Otis on 2023-10-02 13:34:36 GMT from United States)
Honestly I was not paying attention to which (default) file system was there in distros I was installing over the years, for the simple reason that as a beginner, and later on as a lazy user, I could not detect much in the way of meaningful differences between them.
Then one day I read about the founder/maintainer of the ReiserFS and was appalled. That made me look more closely at things. The ext* became my go to after that just for simplicity and predictability.
14 • Shell choice (by Jesse on 2023-10-02 13:50:29 GMT from Canada)
@6: "why are you using a bash shebang in a script that contains no bashisms? Do you want it to run slower for any particular reason? "
I suspect you're joking, or have fallen for someone else who is joking and misleading you.
We're talking about executing about half a dozen lines of shell script. The difference in the time it takes for the system to run the script using bash, dash, or BSD's default shell, is so small it cannot be perceived by the human eye.
Don't take my word for it, or anyone else's, you can test it yourself.
Here is the timing result of running the media-duration script when bash is the interpreting shell for about a dozen media files:
real 0m0.805s
user 0m0.664s
sys 0m0.162s
And here is the result of timing dash interpreting the same script in the same directory:
real 0m0.799s
user 0m0.630s
sys 0m0.188s
The system time is a little more, the userspace time a little less. But the difference in real time, the difference the end user sees? It's 0.006 seconds. You cannot perceive the difference. The idea that using one shell over another for speed, when we're talking about a one-time run of a tiny script like this, is pointless.
> "Debian and several other distributions use dash for /bin/sh,"
That's fine, if you're using Debian or a distribution which uses a dash/bash compatible /bin/sh. I run a wide variety of operating systems, including some which are not Linux-based. It's not a good idea to assume you know what /bin/sh is compatible with when moving between systems. If I happen to end up running scripts on a system where /bin/sh is compatible or points to csh or ksh then it's going to blow up in my face if I simply use /bin/sh for all my scripts. It dosn't happen often, but it's not a good idea to assume you know how /bin/sh will behave.
15 • Snap malware (by nsp0323 on 2023-10-02 14:15:48 GMT from Sweden)
Since no one had a comment about it, I guess malware in snaps is something that is regarded as normal these days. Perhaps, even something you would expect to happen.
16 • Snap malware (by hadji457 on 2023-10-02 14:50:15 GMT from United States)
@15: Maybe not many of us use snaps. Just saying.
17 • Snap malware (by David on 2023-10-02 16:15:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Clem was obviously prescient when he dropped Snap support from Mint! His comment at the time was "Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. "
18 • ReiserFS (by John on 2023-10-02 17:08:59 GMT from Canada)
I use to use ReiserFS, but moved to jfs before Reiser's wife was killed. Then maybe ~10 years ago I went to ext4.
I really liked jfs, but when IBM stopped funding it for Linux (fired the maintainers), seems it started a slow march to abandonware. A few years after that abandonment I lost a couple of files dues to a power outage. I never had issues with jfs in the past.
I wonder if jfs will go the way of ReiserFS too. Also I am curious how many people still use jfs. Per wikipedia lfs performance has fallen behind ext4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFS_%28file_system%29
19 • Reiser FS (by arkaland on 2023-10-02 18:02:41 GMT from United States)
I've been using the JFS filesystem since August of 2008. Since then I've always used it
on the hard drive and also on storage-type flash drives as well. I myself have never had
a single problem with JFS. In fact, I find it so reliable (and the man files so understandable
and accurate) that I have never been tempted to try ext4 or any "advanced" filesystem
instead of JFS. Of course, I don't care about "extra" features such as being able to
re-size partitions, and I've always done my own regular backups. It's true that jfs-1.1.15
no longer receives "upgrades", but it really doesn't need any.
20 • Malware in snaps arenot Snap malware (by hhmmhh on 2023-10-03 02:25:52 GMT from France)
@15, @16, @17 i have no liking for statically-linked distribution-agnostic software deployment systems like Snap, FlatPak or AppIm, but...
Who's guilty here? Snap or the guy who hid a malware in packages?
How do you know your favorite distro's repositories do not contain software infested with some yet unknown malware?
What is a curated software repository but one only devoid of already-known malware?
We cannot trust downloaded software, whatever its source. We just depend on software repositories to get us rid of malware as soon as it is detected.
Stopping the deployment of the compromised packages while preparing new versions whithout the malware is just what Snapcraft has been doing since it has been detected.
Is it not what opensource software user always have expected, remembering old stories of faulty proprietary software left unpatched in fear admitting a vulnerability will taint the company's reputation*?
---
* E.g. DEC VMS privileged user accounts with default passwords...
21 • Linux Mint "Edge" announcement (by brad on 2023-10-03 11:25:31 GMT from United States)
"This image is made for people whose hardware is *too new* to boot the 5.15 LTS kernel included in Linux Mint 21.x"
Please, someone tell me that Linux Mint (and other distros?) are "backward-compatible"; i.e. that the newest hardware can boot older versions of the Linux kernel?
I thought that "planned obsolescence" was a hallmark of Windows and iOS, not Linux!
22 • kernel compatibility (by Dolphin Oracle on 2023-10-03 13:01:25 GMT from United States)
@21 since in linux most drivers are in the kernel, newer hardware tends to need newer kernels. graphics drivers are a major culprit here.
older hardware often has no issue with newer kernels, but newer hardware can have issues with older kernels.
23 • Ad Blocking with uBlock Origin (by Simon Plaistowe on 2023-10-03 20:08:56 GMT from New Zealand)
@11 Yes I agree, I also use uBlock Origin and have no issues. Perhaps BadWolf has "hit the nail on the head" and the problem is caused by personal settings.
24 • Zenwalk (by TK on 2023-10-04 06:05:53 GMT from Canada)
Zenwalk self-destructing during a system update by removing glibc is the most hilarious and devastating bug in recent memory.
25 • Zenwalk update problems (by Ennio on 2023-10-04 08:55:31 GMT from Netherlands)
Zenwalk was installed on the fly on reiserfs without problems, the updates were notified after reboot and no mirror selection options were offered. Netstat gave me a handful of IP addresses: the CERT server from Google USA and another thingy from Amazon somewhere and the Slackware packages repository was from South Africa. Will later see what happens if I want to select another. After reboot all is quiet, no glibc glitch. Side note: the background color during install was a delightful foggy green, like emerald on Monday morning at 7, and the network notification applet is holly fuchsia!
26 • Bodhi (by Geo on 2023-10-04 12:56:08 GMT from Germany)
just wanted to say I had huge success loading Bodhi on an ancient machine. My hat's off to them.
27 • Totally Milan Kundera moment with Zenwalk (by Ennio on 2023-10-05 07:03:41 GMT from Netherlands)
@25 It actually bricked, I was singing prematurely. What puzzles me more is the silence in the Zenwalk portion of Linux Questions. Although such a "glibc xxx not found" is not uncommon in this case even chrooting is pointless, there is no recovery.
28 • @24 (by kc1di on 2023-10-05 13:29:05 GMT from United States)
this could be the reason for it's removal.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-looney-tunables-linux-bug-gives-root-on-major-distros/
29 • ReiserFS (by Robert on 2023-10-05 17:27:26 GMT from United States)
I never used reiserfs. I do remember hearing about it back before ext4, but the buzz died down soon after. Didn't found out why until recently.
I started with ext3, then moved to xfs and stuck with that for a long time. I still use it for my desktop os partition, but my server is btrfs for the os while all of my data is zfs.
30 • @28 CVE-2023-4911 (by anticapitalista on 2023-10-05 19:27:23 GMT from Greece)
Debian has already provided fixes.
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2023-4911
Number of Comments: 30
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Slint
Slint is a Slackware Linux-based distribution for 64-bit (x86_64) machines. The distribution is intended to be used by people who are visually impaired. The distribution ships with a screen reader built-in which can even be used during the installation process.
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