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1 • Fedora39 (by Rich52 on 2023-11-13 02:24:05 GMT from United States)
Downloaded the iso. Installed the gnome version (should have downloaded the KDE and or Cinnamon desktop version) I guess I wanted to see what the hoopla with Gnome is all about. Overall it worked as stated and the iso installation was easy and straightforward. Overall it was good but I decided to re-install my old OS. I think the main reason is that 'Gnome' is too minimalist for me. A desktop computer doesn't need to look or operate like a cell phone IMHO. I'm a Cinnamon fan and that is what I went back too using my original OS. As stated in the beginning I should have tried the KDE or Cinnamon desktop versions. None the less the release is very good.
Rich;)
2 • Open Source software (by Torsten on 2023-11-13 02:31:33 GMT from Germany)
Yes, my OS (Debian) runs with free open source software.
I removed all non-free software and vrms says: "No non-free or contrib packages installed on debian12! You have completed the first step to enlightenment." ;-)
Infact, I really miss NOTHING and everything works.
3 • Free software (by Andy Prough on 2023-11-13 02:53:49 GMT from United States)
I use the Trisquel GNU/Linux distribution which only includes free software. It just works and runs everything I need.
4 • Security of not so commonly used distributions (by Bobbie Sellers on 2023-11-13 03:51:46 GMT from United States)
Here I speak of PCLinuxOS 64.
If any user has a problem of any sort we have the Forum to report it to and there the
publisher of the distribution, coders and other folks respond very quickly. We have some
problems but none that make us stop using PCLinuxOS for more than a moment. Sometimes we have to reboot with the installation media to get our lamentations
online. Most of the time it is trivial.
bliss - Dell E7450- PCLinuxOS 64- Linux 6.4.11- KDE Plasma 5.27.9
5 • Fedora 39 Gnome (by Nigel on 2023-11-13 05:15:20 GMT from New Zealand)
@52 like Rich52, I downloaded Fedora WS 39 (Gnome). I have not had a serious test drive of Fedora for several years. Wayland gets interesting. I found a lot of the UI and icons (File Manager for example) to be sized for pre-K or the retirement village. With Firefox I struggled to hide the Bookmarks bar or customize the icons in the top. Also right-click had no context menu pop up with handy items like Save-As - useful if you're looking for images to put into a presentation (and 1,001 other situations). So Wayland's interfacing with apps is not quite complete, or is proving harder than anticipated to work with? I did not think much of Loupe, being used to gthumb (which is ever so nearly Irfanview for Linux) or its derivatives like pix. Font selection was one of the more sane amongst distros and was "managed" right with the dnf gui tool (with the dnf-something name that breaks your brain/tongue/etc). The overall 'feel' is quite 'corporate' - updates are "applied" and then it reboots to install like Windows. The Cinnamon Fedora 39 spin did not do this and was more "normal" a Linux - quite well finished I must add. F-39 Gnome.ws is currently on my test laptop and can stay there for a while to be studied and dissected, but I do not see it going any further.
6 • Fedora's Anaconda (by verndog on 2023-11-13 05:35:09 GMT from United States)
"Though, Fedora being Fedora, some things never seem to get better. The Anaconda installer remains as aggravating as ever"!
Ain't that the truth! Its a mystery to me why they still havn't upgraded it so the rest of us can understand its implementation.
7 • @2 What Hardware? (by always-curious-about-FOSS on 2023-11-13 07:29:35 GMT from Germany)
Hello Torsten,
great Job! Enjoy your Freedom!
But bye the way? What Hardware do you use for it?
The Freesoftware Foundation are giving a "Respects Your Freedom Certification" to some Hardware producs.
But its really difficult to buy such a Computer or Laptop in Gemany or EU.
Those requested Hardware its told to be very old with less features, but I guess it would be enough for my purposes.
8 • Free except one... (by Nico on 2023-11-13 07:55:49 GMT from Germany)
Since I switched to Manjaro Cinnamon as my full time desktop OS three years ago, I now use FOSS exclusively - with one exception that I have a hard time parting with: Sublime Text. It's just oh so sweet.
9 • It's Just a Release Per Fedora's Release Schedule (by joncr on 2023-11-13 09:29:43 GMT from United States)
Re: Fedora -- I don't agree with the near-universal tendency of online reviewers to assess a new version of something by assuming we're all entitled to Something Amazing And New in every release. Software gets updated. Linux distributions that have reasons to follow a fixed release schedule create new install images per that schedule. That's it. That's all that's going on.
10 • Anaconda (by NULL on 2023-11-13 09:38:32 GMT from Germany)
Seriously, I do not understand the complains about anaconda, especially compared to other installers.
My main distro is Debian, and the installer is flexible but very cumbersome: Prompts, wait a few seconds to minutes, more prompts.
Anaconda asks all questions at the start, with defaults I personally like and just does it thing. One has to use Anaconda one or two times to get the hang of it, but once the understanding is there, it is fast and comfortable to setup a machine. It takes me less than a minute and then I can go and grab a tea.
Compare that to most other installers in the Linux world:
- Unflexible
- Super cumbersome to setup alternative root file systems, if possible at all
- No sane defaults for desktop users
- Wizzard style setup which makes it cumbersome to change some settings which where three screens to the left or look ahead for future settings to the right
Anaconda is IMHO the perfect installer for desktops, especially if you have to take care of more than one machine.
11 • Yes except (by AdamB on 2023-11-13 10:10:06 GMT from Australia)
After checking whether Virtualbox is open source, I was able to vote "Yes - except for firmware" - This applies to my Linux computers.
On my Mac OS and Windows 10 laptops, I use Firefox, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice.
I run KeePassXC on everything.
12 • Free except… (by SuperOscar on 2023-11-13 12:14:00 GMT from Finland)
I admit using quite some non-free software just because they work far better for me than the free alternatives: Softmaker Office (because LibreOffice is bug-infested), Sublime Text (I never could get VSCode work with TeX), Vivaldi (customizable just the way I like it), and SpiderOak One (for cloud backups).
13 • Work Software (by Alex from the USA on 2023-11-13 14:34:11 GMT from United States)
I prefer open source software whenever I can choose it, but pragmatically my employer requires I use a lot of Microsoft, Oracle, and Citrix products in my workday. I am not a free software zealot - I think closed source products can be powerful, useful, and secure.
14 • Fedora 39, and Free Software (by Donnie on 2023-11-13 15:04:17 GMT from United States)
I haven't tried Fedora 39 yet, but I am writing this on my Fedora 39/LXDE workstation. I use LXDE primarily because I want something simple, with an easy-to-use Start menu. (I consider Gnome 3 as the Windows 8 of the Linux world, and refuse to use it unless I have no other choice.) I'll upgrade this machine to 39 in a few months, once I'm sure that all the bugs have been worked out.
Although I'm a big believer in the Free Software concept, it's not practical for me to completely abandon proprietary software. For a long time, I had to use Windows to teach on-line Linux classes, because my client required me to use a web meeting service that wasn't compatible with Linux. I no longer teach online classes, but if I did, I would likely be able to use a Linux machine to do it, since the web meeting services have vastly improved their compatibility with Linux. Also, I pretty much have to use the closed-source FreeOffice to write Linux books, because my publisher requires me to submit the chapters as .docx files. LibreOffice kind of works with Microsoft formatted documents, but it's not always perfect. At least though, FreeOffice is available for Linux, and works perfectly on it. (The next time they run a good sale on the commercial version, I'll thank them by buying a licensed copy.) And then, there's the matter of hardware drivers. There's no open source driver for my Brother printer, so I have to download the proprietary driver from the Brother website. Open source video drivers work well for normal desktop usage, but for GPU mining or scientific computing, only the proprietary video drivers will work.
In short, even though I'm a big Free Software enthusiast, I have to be pragmatic enough to use closed source software when there's no other good choice.
15 • Fedora 39 review (by Otis on 2023-11-13 15:12:31 GMT from United States)
Thank you for that comprehensive (and entertaining) review. That about the Gnome Tweaks and Gnome Extensions app not being included has always been a bit of an irksome issue for me.. but not huge. What has been (almost) huge for me has been the clunky nature of the installer, and then clunky again as a desktop in general.
Too bad about the Fedora religiosity about Gnome, as KDE (available) and a few others are certainly superior. But, as mentioned in the review, Fedora's Gnome is being improved from that of yesteryear. As it is I've never had Fedora on any machine for more than a month or so, preferring MX Linux (nothing seems to be able to tear me away from this distro, although I do explore).
16 • Correction to Post 14 (by Donnie on 2023-11-13 15:27:15 GMT from United States)
I stated that I was writing this on my Fedora 39/LXDE workstation. I meant to say "Fedora 38/LXDE".
17 • A bit of this, a bit of that... (by Friar Tux on 2023-11-13 18:56:52 GMT from Canada)
I don't really care about open source and proprietary. I use whatever the distro provides. I think one of the "non-free" things my present distro provides are the music codex, I think. It doesn't matter to me as my only priority is that I can use the distro as I want and it does what it's supposed to do.
As for Fedora, it was my first sojourn into Linux and it just would not work. It scared me right back to Windows. Now, I still can't get it to work. I think my second attempt was Mandrake 3.1 which was abit better. I even bought the disc from some company in California. It was nice to work with but it, too, ended up sending me back to Windows.
18 • New Fedora Installer in Works (by joncr on 2023-11-13 22:19:16 GMT from United States)
Fedora has been working on new installer. Maybe in F40?
People do not like what they are not used to. Anaconda is very different from all the other installers that, more or less, look and work like Ubuntu's and, very often, are in fact Ubuntu's installer. (Exception: Debian's classic installer). Whether or not they have the functions of Anaconda is debatable.
What Anaconda has always needed is an option to avoid its complexity if you just want to devote all of a single disk to an install. That's always been simple enough, once you knew how.
19 • Fewdora 39 (by Romane on 2023-11-14 08:13:08 GMT from Australia)
Aggree wholly with the reviewer regarding the inststall program - horrid, horrid, horrid, but did get 38 installed (eventually, thank to horrid horrid, horrid), then upgraded to 39 when it was released. Upgrade process went well, so now on 39.
39 appears to be a solid system, even compared to 38 which found quite good. One can even say happy with 39. Been running Wayland on all my systems (triple-boot) for a good 12 to 18 months now, preferring it muchly to X, and without (many) hiccups. This has continued with 39.
Not my daily driver, but a system that boot into regularly.
If "they" ever improve or replace good old horrid, horrid, horrid, (unlikely, as that would be too big a departure from Red Hat) would easily recommend 39 to anyone. But not while "they" continue to use horrid, horrid, horrid.
Romane
20 • Fedora installer (by Jan on 2023-11-14 13:20:29 GMT from The Netherlands)
I also struggled with the installer. Because I had the habit for linux-try-outs to prepare a partition with / and /home and swap.
However I finally found that Fedora does not need a swap partition. Simply reserve an unformatted partition and let Fedora automatically do the partioning and installing. This is very simple, opposite to defining to do the partioning for Fedora youself. This simple procedure is not communicated easily.
21 • @20 • Fedora installer (by Jan on 2023-11-14 13:32:14 GMT from The Netherlands)
Addition
I make the unformatted partition with GParted.
Before choosing the automatic install, define a user-name and password and select the disk-drive where the unformatted partition is.
22 • Open Source or ... (by Bob McConnell on 2023-11-14 14:24:14 GMT from United States)
No, I run mostly free software. Linux itself uses the GPL, which is my preferred option. There are too many ways to pollute code released under any of the open source licenses.
23 • Fedora 39 strong points & weak ones (by Jeffersonian on 2023-11-14 15:09:45 GMT from Poland)
1) Overall agree here wirth the "reviewer" it is a great solid distro, I upgraded from F38
2) Still, MATE works better than KDE PLASMA, but KDE Plasma is better that before.
But KDE Plasma with Wayland give better graphics (AMD Ryzen 5 pro)
Hopefully some time soon, MATE and XFCE will support MATE
GNOME Desktop is stil... a bad joke, but many gnome apps are very good (gnome-disks, gnome-boxes, gnome-commander: just install them using dnf)
3) Annaconda is just... as bad a before, sorry but this is not Fedora strong point, especially if you need a custom install, with BTRFS, separate partitions of you choice.
4) GPARTED is still not that great.... Wondering if Fedora should not consider something better.
5) Calibre still has bugs... (on other distros it seems too)
6) Packages using TexLive are still problematic, there is an old RPM (from TexLive) but I have not yet reinstalled it : it would be great if so valuable : Latex, TexLive, Miktex etc... could work out of the box with F40, because frankly this is a pain in the neck to deal with.
7) DNF5 is not yet available, no need to rush just wait until it is ready... (I tried the beta, liked it)
8) BTRFS may need special attention, for gparted, and GUI support for subvolumes, a challenge from the CLI, a better documentaion with examples would be great.
9) RpmFusion still does not always have recent packages, even if this is getting better.
Conclusion: Fedora remains my distro of choice, even if Manjaro gets my attention on one machine
It is very functional, one of the best with Open Suse in my view.
24 • Fedora 39 strong points & weak ones (Addendum) (by Jeffersonian on 2023-11-14 15:14:38 GMT from Poland)
Sorry,
Read :
#4 GRUB2 still not that great.... Wondering if Fedora should not consider something better.
25 • Free and Open-Source Software (by Steve Pepperridge on 2023-11-14 16:21:22 GMT from Moldova)
personally, i am legally unable to say i have a proprietary-less system simply because of one thing: i like gaming.
sure, i am aware of FOSS games, but that is but a fraction of the market.
Steam has been a god-send in making gaming on Linux a lot more hassle-free, thanks to advancements made with Proton.
in other cases, if a specific problem can be solved by using a FOSS product, you bet i will prefer the FOSS option.
26 • Fedora 39 (by Hernandez Piras on 2023-11-14 17:14:23 GMT from Brazil)
When I started using Linux, around the year 2000, Fedora, Suse, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Conectiva and Mandrake were still the dominant distributions. I regret to this day the fact that Conectiva and Madrake disappeared and I celebrate each new successful version of those others that survived. I'm glad the Fedora team is in good shape and they've released a compelling version of this venerable distribution. I won't stop testing it on my notebook. Congratulations to the Fedora team!
27 • Ventoy for linux USB-installing (by Jan on 2023-11-14 22:37:16 GMT from The Netherlands)
Last week I mentioned a nuisance in using Ventoy (in Windows10, for making USB-installer for linux).
I have had further problems with the Ventoy USB-stick.
When I plug in the Ventoy USB-stick in the Win10-PC, it takes minutes to recognize (it seems as if all USB-related programs are stalled).
After recognizing, there is no problem any more. Also not after repeated plug-out and plug-in.
I even had a BSOD with Win10 (at 16-bit applications disabled)
The problem is wider experienced, see this info:
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1975
There seems to be no cause and solution found for the problem.
I found that the Ventoy-prepared USB-stick has a big exFAT partition and a small FAT16 Ventoy-system partition.
Maybe the problem is caused by the fact that there is FAT16 partition, which is possibly not very well digested by Windows10 on some PC's (even when 16 bit applications are enabled).
I can work with the Ventoy USB-stick. However does anyone have a solution?
28 • Unintelligible tangents (by Cheker on 2023-11-14 23:45:33 GMT from Portugal)
I thought I was running only free stuff with the exception of Intel and Nvidia stuff but I actually have a few non-free programs like unrar. Not much else.
I gotta say contrary to most people I do happen to like Anaconda. There are some steps that are dependent on others but they mostly are not and you can put your options in in any order. I also think, and I could be wrong on this 'cause I haven't looked at it in a minute, you can feed it a file with your answers and it'll just go off.
I have GNOME on my tablet and that's the sort of environment where it shines, you couldn't pay me enough to use it on a PC though.
29 • RE to #23 by Jeffersonian (by Pierre on 2023-11-15 14:57:11 GMT from Germany)
@ 1) F39 was delayed and misses a lot of features that were in line for F39 but got postponed to F40. Think that's quite a disappointment and makes this release a quite boring one. There are some improvements under the hood but nothing that would be able to impress me.
@ 2) I don't think that GNOME desktop is a joke. The only downsides I see about GNOME is, that you are limited to the predefined workflow. In the last two decades I am running Linux I used KDE 3, KDE 4, KDE Plasma 5, GNOME 2, GNOME 3, Xfce, LXDE, LXQt, OpenBox, i3, awesome, sway and I am not sure I didn't miss one DE or WM I used over the years. And every option has it's advantages and it's downsides. Haven't seen anything perfect yet. So to call a whole DE a joke is a joke for itself, to be honest.
@ 3) Anaconda, too, just like DEs has it's strengths and weaknesses. Though I have to admit, especially customizing the install or partitioning your drive with BTRFS and subvolumes is a real weak side of Anaconda. Still, it's a useable installer that gets the job done.
@ 4) Gparted is quite ok. What I love most is the Guided Partitioning option in Yast during the openSUSE install. Would love to see something comparable in the new Fedora installer.
@ 5) It's more a Calibre related problem than something that would have anything to do with Fedora.
@ 6) I mainly use openSUSE Tumbleweed, but used Fedora a few years ago as my daily driver at work and since Fedora 36 on my old Thinkpad. On both installs TexLive worked good for me in the few times I had to use it.
@ 7) DNF5 is not yet ready, the biggest disappointment in my eyes. As I said, I mostly use openSUSE Tumbleweed and zypper simply performs much better than DNF for years now. I had loved to finally see how DNF5 performs.
@ 8) Agreed.
@ 9) Didn't use RpmFusion for ages since Flatpak is available and offers what I would have needed from third party repositories in the last few years.
@ Your Conclusion) I will stay with openSUSE Tumbleweed. Fedora 39 missed to deliver the most anticipated features and postponed them until F40.
I will continue to updated my Fedora install on my old Thinkpad, but for any other machine I will stay with what is installed. Fedora 39 does not feel like it would be able to deliver anything worth to dare the switch on any of my machines that do not run Fedora already.
30 • @27 Ventoy (by Sam Crawford on 2023-11-15 17:07:18 GMT from United States)
Try Rufus for making a USB stick from Windows. It's a free download and works well.
If using Linux then Balena-Etcher or Mint Stick are great USB writers.
31 • @30 Ventoy (by Jan on 2023-11-16 00:35:03 GMT from The Netherlands)
When I use Rufus for making a Fedora install/try USB-stick, at booting an error occurs and halts further booting. Several times tried, same result.
The Fedora USB-stick program (for Windows), after a few different Fedora versions, makes the USB-stick unusable (repair with GParted).
Ventoy (Windows-version) was the only USB-maker at which I succeeded to make a bootable USB-stick (but with nuisances as described)
32 • Rufus NEVER fails (by why-oh-why on 2023-11-16 06:56:21 GMT from The Netherlands)
Rufus works ALWAYS if one knows how to use it and what for.
Writing a Fedora ISO to a USB stick with Rufus in ISO mode is also 100% reliable. If it doesn't work for you, it's either the USB media, your motherboard or you (choosing the wrong option at boot).
Some MBs do not show all possible options by default, only the first few, and in such cases you need to configure the MB boot options first.
As a side note, there is a bug with UEFI and some motherboards that happens in Fedora 37 and later, and you either have to boot in (fake) MBR mode, or copy and paste some of the F36 files onto F39 installation media.
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/install-media-dont-boot-in-uefi-mode-on-certain-motherboards/71376
There are different types of ISO installation images, and there are two different ways Rufus can prepare the USB boot media.
The first way is to create installation media in ISO mode, which copies the ISO file to the USB stick. The USB stick remains visible to Windows.
The second way to create installation media is in dd mode, which does the same as the dd command, but is made for normal people.
In this second case, which works like Balena Etcher, Fedora Media or Rosa Image Writer, the USB stick is reformatted.
As it is not FAT, exFAT or NTFS, the USB key becomes unrecognisable ("unusable") for Windows.
You don't need to "fix" it, because it was never broken, and you don't necessarily need GParted to reformat it.
The Windows GUI can do it, and command line freaks can do it in the Windows Terminal with fdisk. Another option is to reformat it with Rufus, or just use Rosa Image Writer, which also writes images in dd mode, and also has a "clean to recover USB" option.
http://wiki.rosalab.ru/en/images/0/0b/RosaImageWriter-2.6-eng.png
It does the same as Windows GUI, Windows cmd, Rufus, GParted, etc. -- it erases all partitions on the USB stick, after which you can re-initialise it and create a fresh exFAT partition. One, because Windows can only recognise one (first) partition on USB media.
33 • @32 Rufus, USB (by Mr. Moto on 2023-11-16 11:54:46 GMT from Japan)
"Writing a Fedora ISO to a USB stick with Rufus in ISO mode is also 100% reliable." I no longer find it so. I've been using Rufus for quite a few years without problems. On this same PC for about 4 years. Used to be able to write Debian and derivatives with persistence. That stopped working a some time ago, Now the lates version (4.3 insists on formatting the USB stick in NTFS when in ISO mode. The live systems won't boot. This may not be all due to Rufus. I tried an older version formatted in FAT32 and that also didn't work. I went back to Unetbootin, and that also failed to boot. Maybe something changed in the way the Linux ISOs are done, but that's beyond my paygrade. If I have to write in dd mode, I have Balena Etcher on Linux and I don't need to move to Windows.
"Windows can only recognize one (first) partition on USB media." That is not accurate. I'm on Windows 11 right now and I have a USB stick inserted with 3 partitions. The first 2 are in ext4 and hold an Armbian image. Windows mounts the third partition as "D:" and it works fine. The first 2 are not seen unless I open the disk utility, but they are there and recognized, just cannot be mounted unless reformatted..
34 • @33 (by Mr. Moto from Japan) (by why-oh-why on 2023-11-16 17:58:05 GMT from The Netherlands)
"I'm on Windows 11 right now and I have a USB stick inserted with 3 partitions [...]"
Well, above I wrote about Rufus and I assumed that some people would store the data on the persistent partition and then try to mount it under Windows.
Yes, of course I know that before Windows 10, Windows couldn't start anything at all with multiple partitions on a USB drive. Since Windows 10, it sort of can, but many people still have problems with it, and Windows Disk Management still can't repair or reformat just one selected partition. Trying to reformat a second partition wouldn't 'just work'. Multi-partitions on USB are still a mixed bag in Windows.
https://postimg.cc/jnw5yJVB
"That stopped working a some time ago, Now the lates version (4.3 insists on formatting the USB stick in NTFS when in ISO mode. The live systems won't boot. This may not be all due to Rufus."
https://postimg.cc/qgzgPWtQ
As for Rufus 4.3, writing Debian 12-2 to FAT32 USB with persistence still works like a charm. [No, it wouldn't work with the settings as in the screenshot.] There are a few caveats to be aware of in the Rufus settings themselves, and later when trying to live-boot under Windows, but as I said, Rufus will always work if you know how to use it and for what.
https://postimg.cc/K4w4xQBb
Not sure if Rufus is to blame. ;)
35 • @34, Rufus, USB sticks (by Mr. Moto on 2023-11-17 06:52:59 GMT from Japan)
"Trying to reformat a second partition wouldn't 'just work" Again, that is inaccurate. Just to try, I reformatted two partitions on an 8 GB stick. Worked like a charm. Never had a problem. No mixed bags.
On Rufus: I'll stand partly corrected. The persistence problems were real, and documented. Rufus needs to format the persistence partition, and this would result in an interruption.
https://superuser.com/questions/1467957/rufus-gets-interrupted-by-explorer-exe-almost-every-time
This stopped happening a short time ago. Rufus would finish writing, but then my live systems would not boot unless written in dd mode as recently as 2 weeks ago. I just tried today and it does work, so one point to you. No special settings or knowledge needed. I slide "persistence" on the bar where I want, and keep all the rest of the defaults. No changes have been made except regular WIndows updates.
I don't "live-boot under Windows". I boot Windows from the grub menu (rarely) or on a VM (frequently). I live boot by bringing up the menu on UEFI, (F10 on my machine) and scrolling down. I also don't use Debian live. I either install Debian or use a derivative like Linux Mint.
In any case, the newer distros that I might want have become too slow and cumbersome to run live, especially with persistence, so now I use an Armbian Generic Intel image, which is persistent and boots and runs almost as fast my installed distros.
BTW: Couldn't see your posted images. Tried disabling blockers, but all I saw were hair growth and skin care ads
36 • USB pendrives (by Ken on 2023-11-17 12:29:46 GMT from United States)
I also experienced the same behaviour as described in @34.
My two Windows machines behave differently. The one on which the Ventoy USB was created only mounts the first partition, but under Disk Management there are two. The other one mounts both.
It also won't let me format the second partition, instead everything is greyed out, as in the picture in @34.
37 • Rufus, USB (by Kato_san on 2023-11-17 13:30:35 GMT from Japan)
I can't really agree with both statements in @35 because, as described and shown in @34 and @36, different Windows machines behave differently, and in the case of "no special settings or knowledge required", "special" is debatable.
In addition to @36, I would like to say that my machine shows exactly the same behavior with Ventoy's second partition, but on a Debian Live USB with a persistent partition, Disk Management does not allow reformatting either, but it does allow deleting the second partition. In theory at least, it should be possible to delete the second partition, create a new one, format it and give it a letter, but I haven't tried this.
Rufus has never failed me either, but I can see how it might be a problem for some. I have noticed that when I try to create a persistent Debian 12 live-USB, using GPT and the UEFI (no CSM) option, the USB boot works correctly, although the first attempt always fails, but the second boot works correctly.
However, when I try to create the same persistent Debian 12 live-USB using the default settings (MBR), it fails. I suspect this is what most people here are trying to do, otherwise it wouldn't boot on their old hardware.
All that said, this is actually the "special settings or knowledge".
Number of Comments: 37
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • 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 | 
Hikarunix
Hikarunix ["hee-kah-roo-nix"] was a Linux live CD based on Damn Small Linux and dedicated to Go - a popular Asian strategy game. It was known as Baduk in Korea and Wei Qi in China where the game started somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. Today it was played in nearly every country in the world and has even been played in space. This CD was designed especially for Go players of all levels. Whether you've been playing for decades or have never heard of the game until now, this CD was for you. Any machine that can boot to CD can boot to Hikarunix instead of the computer's regular operating system. Since it boots entirely in RAM and only borrows the peripherals, Hikarunix doesn't touch the host machine at all.
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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