DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1047, 27 November 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 48th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Swap space is an interesting concept which allows a computer to appear to have more memory than is physically available. Swap space is typically a region of a computer's hard drive which is set aside to hold data when memory is full. This allows the operating system to move information out of memory when RAM is nearly full and copy it back into memory as needed. This week, in our Questions and Answers column, we discuss why some swap space might be used, even when the computer's memory is not full. Do you use swap space? There are a few different approaches systems can use to setting up swap, ranging from traditional swap partitions, to files, to compressed RAM. Let us know your preferred approach in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about Ubuntu Budgie potentially benefiting from work the Xfce project is doing with Wayland. Plus we discuss Slackware streamlining its kernel offerings for older machines and share an overview of some problems detected in the new FreeBSD 14.0 release. One of the operating systems which uses FreeBSD as a base is GhostBSD. This week Jesse Smith takes this desktop flavour of FreeBSD for a test drive and reports on his experiences with it. This week we are also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Plus we're happy to announce the loongarch64 CPU architecture has been added to our Search page and then we give thanks to the generous readers who have donated to us this month. 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) |
GhostBSD 23.10.1
GhostBSD is a desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD. The GhostBSD project takes a "-stable" (development) branch of FreeBSD and provides a number of convenient features. These features include a live desktop on the install media, a graphical system installer, and a pre-configured MATE desktop. (There is a community-maintained Xfce edition as well.) GhostBSD also automates setting up ZFS volumes and includes some graphical utilities to handle common tasks such as package management and connecting to networks.
The latest release of GhostBSD, version 23.10.1, includes some improvements to the network utility (called networkmgr), adding the ability to set static IP addresses and custom DNS servers. This release also updates the FreeBSD kernel and removes the os-generic-userland-devtools package from the base system to save disk space.
I downloaded the latest release which is available in a single edition (featuring the MATE desktop) for a single architecture (x86_64). The ISO file is 2.5GB in size. The project lists the minimum system requirements on the download page: 64-bit x86 processor, 4GB of RAM, 15GB of disk space, and network card. These requirements, especially the 4GB of RAM, may seem unusually high for a FreeBSD-based operating system. This is a hard requirement and it appears to be a side-effect of the live media loading the system image into RAM at boot time. This isn't the amount of memory required to run the operating system day-to-day, just to run the live session and perform the installation.
Installing
The live media boots to the MATE desktop which places panels across the top and bottom of the screen. The top panel holds the Applications menu, along with its companions, the Places and System menus. The top panel also holds the system tray. The bottom panel serves as the task switcher. Icons on the desktop open the Caja file manager and launch the system installer.
GhostBSD uses a custom system installer which looks and acts similarly to Calamares in the Linux ecosystem. This graphical installer walks us through picking our preferred language, choosing our keyboard's layout, and selecting our timezone from a list. We are then asked if we wish to manually partition disks or take a guided option. The guided approach is still fairly flexible, allowing us to select which disk to use, picking a volume name for our ZFS pool, and setting the desired size of our swap space. We can also pick which of the FreeBSD boot loaders (there are three) we wish to use.
The system installer also asks us to make up a password for the root user and create a username/password combination for ourselves. The installer then copies its files to the local hard drive. When it is finished the installer offers to restart the computer or return us to the MATE desktop. The whole experience is pleasantly straight forward, friendly, and should be easy to navigate for anyone who has installed a mainstream Linux distribution.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of GhostBSD booted to a simple, graphical login screen which was pleasantly decorated with a landscape photo. There are no session options presented by default, when we select our account and put in our password we're signed into the MATE 1.26 desktop.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- The Caja file manager
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
MATE is set up to be pleasantly quiet. There were no pop-up windows, no notifications, and no welcome screen when I signed in the first time. GhostBSD presents us with a clean environment and leaves us to get to work and use it as we see fit.
The MATE desktop is set up with a light theme, though alternative themes, including dark ones, are available through the settings panel. I found the screensaver kicked in quickly, after five minutes, and locked the screen. This is a bit aggressive for my taste, but this too can be easily changed in the settings panel.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- Exploring the settings panel
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
When I tested GhostBSD in a VirtualBox environment the operating system ran quickly and smoothly. My only problem was my desktop resolution was limited to a maximum of 1024x768 pixels. I could fix this by adjusting VirtualBox's settings to use VBoxVGA as the graphics controller instead of VMSVGA. From then onward, I could access my host system's full screen resolution.
When I ran GhostBSD on my laptop, I had an experience which was of mixed quality. The operating system ran quickly and smoothly, my touchpad was detected and would interpret taps as clicks. On the other hand, GhostBSD was unable to work with my keyboard's function keys. In other words, adjusting audio volume and screen brightness using the function keys did not work. I found GhostBSD could detect my wireless card and even use it to detect local wi-fi networks. However, GhostBSD was unable to connect to any wi-fi networks, with authentication failing each time, even after verifying the password was correct.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- Using MATE with a dark theme
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The operating system took up 5.8GB of disk space for a fresh install, plus however much we set aside for swap space. When sitting idle at the MATE desktop, GhostBSD consumed 320MB of active memory and 460MB of wired memory, most of the latter set aside for ZFS functions and cache.
Included applications
GhostBSD ships with a fairly standard collection of open source software, most of it in the GNOME/MATE family of applications. The Firefox web browser is included along with the Transmission bittorrent client. The Evolution e-mail client is included alongside a document viewer and Caja file manager. We're also given a text editor, virtual terminal, and calculator.
The operating system ships with two media players, Rhythmbox and VLC. I found VLC was able to play any audio or video file I threw at it, though audio wasn't always smooth and could stutter. Rhythmbox was unable to play MP3 files, reporting it was missing codecs. While the application offers to search for the missing software, clicking the button to perform a search for the required packages does nothing and codecs must be installed manually.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- Browsing the application menu
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
GhostBSD included the FreeBSD kernel and userland tools. Local manual pages are also included. GhostBSD's user accounts default to using the fish shell, though csh and tcsh are also available on the system. We can install other alternatives, such as bash, from the project's software repository. GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD 13.2-STABLE at the time of writing, not 13.2-RELEASE. This means the operating system is mostly stable, though slightly on the development end of things compared to fixed FreeBSD releases.
The operating system ships with sudo to provide administrator access and the first user is automatically set up with sudo access.
Software management
The GhostBSD project ships two graphical package management tools. One is called Update Station and it is a simple utility which checks for new software packages. During my trial no new packages were detected in the repositories, meaning I was unable to test its capabilities for fetching updates. I confirmed no new packages had been made available using the command line pkg package manager.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- The Software Station application
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The second graphical software tool is called Software Station. This is a low-level package manager, similar in style to Linux tools like Synaptic. Software categories are listed down the left side of the window and items in a selected category are shown to the right. Software Station uses FreeBSD's ports category names which can be short and cryptic. In my opinion, it's not always clear which category an application might be in. For example, would you expect to find a tool such as wget, that is used for downloading content from the web, under the "ftp", "net", or "www" category? (The correct answer turns out to be "ftp".) Fortunately, Software Station provides a search function for when we know the name of a package, but not its precise category.
Using Software Station, we can queue a series of actions, fetching and/or removing multiple packages in a batch. The application worked well and functioned quickly. I had no problems searching for, adding, or deleting software packages.
For people who prefer the command line, FreeBSD's pkg utility is available and also works quickly and ran without any problems during my trial.
Conclusions
GhostBSD does a good job, in my opinion, of doing what it sets out to do: provide a pre-configured, desktop operating system which is based on FreeBSD. The project offers a fast, stable, and wonderfully easy to set up desktop platform. I really like how fast and clean MATE is and how GhostBSD makes installing FreeBSD a point-and-click experience.
GhostBSD has added a few convenient utilities too, such as the network manager (networkmgr) and the Software Station. I still found the network utility to be less useful than Network Manager on Linux (it was unable to connect to local wireless networks), but that may be an issue with the underlying network device driver rather than networkmgr itself.
I feel the above point highlights the main drawback to trying GhostBSD. The project does a great job of installing and configuring FreeBSD to be used as a desktop operating system. In this aspect, I cannot find fault with it. However, GhostBSD also inherits its parent's weaknesses when it comes to desktop computing. Wireless drivers, running closed source applications such as Steam, and running less popular open source applications all run up against the limits of what FreeBSD is currently able to do when compared to Linux. GhostBSD is great if you have a wired network and want to run popular open source applications exclusively. It shines in this area. However, when stepping a little outside of this well-trodden ground the platform bumps up against its limitations.
For people who like FreeBSD and want to get up and running with a desktop quickly, GhostBSD is ideal. For people who enjoy Linux and stick to open source software exclusively, GhostBSD might be a good fit too. However, people who need non-free firmware, run closed-source applications, or who have exotic hardware might find GhostBSD limited compared to mainstream Linux distributions.
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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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Visitor supplied rating
GhostBSD has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.3/10 from 43 review(s).
Have you used GhostBSD? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work happening in Xfce, Slackware streamlines 32-bit kernels, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0
Over time, more Linux desktop environments are making the gradual migration from using the X11 protocol to display user interfaces and shifting to using the Wayland protocol. One of the challenges of Wayland is each desktop environment typically needs to make its own compositor, usually as part of the window manager. One exception of this duplication of work may turn out to be the Budgie team partnering with Xfce to share their efforts. The Register reports: "Budgie is being pragmatic - looking to see what can be done in the short-to-medium term, then having a longer-term view. Thus, the Budgie team has been evaluating options to move forward. Xfce are doing some really great work in this area with libxfce4windowing - a compatibility layer bridging Wayland and X11, allowing the move in a logical direction without needing a big-bang approach. To date, most of the current codebase has already been reworked and is ready for a Wayland-only approach without impacting further development and enhancements." Additional information about Budgie's migration and how it will affect Ubuntu Budgie can be found in The Register's article.
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The Slackware project is making some adjustments to its lineup of kernel offerings. The famously conservative distribution is streamlining its available kernels for 32-bit CPUs in the Testing branch, though the changelog points out even Pentium M processors (which are 20 years old at the time of writing) can still be used to run Slackware. "We have fresh 6.6 kernels in /testing! You may notice that on the 32-bit side we have done away with the -smp labeled kernel packages, but it's actually the other kernels that were retired -- the non-SMP, non-PAE ones. If you were previously using kernel-generic-smp or kernel-huge-smp, you'll need to make some adjustments to your boot loader setup to load kernel-generic or kernel-huge instead. About the only non-obsolete CPUs that may have an issue with this are the first generation Pentium M chips, which supported PAE but unfortunately did not advertise this in the CPU flags. But these will support PAE if the kernel option "forcepae" is appended at boot time."
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The latest version of FreeBSD was announced about a week after FreeBSD 14.0 was expected to be officially released. Despite this extended delay, there have been a number of issues which have surfaced, following the install media being made available to the public. Colin Percival has provided an overview of problems with the 14.0 release, along with explanations for why the problems exist and how to work around them. A few of the issues concern upgrading FreeBSD from an earlier release: "The default shell for root changed from csh to sh in FreeBSD 14. When you upgrade to FreeBSD 14, freebsd-update will prompt you to merge changes to /etc/master.passwd. Don't just take the new password line for root since it doesn't have a password. Keep your existing line and change the shell (or not, if you prefer to stick with csh)."
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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) |
Why Linux uses swap when memory is free
Has-plenty-of-room asks: Why is my Linux system using swap space when there is still room left in RAM? I thought swap was just there to catch overflow.
DistroWatch answers: As suggested, swap space is usually an area set aside on the hard drive which will temporary store data that was being used in memory (RAM). Swap space is either a disk partition or a special file where the operating system can copy data that was in memory. Once the information has been copied to swap space, the operating system can use the previously occupied space in memory for something else.
When the information which was copied to swap space is needed again it is copied back into RAM where it can be used by running applications and services.
Generally speaking, swap space is used when RAM is nearly full and the operating system is at risk of running out of space in memory needed by applications. Since swap space is used to store information which currently doesn't fit in memory, why would it be in use if memory isn't full?
What has probably happened is, at some point after the computer booted, memory filled up (or got close to being full). At that point the operating system copied some information it was not currently using out to swap space. This freed up RAM to be used by services and applications. Later, some RAM was freed, leaving more space. However, since that time, the operating system has not needed the information it pushed out to swap.
Maybe a background service has been sleeping, maybe there is an application window which hasn't been looked at for a long time. For whatever reason, the system hasn't needed to actively make use of the data in swap space. Since the information hasn't been needed, it remains in swap to avoid running into an inefficient situation where the data might get read back into RAM and then bumped out again before it is needed.
In short, chances are your system did fill up RAM in the past (or came close to filling its RAM) and the system shuffled data it wasn't currently using out to swap. The data hasn't been needed since then so the information has sat quietly in swap space. It will be loaded back into RAM when it is needed.
If you ever wish to clear data from swap space, forcing it back into RAM, you can do this on Linux using the swapoff and swapon commands. Running the command "swapoff -a" will disable all swap spaces, causing the system to load data back into RAM. We can then run "swapon -a" to re-enable swap space so that it can be used later if needed. This process effectively "flushes" swap space (when it is convenient for us) rather than waiting for the operating system to load memory from swap back into RAM on demand, which can cause small delays when the data is required.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
EndeavourOS 11-2023
Bryan Poerwo has announced the release of EndeavourOS 11-2023, code-named "Galileo", a major update of the project's Arch-based Linux distribution. In this release, the live ISO image ships with KDE Plasma desktop (instead of Xfce), Linux kernel 6.6.1 and an updated Calamares system installer: "It has taken a while to develop this release but we are still here and despite life throwing in extra challenges for each of our team members the past months, we are proud to present you our Galileo ISO with significant changes. KDE Plasma replaced Xfce as the Live environment and on the offline install option. To make development and maintenance easier for the team, we switched to KDE Plasma instead of Xfce due to a more native experience for our developers with the Calamares installer. This only affects the Live environment and the offline install option. When choosing the online install option, Xfce is still there as an option to choose from. For those who like the Xfce theme we created, this option will still be available after installation through the Welcome app." See the release announcement for a complete list of changes and screenshots.
EndeavourOS 11-2023 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 6.1MB, resolution: 2560x1440 pixels)
FreeBSD 14.0
Colin Percival (the new Release Engineering Team Lead) has announced the release of FreeBSD 14.0. It is available for the amd64, aarch64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, armv7 and riscv64 architectures. "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the stable/14 branch. Some of the highlights: OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.5p1; OpenSSL has been updated to version 3.0.12, a major upgrade from OpenSSL 1.1.1t in FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE; the bhyve hypervisor now supports TPM and GPU passthrough; FreeBSD supports up to 1024 cores on the amd64 and arm64 platforms; ZFS has been upgraded to OpenZFS release 2.2, providing significant performance improvements; it is now possible to perform background filesystem checks on UFS file systems running with journaled soft updates; experimental ZFS images are now available for AWS and Azure; the default congestion control mechanism for TCP is now CUBIC." For further information please see the release announcement and the release notes.
Rocky Linux 9.3
Louis Abel has announced the release of Rocky Linux 9.3, the latest stable version from a project that develops a community clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux: "We are pleased to announce the general availability of Rocky Linux 9.3. This release is currently available for the x86-64, aarch64, ppc64le and s390x architectures. The 9.3 release brings back cloud and container images for ppc64le that were not released with 9.2 due to issues with QEMU. These images may be divergent from the other architecture's images in some small ways, but we will work to reduce this delta in future releases of the images. The kernel-rt package has been merged into a subpackage of kernel. A new kernel-uki package was introduced as a technology preview, providing a Unified Kernel Image variant for booting. This UKI image is signed with its own SecureBoot key. A java-21-openjdk package was introduced providing a new version of Java. Current users of Rocky Linux 9 can upgrade to 9.3 from the terminal via dnf update, or from the desktop with GNOME Software, KDE Discover, etc." Read the release announcement and the release notes for further information and upgrade instructions.
Proxmox 8.1 "Virtual Environment"
Proxmox is a commercial company offering specialised products based on Debian GNU/Linux, notably Proxmox Virtual Environment. The company's latest release is Proxmox 8.1 Virtual Environment which is based on Debian 12 and features ZFS 2.2.0 along with an updated kernel. "We're very excited to announce the release 8.1 of Proxmox Virtual Environment! It's based on Debian 12.2 "Bookworm" but uses a newer Linux kernel 6.5, QEMU 8.1.2, and OpenZFS 2.2.0 (with stable fixes backported). Here is a selection of the highlights of Proxmox VE 8.1: Debian 12.2 (Bookworm), but uses a newer Linux kernel 6.5 as stable default; latest versions of QEMU 8.1.2 and ZFS 2.2.0 including the most important bugfixes from 2.2.1 already; Software-Defined Networking (SDN); Secure Boot; New flexible notification system with matcher-based approach; Ceph Server: Ceph Reef 18.2.0 is default, and Ceph; Quincy 17.2.7 comes with continued support; countless GUI and API improvements." Additional information is provided in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
rlxos 2023.11
rlxos is an independent Linux distribution which runs on an immutable filesystem and features the Xfce desktop. The project has made some significant changes for its latest stable release, swapping out the GNOME desktop in favour of Xfce and using Swupd for software updates. "Silaghana marks the major release of RLXOS, encompassing significant changes, exciting features, and the potential to break backward compatibility. Here's a glimpse of what Silaghana offers: Desktop environment switch: We've transitioned from GNOME to Xfce4 - significantly faster and lighter; simplified interface without compromising usability; highly configurable to meet various user requirements. Swupd for seamless updates - Swupd empowers both developers and end-users to flexibly manage system updates via libostree; users can review update changelogs before applying them; Swupd facilitates temporary safe mutability within the system." Additional details on the new release can be found in the project's release announcement.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
Ultramarine Linux 39
Ultramarine Linux is a Fedora-based distribution featuring extra package repositories such as RPM Fusion, the Budgie (or Cutefish) desktop, and multimedia codecs. The project's latest release, version 39, uses an in-house build system and can automatically install NVIDIA drivers when appropriate. "Changes: Rebase to Fedora 39. Build process no longer relies on Red Hat's Live Image Creator, switched to our in-house builder; Katsu. Various fixes for live image startup scripts. speech-dispatcherd is now disabled, TTS is now handled by other means. When importing COPR repositories, DNF now finally uses Fedora repos instead of EPEL. New wallpaper. Slightly refreshed looks on Flagship Edition. Default typeface is now Inter instead of Cantarell. Various Pantheon fixes. Install some elementary apps from appcenter, when available. Fix issues with XDG portals. Fix bug where wallpapers would not properly apply." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
OpenMandriva Lx 5.0
The OpenMandriva team have announced the availablity of a new release of their user-friendly, desktop-focused operating system. "OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, the long-awaited release of the independent, community controlled distribution's fixed point release branch (as opposed to its rolling release branch), has been released. This is expected to be the last major release featuring the Plasma 5 desktop. In the 1.5 years since the previous fixed point release, OMLx 4.3, many things have changed. Among others, the new release is based on kernel 6.6 LTS (kernel-desktop-6.6.2 - 6.7.0-rc2 is also available), Mesa 23.3.0-rc4, Qt 5.15.11+KDE Patches and 6.6.0, KDE Frameworks 5.112, KDE Gear 23.08.3, Plasma 5.27.9.1, LibreOffice 7.6.3, and other current open source software. Outside of component updates, this is the first fixed point release that merges the / and /usr filesystems." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
OpenMandriva Lx 5.0 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 371kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
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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: 2,931
- Total data uploaded: 43.8TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What type of swap space do you use?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about swap space getting consumed in order to hold data which had been held in RAM. There are a few different types of swap space. Traditionally swap space was held on a separate disk partition, though these days it is becoming more common to use a special file (often stored in the root partition) to hold data that has been evicted from memory. Some people also use a special approach which treats a section of RAM as compressed swap space, allowing the operating system to compress and move unused data into another region of memory rather than using a disk.
This week we would like to hear which approach you use. Feel free to tell us why you use the approach you do in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on running minimal window managers versus a full desktop environment in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What style of swap space do you use?
File: | 233 (14%) |
Partition: | 896 (53%) |
zRAM/compressed RAM: | 118 (7%) |
A combination of the above: | 119 (7%) |
No swap space at all: | 308 (18%) |
None of the above: | 18 (1%) |
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Website News |
Added loongarch64 architecture
DistroWatch has added the loongarch64 CPU architecture to our database. At the moment we know of only two distributions which are working on loongarch64 support (T2 SDE and Debian). It is now possible to use our Search page to find distributions which support the loongarch64 CPU type.
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Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $127 in contributions from the following kind souls:
Donor |
Amount |
J S | $50 |
Charles S | $20 |
Jonathon B | $10 |
Sam C | $10 |
David P | $9 |
Chung T | $5 |
Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
DuCakedHare | $5 |
Skye F | $3 |
J.D. L | $2 |
PB C | $2 |
Peter M | $2 |
c6WWldo9 | $1 |
Stephen M | $1 |
Shasheen E | $1 |
William E | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Red OS. Red OS is a Russian project, based on the source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
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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, 4 December 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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Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip. (Tips this week: 1, value: US$100) |
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Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • POLL (by Reyfer on 2023-11-27 03:51:49 GMT from Venezuela)
What is the purpose of the last option on this week's poll?
2 • @1. Poll (by Sam Crawford on 2023-11-27 04:09:18 GMT from United States)
Commadore 64 users.
3 • SWAP space (by Alexandru on 2023-11-27 07:15:36 GMT from Romania)
The last option is for something else than is listed. And in my case (I did not vote however) is "it depends on the hardware".
4 • GhostBSD 4GB RAM (by vermaden on 2023-11-27 08:09:46 GMT from Poland)
Hi.
> These requirements, especially the 4GB of RAM, may seem unusually high for a FreeBSD-based operating system.
Its because installer first unpacks files to ramdisk and then does the installation.
If you want to install GhostBSD on a computer with - for example - 2 GB RAM then do the following:
1. Install GhostBSD in VirtualBox with 4 GB RAM on some other computer.
2. Install latest FreeBSD STABLE snapshot on a computer with 2 GB (Auto ZFS).
3. Enable sshd(8) on 2 GB machine. # vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config (PermitRootLogin yes) # service sshd enable # service sshd start
4. From 4 GB machine do bectl(8) export like that to 2 GB machine. # bectl export ghostbsd | ssh root@2GB bectl import ghostbsd
5. Activate new ZFS BE on 2 GB machine. # bectl activate ghostbsd
6. Reboot 2 GB machine into GhostBSD using 'ghostbsd' ZFS BE.
Hope that helps.
Regards, vermaden
5 • zRAM (by NULL on 2023-11-27 08:46:06 GMT from Germany)
Switched all my devices (servers and desktops) to utilize zRAM instead of swap and could not be happier with the results.
It reduces read/write cycles on SSDs, is faster to begin with and allows even my cheap 4GB netbook to be a machine used for light development with the GNOME desktop.
Of course there might be situations where a partition/file swap is more appropriate or a mix between zRAM and partitions/files.
For regular users, IMHO zRAM should be the default on desktops nowadays, because the benefits easily outweigh potential drawbacks .
6 • swap (by fenglengshun on 2023-11-27 10:25:39 GMT from Indonesia)
Most distro I use (including the one I use currently) use zram. I usually add swapfile on top of that, juuuuust in case when it's needed. And it is needed, sometimes reaching 10GB if I've used my device for particularly long times without rebooting.
7 • GhostBSD (by Otis on 2023-11-27 12:19:30 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the GhostBSD review. It's been my little "pet hope" distro (I still call BSD projects "distros" even though that term is most commonly used for Linux projects) since I first noticed it and tried it a few years ago.
I keep running into the wifi issues, along with sound workarounds instead of "just working out of the box" no matter the hardware I try the installation on. I'm somewhat spoiled by most Linux installations which see the hardware and you're fully up and running to see if the distro is compatible with your way of doing things. BSD projects seem to need a lot more extra work to do that... still; it's been a long time of hope that they'll catch up to Linux.
I do love the no systemd aspect of BSD, along with a certain sort of snappiness of operation that is only in a few Linux distros.
8 • GjostBSD (by Borgio3 on 2023-11-27 13:05:48 GMT from Italy)
I'm using GhostBSD since May of 2023, after a year with NomadBSD, and i'm very satisfied of both. I like very much their reliability, and ligtness, and all operations run quickly and smoothly. So i had abandoned the Linux world.
9 • GhostBSD: small issue (by Nathan on 2023-11-27 13:31:19 GMT from United States)
I used GhostBSD on my "play" desktop for about 5 months. I had no issue with WIFI using the Panda USB stick. My only issue was the sound device. I set the sound to the desktop speaker but after each power down, G. reverts to no sound device. The "save" selection did not function. Other then that, GhostBSD worked like a charm, speedy, no popups or other "noise" That machine is now running Peppermint 12 while my daily laptop is running MX "KDE".
10 • GhostBSD (by Barnabyh on 2023-11-27 14:08:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
I like the traditional GNOME 2 set up on the FreeBSD base. Been watching this project since you Jesse reviewed it here first. Unfortunately not being able to use Steam is still a deal breaker.
11 • Swap for Suspend (by Stan R on 2023-11-27 15:26:42 GMT from United States)
I believe swap might be necessary for a system to suspend or sleep. Maybe even needed when drives or partitions get above 80 or 85 percent full; so that the kernel can move things to keep down data fragmentation.
12 • @11 Swap (by Denethor on 2023-11-27 17:17:50 GMT from Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Dear Stan R, swap is not necessary for sleep/suspend, only for hibernation.
13 • Swap (by David on 2023-11-27 17:20:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
The reason why a computer uses swap when there's plenty of RAM available is that it does so when the the free memory falls below a certain limit. The limit depends on the type of memory, where in the memory the program is loaded (RAM is spit into two or three zones), and how enthusiastic about swapping the kernel has been set to be. The only thing you can control is the last factor, "swappiness". That is usually set to 60, but can be anything from 0 to 100 — the higher it is, the more likely the system is to use swap..
14 • Swap (by DaveT on 2023-11-27 19:06:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
I never use swap on desktops and laptops. No need for it. If the software you are using starts running dog slow then install more RAM or buy a new laptop! I only use a swap partition on servers.
15 • Swapping. (by Friar Tux on 2023-11-27 20:47:41 GMT from Canada)
I use what ever is default on my daily distro. I don't care to twiddle with what's under the hood, I just want to get my stuff done. Also, I figure the developers of the distro have optimized it to what works best, so if it ain't broke, I don't try messing with it. As for anything BSD, I gave up on that a long time ago. I could never get one installed or working on any machine. I find it takes way too much extra fiddling - as Otis (@7) stated above.
16 • BSD = being self-debaring (by BSD was something in the 80s on 2023-11-28 00:06:16 GMT from France)
@7, @15 No surprise. FreeBSD IS DESIGNED to require lots of fiddling. It's all stated loud and clear in its very motto "the power to serve". Its a server OS, that means it's to be run by sysadmins. It's not to be used as workstations... Except sysadmin's workstation maybe (but i know so many Unix sysdmins who prefer using Windows or more rarely Macs). Have ever seen a FreeBSD install tutorial? They explain that managing lots of things by shell commands and editing /etc files is "better to learn how things work"...
But i'm always nagged by this impression they're just hiding by that, that they don't have the ressources, neither the know-how to make things easier.
At any rate, iIf you're no computer pro, no luck. But if you seriously want to train as a sysadmin, well, maybe you'd be better off installing a Linux server, actually, and deploying web services on VMs or in Docker containers.
Come to think about it, BSD used to be a source of non-conformity, back in the days it was Unix 1BSD, 2BSD, ...4.3BSD, developed at University of California in Berkeley. Then 4.4BSD was released, it didn't bear the Unix name anymore, the UCB washed their hands of it, and strangely, it was adopted by guys who have since then proven to be so conservative the BSD systems have kept receding everywhere... There may be companies just embed most of FreeBSD's kernel in commercial products,but just don't follow any of BSD folk senile principles (Sony PlayStation, Apple devices...).
17 • @15 (by Simon on 2023-11-28 00:20:41 GMT from New Zealand)
The developers of the distro have not optimized it to what works best for you: they've attempted to set it up in a way that's going to work for the largest number of people, which usually means that it can work much better for you if you take the time to understand it and improve on the default setup.
18 • gigs (by Iohannis on 2023-11-28 01:07:49 GMT from United States)
My current computer is an off the shelf "gaming" machine. It replaced my custum power hog second best of everything. It came with 32 GIG, the minimal configuration. If my OS ever touches swap, something has gone terriby wrong.
19 • Swap Space (by Simon Plaistowe on 2023-11-28 02:16:42 GMT from New Zealand)
Well that mainly depends upon the hardware. If it's on SSD then I tend to use a file, which is easy to resize or recreate if I wish to. If it's on HDD then I tend to use a partition to avoid fragmentation, and physically place that partition as close as possible to the beginning of the drive where access is faster. And I tend to keep /tmp/ in RAM, using tmpfs so it'll use RAM when possible then swap space thereafter.
20 • swap space (by Will on 2023-11-28 04:35:22 GMT from United States)
When I saw this poll, I scratched my head and thought to myself, swap, sheesh, how long has it been since I thought about swap... at least a couple of years now. So I looked and apparently, somewhere along the lines of installing mint, I wound up with a 2.0gb swapfile. Apparently, it's been enough for my needs. I do have 32gb of ram on the desktop and 16 on my laptops. I do a lot of dev work and vms, but I can't remember running out of memory or crashing for years, so I'll stick with mint's defaults and keep not worrying about it :).
21 • Why these BSD variants? (by Greg Zeng on 2023-11-28 04:42:10 GMT from Australia)
Comments made so far explain much. BSD for servers, originally, like Linux, but free of the Unix legalities. Supposedly trimmer, & better than Linux, but only in the opinion of a very small minority. Varieties of user applications?
The next puzzle in Distrowatch is the reason for living of the hundreds of different brand names. It is similar to the human population. So newborn babies, with varying degrees of ability & ambition. Some babies stagnate in their growth, with some never reaching teens or adulthood. There are dinosaur versions, stuck in traditional ways, such as the Linux (Unix) From Scratch variants, denying the existence of the common later changes & innovations. No systemd, no Wayland, no BTRFS, no zRAM, etc.
There are many rebellious forks as usual, unable or unwilling to partner with existing development communities. These forks are based usually on Debian, Red Hat, Arch, or the derivatives of these derivatives. Most forks have daring and adventurous innovations. These include early use of the inevitable. Is Wayland ready to be incorporated into the conservative parent, upstream versions of these forks?
End users like myself are watching for the fear and clumsy attempts by these coders. The "Discover" package manager was invented to try to improve the Synaptic Package Manager, designed for the Debian compiled applications. Discover is trying to better handle snap, flatpak and Debian packages. Discover cannot yet handle AppImage, nor the many incompatible versions of the RPM-compiled applications.
My preference for PC Linux OS. PCLOS is trying to match the original Synaptic for its versions of their unique RPM compilations. This variant of Synaptic includes essential applications usually neglected by other application package managers; Slimjet, Grub Customizer and Freefilesync. This isolated PCLOS community however has yet to debug Onboard and other applications into their application package manager. PCLOS is not yet able to use other package managers, including Discover, flatpak and snap.
BSD has yet to be accessible for application end users. Most of the hundreds of Linux operating systems are unavailable. Too dangerously youthful, too staid & conservative, or too geeky. PCLOS is my preferred Unix-based system, despite its small coder base, and use of an antique version of RPM.
Since my computer needs are not just Linux limited however, only Windows has the full range of user options, for applications and devices used in the real world. The many Unix variants (BSD, Linux, Apple and Android) cannot yet have the user sensitivity required by the general public. My medical impairments are better treated with Logitech products, and Windows software etc.
Hopefully the many Unix derivations will be mature enough for the general computer user. Meantime, these Unix derivatives stay the domain of professional coders and their geek dependents.
22 • Swap, Scratch or Proxy; it's a MUST have (by why-oh-why on 2023-11-28 08:06:50 GMT from The Netherlands)
There are people who will tell you things like "if you need swap, you need more RAM" or "I have 32 GB of RAM; I can't see why I would need swap." Well, that only shows their half-knowledge and how they actually really can't see. Please let me give you an example from the past.
When I started using image manipulation programs, the "supercomputer workstations" had 32 MB of RAM and were costing as much as a small house. Computers had 32 MB of RAM, but we were working with 128, or 512 MB of images. That was possible only because of "proxy images." Check out the "Alias Eclipse" history for more.
Eclipse Paint was the best professional image manipulation program until the "bargain cheapo" Adobe Photoshop came out. For a peanut (about $600) of the price ($3500), it could do almost everything ("warping") better. (I do not remember the exact price anymore, but the approximate difference in the price was as written.)
Except for one thing: Photoshop struggled with files much larger than the amount of RAM. The "scratch disk" was born. Try opening a 512 MB or 1 GB image in Photoshop (to get the idea, GIMP will do too) and try making 100 layer copies and see what happens.
Technology changed, but nothing changed in the sense of "no swap, no work."
Swap is absolutely necessary in modern times too. Swap is necessary for hybernation, swap is necessary for badly programmed websites (the infamous thumblr's "infinity scroll"), swap is necessary for HQ audio, video, and imaging applications, etc.
No swap, no fun, you could say, even today. Once, it was a 128 MB image on a 32 MB RAM computer, and today it is a 4 TB RAM computer struggling with 365 GP (gigapixels). "Post-processing and stitching the 46 terabytes afterwards took 2 months, and the resulting 365-gigapixel photo would be as large as a soccer field if printed out at 300 dpi."
Search for "365-Gigapixel Panorama of Mont Blanc Becomes the World’s Largest Photo" (PetaPixel) for more.
So yes, "if you need swap, you need more RAM" or "I have 32 GB of RAM; I can't see why I would need swap" is the truth for most people, but far from the truth in general.
23 • BSD (by DaveT on 2023-11-28 10:19:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
I use OpenBSD as my daily driver. It works very well indeed. You DO have to read the manual at times to get things how you want them. Choose your hardware carfeully! I only use Devuan Linux for those things the BSDs don't do such as music composition. A suitable vanity project now I am retired would be to port Csound to OpenBSD - that should keep me quiet for a bit!
24 • Fiddling by design (by Otis on 2023-11-28 13:49:05 GMT from United States)
@16 I don't think so. In the first place not every BSD version/distro/project has the same vision, some, notably the BSD at hand in this week's review section, seeks to not only be "elegant," as stated on Eric's homepage for GhostBSD, but also to basically be a Linux distro replacement or at least alternative, fully functional out of the box and ready to fire up and go to work.
It, like other BSDs out there, is evolving with each release, and also has a thriving community of contributors to those ends.
I do see many BSD, and some Linux, projects that appear a lot like my old motorcycle kit years ago; basically a garage build and tinker endeavor designed just for that purpose. But, not, some BSD is about trying to be as good and finished as the best Linux distros out there.
25 • Typo correction (no editng here) (by Otis on 2023-11-28 13:52:19 GMT from United States)
@24 "But, not, some BSD is about trying to be as good and finished as the best Linux distros out there" should be:
"But, no, some BSDs out there are about trying to be as good and finished as the best Linux distros out there."
26 • ZRAM (by GT on 2023-11-28 15:44:45 GMT from United States)
ZRAM is super easy to setup on Debian 12. I use it instead of a partition and have no complaints.
27 • Swap space (by Bob McConnell on 2023-11-28 16:23:51 GMT from United States)
With 8GB of RAM, I have a 16GB swap partition active on every drive in each system. The only applications that use it on a regular basis are Firefox and the news reader pan2. Both are memory hogs and seem to forget to call free() when the allocated chunks are no longer needed. In at least one case, I have seen Firefox use 3GB for one tab after keeping the NOAA regional radar on it for several days. Terminating that process from the system monitor will free up that memory, and then restoring the tab restarts it with much less memory use. Pan2 simply keeps using more memory for each group, apparently without reusing or releasing any of it. The header download is the worst case. I sometimes have to shut the app down halfway through the list, in order to finish in a reasonable time frame. I always shut it down and restart between downloading headers and scanning through them.
28 • news reader (by jc on 2023-11-28 20:28:31 GMT from The Netherlands)
Comment 27: Why not use a better news reader than pan2?
29 • Nitrux passwords (by signior on 2023-11-28 23:24:53 GMT from Germany)
"Nitrux: Calamares will now enforce a stricter password check...to increase security... the 'system administrator,' must use a password over 8 characters long."
Dinosoar moment? Security experts were recommending passwords 12 or more characters long years ago. Win & MAC now offer built-in 2fa / mfa. The only Linux distro that offers something similar is SystemRescue via a built-in security key client - and it's just a rescue system. Login method is one area where Linux has fallen behind.
30 • Nitrux passwords, @29 (by Wally on 2023-11-29 01:56:44 GMT from Australia)
When I run into an installer that demands a password to its specifications, I quit the installer and install something else. I guess I'll skip Nitrux. Nothing against security. I just detest people and things that try to save me from myself. I'm retired and my computers reside at home. The only person with access is my wife, who knows all my passwords. Since I boot a few times a day, I don't want or need to be bothered with complex logins. In the unlikely event that someone breaks is and steal my computers, anything any of importance or value requires its own authorization for access. Burglars are welcome to my porn.:-)
Security people puzzle me sometimes. I have a phone with fingerprint sign-in, but once in a while it wants my 4 digit PIN "for security reasons". I'd think it'd be easier to steal my PIN than my fingerprint, but what do I know? Windows 11, by the way, can do with just a 6 digit PIN if signing in with an MS account.
31 • @14 Swap (by Inspector Barnaby on 2023-11-29 20:11:55 GMT from Denmark)
So, fellow-me-lad, why don't you just install more ram or buy new servers?
Toodle-pip!
32 • GhostBSD (by Todd on 2023-11-30 01:46:25 GMT from Italy)
GhostBSD proves that, with a little work, FreeBSD is also suitable for the desktop. It may lag behind Linux on hardware recognition, but it is a "real operating system" (not a kernel + GNU userland). It also evolves slowly to provide more stability, instead of frantically introducing new features and new problems.
33 • news reader @28 (by Bob McConnell on 2023-11-30 06:10:44 GMT from United States)
I would like to, but I haven't found one. I used Agent early on, then PAN for many years. pan2 is mostly a big disappointment after both of those. If I could find something else in free (libre) software that had a similar look and feel, I would switch to it very quickly. I even used Perl scripts to download everything in a few groups for several years. But that became a problem with all the noise that is being generated.
34 • BSD (by Trihexagonal on 2023-11-30 16:57:17 GMT from United States)
@16 "Have ever seen a FreeBSD install tutorial?"
Yes, I wrote one for people who had never used the command line.
https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/27708765
"They explain that managing lots of things by shell commands and editing /etc files is "better to learn how things work"..."
Right you are.
"But i'm always nagged by this impression they're just hiding by that, that they don't have the ressources, neither the know-how to make things easier."
https://web.archive.org/web/20220411175907/https://trihexagonal.org/
Posted from my FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE-p3 box.
Ghostbsd is a fine OS and been faithfully maintained for many years.
Kudos to Jesse for reviewing it.
Number of Comments: 34
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