 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1048, 4 December 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 49th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
In the Linux community, the herd of Wayland-backed desktop sessions have been slowly coming over the horizon for years. As window managers and desktops gradually adopt Wayland, some distributions are looking to phase out the old X11-powered desktop sessions. Our Questions and Answers column tackles the topic of Wayland gradually replacing X11 sessions and how long X11 applications are likely to be supported. Also this week, in our News section, we talk about Red Hat's plans to ease X11 out the door in favour of Wayland. Meanwhile the Fedora team is looking at making it possible to start new Wayland sessions remotely as the UBports team highlights a new tool to help develop applications on mobile devices. First though we take a look at openSUSE's MicroOS running the GNOME desktop. MicroOS is an immutable operating system which combines openSUSE packages with portable packages on a fixed foundation. Read on to learn more about this interesting branch of the openSUSE family. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: openSUSE MicroOS
- News: Red Hat phasing out X.Org packages, UBports makes it easier to develop on mobile devices, Fedora to support remote Wayland login sessions
- Questions and answers: The transition from X11 to Wayland
- Released last week: 4MLinux 44.0, Armbian 23.11, NixOS 23.11
- Torrent corner: Armbian, KDE neon, Proxmox, Tails
- Opinion poll: Does your desktop or window manager support Wayland, X11, or both?
- New distributions: AcorOS, Starbuntu
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE MicroOS
MicroOS is a special branch of the openSUSE project. The MicroOS branch, which uses the same technologies as other openSUSE editions, offers an immutable operating system. This means the core system is read-only and not meant to be changed while the distribution is running.
I tried MicroOS a little over a year ago, running the edition's KDE Plasma desktop. The experience, in line with the edition's label of being alpha-level software, was (in brief) poor. A year ago the Plasma flavour of MicroOS threw a lot of errors and ran into a number of problems. Though, again, in all fairness it was marked as "alpha" quality software.
I checked back on MicroOS and discovered that, in terms of classifications, not much has changed. MicroOS still bears the warning that the Plasma flavour is alpha software and the GNOME flavour is still considered a release candidate (as it was a year ago). Things may be moving slowly in the MicroOS ecosystem. Still, I was curious to see how the GNOME edition was coming along and if it could offer a better experience than my trial with the Plasma edition.
MicroOS is offered as a 4.1GB ISO file. A minor annoyance I ran into early on was the ISO's filename didn't match the filename listed in openSUSE's checksum file. This just means that automated hash checking tools don't work (reporting an error) and the checksum needed to be verified manually.
Installing
Booting from the MicroOS media brought up a boot menu where we can choose to boot from a local hard disk or launch the system installer. Taking the Install option launches a graphical environment and starts openSUSE's installer.
The install process is fairly straight forward. We are shown a license agreement and then asked to select a role for our new operating system. Roles include: MicroOS (minimal install with no services); Container Host (this offers Podman for handling container workloads); Desktop (with GNOME); Desktop (with Plasma); Remote Attestation (Agent); and Remote Attestation (Verifier). Since it didn't seem like the desktop flavours had advanced in their stability, I chose the GNOME option for my trial since the Plasma role was a mess during my previous experiment.
We are asked if we'd like to select a remote time server for syncing our system's clock and then given a chance to create a password for the root account. We're then shown a summary of actions the installer will take and we can click convenient links next to each action item in the summary to change it. These links to advanced options in the installer might be my favourite part of setting up a fresh copy of openSUSE.
The installer then set up a Btrfs volume and copied its packages to my hard drive. Once the installer finishes its work the computer is automatically rebooted and launches the new copy of MicroOS.
Early impressions
The first time MicroOS boots it brings up the GNOME desktop and runs a wizard to complete a few configuration steps. We're asked to pick our preferred language from a list, select our keyboard's layout, and asked if we'd like to enable location services. We're then asked to pick our timezone from a map. The final two steps invite us to connect with on-line accounts (Google, Nextcloud, and Microsoft are supported) and then create a username and password combination for our regular user.
At this point we are presented with the GNOME desktop and left to explore. In the future, when the system boots, it shows us a graphical login screen. From the login screen we have four session options: GNOME (running a Wayland session), GNOME Classic (also on Wayland), GNOME on an X11 session, and GNOME Classic on X11. I mostly stayed with the GNOME Wayland session and it worked well during my trial.
openSUSE MicroOS 2023 -- The GNOME Settings panel
(full image size: 579kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
GNOME is presented in a fairly minimal style with a panel across the top that holds the Activities menu and system tray. The default theme is dark, though this can be adjusted in the desktop's settings panel. When the Activities screen is opened, a dock is presented at the bottom of the screen with a few launchers and a button to display a full screen grid of application launchers. This makes getting to the applications a bit of a process, with a lot of mouse movement. GNOME's layout is awkward, but functional.
Included software
The first time I ran the GNOME session a window popped up letting me know Firefox was being installed. This was followed by other messages indicating additional apps, such as a calculator, were also being installed. Once this series of packages were installed I browsed the application menu to find the following items: Firefox, GNOME Software, the GNOME Files file manager, a system monitor, virtual terminal, and a text editor. These applications worked and I had no problems with them. The GNOME Help documentation portal is also installed, but no help pages are included. Launching GNOME Help just displays an empty window instead of the expected documentation. The GNOME Settings panel is also included to help us customize the desktop.
openSUSE MicroOS 2023 -- Seeking documentation in GNOME Help
(full image size: 451kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Behind the scenes we can find the GNU command line utilities installed. There is no man command, so no access to local manual pages by default. The systemd init software is provided and, at the time of writing, MicroOS was running version 6.5 of the Linux kernel.
Hardware
When I tried running MicroOS in a VirtualBox environment the distribution performed adequately. The system was stable and ran without serious issues, though desktop performance was subpar. This is fairly typical for GNOME running in a virtual machine. When running MicroOS on my workstation all of my hardware was detected, the distribution connected to local wireless networks, and performance was improved. The desktop still wasn't particularly responsive when compared with alternatives such as Xfce or Plasma, but it ran well enough for me to work comfortably with it.
openSUSE MicroOS 2023 -- Exploring the system in a virtual terminal
(full image size: 657kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
MicroOS is unusually heavy in memory, taking up 1,100MB of RAM just to sign into the minimal GNOME environment. MicroOS's Plasma flavour took 640MB, for the sake of comparison, a little more than half the memory with the same base operating system. Other mainstream distributions I have run this year tend to consume between 500MB and 800MB of memory. The MicroOS distribution also consumed a lot of disk space, 7.2GB for a fresh install, which feels like a lot since only a handful of applications are included. Again, for comparison's sake, my experiment with the Plasma flavour used 2.8GB of space on the drive.
Software centre
The GNOME flavour of MicroOS uses GNOME Software to manage applications. There are three tabs in this software centre: Explore, Installed, and Updates. During my trial there were no new updates released, which made the Updates tab uninteresting.
openSUSE MicroOS 2023 -- Browsing software packages
(full image size: 568kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Installed tab lists packages which are already on the system. These include items like Firefox and the calculator. MicroOS installs applications as Flatpak bundles on a per-user basis. These Flatpak packages are pulled from the Flathub repository. This means each user gets their own copy of an application. A nice side effect of this is we can add or remove applications to our account without needing to use a password or other form of administrator access.
The Explore tab shows us categories of applications we can browse. There is also a search box where we can search for software based on a name or description. Clicking on a specific application's entry in the Explore tab brings up a full screen description and a screenshot of the software in action. We can click a button to install new items and continue to browse for additional applications. Software is fetched in the background and we can check on the status of items being installed by switching to the Installed tab.
Conclusions
I feel as though openSUSE's MicroOS is, at the moment, less a full featured operating system (like openSUSE Leap), Ubuntu, or Manjaro, and more of a minimal platform on which we can build our computing experience. The MicroOS edition ships with very little software, beyond the core desktop, and we (as the user) are expected to layer on any software required to accomplish tasks. While this introduces a bit more set up time at the beginning, the idea of installing just the Flatpak bundles we need does appeal to me, at least in terms of setting up an end user desktop experience.
Unlike the experience I had with MicroOS's Plasma flavour last year, the GNOME experience was quite good. I'd even say it was pleasantly polished. It feels like the developers actually use this system and have ironed out most of the issues. There were just a few exceptions, such as the GNOME Help application not displaying any documentation, but otherwise my trial with MicroOS was quite solid this time around.
When I test out distributions, especially ones trying new things, I strive to look at two key factors: Does this project accomplish what it sets out to do? And will I find this useful?
The GNOME flavour of MicroOS (which is sometimes referred to as openSUSE Aeon) certainly seems to be accomplishing its goals. The distribution was stable, worked well with my hardware, and presented very few problems. It was easy to install new desktop applications, even more seamless than on most distributions since a password wasn't required. One of my few concerns was how heavy MicroOS was when running GNOME, even compared to the Plasma flavour of the same platform. It's unusually large, but the experience and software included are minimal.
While MicroOS appears to be accomplishing its goals and doing well, I'm not sure I'd want to use it myself on a regular basis. Apart from the heavy memory usage, I ran into two things which make me hesitate to keep running MicroOS. One is that there doesn't appear to be much documentation for it yet (or a community around it). I tried looking up a few aspects of how the atomic updates work and how to perform some configuration tasks without openSUSE's YaST control panel. The documentation in the wiki appears to be limited and more of a quick reference for people already familiar with MicroOS.
My other concern is, as with some other immutable platforms, low-level package management and software configuration gets complicated. It's easy enough to fetch a Flatpak and install it in our user's account with MicroOS. The process is quite smooth. However, when it comes to adding or configuring command line software and libraries (things I use in my line of work administrating and developing software), MicroOS becomes awkward. First, the documentation on package management linked to in the wiki is missing at the time of writing, so that's no help. It looks as though the recommended way to handle command line software and libraries is to install a container, put a base image of another openSUSE edition in the container, and then install RPM packages into the container. This feels really indirect and leaves me feeling as though people like me will be better served by simply installing a different edition of openSUSE as the main operating system.
In short, openSUSE's MicroOS is doing well, it runs smoothly, it's accomplishing its goal of being an easy to use, immutable operating system. I might set up something like this for less technical users. However, it's quite minimal, there isn't much documentation, and the immutable nature makes some low-level tasks and tweaking more complicated.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Lenovo desktop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Hex-core Intel i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
- Storage: Western Digital 1TB hard drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 wired network card, Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe wireless adapter
- Display: Intel CometLake-S GT2
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Visitor supplied rating
openSUSE has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.5/10 from 515 review(s).
Have you used openSUSE? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Red Hat phasing out X.Org packages, UBports makes it easier to develop on mobile devices, Fedora to support remote Wayland login sessions
Red Hat has announced plans to drop X.Org packages from the upcoming release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10, instead using Wayland and (when necessary) Xwayland for backward compatibility with X11 applications. "With this, we've decided to remove Xorg server and other X servers (except Xwayland) from RHEL 10 and the following releases. Xwayland should be able to handle most X11 clients that won't immediately be ported to Wayland, and if needed, our customers will be able to stay on RHEL 9 for its full life cycle while resolving the specifics needed for transitioning to a Wayland ecosystem. It's important to note that 'Xorg Server' and 'X11' are not synonymous, X11 is a protocol that will continue to be supported through Xwayland, while the Xorg Server is one of the implementations of the X11 protocol." Details on this change can be found in the company's announcement.
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One of the barriers to running many open mobile operating systems on phones is the lack of applications on these platforms. The latest UBports newsletter highlights some new applications, one of which aims to facilitate development on the UBports mobile operating system. "Touch IDE is a touch-optimized, mobile-friendly development environment. Its programming language is easy to use and doesn't require tedious keyboard input. You can create and run your scripts on your mobile device without using a PC. The scripts are converted to pure HTML/JavaScript-based applications in the background and are therefore executed on your device immediately, without further compilation." Additional information on Touch IDE can be found in the UBports Open Store repository.
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There are some interesting components coming together in GNOME and in the Fedora distribution which will soon allow users to set up remote desktop sessions and login to their GNOME desktop running on Wayland. Christian F.K. Schaller takes us through a tour of new features, such as PipeWire, updated NVIDIA video drivers, and remote Wayland sessions in an exciting feature preview. "One feature we been also spending a lot of time on is enabling remote logins to a Wayland desktop. You have been able to share your screen under Wayland more or less from day one, but it required your desktop session to be already active. But let's say you wanted to access your Wayland desktop running on a headless system. You [have] been out of luck so far and had to rely on the old X session instead. So putting in place all the pieces for this has been quite an undertaking with work having been done on PipeWire, on Wayland portals, gnome remote desktop daemon, libei; the new input emulation library, GDM and more. The pieces needed are finally falling into place and we expect to have everything needed landed in time for GNOME 46."
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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) |
The transition from X11 to Wayland
Phasing-out-the-old asks: With Wayland quickly gaining in popularity, how long before we can expect X11 applications to no longer work?
DistroWatch answers: While the Wayland display protocol is currently being adopted by a few of the major desktop environments and, by extension, enabled in quite a few distributions, there is a lot of inertia involved in the situation. The X11 protocol, and the related display servers which implement X11, have been around for around 40 years. X11 has been a central component of desktop computing for Linux distributions, the BSDs, and related operating systems for decades. There are dozens of window managers, several desktop environments, and thousands of applications which were developed to work with the X11 protocol. When a technology becomes this widespread and ingrained, it takes a long time for it to fade away.
At the moment there are two major desktops which are moving toward being primarily Wayland-based (GNOME and KDE Plasma) with a few others (such as Xfce and Cinnamon) planning to slowly implement Wayland sessions in the coming years. That still leaves several desktop environments and most window managers remaining on X11, at least for the moment. It's probably going to be at least another five years before all the major Linux desktop environments default to running Wayland at its current rate of adoption.
After that, there will still be some holdouts which continue to run X11 sessions by default, or even exclusively. And, even if those projects switch over to Wayland eventually, the X11 protocol will likely live on as a legacy option, at least in conservative desktop environments and long-term support distributions which offer up to ten years of support.
In the Linux ecosystem, where Wayland is gaining most of its ground, X11 still likely has a lifespan of 15 to 20 years before it is no longer supported directly. I say "directly" here, because part of Wayland is the XWayland component which allows Wayland sessions to run X11 applications. This will allow software built to work with X11 to continue to run for years, probably decades longer, even after standalone X11 sessions are no longer supported by most Linux distributions.
I'd also like to observe that, while Wayland does work on some other platforms, it is most commonly used on Linux distributions. It would not surprise me if X11 continues to be the default display protocol for a while longer on the BSDs and other, more conservative, branches of the Unix family.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Nitrux fefc905b
The Nitrux team have published a new version of the project's Debian-based distribution. The project's latest release, which is labelled "fefc905b" and referred to as 3.2.0 in the release announcement updates the kernel, key desktop applications, and enforces strict password checks in the Calamares system installer. "Nitrux 3.2.0 build.301123.fx uses Linux 6.6.2-1 (Liquorix). We've updated the following components of the distribution. Firefox to version 120.0. KDE Gear version 23.08.3. Updates to our Calamares settings include the following. Calamares will now enforce a stricter user password quality check by using libpwquality to increase user account security. When creating the main user account, i.e., the 'system administrator,' users must use a password over eight characters long, including uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols, when creating their user accounts during installation. We recommend using a password generator application or website. Otherwise, the password quality check will be too low, and the installation will not continue."
Armbian 23.11
Armbian is a Linux distribution designed for ARM development boards. The project's latest release is Armbian 23.11 which is based on Debian 12 "Bookworm". "Key Improvements in This Release: Addressing numerous bugs for improved functionality for Banana Pi CM4. Mainline Kernel for RK3588 with experimental HDMI support. Fixed Display Managers across all desktops. Experimental EDK2/UEFI Support for RK3588 boards. Introducing Ubuntu Mantic and Debian Trixie as daily image builds. Enhancing quality control through automated tests. Highlights of completed actions: closed projects - In this version, we've successfully closed several projects, including switching the default login manager, enabling artifacts creation at pull request, and adding support for Hikey 960. Additionally, we've updated the edge kernel to v6.6 and introduced new Armbian wallpapers. The support for various boards like NanoPi R6S/R6C, TI SK-TDA4VM, Xiaomi-elish, and more has been added, enhancing the range of compatible devices." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
4MLinux 44.0
The 4MLinux project develops a lightweight distribution with a focus on four key areas (gaming, multimedia, servers, and maintenance. The project's latest release is version 44.0 which introduces some new features. The release announcement reads: "The status of the 4MLinux 44.0 series has been changed to STABLE. Edit your documents with LibreOffice 7.6.3 and GNOME Office (AbiWord 3.0.5, GIMP 2.10.34, Gnumeric 1.12.55), surf the Internet with Firefox 119.0.1 and Chrome 119.0.6045.123, send emails via Thunderbird 115.4.2, enjoy your music collection with Audacious 4.3.1, watch your favorite videos with VLC 3.0.20 and SMPlayer 23.6.0, play games powered by Mesa 23.1.4 and Wine 8.19. You can also setup the 4MLinux LAMP Server (Linux 6.1.60, Apache 2.4.58, MariaDB 10.6.16, PHP 5.6.40, PHP 7.4.33, and PHP 8.1.25). Perl 5.36.0, Python 2.7.18, Python 3.11.4, and Ruby 3.2.2 are also available. As always, the new major release has some new features. Mesa3D drivers providing system-wide support for Video Acceleration API (VA-API) have been added. QMMP (audio player), Media Player Classic QT (video player), Capitan Sevilla (platform video game) are now available as downloadable extensions. Additionally, the new stable release offers improved support for SPL printing as well as wireless networking."
NixOS 23.11
NixOS is an independent distribution based around the Nix package andsystem manager. The project's latest release is NixOS 23.11 which upgrades the LLVM build software and introduces GNOME 45, along with several other package upgrades and new modules. "In addition to packages the NixOS distribution also features modules and tests that make it what it is. This release brought 113 new modules and removed 18. In that process we added 1565 options and removed 362. GNOME 45 - GNOME has been updated to version 45 "Riga", which introduces a new image viewer, a new camera app, and more changes. Refer to the release notes for more details. Default LLVM version - The default version for the LLVM package set has been updated to 16 (from 11) on both Linux and Darwin, which introduced lots of new features and improvements. The full lists of changes are available here (LLVM) and here (Clang)." Additional information is available in the project's release announcement.
NixOS 23.11 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 525kB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
Murena 1.17
Murena has announced a new stable update to the project's 1.x branch. The new version, Murena /e/OS 1.17, updates the web browser and the microG compatibility software, and introduces a number of bug fixes. "We're excited to bring you /e/OS 1.17 with significant improvements. Stay updated with refreshed Browser and microG, ensuring a more secure online journey. Bug fixes include functional bookmarks, smooth SMS experiences, and improved settings visibility. Device highlights feature firmware upgrades for Fairphone 5 and Teracube 2e, with improved functionality and fixes. Important note: This version marks the final version for Android Q; please consider upgrading for continued support if your device is compatible with a more recent Android version." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
Mabox Linux 23.12
Daniel Napora has announced the release of Mabox Linux 23.12, an updated build of the project's lightweight Linux distribution that features a customised desktop based on the Openbox window manager. The new release updates the Linux kernel to the long-term supported (LTS) version 6.6: "The December 2023 release of refreshed ISO images brings the latest 6.6 LTS kernel. Of course, there is still an ISO image available with the slightly older 5.4 LTS kernel version which may be a good choice for some older hardware. The Tint2 panel and Jgmenu are known for offering advanced users incredible capabilities and customization options. We use these possibilities in Mabox. One of the unique features of the Tint2 panel is the ability to connect your own actions (commands or scripts) to events such as left, middle or right click, mouse wheel up or down on panel elements. Conky in Mabox has been equipped with additional features that you will not find in any other Linux distribution. Here again, the wonderful Jgmenu was used with the addition of excellent glue - Bash scripts." Read the rest of the release announcement, with many screenshots, for further information.
Mabox Linux 23.12 -- Running the Openbox window manager
(full image size: 835kB, resolution: 1920x1440 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: 2,935
- Total data uploaded: 43.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Does your desktop or window manager support Wayland, X11, or both?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about the aging X11 protocol being replaced by the new Wayland graphics protocol. A few desktop environments and window managers have already adopted Wayland, a few exclusively, though X11 is still a supported session option with almost all graphical desktops. This week we'd like to hear whether your preferred desktop environment offers Wayland, X11, or both at login time.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using various types of swap space in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Does your desktop/window manager support Wayland or X11?
| Wayland: | 125 (9%) |
| X11: | 668 (47%) |
| Both: | 587 (42%) |
| I do not use a graphical session: | 6 (0%) |
| I do not run an OS where X11 and Wayland are supported: | 26 (2%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- AcorOS. AcorOS is a Debian-based distribution which uses the Calamares system installer. AcorOS is available in LXQt, Xfce, and Cinnamon desktop flavours.
- Starbuntu. Starbuntu is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Openbox window manager with a number of customizations.
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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, 11 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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BEERnix was a lightweight Linux live CD based on KNOPPIX.
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