 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1062, 18 March 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 12th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The beginning of March has been an exciting time for fans of Qt-based desktop environments. With LXQt adding Wayland support and KDE Plasma 6 launching and then quickly being showcased in the KDE neon distribution. This week we begin with a look at Plasma 6 running on KDE neon as Joshua Allen Holm takes the new desktop for a spin. While Plasma 6 has resulted in a flood of bug reports in the KDE issue tracker, distributions are quickly packaging the software. openSUSE has been one of the first to replace Plasma 5 in its Tumbleweed repositories with Plasma 6 packages. We discuss openSUSE's Plasma packages and known issues in this week's News section. We also talk about Pop!_OS getting a new software centre to match its new COSMIC desktop environment and celebrate Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, turning 20 years old this month. One of the ways Canonical spread its Ubuntu distribution in the early days was by shipping free CDs to potential users. While physical media with Linux pre-installed has become less common over the years, some people continue to purchase thumb drives and DVDs with Linux on them. Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll if you still purchase physical install media. Plus we discuss some easy ways to adjust file permissions when multiple users are placing files in a directory. We're also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Joshua Allen Holm) |
KDE neon 20240303 and 20240304
KDE neon is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution released by the KDE project. It features the latest KDE Plasma desktop environment and applications on top of an Ubuntu long-term support base. This means that the current releases of KDE neon feature the brand new KDE Plasma 6.0 desktop with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS providing the base, non-KDE package selection. KDE neon uses Ubuntu's Hardware Enablement (HWE) Linux kernel, which is currently at version 6.5.
KDE neon 20240304 -- Live desktop with welcome centre
(full image size: 796kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
KDE neon comes in four versions: User, Testing, Unstable, and Developer. This review focuses on the User edition, which advertises itself as "[f]eaturing the latest officially released KDE software on a stable base. Ideal for adventurous KDE enthusiasts." I should note that the "adventurous" part is an extremely recent revision for reasons that will become clear shortly. It used to say "Ideal for everyday users." The other editions are aimed more at testers and developers.
The first release of KDE neon User Edition with KDE Plasma 6.0 was version 20240228. There was also a revised ISO pushed out with a 20240229 date stamp. The first version I downloaded for this review was 20240303, which had a bug in the installer. I was finally able to complete an install and write this review using the 20240304 ISO.
Live desktop
I began by copying the 2.8GB KDE neon 20240303 ISO to a flash drive. I booted to a live desktop environment that looked very nice and had some nice enhancements over Plasma 5.27, but seems to extremely lacking in pre-installed software. I will cover the included applications in more detail later in this review, but the lack of applications left me with little to explore. Most of the categories in the application menu only had one or two entries. Honestly, for this distribution being a showcase for KDE projects, I was shocked at how slim the software selection was, but I figured maybe the installer would let me add applications of my choosing while installing. Sadly, that turned out to not be the case.
KDE neon 20240304 -- The Plasma 6 System Settings panel
(full image size: 206kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Failed installation attempt
My first attempt to install KDE neon failed because of a bug in Calamares related to networking. Getting a big "Installation Failed" message does not make a good first impression. The full error message was: "Main script file /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/networkcfg/main.py for python job networkcfg raised an exception."
After confirming that this error was a known bug, I had the choice between trying some workarounds or waiting for fixed installation media to be released. I opted for the second option and tried again when the installation media with a 20240304 date stamp came out.
Installing KDE neon
After copying the 20240304 image to a flash drive, I was ready to make another attempt at installing KDE neon. This time everything worked as intended, but like I noted above, there was no option to pick additional software. The installation process was a very standard experience of setting location and keyboard layout, partitioning and formatting, and creating a new user. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was the fact KDE neon defaulted to creating an 8GB swap partition, which was twice the size of the RAM in my computer. I cannot recall any distribution I have installed in recent memory that wanted to create a swap partition or swap file that large.
KDE neon 20240304 -- Calamares system installer partitioning screen
(full image size: 717kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Plasma 6 defaults to running on a Wayland session and this is what I used for the majority of my review. One odd thing I noticed post-install was that the various standard directories were not created in my home directory by the installer. I had to manually run xdg-user-dirs-update to create the Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Public, Templates, and Videos directories.
Default software selection
KDE neon has one of the smallest selections of pre-installed software that I have ever seen. Only Ubuntu's Minimal desktop install and Fedora Silverblue come to mind for desktop-focused distribution with a similar lack pre-installed software. By category, the complete list of graphical applications is as follows:
- Development: Kate, UserFeedback Console
- Graphics: Gwenview, Okular
- Internet: Firefox Web Browser, KDE Connect, KDE Connect SMS
- Multimedia: VLC media player
- Office: Okular
- Settings: System Settings
- System: Discover, Dolphin, Info Center, Konsole, Menu Editor, System Monitor
- Utilities: Ark, Emoji Selector, Kate, KWrite, Spectacle, Welcome Center
KDE neon 20240304 -- The application menu
(full image size: 859kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In the root of the application menu, alongside the above categories, there is also a Help application.
Even counting double entries, this is less than two dozen items. There is no music player. VLC media player can play music, of course, but it does not fill the same niche as iTunes and Rhythmbox do in their respective environments. KDE has applications that fills that niche, namely Elisa and JuK, but they are not showcased by KDE neon pre-installing them. Even VLC media player is an odd choice. KDE's own Dragon Player is good application, and after I installed it myself, it worked much better than VLC media player did. VLC media player would not switch to full screen mode and had audio hiccups after resuming from pause, but Dragon Player had none of these issues. (The VLC full screen issue could be fixed by switching to Plasma's X11 session.) There is no office suite, not KDE's Calligra suite or the near ubiquitous LibreOffice. There are also no games, despite there being a good number of polished games published under the KDE brand. KPatience, KDE's version of solitaire, would have made a welcome addition to the default software selection, if only to provide a diversion for the user while the installer was working its way through the non-interactive parts of the install processes.
The version of Firefox installed, currently version 123, comes from the Mozilla Team Personal Package Archive (PPA), but even that had issues. The Widevine DRM plugin crashed constantly. And in yet another sign that KDE neon shipped before everything was ready, the Plasma Integration Firefox extension, which the Plasma desktop prompts the user to install, is not compatible with Plasma 6. The browser extension and the plasma-browser-integration package cannot communicate with each other.
There are so many issues, both little and big, with just the small selection of pre-installed applications. Some were solvable, like VLC media player correctly going into full screen once I changed KDE Plasma 6's scaling to 100% from its default of 125% (not that I have any idea why KDE Plasma 6 and/or KDE neon decided I needed 125% scaling by default on my 1080p display), but others were not. VLC media player still has audio issues, Calligra still has no spell check, and so on. I have honestly had better experiences with Ubuntu daily images for releases that were still pre-beta than I have with this KDE neon release that came out part of the Plasma 6 mega release.
Installing additional software
Because it is built on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, KDE neon comes with access to a sizable selection of software. Most of this comes from Ubuntu's archives, but KDE applications come from KDE neon's repositories and the Mozilla Team PPA provides Firefox. The Snap command line application is installed, but no Snaps are pre-installed. Flatpak is also pre-installed and Flathub is already pre-configured. Being Ubuntu-based, KDE neon includes the standard dpkg and apt command line tools for managing packages, but the KDE neon website recommends using pkcon when updating the system from the command line.
KDE neon 20240304 -- The Discover software centre
(full image size: 348kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
KDE neon uses KDE's Discover as its graphical tool for installing applications and updating the system. However, Discover has issues just like many of the other pre-installed applications. I tried searching for LibreOffice and Discover crashed every single time. I could successfully search for other specific applications (e.g., NetBeans) and search terms that produced a large number of results (e.g, DOS) without crashing, but Discover really, really, really does not like LibreOffice for some reason. Message received, I tried to install Calligra Words instead, which worked, but Calligra Words claimed there was "[n]o backend found for spell checking". Nothing I did seemed to provide Calligra with a working spell check backend, so I gave up and installed LibreOffice from the command line.
In order to get a system that was (mostly) usable, I ended up installing Dragon Player, the Calligra office suite (in an attempt to prefer KDE applications for this review), and LibreOffice. That is not a huge amount of added software, but the KDE neon ISO is smaller than some other distributions, so they could have easily released a slightly larger ISO with more KDE software.
Honestly, the choice of preferring VLC media player over Dragon Player is the thing that confuses me the most. Installing Dragon Player only required downloading the Dragon Player package itself because all the required libraries were already installed. Installing both Dragon Player and VLC media player would barely increase the size of the ISO. I am not sure if VLC media player can be fully removed without breaking things, and I am hesitant to try given how broken some things are already, but I would assume that shipping only KDE's own Dragon Player should be possible, should the developers wish to do so.
Final thoughts
KDE Plasma 6 shows a lot of promise, but I have a very hard time recommending KDE neon in its current state. So many things are broken to the point of being unusable. Some of this can be attributed to version X.0 newness of Plasma 6, but that only applies to KDE specific things. Shipping an unusable Calamares installer was not good. The staggering number of bugs and things that are just not ready is disappointing. As much as I like KDE Plasma 6's design, I cannot recommend using KDE neon as anything more than a way to try out Plasma 6 while waiting for an updated version of KDE neon or some other distribution to release a more stable experience. I look forward to trying KDE Plasma 6 when it hits Fedora and Kubuntu in upcoming releases, and might give KDE neon another try when Plasma 6.1 comes out, but this experience did make a below average first impression.
KDE neon 20240304 -- The desktop cube
(full image size: 272kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Though, to end on a more positive note, the desktop cube is back. It is an optional feature that needs to be enabled, but it is a nice bit of nostalgia.
Follow-up
Between this review being written and publication, things have changed quickly with KDE neon. The latest ISO refresh/batch of package updates does start fixing things. I can now make VLC go full screen under Wayland with 125% scaling and the Firefox Plasma Integration is now functioning. So, thankfully, anyone who does decide to try out KDE neon after reading my review will not suffer as much as the early adopters
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Hardware used for this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an Asus L510MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5030 CPU @ 1.10GHz
- Storage: 128GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Intel Gemini Lake PCH CNVi WiFi
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
KDE neon has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.7/10 from 131 review(s).
Have you used KDE neon? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6
It has been 20 years since the Canonical company was formed and started work on the Ubuntu distribution - itself nearing its 20th anniversary. Canonical entered the desktop space around the same time Red Hat had announced it was discontinuing Red Hat Linux (a popular desktop distribution at the time) in favour of focusing on its more business-oriented Red Hat Enterprise Linux product. Canonical came along and filled this void, creating what quickly became the most commonly used desktop Linux distribution. ZDNet takes a look back at Canonical's beginning: "From the get-go, Canonical's mission was audacious: To create an operating system that was as feature-rich, user-friendly, and accessible as its proprietary counterparts. Released in October 2004, Ubuntu Linux quickly became synonymous with ease of use, stability, and security, bridging the gap between the power of Linux and the usability demanded by end users."
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Jeremy Soller from System76 has announced that the COSMIC desktop being developed for Pop!_OS will include a new software centre. "COSMIC Store is coming along quickly, though there is still a lot left to do. It loads nearly instantly, because it uses bitcode to cache appstream data in an optimized format. It uses very little memory compared to the Pop Shop. Searches can be performed live as they are done in parallel. Searching for "e" takes 5.5ms on my desktop and returns 4,601 results."
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About a week ago we saw the initial release of KDE's Plasma 6 desktop, a major update for the desktop and its associated software produced by the KDE project. The new desktop is quickly being packaged by multiple distributions, particularly rolling releases. This may cause a bumpy ride for users as Plasma 5 and Plasma 6 are not designed to be installed side-by-side. Fabian Vogt comments on Plasma 6 entering openSUSE's Tumbleweed branch: "The next TW snapshot 20240311 contains KDE Plasma 6.0.1, Gear 24.02.0 and Frameworks 6.0.0. Plasma 5 will be replaced, it is no longer part of the repository. There are a few minor issues in this snapshot found by openQA but not considered severe enough to actually block the snapshot from getting published. They'll all be fixed with Plasma 6.0.2 in one of the next snapshots, also for those installing or upgrading now." Known Plasma 6 issues are included in the mailing list post. The update has not gone well for some Tumbleweed users.
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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) |
Set access permissions for all new files in a directory?
Reading-is-for-everyone asks: I have a cron script that scans through files placed in the /media/upload directory. These files should all have permissions 644 so my script can read them. Is there a way to set these file permissions automatically for every file?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few ways you can approach making sure files deposited in a directory have a specific set of permissions. In this case the 644 permission values indicate the owner of the files can read them and edit them. Other users (members of the file's group ownership and anyone else on the system) will be able to read these files. The 6 indicates read and write permission for the owner while the two 4s each indicate read-only access for others.
One approach you may be able to take - assuming you have some control over the user accounts of each user who will be uploading, creating, or moving files into your /media/upload directory - is to set the default permissions for new files. This will cause all new files created or uploaded by users on the system to have specific permissions. The tool to set default file permissions is called umask.
The umask utility sets which permissions are not granted on newly created files and directories for a specific user. The umask command accepts an octal permission number (in the same format as the chmod command) and causes new files to have the given permissions removed. For example, on most systems the umask value is set to 022. This means the owner doesn't have any permissions removed (they can do anything they like with new files). However, members of the file's group and other users on the system have their access to edit the file (permission 2) removed.
The umask value is usually set in the start-up configuration file for a user's shell (such as in /etc/bash.bashrc or ~/.bashrc). On some distributions, particularly those in the Debian family, the umask value is set in the /etc/login.defs file.
You probably want all users to have a umask value of 022, which is a fairly common default across distributions.
With that said, if you already have the users' umasks set to 022 and they're changing the permissions on their files or something else is changing the permissions or you do not have access to change their umask then what can you do? An alternative would be to change file permissions just before your cron job runs. You can accomplish this by having the root user run the following chmod command to grant all users read access to the files under your /media/upload directory:
chmod -R a+r /media/upload/
Placing the above line at the start of your existing script or having it run from your root user's crontab before your script is launched will provide read access on all files and sub-directories under /media/upload.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
CachyOS 240313
CachyOS, a user-friendly and highly-optimised Linux distribution based on Arch Linux, has received a significant update. Its version 240313 features the brand-new KDE Plasma 6 desktop with Qt 6 and the Wayland display server by default: "This is our third release in 2024 and brings quite big changes. We are dropping our GNOME ISO image due to a lack of maintenance and double testing for every release. Also, this should avoid confusion among users about the net-installation, and supported desktop environments, since we are providing most desktop environments directly in the netinstall. This ISO image is based on Plasma 6 and will also have Wayland enabled by default. This should not have a big impact on NVIDIA users since X11 can still be used after the installation. Plasma 6 seems Wayland-wise in really good shape and as soon wayland-protocols and NVIDIA provide the explicit sync protocol, this should also be the case for most NVIDIA users. Features: Plasma 6 is now shipped in the ISO image and uses Wayland as default, GNOME ISO image got dropped to avoid confusion about netinstall; Calamares - rebased for Qt 6; refind - add f2fs and zfs as option including luks2 encryption...." Continue to the release announcement for further details.
CachyOS 240313 -- Running KDE Plasma 6
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Univention Corporate Server 5.0-7
Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is an enterprise-class distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. The project has published an update to its 5.0 series which introduces blocklists for the Univention Directory Manager. "A new feature in UCS is "blocklists" for the Univention Directory Manager (UDM). This feature allows UDM to block previously used values for specific attributes. One possible use case would be preventing the unintentional reuse of an email address, which could potentially lead to one user accessing another user's emails: a user had the email address "smith@company.com," then leaves the company, and their account is deleted. Shortly after, a new user "smith" is created. Now, UDM can prevent the creation because "smith@company.com" would be used as the email address again. Blocking old email addresses occurs automatically when the feature is activated (it is initially deactivated) and the corresponding blocklists are created. The blocklists can also be managed with a UMC module." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
Void 20240314
The Void project produces an independent, rolling release Linux distribution. The project's latest snapshot provides a keyboard layout selector on the login screen, enables the chrony network time daemon, and supports Raspberry Pi 5 computers. The distribution's release announcement shares the details: "Some highlights of this release: A keymap selector is now shown in LightDM on XFCE images. The chrony NTP daemon is now enabled by default in live images. Raspberry Pi images can now be installed on non-SD card storage without manual configuration on models that support booting from USB or NVMe. Raspberry Pi images now default to a /boot partition of 256MiB instead of 64MiB. rpi-aarch64* PLATFORMFSes and images now support the Raspberry Pi 5. After installation, the kernel can be switched to the Raspberry Pi 5-specific rpi5-kernel." Void is available in glibc and musl C library editions.
ALT Linux 10.2
ALT Linux is a project which produces multiple editions of an independent distribution for Russian speakers. The project's latest release, version 10.2, enables installing the distribution to Btrfs pools, includes Timeshift for working with filesystem snapshots, and includes an OEM install mode. "Computer manufacturers will be interested in the preinstallation mode (OEM mode). Added Timeshift 23.12. This program is designed to create snapshots of system files and settings. In the installer, at the disk preparation stage, it became possible to create subpartitions of the BtrFS. This file system uses accelerated operations with any files thanks to copy-on-write technology which affects fault tolerance and ease of administration. A security benefit when using BtrFS is the creation of a restore point before updating the system. A module has been added to the System Control Center (Alterator) for remote configuration of the system via the alterator-fbi network (Form Based Interface) which provides a web-based management interface. Changes have been made to the text of the license agreement." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
4MLinux 45.0
4MLinux is a small, indepedent distribution which focuses on four areas: network services, games, multimedia, and system rescue. The project's latest release, version 45.0, offers video scaling, new games, and upgrades the OpenSSL version to OpenSSL 3 from 1.1. "As always, the new major release has some new features. Lots of new printing drivers have been added. FFmpeg in 4MLinux now offers improved support for video scaling (resizing) via zimg library. Additionally, FFmpeg and MPlayer make us of Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural DSP effect library (libbs2b) for better handling of stereo audio. Classic CHAMP Kong game has been added to the 4MLinux DOSBox package. Basilisk web browser is now available a downloadable extension. And finally, OpenSSL in 4MLinux has been system-wide upgraded to its version 3." Additional details are available in the project's release announcement.
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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: 2,975
- Total data uploaded: 44.1TB
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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) |
Purchasing physical media
This week, in our News section, we marked Canonical's 20th anniversary. One of the methods Canonical used to spread the company's Ubuntu distribution in its early days was shipping Ubuntu CDs to potential users free of charge. This helped get the Linux distribution to people who did not have access to high-speed Internet.
With fast internet connections more common these days, the sales of CD, DVD, and USB media have decreased, but some people still prefer to acquire install media this way. For some people it's a way to get around limited Internet connections, for others it is a way to sponsor projects, or a way to acquire media to hand out at events.
Do you still purchase or otherwise acquire physical media with a Linux distribution pre-installed?
You can see the results of our previous poll on using a smart phone as a workstation computer in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you purchase Linux media?
| Yes - CDs: | 20 (1%) |
| Yes - DVDs: | 53 (3%) |
| Yes - USB thumb drives: | 68 (4%) |
| Yes - Other: | 22 (1%) |
| No: | 1546 (90%) |
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| Website News |
New projects added to database
Dr.Parted Live
Dr.Parted Live is a bootable GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian Testing. It is a live CD/USB featuring a lightweight Openbox window manager and useful applications for data backup, restore and recovery.
Dr.Parted Live 24.03 -- Exploring the Openbox environment
(full image size: 85kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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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, 25 March 2024. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Purchasing physical media (by Guido on 2024-03-18 01:58:22 GMT from Philippines)
I started using Linux about 16 years ago. Since the Internet was still very slow back then, I regularly bought a German Linux magazine with a DVD every two months. Each DVD contained popular distributions, all of which I was able to try out and install. Of course Ubuntu and openSuse were also included. In recent years, the Internet has become so fast that some things have become unnecessary. I haven't used a DVD to install for a long time, just a USB stick.
2 • Dr.Parted Live (by seatux on 2024-03-18 02:00:00 GMT from Malaysia)
Man, another drive management distro with no tool to secure wipe/TRIM SSDs to 0.
Still stuck with PartedMagic for its SSD abilities. Would like to know better alternatives though.
3 • File Permission (by Vinfall on 2024-03-18 02:04:55 GMT from Hong Kong)
I think `chmod -R a+r /media/upload/` would expand permissions by allowing read permission, but would NOT restrict file permissions if it starts with a more permissive one like 750?
I want to do it *reversely* to restrict image/video resources access in a githook. For once I accidentally ran `chmod 644 ./*` and broke folder permission, as they should be 755 (`rwxr-xr-x`) or 750 at least. Luckily I did not do it recursively so it's still easy to recover… Now I just use `find -type f` to avoid that.
Also, I heard of setting umask from 022 to 027 several times (to avoid non user/group access by default, 640 for files, 750 for folders). Would this behavior affect those cron scripts?
4 • Plasma 6, Neon (by thatguy on 2024-03-18 02:38:41 GMT from United States)
Yeah, it's been a rocky ride adjusting to the Plasma 6 upgrade. For me it happened first with Arch, then Tumbleweed, and it was almost unusable at first on both. It's gotten much better but there are still random crashes. Quite the contrast, going from the rock solid stability of 5 to the walking on eggshells/crashes aplenty 6.
As for Neon and the review, I thought it was more than fair. While I like the sparseness of Neon's installed packages, I understand the concern and agree that at least a few more things could be included. Kpat and kmines at least. And things should never get released that are THAT broken.
Neon's not really going to be stable for a while I would guess, which is a shame. As a huge fan of KDE/Plasma, I used to use Neon as my daily driver. Right now I'm mostly on Debian stable while we wait for Plasma 6 to mature.
A lot needs to happen - not just bug-squashing but also the infrastructure of contributed themes/extras/etc. Right now there still isn't a decent weather widget for example, and some things that claim to work with 6 do not.
5 • Sort-of purchase media (by DaveB on 2024-03-18 03:57:29 GMT from Australia)
Back in the dial-up days when a distro download was measured in hours, I used to subscribe to Linux Format. Always came with two or three (or sometimes more) distros on a DVD on the cover. Never needed to download anything - only problem was the popularity of Ubuntu meant that was on the DVD every two to three months. These days .au internet speeds are fast enough that I can happily download distros, and keep using the connection for other tasks.
6 • neon ate my laptop partition (by M.Z. on 2024-03-18 04:42:49 GMT from United States)
I can attest to KDE neon not delivering any kind of smooth experience in the most recent releases, even if you were just expecting a normal upgrade. I really liked it for quite a while & it had been the best Distro for a bluetooth stereo I recently got - it worked way better than LMDE at any rate.
Anyway, despite all the good it just killed itself after an upgrade & I can't login. Its such a shame, it was a great daily driver for quite a while. I don't get how this got released as a regular upgrade.
7 • Void woes (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-03-18 05:42:56 GMT from Australia)
If any Void devs happen to read these comments, please for the love of God, update your installer. There is no justification to not use calamares or some alternative compared to the monstrosity you have now. Actually, to be perfectly clear, everything is fine except for the partitioning section, which has never worked properly and frankly, resorting to fdisk just seems like some form of childish elitism to ensure only greybeards are worthy to use your distro. Just update it, even MidnightBSD has a better installer than your distro.
8 • physical media (by Steeeeve on 2024-03-18 08:25:00 GMT from New Zealand)
My answer was not among the options: "I used to". For some years I would regularly order the discs to support the distributors and knew that some of the money also went to the distro devs. Then the world changed and they closed all that down. Now I just burn metric tons of bandwidth, write the ISOs to USB and occasionally for older machines, to a rewritable DVD.
9 • Linux magazines/DVDs (by Dave Postles on 2024-03-18 08:47:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes, in the early days me too. On one occasion, I was away at a conference and (as I found later) one of the leads in the laptop had come free. I bought a Linux magazine from a large bookstore with a live DVD of Sabayon. It managed my laptop through that away time.
10 • Void woes @7? (by picamanic on 2024-03-18 09:26:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I like that the Void installer is a simple 1559 line Bash script which "just works", where anyone can see what t does. Calamares is 58k lines of C++ code. Very pretty. Very corporate. No thanks.
11 • physical media (by anticapitalista on 2024-03-18 09:45:37 GMT from Greece)
Like @8 - I used to.
Now I either test in a virtual machine or boot (and perhaps install) using fromiso method.
If distro doesn't support this method or something equivalent, the iso file gets deleted.
12 • Neon - Plasma 6 (by kc1di on 2024-03-18 09:53:09 GMT from United States)
It was a very disappointing release and most likely should have cooked a bit longer before hitting the release stage. But I'm sure it will get fixed and has already made much progress.
will wait a bit longer before using KDE6 for my daily driver :)
13 • Void install (by Jesse on 2024-03-18 10:22:53 GMT from Canada)
@7: "resorting to fdisk just seems like some form of childish elitism to ensure only greybeards are worthy to use your distro"
I've installed Void many times and never used fdisk in the process. It's definitely not a requirement, even for manual partitioning.
14 • Neon (by Xenon on 2024-03-18 10:44:03 GMT from Moldova)
Things do not change
The last update to 6.0.2 broke kde discover
It doesn’t start
15 • OS on DVD (by Otis on 2024-03-18 11:08:59 GMT from United States)
I had a college friend who had an AOL curtain of discs. I wonder if he added an Ubuntu curtain somewhere.
For a while I was purchasing discs and thumb drives from a company that had ads here at DW, just out of laziness. Now I just do what most distro users do and burn an iso. Looks like 93% of us in the poll so far.
16 • Why can't they wait? (by Keepforgetting on 2024-03-18 11:15:18 GMT from Germany)
The bad experiences when replacing the functioning and stable Plasma 5 with the unfinished, unstable Plasma 6 were unfortunately to be expected. This is typical of modern software development: Hooray, there is a new version! Lets ditch the working version for something half-baked, but NEW and SHINY!!! Users of rolling release distros with KDE will be very happy in the next few months.
Testing first and then releasing a stable, solid and fully funtional product is SO last century ...
17 • @19 (by kc1di on 2024-03-18 12:14:25 GMT from United States)
I'm with your but fear the problem lies partly with limited hardware of the Dev's thus testing gets done on their stuff but is not a reflection of the hardware in the real world. I still think they could have fixed many of the bugs before release. But they advertise a release date and that it :(
18 • bleeding edge (by ResistChange on 2024-03-18 12:32:16 GMT from United States)
Plasma 6 sounds cool and all but is it as fast as fluxbox or openbox? Nah? At least it's not as weird as Gnome is now.
19 • Plasma 6 is... (by Mike W on 2024-03-18 12:54:57 GMT from United States)
..a good example of why waiting for the bug fix edition of new software is usually prudent.
20 • KDE (by Otis on 2024-03-18 12:59:13 GMT from United States)
Those of you lamenting issues with KDE Plasma, especially on (the reviewed) Neon, might want to give Nobara a go. I've been testing it for two weeks now and have seen nothing negative to report in spite of several updates (which come via notification first giving the user the choice as to yes or no on elements of the update for full go yes or no).
21 • KDE Neon as a Testing Distro (by Justin R. on 2024-03-18 13:03:03 GMT from United States)
"I cannot recommend using KDE neon as anything more than a way to try out Plasma 6 while waiting for an updated version of KDE neon or some other distribution to release a more stable experience."
Correct me if I'm wrong, I always thought the goal of KDE Neon was to be a test bed or showcase for the latest KDE releases rather than a stable environment that would be people's daily driver. That's why there isn't a lot of software added at install.
Even Jesse's intro for KDE Neon mentions "Two editions of the product are available - a "User" edition, designed for those interested in checking out the latest KDE software as it gets released, and a "Developer's" edition, created as a platform for testing cutting-edge KDE applications." https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kdeneon
22 • @21 (by K. Engels on 2024-03-18 14:00:18 GMT from United States)
Until a very short time ago, the User edition, as noted in the review, was billed as "Ideal for everyday users." That wording implies it something that should be usable as a daily driver, not just as a testing ground or showcase (and if it was meant to be a showcase, that would strengthen the argument for including more KDE applications, so the user could try them from a live image). The KDE neon team changed the wording on the website after the first problematic ISOs with Plasma 6 came out. Even the "Who is KDE neon for?" entry on the FAQ page was added very recently. Until the recent Plasma 6 problem images came out, nothing declared KDE neon's User edition to be only a testing or showcase distribution for "adventurous KDE enthusiasts".
23 • Tumbleweed Plasma 6 (by Happy TW User on 2024-03-18 16:51:34 GMT from United States)
I think a number of the issues that people had with the Plasma 6 upgrade in Tumbleweed dealt with doing the update through konsole instead of a separate terminal (part way through the upgrade, kde restarts killing the konsole session). Also, there were some issues with nvidia cards and those plasma extensions that hadn't been ported yet.
Tumbleweed developers have quickly released 6.0.2 which solved a number of problems. I was one of the many users who did not experience any problems with the upgrade. And for those who did, assuming they had used the default BTRFS partitions, it was simple enough for them to rollback to their Plasma 5 install.
Plasma 6.0.2 is very fast, even on my old hardware, and works quite smoothly. It takes a moment to relearn where things our in the system settings, but the new layout actually makes more sense.
All in all, I am quite pleased with the results and performance. The KDE team and the Tumbleweed developers both did an excellent job!
24 • Review (by Canas on 2024-03-18 17:02:17 GMT from Portugal)
Your review started bad and you could edit your review later instead of putting the follow up.
They fixed most and still, your review doesnt show that. A lot of people may not install it because of you.
About dragon player. Most people use VLC. Why does that matter so much that you have to talk about it a dozen times?!
I didn't liked your review. Biased to say the least.
25 • KDE Neon (by Ne1 on 2024-03-18 19:46:01 GMT from United States)
I found some of those problems as well during my install (user dir's missing mainly) but my biggest issue was with LUKS FDE not working. Once they have that figured out I may give it another stab, but I'm pretty darn tickled with 5.27 for now.
26 • Review authorship (by Someguy on 2024-03-18 20:33:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
I always check this first!
27 • @24 (by K. Engels on 2024-03-19 01:26:19 GMT from United States)
"Your review started bad and you could edit your review later instead of putting the follow up."
Or, maybe KDE neon shouldn't have shipped ISO images with broken installers for the first week after their big Plasma 6 launch followed by a week of massive bugs that should have been caught by basic QA before being pushed to the User Edition. Why should a review wait until the developers fix their buggy releases before saying anything? If anything, even acknowledging that there were patches that fixed some of the issues that came out only days before this review went to live (which almost certainly means they came out after the review was submitted) is far more generous than the reviewer or DistroWatch needed to be. The KDE neon versions reviewed were broken to the point of the being unusable. That is FACT not "bias". The reviewer is far from the only person to have this experience. The KDE neon team altered their description of who the User Edition was for because of how badly the Plasma 6 on KDE neon launch was handled. A version targeted towards "everyday users" is now being retroactively branded as for the "adventurous". Don't shoot the messenger just because you don't like the message.
28 • Plasma 6 (by David on 2024-03-19 02:11:41 GMT from United States)
I've been using Fedora 40 KDE pre-Beta for about a week and have had no problems with their implementation of Plasma 6. Granted I do standard stuff: email, web, documents, audio (Elisa). I don't "push the envelope" at all. It appears to be stable. No errors. No stress. Simply solid. YMMV
I had a negative experience trying to install KDE Neon a couple of weeks ago just to see what was going on there. An error stopped the installation ... something wrong with the installer (described in the review), so I gave up on it.
29 • KDE Neon (by Any on 2024-03-19 06:00:44 GMT from Spain)
From their website:
Who is KDE neon for?
KDE neon is intended for those who want to experience the latest and greatest KDE software as quickly as possible. Though KDE developers endeavor to minimize bugs and maximize stability, using the latest software the moment it's released will inevitably result in a less stable experience compared to distros that delay software by days, weeks, or months. As such, the ideal KDE neon user is someone excited to use the latest and greatest KDE software who can tolerate some bumps in the road from time to time, not someone with mission-critical reliability needs.
30 • neon (by Mr. Moto on 2024-03-19 11:32:08 GMT from Philippines)
I've been running neon for some years now. Plasma 6 was installed with the last upgrade. It was slow at login, and wouldn't logout, restart or shutdown from the desktop. A quick web search found the bug and a solution. Working fine now, and the slow login has been resolved.
My problem with KDE is that I use a dock, and Latte has been abandoned and is unreliable. I use Plank, which only runs on x11, so no Wayland for now. In the meantime, Gnome has advanced enough that it works as well as Plasma with just a couple of extensions. I'm running Wayland Gnome now.
No big complaints in any case. I've learned over the years to have two or more distros always installed with pretty much the same setup. When faced with problem bugs, a quick restart and I'm back running with very little difference. Even Windows sits there quietly just in case it's ever needed.
31 • KDE6 (by Gekxxx on 2024-03-19 11:53:01 GMT from Belgium)
I use KDE6 now on arco Linux without problems. Even works on my Nvidia 470 powerd by Nouveau. I will continue using as is. I will not install the propriety driver as I know that will go wrong with the 470 driver.
32 • @29 (by K. Engels on 2024-03-19 13:45:24 GMT from United States)
As I already noted in comment #22, that question was not part of the FAQ until after the botched release. This can be confirmed by using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which does not have that question on the snapshot of the page from March 6. Citing that FAQ item as justification puts you in "We have always been at war with Eastasia." territory.
33 • KDE Neon (by Christian on 2024-03-19 15:23:15 GMT from Brazil)
I've been a Neon user for more than 4 years.
KDE has been my favorite DE for a very long time, and Neon was very appealing to me. A solid Ubuntu base with the latest KDE applications.
There were always a few problems in updates and upgrades (especially with the NVidia drivers), but nothing that would completely ruin the experience for me (I had enough patience to wait for a few days while the problems were sorted out). However, it was annoying and you had to know your way to have a working system. Also, I felt too lazy to nuke my install and start all the way again.
Unfortunately, the upgrade from 5 to 6 was not as smooth for me and, even though most of the things in the system was working, given that I had a bit of extra time, I have decided to move to a different distro.
Neon never hid the fact that it was not a distro, or that problems were to be expected. And I could live with those. I would still recommend the distro for anyone wanting the latest directly from KDE, as long as the user is willing to do some troubleshooting from time to time.
For me, I'm on (hopefully) calmer waters, still running KDE. Tuxedo in one machine and Mageia on another. MX was the Tuxedo runner-up. Not the latest, but I do appreciate not that many updates to the entire system for the sake of simplicity and stability. KDE 6 looks awesome, but so does 5.27 and I don´t mind waiting a little longer.
To the KDE Neon team, thanks for the hard-work.
34 • File Permissions with acl (by Benjamin on 2024-03-19 19:14:29 GMT from Austria)
Another way of doing it would be setgid+acl. You have to make sure your file system supports it (some FS like ext4 need to have the acl mount option set)
Then
# set s bit (setgid) so all uploaded files belong to group of the parent directory
chmod g+s /media/upload/
# set default permission for group and others
setfacl -d -m g::rX /media/upload/
setfacl -d -m o::rX /media/upload/
note the capital X here: it only sets execute for folders not for files.
That should do it There is also the possibility to set default permissions for a specific group with ‘setfacl -d -m g:groupname:rX’ without the setgid but it makes things probably harder to understand.
35 • Void Install Tips and Repo Rot (by Random Experienced Void User on 2024-03-20 00:10:46 GMT from United States)
Void Linux has long needed a better installer. Here is what to do. Partition and format your Void file systems by hand. Run the installer skipping past those steps, assigning mount points by hand. Otherwise ignore the installer; use chroot steps by hand. The Void installer does not "just work" and reading it is not the point. The purpose of a program is to automate. If one must read it to use it, the script is not a tool but a recipe. It's simpler and more reliable to copy manual steps off a website than reverse engineer a decades-old bash script. Anyway the installer should invoke gdisk, not archaic fdisk.
Void geeks like minimalist window managers. Desktop spins are not as fun to rice. That said, praise Void for making GNOME and KDE work without systemd.
Plenty of useful software Void ignores or bans. CudaText and Brave should be in repos. Selections reflect Void's user base and policy against some software. So while repos have a banquet of half-baked console text editors, plus Vim and Emacs, they ignore gems like wxMEdit and CudaText. Even Geany took a long while for Void to update. Geany itself has orphaned plugins.
That note brings me to the biggest problem with Void nowadays, package rot. Many are orphans while others sit stale for a bit too long (nix, mediainfo, textadept) or for ages. The story is bad on average with programming languages (mercury, lily, haskell, lfe) although some have good support (PHP, Python). Void recently added new members tasked with packaging, so cross fingers. The distro is cool and just needs less focus on "build infrastructure" and more on build automation for upstream point releases.
36 • Void (by Dave on 2024-03-20 00:30:42 GMT from Australia)
I've always been curious, Void has some overlap with Alpine. Non-systemd distro using muslc. Have Void users who maybe aren't 100% happy ever tried Alpine?
37 • Void and Alpine (by Otis on 2024-03-20 14:01:45 GMT from United States)
With Void and with Alpine I was in hardware support hell. Maybe I gave up too soon on them, but did end up satisfied with other distros which didn't have me searching for drivers etc (Nobara 39, MX Linux).
38 • Void fan (by picamanic on 2024-03-20 15:43:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
@35 You should really be writing this on r/voidlinux, where it would reach a more critical audience.
39 • Void Problems and Alternatives (by Random Experienced Void User on 2024-03-20 23:48:41 GMT from United States)
@36 Alpine is weak on desktop support but superb elsewhere (servers, embedded, docker). Void has better desktop support, but weaker server support. Alpine desktops may have improved by now, I don't know these days. Obarun and Artix are my top Void alternatives.
@37 Hardware is a kernel issue. Void has the best Linux kernel packaging methodology I've seen. It's a major attraction. You may have hit musl libc driver issues. Those will happen with nVidia and printers. Alpine is exclusively musl, while Void offers both musl and glibc builds. Furthermore, Void's default repo list omits "non-free." Include that repo for driver blobs.
@38 My tips help distro shoppers (a) evaluate if Void is right for them, and if so, (b) how to install it. Distrowatch is the correct venue. It's where shoppers shop. For example, even hackers who might otherwise love Void need know other distros have superior selection and packaging maintenance for programming languages.
40 • Do you purchase Linux media? (by James on 2024-03-21 10:27:55 GMT from Canada)
I answered no, but I did once, back between 2000-2005. I bought a Xandros CD. I had no idea you could download a .iso yet back then, not even sure if you could.
41 • Physical Media (by penguinx86 on 2024-03-21 16:30:38 GMT from United States)
I only bought physical media on USB thumb drives. It's been a long time though. Now I download ISO files and make USB media myself using usb-creator-gtk, or install the ISO as a virtual machine in VirtualBox. ISO files seem way more useful than physical media. But today, I have an old dying 10 year old laptop that I need to wipe. I plan to boot from a USB thumb drive I made last year and wipe the SSD using Gparted. It seems a shame to retire this old laptop, but it has multiple hardware issues and I need to wipe the hard drive before it dies completely and it's too late.
42 • Void hardware issues (by Otis on 2024-03-21 18:59:28 GMT from United States)
@39 thanks for explaining more thoroughly than I could have the reason I had to dump Void (and Alpine).
43 • Run Closed Source Drivers on Closed Source OS (by Random Experienced Void User on 2024-03-21 19:36:20 GMT from United States)
@42 Otis - What you should dump is nVidia. Distrowatch covers open-source operating systems. If you want closed source stuff, but find trouble, blame nVidia. I avoid nVidia as the Microsoft of video. The monopoly is identical. It's odd, all the railing against Microsoft, but none against nVidia, from end users anyway. Distros are just supposed to support nVidia. Anyway Void glibc does nVidia as well as any distro. It's not a criticism I would level at Void. The founder was a gamer. That said, I'm happy you found your solutions. In case of problems with those, switch to Microsoft Windows.
https://docs.voidlinux.org/config/graphical-session/graphics-drivers/nvidia.html
44 • Purchasing Linux media (by AT on 2024-03-21 23:56:25 GMT from Germany)
Now a days, it's easier to download images. However, there was a time, when internet was slow, and I had to go to the market to find and buy linux CD/DVD. The first linux CD I bought was Redhat 6.2, and on back cover there was Gnome Icon, which looked a lot like the Foot-Klan from the Ninja Turtles. However, my biggest purchase was Mandrake Linux 10, which came on a whopping 10 cds, and to had them shipped from a store in Canada. However, Ubuntu came soon after, and they sent you a free CD. I ordered an entire box and gave away to my friends, this stopped purchasing Linux media further.
45 • nVidia etc (by Otis on 2024-03-22 01:18:20 GMT from United States)
@43 The machines I test and run Linux distros on have no nVidia. nVidia is not my enemy. My enemy in running Linux is several distros that I have tested which need far too much work for my liking to work properly and reliably (openSuse and its relatives, and several projects that seem built for a small portion of machines out in the wild).
The one I am on now, an Acer Aspire A-517-52, is not old or new; it's been around for a while and has very common hardware, hardware which Void and Alpine and openSuse and others just can't get along with, not to mention the printers/scanners/copiers I use. Nobara and MX Linux see it all natively and fire up the printers (all Epson printers) even in the live environments and of course once installed on the nvme ssd.
It's so simple: many distros just need to be worked with to get going. I used to do that; search for drivers, compile, troubleshoot, etc. But this is 2024, and honestly there are whole families of Linux distros out there ready to go and with little or no need at all for messing with. It's been over 25 years of desktop Linux now, my friend. Messing with them as a hobby is fine. But doing all that out of necessity is.... no longer necessary. ;o)
46 • Logo shirts are media too (by MInuxLintEbianDedition on 2024-03-22 08:58:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
I bought a cool linux t shirt to support a distro maker
47 • Re: Purchasing Physical Media (by Andrew on 2024-03-22 09:06:15 GMT from United States)
I answered "Yes - Other", and going by the letter of the polling question as asked, this is accurate; however, I'm not entirely sure if the question's scope was *intended* to cover this case: the most recent computers (laptops) I have purchased have been ones with Linux preinstalled on them. (A harddrive is "media", after all XD). Typically what I do, though, is remove the harddrive from the new machine and insert the old harddrive from the old machine; wipe the root partition, do NOT wipe the /boot and /home partitions, then use a live USB stick to install a fresh system on the old HDD's root partition (and a new kernel in /boot). If I have problems obtaining drivers for the new machine, I will swap the HDDs again, boot into the preinstalled Linux that came with the new machine, and copy the missing drivers that I need from the new HDD to the old HDD.
48 • Clarity on Hardware Support vs Auto Wizards (by Random Experienced Void User on 2024-03-22 18:52:36 GMT from United States)
@45 Otis - OK but I think you're a bit confused. I can agree to an extent.
Printing has a sadder story in Linux than nVidia. Waiting for OpenPrinting drivers is watching glaciers grow. Even the ones marked 'works perfectly' for years somehow don't get packaged. And multiple printer vendors give worse Linux support than nVidia, which at least ships closed blobs that work for all models sold. Print vendors often don't.
Beyond printers you mention no specific hardware. Oddly, I type this reply on a similar Acer Aspire model running Void, Wayland, and Sway. I cannot report any hardware problems. Hardware support is a Linux kernel issue. It will happen across all distros. Any true hardware issue begs for a distro that paces modern kernel development.
What you're calling hardware is a different topic, auto wizards. Void and Alpine do not install the kitchen sink. To imitate 'auto wizard' distros, just install the same packages those have; avahi and similar.
Myself, I can't stand a dozen hidden 'auto wizards' taking memory and CPU away from me, and stalling my mouse pointer every time I edit a doc, because they are 'scanning' again, or systemd thinks it has something to do, or a mystery background process just awakened, or another wants to write logs to disk. It's thus a matter of taste, not technical progress. I thank my lucky stars that I have the choice.
By all means, if you like 'wizards' doing things for you, and change printer models regularly, then run wizard-heavy distros that ship regular desktop spins further bogged down with systemd. I played enough years with systemd and wizards to know that I would rather run Microsoft Windows. The amount of labor involved making things work is equivalent, and the odds of success are better.
49 • OEM Updates Worth Doing (by Random Experienced Void User on 2024-03-22 19:30:09 GMT from United States)
@45 Otis - Your Acer laptop is a 2021 model, only 3 years old. Acer offers 12 BIOS/firmware updates and 36 Windows drivers for it. Some drivers (chipset?) might contain additional firmware fixes. I would run Windows on it and install what matches on-board components. Then reboot back to Linux.
https://www.acer.com/us-en/support/product-support/Aspire_A517-52/downloads
https://nanoreview.net/en/laptop/acer-aspire-5-a517-52
Number of Comments: 49
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| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
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| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
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| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Full list of all issues |
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FunOS
FunOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution which features the JWM graphical user interface. The project is intended to be more lightweight than official Ubuntu community editions while providing the same application compatibility and hardware support.
Status: Active
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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