 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1064, 1 April 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Linux kernel is undoubtably the most popular of the world's open source kernels. Linux sits at the heart of billions of smart phones, millions of servers, the world's fasted super computers, and tens of millions of desktop machines. However, Linux is far from the only open source kernel available. There are other popular kernels such as those offered by the BSDs, Haiku, and FreeDOS. This week we field a question about another open source kernel, this one from the GNU project. GNU's Hurd kernel has been around for decades and we discuss its current status in this week's Questions and Answers column. Have you ever run a computer system that used Hurd? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss the FreeBSD Foundation's plans to improve wireless networking support on FreeBSD while Canonical extends Ubuntu Pro's support term to 12 years. Plus we talk about Qubes OS offering new updates and a reminder that Qubes OS 4.1 is nearing the end of its supported life. We also discuss a compromise in the liblzma compression library. First though we talk about NixOS, a Linux distribution which showcases the powerful Nix package manager. We share details about NixOS and how to make use of Nix in our Feature Story. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
NixOS 23.11
NixOS is an independently developed Linux distribution that aims to improve the state of the art in system configuration management. In NixOS, the entire operating system, including the kernel, applications, system packages and configuration files, are built (and can be configured) by the Nix package manager.
This week I want to talk about NixOS as a desktop distribution and touch upon the Nix package manager and how we can use it manage multiple aspects of the operating system.
NixOS is available in two desktop editions: GNOME and KDE Plasma. There is also a Minimal command line edition. The desktop editions are about 2.5GB in size while the Minimal edition's ISO is 949MB. The distribution runs on the x86_64, ARM64, and i686 architectures.
The list of changes for NixOS 23.11 is fairly short. We're told that, along with some background changes and package updates, the latest version ships with GNOME 45 and the LLVM developer tools have been upgraded to version 16. This version of NixOS is supported through to June 30, 2024.
I downloaded the KDE Plasma edition and verified its checksum. Here I ran into a small error. The NixOS checksum file provides the wrong filename which means automated checksum tools, such as sha256sum, will fail or report an error. The ISO file's checksum does match the checksum provided, it is just the filename which does not match (the ISO file is called "latest-nixos-plasma5-x86_64-linux.iso" and the matching checksum says the filename should be called "nixos-plasma5-23.11.2596.c1be43e8e837-x86_64-linux.iso"). After manually confirming the ISO I had downloaded was valid, I set about testing the live mode.
Booting the live media displays the GRUB boot manager with some useful options. These include booting NixOS normally, loading the distribution into RAM, and booting in safe graphics (nomodeset) mode. Each option boots and loads and Plasma desktop session. The desktop panel sits at the bottom of the screen. On the desktop we find icons for opening a terminal, launching the GParted partition manager, launching the system installer, and opening the NixOS documentation. The documentation is in HTML format, it is stored locally (on the live media), and the documentation is displayed in Firefox.
NixOS 23.11 -- The live desktop and system installer
(full image size: 525kB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
Installing
After the Plasma session appears the Calamares system installer is launched automatically. Calamares asks us to select our preferred language. On this page there are buttons for showing us support options, known issues, and the distribution's release notes. These buttons all launch Firefox to show us the appropriate on-line resources. The following Calamares screens ask us to pick our timezone, keyboard layout, and username and password. We're then asked which desktop environment we want to install. The available options are: GNOME, Plasma, Xfce, Pantheon, Cinnamon, MATE, Enlightenment, LXQt, Budgie, Deepin, or no desktop with a command line only interface. We can pick only one desktop to install and I decided to use Plasma.
Calamares then asks us if we wish to enable non-free components like firmware. Then we are given the choice to manually partition the disk or accept an automated process. The automated approach sets up a single ext4 partition. We can ask the automated partitioning tool to also create a swap partition.
The installer then copies packages to the hard drive and offers to restart the computer. The whole process was quick and trouble-free.
Early impressions
My freshly installed copy of NixOS quickly booted to a graphical login screen. By default we sign into a Plasma X11 session, though a Plasma Wayland session is also available. Plasma uses a light theme by default. The desktop for the installed operating system no longer displays icons for documentation and install options. When we sign into our account there is no welcome window or first-run wizard.
NixOS 23.11 -- The KDE System Settings panel
(full image size: 259kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
I started testing NixOS in VirtualBox. The distribution ran well in the virtual machine. Audio and networking worked and the desktop was responsive. Plasma didn't dynamically resize with the VirtualBox window, but I could adjust the desktop resolution in the System Settings panel.
When I ran NixOS on my laptop all of my hardware was detected and worked well. Networking, audio, and media shortcut keys all functioned as expected. Plasma ran well on my laptop.
A fresh install of NixOS took up 7.5GB of disk space. Memory usage varied a bit from one boot up to the next. RAM consumption ranged from 570MB to 620MB when signed into Plasma. This puts NixOS well within the middle-weight range for mainstream distributions.
Included software
The Plasma edition of NixOS ships with a fairly small collection of desktop applications. We're given the Firefox web browser and the Elisa audio player. Audio codecs are included, though there is no video player. The Okular document viewer and Gwenview image viewer are included for us. There is a text editor (Kate) and a system monitor. The Dolphin file manager is installed for us.
The System Settings configuration panel is included to help us customize the desktop. We're also provided with a copy of KDE Help for learning about the Plasma desktop and its core applications.
Digging deeper we find the GNU command line programs, a full set of manual pages, and systemd covering init duties. The sudo command provides admin access to our first user so we can perform administrative actions. Version 6.1 of the Linux kernel is installed for us.
NixOS 23.11 -- Exploring the application menu with a dark theme
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
What I found interesting about the default collection of software was the lack of some popular or commonly used items. As I mentioned above, there is no video player. We can install one using the Nix package manager if we wish. Since NixOS exists in large part to show off the Nix advanced software manager, the distribution has skipped support for Flatpak and Snap. (Flatpak is available in the NixOS repositories if we want to install it.) The vi/vim text editor, provided by most distributions, is not included, though Nano is available.
Nix and software management
The Nix package manager is the centrepiece of the NixOS distribution. It's an advanced package manager which some very useful properties which will work quietly for us in the background while presenting us with an interface which feels similar to other command line package managers. Nix performs atomic updates, meaning installed software is always in a usable state; a crash or power outage mid-upgrade won't hurt anything. Nix also separates packages in a way which allows for multiple versions of software to be installed at the same time, which is handy if two applications rely on different versions of the same library.
Perhaps one of the most useful features of Nix's package management abilities is a concept called generations. Nix uses directories and symbolic links to keep installed software logically separated. Each time we install or remove new software Nix creates a snapshot of the installed packages. This snapshot is called a generation. This means if we install a new package which breaks something we can instantly revert the change back to the previous version. It also means if we install two different versions of the same application we can switch immediately backward and forward between the two versions. This makes testing and comparing application versions quite easy.
Let's look at how all of this appears to the end user. To refresh our local database of available software we can run "nix-channel --update". To upgrade one (or multiple) packages, we can run "nix-env -u".
When we want to find a package based on its name we can use a query search such as "nix-env -qa package-name", for example "nix-env -qa vlc" to find the VLC player. To install a package we want we can use "nix-env -i package-name" and removing old software can be accomplished with "nix-env -e package-name".
Nix does not display much information to the console while it is working and it tends to be slower than other package managers such as pacman and APT. However, it did work well for me and I encountered no issues with Nix's functionality.
A few paragraphs back I mentioned Nix takes snapshots whenever we add or remove packages. We can see all of the snapshots on our system by running the command "nix-env --list-generations". Each generation is associated with a number and the currently active snapshot is marked in the list of generations. We can then jump forward or backward in time using the command "nix-env --switch-generation" and specifying the number of the snapshot. For instance, if I'm currently in snapshot 10, I can go back one step by running "nix-env --switch-generation 9".
Jumping between generations happens instantly and the snapshots don't take much space, just the size of the package which was changed. This means we can often store dozens of snapshots without noticing a significant use of storage space. If Nix ever uses too much disk space to store its generations there is a clean-up command to delete old generations, this command is called "nix-collect-garbage".
Nix configuration
While atomic updates and package snapshots are great features to have, Nix has another, more impressive, trick up its sleeve. We can configure the NixOS distribution by writing a specification of the functionality that we want on our machine in a single file and running a command. Most operating systems have a control panel or a series of configuration modules - one for managing user accounts, one for software management, one for enabling background services, and so on. With Nix we can write a terse description of users, features, and services we want and run a command. Nix then figures out how to configure the operating system based on our written instructions.
The file /etc/nixos/configuration.nix contains the current configuration of our machine, omitting any packages we added manually. Whenever we change something in this file we need to run the command "nixos-rebuild switch" to apply the new configuration and switch into this new setup. This also sets up NixOS to boot into the new configuration. Should we wish to test out the new configuration without booting into it next time the computer starts we can run a different command, "nixos-rebuild test", to effectively test drive the new instructions without making them the default when the system restarts.
NixOS 23.11 -- Browsing the system's Nix configuration file
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The NixOS manual includes information on configuration options we can put in our file along with some examples. There are also some popular options, such as OpenSSH service access, already in the configuration file and commented out to make it easier to enable them with a few keystrokes.
Something I appreciate about Nix is we can delete old items we no longer want from the Nix configuration file and Nix will remove them from the operating system. This means we can disable services, remove user accounts, or delete packages by erasing them from the configuration file and running the command "nixos-rebuild switch".
NixOS 23.11 -- Rebuilding the system configuration
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
This might seem like an odd way, or even a cryptic way, to add and remove elements of the operating system. It's a bit like having one, giant recipe for the distribution rather than a series of tools to manage specific elements. However, once you get accustomed to writing rules for services and system-wide packages, it unlocks some potential. For example, we can copy the same configuration file to another computer (or another thousand computers) running NixOS and use the configuration file to build the same operating system on the other computers in a few minutes. In other words, Nix not only offers us a central way to manage our operating system, it also provides a way for us to clone our system to other machines with a single text file and the Nix software.
Immutable?
Something I've read over and over again during the past year is the idea (often shared in articles, forum posts, and support discussions) that NixOS is an immutable distribution, meaning people think it has a read-only filesystem. I've encountered this idea so often I wanted to address it in this review. This idea that NixOS is immutable is false. The NixOS distribution has no immutable properties and we can write to any part of the root filesystem. However, this myth seems to have spread widely (even among some NixOS users) due to Nix's ability to make atomic transactions using separate directories and symbolic links. Since immutable distributions also offer atomic updates it seems this one overlapping feature has caused a lot of people to become confused.
NixOS, using its snapshots and atomic updates, can offer some of the same benefits as some distributions which are immutable. However, NixOS does not use an immutable filesystem. It achieves its atomic update magic using other means.
Conclusions
NixOS, as a general purpose distribution works quite well. On the surface it doesn't do anything particular remarkable - we install it using Calamares, it runs GNOME and KDE (and some other desktops), and ships with a fairly minimal desktop experience. It's not unlike other streamlined desktop and minimal desktop install options from other mainstream distributions. NixOS can work like just about any other desktop distribution as long as we don't mind turning to the command line to install new software.
With that said, under the surface NixOS becomes much more interesting. Its main purpose is showing off the Nix package manager and Nix is impressive. The Nix software provides many features above and beyond most other traditional Linux package managers, providing automated snapshots, multiple versions of the same package, atomic updates, and essentially a type of boot environment. It's also possible to both instantly rollback changes and jump forward through snapshots.
As I mentioned above, the real gem Nix offers is its central configuration file where we can install new software, enable services, and even manager user accounts by editing a single file and running a command. This makes Nix not just a package manager, but also a system manager. Plus it gives us the ability to set up a copy of our customized operating system on another computer by deploying the Nix configuration file to another machine and running a command. It's highly flexible and, though there is a learning curve, this makes deploying (or redeploying) our distribution virtually effortless.
In addition to all of this, NixOS is a rare gem in that I don't think I ran into any errors while I was using it. The distribution was stable, it worked well with my hardware, and I didn't run into a single issue while running it. I feel NixOS is well worth a try, especially if you're a system administrator and want to deploy (or maintain) identical distributions across multiple machines.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
NixOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.1/10 from 73 review(s).
Have you used NixOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
FreeBSD Foundation to focus on wireless networking improvements, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support, Qubes OS 4.1 nearing its end of life, liblzma compromised upstream
The FreeBSD Foundation has published a series of updates which discuss work the Foundation is putting into the FreeBSD project. Some of the improvements being worked on include updating the FreeBSD wireless drivers: "The FreeBSD Foundation is making significant strides in wireless development, led by Cheng Cui and Bjoern Zeeb. Their primary goals are to fix bugs, stabilize the system, and improve iwlwifi for 802.11ac transfer speeds. Zeeb's recent contributions have brought stability fixes to native and LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers in FreeBSD 13.3. They will soon focus on enhancing iwlwifi performance to achieve faster and more reliable wireless connections on FreeBSD systems." The March 2024 Software Development Update covers additional improvements and areas of focus.
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Canonical is extending its support term for Ubuntu Pro subscribers. The company now offers 12 years of support for Ubuntu 14.04 and future long-term support (LTS) releases. The new offering is called Legacy Support and extends Ubuntu's LTS support cycles from 10 to 12 years. "Ubuntu Pro coverage for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will end in April 2024. With Legacy Support, organisations running their systems on top of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS can obtain an additional two years of expanded security maintenance and phone and ticket support. This enables IT managers to prepare a detailed upgrade plan for the next LTS, and software architects to concentrate on the application level with the support offered by Canonical's team."
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The Qubes project released version 4.2.1 of the Qubes OS platform for running tasks in isolation from each other. The release announcement was accompanied by a reminder that Qubes OS 4.1 will reach the end of its supported life in June. "Qubes OS 4.1 is scheduled to reach end-of-life (EOL) on 2024-06-18, approximately three months from the date of this announcement. If you're already using Qubes 4.2, then you don't have to do anything. This announcement doesn't affect you. If you're still using Qubes 4.1, then now is the perfect opportunity to upgrade, since a brand new Qubes OS 4.2.1 ISO was just released today! (This is also the best way to get started with Qubes if you don't have it installed yet.)"
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Andres Freund has reported the upstream xz repository has been compromised with a backdoor which can affect software which relies on the liblzma software library. This compromise can, in turn, affect secure shell logins on distributions which run systemd. "After observing a few odd symptoms around liblzma (part of the xz package) on Debian Sid installations over the last weeks (logins with ssh taking a lot of CPU, valgrind errors) I figured out the answer: The upstream xz repository and the xz tarballs have been backdoored. At first I thought this was a compromise of Debian's package, but it turns out to be upstream."
Freund's mailing list post goes on to explain how the backdoor was found and why it affects OpenSSH sessions on Debian and related distributions, even though OpenSSH does not rely on lzma. "OpenSSH does not directly use liblzma. However Debian and several other distributions patch OpenSSH to support systemd notification, and libsystemd does depend on lzma. Initially starting sshd outside of systemd did not show the slowdown, despite the backdoor briefly getting invoked. This appears to be part of some countermeasures to make analysis harder."
According to a Red Hat blog post, only versions 5.6 and newer of the xz software contain the backdoor. Versions 5.4 and earlier appear to be uncompromised.
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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 status of GNU's Hurd kernel
The-thundering-herd asks: What is the current status of GNU Hurd? Is it still in development?
DistroWatch answers: For people unfamiliar with the project, Hurd is the name of GNU's microkernel project: "The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement filesystems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux)."
Hurd is still under development and the project publishes semi-regular news updates which highlight new developments in the kernel.
While still under development, the Hurd kernel has never really gained momentum the way Linux, FreeBSD kernel, or even Haiku's kernel has. The Hurd kernel does not have much in the way of hardware support and has limited CPU architecture support. It's not likely to run on most hardware or be stable enough to be used as a primary operating system.
One of the few operating systems to use the Hurd kernel is a port of the Debian project which couples GNU Hurd with the GNU userland utilities and a lightweight desktop environment. The GNU Hurd port of Debian can run in some virtual machines and is capable of running many of the same open source software applications as Debian's main Linux branch.
In the past we have talked about what it is like to run Debian's Hurd branch when running the LXDE desktop and a subset of Debian's software repositories.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
RELIANOID 7.2
RELIANOID is a Debian-based Linux distribution for load balancing. The distribution offers a load balancing oriented operating system for testing, development, and quality assurance environments. The project has published an update which improves on the distribution and scheduling of network traffic. "RELIANOID 7.2.0 comes with several key improvements to elevate your user experience. The system now operates on the solid foundation of Debian 12.5, ensuring a secure and up-to-date environment. The cluster service is now included by default, simplifying the setup for those deploying clustered environments. Additionally, we've invested in enhancing the developer documentation's syntax, making it more accessible and user-friendly. The HTTP farms parser has been fortified to improve robustness, and good practices have been applied across the core codebase to achieve Critic Level 4 compliance, ensuring the highest standards of code quality. This release addresses some bug fixes to fortify the reliability and stability of RELIANOID. Cluster replication issues have been resolved, ensuring a seamless and consistent cluster environment." Additional information is provided in the release announcement.
NetBSD 10.0
The highlight portable NetBSD operating system has reached a new milestone with the release of NetBSD 10.0. The new version introduces a number of performance and security improvements: "Benchmarks of NetBSD 10 show huge performance and scalability gains over NetBSD 9.x, especially on multiprocessor and multicore systems, for compute and filesystem-bound applications. Areas of improvement included: Switched the kernel's file path lookup cache to use faster per-directory red-black trees. Improved scheduler performance, including the ability to more appropriately spread load on a mixture of slow and fast cores (e.g. big.LITTLE Arm CPUs). Various optimizations for the machine-independent virtual memory system: Switched to a faster radix tree algorithm for memory page lookups. Improved tracking of clean/dirty pages, speeding up fsync(2) on large files by orders of magnitude. Improved parallelization: rewritten page allocator with awareness of CPU topology, replaced global counters with per-CPU counters, and reduced lock contention. Improved the performance of the select(2) and poll(2) system calls. Improved the performance of tmpfs. Implemented lazy update of atime/mtime. Various optimizations of architecture-dependent x86 and AArch64 code, vastly improved network and I/O throughput on aarch64. Various boot speed improvements. Compatibility with WireGuard: A new interface, wg(4), provides a VPN tunnel compatible with the WireGuard specification. The driver is experimental and needs more testing. A userspace implementation using a rump kernel server is also included, see wg-userspace(8). The NetBSD implementation works with WireGuard implementations used by commercial VPN providers, Android, Linux, and more." Additional details, including a list of the CPUs NetBSD supports, can be found in the project's release notes.
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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: 2,982
- Total data uploaded: 44.2TB
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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) |
Have you ever tried running Hurd?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about GNU's Hurd kernel. The GNU microkernel project has been around for decades, but hasn't gained as much attention as other open source kernels like Linux and the BSDs. Still, Hurd has found some users through project's like Debian's Hurd port.
We'd like to hear if you've ever tried running Hurd. Let us know your opinions on the Hurd project in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on fast and slow rolling release distributions in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Have you used the Hurd kernel?
| Yes - in the past: | 118 (8%) |
| Yes - am running it now: | 11 (1%) |
| No - but plan to in the future: | 158 (11%) |
| No - and no plans to run it: | 1209 (81%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- NethSecurity. NethSecurity is a Linux-based distribution for firewalls. NethSecurity delivers the functionalities of a modern Next-Gen firewall: MultiWAN, deep packet Inspection, VPNs, and threat protection.
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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, 8 April 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 • Hurdless (by Johhy Walker on 2024-04-01 00:26:15 GMT from United States)
Why Hurd when we have Linux for decades. I don't need to experiment.
2 • Re: GNU/Hurd (by Vinfall on 2024-04-01 02:16:09 GMT from Hong Kong)
Because Linux kernel by default comes with so many (closed source) binary blobs I guess? That's also why we have Linux-Libre as seen in Debian/Trisquel.
That being said, it's getting harder these days after so many years of waiting and people are really getting tired. IMO nowadays even a new kernel implementation written in Rust like Redox or even buggy Maestro can draw far more attention that this legacy…
3 • Hurd (by Andy Prough on 2024-04-01 02:28:07 GMT from United States)
I'm running Debian 12 Hurd version via KVM at the moment. I'm writing this comment from it, using the Links2 browser on the DWM window manager. It's fairly pleasant, although missing a few important packages like Firefox. Other than the limited number of packages, you really wouldn't know you are running a different kernel.
4 • rlxOS is an immutable Linux distribution not NixOS (by Robert on 2024-04-01 03:55:01 GMT from United States)
rlxOS is an immutable Linux distribution not NixOS, you might of confused them. Since their Distro linux names sound kind of alike.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/rlxos-is-an-immutable-linux-distribution-that-proves-looks-can-be-deceiving/
5 • rlxOS is an immutable Linux distribution not NixOS (by Robert on 2024-04-01 04:07:55 GMT from United States)
can the email address be edited out I didn't mean to share it, thanks :) if not that's ok
I guess. I been playing with Opensuse MicroOS and Fedora Silverblue and Kinoite, I like the new plasma 6, but on Fedora Kinoite, for some reason it has startup display bugs on my ASUS Republic of Gamers laptop, all the way right up to the X windows system, it has a bug right before loading plasma 6 on the Fedora Kinoite version, I used Tumbleweed on it too, it gets a text message about TPM thing on startup in the linux kernel, and some weird message about the blutooth, it works but still their is a kernel message about that too, its a strix laptop model is GL702VS and has a Geforce GTX 1070 mobel 3D graphics in it, with a core i7 processor, it can run windows 11 but scanning and it only able to use windows 11 with rufus, by default its a laptop that is not supported by windows 11 even if it can run it. it came with windows 10 on it. I like the idea of the MicroOS and Kinoite, and sometimes I like the gnome on laptop more and on my older desktop a gigabyte system I prefer plasma 6 or 5 and kde but that me, its been hard to find the perfect linux to run on this laptop, they work somewhat, and I always have to enable the keyboards backlight from either gnome or plasma by default they have the keyboard red lights off, its nice to have them on at night otherwise its hard to see the keyboard keys labels on them. but unlike the windows drivers for the keyboard the linux ones have to be turned on with settings.
6 • rlxOS is an immutable Linux distribution not NixOS (by Robert on 2024-04-01 04:29:37 GMT from United States)
if your wondering why linux over windows 11 the Security virus scanner does not work well on this laptop, the ASUS Republic of Gamers, GL702VS laptop, has Strix name above the keyboard on it, what windows 11 does not support on this laptop is the Intel core i7 processor that it came with, it has their TPM 2.0 device, which linux doesn't seem to like, the blutooth works but gets a kernel message on startup that I don't really understand, and in the kernel sometimes during grub or when loading the kernel depending on the linux distro, two text lines come up about the TPM , that maybe should be hidden but they are not using dmesg
tpm_crb [MSFT0101:00: Firmware bug] ACPI region does not cover the enture command/response buffer - this is show twiced during bootup on opensuse tumbleweed , not fedora I don't recall seeing this in Fedora at all in its kernel.
Bluetooth hcl0: Malformed MSFT vendor event 0x02 is the other message I see during bootup on opensuse tumbleweed
like SGX disabled by BIOS.is also in the kernel during statup their is no SGX settings in the bios about anything been disabled its something I have no control over on this laptop.
7 • NixOS good, but not for me (by J.D. Laub on 2024-04-01 04:44:42 GMT from United States)
I ran NixOS for a couple of years, and the experience went fairly well. I moved on because I didn't have a lot of disk space available, and it seemed like every time a core utility changed, a ton of disk was gobbled up retaining the prior generation alongside the current. It got to the point where I'd have to immediately remove the prior generation to avoid running out of space. It was working as designed, but I didn't (couldn't) give it a chance to breathe.
Another issue i hit was the way some configurations were specified in the nix file. Things that had previously been a simple tweak to a file under /etc/ ended up getting specified via an elaborate, syntactically-complex series of lines in the nixos config file; I was spending a lot of time digging around forums/posts/FAQs to find how to do things. Again, I'll take ownership of this - I was familiar with the "old" way & had trouble leaning the "new" way.
The nix config files between my machines got problematic. In my environment I had a reliable old desktop which did a lot of audio work, a newer laptop used for video editing, my wife's laptop with some specific office software, my kid's laptop with other needs, etc. Some of the nix config could be shared, but a lot wasn't, and keeping things straight was becoming onerous. Granted, nix offered repeatability, but I was too used to a simple "apt install" to fix a deficiency instead of making a config file change & then deploying that.
It also felt like if some software I wanted to try wasn't in the nixos repo, it would be way too much hassle to kick the tires. (I'm from the old configure / make / make test / make install days.) I suspect if I'd run the right nix-env commands first things might've gone better, but it got to the point where I felt like I was being straightjacketed.
I don't fault nixos - it just wasn't for me. What put it on my radar to start was that I wanted something along the lines of "make sure these 50 packages are installed on all machines, these 6 packages are installed on machine A, these 14 packages are installed on machine B, etc.". NixOS does far more than that. I haven't yet found a good solution for the simple need.
8 • Hurd (by Al on 2024-04-01 05:37:10 GMT from Bulgaria)
Hurd is important, it is the right way to do things. While I'm impressed by ability of linux and windows to create and maintain gigantic kernels - it is hard to do it without bugs and security flaws. Windows is updated every month and it is not known what updates really do and why they are needed if it looks same all the time...Some day everyone will awake hacked because there is so much unnecessary code in the kernel...(to mention just the most obvious reason)
9 • xz (by Wignersfriend on 2024-04-01 10:20:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Worth noting that this vulnerability only occurs if your distro uses cmake to build it. If you use the Arch familly (for example) that don't build with cmake then you're safe.
10 • Re: NixOS good, but not for me (by Elisabeth on 2024-04-01 11:13:17 GMT from Germany)
@J.D. Laub,
ansible would be a solution to your problem
11 • @3 That is a pretty noticeable difference (by GT on 2024-04-01 16:11:36 GMT from United States)
"It's fairly pleasant, although missing a few important packages like Firefox. Other than the limited number of packages, you really wouldn't know you are running a different kernel."
I use Linux for specific applications, and if those applications don't run, the OS is essentially useless. I'm surprised it cannot run Firefox. Having a modern web browser is one of the most critical applications for an OS. While I can admire the effort, I can't admire the end result if the system is incapable of basic functionality, which seemingly extends beyond applications as it isn't compatible with most hardware.
Nonetheless...Godspeed, Hurd Devs. I won't be holding my breath waiting for a useable system, but I'm rooting for you.
12 • NixOS Versions (by ThatGuy on 2024-04-01 20:48:47 GMT from United States)
According to the review NixOS is available in two desktop editions: GNOME and KDE Plasma. Jesse downloaded the KDE Plasma edition.
On installation it asks which of 10 different desktop environments (including GNOME and Plasma) to install. Why have different versions if it is going to offer to install all of them?
13 • Hurd (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-04-01 20:48:54 GMT from Australia)
Hurd is a fantastic endeavour in pursuing a morally and ethically libre linux whic in the real world renders it useless.
It will never be useful and is really only an academic theoretical pursuit at this time.
Perhaps when we have free opensource eth/wifi, graphics, usb, and pretty much every other hardware, with which we can use free opensource drivers, then, we can maybe use hurd, but until then hurd is just a _urd.
14 • @13 - Hurd not useless (by Andy Prough on 2024-04-01 21:24:23 GMT from United States)
>"Hurd is a fantastic endeavour in pursuing a morally and ethically libre linux whic in the real world renders it useless.
It will never be useful and is really only an academic theoretical pursuit at this time."
I used the Debian 12 Hurd version yesterday for a few hours, and I've used it in the past. It's certainly not useless - you can't really tell that you aren't on a regular Linux kernel. Nearly all of the normal programs work just like normal. The problem right now is that Hurd is only stable as a 32-bit kernel, its experimental 64-bit version needs to get fully implemented. Also it's going to need a lot of hardware drivers and firmware compiled for it if it's going to have widespread use on live systems. But currently as a 32-bit kernel for a distro running in a KVM virtual machine it's working perfectly fine.
15 • Have you ever tried running Hurd? (by The Catboy on 2024-04-01 22:04:36 GMT from United States)
I would use it if it wasn’t stuck in development hell for the past 34 years. There’s no reason to use GNU Hurd when both the Linux Kernel and freeBSD are both so much more developed and actually being worked on compared to Hurd. I don’t even know if it will work on any of my hardware and I am not really interested in figuring out.
16 • Hurd (by M.Z. on 2024-04-01 23:14:46 GMT from United States)
Hurd is basically an IT science experiment. I don't even beta test my favorite Linux distros, so I'm not really the target audience for that type of thing; however, if it is worth working on to the developers then they are free to purse it & I wish them luck.
17 • Hurd hurts (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-04-02 00:36:03 GMT from Australia)
Considering that RedoxOS written in Rust, which is a microkernal OS and which will probably be ready for stable release probably sometime late this year, the amount of man hours spent on Hurd which could otherwise be used on other projects seems to me to be a completely misguided endeavor. Sure, these researchers/coders/whoever are passionate about Hurd, but just think, instead of canning the project over and over and starting from scratch, if they could have devoted their efforts to BSD or the linux kernel, the potential improvements we might have now.
Seems to me a little bit like the concord problem; they are so deeply invested with their time, that they feel unable to give up and walk away to do anything else, and it is probably the figurative hill that they will die on.
18 • @17 Hurd does not hurt (by Andy Prough on 2024-04-02 01:30:26 GMT from Switzerland)
>"the amount of man hours spent on Hurd which could otherwise be used on other projects seems to me to be a completely misguided endeavor"
The old, "how dare those developers waste their time like that" argument. Funny how it's only ever brought up by non-developer users. "How dare you waste your time on that - you should have been creating new games and new social media sites to entertain me!"
19 • I tried freeBSD once, half my hardware or machines don't have working mouse (by Robert on 2024-04-02 02:42:40 GMT from United States)
freeBSD tried it, for whatever reason, the USB mouse is not loading, otherwise yes it runs, also doesn't like my razer keyboard US keyboard, and the buttons don't work either, so yes it runs but has problems and is not as supported as ubuntu, arch, gentoo, etc.. they and fedora and opensuse work better on my hardware at home.
I had redownloaded freeBSD like a year ago or so.
20 • Hurd (by jazzfelix on 2024-04-02 08:29:45 GMT from Germany)
I tested Hurd about 20 years ago. It was hell of unstable. Tested it 15 years later. It was hell of unstable. Probably still not worth a try. No modern browser, only 32 bit. I don't know about stability or usability as a host for virtual machines which I would need, because I am sure it does not run any of the proprietary softwares I use.
21 • Hurd hurts (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-04-02 10:19:35 GMT from Australia)
@18
>The old, "how dare those developers waste their time like that" argument. Funny how it's only ever brought up by non-developer users. "How dare you waste your time on that - you should have been creating new games and new social media sites to entertain me!"
Exactly, good to see that you understand my point. Perhaps not games or social media, but they could have spent their time improving the linux kernel or any other program.
It's not like they haven't given it go, they have been at this since 1990. So good on them for trying, but people should know when to walk away when something isn't working, especially when there are other microkernel projects that could use talented devs.
In contrast to Hurd, SeL4 was started in 2006. OKL4 the commercial version used in mobile phones, exceeded 1.5 billion shipments in early 2012. Apple A series processors beginning with the A7 contain a Secure Enclave coprocessor running an L4 operating system[14] called sepOS (Secure Enclave Processor OS) based on the L4-embedded kernel developed at NICTA in 2006.[15] As a result, L4 ships on all modern Apple devices including Macs with Apple silicon. In 2015 alone, total shipments of iPhone was estimated at 310 million. (wiki)
People can pursue whatever project they want and they should follow their passion. but that can still be a waste of time, 34 years of wasted time to be exact.
Maybe my great grand kids will get to try a beta release in another 30 years.
22 • @17 & 21: (by dragonmouth on 2024-04-02 11:40:23 GMT from United States)
It's a good thing that various Linux developers did not follow your thinking and listen to Steve Balmer when he said that people should not waste their time on developing Linux.
BTW - Andy Prough was being sarcastic rather than agreeing with you. People should be able to develop any application(s) they feel like, not just the ones you need/want/like.
23 • GNU Hurd (by Highlander on 2024-04-02 12:01:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
Was that an April Fool question?
The GNU Hurd idea is around 40YO and not much has ever come of it.
Even Plan9 and Minix got further, and neither of them are of serious mainstream use.
Even the BSDs cannot offer a decent desktop, however good they are as servers.
Why does Linux exist? Why is Linux used for more servers than any other OS? Why does Linux power more supercomputers than any other OS?
24 • Alternatives to Linux (by Otis on 2024-04-02 18:50:42 GMT from United States)
@23
The overwhelming consensus here is that Hurd is not a viable alternative to Linux distros. Agreed. But your "Even the BSDs cannot offer a decent desktop, however good they are as servers" seems not valid as many find the various BSDs quite "decent" indeed, including GhostBSD of course.
25 • Hurd and so on... (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-04-03 04:50:33 GMT from Australia)
The questions is; what are real alternatives if you don't want to use Linux? If you want to have a fully functional OS with desktop and apps.
Hurd (archhurd etc)- not ready
RedoxOS - not ready
BSD flavors (Freebsd, midnightbsd, hardened etc) - yes
MacOS - yes
Winblows - yes
Haiku - yes and no
SerenityOS - yes
ReactOS - yes and no
ChromeOS - yes, but if you care about privacy forget about it
Minix3 - yes
TempleOS - yes
ToaruOS - yes
Not too many alternatives, but some interesting ones are there, probably the most notable being ToaruOS.
26 • "alternatives" (by Otis on 2024-04-03 15:44:55 GMT from United States)
@25 welllllllll.... Three of the offerings on that list (Windows, MacOs, and ChromeOS) are the OSs which Linux/BSD are alternatives to, is the way I'd say most of the world sees personal computing. Yeah, MacOS is "ready," along with the word's most prolific OS in the world, Windows.
Best of luck to ToaruOS and the others.
27 • Hurd (by Jacob Alexander Tice on 2024-04-03 19:48:49 GMT from United States)
Hurd is seemingly on life support, and looking like it's going to flatline soon. A shame, because I think the idea has potential.
28 • NetBSD (by Jon on 2024-04-03 23:47:25 GMT from Canada)
Congratulation to the NetBSD team on release 10.0
The project always amazes me on how much they get done with so little resources.
29 • Hurd and so on... (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-04-04 00:12:46 GMT from Australia)
I was checking out Haiku, seems it will run fine on my slightly older laptop, so I will give that a spin and see how it goes.
ToaruOS; I will also try to install this.
It would be good if Jesse reviewed some of these non-linux distros once in a while. Last Haiku review was in 2020 beta 2. But no SerenityOS, no Toarus...perhaps these are too far on the edge. There is a massive waiting list anyway, but most of these are just fluff; meaning debian with this wallpaper and icon theme.....most of them are nothing but respins and bring nothing new or unique, unlike say SerpentOS.
If you are reading this Jesse, your criteria for reviewing a distro/os should be more than just respins of (major distro + new icons/wallpaper). This will probably reduce your list by 99% and leave distros that are actually trying to do something new or unique.
30 • Review list (by Jesse on 2024-04-04 00:24:53 GMT from Canada)
> If you are reading this Jesse, your criteria for reviewing a distro/os should be more than just respins of (major distro + new icons/wallpaper).
Seems like an odd thing to post this week since I just reviewed NixOS, one of the more unusual and unique distributions in existence at the moment. But let's zoom out a bit....
I agree with you, that's why I review the odd ones and outliers. As often as I can, really. I've tried Haiku, MINIX, Serpent OS, FreeDOS, ReactOS, Void, etc. And I write about them on here.
The reason you don't see them mentioned more often is these little projects don't advance quickly. Almost nothing has changed with any of the aforementioned projects in the past few years. Haiku is still in beta and only puts out new versions every few years, ReactOS is mostly the same as it was 5 years ago, FreeDOS is the same it was 10 years ago, Serpent OS doesn't run for me (tried it, didn't boot), apart from fixing sound Void hasn't changed much in the last five years, MINIX appears to have been discontinued around three years ago, etc.
The same goes for NetBSD and OpenBSD. They improve, make little behind-the-scenes changes. But I could cut and paste my last review of OpenBSD, change the version number, and no one would notice. Which is probably why whenever I review these outliers people write to me to complain that I should review projects "people actually use" like Ubuntu and Fedora and not the cool, weird projects I'm so fond of.
31 • Hurd's other benefit (by CLia on 2024-04-04 02:29:29 GMT from Australia)
i ran Debian-Hurd CLI on bare metal a couple of years ago, interesting project.
the main benefit i see in it is it's *combination*,
of FOSS & microkernel+'servers' :)
those 'servers' are little bits of code all their own -
upgradable, researchable, securable...
maybe that's a better way for the future than ginormous monoliths of kernels
32 • @25 (by Reyfer on 2024-04-04 03:18:17 GMT from Venezuela)
TempleOS: Religion based os, not for me
SerenityOS: We are in 2024, not the 1990s
ToaruOS: Last stable release in December 2021, everything else small Github commits, not "ready" as you claim
33 • Haiku (by Dave Postles on 2024-04-04 08:04:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
I tried Haiku a couple of years ago. It ran fine with a good range of apps installed and other useful ones to install too. It would be nice to have some more security features. I might try it again.
34 • #2 re: "binary blobs" in linux (by Andrew on 2024-04-04 12:15:56 GMT from United States)
As I understand it (for what little that is worth XD), the binary blobs that are in the kernel source tree may only be built into kernels by users comping kernels for their own personal use, that will not be distributed, and that option is not enabled by default.
Compiled distribution kernels do not include binary blobs in their builds, and are restricted from doing so as that would violate the kernel's GPL2 licence
35 • Binary blobs (by Jesse on 2024-04-04 12:37:19 GMT from Canada)
@34: "As I understand it (for what little that is worth XD), the binary blobs that are in the kernel source tree may only be built into kernels by users comping kernels for their own personal use"
This is not true. The binary blobs are there for virtually every kernel, except for the libre-Linux kernels that scrape the binary blobs out.
> that will not be distributed, and that option is not enabled by default.
The binary blobs are included by default.
> Compiled distribution kernels do not include binary blobs in their builds
Virtually all distribution kernels include binary blobs. A few don't, like the libre distributions (Trisquel for example). But all mainstream distributions include binary blobs for firmware.
> s, and are restricted from doing so as that would violate the kernel's GPL2 licence
This is also not accurate. The firmware is usually under a separate license and not affected by the source code of the kernel. Different files can be distributed under difference licenses in the same source package.
36 • xz, openSSH and systemd (by Kazlu on 2024-04-04 16:17:49 GMT from France)
I hate to be the one opening this can of worms again but...
"OpenSSH does not directly use liblzma. However Debian and several other distributions patch OpenSSH to support systemd notification, and libsystemd does depend on lzma."
Isn't that an illustration of one of the anti-systemd arguments? systemd being too large, doing too many things, having a larger attack surface than other solutions?
I honestly may be wrong here, my question is genuine. But so is my concern.
37 • systemd and xz (by Jesse on 2024-04-04 16:35:50 GMT from Canada)
@36: "Isn't that an illustration of one of the anti-systemd arguments? systemd being too large, doing too many things, having a larger attack surface than other solutions?"
Yes, at least sort of. There is an argument people who don't like systemd express about it being used for too many things, spreading too much, getting hooked in to too many parts of the system. It's certainly a reason for concern.
Though, to be fair to systemd developers and fans, this isn't entirely a fault of systemd in this case. Debian (and other projects) modified OpenSSH to link in with systemd. If distributions had left OpenSSH to work as it normally does, then systemd wouldn't have been involved and liblzma wouldn't have been an issue.
So this might be less a valid complaint against systemd as it is a complaint against distribution packagers trying to patch upstream code to do things it wasn't supposed to do.
This isn't the first time Debian has done this with OpenSSH. Years ago they had a test case in OpenSSH which basically made security keys predictable by creating them with a known seed.
Basically, yes, systemd is large and maybe has a larger attack surface than it should. However, that would be less of a concern if distributions would stop linking things to it which are not supposed to be linked to it.
38 • systemd and xz (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-04-05 03:46:16 GMT from Australia)
I agree that it shows that systemd has a large attack surface:
1) it does too many things other than being an init replacement. Systemd is comprized of approximately 70 binaries that handle system initialization, daemons and services, logging and journaling, and many other functions that were already handled by dedicated modules in Linux
2) too many lines of code to audit properly. Approx 1.4 million lines. Compare that with the linux kernel which has about 28 million lines
However I am biased and do not like systemd as you can probably tell from previous posts.
The issue with XZ utils is not a problem with systemd per se, but an issue with how software is managed in the linux eco system with maintainers and trust. Trust at the end of the day is why this exploit found its way into those mentioned distros.
The other thing worth mentioning about this attack is the long game that the attacker(Jia Tan) played in getting this exploit into distros; a matter of years to gain the trust from the original developer to becoming a co-maintainer to get to this point.
Das problem (the problem), is that it is impossible for every included program in a distro to have multiple people look and scrutinize every line of code for every update/commit. A professional audits on that scale would cost ...well hundred of thousands of dollars or much more considering that the average distro has more than 1000 packages To ask the opensource community to do it this for free is too much.
What is the solution? Reduce the attack surface would be simplest imo. Reduce the number of programs/utils to the bare minimum in a distro, the absolute essentials only to provide full functionality. Anything else would need to be added by the user. Something like Alpine, but obviously it would need to come with desktop versions for their iso. But personally, too much is included in standard releases. Every time i install a new distro i go through the packages and end up ripping out hundreds of libraries/utils etc that i don't need, threading a careful line as to not break my system.
Yes you have netinstall for most distros, but even then there are a lot of unnecessary packages.
What is the solution to prevent another xz exploit? Is there even a solution to the opensource supply chain trust model? How many exploits have gone un-noticed and are currently active? We were lucky that xz was discovered by accident.
Back to systemd; the real problem is that it is now so deeply entwined into many open source projects that it has become like a hard dependency, where programs don't function unless it is installed. PostmarketOS's decision to switch to systemd is an example of this.
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| • 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 |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Sorcerer
Sorcerer was a source-based Linux distribution. Source tarballs are downloaded directly from software project home pages or as patches when an old source was previously downloaded. Sources are compiled for the architecture and with the optimisations that the system administrator specifies. Sorcerer has both command-line and menu-driven source management programs.
Status: Discontinued
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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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0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
