 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1069, 6 May 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Just over a week ago Canonical launched Ubuntu 24.04, the distribution's latest long-term support (LTS) release. Accompanying Ubuntu 24.04 were its ten community editions. Jeff Siegel took the latest version of Ubuntu for a test drive and reports on his findings and early impressions of Canonical's new release. Learn about Jeff's impressions in this week's Feature Story. In our News section we talk about the systemd project launching its replacement for sudo while the Linux Mint team unveils plans to guard against unverified Flatpak applications. The Mint project is also moving to make development of its cross-desktop applications (XApps) more open and portable to other distributions. We also talk about the highlights in FreeBSD's quarterly news update. Plus this week we talk about how to address installing new software when a partition is running out of space. One workaround in this situation is to expand a storage pool across multiple disks or partitions. Do you use a flexible storage solution, such as Btrfs or LVM? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. We are also 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 Jeff Siegel) |
Ubuntu 24.04
Ubuntu 24.04 could turn out to be the distribution's most important release in a decade, a version as significant as owner Canonical's attempt at convergence with the Unity desktop in the mid-2010s. That's because, as Windows 10 reaches end of life in 18 months and its users either don't want to upgrade or don't have the wherewithal to do so, they'll go looking elsewhere. Given its role as perhaps the most visible Linux distro among the unconverted, Ubuntu is where many will look.
Hence, the focus of this review, using an older laptop with minimum Windows 11-ish specs as the test machine: Is Ubuntu 24.04, codename Noble Numbat, appealing enough - in performance, in simplicity, and ease of use? Is it good enough in its hardware support and appearance to offer those Windows refugees a new home? As such, I tried to use just the App Center to install software and update the system, and tried not to use too many GNOME extensions to tweak the layout or make GNOME easier to use. My goal was to replicate what someone coming from Windows 10 would find and do.
The answer to all of this? Mostly yes. There are, this being Ubuntu, the usual annoyances with Snaps and the GNOME desktop, and my hardware didn't include anything NVIDIA or Realtek, so I can't speak to the common issues with those hardware components.
Ubuntu 24.04 -- Setting up Ubuntu
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But the revamped App Center is a vast improvement over the previous software stores and does what it's supposed to do. Wayland for display and PipeWire for audio worked out of the box while the new Flutter-based installer (Subiquity) lives up to all its hype. In fact, I tested Ubuntu 22.04 and 23.10 on the same laptop in preparation for this review, and 24.04 is just that much better than the very ordinary 22.04 and the surprisingly inconsistent 23.10.
Getting started
Ubuntu 24.04 is a long-term support (LTS) release and will be supported for five years (10 or 12 years with a free, personal subscription to Ubuntu Pro). It comes in a 64-bit 6GB ISO file, which is more than a gigabyte bigger than 22.04. The minimum system requirements are at least a 2GHz dual core processor, 4GB RAM, and 25GB of hard-drive space. This compares to Windows 11, which needs 4GB of RAM and a 64GB hard drive, as well as specific CPUs, the dreaded Trusted Platform Module 2.0, and a Microsoft account. Ubuntu doesn't need any of the latter, and should run without any trouble on any Windows 10-compatible system.
Under the hood, 24.04 comes with the Linux kernel (version 6.8); the GNOME 46 desktop; Netplan 1.0 for better network management; the Mesa 24.0 graphics stack, and a host of technical upgrades to improve security and to make the system work more efficiently. Canonical went out of its way after the xz backdoor emerged to reemphasize its commitment to security, including delaying the 24.04 beta release.
The first noticeable difference between Numbat and previous Ubuntu downloads is the new Minimal install, which includes Firefox, the Nano text editor, a terminal, the App Center and not much else. That means no office suite, no e-mail or camera app, no music or video player, and - as the Internet has been bemoaning since the news broke - no games.
Which, frankly, is a welcome change. There is an expanded install with more apps, but for those of us who don't need all of LibreOffice or Thunderbird, or want specific apps instead of the defaults (VLC instead of Parole or Audacious instead of Rhythmbox, for instance), this is another improvement. And I only play Aisle Riot anyway.
Believe it or not - the new App Center handles its work without much trouble; I didn't have to install Synaptic to make up for the app center's shortcomings. Frankly, I was stunned. I've been complaining about the various Ubuntu software thingies for as long as they have existed, and there isn't much to complain about here. It updates. It installs - both local Deb files and Snaps. It's much quicker, it looks better, and it didn't crash once. This is the sort of thing that's crucial for someone moving to Ubuntu from Windows, where most people only know the app store approach to installing apps.
Ubuntu 24.04 -- Fetching software updates
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I ran into two quirks. First, the App Center won't update the App Center Snap; it throws an error message since the App Center is open. You'll need to close the App Center and update it through the command line ("sudo snap refresh"). This bug has been hanging around for a while and I'm surprised it wasn't fixed here. Second, the App Center won't install third-party Deb files, so you'll need to install either wget or gdebi (for which the GUI actually works) if you want something that's not in the App Center, like the Vivaldi browser or Ubuntu Cleaner. Know that this is hardly as Windows-user friendly as so much else in the distribution.
Several software changes are worth mentioning. Thunderbird, like Firefox, is now a Snap. Cheese has been replaced by the GNOME camera app, called Camera, and seems to be an improvement. My lips were mostly synced with my voice in a test video. There is also a new firmware updater, accessed through Settings - just like in Windows.
Ubuntu 24.04 -- Firmware updater
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Meanwhile, the Firefox Snap, which has been notoriously slow in opening since Ubuntu switched the Firefox package from a Deb to a Snap, seemed to load as quickly as it always has. The App Center Zoom Deb file, which has been quirky over the past several Ubuntu versions (ibus woes, anyone?), also worked without any trouble.
Bring on Flutter
Even more impressive is the new installer. The Flutter version looks better, is easier to use and understand, and seemed more nimble. Installation, from first click to reboot, took about 15 minutes, which included overwriting Ubuntu 22.04. Best yet, when prompted to remove the installation media and hit Enter, the installer didn't crash. That issue has been all too common in past Ubuntu and community flavour installs.
Also, the GNOME desktop didn't annoy - which isn't as damning with faint praise as that sounds given that sometimes, it seems that "annoying" is GNOME's reason for being. Thanks to a couple of GUI changes, there's less need to install extensions -- and then find out they haven't been updated to the current version of GNOME. The new Quick Settings, which sits in the upper right hand corner, includes action buttons; network, Bluetooth, and battery settings; and volume and brightness controls. The only extension I had to install to make something work was GNOME Tweaks, so I could set the Nextcloud desktop app to run at startup. Nextcloud even connected through Online Accounts, which has been problematic in some previous versions of GNOME, both in Ubuntu and elsewhere.
Ubuntu 24.04 -- The quick settings panel
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In fact, there really wasn't a reason to add the half-dozen extensions I normally install to make GNOME more comfortable to use, including Dash to Panel. On the other hand, those who want the calendar and weather combined in the top panel in some sort of usable fashion will still need to add an extension (such as OpenWeather Refined, for one).
The Nautilus file manager (better known as Files these days) has also seen a spate of upgrades, making it more powerful and quicker: custom folder icons, much better drag and drop, improved text search, and a thumbnail view. Dragging screenshots from the Photos folder to the Nextcloud folder was easier than it has ever been.
Ubuntu 24.04 -- The new system installer
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In the end, Ubuntu 24.04 is the most complete version I've tried since at least 20.04, and perhaps even before that. Its GNOME desktop is quicker and easier to use, and it doesn't penalize those of us who prefer the mouse to phone-style swiping. Its GUI is more modern and more complete, and not having to find the right GNOME extension to add to make up any shortcomings is an added bonus. The new Flutter installer should make it easier to perform dual boots, while the new App Center - if not quite perfect yet - is far more effective than those iterations that preceded it.
Best yet, it just works - and that's despite switching to less tried technologies like Wayland and PipeWire. Windows, for all of its many faults, usually does just that. It works with almost any peripheral or odd piece of hardware users throw at it. Ubuntu still isn't at that point, but what one review of 20.04 called the distro's "steeper learning curve" is pretty much gone. Boot this one up, and anyone who has used a computer before should feel reasonably comfortable.
While Ubuntu 24.04 is in good shape, don't try updating from 22.04 to 24.04 until the first point release later this year. Unlike the fresh install used here, upgrades have caused problems which may cause upgraded systems to become unrecoverable.
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Hardware used for this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP EliteBook 850 G5 laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Core i7-8550U, 4GHz
- Storage: 512GB SSD
- Memory: 16GB of RAM
- Networking: Intel Dual Band AC-8265 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac wireless
- Display: Integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620
When he is not testing out new versions of Linux distributions, Jeff Siegel can be found writing about all things related to wine at Wine Curmudgeon.
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Visitor supplied rating
Ubuntu has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.7/10 from 293 review(s).
Have you used Ubuntu? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
systemd creates a sudo alternative, Linux Mint guards against unverified Flatpaks and encourages a distro-neutral approach to XApps, FreeBSD publishes quarterly news summary
The systemd project is adding a new utility to its portfolio, this one designed to replace the sudo and doas programs. Lennart Poettering, systemd's creator, wants to get away from SUID programs (programs that run as another user, such as root, automatically) as a way to elevate access. Instead, he is proposing a situation where the user runs a file which asks the service manager (systemd in this case) to run a new process with elevated access. OSNews writes: "Poettering wants to address this problem [of SUID programs], and has come up with run0, which behaves like sudo, but works entirely differently and is not SUID. run0 asks the service manager to create a shell or command under the target user's ID, creating a new PTY, sending data back and forth from the originating TTY and the new PTY." In other words, instead of the user launching a program (like sudo or doas) that will run a single new process as another user, run0 will get the service manager to create a new process and then pass information between the original shell and the new process. The new run0 command will appear in systemd version 256.
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The Linux Mint team published their monthly newsletter for April and it covers a lot of topics. The team talks about testing new Fastly mirrors to improve package download speeds and reliability, swapping out the discontinued HexChat IRC client for Matrix, and dealing with unverified Flatpak bundles. To protect users against unverified Flatpak packages in the Flathub repository, Mint is taking a few steps: "We've been lucky so far. We really need to take action: We'll update the Software Manager to not show unverified Flatpaks by default. This will be an opt-in. When shown, unverified apps will have a score of 0. The score can help a user build trust towards the application, but the issue here isn't the application, it's the fact that the maintainers aren't who people think they are. When shown, unverified apps will be clearly marked as unverified. We're fully aware this goes against convenience and will hurt Linux Mint a little bit. It might not be a popular decision but we think it's a very important one. By the time malware hits Flathub, we hope these measures and the measures taken by Flathub will have minimized the number of exposed users and raised awareness around the risks which are being taken."
The Mint team also talks about XApps, the Linux Mint replacements for GNOME applications which do not work properly on non-GNOME desktops. The Mint team points out that, while XApps are used almost exclusively on Linux Mint, they could be run on other distributions, such as Xubuntu which currently suffers from running GNOME applications which don't integrate with Xfce. "What should have happened ideally would have been more communication and an independent XApp project, not hosted or maintained by Linux Mint, but by people from various desktop and/or distributions. XApp should be its own organization, with its own GitHub repositories, chat room, website, etc. It should be a space which facilitates collaboration, compatibility and the development of application which works everywhere, not just apps which are needed or maintained by us." People interested in collaborating on an independent XApps suite can visit the new XApp Matrix channel.
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The FreeBSD project has published its quarterly newsletter which highlights work and progress happening in the project. Some of the highlights include work being done on filesystems, wireless networking, and optional notifications from the FreshPorts website when new packages become available. The newsletter also mentions graphical package managers, such as Discover, will now work with FreeBSD's pkg package manager through PackageKit: "PackageKit is a small D-Bus daemon program that serves as a backend for "application store" type of apps - most notably Plasma Discover and Gnome Software Center. The latest PackageKit release features a libpkg backend, which means that you can now use PackageKit-enabled programs on FreeBSD to manage software. Plasma Discover is already switched to using PackageKit, so you will get it working out of the box once you update your ports/packages."
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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) |
Placing packages in alternative locations
Picking-package-placement asks: In Windows when you install software you always have the option to choose which drive to install to (assuming of course you have two or more drives plugged in). It's really handy if your C: drive is getting full but you have loads of space on D: or whatever.
Is there any way to do something similar on Linux?
I tend to underestimate the space I'll eventually need for a Linux install and then get in a tricky situation (unable to shrink the main Windows partition to make room for it because I have the Linux partition at the start so I can't then give it the freed up space at the end) so I would have to fresh install both operating systems to change how the drive is split between them.
After the OS is installed, let's say you install LibreOffice, for example. In Windows, you have the option to install LibreOffice to D: if your C: drive is low on space. In Linux, LibreOffice installs to / and if / is low on space then tough.
So you've got AppImages, can dump those anywhere. Similarly, loose binaries not integrated into the package management (maybe something you compiled from source yourself) you could drop on another drive to save space. For Docker maybe you use /var/lib/docker as a mount point for another drive, though I'm thinking of solutions more flexible than dedicating an entire additional drive to Linux.
From a Windows and Linux dual boot perspective it would be nice to have a third drive accessible to both (NTFS so both can see it as standard) for software overflow. Would be great if APT (or DNF or whatever) asked which drive you'd like to install LibreOffice to (LibreOffice is just an example). I realise it would need to create a whole other bunch of directories for that on the other drive but was just wondering what solutions (if any) exist. I'd be surprised if nobody has done anything at all to address it.
DistroWatch answers: One of the interesting things about moving between operating systems is getting to see how the various platforms are organized and how they take different approaches to solving similar problems. This is a great example.
On Windows each storage device - whether it is a hard drive, network share, or optical medium - gets assigned its own drive letter. Each storage device or location is presented to the user as a separate, independent device with its own directory structure.
In a way, the Windows approach makes sense because the separate drive letters for each storage device reflect the real, physical individual devices in the real world. A person's floppy drive is a separate entity from their hard drive which is also separate from their DVD storage. People can see a one-to-one relationship between their drive letters on Windows and their physical devices.
Linux, and other members of the Unix family, take a different approach. On Linux there is one central filesystem that acts like one big tree with multiple branches. We can attach new devices to Linux's filesystem, growing the tree. The individual devices, the underlying storage, is largely transparent to the user. All the end user sees is one continuous filesystem with a seamless collection of directories (or branches).
The Linux approach makes sense in that the end user shouldn't need to think about underlying physical storage. Everything is kept in one big pool and the filesystem takes care of managing the individual devices, RAM-backed directories, and network shares. It's more fluid and the low-level functionality is handled for us so the user rarely needs to think about the physical storage devices.
This difference in how the operating systems handle storage then affects other elements of using the operating system. On Windows we again see that package management is usually a matter of the user dealing with individual application installers. Most people don't use a central software manager on Windows, they go out and grab individual application installers and run them manually. Since Windows splits storage up into different drive letters, the package installers typically need to ask where they should be installed, prompting the user to pick a drive letter and directory.
On Linux most package management is, again, a central, unified experience. Most software is pulled from official repositories and the software manager knows how to organize files throughout the unified filesystem tree. The user isn't expected to go out and fetch packages, run individual installers, know which storage device will hold a specific package, or where executable files are located. On Linux, software management is all supposed to be magically handled for the user in the background.
You might be wondering how this centralized versus independent organization helps you when you are running out of drive space and still have more software to install? I will get to that in a minute.
The reason I brought up the different approaches Windows and Linux use when it comes to handling storage (and installing software) is these core differences in organization naturally affect how we solve problems. Since Windows doesn't really have a central way to organize and manage storage devices, it also doesn't really have a storage-oriented solution to one disk running out of space, other than maybe attaching and using an additional device. And, since Windows doesn't really have a central method for installing new software, each package installer is left to handle asking about where it should be installed. Which is a lot of duplicated work for package maintainers as they are forced to deal with the problem of "What if the user ran out of space on their main drive?"
Since Linux has a central filesystem and (mostly) unified package management for traditional packages, system owners are able to better introduce solutions at the problem areas rather than working around them. In other words, if you run out of storage space on Linux, rather than passing that issue off up the chain to package installers, we can usually deal with the problem at the storage level.
This means that people running Windows, when they think their C: drive might not be large enough, need to manually tell each new package they install to use an alternative drive and hope it works smoothly. (Some third-party Windows software breaks when installed on drives other than C: due to a lack of testing from the developers.) On Linux, the solution to running out of space on the filesystem is typically handled using filesystem options.
Specifically, if we have a small Linux partition and believe we will need to make use of another drive or partition in the future, then we'd set up Linux on a flexible storage volume technology such as LVM or Btrfs (supported by most installers) or ZFS. Most Linux system installers will do all the work of setting up LVM or Btrfs volumes for us with just a click or two. On some distributions these flexible storage options are even the default approach to filesystem management.
Each of these (LVM, ZFS, and Btrfs) will allow us to start out running Linux on a single partition and then add more hardware storage devices to our filesystem pool over time. This grows the available storage space seamlessly while saving the user from thinking about where files are located. The user and the package manager do not need to know how many disks or partitions we add to the storage pool, that is all handled in the background by the filesystem. The operating system figures out where things go and spreads files out across each of the storage devices for us. From the user's point of view, we don't think about individual drives and partitions, just how much total space the filesystem has.
All of this is well and good if we're setting up a fresh Linux install, but what if you've already set up your distribution and did so without knowing you'd need to add more storage space later? What if you're running a traditional filesystem like ext4 and haven't set up LVM or Btrfs to allow growing of the storage pool across devices? Is there a way to make package managers put files in specific locations?
Yes, most Linux package managers do allow the administrator to install packages to non-standard locations, though it can be a bit awkward. This usually involves basically telling the package manager to unpack new files into a separate "root" location. The APT and dpkg tools have a few options to do this; pacman can do it too; and DNF and RPM have another approach. None of these are ideal as we then need to make sure this new location is in our user's executable path and it may end up duplicating dependencies across multiple partitions.
A more common approach is to use portable packages (like Flatpak) or containers (such as Distrobox) and mounting the location where these portable software bundles will be installed on a separate partition. For example, we might set aside a portion of our home directory or the /var directory to be mounted on another partition. This is a more clean approach than telling a classic package manager to use a separate region for installing software, though not as clean as using flexible storage pools with LVM or Btrfs.
Also, on the topic of sharing a partition between two operating systems: I'd strongly recommend against trying to save both Windows and Linux packages on the same NTFS drive. That's almost certain to end badly and possibly end up with data corruption. It opens up your Linux files to attacks from Windows malware and may break permissions used by the Linux system. For example, special permission bits used by Linux for tools like sudo may not work if they're installed on a NTFS volume.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Garuda Linux 240428
Garuda Linux is a rolling, desktop distribution based on the Arch Linux operating system. The project's latest release, Garuda Linux 240428, ships with a number of upgrades, the most immediately apparent being the new Plasma 6 desktop: "The main focus of this release is certainly the already mentioned Plasma 6 upgrade which already arrived in the Dr460nized edition. Meanwhile, Sway and Hyprland received some major improvements to their respective editions as well. Also, FireDragon was rebased to Floorp, meaning we now profit from its interesting feature set. Lastly, our build system for the garuda repository received major updates, and the pilot phase for Chaotic-AUR infra 4.0 is supposed to start soon. As KDE 6 was released in February, the Dr460nized edition underwent some minor changes to how we create our desktop layout. Multiple plasmoids needed to be ported to KDE 6, which also caused some of them to be replaced with updated forks (eg. the original Latte dock window - title, appmenu, buttons - are no longer maintained and were ported or forked by other people)." Additional information is provided in the release announcement.
Garuda Linux 240428 -- Running the Plasma desktop
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T2 SDK 24.5
T2 SDE is an open-source system development environment (or distribution build kit if you are more familiar with that term). T2 allows the creation of custom distributions with bleeding-edge technology. The project's latest release, version 24.5, runs on 25 CPU architectures and includes updates to the Linux kernel, GNOME, and KDE Plasma. "T2 24.5 was released as a major milestone release not only including the latest and greatest Linux kernel, GCC, LLVM / Clang, Glibc, Musl, uClibc, X.org, Mesa3D, but also the KDE and GNOME desktop packages updated and fixed to finally mostly cross compile. While at it, we also undeleted IA-64 Itanium support! A total of 36 pre-compiled base install ISOs for various Glibc, Musl and uClibc combinations are available for for 25 CPU ISAs: Alpha, Arc, ARM(64), Avr32, HPPA(64), IA64, Loongarch64, M68k, Microblaze, MIPS(64), Nios2, OpenRISC, PowerPC(64), RISCV(64), s390x, SPARC(64), SuperH, i486, i686, x86-64 and x32. On most architectures the release still boots with 512MB of RAM or even less, and are on average just one GB in size. Most vintage Xorg drivers were fixed to actually work again. The rolling release is updated using the scripted source build system and thus optimized for the native system CPU." Additional details can be found in the release announcement and in the release notes.
PrimTux 8
PrimTux is a French distribution from the language Debian and Ubuntu family. It is developed by a small team of school teachers and computer enthusiasts in educational environments. The project's latest release, PrimTux 8, is based on Linux Mint 21.3 and features a new application menu along with a new visual style. The distribution uses Xfce as the preferred desktop environment. The brief release announcement, in French, reads: "The PrimTux team is proud to announce the release of version 8 of its system, based on Linux Mint 21.3, with: a new menu, organized according to school programs; a search for applications by keywords; and a complete overhaul of the graphic charter, improving the user experience. The site of documentation, totally rewritten, has three sections: the first steps, the manual of the administrator and the student documentation. Primtux8's ISO and the transfer instructions for transferring to USB key (8GB minimum) can be found on this page. 2GB of RAM (4GB for optimal use), an SSD with 30GB of free space and a 64-bit processor are required to install Primtux 8."
LibreELEC 12.0.0
The LibreELEC development team has announced the release of LibreELEC 12.0.0, a major new update of project's multi-platform Linux distribution featuring the Kodi media centre. The new release ships with Linux kernel 6.6.28 and Kodi 21.0: "LibreELEC 12.0 has released as final release, bringing Kodi (Omega) 21.0. With the new release cycle we changed many devices to 64-bit architectures, including Rasberry Pi 4 and 5. If using Widevine DRM (required for various copy-protected video add-ons like Prime Video, Netflix) on one of these devices and updating from LibreELEC 11, Widevine DRM will need to be re-installed on these devices due to the changed architecture. LibreELEC 11.0 installs will not automatically update, but you can manually update. LibreELEC installs from before LibreELEC 10.0 must make a clean install due to the Python 3 changes since Kodi 19. The Generic image runs the same GBM/V4L2 graphics stack we have long used with ARM devices." See the release announcement and the changelog for further details.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4
Red Hat, Inc. has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.4, the latest stable release of the company's enterprise Linux platform available for the x86, ARM, IBM Power, IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE platforms: "Red Hat, Inc. today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4, the latest version of the world's leading enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 brings a wide range of new and enhanced capabilities to better manage the complexity of hybrid cloud computing in an increasingly AI-centric world, including refined management and automation and proactive support in building standard operating environments (SOEs) for distributed systems. Automation is increasingly a critical part of an operation team's toolbox, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 continues Red Hat's drive to make automation an integral part of modern Linux platforms. 9.4 further extends Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles, deployment-ready Ansible content collections that help configure and launch common administrative tasks." See the press release and the detailed release notes for more information.
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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: 2,993
- Total data uploaded: 44.3TB
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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) |
Do you use a storage pool that can be grown?
In our Questions and Answers column this week we talked about ways to address running low on space in a disk partition. One solution to running out of room in a partition is to use a filesystem which can be expanded across additional partitions or other storage devices. LVM, Btrfs, and ZFS are examples of storage solutions which can be used to easily expand storage space across devices. Do you use one of these flexible storage solutions?
You can see the results of our previous poll on which Fedora spin should be used as the main Workstation edition in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you use a flexible storage solution?
| Yes - Btrfs: | 214 (14%) |
| Yes - HAMMER/HAMMER2: | 7 (0%) |
| Yes - LVM: | 124 (8%) |
| Yes - ZFS: | 102 (7%) |
| Yes - Other: | 30 (2%) |
| No: | 1007 (68%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 13 May 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 • Systemd (by shep on 2024-05-06 00:39:35 GMT from United States)
The idea of spawning a new process to shutdown a desktop environment, maintain a wireless connection or ntp sync the desktop clock does not sound like it is going to be more efficient or secure. I also question a Microsoft employee who writes code to bloat my system when the lack of bloat is a strong reason to run Linux/OpenBSD in lieu of Windows.
2 • Placing packages in alternative locations (by Vinfall on 2024-05-06 01:48:12 GMT from Hong Kong)
The answer is so well-written and covers quite a lot of perspectives, congrats!
It's a bit over-complicated though as the question implies a few other underlying questions like misuse of NTFS filesystem, so if someone prefers a TL;DR:
1. Windows & GNU/Linux has different package management conventions and that assumption makes users think differently
2. You can use logical volume with LVM or a filesystem supporting such feature, portable packages/containers or set up install parameter for package manager
Moreover, despite the missing path or duplicating dependencies issues mentioned, the package manager method seems more straightforward if you ever compile a package from source code. Setting up things like `EPREFIX` variable in Portage (Gentoo) is no difference than passing de facto `--prefix` make install param. You can learn more about this from LFS preface (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/prologue/typography.html).
3 • Ubuntu 24.04 Installer (by Zacmanman on 2024-05-06 02:51:51 GMT from United States)
I decided to hop from Pop!_OS to Ubuntu 24.04. I had forgotten that I had installed Pop over ZFS. The new Ubuntu installer did not like that and *would not* install the OS on a previously created ZFS partition. Thankfully Gparted is in the live image. Unfortunately, that also hated my ZFS partition... Well, it took a while but I got it formated to Ext 4. Oof.
4 • systemd os (by systemd os on 2024-05-06 03:12:50 GMT from Singapore)
I'm seeing a systemd os coming soon.
5 • systemd run0 (by ttz on 2024-05-06 03:31:35 GMT from Bulgaria)
Another day, another metastasis grouth.
What if systemd is not the technology we initially thought its scope was, but a meticulous Microsoft's long term strategy to reshape and control Linux to its needs? Nowadays this strategy even demostratively and arrogantly being enforced by Microsoft software engineers onto the free Linux world?
6 • Ubuntu 24.04 vs. my old Nvidia graphics card (by eco2geek on 2024-05-06 04:24:49 GMT from United States)
So, I have an old Nvidia graphics card in my desktop PC and it uses the nouveau driver. For the first time, a beta version of Ubuntu didn't work properly out of the box, when running from live media. But neither did the Fedora Gnome beta, so it apparently wasn't an Ubuntu problem; it was a Gnome 46 problem. Xorg vs. Wayland didn't matter.
(Windows 10 works fine on my computer, so does Ubuntu 23.10, and although sddm is completely glitchy lately, KDE works OK, including Plasma 6.)
I was googling for a fix for the issue pretty much for the month since the Ubuntu 24.04 beta came out until the final came out. Finally, in the GTK issues page, someone described symptoms that sounded a lot like mine. The report is here:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/6654
Now this person has a video card even older than mine. My issue is that the menus in apps like Nautilus (aka Files), Settings, the text editor, etc, appeared as small unreadable blobs off to the left of where they should have been. And the Appearance page in Settings didn't display either the highlight colors, or the wallpaper thumbnails correctly. Often the system would end up crashing.
The fix is to set a global environment variable, e.g. in /etc/environment, either
GSK_RENDERER=gl or
GSK_RENDERER=cairo
("gl" seems to be a bit faster.) Apparently GTK used to use cairo, but GTK4 uses a newer, faster renderer called "ngl" by default. I'm ngl (see what I did there?), it doesn't like my old video card.
So if you have an old Nvidia GPU, running the nouveau driver, and Gnome has visual glitches, setting the renderer back to "gl" or "cairo" might fix your problem.
7 • systemd (by Bobbie Sellers on 2024-05-06 05:47:51 GMT from United States)
I do not for some reason think that the people at Red Hat were confused when they
adopted systemd. I think they forgot the basic principles of one function to one simple.
utililty. Also since systemd has to be learned about and I had just managed to figure
out why i should be using Grub2 rather than LiLo. I have limited energy for handling
stuff so I prefer stuff that duplicates what was handy about AmigaOS 3.9./68050 at 50 MHz.
That i understood and modified startup-sequence files in a text editor.
So Lennart Poettering is an agent of change. I am not surprised that LP went to
Microsoft. Many competent programmers have done so and AmigaOS lost a
lot of talent to programmers for Microsoft products. Well LP is coming up with
a substitute for sudo (a bad idea on Ubuntu as implemented) but he hooks his
new non-sudo to systemd and it seems like a needless complication.
(https://linuxiac.com/systemd-v256-introduces-run0/)
Just the opinion of someone who started with Commodore 64.
bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLOS 2024.04- Linux 6.6.30-pclos1- KDE Plasma 5.27.11
8 • Even more systemd? (by Devuan User on 2024-05-06 09:53:02 GMT from United States)
Color me surprised. For this ritual, I shall perform the sacred "I told you so" dance.
9 • Story (by Version on 2024-05-06 09:56:37 GMT from United States)
"Under the hood, 22.04 comes with the Linux kernel..."
I thought this was a review of 24.04?
10 • systemd feature creep (by 0323pin on 2024-05-06 10:21:14 GMT from Sweden)
Yet again, it's extending its tentacles and no one knows where and how the feature creep will end. Personally, I haven't used GNU-Linux-systemd for years but, it's becoming increasingly harder to avoid it. Disgraceful.
11 • Updating Ubuntu Software Center (by Dan on 2024-05-06 10:40:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
Surely a script to update the Software Center during a reboot makes sense?
12 • @10 Systemd (by kc1di on 2024-05-06 11:26:01 GMT from United States)
I'm with you and yes it is becoming harder and harder to find systemd free Linux PCLinuxOS is still one of them. Though they are talking about going to Wayland for KDE 6 Wondering how that will affect systemd free Distro?
13 • Updates (by Jesse on 2024-05-06 13:19:36 GMT from Canada)
@11: "Surely a script to update the Software Center during a reboot makes sense?"
Why would that make sense? The software centre is just another application. Updating it live and in-place doesn't affect the version currently running in memory. That's why all other Linux software managers update live.
14 • SystemD (by Otis on 2024-05-06 10:40:41 GMT from United States)
@5 and many more to come: The angst about systemD, and some of the analysis and conclusions thereof, will always influence the Linux user base (a very small base compared to Windows and Mac) proportional to each users satisfaction with their daily computing experience. Init system efficiency is NOT on the minds of most home computer users, and that is a piece of Microsoft wisdom that has spawned their strategy to subvert from within and yes take over and orchestrate Linux marketing at some future point.
That's what they do.
15 • Is systemd really that popular with users? (by picamanic on 2024-05-06 14:46:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
The "popularity" of systemd with ordinary users is supported by the headline Distrowatch Page Hit Ranking that puts 12 systemd distros above the first without it [antiX]. On this table, my favourite, Void, languishes at position 92.
Yet, buried deep into the Distrowatch site is the Visitor Supplied Rankings table which tells a different story: Void is now first, Arch second, and 4 of the top 10 avoid systemd.
I am sure that this situation did not arise from any deliberate intention to portray systemd as overwhelmingly the most popular "choice", when the evidence puts this into question.
16 • run0, storage (by Robert on 2024-05-06 15:52:13 GMT from United States)
run0 is another one of those where I read it and it sounds like a great idea, but still makes me uncomfortable because it's yet ANOTHER thing systemd is trying to take over. If it works well, I guess there isn't too much to complain about.
On storage use both LVM and ZFS. ZFS is for my data, and I even did have to expand it on my fileserver. LVM is used for the system because ZFS on root was too much work and I didn't trust Btrfs. I use that volume primarily for snapshotting in case an update goes bad. Not really any reason to shrink or expand it.
17 • @15 SystemD and Popularity (by Robert on 2024-05-06 16:07:31 GMT from United States)
Regarding systemd, there's a loud group of people who don't like it. Some people do like it. Most people probably don't care as long as it works. Which it does.
The stats you are looking at are different things. Page hit rankings are exactly that - page hit rankings. In other words, a lot of people are looking at these distros. Which presumably correlates with usage, but not the same thing. And as above, systemd likely doesn't enter the equation for most people on these distros.
Conversely, I expect a lot of non-systemd distros are used specifically because their users don't want systemd. In other words, a minority. But this minority really enjoys their chosen distros and so they rank highly in the reviews.
18 • run0 (by 2complex4u on 2024-05-06 16:08:05 GMT from Germany)
run0 sounds more complicated than any of the currently existing alternatives. How can this be a good thing? Especially when communication between processes is already known to be a security nightmare?
systemd will soon be so large and complex that it is fundamentally unauditable, if it has not already reached that stage ...
19 • Page views and popularity (by popular distro on 2024-05-06 17:31:56 GMT from The Netherlands)
@17: I do not think that page views relate to popularity. It may relate to sparking interest for what ever reason: does this distro (claim to) offer something new, do they have a different approach to something, are they focusing on a specific use case, whatever.
I look at lots of distros, and try some, but have not found any to replace what I have been using for the last 15 years or so.
20 • @12 (by Sohl on 2024-05-06 17:41:22 GMT from United States)
I've had good experiences lately with Devuan as a systemD-free distro. It has many of the same applications and whatnot that Debian & Ubuntu have like XFCE and Chromium but does not use systemD init.
21 • @15 Distros using systemd (by Chris Whelan on 2024-05-06 19:54:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
MX Linux is #1 on the DW list, and does not boot with systemd by default, so the top 11 out of 12 use systemd.
22 • systemd vs. runit (by Microlinux on 2024-05-06 21:37:59 GMT from France)
Systemd has made the life of us admins much easier. And it's also a bloated and overengineered piece of software that flies in the face of UNIX philosophy.
As far as I'm concerned, everybody should use runit like Void Linux does. Keeping it simple, extremely robust and the fastest init on the planet.
23 • systemd vs. openrc (by MonteDrago on 2024-05-07 08:14:53 GMT from Germany)
After the xz bug, I switched my production system from Manjaro (systemd) to Artix (openrc).
And this message shows me that it was the right decision.
Systemd starts slowly, is overloaded and causes problems with the shotdown from time to time, for which I cannot find a reason in the log files.
Openrc, on the other hand, starts quickly, works stably and is easy to learn.
But yes, it is increasingly difficult to find programs that do not require systemd.
And that is a bad development in Linux.
24 • Package Management/systend (by dr.j on 2024-05-07 10:43:05 GMT from Germany)
Package management: What a crazy question? Typical Windows.
If I have two hard disks (Drive C: and D:) and Drive C is running out of space, then I install my system on the larger disk D. Or swap C for a larger one. Why should I tinker with package management?
systemd: Until today, the Linux world was characterized by the fact that you could choose. The development of systemd and its widespread adoption in all major popular distributions is very worrying in this respect. Fortunately, they still exist, the systemd-free distros. In this respect, Mr. Poettering can think up some madness for years to come. That doesn't make an undesirable development any better.
25 • systemd vs. runit (by lincoln on 2024-05-07 12:09:01 GMT from Brazil)
When they say that systemd makes the life of the admin easier, it's tempting to laugh. Compare the complexity of creating or editing a Unit File (understanding its structure, types, sections, installation, all configuration directives, reserved directories, additional settings) and the run script in runit (usually two or three lines) (reference: https://smarden.org/runit/runscripts).
Another indicator of the brutal complexity of systemd compared to runit is the number of pages needed to explain both: 35 pages (Chapter 10. managing services with systemd) and 7 pages (Chapter: Services and Daemons - runit).
Another signal would be the number of individual binaries in each init system/service supervision: 9 in runit and 69 in systemd (In January 2013).
And I find it mandatory to mention the elegance of runit's implementation combining service directories, symbolic links, run scripts, and concise code ("As of version 1.0.0 of runit, the runit.c source contains 330 lines of code; the runsvdir.c source is 274 lines of code, the runsv.c source 509").
26 • @25 (by dr.j on 2024-05-07 12:34:35 GMT from Germany)
Couldn't have said it better
27 • Contrarian View (by Mike W on 2024-05-07 14:57:07 GMT from United States)
@14: Exactly. I'm just an average user, and could care less.
I get that ststemD rubs the "do one thing and do it well" advocates. But,why is systemD seemingly so much more popular, or at least more prevalent, with distro developers than the others?
28 • @22 runit and s6 (by anticapitalista on 2024-05-07 15:22:45 GMT from Greece)
runit is fast but in my tests (on antiX) s6 is even faster to boot to a desktop.
29 • uncontrarian view (by init-outit on 2024-05-07 15:34:24 GMT from Germany)
@27; Want to know why systemd is more prevalent with distro developers?
Because Redhat.
And they managed to convince Debian. Arch adopts new stuff very quickly anyway - their main reason to exist is to provide users with the newest shiny stuff as quickly as possible.
30 • systemd (by Jesse on 2024-05-07 15:35:26 GMT from Canada)
@27: "I get that ststemD rubs the "do one thing and do it well" advocates. But,why is systemD seemingly so much more popular, or at least more prevalent, with distro developers than the others?"
systemd takes on a lot of functionality that means distro developers need to do less work. They don't need to package a separate login manager, service manager, init, network name resolver, boot loader, and (now) sudo. They can just bundle up systemd with all its components.
systemd also means different distros can share unit files rather than each family of distros having their own service manager configs/scripts.
So systemd often means less work for distro developers, while making more work for upstream developers and introducing problems for (some) users who don't like the way it works - large size, security bugs, binary journal, DNS issues, etc.
31 • Systemd (by zephyr on 2024-05-07 21:46:48 GMT from United States)
The vast majority of users that just so happen to use a system(d)eath distro...just don't know any better.
32 • systemd (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-05-07 22:08:05 GMT from Australia)
GNU/Linux is dead or at the bare minimum on its death bed
Systemd imo, is anti-linux and against the philosophy of linux.
When Systemd/Linux? Better yet, when Systemd Distro with Gnome?
I commented a lot in the previous week/s on systemd. Everyone here who is calling out systemd for its complete overreach is spot on.
As for the users who don't know any better about systemd, well, these are the "windows" users of linux. Can't help them unless they want to be helped.
Perhaps when the next xz-systemd type exploit drops they will open their eyes.
If we stand idly by and do nothing, systemd will consume linux. Everyone has a choice on the distro they use.
Instead of Arch, use Artix or Obarun/Joborun
Instead of Debian use Devuan or Antix/MXLinux
Other systemd distros:
---------------------
Gentoo/Funtoo/Calculate Linux/Redcore
Slackware
Void
PClinuxOS
Alpine
Kiss
Crux
Adelei
Guix
Hyperbola
Parabola
Stay frosty.
33 • systemd by ThomasAnderson (by Jan on 2024-05-07 23:44:00 GMT from The Netherlands)
I value your (and Jesse's compact and clear) comments on systemd very much. I hope to see more of this.
I am interested in Linux, but I am not a coder and prefer UI over CLI.
I try, in the latest months, to find/decide on which distro I can best go to when I have to stop with Windows.
I want a good backed and secure/safe (multi-eyes-principle) and longer lasting distro (which runs reasonably smooth on older hardware).
The security-breaches and the comments on systemd + Flatpak + Snap + stable (so old) or bleeding-edge (so some risk) + "app-rot" show that there is no simple/easy choice.
34 • SystemD (by Mr. Moto on 2024-05-08 01:11:19 GMT from Philippines)
@31, "The vast majority of users that just so happen to use a system(d)eath distro...just don't know any better." Thank you for your enlightened comment. But maybe, just maybe, the majority of users just want to run an OS, and not join a religion or become a participant in init wars, or desktop wars. I'm a long-term Linux user, and I do know "better". I just don''t give a rodent's behind.
35 • Ubuntu and Flutter installer... (by Vukota on 2024-05-08 11:03:45 GMT from Serbia)
I wonder how hard or easy is to hack (enhance) new Flutter installer to behave differently? I know previous installer was pretty easy to hack with plane editor on live media before doing install. How about now? Do we need to rebuild whole image in order to do this now?
36 • Users issue? (by Otis on 2024-05-08 15:42:04 GMT from United States)
SystemD is reported to be about the devs wanting/needing less workload per project/task etc. The same insightful folks who report this also preach to users to "stop using systemD distros, there are many choices (fairly exhaustive list provided @32).
Would the devs who love systemD, and who have been converted away from the other inits, be affected by users en masse switching to Void, PCLinuxOS, Gentoo, et al?
It's the "en masse" that ainta gonna happen, in the first place. And even if it did it'd be years before those devs felt in necessary to only do work with the other init systems.
So, folks, do the devs see this angst among users and not give a rat's fuzzy rump. Yep. Apparently so.
37 • Shut down/boot up (by Otis on 2024-05-08 15:52:56 GMT from United States)
@36 (my own) incidentally, my shut down time on Nobara (systemD) is 2.5 to 3 seconds. Boot up is 13 seconds.
I am an advocate of ridding the Linux world of systemD because it does not seem to fit in with the perceived spirit of Linux, not because it is not efficient. It most certainly is efficient.
I live with it, but would rather not. Those non-systemD distros are okay, but I have found reasons for each of those to not remain long term on my machines and have settled on MX and Nobara.
38 • run0 (by Barnabyh on 2024-05-08 20:42:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yet another "solution" in search of a problem. It will not be long before the inventor has found another item that needs to be added to systemd because he is bored and self-centred and wants to show everybody what he can do.
@34: Mr Moto, that's even worse, you DO know better and you don´t even care. Although I doubt it. If you really did know better you would.
39 • systemd (by former on 2024-05-09 00:01:37 GMT from United States)
I don't use systemd.
I don't plan to ever use it.
If I have to, I will learn BSD and switch to it.
But until then, luckily there are non systemd alternatives.
40 • SystemD redux (by Mr. Moto on 2024-05-09 03:03:05 GMT from Philippines)
@38, "Mr Moto, that's even worse, you DO know better and you don´t even care. Although I doubt it. If you really did know better you would." How evangelical! I give up! Only you know The Truth, and I'm just an infidel.
41 • OpenBSD (by Midnight Sun on 2024-05-09 05:39:16 GMT from United States)
OpenBaSeD sounds like the way for a lot of us who want to avoid that festering pile of nonsense (among others).
Install Alpine Linux if not yet ready. It's at least understandable when you want some features not commonly present for OpenBSD, but at least the developers of both the Linux distro and OpenBSD are competent enough to make it happen.
P.S. For everyone else, remove sudo and install opendoas (depending on your package manager).
42 • systemd (by hulondalo on 2024-05-09 07:20:31 GMT from Hong Kong)
by the time it's done, systemd would have become an independent operating system and thank goodness linux would be getting rid of it :)
for the life of me i cannot understand this passion to replace everything that makes linux great and combine them all to create a single point of failure. change for the sake of change?
43 • @34 Mr. Moto: (by dragonmouth on 2024-05-09 12:53:08 GMT from United States)
Linux is about choice and simplicity. SystemD violates both of those tenets. If you wish to use systemD, have at it. Your choice. Others made/make other choices. Are you going to deny them those choices?
SystemD is another step towards Window-ization of Linux. If we wanted to be subject to the tyranny of systemD, we would have never switched form the tyranny of Windows.
44 • @43, dragonmouth, system D all over again (by Mr. Moto on 2024-05-09 14:24:36 GMT from Philippines)
@43, "Are you going to deny them those choices?" Where and how am I denying anyone any choices? Go to it! Use what you want. Have I stated any position either against or in favor of systemd?
Yes, I believe that the vocal minority who come out swinging at any mention of the unmentionable init are like the tree falling in the forest that no one hears. They will change nothing, and Linux will continue an prosper regardless of their predictions of doom. Some yearn for the simplicity of Unix. Why not use BSD? That's Unix. Too much trouble? So they don't just want a free sack of potatoes. They want them peeled and cooked.
Microsoft will take over? For what? Microsoft already has Linux. Are they expected to realize the miracle of monetizing the Gnu/Linux desktop, which no one has so far managed? Redhat, Canonical, Suse? They make money on support. There's that little thing called the GPL in the way.
Some who dislike systemd are actually doing something constructive, like creating Void, MX, AntiX, Artix, Devuan, et al., and there are those who contribute to those projects. Lighting a new light, so to speak. But the majority of the systemd haters just prefer to sit and complain about the darkness.
But none of those cause me to post here. The ones I answer to are the cult evangelists who insult anyone who does not share their beliefs or fears, calling them uninformed and ignorant. "Your choice." Yes, it is! And I will exercise it.
45 • Vocal minority (by MTV on 2024-05-10 07:26:52 GMT from France)
"Microsoft will take over? ... the cult evangelists who insult anyone who does not share their beliefs or fears, calling them uninformed and ignorant..." (@44)
... ironically are against freedom of choice and worship Microsoft without even realizing it.
They are for freedom of choice, but against choice (Systemd, Gnome Desktop...), and any GUI is fine for them, as long as it looks and feels like Microsoft's (the ugly KDE is a 100% copy of a Microsoft concept and together with Cinnamon, it reminds one of Windows Vista in early alpha stage).
They didn't yet discover that Linux does not exist for and because of them, nor would it be able to keep existing if it relied solely on spare-time work and their generous donations.
46 • desktop & init (by M.Z. on 2024-05-10 15:31:28 GMT from United States)
There are plenty of ways in which systemd is a sub-optimal solution, but from the end user perspective it just works & can be easily forked or modified by developers because it is open source GPL licensed software. I've used both and there is little real difference as far as I'm concerned, though it is nice that some project provide an alternative & I don't think that there are any good reasons to think you'll end up without plenty of options for Linux init systems.
@45 - yes you do have a real choice & XFCE & KDE plasma are the choices most desktop users tend to make. Kde is very powerful & flexible & can be made to look however you want it too - no need to be ugly about your preferred DE not doing theming & config as well.
47 • systemd (by ThomasAnderson on 2024-05-10 22:39:43 GMT from Australia)
@46
>>from the end user perspective it just works
Look on Github at the open issues with systemd which as of today is 2035. Top on the list is this:
Deleting "$HOME"/.identity Prevents Logging in to systemd-homed User Account
On Ubuntus systemd bug page, top on the list:
Shutdown hangs in md kworker after "Reached target Shutdown."
On Debians systemd bug page, top of the list:
Can't decrypt root device after upgrading to systemd v256 and rebuilding initramfs
Systemd has a lot of bugs. It may seem like it just works but it really doesn't.
How many open issues with sysvinit ..... 0...zero
Systemd is not just an init system. That is the main objection to systemd. If you want an init system that works, use sysvinit or others.
Number of Comments: 47
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| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
redWall Firewall
redWall Firewall was a bootable CD-ROM firewall based on Gentoo Linux. Its goal was to provide a feature-rich firewall solution together with a web-based interface for all the generated log files. redWall Firewall comes with Snort, SnortSam, DansGuardian and support for fwbuilder, SpamAssassin, reporting, VPN and mail alerts. Configuration files are stored on a floppy disk or a USB pen drive.
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 
