 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1077, 1 July 2024 |
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Welcome to this year's 27th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Progress moves ever forward and this week we report on projects making advancements and reaching milestones. In our News section we talk about Ubuntu's plan to make its GNOME on Wayland session the default in almost all situations, including on computers running NVIDIA graphics cards. We also report on openSUSE updating its Leap Micro edition and Debian providing updated media while FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary. We also report on UBports gaining contact synchronisation with Nextcloud. DOS, in its various forms, tends not to be widely used anymore, but some people still use it for legacy applications and classic games. Do you still use DOS anywhere? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. This week we begin with a look at another technology which tends not to be widely used anymore: the Unity desktop. Unity is available in two different forms, the Unity 7 desktop and the Lomiri interface which was developed for mobile devices. We discuss both flavours of Unity below. Plus we talk about why a person might use different distributions for different tasks. We talk about what makes some distributions unique and suited for niche situations below, in the Question and Answers section. Plus we are pleased to list the new releases of the past week and link to the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
The Unity desktop and Lomiri on Ubuntu Unity 24.04
About 14 years ago Canonical announced it was going to create its own desktop environment, called Unity. Canonical had been using the GNOME 2 desktop for its Ubuntu distribution up to that point, but when the GNOME team dropped development of GNOME 2 in favour of GNOME 3, it caused several distributions to look for alternatives.
Canonical's solution was essentially a fork of GNOME 3 with a number of interesting features, such as an optional unified menu bar, the search-oriented Dash which would replace the old application menu, a vertical dock, and a method for navigating application menus called the HUD. It was a potent combination of features, but the Unity desktop struggled to gain mindshare.
Unity's lack of popularity involved a lot of factors. Fans of GNOME (versions 2 and 3) were not happy about Canonical replacing their preferred desktop, traditionalists didn't like the new layout, while fans of efficiency pointed out Unity's 3-D effects required either a suitable video card with good drivers or a powerful CPU to render smoothly. Meanwhile, people who were running distributions other than Ubuntu were unable to run Unity because the desktop used custom versions of libraries that were packaged for Ubuntu only.
A handful of years later, Canonical dropped its plans for a custom desktop, cloud services, and their mobile distribution. Unity (also known as Unity 7) was abandoned. However, a few years later the desktop started getting some community attention and has returned, running on the Ubuntu Unity community edition. This week I want to talk about Unity, a desktop which I feel delivered on its design goals and moved Linux desktop design forward, despite how it was mismanaged. I'll be exploring Unity, both its workstation and mobile flavours, using the recent release of Ubuntu Unity 24.04 as a base.
Unity 7
I'd like to start with Unity 7, also known as the branch of Unity for desktop computers. Launching my live copy of Ubuntu Unity brought up the Unity 7 desktop. A single icon for the system installer sits on the desktop. A vertical panel is displayed down the left side. This panel holds the Dash button along with icons for launching the system settings panel and LibreOffice applications. A thin panel sits at the top of the screen and holds the system tray.
Installing
As Ubuntu Unity has no welcome screen, I dived straight into the system installer. The distribution uses Calamares as its installer, which offers to install the operating system in one of three modes: Full, Normal, or Minimal. The Minimal setup will provide us with just the Unity desktop and a few utilities. The Normal package set includes the Unity desktop and a few applications, such as the web browser, office software, and media player. The Full software set includes everything from the Normal mode and includes extras such as the Element Matrix client, Thunderbird, a virtual machine manager, and Krita. When we select the Normal setup we can optionally click any of the add-ons from the Full software set to include them too. I opted to install the Normal set, plus Thunderbird.
After the software selection screen the experience with Calamares was entirely normal and there were no surprises. Calamares collected the usual data about my language preferences, timezone, and login credentials. It then copied its packages to my hard drive and offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My installed copy of Ubuntu Unity booted to a graphical login screen. Once I signed in a window appeared on the desktop which showed available keyboard shortcuts. In the future, holding the Super/Meta key causes this helpful window to reappear. I like how easy it is to see available keyboard shortcuts and its one of several ways Unity presents itself as being unusually keyboard-friendly.
The desktop uses a dark blue and purple theme. The dock is still displayed down the left side of the screen. There are no icons on the desktop.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- Fetching package updates
(full image size: 765kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
With the Dash and the dock on the left side of the screen, and the window control buttons all placed to the left side of their application windows, this causes virtually all interactive elements to be in the upper-left quadrant of the screen. This is convenient as it means we usually require very little mouse movement to interact with the desktop. This, combined with the keyboard-friendly approach throughout Unity means we rarely need to move the mouse much, which is especially nice for people who struggle with carpal tunnel issues.
Hardware and performance
I tested Ubuntu Unity in a VirtualBox virtual machine and on a laptop. Everything worked well in both environments. My hardware was all detected and used properly, the Unity 7 desktop was responsive in both test environments, and the system generally ran smoothly. I did find that, when running directly on my laptop, Unity would display issue reports when I first logged into the desktop. These reports can be set to not display anymore after the first wave of them. This was something that happened eight years ago too, when Canonical was still developing Unity, and I wasn't happy to see the flood of errors again when signing in. Once I was signed in and using the desktop the errors didn't appear again.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- The Unity settings panel
(full image size: 687kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Unity did not register my touchpad's taps as clicks. I looked for a setting to fix this. I checked in the settings panel and in the Unity Tweak Tool. While the former had a section dedicated to mouse and touchpad devices, I didn't find any tap-to-click option. Eventually I turned to the xinput command line tool and used it to enable taps-as-clicks.
Unity 7 used about 825MB of RAM, placing it on the heavier end of the spectrum of Linux desktop distributions. Ubuntu Unity took up about 7.5GB of disk space with the Normal package selection and Thunderbird. Additional space was used for a swap file I had enabled.
Included applications
There are not a lot of Unity-specific applications. Apart from some Unity-specific features and the settings panel, Unity mostly relies on programs provided by other desktops or independent third-parties. Ubuntu Unity ships with Firefox, LibreOffice, the Atril document viewer, Ubuntu's software updater, and the Synaptic package manager. The Normal selection of software also includes Rhythmbox, Shotwell, and VLC.
In the background we find the GNU Compiler Collection, the GNU command line utilities, and manual pages. The distribution ships with systemd and version 6.8 of the Linux kernel.
One of the few Unity-specific applications included was Unity Tweak Tool which offers additional settings and customization options, on top of those found in the settings panel. These extra options involve themes, hot-corners, snap-to-edge behaviour, and number of virtual desktops. I like the Unity Tweak application as it addresses most areas where Unity might otherwise be considered ridged or uncustomizable.
Dash
One of the most prominent features of Unity is the Dash. The Dash is essentially a central location for locating and accessing applications, directories, and media. Across the top of the Dash window we find six tabs: Home, Applications, Documents, Videos, Music, and Photos. The Home tab shows recently launched applications and, from here, we can search for anything - applications, folders, and files.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- The Dash's Applications tab
(full image size: 665kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Applications tab shows recently launched programs and an alphabetical list of installed applications. We can type a search to narrow down the list. The remaining tabs can be used to search for directories and media files in our user's home.
I like that we can use the Super key to bring up the Home tab of the Dash. It's also convenient that each tab has its own Super key shortcut. For example, Super-A jumps immediately to the Applications tab.
Something I dislike about the Dash is that results are broken up and sometimes require that we expand search results to see everything. This involves more clicks to see, for example, a full list of applications.
Unity HUD
One of my favourite features of Unity is the HUD. When we are using an application we can tap the Alt key to activate the HUD window. We can then type the name or description of a function the application can perform, something that matches a menu entry in the application. Once we find the proper entry we can select it with the keyboard's arrow keys or the mouse.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- Launching menu entries with the HUD
(full image size: 71kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
This might be a strange thing to visualise. Let's say, for instance, we are running the LibreOffice application and we want to create a PDF of our document. We might not know if the "Export to PDF" function is under the Tools menu, the File menu, or somewhere else. We might not even know for sure the exact name is "Export to PDF". Rather than browse the menus we can tap Alt, then type "PDF". The "Export to PDF" entry will be listed in the HUD window and we can select it and press Enter to open the Export window within the application. This both makes navigating menus faster with the keyboard when we don't know the available shortcut and saves us from browsing menus while looking for an item for which we might know the exact name.
Settings and Unity Tweak Tool
Earlier I mentioned Unity ships with a settings panel and an additional Unity Tweak Tool. The settings panel uses a classic grid layout with modules we can click to open. Unity's modules are fairly streamlined and, I found, easy to navigate. There is also a search box in the settings panel to help us find specific modules. The Tweak panel has a similar layout and style and it also makes customizing Unity pleasantly streamlined.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- The Unity Tweak Tool
(full image size: 675kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Combined, these two tools don't offer the same level of customize as we can find in Plasma or Budgie, but they do a good job of making Unity a bit more flexible than it used to be when originally developed by Canonical.
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Lomiri
When Canonical was developing its mobile version of Ubuntu it also needed to create a new user interface as there were not many open source, mobile desktops available at the time. They decided, in a move that created a good deal of confusion, to call this new interface Unity. Or, more specifically, Unity 8. This was not an evolution of Unity 7, as one might expect, but a whole new desktop developed with a completely different toolkit and approach.
The original idea seemed to be that Unity 8 would start as a mobile graphical interface and gradually gain features and flexibility to become both a workstation desktop and a mobile interface, capable of working on screens of any size. While Unity 8 performed well on mobile devices and continues to power the UBports experience, development for workstations was dropped before it gained any traction.
Unity 8 eventually found new life, not just in UBports, but it has also been dusted off and packaged, by community volunteers, for Debian and Debian's children. These child distributions include Ubuntu Unity and there is a special, experimental edition of Ubuntu Unity which features the Unity 8 desktop.
The modern version of Unity 8 is called Lomiri and, while it is still functioning well as a mobile interface, it hasn't gained a lot of attention on workstations and laptops. I decided to try out Lomiri, once again using Ubuntu Unity as a base.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- The Lomiri desktop and application menu
(full image size: 803kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Booting from the Lomiri edition of Ubuntu Unity brings up the live desktop. Lomiri uses a similar layout to the one used by Unity, placing a vertical panel on the left side of the screen and a thin panel across the top. Two buttons sit on the left-hand panel, one for opening the application menu and another for launching the Morph web browser. Morph is also the default browser of UBports. A settings and user controls widget sits in the top panel in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Lomiri uses a purple/orange background and the panels are black. Applications use a light theme by default, though this can be changed in the Lomiri settings panel. As with Unity, window control buttons are placed to the left side of application windows.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- The Lomiri settings panel
(full image size: 884kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I found an icon for the system installer in the application menu. Unlike Ubuntu Unity's main edition, which uses Calamares, the Lomiri edition uses Ubuntu's classic Ubiquity system installer. The installers are different programs, but supply roughly the same steps and have us provide the same information, in mostly the same ways. Ubiquity successfully set up my new copy of the distribution and offered to reboot the computer.
Hardware and performance
The Lomiri edition of Ubuntu Unity ran on both my laptop and in a virtual machine. My hardware was detected and used, though with a few quirks. For example, when running in both VirtualBox and directly on my laptop, the mouse pointer would stutter and jump around short distances. It looked like the desktop was trying to recalculate where the mouse was supposed to be and it caused the mouse to be jittery from time to time.
I also found that when running on my laptop, I was unable to use touchpad taps to click on items. There is an option in the Lomiri settings panel to enable taps-as-clicks. Enabling this option had no effect.
The Lomiri interface was responsive and proved to be stable during my trial of a few days. When signed into Lomiri the distribution used approximately 780MB of memory, close to the amount used by Unity 7. This edition of the distribution used a relatively large amount of disk space: 16GB, plus a swap file I had enabled.
Applications
Despite its relatively large footprint on my disk, the Lomiri edition doesn't ship with many desktop applications. We're given two web browsers, Firefox and Morph, along with an image manager, clock, calculator, and terminal. LibreOffice is included along with a video player and a music player.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- Running LibreOffice and trying to change touchpad settings
(full image size: 421kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In the background we find the GNU Compiler Collection is installed along with the GNU command line utilities and manual pages. Java, provided by OpenJDK 21, is installed for us along with systemd. Linux 6.8 keeps things running in the background.
Lomiri characteristics
While the workstation version of Unity ships with the Dash in place of an application menu, Lomiri uses a plain application menu with icons arranged into a grid view. There are fewer options to customise the Lomiri interface, though there is a settings panel to help us change the theme, wallpaper, power settings, networking, and mouse settings. Apart from the touchpad settings, everything else worked well and I had no trouble connecting to wireless networks and adjusting the theme. As with Unity 7, I found my media keys on my laptop worked as expected.
In the upper-right corner of the interface we can find a pull-down drawer which gives us quick access to notifications and settings. This pull-down panel works, though I feel it functions better on a touch device than it does with a mouse pointer. Still, I enjoyed the quick access to commonly used settings.
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 -- The pull-down settings panel
(full image size: 834kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
All new application windows start out small and in the upper-left corner of the desktop when programs are launched. We can resize them, though sometimes when resizing the window will snap back to its original dimensions. I suspect this behaviour is a side-effect of Lomiri being designed primarily for mobile devices.
Conclusions
Lomiri works, but it is very minimal in its approach. Perhaps more importantly, at least when run on my laptop, Lomiri didn't work gracefully. It's functional, I can open applications, switch between them, and adjust settings. However, Lomiri doesn't really do anything to help the experience. I need to resize each new window, the mouse jumps around a bit, and there aren't any search or convenience features which stand out. In short, Lomiri still feels like it is primarily targeting mobile devices and is working on laptops and workstations as an add-on ability. It runs, but it's not yet a polished experience on desktop machines the way it is on mobile.
In contrast, Unity 7, while it has remained relatively undeveloped for the past eight years, is still a pretty solid desktop experience. The conveniences and shortcuts that made it appealing ten years ago still hold up today. There are a few areas, like the Dash, where I feel icons could be displayed more efficiently, but on the whole the desktop performs well. It's nice to see Unity 7 gain some fresh life and I'd like to see it updated to the point where it could be ported easily to other distributions. Unfortunately, I think Unity's development team remains small and it's unlikely to get a lot of new work, new features, or Wayland support in the near future.
In short, I really like Unity 7, though I think its small support team will struggle to keep it up to date with new developments (new versions of GTK, Wayland, and improving the Dash). Lomiri seems to be in the opposite situation. It's running on a modern display server, it has been ported and packaged to Debian (and its children), but it's still a ways to go from being an ideal desktop environment for workstations. Lomiri performs well on mobile devices, but it doesn't yet scale up well to a laptop experience.
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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
Ubuntu Unity has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.7/10 from 18 review(s).
Have you used Ubuntu Unity? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary
A small change to Ubuntu's login manager will see GNOME running on Wayland as the default session option for virtually all users of Ubuntu 24.10, even people with NVIDIA video cards. The change to gdm, the login manager, is described as follows: "Remove the Ubuntu-specific rules that made X.Org the default for NVIDIA. Updated Revert-data-Disable-GDM-on-hybrid-graphics-laptops-with-v.patch to ensure NVIDIA 5xx drivers always get Wayland as the default unless there's a stronger reason why it won't work (like modeset has been disabled on the kernel command line)."
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The openSUSE project has announced the end of life of Leap Micro 5.4 while ushering in Leap Micro 6.0: "Leap Micro 6.0 is a rebranded SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 6.0 which is an ultra-reliable container and Virtual Machine host by SUSE. Leap Micro is released twice a year and has support over two releases." Leap Micro is intended to be a light platform from which administrators can run containers and virtual machines. A more detailed description along with download options can be found on the openSUSE Get page.
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The Debian project has published refreshed media which includes security fixes, for Debian 12. The new media are labelled with version 12.6. "The Debian project is pleased to announce the sixth update of its stable distribution Debian 12 (codename bookworm). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 12 but only updates some of the packages included." A similar announcement was made for Debian 11 which now has refreshed media labelled Debian 11.10.
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The UBports team have published a status report which outlines progress being made with Snap packages, the PureMaps app, and the hide.me VPN utility. The project is also making progress browsing and synchronising contacts. "Contact synchronisation has always been a major topic of conversation in the community, so this work will be greatly appreciated. With large numbers of contacts - 500 or even in some cases 2000 - the address book becomes so slow that it is unusable. Lionel has a system with 3000 contacts loaded. He demonstrated scrolling through those and it was very fast. Marius commented on how difficult that area is and what an amazing job Lionel has done. At this point the progress is local and the next phase will be the synchronisation part. The emphasis is on Caldav only, to synch with Nextcloud. Lionel showed another video, this time loading contacts from a directory on a local Caldav server." Additional information is provided in the UBports Q&A blog post.
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The FreeDOS project celebrated its 30th birthday this past week. The project's founder, Jim Hall, talked about the beginnings of his open source implementation of DOS earlier this year: "In early 1994, I noticed articles in computer magazines that said Microsoft was going to stop making DOS. They said the next version of Windows wouldn't need DOS to run. Windows versions 1, 2, and 3 all ran 'on top' of DOS. But the next version of Windows would run on its own. Effectively, this meant that DOS was on the way out. I still used DOS, and I didn't want to stop using DOS. And I looked at what Linux had achieved: people from all over the world shared source code with each other to make this full operating system that worked just like Unix. And I thought 'If they can do that with Linux, surely we can do the same thing with DOS.'" FreeDOS is still used in a number of legacy environments and is sometimes shipped on new personal computers as a default or test operating system. Happy birthday, FreeDOS!
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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) |
Different distributions for different tasks
Seeking-something-unique asks: I've been reading about the multitude of distributions and it got me wondering: what does one distro do that the others don't? Like, what can I do with openSUSE that I can't do on Arch?
DistroWatch answers: It can be tempting to say that, with a little work, a person can do virtually anything on one distribution that they can do on another. By installing a few packages or making a few adjustments, most of the mainstream Linux distributions can be made to run most of the same software and accomplish most of the same tasks. You may notice I used the term "most" a lot in this paragraph.
The reason my previous paragraph uses the terms "most" and "mainstream" is that the majority of mainstream Linux distributions can install and run most of the same software. Almost all of the mainstream distributions can be set up with GNOME, Xfce, or KDE Plasma, run Firefox and LibreOffice with minimal effort, and run bash scripts. We can install a compiler, music player, and e-mail client in virtually any of the popular Linux distributions and get, on the surface at least, a similar experience. This is what makes Linux distributions similar.
There are a lot of ways even mainstream Linux distributions are different. A lot of them use different package managers, offer update support for different spans of time, they have different philosophies in terms of packaging, licensing, and upgrades.
Different Linux distributions also run on different processors. Most Linux distributions run on x86_64 machines, the processors typically used in most workstation and laptop computers. Others run on ARM processors, like those found in phones and Apple M-series computers. There are other, more niche processors which only a few Linux distributions support.
The reason I used the term "mainstream" so much earlier is Linux distributions could be thought of as having features represented by overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. In the middle, the popular distributions have a lot of overlapping features and capabilities. The distributions most people will install will mostly do the same things on the same hardware as the other mainstream, popular distributions. Where things get interesting and unique is out towards the edges of the diagram, where there are specialist distributions - ones people typically don't run unless they have specific hobbies or technical jobs.
For instance, UBports and postmarketOS are two of the very few Linux distributions which will run on smartphones. Tiny Core Linux is one of the few distributions that will run on machines with less than 50MB of RAM. If you want a distribution which runs on a Raspberry Pi and automatically sets up a media centre for you, one of your few options is LibreELEC. The more specific your interests, the fewer Linux distributions will be a good fit for your situation.
I'm not sure if I'd say any distribution is entirely unique. Even the unusual, centrally managed NixOS has friendly competition in the form of Guix System. But the further you venture outside of the popular, commonly performed tasks and interests of the mainstream, the thinner the options available to you in terms of which Linux distributions will fit your needs.
In case you are curious about the various categories and areas of specialization of the various distributions, you may want to visit our Search page. The Distribution category field will help pinpoint distributions which fill special roles, like gaming, mobile computing, free software focused, multimedia, and reviving old computers.
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Additional queries and answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
EndeavourOS 2024.06.25
EndeavourOS is a rolling release Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. The project aims to be a spiritual successor to Antergos. The Endeavour project is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a new release which carries the code name "Endeavour". Along with package updates, including Plasma 6.1, this snapshot updates Endeavour's ARM images, and includes a few fixes: "Installation doesn't crash anymore when the EOS apps are deselected in Calamares. Fixed language selection for Italian users for vconsole. The r8168 legacy driver package is removed from our default installation options due to removal from the Arch repo. Most legacy Realtek hardware will run with the Realtek drivers provided by the Linux kernel. In some cases, a workaround is needed described in this thread post." Additional details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
EndeavourOS 2024.06.25 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 695kB, resolution: 1536x864 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 3,028
- Total data uploaded: 44.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Do you have any uses for FreeDOS?
This week we celebrated the 30th anniversary of FreeDOS, an open source implementation of DOS, Microsoft's widely used operating system from the 1980s and 1990s. While the limitations of DOS have mostly pushed it out of the operating system market, many people still find uses for DOS, from running special work equipment, launching legacy applications, and classic gaming. Do you use DOS these days? Let us know how DOS is still useful for you in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on Redox OS in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Making use of DOS
| I run FreeDOS on physical hardware: | 94 (5%) |
| I run FreeDOS in a virtual machine: | 47 (3%) |
| I run MS-DOS on physical hardware: | 31 (2%) |
| I run MS-DOS in a virtual machine: | 11 (1%) |
| I run another DOS implementation like DOSBox: | 177 (10%) |
| I use a combination of the above options: | 104 (6%) |
| I do not use DOS: | 1341 (74%) |
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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, 8 July 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 • How we use FreeDos (by Ben Merembeck on 2024-07-01 01:00:59 GMT from United States)
We use FreeDos to run my wife's old menu system on an old Dos menu system. I know there are newer ones but it would be a hassle to move all those menues to one. I just bring up FreeDos.
2 • Free DOS (by penguinx86 on 2024-07-01 01:07:05 GMT from United States)
I used Free DOS to flash the firmware on a 2.5 inch SATA III SSD. New firmware was needed for a bug fix. That was the only time I ever needed to use Free DOS.
3 • Never had a use. (by uz64 on 2024-07-01 02:14:10 GMT from United States)
Other than to play around a bit here and there, I never really had a use for FreeDOS. It's fun to play around with for nostalgia reasons, but even with gaming DOSBox just seems to make more sense, and most of the games I have these days are from GOG pre-packaged with DOSBox anyway. Although my laptop is old and does support legacy BIOS, I left booting directly to DOS with Win9x decades ago and haven't looked back. I do occasionally run it in a VM, but it usually doesn't last long.
The problem is although free and open source software, it is almost 100% meant to use decades-old proprietary software, which I don't really have any of other than repackaged DOS games. No one in the right mind would write any new software for it, so it will never be useful unless you do have some old DOS programs to use. But here in mid 2024... who the hell still does?
4 • FreeDOS (by LiuYan on 2024-07-01 02:57:21 GMT from China)
In the following cases, I will use FreeDOS.
* Flash firmwares on old computers without EFI.
* Catpure screenshots for some DOS softwares.
* Or, to get old feelings/memories back.
When getting older and older, the times I use FreeDOS or DOS will decreased. But still, it does not fade away completely, I may pick it up once a year, maybe.
5 • Proprietary DOS program & DOSBox (by pengxuin on 2024-07-01 04:17:54 GMT from New Zealand)
a proprietary program, originally designed to run on DOS6.22 or Win95.
Natively, DOSBox does not not support all of its features.
However, running the program on a minimal install of Win95 within DOSBox does allow all the features to be used.
A useful enhancement is it can be made to run at near full processor speed, +3GHz, somewhat faster than the P75/P100 it was originally designed to be run on.
6 • FreeDOS (by Andreba57 on 2024-07-01 04:38:00 GMT from Italy)
I gave FreeDOS a try on my eeePC 701, mostly for kicks. Worked great except for the Atheros network drivers (all the downloads I found were either incomplete or infected), so after a while I wrote it off and installed Void Linux.
7 • FreeDOS (by Memories on 2024-07-01 06:08:13 GMT from Canada)
Discussion of FreeDOS brought back memories some of us old "geezers" here may recall. The hassle of memory management, and using various memory managers. The different competing DOS variants (PCDOS,NovellDos etc.). Anyone remember playing around with replacement command.coms? 4DOS on top of MSDOS was great, but found that NovellDOS/DRDOS did everything I needed without addons, including proper memory management.
Think I have a box of prehistoric DOS programs buried somewhere in a local "black hole". Things like WordPerfect 6.0 or 6.1(?), Alpha4 and Paradox 3 databases, Quickmenu III, etc. Wonder if they would work with DOSBOX running in Linux? And would doing so, allow printing to modern printers via CUPS to LP via a USB cable; or maybe to a network printer? If anyone has tried this, curious about the success, before I tear the place up trying to retrieve that software from the Black Hole. No point risking one's neck if someone has already returned from the event horizon and lived to tell about it!
Anyway, off to the FreeDOS website to investigate how well it it handles running such programs and printing.....(Would prefer to try the linux/DOSBOX combo if it would do the job).
8 • DOS WIndows Word 5.5 (by rb on 2024-07-01 06:12:54 GMT from United States)
I remember using Microsoft Works ( which later became Word for WIndows version 5.5) in high school to type essays. It ran on top of DOS. It was a blue screen with white font, a typical menu bar (File Edit Print View, etc). You had to save often because system crashes were common. It was very simple, yet precise and sophisticated for the times. It did exactly what you needed with no excess. Highly effective, productive software. Anyone that is too young to remember and curious can see screenshots online.
9 • DOS program (by Devlin7 on 2024-07-01 06:21:41 GMT from India)
Anyone remember the dos game gorilla.bas? You would calculate the angle to throw the banana over an obstacle and watch it fly towards the opponent gorilla. As CPUs got faster so did the banana. I should imagine playing it now would be just one of the gorillas just falling over dead and there would be no visual indication why. Don't underestimate just how far we come, and remember competition has sped up the progress.
10 • DOS (by dr.J on 2024-07-01 07:10:55 GMT from The Netherlands)
I still use the DOSBox for WordPerfect, a word processing program from the late 80s, which I still prefer to the few current pure word processing programs, such as Abiword, even after more than 30 years.
11 • FreeDos et al (by Brian Kelly on 2024-07-01 07:20:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
Take a look at http://dosprograms.info.tt/ if you think DOS is dead!
I still use one of several versions of DOS to probe 'hard to reach' hardware where virtualization makes it difficult to read underlying device registers and to run some programs for generating unusual sized bit mapped graphics. The nice thing about older OS is they gave more freedom to interact with hardware and didn't force you to communicate through restrictive libraries. Looking back, I have published DOS graphics programs for VGA systems dated 1993, more than 31 years ago (yes, I'm growing silver hair) but they still work perfectly.
12 • Free DOS (by DachshundMan on 2024-07-01 09:25:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
I used FreeDos a couple of years ago to try and recover an old Samsung laptop with a corrupted BIOS (known bug). The only BIOS images I could find were intended to run under MSDOS. Unfortunately, although FreeDos was able to read some parts of the BIOS it proved unable to write to it. As the Samsung solution to the bug was to replace the mother board I was not all that surprised that writing proved impossible.
I did feel a small amount of nostalgia for MS Dos which I used when first using desktop computers, probably this was around 1986.
13 • DOSBox Emulator (by Lawrence on 2024-07-01 13:35:05 GMT from United States)
I use DOSBox Emulator to play the Commander Keen game. It is the only game I still play from time-to-time. Even though I have been playing this game since the 1990s, I have never "beaten" it. I never was any good at games (any kind).
14 • FreeDOS (by Based64x on 2024-07-01 13:37:40 GMT from United States)
I still use FreeDOS quite a bit, mostly for gaming, but also to run some old DOS apps. Overall, I find it great and rarely run into compatibility issues. If being used on older hardware with DOS drivers available. The biggest challenge when running on modern hardware is sound drivers (which can sometimes be resolved using SBEmu). Occasionally, when running 3D games there will be some issues, but those seem to be getting better with every iteration. For me, the best solution on modern hardware has been to run dosbox-staging or dosbox-x over Linux, which gives all the driver advantages of Linux while still using a seamless DOS environment. On a raspberry pi, dosbian is the quickest way and easiest way to get setup.
15 • Using DOS (by Robert on 2024-07-01 14:05:05 GMT from United States)
I don't really use DOS.
I have no use for FreeDOS at all.
Some of my GOG games might come prepackaged with a DOSBOX config, but it often doesn't quite work correctly OOB on Linux DOSBOX versions. That pretty much relegates those to the "maybe I'll jack with this later, but probably not" pile.
16 • DOS (by Otis on 2024-07-01 14:13:59 GMT from United States)
- I don't use DOS (any version)
- I don't use my arm to signal left or right turns when I'm driving
- I don't bang my laundry on a rock by the river
Etc.
17 • Unity (by RetiredIT on 2024-07-01 14:28:59 GMT from United States)
You failed to mention the MATE and Cinnamon desktops, released in August and December 2011 respectively by the Linux Mint team, Perberos (an Argentine developer), and Stefano Karapetsas, et al. They were created in direct response to the notorious GNOME3/Unity desktops. To this day I can't imagine why anyone would want to use either of these desktops because they are so radical and memory hogs compared to what came before (GNOME2, KDE and Xfce). I have used GNOME2/MATE exclusively since 2006.
18 • in re DOS (by grindstone on 2024-07-01 16:09:57 GMT from United States)
Yeah--personally, a couple old DOS programs will be with me until I kick simply because there's dedicated measurement hardware that needs them. I hope to use FreeDOS on a partition on one soon so it no longer needs to boot with a floppy. Haven't been in a hurry :)
Not long ago, I loaded MSWD 5 (I think?) just to visit it again. While it indeed screamed, it seemed considerably more confining than memory held.
It's also true where I've worked that a lot of old industrial machinery and equipment still has "industrial pc's". Replacement cost of the equipment is prohibitive (think 0.3-0.5 million USD ea). The "frames" on the old equipment are preferred over the newer replacements, as well--things that wont be made again, etc. So they live. And live. Funky timing things happen when trying to replace old with USB, etc--in operations where communications issues are costly. Seems simple. Everyone thinks it is. Stuff that a raspberry pi is overkill for. Yet there are old ftp servers and dos pcs and buffer boxes to drip feed bits to old machinery...at exactly the right rate and w/o errors. Guess which choices bosses prefer.
The world is a bigger place that moves more strangely than is always comprehensible. My hunch is that DOS'll be around another 30.
19 • @ 18--Your hunch is, in all probability, correct, (by R. Cain on 2024-07-01 17:54:08 GMT from United States)
For those of you who are open-minded enough who would like more--and highly readable--information on FreeDOS, the following are suggested--
"How FreeDOS Grew Up and Became a Modern DOS"
https://www.howtogeek.com/devops/how-freedos-grew-up-and-became-a-modern-dos/
“Get started with FreeDOS”
https://opensource.com/article/21/6/get-started-freedos
“30 years later, FreeDOS is still keeping the dream of the command prompt alive”
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/30-years-later-freedos-is-still-keeping-the-dream-of-the-command-prompt-alive/
And, of course, there is Jim Hall's FreeDOS website itself--
"The FreeDOS Project"
https://freedos.org/
20 • Unity history (by Chris on 2024-07-01 18:32:23 GMT from New Zealand)
I recall there was a version of what then became Unity, called Ubuntu Mini - it was very good on minimal systems. Lovely layout too, It would good to see it come back. .
21 • The best init system... (by Tech in San Diego on 2024-07-01 19:04:11 GMT from United States)
autoexec.bat
config,sys
22 • @21 (by grindstone on 2024-07-01 19:38:11 GMT from United States)
:)
23 • DOS emulator (by O M on 2024-07-01 22:51:33 GMT from United States)
In 1991 I hired a professional programmer to write a program to replace the way I calculated a hobby of handicapping and rating football teams, which for the previous 20 years I had to calculate with pencil and paper then later calculator and notebook. Not knowing any programming myself is why I turned to a professional. I wanted a program that not only would execute my algorithm but wanted a program I could easily learn and modify and where I could expand upon my algorithm. The professional chose qbasic as the language that would meet my needs. Since qbasic has its limits it required 5 different qbasic programs to accomplish and complete all I wanted it to do. Since then I have expanded my hobby to 12 different sports, and the algorithm has become much more advanced. Of course a qbasic written program needs DOS to make it work. When I gave up on windows in 2012 and went to Linux I needed a DOS emulator to continue with my hobby. Dosbox was my choice. Freedos will also work but Dosbox does a bit better. I'm sure if my programs were rewritten in a more modern language today I could probably reduce several thousand lines of code, but I haven't the time to learn a new language and certainly not the time to rewrite these many thousand lines of code. Since my programs do exactly what I want and need I will stay with these primitive programs that need a DOS emulator. If it ain't broke...well just leave it be.
24 • @21 DOS init (by a DOS init on 2024-07-02 00:36:40 GMT from Australia)
try
io.sys & msdos.sys / kernel.sys
config.sys / fdconfig.sys
command.com
autoexec.bat
:)
25 • Ubuntu Unity (by David on 2024-07-02 03:18:57 GMT from United States)
I have Ubuntu Unity 24.04 installed on a small capacity SSD that I switch in and out of my refurbished Dell mini PC. Unity was the default desktop for the Ubuntu that came on a Dell laptop around 7/8 years ago (16.04?), but it soon was replaced as Jesse described.
I was curious when I read that Unity was making a come-back, built by a 14-year-old, so I read. It's better than I remember from years ago in the Ubuntu ancestor version.
That one might avoid it because of a small development team seems somewhat dismissive after a rather complimentary review. Couldn't the same thing be said about DistroWatch?? ;-) Yes, that's apples vs. oranges, but still ....
26 • so much advertising and BS (by johny on 2024-07-03 02:58:59 GMT from Portugal)
so much advertising and stuff that doesnt matter.
this turns the site much less appealing and to recommend
don't waste it.
why this all of a sudden!?!! stop!
27 • Advertising and BS (by Otis on 2024-07-03 11:07:31 GMT from United States)
@26 Many users here are willing to put up with the occasional misfire in content here. Hell, many of us misfire our own content in this comments area.
But yeah, this week's subject matter etc seems as you say. But I do disagree with you as to how appealing Distrowatch is; the appeal of this site is solid, and the maintainer(s) here are appreciated every week, every day.
28 • So much advertising and BS -2 (by Kevin on 2024-07-03 12:18:23 GMT from United States)
@26 - People need to get food and other essential things in order to live. What would you do if you were in their place trying to your job well by legal means and get an income at the same time?
Have you ever bothered to take a look at the donations lists when they are published? 99% percent of the times they look ridiculous and shameful at best. The vast majority of us just open our web browsers and enjoy reading DW weekly FOR FREE. Donate, what's that?
29 • Advertising and BS? Really? (by Mr. Moto on 2024-07-03 12:58:42 GMT from Philippines)
@26, "so much advertising and stuff that doesnt matter." What advertising? If you're bothered by ads, get an ad blocker. I have one. Other than that, websites cost money to maintain. Ads are income. Are you a big donor?
@27, What "subject matter"? Unity? Lomiri? Freedos? Specialty distros? What's objectionable about those? I don't use Unity, Lomiri or Freedos, but it was interesting to read about them. I even tried Lomiri to see for myself. Not ready for prime time, as I believe Jesse expressed.
As for distros that do what others don't, I have Armbian x86 (Ubuntu 24.04) on a flash drive, and with some configuration it can do what I used 3 different flash drives to do previously: bootable, installable, writable, upgradable, security apps, anonymity, repair utilities, et al. I wasn't going to comment on it, but since I'm here, I'll do a little of my own advertising for them.
All in all, a good weekly.
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31 • "Subject Matter" (by Otis on 2024-07-03 20:56:05 GMT from United States)
@29 lmao.. a-HEM: DOS zzzzzzzzzzz....
Enjoy. Enjoy your DOS.
But I agree that "subject matter" is lesser than most here. No matter, I love DW and will as long as it's not passed into the hands of (fill in the blank with nefarious entity vying for another yacht or trophy wife),
32 • @31 Otis, "Subject Matter" (by Mr. Moto on 2024-07-04 01:26:26 GMT from Philippines)
"Enjoy. Enjoy your DOS." You seem to have trouble reading posts. This is not the first time. I don't use DOS, enjoyably or otherwise. Can't remember the last time I used it. But, judging by the comments, other people do use it and some "enjoy".
33 • DOSZZZing off. (by Kilroy the Great! on 2024-07-04 02:09:26 GMT from United States)
@31 "nefarious entity" Funny thing, but without the monetary funding and contributions in-kind and manpower to Linux by some of these "nefarious" entities, you might be tussling with BSD, or still waiting for GNU Hurd to be ready, or ReactOS or some other dream project, while reading "Tiddlywinks Today" for entertainment.
34 • Unity Lacks Tap-To-Click Touchpad (by joncr on 2024-07-04 11:20:48 GMT from United States)
Unity is too keyboard dependent to be my style of desktop but I did boot the 24.04 live image to discover Unity still doesn't offer a way to enable tap-to-click, natural scrolling, etc., on a touchpad. I don't believe it ever has. That might have been acceptable ten years ago but it is not today. I'd think since so many chunks of Gnome are in the thing, that would not be a problem.
35 • Inzako467279 (by Alberthew on 2024-07-04 23:31:10 GMT from Slovakia)
http://ceicag.org/
36 • Unity (by De Schatberg on 2024-07-05 08:44:42 GMT from The Netherlands)
Unity in Ubuntu 14.04 had a Maclike Global Menu and a very nice Start Menu,
but usability-wise, it was inferior to Gnome 46.
https://ibb.co/5sk7wkQ
https://ibb.co/MGBZc8D
Including the Amazon App-Store was a great idea and an attempt to "make Linux great",
but it didn't get much love and acceptance, and it failed on its users.
Linux users hate good products.
37 • Linux users hate good products??? (by probably-a-user on 2024-07-05 10:17:08 GMT from Germany)
If the users for whom a product is made hate the product, then the product is obviously BAD.
No amount of theoretical acrobatics will change this. A product that is hated by its users can only be "good" for people who don't need to use it - maybe because it is designed not in the way the users want, but in the way some theoreticists want to impose. There is nothing "good" about that.
38 • @37, Unity (by Mr. Moto on 2024-07-05 11:00:57 GMT from Philippines)
"Unity in Ubuntu 14.04 had a Maclike Global Menu and a very nice Start Menu,
but usability-wise, it was inferior to Gnome 46." Since Gnome 46 has the advantage of 6 or 7 more years of development and the backing of big money and manpower, that may be so. However, there are some young developers who have just barely started on Unity anew. Let's see in a few years.
39 • @38, Unity (by De Schatberg on 2024-07-05 11:54:22 GMT from The Netherlands)
@38 (by Mr. Moto from Philippines) Since I can't see the future, I don't know if things will get better or not, but I can analyze the past. Unity is worse now than it was 10 years ago, and most open projects get abandoned at some point. Those who didn't like it before, and those who don't like Gnome 46, probably won't like it in the future--unless it gets the taskbar and even more configuration options than KDE. But then it wouldn't be a Unity anymore, so why have Unity at all? ;)
40 • @41, Linux (by De Schatberg on 2024-07-05 12:16:46 GMT from The Netherlands)
@41 (by Kilroy the Great! from Germany) That was discussed last week. (20240624)
41 • @39, Unity (by Mr. Moto on 2024-07-05 12:32:28 GMT from Philippines)
"Since I can't see the future, I don't know if things will get better or not, but I can analyze the past. Unity is worse now than it was 10 years ago, and most open projects get abandoned at some point." You do go on! You're saying nothing that was not said in Jesse's review, like an echo. So Unity was abandoned. Now it's been picked up by some young developers. Maybe they'll improve it. Maybe not. Maybe they'll drop it at some point. So what? If they enjoy doing it, and it doesn't affect my life or yours in any way, what's the problem? If some people enjoy using it as it is and waiting for more, why does that bother you? Does it diminish you in any way?
You've said that Linux will never be anything but a "hobby" OS. Maybe that's correct, due to the nature of its license. Fine. A hobby is about enjoyment, not mass market. Yes, it only has 2%, but that's millions of people using, developing and generally enjoying it. As a side effect, some people make some money, large corporations like MS, Amazon, IBM, Huawei see enough uses and benefit to themselves to keep contributing to it. I don't need Linux. I don't need it to be perfect. I don't need it to have over 50% of the market. I just enjoy using it and tinkering with it sometimes. Call it a hobby then.
42 • @41, Unity (by De Schatberg on 2024-07-05 12:39:22 GMT from The Netherlands)
@41 (by Mr. Moto from Philippines) I actually did say something that Jesse didn't, and it was one of the biggest, if not the biggest objection un Unity at the time. Maybe reread.
Number of Comments: 42
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| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
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| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
RaspBSD
RaspBSD was a special build of FreeBSD for small, single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, Pine64 and BeagleBoard Black. The project provides a live image of FreeBSD with Openbox and the LXDE graphical desktop, along with pre-configured FreeBSD package repositories. RaspBSD was based on the -CURRENT branch of FreeBSD.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| 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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