 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1090, 30 September 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While Ubuntu is well known for its scheduled releases and long-term support, some people prefer a more cutting-edge experience. For people who think Ubuntu would benefit from moving faster, there is Rhino Linux. The Rhino distribution is a rolling release operating system which is based on Ubuntu's development branch. Rhino also presents a number of interesting features, such as a unified package manager. Our Feature Story this week focuses on Rhino Linux and its approach to unified application management across multiple formats. What do you think of having a unified, all-in-one package manager? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section this week we discuss Valve working to improve Wayland desktop performance while HardenedBSD partners with Protectli to create better, censorship-resistant mesh networks. On the topic of network privacy and censorship we also discuss the Tails distribution joining the Tor Project. Then we talk about a new book from one of our fellow distro reviewers, Igor Ljubuncic, which offers tips on having a successful career in the IT field. Plus we talk about commercial distributions, the tendency for commercial projects to adopt the GNOME desktop, and discuss alternatives. This week we are pleased to welcome the FunOS project - a lightweight, Ubuntu-based project featuring the JWM interface - to our database. Then, below, we share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are grateful to everyone who donates to us and share our thanks below. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Rhino Linux 2024.2
Rhino Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution which offers a rolling-release approach to updates. Rhino features a custom meta package manager which unifies Deb, Pacstall, and Flatpak software management.
The Rhino's release announcement for version 2024.2 includes some highlights, particularly in terms of managing packages and the distribution's welcome wizard:
Our Setup Wizard has just gotten a whole lot better, and we offer something for both regular and power users. We have added a significant number of containerization options, a new package manager, and even the option to add Night Shift. You can now select these additional options in the rhino-setup wizard: Nix, the package manager (note: rhino-pkg/rpk does not currently support Nix). Docker, for rapid containerization and development. Podman, a daemon-less, drop-in replacement for Docker. Flatseal, a GUI application for managing permissions on installed Flatpaks. Distrobox, a program that uses Docker or Podman to deploy containers for other distributions on top of Rhino. Apptainer, for developing smaller application containers. VirtualBox, a GUI virtual machine application. QEMU, a free and open source emulation backbone. Redshift, adjust the colour temperature of your screen according to your surroundings.
Rhino Linux offers builds for a few architectures. There are builds for ARM processors, including Raspberry Pi computers. There is also generic x86_64 build. I downloaded the latter's ISO which is 2.2GB in size.
Booting from the Rhino media automatically loads a graphical environment. The boot splash screen identifies the distribution as Xubuntu, probably because Rhino is built using Ubuntu packages and pulls in Xfce from its parent's repositories.
The live Xfce desktop loads and places a panel across the top of the screen. This panel has an unusual layout. The logout/poweroff button is on the left side (where most desktops place an application menu). Then there are location menus for accessing files in common directories, such as Documents, Music, and Pictures. A system tray is displayed to the right side of the panel.
A dock is placed vertically down the left side of the desktop. The top button opens a search bar where we can type the name of an application we want to launch. The second button from the top opens a full page application grid. One of the launchers in the grid is called Install Rhino Linux.
Installing
Rhino makes use of the Calamares graphical system installer. We are asked to pick our preferred language from a list and shown a button which should display the project's release notes. Clicking the Release Notes button pops up an error saying the default web browser cannot be launched. I found Firefox was installed on the live media and it can be launched from the dock. In short: Firefox is installed, it just hasn't been set as the default/preferred web browser, meaning applications trying to open URLs using the desktop's default browser will fail when attempting to open links.
Rhino Linux 2024.2 -- Trying to access the release notes
(full image size: 300kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The following Calamares screens walk us through picking our timezone from a map, picking our keyboard layout, and creating a username and password. The disk partitioning section offers a friendly manual option and a guided option. The guided approach offers to set up Rhino on one of three filesystems: ext4, XFS, or Btrfs. The ext4 filesystem is the default, though I selected Btrfs for its snapshot capability. We have two options for swap space: no swap or a swap file. Creating a swap partition was not an option in the guided approach, which I thought was odd as swap files don't always work well with the offered Btrfs filesystem.
While Calamares copies its packages to our hard drive we're shown a slideshow of key features. A few of these mention the all-in-one rhino-pkg utility and the new setup wizard which was also mentioned in the release announcement.
Early impressions
My brand new copy of Rhino booted to a graphical login screen where I could select one of two desktop session options: Rhino (the default) and Xfce. I tried the Xfce session, but it immediately failed and returned me to the login page. The Rhino session option loads successfully and presents us with the distribution's customized Xfce environment.
The first time we sign in a setup wizard launches. This application asks us a few questions, beginning with which package formats we want to enable. Flatpak, Nix, Snap, and AppImage are listed. Pacstall seems to be set up automatically and does not need to be selected. When we choose to enable Flatpak support we also have the option of installing Flatseal, a tool for managing Flatpak sandbox options.
The following screen asks us which container formats we want to enable. The options presented are Docker, Podman, Apptainer, QEMU, and VirtualBox. The final screen asks us which extra tools we wish to download. These include Nala (an APT package front-end), GitHub CLI, Apport error reporting, and the Redshift desktop colour tone tool.
Once we have made our selections we are asked to enter our password and the setup wizard fetches the selected packages. We are then asked for our password once more so Rhino can remove a package, which I think is the package for the setup wizard. The system then offers to reboot the computer.
Rhino Linux 2024.2 -- The application grid
(full image size: 173kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
I started my trial with Rhino in a VirtualBox virtual machine. Rhino worked really well in the virtual environment. The system was quick to respond, dynamically resized the desktop, and was stable.
When I played with Rhino on my laptop I ran into a few issues. Rhino's live media was unable to boot in normal mode and required that I boot in safe graphics mode (called "failsafe" mode in the boot menu). My laptop's wi-fi worked and my touchpad worked as expected. When running on my laptop audio did not work out of the box. The volume control was turned up and not muted, and I could see sound output coming from applications through the mixer tool, but no sound came from my speakers. I was eventually able to fix this by adjusting the ALSA volume settings from the alsamixer command line tool.
Rhino is about average in its resource consumption. The distribution took up 640MB of RAM when logged into the customized Xfce desktop and used 7GB of disk space for a fresh install with Flatpak support enabled. This puts it about on par with other distributions running Xfce or LXQt.
Included software
Rhino ships with version 4.18 of the Xfce desktop. Not a lot of applications are installed by default. Firefox is included for us along with the Codium development suite. The Thunar file manager is installed alongside the Celeste graphical file synchronisation client. Celeste basically helps us connect to multiple cloud providers, though its window was often not drawn properly and so using Celeste didn't always work smoothly as input fields would be missing from the window.
Rhino includes the Xfburn disc burning utility, the mpv media player, a text editor, archive manager, and system monitor. It's a fairly small collection of utilities. However, the Xfce configuration modules are present too and there are several of these which are accessible from both the settings panel and the application grid. This results in a curious situation where there are very few desktop applications installed, but the application menu is full to the point of overflowing into a second page.
Rhino Linux 2024.2 -- The settings panel
(full image size: 181kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Exploring the command line we find the GNU core utilities, the GNU Compiler Collection, and manual pages. The systemd init software is present and version 6.10 of the Linux kernel is installed for us. Since Rhino is a rolling release the available software will gradually update.
When an application is open the desktop panel acts as a unified menu bar. The panel changes to display the menu of whichever application currently has focus. This works fairly well on small screens, but results in a lot more mouse travel on larger or multi-screen displays.
Rhino Linux 2024.2 -- Navigating the menu bar
(full image size: 149kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The unified menu bar mostly worked for me, at least when I was working with applications which use a traditional menu bar. However, when I was using applications that do not use a classic menu bar (such as Firefox and mpv) then the panel would show a single drop-down menu with the name of the application. Then the menu always has two entries: New and Quit. These don't work, selecting Quit, for example, does not close the application.
Software management
Rhino does not appear to have any graphical software centre. Instead we're presented with a unified command line utility for managing packages across multiple formats. This tool is called rhino-pkg and it acts as a wrapper for other command line package managers such as Flatpak, APT, and Pacstall. (Pacstall is essentially the Debian/Ubuntu equivalent of the community maintained Arch User Repository.)
Rhino Linux 2024.2 -- Fetching package updates with rhino-pkg
(full image size: 261kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The rhino-pkg program supports five actions: install, remove, search, update, and cleanup. These are pleasantly easy to understand, I think. The "cleanup" function might be the odd one out as it doesn't clean up the package cache as I'd expected, it is described as trying to repair broken or unfinished installs.
Something I like about rhino-pkg is it does not require that we run it with admin access. In other words, we don't need to type "sudo rhino-pkg update", we can just type "rhino-pkg update" and, if the package manager needs elevated access, it will prompt for our password. I also like that rhino-pkg displays detailed progress information while it is working.
When performing searches with rhino-pkg we are shown a list of matching packages and their sources (a source could be labelled APT, Flatpak, or Pacstall). The search function works fairly quickly, displaying a list of packages it finds across all repositories. As an example, running "rhino-pkg search supertux" shows SuperTux, SuperTuxKart, and SuperTuxParty from Flathub along with SuperTux and SuperTuxKart from Ubuntu's APT sources.
If we run "rhino-pkg install supertux" we're shown the same list, with a number prefixing each package name and source. We are then asked which item/number we want to fetch.
There does not appear to be a rhino-pkg function for listing already installed items. We can use the underlying commands like "flatpak list" and "dpkg -l" to see what is installed in each separate package format.
Something I like about rhino-pkg is it acts as a nice wrapper for Flatpak, allowing short-form package names. I can type, for instance, "rhino-pkg install supertuxkart" rather than "flatpak install net.supertuxkart.SuperTuxKart".
Conclusions
My trial with Rhino Linux got off to a rocky start. Not that the first few hours were bad, but there were some obvious problems which really should have been caught in testing. The installer not being able to display release notes and the Xfce desktop session failing are key examples. Rhino mostly worked well on my laptop, and flawlessly in VirtualBox, but had some issues with my Intel video card and my laptop's sound system. These two issues virtually never happen with any other distribution.
While not exactly a bug, I wasn't a fan of the unified menu bar on the panel. These rarely work properly on Linux and, while Rhino's mostly worked well, I don't like the added mouse movement when switching between applications.
On the other hand, once the system was installed and running, I liked the setup wizard and I really liked rhino-pkg. It's one of the few (perhaps the only) all-in-one package manager I've used which really works smoothly. It's fast, it pulls from multiple sources pretty seamlessly, and it allows the user to prioritize package formats. I think, in order to gain wider appeal, the Rhino developers should probably add a GUI version of rhino-pkg. For now, the command line version offers a good experience.
Rhino Linux is one of those distributions where I feel the application selection says more about what the developer finds interesting than what they think their audience will find useful. The distribution ships with very few applications and what we do have (a cloud storage tool, a video player, and a coding suite) are not exactly going to hold widespread appeal. There was no music player, office suite, password manager, note taking application or other things I'd expect most people to want.
I do like that few applications are installed by default - I like a lean system - though this effect is somewhat countered by the large collection of configuration modules which crowd the application menu. I think Rhino would benefit from hiding these modules or placing them all in a sub-folder the way GNOME groups associated tools.
The idea of a rolling release flavour of Ubuntu appeals to me, and I expect it does to other people too. With this in mind, I was happy to see Timeshift is included in Rhino Linux. It would have been even better had Btrfs snapshots been offered as boot environments from the boot menu, the way openSUSE's Tumbleweed does. Perhaps that will come in a later version.
Rhino Linux 2024.2 -- Creating snapshots with Timeshift
(full image size: 164kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In general, I like Rhino's concept. A rolling release Ubuntu with packages from multiple sources, and Timeshift/Btrfs snapshots is a great combination. The rhino-pkg tool works really well and I hope it is packaged by other distributions, especially those in the Debian/Ubuntu family. There are some rough bits in Rhino, but anyone willing to ride the wave of a cutting edge, rolling Ubuntu flavour will probably be up to the challenge.
* * * * *
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
Rhino Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 4.9/10 from 22 review(s).
Have you used Rhino Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD partners with Protectli, Tails is merging with the Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation, Igor Ljubuncic offers tips for people who want to turn their Linux skills into an IT job
The Wayland project has been working toward upgrading the Linux desktop experience for over a decade and, despite a lot of progress, development and support of Wayland have been slow. Joshua Ashton, who works for Valve on graphics related software, is trying to improve the situation and is focusing on practical fixes outside the mainstream Wayland development. "This MR [merge request] adds support for the 'frog-fifo-v1' protocol from frog-protocols, a new repo of Wayland protocols that we intend to be more iterative and experimental than upstream. FIFO is fundamentally broken under Mesa's Wayland WSI right now in two main ways...."
What is frog-protocols and how will it help? It's a project that is working on implementing practical fixes for problems in Wayland which have not been officially addressed for one reason or another, sometimes blocking progress in Wayland for years at a time. The project's GitHub page states: "Wayland Protocols has long had a problem with new protocols sitting for months, to years at a time for even basic functionality. This is hugely problematic when some protocols implement very primitive and basic functionality such as frog-fifo-v1, which is needed for VSync to not cause GPU starvation under Wayland and also fix the dreaded application freezing when windows are occluded with FIFO/VSync enabled. We need to get protocols into end-users hands quicker! The main reason many users are still using X11 is because of missing functionality that we can be shipping today, but is blocked for one reason or another."
The Arch Linux team have announced Valve is also helping their project in various ways: "We are excited to announce that Arch Linux is entering into a direct collaboration with Valve. Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers."
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The HardenedBSD project will be working with Protectli, an open source firewall company. Protectli is donating equipment to help HardenedBSD develop a better censorship-resistant mesh network. "The HardenedBSD Foundation is happy to announce a donation from the folks over at Protectli. Protectli is an open source firewall appliance company. This is their second donation to the HardenedBSD Foundation to date. This donation is for a specific project: the development of a censorship- and surveillance-resistant mesh network. Protectli donated four FW4B devices. These devices will help us research and develop a prototype network, with the end goal being wider deployment once the initial proof-of-concept is developed and documented." According to the news post this work may also involve cooperation with the FreeBSD project, benefiting all three organizations.
* * * * *
The Tails project is a Debian-based distribution designed to improve on-line privacy and security. A great deal of the key technology in the Tails distribution comes from the Tor Project, so it is probably no surprise the two projects have decided to unite and work together. "Today the Tor Project, a global non-profit developing tools for on-line privacy and anonymity, and Tails, a portable operating system that uses Tor to protect users from digital surveillance, have joined forces and merged operations. Incorporating Tails into the Tor Project's structure allows for easier collaboration, better sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to counter a larger number of digital threats. In short, coming together will strengthen both organizations' ability to protect people worldwide from surveillance and censorship." Details of the merger can be found on the Tor Project's website.
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FreeBSD is a popular choice for server environments, but the operating system has had less adoption on desktop and laptop computers. The FreeBSD Foundation is partnering with Quantum Leap in an effort to advance FreeBSD's capabilities on laptops. "as technology evolves, FreeBSD faces a significant challenge: supporting modern laptops. To address this, the FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research has committed $750,000 to improve laptop support, a strategic investment that will be pivotal in FreeBSD's future. In this blog, we'll explore why enhancing laptop support is critical for FreeBSD's continued growth, how the Foundation is tackling this challenge, and why the timing of this initiative is essential. To remain relevant and competitive in this landscape, FreeBSD must extend its strong foundation of stability, functionality, and security to laptops, integral to how people work and interact with technology today." Details about this effort are covered in the Foundation's blog post.
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You might know Igor Ljubuncic from his work in the Linux community, or from his reviews of technology and Linux distributions over at Dedoimedo, or for his various books. Igor recently sent DistroWatch a copy of his latest book for IT professionals, How to Make Your Career Suck Less: A Guide to a Less Painful IT Experience. Since many of our readers are either working in the IT field or planning to join our ranks of digital do-gooders, we want to mention it. The book is clearly written and insightful. In it, Igor talks about the process of getting hired, navigating office life, and expanding a career in IT. If you are hoping to become an IT professional or hoping to make your existing job a better experience, it's well worth a read.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Commercial distributions with alternative desktops
Not-a-gnome asks: I've been looking at commercial distros with support. So far all of them - Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc - use GNOME. Aren't there any paid distros with other desktops like KDE?
DistroWatch answers: Assuming you need the distribution to offer paid commercial support, perhaps for the sake of a contract, then paid projects which ship with KDE Plasma (or other non-GNOME desktops) are rare. Most of the commercial Linux companies (such as Red Hat, Canonical, and SUSE) do tend to use GNOME as their default desktop and put their money/sponsorship into GNOME.
There are some exceptions and the options will vary depending on how much support you wish to get from your commercial vendor. System76 develops the Pop!_OS distribution for their own computers and claim their next release (version 24.04) will ship with their own, in-house COSMIC desktop. System76 sells computers with Pop!_OS pre-installed, however, as far as I can tell, I don't think the company offers official support contracts. The TUXEDO OS distribution ships with KDE Plasma as the default desktop and they do have a support team.
Another approach would be to install a commercial distribution which runs GNOME by default, but then install another desktop. You could, for example, install Ubuntu (or maybe even Kubuntu) and then purchase Ubuntu Pro support, which offers support and fixes for all software in Ubuntu's repositories. It shouldn't matter if you're running the KDE desktop, Xfce, or other interface so long as the packages come from the Ubuntu repositories.
I haven't been able to find any information on which desktop environments SUSE's Liberty Linux project supports (their documentation and chatbot just take me in circles), but the project supports a range of enterprise-level distributions (including CentOS Linux). Enquiring with SUSE as to whether they support your preferred distribution/desktop combination is also an option.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
KaOS 2024.09
KaOS is a rolling release distribution which focuses on providing one desktop (KDE Plasma) and applications developed with one toolkit (Qt). The project's latest snapshot brings the Calligra office suite into the spotlight as well as an updated VirtualBox package. "More applications are now ready to use Qt6 and Frameworks 6, the big one now being Calligra. Since Calligra is again actively maintained and developed, it has returned to being the default office suite for KaOS. Another one that is now Qt6-based is Virtualbox. The UI of the installer has been updated for quite a few pages. This includes an option to choose either Calligra or LibreOffice as the preferred office suite. You will also see that the bootloader selection page and sound backend page are more integrated with Plasma 6 (through Kirigami). There also is now an option in the installer to install with the all-new filesystem bcachefs, it is still in experimental stage, but is included in the kernel build, and the needed bcachefs-tools are available in the repositories." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 3,082
- Total data uploaded: 45.4TB
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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) |
Unified package manager
In our review of Rhino Linux this week we touched upon the project's unified package manager, rhino-pkg. This utility acts as a front-end to multiple package managers, such as APT, Flatpak, and Pacstall. The aim is to give users one interface for managing all of the software (classic, portable, and community supplied). What do you think of unified package managers? Do you like the idea of handling all software through one utility or do you prefer using different tools for handling different formats?
You can see the results of our previous poll on preferred Fedora editions in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Unified package managers
| I like unified package managers: | 248 (10%) |
| I like the idea but have not tried one: | 510 (20%) |
| I do not like unified package management: | 1330 (52%) |
| I do not like the idea but have not tried any: | 224 (9%) |
| Unsure: | 247 (10%) |
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| Website News |
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $140 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| J S | $50 |
| Hernandez P B | $41 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Brian59 | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| surf3r57 | $5 |
| TaiKedz | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Kai D | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New projects added to database
FunOS
FunOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution which features the JWM graphical user interface. The project is intended to be more lightweight than official Ubuntu community editions while providing the same application compatibility and hardware support.
FunOS 24.04.1 -- Exploring the JWM menu
(full image size: 3.1MB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- SteamFork. SteamFork is a fork of SteamOS which seeks to provide a gaming experience on a range of devices, not just the SteamDeck.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 7 October 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, 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 |
| • 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 |
| • 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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Pidora
Pidora was a Linux software distribution for the Raspberry Pi computer. It contains software packages from the Fedora project compiled for the ARMv6 architecture used on the Raspberry Pi, packages which have been specifically written for or modified for the Raspberry Pi, and software provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation for device access.
Status: Discontinued
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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 
