 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1094, 28 October 2024 |
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Welcome to this year's 44th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Few distributions have been more influential so far this century than Ubuntu. This Debian-based project came onto the scene in 2004 and (thanks to various user-friendly design, technical benefits and advertising) the distribution was soon used by thousands of people around the world. This number eventually grew into millions as Ubuntu gained a reputation for being a good operating system for Linux beginners. This past week we marked the 20th anniversary of Ubuntu, a project which has experimented with a wide range of technologies - including cloud storage, its own init software, the Unity desktop, and its own mobile flavour called Ubuntu Touch. Happy anniversary, Ubuntu! Along with marking one project's longevity, we also welcome the birth of a new branch in the AlmaLinux family. The AlmaLinux project has introduced a new development and testing branch called Kitten. The Kitten edition provides a preview of features coming to the next major release of the distribution, AlmaLinux OS 10 and we talk about it below. Meanwhile, a veteran of the Linux community, openSUSE, is refreshing its logos and wallpapers. We share more on openSUSE's future look in our News section. This week we begin with a look at a young distribution called DebLight. DebLight is based on Linux Mint's Debian Edition and seeks to provide a lighter environment, thanks to the LXDE desktop. We share more details in this week's Feature Story. Then, in our Questions and Answers section, we talk about backing up the cron service's list of scheduled jobs and how to restore them on another machine. Do you use cron, or perhaps another tool for scheduling periodic tasks? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are happy to share the releases of the past week and the torrents we are seeding. This week we added a new project to the database, AnduinOS, which is based on Ubuntu and themed to look like Windows - welcome AnduinOS! We're also pleased to be able to thank people who have sent in donations this month - we appreciate you all. 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) |
DebLight OS 1
DebLight OS is a French distribution (with support for the English language) that is based on Linux Mint Debian Edition. What sets DebLight apart from its parent is primarily the desktop environment. While Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) offers users the Cinnamon desktop the DebLight project ships with LXDE as the default desktop. The aim is to provide most of the same tools and the ease of use offered by LMDE, but to be lighter and capable of running on older computers. Like its parent, DebLight offers builds for both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 computers.
The ISO for DebLight is about 3.4GB in size. Booting from this media brings up a menu offering to start the distribution in regular graphics mode, in safe mode, or in text mode. Taking either of the first two options starts the distribution and presents us with a graphical login screen. The password for the live session is, appropriately, "live".
The default LXDE session is set up with a thin panel across the top of the display. This panel holds two buttons for opening applications menus, some quick-launch buttons, and a system tray. At the bottom of the screen we find a dock with larger icons for launching popular applications. There are three icons on the desktop which access our Trash folder, launch the Calamares system installer, and open the DebLight website in Firefox.
DebLight OS 1 -- The application menu
(full image size: 871kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
I mentioned there are two buttons on the panel for opening application menus. The button to the far left opens a classic, tree-style menu with a search bar to help us find specific launchers. Another button on the panel opens a full-screen grid of large icons. A search box and category filters are placed across the top of the display to help us narrow down which item we want to launch.
By default, the desktop and applications display text in French. Likewise, the default keyboard layout is French. I signed out and went back to the login screen and selected English for my session, but found this only adjusted my keyboard's layout; text still usually appeared in French. There is a Language/Lang settings module in the application menu under the Preferences section where we can switch between French and English. After making our selection we need to sign out of the LXDE desktop and login again for the language switch to apply.
Calamares installer
when I launched the Calamares system installer the interface displayed text in French, despite LXDE showing text in English at the time. We can select an alternative language from a list on the first page of the installer. Also on the first page there are buttons for accessing release notes and known issues. Neither of these buttons do anything when clicked.
Calamares then walks us through the usual process of selecting our keyboard layout, confirming our timezone, and making up a username and password for ourselves. The partitioning section provides friendly, point-and-click manual disk manipulation. It also offers automated partitioning. The automated approach sets up a single ext4 partition with optional swap space or a swap file.
Calamares worked quickly and smoothly for me. When it finished copying its packages to my hard drive the installer offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of DebLight booted to a graphical login screen. Two session options, LXDE and Openbox, are presented with LXDE being the default. I tried the Openbox session, but it immediately failed and returned me to the login page. As a result, I spent all of my trail exploring the LXDE session.
The first time I signed into LXDE a welcome screen appeared. This is the same welcome window used by Linux Mint, though with a key difference: all of the text in the window is displayed in both French and English, one translation above the other. It seems as though the developers decided to display both languages at once rather than detect which language preference has been selected. The rest of the desktop usually displayed text in English, following my selection during the install process.
DebLight OS 1 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 848kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The welcome window in DebLight provides access to most of the same documentation, configuration tools, and resources as the greeter in LMDE does. It links to tools like the update manager, Timeshift for making snapshots, and the firewall utility. The documentation and support links all open Firefox to display pages from the Linux Mint website.
Something I noticed early in my trial was the full-screen application menu didn't handle its focus well. When the grid of applications was first opened it would not respond to keyboard input. Typing to perform a search, tapping arrow keys to select icons, and pressing Esc to dismiss the launcher all did nothing. I found I had to click the search box with my mouse before keyboard input would be accepted. This makes the full-screen launcher a little less convenient to use compared to its counterpart on other desktops.
DebLight OS 1 -- The full-screen grid of launchers
(full image size: 383kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Included software
For the most part, the applications included with DebLight appear to be the same ones included in Linux Mint. I didn't do a strict side-by-side comparison, but most of the applications I see in Mint (such as Firefox, Transmission, LibreOffice, Hypnotix, the Mint software centre, Gufw, and so on) are present. For the most part, we're running Mint's collection of software, just using LXDE as the interface instead of Cinnamon, MATE, or Xfce. I did notice the KDE System Settings panel (or a gutted version of it) is present on the distribution. There doesn't appear to be any KDE applications though so I'm not sure why System Settings was present.
DebLight OS 1 -- Running the firefox browser
(full image size: 495kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The distribution ships with the GNU command line tools, manual pages, the GNU compiler, and systemd. In the background we find version 6.1 of the Linux kernel. Everything worked as expected and I didn't have any serious problems with the included software during my trail.
Hardware
I tested DebLight in two environments, on a desktop machine and in VirtualBox. My trial started in VirtualBox and the distribution performed well in the virtual machine. The system was quick, stable, and integrated with VirtualBox with no issues.
When I switched to trying DebLight on my workstation, the experience was similarly smooth. All of my hardware was detected, networking and audio worked out of the box, and the distribution ran quickly. LXDE was pleasantly responsive (apart from the grid launcher) and I encountered no stability issues.
DebLight OS 1 -- Various settings utilities
(full image size: 589kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Despite the name, DebLight uses an average amount of resources. A fresh installed took up 11.5GB of disk space, plus space for a swap file. This is nearly 50% larger than Linux Mint's Debian Edition. When signed into the LXDE desktop the system used between 760MB and 800MB of memory. This is about on par with LMDE's Cinnamon edition (LMDE uses 850MB of RAM in the same test environment) and puts DebLight in the same realm as most distributions running mid-weight desktops such as Plasma 5 and Xfce. Mint's MATE and Xfce editions are lighter, requiring approximately 650MB, for instance, for the Xfce edition.
Software management
DebLight ships with several software management utilities. Mint's friendly software centre is featured and it can pull in software from both Deb and Flatpak repositories. I like Mint's software centre as it does a nice job of presenting categories of packages we can browse. It also makes it easy to select the Flatpak or Deb version of an application.
For low level package management the distribution ships the Synaptic package manager. Synaptic makes it possible to set up batches of add/remove actions to be processed on packages all at once.
Exploring further we find an update manager which sits in the system tray and lights up when new updates become available. The update manager has a number of options to adjust when the utility will check for updates, whether to apply all updates or just security fixes, and we can launch the Timeshift snapshot tool from the update manager.
DebLight ships with Flatpak support enabled and we are automatically connected with the Flathub repository. The software centre and update manager both automatically integrate Flatpak packages, providing all-in-one software management options. We can also manage Deb and Flatpak software from the command line using APT and the flatpak programs.
Conclusions
DebLight starts out with a good idea, in my opinion. It takes one of the world's more popular and easy to use Linux distributions and adjusts it to try to make its parent run better on older equipment. Basically, it's Linux Mint for computers from the Windows 7 era. It's a modest goal, but a clear and (in my opinion) useful one.
DebLight is in its early stages, this was just the first stable version. As such, it's normal that this release had some rough points. There are buttons that don't do anything, an application menu that doesn't grab keyboard input when it is opened, and there are some areas where translations are inconstantly applied. There are definitely some problems scattered through the distribution, though they tend to be minor. They are mostly language-related issues. It is not uncommon to see a mixture of French and English on the screen. For instance, the update manager's main window was displayed in English when I was using it, but the preferences window for the same application displayed in French. Meanwhile the file manager displayed in English, but some folder names in my home directory were in French. As long as you can fumble your way through menus in either French or English (or sometimes both) you should have a fairly good experience, but if you don't read French then you could be in for a challenging time.
DebLight OS 1 -- The interface displaying a mixture of French and English
(full image size: 603kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
DebLight does benefit from its parents fantastic hardware support and wide range of software compatibility. This is the key concept, it seems: Mint, but with lower hardware requirements. The problem, however, is that DebLight is not, in fact, light. Its 11GB disk footprint is as larger or larger than most mainstream Linux distributions these days and heavier than its parent, Linux Mint Debian Edition.
To make matters worse, DebLight's RAM consumption (760MB to 800MB) is about the same as other Linux distributions running Xfce, Plasma, or even Cinnamon. My recent trials with Mint show LMDE consumes 950MB of RAM when running Cinnamon and Linux Mint's Ubuntu-based edition with Cinnamon uses 850MB. Mint's own Xfce edition requires less RAM, in the range of 600MB to 700MB. This means DebLight is about the same size as its parent and consumes about the same resources, in some cases even more resources, depending on which edition we run. In short, it's not lighter, it is just running a different desktop (LXDE) with an alternative theme which fails to provide performance or size benefits. This isn't a great state of affairs for a project's whose tag line is: "The lightened Mint."
It's not that DebLight OS is a bad distribution. If you don't mind the blended language experience, it's a solid, responsive desktop experience. It's fairly similar to its parent in most ways, but with a darker theme and LXDE in place of Cinnamon/Xfce/MATE. I just don't think it has achieved its stated goal of being a lighter alternative to Mint's existing editions.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Lenovo desktop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Hex-core Intel i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
- Storage: Western Digital 1TB hard drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 wired network card, Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe wireless adapter
- Display: Intel CometLake-S GT2
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
AlmaLinux OS introduces Kitten branch, openSUSE updates its look, Ubuntu turns 20
The AlmaLinux project has announced a new testing and development branch of its distribution which is called "Kitten". The Kitten branch allows AlmaLinux users to test out new developments and changes before they arrive in a final, stable release. The project's announcement states: "CentOS Stream 10, which will eventually be the source for RHEL10, has already started being built and is available for use today. Because we anticipated many changes in 10, we wanted to get a head start on building AlmaLinux OS 10. Earlier this year we started setting up infrastructure and the build pipeline for AlmaLinux OS 10, and started testing using CentOS Stream 10's code. Based on this preparation work, we are excited to share that we have successfully built a preview of AlmaLinux OS 10 that we are calling AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10."
The project was quick to point out Kitten is not a direct parallel to CentOS's Stream: "First, this is not 'AlmaLinux Stream.' CentOS Stream is a product of the CentOS community - it's the ultimate destination of the CentOS community's work. AlmaLinux OS Kitten is not a product at all, it is meant as a vehicle along the journey of development of the next version of AlmaLinux. We are using our freedom here to do a bunch of work in preparation for AlmaLinux OS 10. Below you will find a list of the big differences, and on our wiki you can find the full AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 release notes." Download options for each of the project's supported architectures can be found on the Kitten mirror.
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The openSUSE project is refreshing its look with updated branding. "Branding for Tumbleweed and Leap 16.0 are moving along with the creation of a visual identity for these two distinct operating system flavors. For two of openSUSE's most notable Linux distributions, there is an updated logo and new digital wallpaper themes that feature beloved chameleons that represent the community projects. The Tumbleweed logo has been revamped and transitions from a horizontal format to a new design that aligns with logos of other openSUSE flavors like Leap. Samples of the new look can be found in openSUSE's news post.
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The Ubuntu project is celebrating the distribution's 20th anniversary this week. Canonical first launched Ubuntu in 2004 and the distribution soon earned a reputation for being a more user-friendly, desktop-ready flavour of Debian. A focus on ease of use along with hardware certification, shipping free install media, and a streamlined system installer quickly made Ubuntu one of the world's most commonly used distributions. Canonical has published a web page which shows Ubuntu's timeline and marks milestones in the distribution's evolution. "The story of Ubuntu is a story written by many hands. This page is a tribute to our community, partners and Canonical staff who have all given a piece of themselves to making this open source project thrive. Thank you to all of you. Above all, it's a celebration of what Ubuntu has achieved so far, and an invitation to collaborate with us in delivering an even faster pace of innovation in the future." When did you first encounter Ubuntu? Let us know in the comments.
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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) |
Backing up crontab
Running-on-schedule asks: I just noticed that there are no crontabs in my backups of my /home. How do you go about backing up cron jobs and restoring them later?
DistroWatch answers: You can dump your crontab into a text file by running the following command:
crontab -l > my-crontab.txt
The above command creates a new text file called my-crontab.txt and saves the contents of your crontab (scheduled jobs) in the text file. If you want to create a backup of another user's crontab entries, you can run the following command:
sudo crontab -u anotheruser -l > anotheruser-crontab.txt
In the above example, the "-u" flag tells crontab we are dealing with the jobs of another user. Replace the text "anotheruser" with the username of the account you want to backup.
You can then store these text files anywhere in your home directory to add them to your regular backups. Later, when you want to restore a crontab from the text file, you can run the crontab command and just pass it the name of the file. Here I restore my own crontab from a text file:
crontab my-crontab.txt
To restore another user's crontab you can perform a similar command, specifying their username:
sudo crontab -u anotheruser anotheruser-crontab.txt
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
SKUDONET 7.2.0
Antonio Rendón Ruiz has announced the release of SKUDONET 7.2.0, un updated version of the project's specialist Debian-based distribution whose primary purpose is to serve as a load balancer and application delivery system. This new release brings various improvements in the IPDS (Intrusion Prevention and Detection System) module, together with a few bug fixes. "SKUDONET 7.2.0 Community Edition. New Features: added IPDS WAF module; added geolocation support for WAF; added Lua 5.2 support for WAF; added Highlighting language for SecLang and Lua. Improvements: ssl - avoid deleting Default System Certificate; farms - disabled SSLv2 and TLSv1 by default in HTTPS farms; api - improved Backup action messages; networking - added a check for running DHCP daemons at starting DHCP; system - save farmguardian binary files in the backup. Bug fixes: networking - fixed unset of Bonding and NICs when DHCP is enabled; system - fixed update packages action requiring other repositories dependencies." See the release announcement with a changelog and the installation instructions for further information.
Parrot 6.2
Parrot (formerly Parrot Security OS) is a Debian-based, security-oriented distribution featuring a collection of utilities designed for penetration testing, computer forensics, reverse engineering, hacking, privacy, anonymity and cryptography. The project's latest release, version 6.2, introduces several package upgrades and a new tool called Rocket. "Parrot team is happy to introduce you to Rocket, a launcher written entirely in Python using PyQt6 for the GUI, to launch Docker containers, specifically some security tools in our repository on Docker Hub (and others, from other repositories). This application runs on ParrotOS, but is also compatible with other distributions, and can also run on Windows and macOS. It only requires the installation of docker.io to interface with Docker and allow the user to manage containers. Instead of typing and downloading a specific tool, through Rocket you can select a tool from the list, and then downloading the Docker image and launching the container is taken care of by the application." Additional information can be found in the release notes.
Parrot 6.2 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 680kB, resolution: 1680x1050 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: 3,098
- Total data uploaded: 45.6TB
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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) |
How do you schedule jobs?
In our Questions and Answers section we talked about backing up and restoring scheduled tasks using the crontab program. There are a number of utilities for running jobs at specific times. The cron service and systemd timers are two of the more commonly used options. Which of these do you use to schedule periodic jobs? Let us know your preferred method in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on atomic and immutable distributions in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How do you schedule tasks?
| cron: | 461 (24%) |
| periodic: | 7 (0%) |
| systemd timers: | 87 (4%) |
| Other: | 34 (2%) |
| None: | 1356 (70%) |
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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 $135 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| J S | $50 |
| Anonymous | $20 |
| Daniel M | $10 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Brian59 | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| surf3r57 | $5 |
| TaiKedz | $5 |
| STEER PTY Ltd | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| aRubes | $1 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Kai D | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New projects added to database
AnduinOS
AnduinOS is an Ubuntu-based distribution which provides a GNOME desktop which has been themed and styled to resemble Windows 11. The project provides a smaller ISO file than its parent with each supported language split into a separate ISO. Snap support, which is included in Ubuntu, has been removed from AnduinOS.
AnduinOS 1.0.1 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 257kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Radix Cross Linux. Radix Cross Linux is a Russian distribution built for embedded devices and cross-compiling to a variety of CPU architectures.
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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, 4 November 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 • Deb Light (by Guido on 2024-10-28 01:59:48 GMT from Philippines)
Yet another rather superfluous new distro. Take an existing one, change the theme a bit and slap a new panel on it. And we have a new one. - Why don't the developers try to use Debian as a base? That way DL won't be any lighter than LMDE.
2 • What Makes a Desktop Light? (by BlueIV on 2024-10-28 03:35:02 GMT from United States)
Generally when most people speak of what makes a desktop environment of Linux distribution they generally speak of the amount of ram it uses. I rarely hear users discuss the cpu aspect, whether it requires much cpu power compared to something else. Granted in general these qualities correlate with each other, but not necessarily equally.
Is booting into a desktop and seeing how much ram is used a useful metric to speak of the total experience? I remember in the early days of Linux there was a saying unused memory is wasted memory but that may be regarded as a myth these days(?).
3 • Periodicity (by Arve Eriksson on 2024-10-28 04:17:47 GMT from Sweden)
What arcana is this... Huh. Learn something new every day; Linux experience, never change! Apparently I use Systemd-timers. Does it count if that's all set by the distro, and not something I've configured manually?
4 • crontab (by dr.j on 2024-10-28 08:01:21 GMT from The Netherlands)
of course you can do it this way, but crontab is just a file in a folder (var/spool/cron). You can use cron to copy it automatically to your home-directory or to any destination you want or you create a symlink in your home directory and make sure not to copy the symlink as a symlink. That's it.
5 • Light Linux Distributions / Linux for old hardware (by NULL on 2024-10-28 08:10:16 GMT from Germany)
Linux for old hardware seems an evergreen topic in the Linux community and it always seems to focus on the desktop environment.
IMHO it does not matter that the desktop/distribution uses 100MB or 200MB less compared to the competition, once the first web browser tab is opened.
Therefore I find it very surprising that ZRAM is not the default for this kind of distributions, because for me ZRAM is the switch which makes a desktop usable when running less than 8G of RAM on older hardware.
LXDE/Xfce/random window manager feel a bit more responsive on old hardware compared to Gnome/KDE, but in the they don't make ore break Linux on old hardware.
My personal Linux box is on a Netbook with 4G of RAM running Gnome. Totally unusable w/o ZRAM and working w/o trouble with a descent ZRAM configuration.
6 • Deb Light (by LS650V on 2024-10-28 08:12:17 GMT from United States)
Has the LXDE desktop environment in Deb Light been updated from GTK2 to GTK3? If I had to guess, I would say no.
7 • Deb Light (by Bigun on 2024-10-28 08:42:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
The best Deb Light OS? Simply AntiX!
8 • Statistics (by Romane on 2024-10-28 09:20:34 GMT from Australia)
I always look for the Mark Twain "Thingy"
This weeks sent me back to my College days:
"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. (Mark Twain)"
Recalling the very first words out of my statistics lecturer's mouth:
"The are lies, damn lies, and statistics"
9 • 8 • Statistics (by James on 2024-10-28 09:50:57 GMT from United States)
"The are lies, damn lies, and statistics"
Along with "figures don't lie, but liars figure".
10 • First Ubuntu experience (by Mark on 2024-10-28 10:36:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
6.06 Dapper Drake.
Loved the minimalist interface and the stability. Everything just worked right, unusual for a Linux distro at the time, although it was necessary to install ndiswrapper for the wifi driver.
The colour scheme took a bit of getting used to. Had to learn to embrace those earth tones.
11 • @4 crontab (by Delasse on 2024-10-28 11:01:03 GMT from Czechia)
I don't know how your system works, but on my Linux Mint 22 /var/spool/cron/crontabs is `drwx-wx--T 2 root crontab`, that is no regular user has access to it. I can't even `cat` my own crontab file there (without sudo, that is). Besides, putting `crontab -l` into a backup script isn't any more complicated than giving it a file (in this case the link that you propose) under your $HOME to be backed up.
12 • LXDE (by Nicola on 2024-10-28 11:27:49 GMT from Italy)
The problem with LXDE is that - with the development of LXQt towards Wayland support - it is destined for death. The wiki is already gone, and that is not a good sign. It should be noted that the speed of LXDE is also due to the use of GTK2: GTK3 and GTK4 were a real disaster.
13 • My intro to Ubuntu (by mcellius on 2024-10-28 03:15:41 GMT from United States)
I first encountered Ubuntu in 2011, with 11.04, Natty Narwhal. I had been using Windows but was frustrated, not least because I had to reinstall it - again! I finally said, "Okay, time to try Linux," but I really had no idea there were so many distributions. I had never even heard of Ubuntu (somehow the marketing had missed me), but in my research of Linux distros I learned of it, of course. Learning that it was so popular helped me decide: if so many people used it, it must be fairly easy for a newcomer.
I set it up to dual-boot with Windows (yes, I went ahead and reinstalled it), but from the first I really enjoyed Ubuntu. The Unity desktop was new to me, but so what? It was something to learn, as was all of Linux, and I enjoyed that part of it. After a month I found myself rarely booting into Windows anymore, so I uninstalled it - and NEVER regretted that decision!
Over the next several years I did a LOT of distro-hopping, trying everything. I must have installed and tried at one time or another close to 100 distros. (I still sometimes look at new distros or versions, always by installing them in their own partition.) I learned a lot about Linux and although I liked most of them, I always preferred Ubuntu the most. I was disappointed when Ubuntu dropped Unity, but I stayed with Ubuntu and happily still use Ubuntu's modified version of Gnome.
Over the years I set up a small home network (using IPFire, another Linux distro, as a firewall) running three Ubuntu machines, partly just so I could learn more. From the beginning I worked as much from the command line as from the GUI, and still use it a lot. Anyway, I feel comfortable with about any version of Linux, but still find that Ubuntu meets my needs and makes computing enjoyable. For me it has always been solid and reliable, easy to use yet completely configurable for any special needs I have. And I STILL run the latest version, never staying on the latest LTS: right now it's 24.10, and I'll upgrade again when the next version comes out next April: might as well use the latest, I figure.
I don't think Ubuntu is the best distro, but I do think it's the best for me. It works the way I want, and does what I want it - and need it - to do. Is that just because it's the first distro I tried? Well, that was certainly my good fortune, and I've seen no good reason to switch.
14 • DebLight, AnduinOS and Peppermint compared. (by Greg Zeng on 2024-10-28 05:40:22 GMT from Australia)
This week describes the French Debian based system, released for the first time this year. AnduinOS, from China, is clearly in good English language, but Ubuntu-Gnome based, to appear like Windows 11. This second entry is similar to Wubuntu, which is derived another non-English nation.
Peppermint, English based, uses a LXDE derived environment, similar to DebLight, but has been available in mature form since 2011-01-05, thirteen years ago. With Peppermint, my default is Dolphin, instead of Thunar. Mint and its derivatives, like most new releases based on Debian now, try to not provide Synaptic Package Manager. These heavier Linux systems include so much unwanted programs, that I prefer a light system, such as Peppermint, then add my necessary applications.
In Linux however, only PC Linux OS provides Ventoy, as a ready to run application. Generally most Linux operating systems provide very poor BTRFS partition support. So Linux will stay unpopular with the bulk of computer users, unfortunately. Far behind Windows, Apple, and Android, for the moment.
15 • Cron jobs backup (by Jesse on 2024-10-28 11:42:56 GMT from Canada)
@4: "of course you can do it this way, but crontab is just a file in a folder (var/spool/cron). You can use cron to copy it automatically to your home-directory or to any destination you want or you create a symlink in your home directory and make sure not to copy the symlink as a symlink. That's it."
You can do this if you are root. On almost all Linux distributions, regular users do not have read access to the /var/spool/cron/crontabs directory. This is to prevent a user from gaining knowledge about whether other users have crontabs or what might be in them, based on their existence/size.
A symlink to anything in that directory won't be readable.
16 • Re: DebLight OS 1 (by linuxmintusers.de on 2024-10-28 12:37:34 GMT from Germany)
Why not just stick to LXDE versions of LinuxMint provided by german site admins linuxmintusers.de ?
They exist in both LM Ubuntu base for 64bit processers and LM Debian base for 32bit and 64bit processers.
17 • Lite Distros (by kc1di on 2024-10-28 12:50:57 GMT from United States)
My light distro of choice is antix. I used to use lxde but it will become dead in the near future.
LXqt is ok but not as good as lxde in my opinion. Most importantly enjoy your linux journey!
18 • Linux Migration (by Geo on 2024-10-28 13:02:37 GMT from Canada)
I have now successfully migrated my family from Win 10 to Zorin. Very pleased so far.
19 • Lite Distros (by Name (mandatory) on 2024-10-28 13:15:53 GMT from United States)
@17 Same, my light distro is antiX. I like runit version.
20 • Seeing The Light... (by Friar Tux on 2024-10-28 15:25:07 GMT from Canada)
"Light Distros"... never could figure that one out. For my daily driver I use Mint/Cinnamon. I like the fact that I can have all kinds of convenient (for me) bells and whistles running while I work. I have all kinds of "bloat" (as some call it) on my system and it's still quite snappy and quick. With today's computers/laptops, having them jammed full of useful stuff doesn't cause any real issues. Sure, it slows down the process by a micro-second or two, but really, in the end, things still get done rather quickly. (I like testing out new (to me) apps and programs, so believe me when I say my laptop is STUFFED with all kinds of bloaty goodness.)
21 • My Technical Take On All This (by Otis on 2024-10-28 16:15:51 GMT from United States)
Well, you've successfully advanced a Linux subject matter in the poll and discussion here which leaves my sensibilities nearly completely out of it. I don't know or care about any of it, but of course am glad that enough do so that the inner workings of distros are hashed about and perfected, etc, plus these subjects attract more to the Distrowatch site and that's of course a good thing, big time.
@18 Congratulations!
@The rest of you, huh? :oD
22 • crontab (by dr.j on 2024-10-28 16:26:43 GMT from Germany)
@11 @15
well you guys that is a typical problem with modern Linux distros where the developer do our work and create the system they think it should be and giving rea/write access the way they think it is safe (for whom ever). That is not the arch way.
So, my system has a user crontab with full access to and I use a symbolic link to my home-directory to back it up with my regular backup-job when is changes
23 • DebLight review (by Erik Plovpenning on 2024-10-28 17:53:17 GMT from Denmark)
Good review Jesse.
If the user plans on using a modern web browser, the choice of desktop environment is probably irrelevant. And if people prefer lxde it only takes a few minutes to install, why even create a separate distro for this?
24 • Distro choices (by npaladin2000 on 2024-10-28 18:30:00 GMT from United States)
It just amazes me that a distro like DebLight can get posted on here, though it has no niche, and no real justification. Just a different theme on a derivative of a derivative of a derivative. In the meantime, projects like ChimeraOS and Bazzite, which are having a real impact and actually DO have a niche, sit in waitlist limbo. At least let's see the Universal Blue project get listed, even Fedora Atomic gets lumped under Fedora.
25 • Lite Distro? (by DB on 2024-10-28 18:38:32 GMT from United States)
The other day I decided to put Haiku onto one of my old laptops. I used a small ssd drive and did a normal install . Everything works pretty snappy! Wifi even works now! Then I timed to statrup and shut down times. Startup takes 16 to 18 seconds from the time I push the button till desktop is up and useable. Shutdown took 5 to 6 seconds. The only browser I could get to work well was falkon. And it too wants to crash from time to time, but it's kind of fun to use! So if you get a chance check it out, these people have really put together and interesting and different OS.
26 • Lite Distro? (by Sohl on 2024-10-28 19:21:28 GMT from United States)
@25 Haiku is interesting and super slick. However, about a year or so ago, I could not get it booting cleanly from HD after installation. Booted off USB stick ok though.
If you want light Linux, check out TinyCore Linux. The default graphical install is super light but somewhat ugly by modern standards and has very limited WM features, but other WMs are available. Also very light is Puppy Linux with a nicer desktop environment.
27 • @22 crontab (by Delasse on 2024-10-28 20:37:18 GMT from Czechia)
@22 " that is a typical problem with modern Linux distros where the developer do our work and create the system they think it should be and giving rea/write access the way they think it is safe (for whom ever)"
Funny you should talk about others thinking wrongly what is safe while you implicitly claim superiority with the "Arch way" buzzword. "Least amount of privilege" isn't modern, and it shouldn't be just a slogan. And being able to read/write whatever you want has nothing to do with the "Arch way", but whether you are root or not. :) As Jesse mentioned, regular users directly seeing others' crontabs *is* a potential issue, and there's no reason why any regular users should be able to do it => it should be forbidden. End of story. (And as I said, backing up your own crontab is trivial, or it should be, Dr Archway... :P) Next thing we know, you're trying to convince us that /etc/shadow should be world readable and writable so "Arch powauzerz" can directly change their passwords (because using `passwd` is not the "Arch way" or something...).
I thought people "living the Arch way" are supposed to be knowledgeable, not ignorant...
28 • @16 LinuxMintusers.de 403 Forbidden (by Elcaset on 2024-10-29 07:11:09 GMT from United States)
I'm interested to see if linuxmintusers.de maintains a version of Mint with KDE Plasma. However, the linuxmintusers.de site is inaccessible.
29 • Tried Linux MX because of top ranking.. not impressed (by networkxxiii on 2024-10-29 07:14:46 GMT from Switzerland)
I really wonder how Linux MX made it to the top of the list. I wanted something new after using mint as a main driver for some time. All I can say is that it is not very user friendly, has compatibility issues and was annoying to work with on a daily basis at least for me. So this is a warning.
The main annoyance was Xfce continually crashing. And e.g. I want to see a DVD from an external USB Player, I expect no problems here, plug and play, but no, not working out of the box for some obscure reason. I mean the distro *works* but it does not seem polished like e.g. mint is. Sorry to be negative about it but i felt it is necessary to warn others that IMHO, MX does not belong to the top of the list.
30 • @27 crontab (by dr.j on 2024-10-29 07:26:41 GMT from Germany)
One problem nearly everywhere in the web is, that people aren't talking to each other, but just lash out eachother when something doesn't fit into their world or opinion.
If you read my post in detail you will understand that I do not argue against security (so no more words about /etc/shadow, sudoers or similar files), but against the nonsense that I run multi-user security designed by some developers instead of establishing exactly that kind of security that I need in my one-user-environment and which is designed and controlled by me and only by me. And that I can't read my own crontab under the given circumstances (no multi-user notebook) is really crazy. My philosophy of Linux never was of that kind. And a symbolic link has to be made once, a backup must be done everytime you change something. That is not really a smart solution.
31 • @28, 403 verbotten (by Gang of wolfs on 2024-10-29 10:36:01 GMT from Germany)
If you have VPN, try changing IP address to Germany. Works for me.
32 • @29 MX-linux (by Jan on 2024-10-29 11:58:49 GMT from The Netherlands)
Try MX-KDE, I found it performing the best on my old hardware (CPU, but with much memory and SSD).
In an installed MX you can additionally set extra features (fine-tune) and install updates from MX-repo-test and Debian-backport.
Maybe this helps.
33 • 8.04 was my first Ubuntu - good experience (by AdamB on 2024-10-29 12:01:36 GMT from Australia)
Having previously been happy with KDE 3.5 on OpenSuse (10.3?) umtil it went end-of-life, I tried Ubuntu 8.04 and was very happy with it. Gnome 2 suited my workflow very well.- and Ubuntu had an excellent installer.
When Ubuntu abandoned Gnome 2, I migrated to Linux Mint MATE, and have used MATE on various distributions ever since (Raspberry Pi OS is an exception - and I am tempted to try installing MATE on my RPi 4).
34 • @29 and @32 MX-linux, addition (by Jan on 2024-10-29 12:43:51 GMT from The Netherlands)
I mentioned "fine-tuning", however it is called "Tweaks" in the MX-welcome window.
There is another rather essential advice, from my experience.
MX runs fine from a live-usb-Ventoy-stick. However installing from a Ventoy-live-usb-stick goes wrong (in my experience). It gives weird installing problems, and if seemingly good installed, it gives application problems.
Install MX from a Rufus-made USB-stick (where nothing else is present).
35 • MX (by Name (mandatory) on 2024-10-29 14:30:51 GMT from United States)
@29 I'm using MX because of excellent tools. MX Snapshot for example, with few mouse clicks you have complete copy of your system, with all apps, passwords, email client, browsers, bookmarks, everything, in installable ISO file.
You can now 'burn' ISO to USB stick and have your copy of system running off that USB stick on any computer, or you can just install it on a different computer and have exact copy. What other distro can do this? And without any knowledge to do it, just few mouse clicks? And this is only one of several very useful tools.
I have never had any problem with crashing or anything like that. Running MX for years. No wonder it is on top.
36 • Lite distros (by grindstone on 2024-10-29 20:00:13 GMT from United States)
+1 to AntiX and DSL which is lighter than even AntiX.
37 • DebLight (by Keith Bainbridge on 2024-10-29 22:03:28 GMT from Australia)
Good morning Jesse
I gave DebLight a quick run in VBox last night.
I'd have to say that is closer to debian stable than LMDE.
1. There is no mention of the Mint repo - where Mint serve newer versions of Chromium, TBird and Firefox; as well as their Cinnamon files (presumably newer than DebStable, as the Mint community also develops Cinnamon).
2. DebLight's version of TBird is 17 behind Mint's TBird. Firefox is 2 versions behind. I couldn't check on Chromium, but Mint provides 130
My experience is that LMDE is more user ready than debian, in that Mint has printer drivers and internal email (exim et al) sorted.
I consider that DebLight would serve their users better by referring them directly the the LMDE section of the Mint forum, rather than the main mint forum page.
Another matter is that LMDE is available with cinnamon only, unless you know of the alternatives from a site which is not obvious at the Mint download site.
Thanks for listening.
Keith
38 • AnduinOS (by embrace, extend, include on 2024-10-30 00:52:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
"AnduinOS is an Ubuntu-based distribution ... which has been themed and styled to resemble Windows 11."
developer is a "Software engineer at Microsoft"; and the OS seems associated with Microsoft Open Source community.
39 • Light distributions for old computers. (by eb on 2024-10-30 08:13:10 GMT from France)
DSL & Antix are effectively good choices :
- old distros (2005 & 2010)
- excellent window managers (Fluxbox & JWM)
- no SystemD.
"Have a lot of fun" !:-)
40 • @32 and @35 KDE might solve some problems but MX still needs more polishing IMHO (by networkxxiii on 2024-10-30 08:58:12 GMT from Switzerland)
The MX Installer was fine. I actually was impressed by it. Not so much by the OS though. I usually do not need in-built tools a lot, as I bring with me my own suite of tools. E.g. Clonezilla for secuity/backup, FreeFileSync, Xpad, Guake, Flameshot, owncloud, keepass etc.
There was just too many little details that did not fit my bill and was a tad too much of a hassle. I moreover had to change back to Mint, because Citrix Workspace App was always ailing and failing on MX probably due to bookworm not being supported by it. That was a nogo because I need Citrix to work.
TLDR, Im still taken aback how it can be the top distro. Somethings wrong here at least in my book.
41 • @38 AnduinOS, thanks for the warning. (by networkxxiii on 2024-10-30 09:10:30 GMT from Switzerland)
That is a definitive "hands-off!" for me, thanks ;)
42 • Light distributions (by jazzfelix on 2024-10-30 09:14:28 GMT from Germany)
As the light [is distributed (originally emanates)] from the sun your consciousness emanates from the one source [of all life forms]. (Eckhart Tolle)
43 • Fear of WIndows, Fedora 41 KDE (by El Guapo on 2024-10-30 10:10:16 GMT from Mexico)
@38,Anduinos, by embrace, extend, include- On the one hand, I have no use for distros that look like Windows. On the other hand, you'd think that those who fear or abhor Microsoft so much would be fleeing Linux in droves, considering that the bulk of Linux funding and development is coming from MS and others of the evil empire cohort. That includes Linus' salary, by the way. BSD awaits you, although I believe if the developers at FreeBSD and others were offered a nice fat check and ready manpower, they'd jump at the chance.
Fedora KDE. Fresh after the Kubuntu 24.10 review, I wanted to compare with the new Fedora. Runs quite well, as expected, but at idle it's consuming 2.5 GB of RAM. Given what was experienced in the DW review (1.4 GB), I'm hereby declaring Kubuntu a "light" distro.
44 • @40: (by dragonmouth on 2024-10-30 11:51:26 GMT from United States)
"Somethings wrong here at least in my book. "
Did you ever consider that it might be you and your computer? Something you are doing or applications you are running that makes MX such a problem for you? After all, there are thousands of satisfied MX users. They could not have been all bamboozled.
45 • MX Wine (by Jan on 2024-10-30 12:33:54 GMT from The Netherlands)
Additional to my joy about MX-KDE is that it has a Wine installation (from the favourites applications) which actually works (mostly).
Only need to place one checkmark, obviously very capable persons made this.
Because I found no other distro at which simply installing Wine from their repository gives a working Wine-application.
Another distro with a working Wine is Fedora-KDE, at which I needed to install 2 applications: the Wine-application + Wineglass (which pulls in Winetricks),
Wine seems to have a confusing/diffusing problem on giving a functioning icon through which the Windows-application can be started.
Very often 2 desktop icons result from a Windows-app-installation, of which (after running Bleachbit) 1 or both do not work and/or gives a very high CPU-load. The Fedora Wine-application seems to be Bleachbit-resistant (but as mentioned, needed an Wine-aid-app).
Strangely I even once had made a taskbar widget/icon (directly after installing the Windows-app), which was the only functioning start-up possibility.
Alas the Wine-filemanager (with which you can go to the Windows-executable in Programs-folder) has no option to plop a startup icon to the desktop (why not??). However the standard Linux-filemanger also has sometimes the option to make a desktop-icon disabled (also, why??).
46 • Your book (by Otis on 2024-10-30 19:07:30 GMT from United States)
@40 There's an implication that the DW site is fudging on the PHR of MX at the top, or at least an inference on my part well oiled by your words there:
"TLDR, Im still taken aback how it can be the top distro. Somethings wrong here at least in my book."
Your book may be what's wrong. Or it my be my take on your words, but one thing that certainly wrong is the silliness of having a particular popular distro not fit your situation and then question that distro's popularity. @44 points out something similar about your take.
I settled on MX quite some time ago, and distro hop with other machines, but MX Linux has it all and as to reliability after extreme ease of install and personal tweaks if desired. Thus it's spot so high here and elsewhere.
47 • an alternative to Deb Light (by Simon Wainscott-Plaistowe on 2024-10-30 20:49:38 GMT from New Zealand)
I reckon FunOS hits the spot better than Deb Light. Great if you just want a lightweight OS to run some VMs or whatever. Uses less than 400MB RAM on my workshop box. It's not pure Debian though - based on Ubuntu so can use PPAs if you need them. Snaps & Flatpaks are disabled (simply install either if required).
48 • deblight (by hazardous on 2024-10-31 11:48:26 GMT from United States)
Just tried installing deblight and was stymied at the password part, and was further stymied by guessing the right password root backwards, but was not accepted - bah! But it was cetainly a coloutful start.
49 • Microsoft and Linux (by Otis on 2024-10-31 11:55:54 GMT from United States)
@43 Some see Microsoft's involvement with Linux as more a victory for Linux than for Microsoft. Fighting Linux and open source in general seems to have become futile over time for them.
50 • Linux and Microsoft... (by Friar Tux on 2024-11-01 23:03:52 GMT from Canada)
@49 (Otis) Fear not, Microsoft ain't done yet. The "embrace, extend, extinguish" isn't an overnight thing, not with something as big as Linux. They seem to be right on track assisting Linux with code and software to make things work smoothly/better, even employing some of Linux's prominent people. The other shoe will drop when they decide it's time to "make 'em pay or they can't use our stuff". It will not matter what form of license any of the code is under - if Redhat can do it so can Microsoft. Time will tell.
Number of Comments: 50
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| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
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| • 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 |
| • 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.
|
| Random Distribution | 
Clu Linux Live
Clu Linux Live was a Debian-based live distribution which features a command line interface. The live disc can be used to rescue files, clone partitions, and share files over Samba and OpenSSH connections.
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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