DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1096, 11 November 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 46th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The world is full of new processors, new computing devices, and new portable technologies. It seems every week there is a new device available or a new platform to try. This week we focus on operating systems and applications being ported to new devices in our News section. We look at Redox OS being ported to RISC-V processors and its team importing the COSMIC software centre. We also cover FreeBSD booting on the open hardware-powered PinePhone Pro and making its UFS filesystem more accessible on a range of platforms. Plus we talk about new ZFS features coming to TrueNAS (and other operating systems with ZFS support), while LXQt introduces support for multiple Wayland window managers and Debian publishes updated install media. Before we dive into those stories, we take a rapid-fire look at three projects from the DistroWatch waiting list. Tucana Linux, Bazzite, and Playtron OS are all young projects on the waiting list and we share some first impressions. This week we also talk about multiplex sessions and report on how to determine whether we are operating inside one of these special terminal environments - read our Questions and Answers column for the details. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are happy to welcome a new project to our database: openEuler. The openEuler project develops a server-focused distribution that is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and offers both long-term support versions and faster moving interim releases. More details on this project are covered 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) |
Bazzite 40
This week I decided to take a look at a few gaming-focused distributions on the DistroWatch waiting list. The first project to catch my eye was Bazzite. What is Bazzite? The project describes itself as follows:
Bazzite is a custom image built upon Fedora Atomic Desktops that brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favourite handheld. Bazzite is designed for Linux newcomers and enthusiasts alike with Steam pre-installed, HDR and VRR support, improved CPU schedulers for responsive game play, and numerous community-developed tools and tweaks to streamline your gaming experience.
The Bazzite website also mentions rolling back updates and reverting to older versions of the operating system are handy features which are available in case an update breaks the system:
Bazzite is atomic meaning that after every update the previous version of the operating system is retained on your machine. Should an update cause any issues, you can select the previous image at boot time. Additionally, images of the operating system are retained in our repositories for ninety days and can be switched to via the terminal. NVIDIA driver update broke something you needed? No worries, rebase to the last known good release and pin it so that it's retained as long as needed.
From the Bazzite's download page we need to make a series of selections from drop-down lists in order to narrow down which ISO file we need. We begin by selecting which type of computer we have. Options include generic PCs, Steam Deck, Framework Laptop, and a few others. We are asked to pick which type of GPU our computer has: AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA. Then we are asked which desktop we want to use: Plasma or GNOME. Finally, we pick a "gaming mode": single user with automatic login or regular user mode.
The ISO I was offered was 9.3GB in size. The Bazzite website says the ISO is so large because of portable packages and duplicate software:
Desktop operating systems distributed in OCI containers are still a relatively new concept and we've had to make some concessions for technical reasons. Flatpaks and their runtimes are included in the ISO, and a second copy of Fedora Linux is used to bootstrap the installer. The large size of our ISO is not indicative of final install size on disk.
Booting from the provided ISO brings up a menu which offers to boot into the installer or test the media's integrity before launching the system installer. Either option brings up a graphical environment and starts the Anaconda installer. The installer asks us to select our preferred language and then offers us a group of configuration modules we can access in any order. These modules help us connect to a local network, create a user account, pick a time zone, and partition the hard drive. The drive partitioning screens are a bit more complex that those of Calamares and Ubiquity, but the module also offers a guided option which will take over an entire disk.
Anaconda then starts copying files to the local disk. Progress seemed to stall a few times, at the 10% and 50% marks, where the progress bar froze for a few minutes. However, in both cases, the progress bar eventually leaped forward about 40% and then the installer reported it had finished successfully.
Running the installed system
The first time I booted by new copy of Bazzite the splash screen reported it was updating "kargs". Then, after a few minutes of steady disk activity, the screen locked up and the system failed to respond to keyboard input. I forced a reboot and this time the system locked up early in the boot process, once more leaving me with a blank screen.
I tried accessing the boot menu and found there were four entries, two identical entries for "ostree:0" and two for "ostree:1". I tried each of these and they all provided the same experience. I also tried re-installing the operating system in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes, but again Bazzite failed to boot.
I found it interesting the live media worked well, providing a nice graphical installer, but when letting the system take over my entire disk, the distribution didn't work for me. Bazzite also failed to run on a laptop on which its parent distro, Fedora, works. This is understandable, I think. Bazzite is still quite a young project and it may take a few cycles to sort out the rough edges. I decided to move on to another project on the waiting list.
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Playtron OS Alpha 1
The Playtron OS project has a mission similar to Bazzite. The project seeks to support multiple game stores on multiple hardware devices, including the Steam Deck:
Platform support (Alpha 1) includes AMD and Intel compatibility, with ARM builds for select devices coming later. Tested devices include AYANEO 2/2S, ASUS ROG Ally, GPD Win 4, Lenovo Legion Go, and both LCD and OLED versions of Valve Steam Deck. Game Library Integration supports Epic Games Store, GOG.com, and Steam, allowing easy import and play of existing games.
While I didn't find a specific entry in the list of supported hardware indicating whether the project supports generic personal computers, I did find this comment in the install instructions: "Only single GPU systems are supported. If a computer has both an iGPU and a dGPU (common on laptops), they will not work with the Alpha 1 release."
The above warning didn't apply to me, so I proceeded. Playtron OS is in its early development stages and is still considered an alpha release. As such, the release notes indicate there are still lots of issues to fix. Here are a few examples:
A physical keyboard is required for most devices to complete the installation. Physical keyboard input is not supported for library navigation yet. Use a controller for the best experience. CPU resource utilisation for Playtron can be high. During account linking, Epic Games Store account e-mail and password sometimes does not work on the first try. Some owned games do not appear on Playtron OS.
I downloaded the latest alpha snapshot of Playtron OS which is provided as a 2.8GB ISO.
Installing
The Playtron distribution requires UEFI support in order to boot, it will not work in Legacy BIOS mode. When the live media boots it brings up a text console where the installer checks to make sure we have a disk large enough to hold the distribution (at least 55GB is required). We are then asked to select a disk from a list presented in a text menu. We are warned the disk will be wiped and then the distribution is copied to the selected disk. The install process is quite fast and only took about two minutes on my laptop.
My new copy of the distribution started to boot, showed a series of systemd messages, and then froze when it reached the systemd-userdb service. I tried booting a few times, but each time the system locked up upon reaching this service. After that there was no response to keyboard input and no disk activity.
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Tucana Linux 3.1
My third and final trip to the waiting list brought a different type of distribution to my attention. Tucana Linux is an independent, keep-it-simple distribution which uses the Calamares system installer. The project claims to offer easy local repository creation for custom packages, build scripts for making your own ISO, and a custom package manager called Mercury which is written in Bash script.
The Tucana project offers two pre-configured desktop editions: KDE and GNOME. We are told there are also packages in the repositories for setting up the Cinnamon, Xfce, i3, IceWM, and TWM graphical interfaces:
All Tucana installers will ask for a repository mirror you want to use. You can either use the public mirrors detailed at the wiki post here or host your [own] with the instructions from another wiki article here. In addition all Tucana ISOs, regardless of their user interface, can be used to install any desktop environment listed on this page and more, the installer will give you an option to pick at install time.
Despite these assurances, only three desktop environments are listed in the installer as being available: GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Xfce. The project's wiki makes a curious statement about setting up the distribution. Specifically, it says:
The repo must be hand-inputted, we currently have 1 mirror with more coming. Of course you can always host your own.
It then lists the one mirror, which seems odd. Why not have this repository's URL in a text file? Or make it so we can select this repository during the install process from a list? Manually looking up the URL in the wiki and typing it manually seems like the most cumbersome way to handle this situation.
I decided to download the KDE edition of Tucana Linux which is offered as a 2.6GB ISO file. Booting from this ISO brings up the KDE Plasma desktop and places a panel across the bottom of the screen. The desktop uses a light theme and places a single icon on the desktop for launching the system installer. The key elements of the live environment were working for me so I dived straight into the Calamares installer.
Tucana Linux 3.1 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 816kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The Calamares installer starts by walking us through the usual questions. We are asked to pick a preferred language, our timezone, and to make up a username and password. One screen asks us to pick which desktop we want: Plasma, GNOME, Xfce, or No Desktop are the options. I like that clicking each option shows a small screenshot so we know what the desktop looks like. I'm less thrilled that the Tucana website claims to support more window managers, but they are not actually options in the system installer.
Calamares offers friendly manual partitioning and guided partitioning. The latter will set up a single ext4 partition for the root filesystem along with a swap partition.
Calamares then starts a slideshow while it sets up our new copy of Tucana. Most of the slides simply say "This is the second slide", "This is the third slide," and so on. If we look at the install log, it's almost exclusively populated by messages which say "Next slide" with the time stamp.
Early in the process a window pops up and offers to test our repo connection. Though the window doesn't provide any instructions, I realized this is the window where we need to type in the URL for the Tucana repository, then click "Test connection" to start downloading packages. I had thought, since I was installing from the KDE edition's media, the installer would pull packages/files from the local USB drive. However, it looks as though the install process pulls all packages from the on-line repository.
This takes a long time, with each package downloaded one at a time, then installed, then the next package is downloaded, then it is in installed, all in serial. We can watch, using a process monitor, the wget commands fetching each package individually, then wait while the package is installed, before the next package is fetched. This is unusually slow and took about 45 minutes to set up the minimal desktop system. During this time, Calamares didn't show any progress information so there was no indication (until I had opened a terminal to watch the processes perform their tasks) that anything was happening.
Calamares eventually reported success and offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My new copy of Tucana booted and indicated it was running version 6.10 of the Linux kernel and using systemd 256. After a few seconds it displayed a series of errors which read: "Failed to start Name Service Cache Daemon" and then the system appeared to lock up. No graphical environment was displayed and no text prompt was shown.
I tried restarting a few times and found that I was able to switch to a text console using the ALT+F2 key combination. From there I could sign into my user account and explore the command line.
I tried to start the Plasma desktop from the command line, using both the start-up commands for the Wayland and X11 sessions. Both failed with similar error messages which indicated the distribution was missing a dependency, the libbz2 library. I'd like to point out that the Plasma session worked on the live media, so it would seem the package manager did not properly fetch all dependencies from the remote repository during the install process.
Since a dependency was missing, let's talk about the project's custom package manager, Mercury. There is no single "mercury" command, instead there are four related Bash scripts called mercury-install, mercury-update, mercury-sync, and mercury-reinstall. Eagle-eyed readers will note there is no command for removing packages. There also isn't any Mercury command for searching for packages. If we want to get a list of software available in the repositories we can browse a text file called /var/cache/mercury/available-packages. We can run searches or use grep filters on this file to seek software we want to fetch.
I tried installing a few packages, after syncing my repository data, and found mercury-install worked. I was able to grab a few programs and run them. Since I didn't have a desktop environment or working audio, functionality was limited as many packages are for desktop applications. I did find a few command line programs in the repositories, downloaded them, and ran them successfully.
In an effort to get Plasma running I downloaded the bzip2 and bzip2 library packages. With these installed Plasma still failed to run, reporting the same libbz2 dependency was missing.
There are not many packages in the Mercury repository yet, just 1,186 packages. Which is about 1/50 of what Debian and Fedora offer.
While the desktop experience didn't work for me (once the distribution was installed), the command line mostly functioned well. The sudo command was set up and granted my user account admin rights. The usual GNU command line tools were installed for me. The man command is on the system, but there are no manual pages, even for the in-house Mercury package manager.
Conclusions
I usually like small projects which are trying to keep things simple and clean. These sorts of projects usually bring improved efficiency and speed at the cost of modern features. However, Tucana manages to do the opposite. Its install process and package manager are slower, by far, compared to most modern systems and there doesn't appear to be any reduction in resource consumption (the live environment used 830MB of RAM to run Plasma). Which means we are missing out on thousands of packages and convenient features for a slower and similar sized operating system, when compared to most mainstream Linux distributions.
Maybe Tucana will improve in future releases, or make more use of its custom package manager. For now, it's not bringing anything helpful to the experience.
I also want to note that one frustration I experienced twice this week was live systems providing working graphical interfaces, while the installed system did not. One of the reasons people use live desktop media is to test to confirm an operating system will work properly with their hardware before they install it. Using an install process which installs alternative packages or configurations which provide a different experience largely nullifies the benefits of having live media. I hope other up and coming projects keep this in mind so that their installed software works (or doesn't) the same as the live media.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Redox being ported to RISC-V and running the COSMIC software centre, TrueNAS talks about new ZFS features, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, Debian refreshes install media, LXQt supports multiple Wayland window managers
The Redox OS team have been hard at work over the past month, porting their software and important new utilities. Redox has been made to boot on the Raspberry Pi 4, thanks to Jeremy Soller. The build on the Pi is still in its early stages and needs USB support to be used properly on the single-board computer. Redox also made strides on RISC-V systems: "RISC-V is now a supported target for Redox! Andrey Turkin has done extensive work on RISC-V support in the kernel, toolchain and elsewhere. Thanks very much Andrey for the excellent work! Jeremy Soller has incorporated RISC-V support into the toolchain and build process, has begun some refactoring of the kernel and device drivers to better handle all the supported architectures, and has gotten the Orbital Desktop working when running in QEMU."
The Redox team also reported they have managed to get the COSMIC Store software centre ported and new Redox packages can be installed using the COSMIC software centre. Details and screenshots can be found in the project's monthly newsletter.
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The TrueNAS project has published a blog post which provides an overview of new ZFS features. The advanced filesystem has recently gained some practical features such as faster deduplication, gradually expanding RAID arrays, and direct I/O performance improvements. RAID expansion is probably one of the most requested ZFS features and its process is described in the post: "A much-anticipated feature for smaller systems and home users of TrueNAS, RAIDZ expansion allows a small pool (e.g., a single RAIDZ vdev) to be gradually expanded with one drive at a time. Existing data is preserved with its original parity level and rewritten across all drives, while new data is written with the new parity configuration. This simplified administrative process gives smaller TrueNAS systems the flexibility to expand in single drive increments, rather than adding a full vdev of drives. The same expansion feature works regardless of the parity level used - RAIDZ1, Z2, or Z3 - but cannot migrate between protection levels. The expansion process is done while the ZFS pool is online, similar to the resilvering process when a drive fails and is replaced. Once completed, the larger pool's full performance is available. The new disk is used immediately, with additional capacity being reclaimed as existing data is rewritten."
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The FreeBSD project published its quarterly newsletter for the months of July through September. Some of the highlights include a cross-platform FUSE driver for the UFS filesystem which currently has read support and should soon enable writing data to UFS partitions; a graphical bhyve virtual machine manager; and support for booting FreeBSD on the PinePhone Pro: "A new project trying to make FreeBSD usable on the PinePhone Pro has been started during August. The current FreeBSD RELEASE images already boot on a PinePhone Pro, but no screen output or other devices are supported. The aim is to step by step support additional components so that the device one day might be usable as a highly mobile FreeBSD device. Over the last few weeks, the groundwork has been implemented like getting used to the device, cross-compiling and booting a 15.0-CURRENT custom kernel as well as toggling the LEDs (red/green/blue in the front). Also, the LCD backlight can be turned on already and the USB-C hub is enabled even though it is not yet functional due to missing power management support.
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The Debian project has published new install media for Debian 12 "Bookworm". The new media includes security fixes, but does not represent a new version of the distribution. "The Debian project is pleased to announce the eighth update of its stable distribution Debian 12 (codename Bookworm). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 12 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old Bookworm media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror." The refreshed media is available through Debian's download page.
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The LXQt desktop project has reached a major milestone in supporting Wayland sessions. The lightweight desktop is now compatible with Wayland and supports working with seven Wayland-enabled window managers. "Through its new component lxqt-wayland-session, LXQt 2.1.0 supports 7 Wayland sessions (with Labwc, KWin, Wayfire, Hyprland, Sway, River and Niri), has two Wayland back-ends in lxqt-panel (one for kwin_wayland and the other general), and will add more later. All LXQt components that are not limited to X11 - i.e., most components - work fine on Wayland. The sessions are available in the new section Wayland Settings inside LXQt Session Settings. At least one supported Wayland compositor should be installed in addition to lxqt-wayland-session for it to be used. There is still hard work to do, but all of the current LXQt Wayland sessions are quite usable; their differences are about what the supported Wayland compositors provide." LXQt continues to support X11 sessions too. Further details are provided in the project's announcement.
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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) |
Detecting Screen sessions
Am-I-in-a-simulation asks: I constantly use the screen command for running longer tasks in case I logout or get disconnected. Sometimes I forget if I'm in a screen session or just the regular terminal and accidentally kill my terminal session. Is there a way to check if I'm running inside screen or just in plain Bash?
DistroWatch answers: For any readers who are unaware of the screen program, or related tools such as tmux, these utilities are called multiplexers. A multiplexer allows you to run multiple command line shells from one terminal. These shells can continue to run in the background when we logout or get disconnected from the machine where they are running.
Typically, the tmux and screen tools are used to run important or long-running jobs on a remote computer. The idea is we sign into the remote machine, launch a screen instance to create a new shell session, and start a new task. Then we can detach from the screen session, logout, or do other things. The task will continue to run in the special screen session in the background until we come back and reconnect to the shell.
This is handy for a few reasons. One, if our network connection drops the background shell will continue to work. Usually a dropped connection means any task in progress is terminated and screen protects against this. The second benefit to using screen is it allows us to run multiple shells from one terminal (or virtual terminal window). We can launch as many screen background shells as we want and run different tasks in each one, all from the same terminal. The tmux program is especially good in this situation as it makes switching between shell sessions nearly seamless. With tmux we can switch between different running shells the same way we would flip between web browser tabs to see different web pages.
As to how to tell if you are currently inside a background shell which was launched from tmux or screen, there are a few things you can check. If you are worried that running the exit command or pressing Ctrl-D might end your current terminal (or remote login) session you can guard against disconnecting yourself by looking at the SHLVL variable in your shell.
The SHLVL variable shows how many layers deep you are inside shells. In other words, how many times you've run a shell (or tmux or screen) instance inside your original console shell. You can check your shell level (SHLVL) by running:
$ echo $SHLVL
1
A response of "1" means you are at the top level, you're not inside a screen or tmux or other nested shell session. If you disconnect now it'll drop your connection to the server, or close your terminal window if you're running a local shell session. A response of "2" or higher means you are inside a background shell session and terminating it (with "exit" or Ctrl-D) will simply pop you back up to the parent shell.
There are some other approaches you can use to see if you have background shells running and, if so, whether you're using them (or in them) right now. Both screen and tmux have list commands (abbreviated "ls") which will show any shell sessions running in the background to which we can connect (or which are currently being accessed). With the screen command we can run the following:
$ screen -ls
There is a screen on:
43002.pts-1.laptop (10/16/24 18:05:33) (Attached)
Here we run the screen command with the "ls" flag and it tells us there is one session. The process identification number (PID) of the existing screen session is 43002. The "(Attached)" text at the end of the line indicates this session is in use, we are likely inside this session.
The tmux command has a similar approach. Here we can see one tmux background shell is running, but is not attached. In other words, the shell is running in the background and we are not currently inside that shell. Note the word "Attached" is missing from the output.
$ tmux ls
0: 1 windows (created Wed Oct 16 18:06:29 2024)
To reconnect to a shell session that is running in the background we can run a command to dive into the running session. The command is "screen -r" for screen and the tmux equivalent is "tmux attach".
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
NethSecurity 8.3
The NethSecurity team have launched a new update to the project's 8.x series. NethSecurity 8.3 features new monitoring tools, centralized update management, and easy access to options which help prevent bruteforce attacks. "We are excited to announce the release of NethSecurity project milestone 8.3 with image version 8-23.05.5-ns.1.3.0. This release focuses on new features for subscriptions and improved user experience. NethSecurity 8.3 brings several new features and improvements. Centralized unit update management - from the controller, it is now possible to update the unit seamlessly (packages and/or image); real-time monitoring page - a comprehensive dashboard for NethSecurity monitoring has been created; historical monitoring allows the user to see how the firewall is behaving from the NethSecurity Controller, please note that a subscription is required for this feature; improved Threat Shield UI - local block list, logging and brute force protection settings are now exposed in the Threat Shield page; added protection against brute force attacks on the web interface; a new NAT helper configuration page has been added." A complete list of new features is available in the release announcement.
Parted Magic 2024_11_03
Parted Magic is a small live CD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives. The project's latest release is version 2024_11_03 which updates the Linux kernel, introduces WINE 9.x and provides upgrades for LibreOffice and ClamAV. "This version of Parted Magic updates the kernel to Linux 6.11 and adds/updates various programs. WINE has been updated to version 9 with support for 32-bit and 64-bit programs. I didn't do any extensive testing, but I found an old AutoCAD 14 CD from the 90s and it did install and run. I also tested a few 64-bit Windows binaries and those also ran. Winetricks was added to help install programs and missing DLL files. I didn't realize how long it's been since LibreOffice was updated, so that got some attention. The clamtk program was saying the definitions were out of date, even though they were not. This was corrected with a ClamAV update. A forum user suggested Hddsuperclone to be added. Updated programs: BIND 9.18.30, Boost 1.78.0, Cabextract 1.11, ClamAV 1.4.1, cups-cURL 8.10.1, LibreOffice 24.8.2, Mozilla Firefox 115.16.1esr, NVIDIA driver 560.35.03, OpenSSH 9.9p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1zb, Perl5.34.0 Wine 9.0, ZFS on Linux 2.2.6" Additional information is provided on the project's news page, while download and purchase options are offered through the distribution's online store.
UBports 20.04 OTA-6
The UBports team have published a new update for their mobile operating system. The new release, version 20.04 OTA-6, is a relatively conservative update as the developers are working to polish features rather than introduce big changes. "Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-6 contains only a minimal number of changes due to our current focus on Ubuntu base OS upgrade. That said, we still have a few interesting changes: Some support for newer generations of Android HAL (hardware abstraction layer) has been added. This aims to make Ubuntu Touch support newer devices such as Fairphone 5 and the upcoming Volla Phone Quintus better, however this does not imply complete support for those devices just yet. Wireless Display see improved stability on some devices. (Credit goes to Azkali from Volla) General bug fixes and security updates." Originally VoLTE was planned for Vollla phones, but this feature has been held back due to an issue found in QA testing. The release announcement offers additional information. A list of supported devices and download options can be found on the UBports devices page.
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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: 3,110
- Total data uploaded: 45.7TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Tmux or Screen?
In the Questions and Answers section of DistroWatch Weekly we talked about checking to see if our command line shell was running inside a Tmux or Screen session. These two programs are commonly used when managing long-running remote connections or when accessing multiple terminal sessions from one window is beneficial. We'd like to hear if you use either Tmux or Screen, or perhaps a similar tool. Let us know about your preference in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on backing up and restoring lists of packages in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Screen or Tmux?
Screen: | 186 (11%) |
Tmux: | 300 (18%) |
Other: | 48 (3%) |
None: | 1161 (68%) |
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Website News |
New projects added to database
openEuler
openEuler is an open source project operated by the OpenAtom Foundation. It is a digital infrastructure distribution which can fit into a wide variety of server, cloud computing, edge computing, and embedded deployments. openEuler is compatible with multiple CPU architectures (including x86_64 servers, cloud environments, ARM-powered embedded devices, and RISC-V boards) and suitable for a wide range of environments. The project releases a long-term support (LTS) version every two years in order to provide a stable platform for enterprise users. A new openEuler interim version is released every six months to provide more up to date technologies. While openEuler focuses on server deployments desktop environments (including UKUI, Deepin, GNOME, and Xfce) are available.
openEuler 24.09 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 728kB, resolution: 1014x761 pixels)
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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, 18 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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Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Almost but not quite. (by Devlin7 on 2024-11-11 02:01:03 GMT from New Zealand)
Hi Jesse, I was reading your comments about the gaming machines and it reminded of a WM distro I tried a few weeks back. Installation went well, no issues creating my user account. When I logged on, everything looked great. I decided to see what installed and I noticed in the .config folder that there was lot in there. I could see every bar, notifcation and dock package the distro owner had tried before packaging the "distro". What was concerning though was the users firefox history was there also.
2 • Three LEMONS (by Roger Brown on 2024-11-11 04:27:16 GMT from Australia)
Once more Jesse has wasted his and OUR time reviewing distros which are simply not ready for useful consideration. This simply detracts from the reputation of our fine operating system and gives readers the impression that installing Linux is a doubtful and dodgy enterprise.
What we need are reviews of distros that DO work and CAN be recommended to readers - not half baked efforts that do nothing other than diminish the reputation of the Linux operating system.
3 • Interesting gaming distro results (by James Jones on 2024-11-11 06:07:29 GMT from United States)
Hello Jesse. I was reading the results you got from testing the three gaming distro and surprised you ran into issue with Bazzite because it works great on my setup. I never ran into the issue you reported when installing it on real hardware and since I'm using an AMD video card, I was able to get that SteamOS interface to work fine.
4 • tmox advantages (by AdamB on 2024-11-11 06:08:17 GMT from Australia)
I have recently started using screen and tmux. One of the great advantages of tmux is that it displays a status bar, which shows the current session number, and lists the windows available in that session, with the current window highlighted. If I am not seeing that status bar, thrn I am not attached.
Screen gives no such status information, and it is easy to get confused.
One feature that confused me for a while is that tmux's "windows" are equivalent to screen's "sessions".
I have a WSL installation of Debian on a Windows laptop; this gives me a single virtual terminal. Running tmux gives me access to as many "windows" as I need.
Using the default key-bindings, it is possible to use tmux on the local machine, and screen on a remote machine (or, maybe, the reverse) - trying to use the same multiplexer at both ends is unlikely to work well.
5 • Bazzite (by FlorianB on 2024-11-11 07:16:03 GMT from Germany)
I know "works on my system" is just about the most useless feedback there is but, like for James, Bazzite works great for me (even with an Nvidia GPU). First distro where HDR just worked without any tweaks. Hope you'll revisit it some time in the future.
6 • @2 Lemons (by Andy Prough on 2024-11-11 08:16:08 GMT from Switzerland)
>"Once more Jesse has wasted his and OUR time reviewing distros which are simply not ready for useful consideration. This simply detracts from the reputation of our fine operating system and gives readers the impression that installing Linux is a doubtful and dodgy enterprise."
Installing ANY operating system is a doubtful and dodgy enterprise, which is why about 97% of users never change the Windows or MacOS that is pre-installed on the laptops or desktops that nearly all of them buy. Fortunately, here on DistroWatch we can share info on the operating systems that work better or worse. Including in Jesse's reviews and our own user reviews.
I've found a number of relatively obscure distros that worked very well for me over the years from reading about them here on DistroWatch. Some that come to mind are Exe GNU/Linux, Hyperbola, and GNUinOS. It's well worth reviewing both the mainstream distros and the more obscure ones.
7 • Zellij > Tmux or Screen (by Shadow53 on 2024-11-11 08:56:04 GMT from United States)
Zellij is a relative newcomer in the space, but I find it the easiest to use, in large part because it shows the common keyboard shortcuts in the bottom panel. It also supports Tmux keybindings, though I haven't exercised that.
8 • Lemons (by Roger Brown on 2024-11-11 09:08:05 GMT from Australia)
@6 I would absolutely disagree that installing Linux is doubtful or dodgy. But it is certainly a matter of choosing a reliable distro.
That's where Distrowatch comes in. It should ensure that the distros it lists and (more importantly) reviews are indeed reliable and suitable to new Linux users.
Whilst I applaud Jesse's desire to explore different ways of presenting Linux - immutable, atomic, container based or whatever - we need listings and reviews that are invariably reliable.
Personally I wouldn't be concerned if we only listed 50 distros or even less, But they need to be distros that users can trust.
9 • @8 - Lemons (by Andy Prough on 2024-11-11 11:04:27 GMT from Switzerland)
@8 - >"@6 I would absolutely disagree that installing Linux is doubtful or dodgy. But it is certainly a matter of choosing a reliable distro."
That's not what I said - I said that installing ANY operating system is doubtful and dodgy. There's millions of things that can go wrong, as there are billions of combinations of hardware, software and drivers. This is why the extreme vast majority of computer users, probably over 97%, never install a new OS once they purchase their Windows machine or their Mac.
For those few of us who do build our own machines and/or install new OS's over a proprietary OS, we should feel free to experiment. Like many of us, I've built Linux from Scratch, I've created my own distro respins, compiled my own custom kernels, re-configured my window managers and sound systems and network services, etc, etc. I see nothing wrong with trying out an experimental distro that is not ready for primetime. It's another opportunity to learn.
10 • @2 & @8 (by dragonmouth on 2024-11-11 12:11:10 GMT from United States)
It is nice to know ahead of time what works and what doesn't and if it doesn't, why not . It is also nice to know whether your problems with an install are only yours or if others have them. Jesse provides a valuable service by testing esoteric distros. If you feel the reviews are a waste of time, feel free not to read them.
11 • reviews (by tomas on 2024-11-11 12:43:30 GMT from Czechia)
I do not mind that from time to time there is a review of a distro on the waiting list. But I think that there should not be too much of them as lately. Also some caution should be used before including them in the regular database. Having read the review on Redox I would not include it yet and keep it on the waiting list.
On the contrary, for instance, I miss a recent review of RebornOS. I installed it recently on another PC and was rather surprized by the changes since my last time. Before the desktop on live medium was Gnome, now they switched to Xfce. Not only that, I would like to know Jesse's opinion on the detailed selections during the instal process. (It enables to select the preferred desktop to be installed but the applications that usually make part of the package are somewhat scattered elsewhere.)
12 • GnomeOS (by Dave Postles on 2024-11-11 12:58:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
Just wondering if anyone has tried it. It's a big download.
https://os.gnome.org/
13 • is Tucana a RAM eater? (by Adenoid Hynkler on 2024-11-11 13:03:23 GMT from Italy)
Tucana live environment uses 830MB of RAM to run Plasma. Debian 12 KDE uses 700MB of RAM to run Plasma. I think it is not a great difference.
14 • Lemons (by penguinx86 on 2024-11-11 14:57:00 GMT from United States)
There are lots of distros reviewed on Distrowatch that are still in development. A work in progress or not ready for prime time. I think these preliminary reviews are geared more towards developers, rather than end users looking for an OOB solution. I used to try every new distro that came along, burning an ISO file to a CD/DVD then trying to install it. Some worked well with my hardware, and others not so much. Then, I'd wipe my hard drive, download a new distro and try again. I wasted lots of CD/DVDs that way. (That was before I learned about Virtualbox.) But it was a good learning experience. I appreciate the work that went into these new distros, even if many didn't work for me as a daily driver. They may still be a 'work in progress' but I wouldn't call them Lemons.
15 • Good for Redox (by Mixi on 2024-11-11 15:27:16 GMT from France)
It's nice to see there is still serious effort put into it. I've tested it (on VM) few years back and was just a pet project at this moment, not even something Linux related. But since few years, it starts to look like Linux, run like Linux, and maybe one day, be usable on computers like Linux. I'm not saying that it will replace Linux any day, ever, but for few specific and well tested setups (like some Raspberry Pi), it can be just a possible replacement for Linux, as long as it completely binary compatible with it. After years that developers are trying to integrate Rust into Linux, with not much real success (not a single fully functioning driver), Redox can be where all this Rust efforts could be put. Maybe just as an experiment to get Rust ready for OS development, where Linux seems to be a too ambitious target. I'm not trying to start a flame war with Rust, I much don't care about Rust vs C, but at this moment, they've manage to create a whole OS using Rust, but nobody has been able to replace any part of Linux using the same technology. So it may not be about Rust is a good or a bad programming language but more about it's the best language for Linux, which seems actually not. So if another open source project can benefit of the Rust developers devotion, it's always a good thing for any of us.
16 • On alleged lemons and leaked browser history (by Rowley Birkin, QC on 2024-11-11 17:48:39 GMT from Denmark)
I for one enjoy Jesse's reviews. While not ready for prime time, projects like these show how people use their creativity, educate themselves, learn and hopefully, in time, create new and interesting projects to the benefit of us all. Without diversity, innovation and a lot of failures, there can be no progress.
@2: Mr Brown, you are taking things too seriously. Only a microscopic minority of computer users even know or care about linux. And why does it matter to you what they think? It's just an OS, use it if you like. Or don't, the only one who cares is you. It's not a competition.
@1: Devlin7, I trust you made the developer aware that their Firefox history had been leaked?
17 • @AdamB, try a .screenrc file for status line (by Kingneutron on 2024-11-11 19:17:47 GMT from United States)
https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/dot-screenrc-nonroot
Screen is pretty customizable, but you may have to research it a bit. Rename the file to ~/.screenrc and then launch ' screen -aAO -h 2000 '
18 • Bazzite also (by npaladin2000 on 2024-11-11 21:07:22 GMT from United States)
Like others have commented here, I have used Bazzite on several machines without these issues. I've used both a modern Lenovo laptop and a ROG Ally and they both worked flawlessly with Bazzite. I did notice the test hardware was on the older side (particularly the GPU) and may not have had proper Vulkan support.
19 • Tmux and ohmytmux (by Vinfall on 2024-11-12 01:39:26 GMT from Hong Kong)
@17: I believe that screen is customizable, but there should be an example with good defaults in place before people are persuaded. The one you mentioned is fairly simple and `hardstatus string` looks like a curse.
For tmux there is ohmytmux (https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux), the only annoying thing is command prefix (a bonus ctrl-a with tmux's default ctrl-b) which breaks the command line conventions (ctrl-a to move cursor to beginning of line and ctrl-e to move cursor to end of line), all others are either pretty good out of box or minor personal preferences.
With my customization, I used to run TTY only and it worked pretty well. While in screen you may achieve similar results, I doubt if I would invest so much time w/o a solid framework.
20 • Re #2 (by X on 2024-11-12 05:25:14 GMT from Hong Kong)
If only polished error free operating systems are reviewed, then our time would be wasted. These reviews can be a help in resolving issues, whether solutions come from other users of the developers themselves. Reviews of newly devoleping versions brings in outsiders to test and provide solutions. Also, new concepts and ideas can be experimented and successful ones will be incorporated into the mainstream OSes.
Of course, we all like to see our favorite or longstanding OS get reviewed, If only thosed are reviewed, it may, in a way this can put limitations on what may be achieved,by leaving projects in the shadows, which is the oposite of the philosophy that got us to this point.
21 • screen (by Fabio on 2024-11-12 06:38:21 GMT from Germany)
I use screen with customization in the file .screenrc. Generally I insert several tabs with Contr-A-C changing their names, etc. My only problem with screen is that, if the machine is powered off, I have to restart creating again the tabs, renaming, etc. I mean that screen has no elementary restore option after shutdown or i do not know how to define it.
22 • @18 (by James Jones on 2024-11-12 06:56:30 GMT from United States)
I don't think the test machine is old considering that the desktop PC I'm using right now with Bazzite is an 8th Gen i7 while Jesse used an 11th Gen i5, which should work. Prior to getting the AMD GPU for the desktop PC, I used the integrated graphics on the 8th Gen i7 to play some lighter games and it worked fine with Bazzite.
23 • @2 Lemons (by Georg on 2024-11-12 11:53:23 GMT from Czechia)
@2 There's no such thing as "the Linux operating system", and I don't mean it in a philosophical way. (This is as practical as it gets.) Since there are countless _distributions_ of (what we usually refer to as) Linux, often with hardly any coordination between them, you can't blame one party for the mistakes/shortcomings of the other. (Just as you can't blame Microsoft for a bug in MacOS, or you can't blame Apple for an outdated component in Debian, or you can't blame Debian for a shortcoming of whatever version of Windows -- similarly, you can't blame Debian for an Ubuntu-specific error, and we could list the examples ad nauseam.) The free software world makes reusing each other's work possible, which includes the inherent possibility of fragmentation. You have to keep that in mind, lest you confuse something with innumerable independent parts as one monolith ("_the_ Linux operating system").
24 • @Kingneutron thanks for the .screenrc (by AdamB on 2024-11-12 12:56:04 GMT from Australia)
I have downloaded the .screenrc file and have been experimenting with it. It has been working well for me.
I have come to realise how little I know about the workings of screen - in particular, the relation between sessions and windows. There is more in common between screen and tmux than I originally realised.
If I have started screen on my linux desktop, and am locally attached, then in order to use screen from another machine via ssh, I need to start a new screen session (once logged in via ssh), using a command such as "screen -S ". The new session will also be set up in accordance with your .screenrc file.
Screen's "hardstatus" line has worked well over ssh connections so far.
25 • reviews (by Dolphin Oracle on 2024-11-12 13:29:40 GMT from United States)
I like the reviews section, and I think its good to have a dive into the waiting list every now and then, if for no other reason to be reminded that doing these things is not easy, even when basing off another distro's repository.
Its also nice to see when a small project is trying something a little different, even if its not quite fleshed out yet.
26 • Long-awaited justice for Fedora KDE (by David on 2024-11-12 15:50:36 GMT from United States)
Lnuxtoday.com:
"In a significant development, the Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Spin has officially been granted Edition status, which promises greater visibility and support for the KDE experience on Fedora Linux. In simple terms, Fedora Workstation and the KDE Plasma edition are now on the same level.
Effective with the arrival of Fedora 42 ... unless this is a hoax.
27 • Fedora (by Jesse on 2024-11-12 16:16:10 GMT from Canada)
@26: It's not a hoax. We covered the story about Fedora making Plasma an official edition here, with references, yesterday: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=showheadline&story=18852
28 • Tucana Linux (by LinuxLarry on 2024-11-12 18:02:03 GMT from Brazil)
Agree totally with Jesse's observations regarding Tucana Linux. I'm a big supporter of Linux projects in general but since around 80% of 'based on' distros have no need to exist I love it when new totally independent distros get released. Having navigated the repo URL during the installation process I waited eagerly for it to complete... and waited... and waited! I read in the review about this taking a very long time but after 5 hours of it still downloading stuff I thought that was long enough and gave up. Pity, but for this to have any chance of success the install process needs some serious adjustment.
29 • Distro Reviews should report bugs and the follow up. (by ViamoIam on 2024-11-12 22:46:00 GMT from Canada)
When reviewing a distribution, bugs should be reported, and the experience shared. The experience of a whether an issue is resolved or not will vary, but the process will reveal a great deal. Perhaps their is no bug tracker. Perhaps an immutable distribution will no longer work easily for something.
30 • TUCANA (by rhtoras on 2024-11-12 23:16:00 GMT from Greece)
"My new copy of Tucana booted and indicated it was running version 6.10 of the Linux kernel and using systemd 256. After a few seconds it displayed a series of errors which read: "Failed to start Name Service Cache Daemon"
This is all you need to know about systemD and Tucana. Sorry but no "independent" distribution based systemD exist. Sad but true...
I would love to see a review about dragora gnu linux because i rarely see people talk about this distribution even here...
31 • So many Linux distros ... to test ... but which? (by Greg Zeng on 2024-11-13 00:18:08 GMT from Australia)
There seems to be a lack of competent journalists in the computer world now. None have a full understanding of how these computer systems are evolving. Generally, the hardware is downsizing physically. The software and operating systems are slowly upsizing to overtake existing software and operating systems.
The middle ground of hardware computing seems to be desktop computing, including networked workstations. The growth is in smaller IOT, transportable, and wearables with hardware. Linux in these newer hardware systems is trying to grow with Android and Chrome operating systems. Apple and BSD are Unix-based, rather than Linux-based. Bridging these Unix and Microsoft systems with Linux are a few emulators (including WINE & CrossOver) and many virtual operating systems, using another operating system as the first base, to gain access to the Home databases of the main system.
Linux has obvious handicaps for all operating systems. EXT4 seems impossible to read-write in Microsoft systems. BTRFS can be read-written for Microsoft with external utilities. However, BTRFS does not have the compression and other system ease that is with Microsoft NTFS. Linux has its open-source version of NTFS, but it is not as industry-stable as the official Microsoft version.
All operating systems are overwhelmed by hardware innovations and advances in AI and Display technologies. Nvidia and other hardware creators are creating demands that the software coders are continually trying to optimise further..
32 • illumos (by illumos on 2024-11-13 04:59:56 GMT from Japan)
@31 BSD and macOS aren't based on System V UNIX. illumos is only true UNIX based open source operation system. You can use openindiana as your daily driver!
33 • @2 Entitlement (by Hans Gruber on 2024-11-13 12:37:14 GMT from United States)
@2 Pretty entitled attitude to tell Jesse what he should be doing on his own site, eh? If you don’t like the reviews, don’t read them. As far as perception of Linux as a suitable OS being damaged by reviews of fringe distros: evidence please?
34 • @30 - Independent distros with systemd (by Uncle Slacky on 2024-11-13 18:58:49 GMT from France)
Solus is one example of an independent distro with systemd, at least.
35 • Reviews, poll, etc... (by Otis on 2024-11-14 02:13:39 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the reviews, especially Bazzite. I have it on my wife's (discarded long since) ancient HP laptop. I'll be fooling with it more but so far have taken a liking to its nature, so to speak.
Hmm.. once again no "I don't give a rat's fuzzy fanny" as poll choice. I keep having to bow out of making a choice in these polls. ;o)
36 • screen or tmux (by John on 2024-11-14 15:26:53 GMT from United States)
For Linux or BSD, it is tmux. On AIX screen is the only choice.
I did notice screen uses a bit less resources which I found interesting.
37 • Wasted time (by Otis on 2024-11-14 15:28:59 GMT from United States)
@2 I cannot wrap my mind around a notion that Jesse wastes his time selecting, testing and evaluating, then writing about any Linux (and BSD) project.
Perhaps some readers at this site are pressed for time even more than Jesse. If so, be aware that Distrowatch, and largely Linux/BSD centered websites all across the internet, contain vast and diverse information a lot of which may not be of interest to 100% of readers who frequent those sites.
38 • independent distros (by rhtoras on 2024-11-14 17:02:56 GMT from Greece)
@34 we can talk for hours... days or monts... we won't agree... independent is systemD free meaining i can use whatever i like (obviously systemD is excluded) and by this i mean systemD independent meaning no IBM or Microsoft can have control over my system so it stays independent. Solus just like Serpent OS might seem as independent projects but what they do is relying on systemD which is controlled by IBM/Redhat and Microsoft.
@32 you are correct but not only openindiana is a viable option... Open Indiana is a rolling os while Tribblix is a stable one model using lx zones too and offers (omnitribblix version for sure) more desktop environment options. I assume also Omnios can be an option as desktop with some tweaks. For the record freebsd uses some line of code straight form the first version of UNIX made in Bell labs. Linux is a kernel so is illumos.
39 • independent distros (by Karl Vreski on 2024-11-14 22:25:09 GMT from Australia)
@38
The problem with systemd has been talked a lot here on this forum and even by Jesse on occasion, weighing the pros and cons even and the truth is, for some system admins, systemd is easier to use than system V or other inits. Gnome desktop is also dependent on systemd, although it is possible to get it running without, there are still some core files installed.
Independent distros like Devuan, whose position is to abstain from systemd entirely, still can't fully get away from it as it uses elogind. Elogind is found almost everywhere, even in independent systemd-free distros, except;
antix carbslinux damn small linux glasnost glaucus hyperbola lglunic joborun kiss kwort mere noir oasis linux obarun pclinux sabotage venom
Most of these are not actively maintained and not suitable as a daily driver except Antix and PClinuxOS which have an active and well maintained repo and development.
Someone will point out that elogind is a separated component from systemd and therefore your distro is not really systemd, however, why use elogind at all, when you can use seatd?
According to Alpine Linux wiki: Seatd is a seat management daemon, that does everything it needs to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Depends only on libc. Seat management takes care of mediating access to shared devices (graphics, input), without requiring the applications needing access to be root.
So to any independent systemd free maintainers reading this, please drop elogind and switch to seatd to make your distro 100% systemd-free
40 • #39 +1 elogind has to do, too (by grindstone on 2024-11-15 15:38:52 GMT from United States)
Bravo. One minor note -- as DSL is now an AntiX derivative, it, too is active.
41 • Screen or Tmux (by eb on 2024-11-15 16:03:14 GMT from France)
1 question for screen & tmux users : how many terminals do you nest into 1 screen or tmux session ? Without graphical environment, we have 6 terminals, right ? With a graphical environment, we can lodge 1 terminal per workspace, that can be a lot ... As for me, I never run more than 6 terminals simultaneously. Thanks !
Number of Comments: 41
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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 |
• Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
• Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
• Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
• Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
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• 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 |
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• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
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• 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 |
• Full list of all issues |
Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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Random Distribution |
OLPC OS
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an initiative to build a low-cost laptop computer with a pre-installed operating system and applications designed for children in developing countries. The operating system is a Linux-based solution, a heavily customised edition of Fedora Core with a special graphical user interface called Sugar. Among applications, the system includes a web browser built on Xulrunner, a simple document viewer based on Evince; the AbiWord word processor, an RSS reader, email, chat and VOIP clients, a multimedia authoring and playback environment, a music composition toolkit, graphics toolkits, games, a shell, and a debugger.
Status: Dormant
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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.
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Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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