DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1106, 27 January 2025 |
Welcome to this year's 4th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
What is reality? What is the nature of the Universe? Are we really living in the world we perceive or are we in a vast simulation, a virtual machine of sorts? While these questions are more philosophical than technical, a real technical query is whether our operating system is running in a virtual machine or directly on physical hardware. This week, in our Questions and Answers column, we explore how to detect whether we are running programs in a virtual environment. In our News section we mostly talk about flavours of BSD this week. We begin with a look at how to draw graphics in the NetBSD terminal and share an effort to port Nix to the FreeBSD kernel. We also report on GhostBSD hosting an on-line conference to discuss and promote desktop computing on the BSD family of operating systems. Before all of that, we take quick looks at progress being made by two distributions experiencing longer than usual development cycles. We give quick updates on work going into Adelie Linux and Pop!_OS, both of which have recently published new development snapshots. In our Opinion Poll we ask our readers to weigh in on Pop!_OS's efforts with the COSMIC desktop and what the next version of the distribution will look like. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and the torrents we are seeding.
Finally, we wrap up with some news closer to home. Several readers reported this week they can no longer post or see links to DistroWatch on Facebook as Facebook now considers Linux to be malware. People wishing to keep up with and share DistroWatch-related news can use our RSS feeds and the Mastodon social network instead of Facebook. Also, we take a moment to thank everyone who sent us donations this month, we greatly appreciate your help. 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) |
Adelie 1.0 Beta 6
Sometimes, when the flow of new releases slows down, I find myself revisiting projects which are trying new things to see how they are coming along. I'm not looking at the whole project in these cases, but revisiting key elements, feature gaps, or bugs that I have noticed before in order to see what has been changed or improved.
For instance, about a year ago I tried the Adelie Linux distribution. It's a multi-architecture distribution which aims to be small and efficient while supporting multiple desktop environments. I talked about the Adelie project last year and, around the start of 2025, received an e-mail from the project indicating they were making good progress toward version 1.0.
I downloaded the latest Beta release which is offered in four desktop flavours (Plasma, LXQt, MATE, and Xfce) along with a command line only (server) option. I decided to try the LXQt edition again as I'd had mixed experienced with it and wanted to see if any of the bigger bugs had been squashed. The ISO was a 690MB download, so the size hasn't changed much.
Initial impressions
The live environment and the initial install process are pretty much the same as they were a year ago. One thing which I believe is different now is the graphical system installer allows us to not only select a desktop flavour to setup, but it also offers a text-only mode and a Custom software selection option. The Custom screen allows us to select a desktop environment, games, optional office applications, and background utilities such as network services. I decided to use the Custom approach to pick the LXQt desktop with Firefox, a few utilities, and the OpenSSH service.
The Custom approach also allowed me to make some "either or" choices. I could use Dash or Bash as the default command line shell, I could select s6 or SysV for init, and I could choose eudev or mdevd for the event daemon. Unfortunately, none of these options are explained at all in the installer. The user is expected to know what these are or do some research on their own. I also noted that while we can pick between Dash or Bash for the default system shell, the user always ends up running zsh. I'm not sure why we can pick the shell for background services, but not our own user.
Adelie 1.0 Beta 6 -- Selecting packages to install
(full image size: 246kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
As before, the system installer asks us to make up a root password and we can create up to four regular user accounts.
The Adelie installer fetches its packages from on-line repositories, meaning we need an Internet connection to perform the installation. It can also mean the install process takes a while (about 15 minutes for LXQt, about 25 minutes to set up Plasma). During this time no progress information is shown on the screen, making it seem as though the installer has locked up. However, the install process did eventually complete successfully for me.
Then and now
When I experimented with Adelie a year ago, the LXQt edition had been able to connect to the network when I was running in live mode, but once installed, the LXQt edition did not appear to have any networking tools. This meant I could install Adelie, but then not get on-line afterwards. This time the experience was worse.
Once the LXQt edition installed, it booted to a graphical login screen. Here I found that the distribution would not recognize any keyboard or mouse input. I couldn't sign in, click on any options, or even switch to a local terminal screen.
I decided to go back to the beginning and, as I had a year ago, switched to trying the Plasma desktop. I still used the LXQt live media to launch the installer, selected the Plasma desktop with Mobile profile in the installer, and (when the installer finally finished its work), I was able to boot the distribution and sign in. Since my keyboard and mouse worked with the Plasma edition it seems there are still necessary pieces included in the Plasma profile which are not included in the LXQt package selection.
A year ago, I found Adelie's Plasma 5 desktop sometimes failed to display its wallpaper properly, the network tools were tucked away, and there were two audio controls in the system tray. In 2025 not much has changed. Plasma 5 is still being used rather than Plasma 6. This time around the wallpaper and panel always displayed properly, which is a step forward. This time there are still two audio widgets which looked identical in the system tray - though one controls volume and the other opens the KDE System Settings audio controls.
Adelie 1.0 Beta 6 -- Exploring Plasma's settings
(full image size: 193kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In an unfortunate regression, I was unable to find any network connection tools included in the Plasma edition this time. I can't imagine why networking utilities would be included on live media, but not in the installed distribution. Network Manager is available in the repositories and I could side-load it from another computer, but this seems like a terrible oversight. Networking controls are either well hidden or just not included in the Mobile computing package selection and I cannot imagine why the developers are making it this hard to get on-line.
The distribution hasn't changed much in size over the past year. Adelie required about 5.7GB of disk space last year and that has remained steady. When signed into the Plasma desktop the distribution currently uses about 400MB of RAM, which is on par with last year. One change I noticed was last year active RAM usage would continue to creep up fairly rapidly, even when the system was idle, slowly consuming all available memory. In 2025 I found RAM topped out at about 440MB if I just signed in and left Plasma idle.
When I used Adelie a year ago I pointed out some quirks of the distribution. These were not bugs or problems, but unusual behaviours. For example, the distribution does not include access elevation tools such as sudo or doas. To perform administrative functions we need to login as root or use the su command. Another interesting quirk is there is no clear command, and Adelie might be the only distribution I know of that doesn't include the command to clear the terminal. These features (or lack of features) are all the same today as they were a year ago.
Adelie 1.0 Beta 6 -- Performing privileged actions
(full image size: 146kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Another thing which hasn't changed is Adelie places the APK package manager in the root's executable path, but not the user's path. This means regular users cannot "see" the apk command. To run the package manager they need to become root, change their default path, or supply the full pathname for the apk command (/sbin/apk). This isn't a bad arrangement, but it does mean more steps or more typing when we want to perform searches for packages.
Conclusions
It seems not much has changed for Adelie over the past year. To the team's credit, it looks as though they've fixed the expanding memory consumption bug and that is great. On the other hand, there are more severe problems with the LXQt edition and I found it even harder to get on-line with the Plasma flavour than before. The odd quirks, like two identical audio widgets in the system tray persist and the system installer still doesn't show progress. On the whole, this release felt like it took one step forward, but two steps back.
Adelie 1.0 Beta 6 -- Dual audio widgets
(full image size: 115kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5
It's only been five months since my last experience with Pop!_OS and its new COSMIC desktop. When I tried out its initial development snapshot back in September, I found the COSMIC desktop had some interesting ideas behind it, but it was lacking features, window management was awkward, and the environment was unstable. I was curious to see what new options, applications, and improvements had been made.
Pop!_OS continues to be offered in two editions, Intel/AMD and NVIDIA. The download is about 2.5GB in size, which hasn't changed in the past five months. The install process all appears to have remained unchanged since I last tried the distribution.
Then and now
Once I had installed the distribution I found it booted to a graphical login screen where I could sign into the COSMIC desktop. COSMIC, it's worth mentioning, offers a Wayland session only; there is no X11 session.
Signing into COSMIC requires 1.5GB of RAM. This surprised me as the same desktop on the same laptop used 1.0GB five months ago. In the past five months the desktop's active memory usage has ballooned 50%, making it one of the heaviest desktop environments in the Linux community. Disk usage, meanwhile, remains about the same at 6.7GB for a fresh install. CPU usage tended to remain fairly low, around 1.5% to 2.0% when sitting mostly idle and just running the top process monitor.
Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Five months ago I mentioned one of my biggest issues with COSMIC was how it switched between windows: "COSMIC seems to assign each window a number as it is opened. Then pressing Alt+Tab cycles through the list of open applications in the order we launched them. If we open the terminal, the file manager, and a text editor (in this order) then pressing Alt+Tab once will always jump to the terminal, even if it is already the active window. Pressing Alt and then tapping Tab three times will always raise the text editor into focus."
Alt+Tab behaviour has changed in the latest Alpha snapshot, placing it more in line with how other desktops behave. Alt+Tab now cycles through windows in the order they've been recently accessed, not the order in which they were launched. This makes it easier to toggle rapidly between two tasks.
Five months ago I pointed out when running COSMIC I couldn't use menu keyboard shortcuts. For example, typing Alt+F doesn't open the active window's File menu, Alt+V doesn't open the View menu, etc. This behaviour remains the same and it makes navigating application menus awkward if you're accustomed to keeping your hands on the keyboard.
In my previous trial COSMIC crashed a couple of times in my three-day trial. This time the desktop didn't fully crash, but sometimes the application menu button on the dock would stop working. This made it hard to open new programs. Logging out and then signing back in seemed to be the only way to fix the application menu.
Software management
Pop!_OS's software centre is a functional, modern software centre. It handles working with both Deb packages (called "system" packages) and Flatpak bundles. My only complaint with the software centre five months ago was it constantly asked me for my password before every action (installing, removing, or updating packages). This behaviour has remained much the same, with each addition or removal of a Deb package requiring a password. Installing new Flatpak bundles does not require our password though.
Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5 -- Managing software packages
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
New items
The big, new item in COSMIC is the COSMIC media player. This player is launched if we try to open any media file from the file manager. The new COSMIC application was able to play audio files for me, but it completely failed to work with video files. Any time I'd try to launch a video a message would appear in the player's window which read: "No video open." When this happened it would also disable the player's File menu, preventing me from trying to open another file.
Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5 -- Trying to play a video file
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
There are new categories in the COSMIC settings panel. There were previously six categories or tabs available for us to browse in the two-pane panel: Desktop, Displays, Power and Battery, Input Devices, Time and Language, and System and Accounts. These six have been joined by two more categories: Bluetooth and Network & Wireless.
The Bluetooth section is probably self-explanatory, it helps us link our system with Bluetooth devices in the area. Networking is also about what we would expect, helping us view and connect with local networks. Under the networking section there is a button for managing VPN connections. When I clicked on the button for adding a VPN connection an error was displayed which read: "Failed to add VPN config - open dialog failed." So it seems Pop!_OS is ready to network, but not to network privately.
Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5 -- Trying to enable a VPN connection
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Five months ago I wrote "A problem I ran into was, when the settings panel was open, it constantly used around 20% to 25% of my laptop's CPU. This eventually caused the fan to run as the laptop would heat up. No other COSMIC applications had this problem, only the settings panel would constantly gobble up available CPU cycles."
This problem persists and it causes the fan to kick in on my laptop after a few minutes. This doesn't happen with other COSMIC applications and it seems to be a problem with the application window being constantly redrawn (judging by how hard it is impacting the window manager's CPU usage), even when nothing is happening on the screen. It's discouraging this hasn't been addressed in the past five months.
Conclusions
I feel that Pop!_OS, mostly through its COSMIC desktop, has made a few improvements over the past five months. The improved window switching order is definitely a perk and makes it nicer to work with multiple applications. I'm also happy to see the settings panel is expanding, bringing in new options, and the desktop appears to be more stable now than it was five months ago.
On the other hand, there were a lot of problems (both new and old) in this Alpha snapshot. Memory usage has gone up 50% but there are no new user-visible features in the default desktop. COSMIC is now one of the heaviest desktops around, but it has one of the smaller feature sets. The media player failing and locking up when trying to play video files wasn't a good sign and it put a dark mark on this new application's debut. Likewise, I was happy to see the networking section of the settings panel appear, only to be disappointed to discover the VPN section doesn't work yet.
Mostly I was disappointed at the issues which remain. The software centre still nags for our password instead of caching permissions/credentials, the settings panel still hungrily gobbles up CPU cycles, menu shortcuts still don't work, and there are still a few stability issues. At this rate, it seems unlikely COSMIC will be ready for a stable release prior to 2026.
This situation makes me wonder how System76 plans to handle the situation. The company has a few options before them, none of which are likely appealing to management. The company could reverse course and publish a new Pop!_OS release featuring their old GNOME environment and admit building a desktop is taking longer than expected. They could publish a new release of the distribution before COSMIC is ready, risking unhappy customers, or they could wait and ship COSMIC when it's ready - maybe as a 26.04 release. The last option currently seems the most likely, but that would mean there were four years between the company's LTS releases, which quite a gap for a company that sells expensive laptops to developers and gamers. I don't envy the people who need to make the decisions in this scenario.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Pop!_OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.1/10 from 249 review(s).
Have you used Pop!_OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Drawing graphics in a terminal with NetBSD, Nix package manager ported to FreeBSD kernel, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference
People who are interested in low-level graphics, programming, or just how to do neat tricks with a terminal may be interested in this tutorial. Julio Merino demonstrates how to draw graphics directly to the screen without needing to use Wayland or an X11 display server. "The EndBASIC console can now run directly on a framebuffer exposed by the kernel. No X11 nor Wayland in the picture (pun intended). But how? The answer lies in NetBSD's flexible wscons framework, and this article dives into what it takes to render graphics on a standard Unix system. I've found this exercise exciting because, in the old days, graphics were trivial (mode 13h, anyone?) and, for many years now, computers use framebuffer-backed textual consoles. The kernel is obviously rendering 'graphics' by drawing individual letters; so why can't you, a user of the system, do so too?" The tutorial goes on to demonstrate how to create graphics without relying on popular graphics technologies such as X11.
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The NixOS project develops a Linux distribution centred around the Nix package manager. Nix has gained a lot of attention for its ability to manage not just packages, but also services and users in a declarative manner. The NixBSD project seeks to port Nix and its related components to a FreeBSD kernel. "NixBSD is an attempt to make a reproducible and declarable BSD, based on NixOS. Although theoretically much of this work could be copied to build other BSDs, all work thus far has been focused on building a FreeBSD distribution." So far no live ISO file has been produced, but building the base and running the operating system in a virtual machine is an option.
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The GhostBSD project is organizing an on-line conference which will promote and discuss desktop computing on BSD bases. "GhostBSDCon 2025 is an inaugural on-line technical conference. High quality technical papers and engaging community presentations will be curated to support ongoing technical development and *BSD community experiences." The forum post links to a PDF with more details.
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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) |
Are we inside a virtual machine?
Are we inside a virtual machine? This isn't a philosophical question or a query about the nature of our existence. Rather, I'm talking about whether the computer environment we are using is running on physical hardware directly or if our programs are running in a virtual machine.
This sometimes matters when we are measuring resource usage, testing security, or determining which filesystem might best suit our situation. It could also be useful for determining whether the host provider we are working with really gave us physical machines for running servers or if they set us up with some virtual private servers (VPS) and hoped no one would notice the difference.
There are a few ways to determine if we are operating inside a virtual machine. I'm going to mention five of the easiest ways to quickly check if our operating system is running on bare metal hardware or in a virtual machine. These approaches generally do not require installing additional packages beyond what most Linux distributions provide in a default installation.
One approach is to look at boot messages from the kernel. We can do this by running the following command as the administrator (either by logging in as root or using sudo):
dmesg | grep -i hypervisor
In situations where we are operating inside a virtual machine we should see output which looks like this:
[ 0.000000] Hypervisor detected: KVM
However, if we are not working inside a virtual machine, then there should be no output from the dmesg command shown above.
Another approach is to use the lshw (list hardware) command and look at the first ten lines of output. We can filter output down to these first ten lines using the head command:
lshw | head
In particular, look at the Product and Vendor fields in lshw's output. On a physical machine we should see a vendor field which lists an OEM, such as "HP" or "Lenovo". When running in a virtual machine we will see a Product field which mentions the type of virtual machine, such as "VirtualBox" or "KVM".
Another utility we can use to check the environment is dmidecode. This tool checks BIOS information. Here we check for the machine's manufacturer:
dmidecode -s system-manufacturer
When run on physical hardware, the above command should output the name of an OEM, such as Lenovo, HP, or Dell. When run inside a virtual machine the above command will likely report something like "KVM", "GmbH", or "VMware".
People who run the systemd init software have another utility called systemd-detect-virt. This program can be run without arguments:
systemd-detect-virt
It should simply output "none" when running on physical hardware or the name of the virtual machine provider. For instance, when running in VirtualBox (which is owned by Oracle), the above command displays "oracle".
Also, for people who run systemd as their init software, there is a fifth tool. The hostnamectl command will tell us information about the underlying machine, real or virtual.
hostnamectl
The above command will print around a dozen fields of information about the name of the computer, its systemd Machine ID, the name of the operating system, and its kernel version. In particular, we want to look at the Virtualization and Hardware Model fields of the hostnamectl output. When run in a virtual machine these fields will say things like "KVM" or "VirtualBox" or "oracle".
There are additional ways to check for signs of running inside a virtual machine, but they usually require downloading additional tools. These five approaches are relatively simple and stick to using commands found on most distributions.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
BSD Router Project 1.994
BSD Router Project (BSDRP) is an embedded free and open-source router distribution based on FreeBSD. The project's latest release is version 1.994 and uses the FreeBSD 15 development branch. "Starting with this version, BSDRP requires at least a 4GB disk. If you installed BSDRP on a 2GB disk, upgrading will not be possible. However, if it was installed on a 4GB or larger disk, you can resize the system partition using the following command: 'system resize-system-slice 3921924'. New features: This is an intermediate release preparing the branch 2 that will use the poudriere-image framework in place of NanoBSD. Based on FreeBSD 15-head 8f6b66a9d3f and ports tree. New packages: dns/dnsmasq (will replace isc-dhcp44 and dhcprelya); Python 3.11 (this one added more than 100M of libs). Removed packages: freevrrpd (carp is now supporting VRRP mode); ucarp (no more conflict once carp enabled in VRRP mode); net/aquantia-atlantic-kmod (does not build on latest head). Deprecated packages (will be removed in next release): isc-dhcp44 (use dnsmasq, kea requires 300MB disk space with its dependencies); dhcprelya (use dnsmasq)." The release notes offer more information.
Solus 4.7
The Solus project develops an independent, rolling release distribution with a focus on desktop computing. The project has published Solus 4.7 (also labelled 2025-01-26) which features improved video card support and does away with the old software centre. "We encourage you to try one of the new software centres as a replacement for solus-sc (Solus Software Centre). A new software centre gets you out-of-the-box support for Flatpaks, and better app descriptions through Appstream metadata support. Our contributors and staff have been hard at work adding and fixing the metainfo.xml files used for Appstream support. Our goal is for every packaged GUI application to have a working metainfo.xml file, so that the software centres can show users all kinds of information about an app before they decide to install it. Curious Budgie, GNOME and Xfce users can install GNOME Software, while Plasma users should install Discover." Additional changes, along with screenshots, can be found in the project's release announcement.
Solus 4.7 -- Running the Budgie desktop
(full image size: 2.0MB, resolution: 1920x1200 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: 3,149
- Total data uploaded: 46.3TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What should System76 do with Pop!_OS?
In our Feature Story this week we talked about Pop!_OS and the progress of its custom COSMIC desktop environment. Pop!_OS 24.04 was originally expected to launch in the middle of 2024 and would use Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as its base. However, the 24.04 release has yet to be published and the developers didn't bother to put out their usual x.10 release toward the end of the year. This has left some questions as to what the next release of Pop!_OS can or should look like.
Will System76 continue to work on COSMIC running on the 24.04 LTS base? Will they publish an interim 25.x release featuring an incomplete COSMIC? Will they backtrack and ship a version with their previous GNOME desktop? Perhaps they'll wait for the next LTS cycle (Ubuntu 26.04) before publishing a stable COSMIC? There are at least these four options and we'd like to hear what you think System76 should do with their distribution.
You can see the results of our previous poll on CentOS 10 Stream in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What should System76 do with Pop!_OS?
Publish 24.04 with GNOME: | 329 (17%) |
Wait for COSMIC to mature and publish an out of date 24.04: | 140 (7%) |
Rebase on an interim 25.x release and ship with a beta of COSMIC: | 139 (7%) |
Ship a 25.04 interim release with GNOME: | 149 (8%) |
Wait for 26.04 and ship a stable COSMIC: | 420 (21%) |
Something else (in comments): | 792 (40%) |
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Website News |
Facebook ban
Starting on January 19, 2025 Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labelled groups associated with Linux as being "cybersecurity threats". Any posts mentioning DistroWatch and multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed.
We've been hearing all week from readers who say they can no longer post about Linux on Facebook or share links to DistroWatch. Some people have reported their accounts have been locked or limited for posting about Linux.
The sad irony here is that Facebook runs much of its infrastructure on Linux and often posts job ads looking for Linux developers.
Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about this, apart from advising people to get their Linux-related information from sources other than Facebook. I've tried to appeal the ban and was told the next day that Linux-related material is staying on the cybersecurity filter. My Facebook account was also locked for my efforts.
Blocked by Facebook
(full image size: 102kB, resolution: 688x722 pixels)
We went through a similar experience when Twitter changed its name to X - suddenly accounts which had been re-posting news from our RSS feeds were no longer able to share links. This sort of censorship is an unpleasant side-effect of centralized communication platforms such as X, Facebook, Google+, and so on.
In an effort to continue to make it possible for people to talk about Linux (and DistroWatch), as well as share their views and links, we are providing two options. We have RSS news feeds which get updates whenever we post new announcements, stories, and our weekly newsletters. We also now have a Mastodon account where I will start to post updates - at least for new distributions and notice of our weekly newsletter. Over time we may also add news stories and updates about releases. Links for the feeds and the Mastodon account can be found on our contact page.
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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 $262 in contributions from the following kind souls:
Donor |
Amount |
Patrick M | $100 |
Doug S | $50 |
J S | $50 |
Ppb | $13 |
Jonathon B | $10 |
Sam C | $10 |
Brian59 | $5 |
Chung T | $5 |
surf3r57 | $5 |
TaiKedz | $5 |
J.D. L | $2 |
PB C | $2 |
aRubes | $1 |
Stephen M | $1 |
Kai D | $1 |
Shasheen E | $1 |
William E | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Bluefin. Bluefin is a desktop distribution which features the GNOME desktop, a cloud-focused approach, and atomic updates.
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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, 3 February 2025. 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 • COSMIC (by Toran on 2025-01-27 01:17:58 GMT from Belgium)
They have to launch when COSMICF is ready. That this takes time, is normal.
2 • Linux and FB (by Brad on 2025-01-27 01:30:52 GMT from United States)
Hello all,
I am now following DW on Mastodon, and I encourage all of you to do as well. I've been starting to use Mastodon as a rational alternative to FB, which I believe has turned evil recently (MHO only!). Thanks!
3 • Cosmic (by Marc on 2025-01-27 01:36:21 GMT from Australia)
Hi All, I run a frankendebian with the daily cosmic repo, that I update roughly twice a week. It is improving, but not yet a daily driver for me as much as I want it to be. Probably my biggest gripe is that I love synaptic for my .deb packages but it has never been able to run under cosmic due to running as root, meaning I switch back to another to do updates etc.
4 • cosmic (by anon on 2025-01-27 02:49:59 GMT from Germany)
popos and cosmic can be put out to pasture for all I care! An option "I dont care" should have been added for those of us that dont care.
5 • Cosmic options (by Kilroy on 2025-01-27 03:13:02 GMT from United States)
1) recycle bin 2) delete forever
6 • Linux and FB (by Friar Tux on 2025-01-27 03:59:40 GMT from Canada)
Odd. I was commenting on a FB post about Linux, yesterday (Sat. Jan. 25/25) with no issues. My comment was similar to what I said here, regarding how long I've used it, why I use it, etc. No issues yet. I'll let you guys know it I run into anything.
7 • Cosmic...Why not take KDE Plans and theme it... (by WhyNot on 2025-01-27 04:04:09 GMT from United States)
... To act like they want Cosmic to act? No need for yet another DE. Gnome is too inflexible but Plasma can be configured to almost anything you want. Convincing Windows GUI, OSX GUI or an odd mix of the two, there have been some good examples of this out there. There are arguably more important things to spend serious development time on.
8 • Cosmic (by penguinx86 on 2025-01-27 04:08:15 GMT from United States)
I tried Pop!_OS with the Cosmic desktop in Virtualbox. I'm not a fan of Cosmic, but I guess it's better than Gnome. Neither Cosmic or Gnome desktop environments make me want to spend $1k+ for a System76 laptop.
9 • Facebook & Cosmic (by AT on 2025-01-27 04:12:02 GMT from Germany)
First of all, Facebook ... Why am I not surprised? Facebook is pure spam these days, with bots ruining any community that survived there. Few good linux communities that remained, have people complaining about their posts disappearing. I think its time for people to move on from Facebook for collective good of mankind. ... Second, As much as bloating Cosmic is, I can see the promise of it. I always saw Pop OS as an improvement on Ubuntu, and Cosmic to Gnome, SO I would rather just wait for Cosmic to catch up and get stable enough to be shipped with next iteration of Pop OS.
10 • System76 and Cosmic (by Andy Prough on 2025-01-27 04:33:25 GMT from Switzerland)
I looked into having my business purchase a System76 laptop for me to use last year. If I had gotten one, I would have removed Gnome or PopOS or Cosmic or whatever was on it and used a simple Mate desktop environment and a tiling window manager like DWM. I really just need the DE/WM to do its basic work and get out of the way and not use up a lot of resources. I don't care if it's written in Rust, I don't care if it uses Wayland instead of Xorg - these things are just memes and often get in the way of getting work done.
11 • What should System76 do with Pop!_OS? (by plop on 2025-01-27 04:38:16 GMT from The Netherlands)
They should ship with KDE/Plasma.
12 • COSMIC... (by thatguy on 2025-01-27 06:00:11 GMT from United States)
No a fan of the COSMIC experience at all. Gnome aready exists for those types, and I'm hard pressed to see anything in COSMIC that's an improvement. It seems even more limited in some ways, including package management.
If I were in charge there I'd be panicking, though I would never have funded it to begin with when there are already great DE/WM options with maturity and large teams of developers. Reinventing the wheel may be better received in another few years, when the populace at large has moved further down the path towards full smartphone-fueled Idiocracy.
Until then, do whatever. Anyone spending big bucks for a fancy modern machine with COSMIC as its DE deserves what they get. Advantage Tuxedo OS, with Plasma. Not perfect, but usable at least.
13 • Comments on Adélie (by A. Wilcox on 2025-01-27 06:55:56 GMT from United States)
We have been unable to duplicate the LXQt "no input" bug with our own hardware. We have had a few people report it, but when we ask for basic information (/var/log/Xorg.0.log, /var/log/messages, dmesg), we never receive a response. I would be very interested to fix this issue, if I knew what was causing it.
Regarding "Unfortunately, none of these options are explained at all in the installer" - in the Introduction page, it states:
> To learn more about the installation procedure, choose Help or press the F1 key at any time.
If you choose Help (at the bottom left) or press F1 while the Software Choices page is open, a two-page document explaining each option and what it means is displayed. I wasn't quite clear if you feel these are not adequate explanations, or if you didn't use the Help button. The documentation is in the Horizon Git repository and we would welcome any contributions to improve the online help system.
This Beta 6 release was focused heavily on the internal tooling (compiler update from GCC 8 to GCC 13, Rust, LLVM, etc), which was necessary to be able to work on things like Plasma 6. I had wanted to enable NetworkManager by default on all installs, but we were pressed for time and needed to release Beta 6 before I was able to complete that work.
Many of the issues you had with the installer in your last review were specifically fixed in this release, including validating user names, the keyboard selection menu having full language names instead of "cryptic" acronyms, disk options, and others. We try to listen to reports and fix things when we have adequate information to make those fixes. It is somewhat disheartening to me that you feel we have made so little progress.
14 • Facebook and Linux as well as thoughts on PopOS! (by Terry Parris on 2025-01-27 08:02:52 GMT from United States)
I left Facebook over a year ago now. Hearing this about them calling posts about Linux a cybersecurity issue doesn't surprise me in the least as they were silencing a lot of posts other than just about Linux prior to my departure from this heinous (so called social network). As they are Linux users themselves they shouldn't stop freedom of speech on Linux (something tells me this has something to do with other companies I.E. Microsoft and/or Apple wanting the posts removed even though they use open source software to run their servers).
As to PopOS, well, I have one of System 76's older Pangolin laptops. It came with the original PopOS installed. I was never a fan of the original. Mostly due to using the Gnome desktop which I find to be a gluten for memory. PopOS with System 76 drivers installed on this Pangolin 11 chewed up 1.8 GB of memory on a fresh boot so Cosmic having 1.5 GB of memory usage doesn't surprise me. I've distro hopped for some time with this laptop. I liked Linux Mint Cinnamon for years but never liked having to wait years for newer applications (even with PPA's). I tried Manjaro Linux with KDE for a while and got too damn tired of tinkering with desktop settings. Now I run Manjaro Cinnamon community addition. Less tinkering even if System 76 drivers are a bit of a hassle to load on Manjaro and get it right. Waiting on packages for the most up to date desktop isn't so bad as Manjaro does more extensive testing of the Arch base packages before releasing them.
As to System 76 hardware, they have some excellent hardware. Just wished they made an all AMD workstation laptop. Never was a fan of Intel. The only improvement that they could do better with their laptops is making them more like Frameworks laptops which will me my next laptop purchase to avoid proprietary drivers such as the System 76 drivers.
15 • Don't care? (by Dave on 2025-01-27 09:47:51 GMT from Australia)
4 - I think not voting or commenting would usually imply don't care 😆
16 • Cosmic (by Dav3 on 2025-01-27 09:51:34 GMT from Australia)
I've heard some be a bit negative about Cosmic, about why we need another desktop.
I think it's more a matter of System76 have a very specific look and feel they want to achieve, and they want it to be bundled with their hardware. Sort of like Apple.
I think it's great they're doing it and it's better than having all of these brittle Gnome extensions to force Gnome to be what they want it to be.
If you don't like it no-one is forcing you to like it or use it.
17 • Wht should System76 do with Pop!_OS? (by James on 2025-01-27 10:33:03 GMT from United States)
Something else (in comments): 94 (26%)
Offer at least one other traditional desktop. Cinnamon, KDE, Mate or Xfce.
18 • PopOS (by uz64 on 2025-01-27 10:33:39 GMT from United States)
"Wait for COSMIC to mature and publish an out of date 24.04"
That one, to start. And for the record, 24.04 is not out of date. It's still supported and will be supported with security patches and updates for, what, like twelve years in total for those who want to keep using it until it's really creaky and old? It will be a late release, sure, and it won't have the full term of support that an LTS normally provides, but that's the kind of thing that should be be expected after making the decision to create their own desktop environment, and it should only affect them for one release cycle. In the meantime, of course, once they get Cosmic done and stable they can also release it as part of a new interim release, and keep improving it up until the next 26.04 LTS is released. Nothing says System76 has to do one or the other; they have many options. It's not all black and white like the poll seems to suggest.
19 • Adelie cmdline: "which apk" (by Jeffrey on 2025-01-27 11:08:37 GMT from Czechia)
Call it nitpicking if you will, but using `command -v` instead of `which` has been preferable for some time now. Long story short, `ocmmand -v` and `command -V` are POSIX standards now, `where`, `which` and `whence` are not. (See e.g. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/85249/why-not-use-which-what-to-use-then .)
20 • What should System 76 do with POP!_OS (by jayvee on 2025-01-27 14:20:02 GMT from United States)
I thought the original idea was to get away from Ubuntu, etc. and go on their own. I feel they should get off Ubuntu and go straight Debian or better yet Arch if they can. Get the resources they need and finish Cosmic!
21 • Facebook ban (by Geo on 2025-01-27 14:05:19 GMT from Canada)
I was banned too. Best thing ever.
22 • Can Pop!_OS become Windows? (by illumos on 2025-01-27 11:54:24 GMT from Japan)
Windows users are used to default administrator privileges.
But in Linux, they have to enter their password every time they want to do something.
This is a huge pain for Windows users.
Even MX Linux, which has an intuitive and easy-to-use UI, has this problem, so this is not a distribution or DE specific problem.
If there were distributions that could be used with default administrator privileges like Windows, Windows users would migrate to Linux.
Of course there are security issues, but most Windows users don't care about security.
23 • Facebook (by Keith S. on 2025-01-27 04:56:02 GMT from United States)
No surprise that Zuck is censoring Linux. Their censorship regime is completely unpredictable and irrational, same with X (and YouTube and Instagram and....) I have successfully avoided using all the major social platforms for over a decade. When I need news and information about Linux, I come here first.
24 • COSMIC (by Gary W on 2025-01-27 04:13:22 GMT from Australia)
I'm with @1. Not that I care much, but shipping betas and buggy releases will do more harm than good.
25 • POP_OS Cosmic Poll (by ManyRoads on 2025-01-27 14:51:43 GMT from United States)
FWIW I recommend POP_OS COSMIC be forked to an Arch-base with COSMIC (for development & test) and the *buntu side remain with the Gnome DE. They would likely get a lot greater geek involvement that way, with minimal disruption in their *buntu ecos.
26 • NoFB (by Dave Postles on 2025-01-27 16:23:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
I quit FB many years ago when I discovered that Apple, Google, FB and MS were all aggressive tax avoiders depriving us in the UK of much-needed revenue. I'm on Mastodon, but not .social, but I'm now following DW.
27 • POP_OS Cosmic Poll (by Nero on 2025-01-27 16:28:26 GMT from Italy)
System76 should use the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment.
28 • Facebook ban (by Donnie Tevault on 2025-01-27 16:24:36 GMT from United States)
I quit logging into Facebook about four years ago, partly because I got tired of their censorship policies, and partly because I've found Facebook in general to be a rather toxic place. I did have a "BeginLinux Guru" page there, but in light of this new news, I would imagine that it's now been deleted.
29 • But linux Gaming! POP! OS (by Distrowitch on 2025-01-27 15:25:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
POP OS is oft touted as one of the top 5 linux gaming distros, this is it's best shot at championing linux for the mainstream, and so the most stable, 'always just works' approach should be king.
30 • Facebook Linux Ban (by Jordan J on 2025-01-27 17:33:54 GMT from United States)
I have no FB account and couldn't care less if they go bankrupt. But I had an immediate concern that I might begin being denied access to websites because I use Linux. In other words something like FB determining "Linux is malware" would be big enough news that the New York Times would pick it up. But I'm not finding a word about this anywhere but here which makes me question the accuracy of the report. I wouldn't be surprised if FB made some sort of determination since there are at least half a dozen distros loaded with tools that can be used for malicious attacks. But there has to be more involved than what has been put forward here.
31 • Facebook Ban (by Doug Deaderick on 2025-01-27 17:46:52 GMT from United States)
Facebook became a platinum member of the Linux Foundation in 2020 per techradar.com. It's time to rethink that membership...
32 • Everyone should quit Facebook/Meta (by Dianne S on 2025-01-27 17:53:02 GMT from Canada)
I recently deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I wrote a blog post describing my rationale, and also ways for people to continue using Facebook somewhat more safely.
https://dianne.skoll.ca/writings/how-to-use-facebook/
33 • Poll (by Otis on 2025-01-27 18:55:44 GMT from United States)
I suppose the given response would largely have to do with whether or not a user fancies being a portion of the testing branch of distro development. Many of us have more than our "daily driver" in our possession, so having space for one or two "not ready for prime time" titles seems within our sensibilities.
It's obviously helpful to the developers. And they develop the stuff for us.
34 • FB (by Josh on 2025-01-27 19:04:28 GMT from United States)
Huh. Now I have yet another reason to hate Facebook. I wish I could convince my mom to stop using it and delete her account. I almost nuked it a while back when I found out someone was attempting to scam her. If Cuckerberg stops her from using it because her laptop runs Linux, well..... I will NOT be installing Winblows on it.
35 • RSS (by Tickonux on 2025-01-27 19:54:36 GMT from France)
I'm "following" Distrowatch for years using the good old (and perfectly working fine) RSS feed. I'm just hoping with being ban (this may be only temporary) won't affect DistroWatch too much, especially for people having tough times finding sometime better that Winware to install on their computer. Anyway, continue your good work :)
36 • FB (by GT on 2025-01-27 21:59:38 GMT from United States)
All of my friends and family quit using FB years ago. It didn't happen out of some shared desire to do so. There was no coordination or talk of it at all. All of us, on our own, just grew to hate the experience of using it and stopped. When it came up in conversations, we would find out that none of us could remember the last time we had signed in because we didn't want to scroll through a bazillion ads and scam-bait to see posts from people we hadn't communicated with since high school letting us know their kid got an A- on a weekly spelling quiz.
37 • FB ban??? (by Kilroy on 2025-01-27 22:36:15 GMT from United States)
Guess I missed all the excitement. Distrowatch is alive and well on Facebook, and so are a bunch of Linux groups.
https://www.facebook.com/distrowatchnews
38 • Facebook? Yawn... (by luvr on 2025-01-27 23:48:49 GMT from Belgium)
I used to have a Facebook account but deactivated it in December 2023, even though I kept my Messenger account alive. Beginning 2024, the EU demanded that Messenger accounts would no longer need to have an associated Facebook account, so I completely deleted my Facebook account. A few months later, I decided that my Messenger account was just sitting there unused, and I deleted that as well.
I'm not on exTwitter or on any of that other crap, and have never been there.
I do have a WhatsApp acoount for family and friends purposes. Apart from that, all that AntiSocial Control Media nonsense can rot in hell, as far as I'm concerned--and even if WhatsApp wanted to rot along with the rest of the gang, I'm sure we could still keep in touch somehow.
39 • The wrong side of the cosmos (by Cosmic disapointment on 2025-01-27 23:52:01 GMT from France)
Pop_OS! wanted us to believe they were producing a better GNOME than GNOME. AZnd yhe result is an non ergonomic app launcher that mixes the worst of GNOME Shell with the worst of Unity.
Want a GNOME easier to use than out-of-the-box GNOME ? Just enable the 'Places menu' an 'Applications menu' by default, and voilà: as straightforward as GNOME 2 with GNOME 3's simplicity and integration. (i've been using the two i listed above since i switched from Ubuntu with GNOME 2 to UbuntuGNOME Remix, the then first (unofficial) release of Ubuntu with GNOME 3 in 2012 and still haven't found an easier desktop as my daily driver).
But, well, they fancied they had to design a different shiny launcher, probably with no outside user feedback at all.
To be fair, i look on at what they try. Maybe they could surprise me one day.
So my wish list to Pop_OS! to adress the layman user outthere (who spends life doing other interesting stuff a Linux master cannot do) : - Stick to GNOME with 2-3 sensible extensions preconfigured ('Applications menu', 'Places menu', 'Dash-to-dock'...). - Disable 'snap' directtly in the distro. And partner with other Ubuntu derivatives to bring back all packages (Firefox et al.) as DEB package without the user having to install the Mozilla PPA. - And make this run effectively without loosing time reinventingf new wheels Pop_OS! apparently does not have ressources to make good.
Oh, and how can one possibly use so much computer ressources just in a setting panel? Did they put a VM with a JS engine inside it?
40 • Detect Virtual Machine (by Vinfall on 2025-01-28 02:08:23 GMT from Hong Kong)
Unfortunately none of the suggested commands work for VMs. dmesg requires root privilege, lshw/dmidecode is not always preinstalled, and not everyone is using SystemD.
I eventually moved on to have a general solution instead but in the past I've done things like this to detect virtual machine. (To be clear, they are fundamentally the same as above tools, but work almost everywhere.)
1. check /proc/cpuinfo, VM by default has keywords like hypervisor/virtual, but you have to filter out noise. 2. check files under /sys/class/dmi/id/, usually product_name alone would suffice. 3. check other places under /proc, it's exposed to most users and works in a reliable way.
41 • Social Media (by fenglengshun on 2025-01-28 06:11:58 GMT from Japan)
Will there be a Bluesky account? I mainly use Bluesky these days. I don't like most of the Mastodon apps and the webapp to be honest, so I just use OpenVibe despite it being close-sourced.
Bluesky is my main now, with Mastodon and Threads being just there for me to look at on occasions.
42 • Pop!_OS, GNOME, KDE, Cosmic (by Microlinux on 2025-01-28 08:57:33 GMT from France)
As a long-time Linux user (24 years and running) I frankly don't understand why anyone in their sane mind would choose GNOME 3.x over KDE and Xfce. (Disclaimer : I loved GNOME 2.x and even built it from source on Slackware after Patrick Volkerding decided to throw it out from the distribution because the GNOME code base was a mess.)
Here in our local school we have Rocky Linux with KDE from EPEL running, and everybody loves it. Or at least no one hates it. I gave GNOME a spin a few years back, and I guess I should have filmed the average user's reactions when confronted with a default GNOME desktop. Folks really hated it.
So, if any of the good folks at System76 read this message: please don't reinvent the wheel and develop yet another horrible and useless desktop environment (Unity, Pantheon, Budgie, whatever...) Just go with sanity and base your next project either on KDE or on Xfce. Or develop two versions based on both.
Cheers from South France.
43 • Adelie linux (by rhtoras on 2025-01-28 11:52:50 GMT from Greece)
Adelie linux is essentially Alpine linux with a different init system. That's not bad to be honest as sysV init has it's fanbase and S6 is faster and advanced users tend to like it. GTK desktops are incomplete and ofcourse i had a bad experience. I understand the dev team is small and i disliked to see them trying to port systemD to a real linux distribution and making this thing work with musl. My whole experience with the project was not good but not bad either. I also tend to check it from time to time. Hope to improve it soon.
Great review Jesse...
p.s they could at least provide an icon for the Horizon ui which is the installer as not all users know where to look for.
p.s 2 The project is not intended for new users.
44 • Bluesky (by Jesse on 2025-01-28 13:59:05 GMT from Canada)
@41: "Will there be a Bluesky account?"
I wouldn't rule it out, but setting up additional social media accounts isn't at the top of the priority list at the moment. It took us over 20 years to get around to getting this first one.
45 • Pop! OS (by EH2 on 2025-01-28 14:24:17 GMT from Mexico)
I've never been able to install Pop! OS in any device I've owned, I've tried multiple times and something always goes wrong, so I have no opinion on their past OS offerings.
The smartest option IMO would be for them to offer more OS options preinstalled and preconfigured with their devices, instead of just Pop! or Ubuntu. COSMIC clearly isn't going to be ready for release in a long time, so why not think of the client base first and give them something they can work with?
46 • What should System76 do with Pop!_OS? (by nobody on 2025-01-28 14:33:18 GMT from Germany)
What should System76 do with Pop!_OS?
My answer is : Donate it to Kindergarten for 5 year young to play with.
47 • Cosmic Desktop (by Bob on 2025-01-28 14:38:25 GMT from United States)
I agree with @42 @27 @17 and @11 that System 76 should offer alternative desktop environments like Xfce and KDE. Could it hurt to at least offer Xubuntu or Kubuntu as alternatives to Ubuntu? Cosmic is a nice try, but it seems too unfamiliar and proprietary to me. Most of the stuff I want to use is missing, renamed, relocated or hidden. Cosmic sort of reminded me of Mac OSX, but not in a good way. There is too much of a learning curve for me to use Cosmic.
48 • FB DW (by Otis on 2025-01-28 15:38:21 GMT from United States)
@37 I tried inputting the DW address in a post and it pre-empted with a strange place holder. So I didn't hit "submit," thinking I'd get banned.
FUD is alive and well.
49 • Facebook ban lifted (by David on 2025-01-28 17:19:50 GMT from United States)
Per TheRegister, the Facebook ban by Meta has been lifted. What is not being reported is that the AI bot that made this error has been disciplined and put on leave without pay. ;-)
50 • Gnutella peer-to-peer network (by gtk-gnutella on 2025-01-28 17:45:30 GMT from Seychelles)
Could DistroWatch distribute a weekly newsletter using gtk-gnutella? Keep in mind that your IP address reveals your location. https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnunet.Messenger The name of the server should of course be DistroWatch. People share linux files using gtk-gnutella, which is a server/client for the Gnutella peer-to-peer network, so it would be natural if DistroWatch were visible even by sharing a newsletter. The Internet is getting weirder all the time and all ways of sharing information should be in place.
51 • Bluesky? (by Dave Postles on 2025-01-28 21:27:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Why Bluesky? Isn't it funded by venture capitalists? I'm happy with Mastodon.
52 • @48 • FB DW (by Kilroy on 2025-01-29 03:08:15 GMT from United States)
"I tried inputting the DW address in a post and it pre-empted with a strange place holder." I was banned some years ago. No idea why. So I opened some accounts using email addresses I create just for joining things. I seldom log in, only when I need something which may be once every few weeks. Searching "facebook distrowatch" on Google/DuckDuckGo will take you to the page and ask you to log in. If logged in, the FB search bar will do. First time I tried it gave me a "community standards" blurb. A while later it was fine and the page loaded, and so did a list of Linux pages. Probably the "ban" was just an overzealous algorithm. I get flagged often for comments and submissions in different sites, sometimes for no discernible reason.
53 • detect virtual env (by Dimitris T on 2025-01-29 14:01:42 GMT from Greece)
there's also virt-what tool. available in repos for known distros. https://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/
54 nd DW, Linux etc.. (by Otis on 2025-01-29 16:07:00 GMT from United States)
@52 Yeah flagged (or banned) "for no discernible reason" seems woven through many a comments area and forum, always has been. So I just plug along and try not to swear too much or offend this or that group, etc.
The thing about FB removing or banning Linux stuff seemed to fit in with all the latest mumblings and rumblings about the Supreme Leader of Facebook, and then the corporate tie in etc.
What's also marbled through all this is that Linux itself has begun to morph into a largely corporate constellation of entities, quite the opposite of its philosophical beginnings. Bill Gates saw early Linux as such threat that he would not allow Linux distros to be displayed near his Windows boxes (remember Suse, RedHat, Turbo, etc boxes at stores like Best Buy, then they vanished?). Now he owns some of Linux and wants it all I presume; if it won't go away just take ownership of it.
fWIW I love that Distrowatch has a live account at Facebook, and will frequent that account more now that it's been brought up here.
55 • Pop!_OS and COSMIC (by Kazlu on 2025-01-30 09:09:28 GMT from France)
Ultimately, they decide what they want to do. However, what is not alright is break the promise of the planned release cycle. If people plan according to the fixed release cycle, which is *the whole point* of having a fixed release cycle, then you don't delay because what was planned is not ready. You launch without whatever is not ready.
I other words, here, it would translate in releasing 24.04 with GNOME, and keep publishing interim versions with GNOME as usual until COSMIC is ready to be launched, preferably with an interim release and not an LTS.
If they are not ready fo follow their own promise, they should change their release schedule policy altogether for a "release when reasy" one. It's all fine, as long as it is presented as such.
56 • Pop!_OS and COSMIC (by Robert on 2025-01-30 19:15:16 GMT from United States)
I think its very clear that the new COSMIC desktop will not be ready for production for a while yet. I also think its fairly clear that in PopOS' position they probably shouldn't let their distro get too stale. So to me the most reasonable thing to do is put out another release using GNOME. Doesn't matter whether that's based on 24.04 or a 25 release. They won't be losing anything relative to where they currently are, and users get their updates. Given GNOME's propensity to break all extensions every couple weeks the probably need to do some updating of their GNOME COSMIC components, but that should be considerably less effort than what's required to get their own desktop fully online. They could make the COSMIC desktop easily installable in a "preview" or "alpha/beta" status if they aren't doing so already. Then whenever COSMIC is ready, flip the switch.
I think right now to their detriment they are unwilling to go back on their promise of "the next major release will have the COSMIC desktop" or whatever.
57 • @56, Pop!_OS and COSMIC (by Wally on 2025-01-30 23:17:11 GMT from Australia)
"Given GNOME's propensity to break all extensions every couple weeks" Oh, come on! I have Gnome 3.38 on Debian and Gnome 47.2 on Kali with the same extensions enabled. None are broken. I have Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.10, again with extensions. Ubuntu desktop is Gnome with extensions and so is Zorin. They seem to do fine. The Sytem76 people just wanted to be the tail the wags the dog, and when the dog would not wag, they went home to make their own frankendog.
58 • Facebook? (by Will on 2025-01-31 14:45:42 GMT from United States)
I used FB until a friend in intel told me not to - about 5 years prior to the Cambridge Analytics debacle. I was off it until 2018, when I figured I would resurrect it and use it to stay connected without posts. I made a single post of a Colorado skyline image as my background and then I got the boot (no reason given) and after a year of back and forth, on principle, working with BBB, I gave up on ever using FB again. There is no accountability on the platform, customers are powerless and they are milking them for every ounce of data they can get away with. A scourge on the face of our capitalist society :).
Number of Comments: 58
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Archives |
• Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
• Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
• Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
• 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 |
• Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
• Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
• Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
• Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
• Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
• Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20 |
• Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
• Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
• Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
• Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
• Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
• Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
• Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
• Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
• Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
• Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
• Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
• Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
• Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
• Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
• Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
• Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
• Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
• Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
• Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
• Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
• Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
• Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
• Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
• Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
• Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
• Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
• Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
• Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
• Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
• Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
• Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
• Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
• Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
• Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
• Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
• Full list of all issues |
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Random Distribution | 
DragonOS
DragonOS is a Lubuntu-based desktop distribution which is focused on software defined radio (SDR). The distribution provides a pre-installed suite of the most powerful and accessible open source SDR software. DragonOS has verified support for a range of inexpensive and powerful SDR hardware, including RTL-SDR, HackRF One, LimeSDR, BladeRF, and others.
Status: Active
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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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