 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1107, 3 February 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 5th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Debian project has a reputation for stability, predictability, and for its conservative updates. People who like Debian's technology while preferring a more cutting edge experience are sometimes invited to run Debian's Unstable branch, called Sid. This is where new development happens in Debian, but there isn't any pre-built ISO for Sid to help people get started. Luckily, there is siduction, a distribution which packages Debian Sid and offers install ISOs in a variety of desktop flavours. This week we begin with a look at siduction's latest snapshot and report on the experience. In our News section we talk about the Lomiri (formerly Unity 8) interface being packaged by postmarketOS and a new desktop environment called Orbitiny making its debut. Orbitiny provides a classic layout with some modern features and mouse gestures and we share its highlights below. Have you tried Orbitiny? Let us know what you thought of the young desktop in this week's Opinion Poll. We also report on Alpine Linux securing long-term funding through the Open Collective organization. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we share two methods people can use to time tasks on Linux. This includes creating a stopwatch via a script to help time ongoing tasks. Then we share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we share some updates on the ban which prevented people from sharing links to DistroWatch on Facebook. 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) |
siduction 2024.1.0
siduction is a Debian-based, rolling release distribution. More specifically, siduction is based on Debian's Unstable (or "Sid") branch. This base supplies users with a steady flow of new software versions. siduction mostly focuses on desktop use with the majority of the project's editions based around one desktop or another.
The distribution is available for one architecture (x86_64) and offers three desktop editions: KDE Plasma, Xfce, and LXQt. There is also a minimal X.Org flavour and one minimal edition with a command line interface. The project's website mentions there are currently no GNOME, MATE, or Cinnamon editions as no one has volunteered to maintain and test these flavours.
The release announcement mentions the latest snapshot of siduction (version 2024.1.0) provides users with their choice of Plasma 6.2, Xfce 4.20, or LXQt 2.1.0. Some other features are highlighted:
When using the Btrfs filesystem with siduction, we enable you to manage your snapshots with the SUSE-developed tool Snapper, which has its own chapter in the siduction manual under System Administration -> Btrfs and Snapper.
The released images of siduction 2024.1.0 are a snapshot of Debian Unstable, also known as Sid, from December 23, 2024. They are enriched with useful packages and scripts, a Calamares-based installer, and a customized version of the Linux kernel 6.12.4, while systemd is at version 257.1-3.
Additional features and known issues are presented in the project's release announcement. In particular the Xfce Wayland session is reportedly not working and the Dolphin file manager cannot connect to network resources over the Samba/SMB protocol.
The website goes on to tell us the install media includes some non-free components, mostly firmware for wireless cards. "You can manually uninstall unwanted packages or remove them all by entering 'apt purge $(vrms -s)' before or after installation. Otherwise, our script remove-nonfree can do this for you later."
I decided to download the LXQt edition of siduction which is 3.0GB in size. Booting from the live media shows us a boot menu where we can change language and keyboard layout settings. The boot menu also displays the default login credentials which are the username "siducer" with the password "live".
The distribution's live session boots into the LXQt desktop. The environment is decorated with blue wallpaper. A dark panel is placed horizontally across the bottom of the screen. Four icons sit on the desktop: chroot helper, Install System, IRC, and siduction manual.
The chroot-helper icon launches a terminal window and displays an error message which says "Sorry, no disk choosen [sic], exiting." The IRC icon launches HexChat, an IRC desktop client, and logs us into the siduction chat room. HexChat, I will note, has been abandoned with no new releases for about a year.
Clicking the "siduction manual" icon opens a PDF of the project's handbook. This is a lengthy, well written, and detailed overview of installing and maintaining the distribution. There is a nice index at the top and the document covers important information on how to partition a disk, manage packages, work with background services, and schedule tasks. I quite liked the handbook. I did note at times that parts of the handbook are out of date. For example, there are sections which discuss using systemd features, such as systemd-boot and systemd timers. There are also sections which explain how to change between SysV init runlevels. The media verification steps mentioned in the handbook use examples from 2021. This means the manual is usually helpful and well written, but some of the information is due for an update.
Installing
The siduction distribution uses the Calamares system installer in place of Debian's classic installer. This greatly speeds up the initial configuration process. Calamares quickly guides us through picking our preferred language, optionally enabling Debian's non-free repository, choosing our keyboard layout, and confirming our timezone. When we get to disk partitioning we can use the built-in Calamares manual partitioning screens which are fairly simple and easy to navigate. We also have the option of using a guided approach. The guided option will, by default, take over all available space with a single ext4 filesystem and no swap space. We have the option of overriding this to use either the Btrfs or XFS filesystem. We can also enable a swap partition.
The final configuration step asks us to make up a username for ourselves and create a password. This screen also asks if we'd like to make up a password for the root account. If we do not specific a password for root then the root account is assigned our regular user's password. siduction installs the sudo command, but does not grant any users sudo access. If we wish to perform administrative tasks we need to login as the root user or use the su command to switch to root's account.
Calamares copied its packages to my computer in just a few minutes and then offered to reboot the machine.
Early impressions
siduction boots to a graphical login screen. The username and password fields are placed side-by-side rather than one above the other. It's an unusual layout, but it looks nice with the page's theme and minimal icon layout. There is just one session option available: LXQt.
The icons for opening the siduction handbook and for accessing the IRC chat room remain on the desktop. The chroot and system installer icons are removed in the installed copy of the distribution.
siduction 2024.1.0 -- Exploring the LXQt menu
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LXQt is set up with two virtual desktops which can be accessed from the panel at the bottom of the display. The application menu is organized in a classic tree style with a search box at the bottom. The search feature works by name only and doesn't look for associations. For example typing "write" will reveal LibreOffice Writer, but typing "word" shows no results. On some desktops "word" will be associated with the productivity suite.
Hardware
The siduction distribution worked well for me while I was running it in VirtualBox. The distribution was quick to boot, the LXQt desktop was highly responsive, and the desktop resized dynamically (and automatically) in the VirtualBox window.
The distribution detected my laptop's hardware, working (at least to a point) with audio, wireless networking, and my touchpad. However, there were several issues which surfaced during my trial. For instance, when I pressed media keys on my laptop's keyboard (such as Volume Up and Volume Down) a notification would appear on the desktop, indicating the audio volume was being changed, along with the new audio level written as a percentage. However, the audio volume did not actually change. Whether the volume control was set to 0% or 80%, the decibel level was the same. The screen brightness keys likewise had no effect. There is a dedicated desktop configuration tool for adjusting the screen brightness and this utility worked for me.
siduction 2024.1.0 -- Reading the project's handbook
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There is a network icon in the LXQt system tray, but this icon is not interactive. Most distributions place a networking icon in the system tray to provide a shortcut for managing and connecting to networks. On siduction the icon merely lights up when the network connection is in use. To connect to a wireless network we need to go through a long series of steps. First I went into the application menu, then into the Preferences category, then into the LXQt Settings sub-category, then launched the LXQt Configuration Centre. Finally, I opened the network connection module which is called "Connman UI Setup" (not an obvious label for connecting to wireless networks) and then clicked on this utility's Wireless tab. From there I could activate the wireless card and select my network from a list. Nothing appeared to happen, there was no notice or indication the connection was successful. However, I did confirm using other tools that I had an Internet connection.
siduction used about 550MB of RAM when signed into the LXQt desktop. A fresh install of the distribution took up 5.3GB of disk space, not including my swap partition. This puts siduction's LXQt edition in the light-to-medium range for desktop Linux distributions.
siduction 2024.1.0 -- Adjusting the appearance of the desktop
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Included software
Along with the LXQt 2.1.0 desktop environment, siduction ships with a number of useful utilities. These applications range in size and popularity. Firefox is included along with the HexChat IRC client. HexChat, as I mentioned before, is no longer maintained. Thunderbird and LibreOffice are installed along with the qBittorrent client. I found the qpdfview document viewer and the PCManFM-Qt file manager were installed for me along with the Xfburn disc burning software.
siduction ships with the SMPlayer and mpv media players along with the SMTube streaming utility. These media applications are accompanied by a full range of multimedia codecs which allow us to play most audio and video formats. The qps process monitor is included along with a text editor, archive manager, and the Midnight Commander file manager. There are multiple virtual terminal applications (QTerminal and Zutty are provided), the 2028 puzzle game, and the Zim local desktop wiki application. It's quite a varied group of applications.
In the background we find the GNU command line utilities, manual pages, and systemd. The distribution currently uses Linux 6.12 as the kernel.
When we try to run a program from the command line which has not been installed the terminal will quickly display a list of packages which may provide the missing command.
Software management
The distribution uses Synaptic as its graphical package manager. Synaptic is a classic, low-level package manager which shows us lists of packages and offers filters and search options to narrow down what is displayed. We can check boxes to mark packages for installation or removal. Synaptic can also fetch any available updates for us and will even offer to restart affected services after we perform an upgrade.
siduction 2024.1.0 -- Installing new packages using Synaptic
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The siduction handbook suggests upgrades should be performed from the command line as the distribution's rolling release nature could impact the desktop environment. However, I bravely used Synaptic and didn't run into any problems, despite fetching over 400MB of updates during the week.
Synaptic can help us manage repositories too and we can enable/disable software repositories with a few clicks.
As I mentioned above, siduction uses a rolling release model, inherited from Debian's Unstable branch, and (at the time of writing) there is a steady flood of updates. Typically I saw around 50MB to 100MB of new updates per day. This flow will likely decrease when we get close to Debian 13's release date and then increase again after Debian 13 is published.
The Flatpak framework is installed for us though no repositories (such as Flathub) are enabled by default. If we want to use Flatpak bundles we need to set up a repository. We might also wish to add a software centre which knows how to navigate Flatpak bundles.
siduction 2024.1.0 -- Adding the Flathub Flatpak repository
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Btrfs snapshots and other observations
One of the applications included in siduction is called Snapper GUI. This is a desktop application for creating and managing Btrfs snapshots. Since I have enjoyed using Snapper on openSUSE in the past, I was eager to try it out and made sure to set up my test environments with Btrfs as the root filesystem. I could not get Snapper GUI to work at all. I was unable to set up configurations or snapshots with it or browse existing snapshots I had created using the btrfs subvolume command. The command line Btrfs suite of tools worked for me without any issues and the steps for using them are including the siduction handbook.
siduction 2024.1.0 -- Listing Btrfs snapshots
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Once a Btrfs snapshot of the root filesystem has been created it automatically shows up in the boot menu. This allows us to select past snapshots we wish to boot and also select which kernel in that snapshot we want to load. This is a great feature, especially on a rolling release distribution, where we may wish to rollback recent changes.
One thing I'd like to point out about working with Btrfs (though it is not specific to siduction) is we need to remember snapshots are not recursive by default. This means a snapshot created of the root directory (/) will not include files stored under the /home directory because /home (or @home as Btrfs calls the sub-volume) is treated separately. This gives additional flexibility, allowing us to snapshot our home directories and core operating system separately, but it means it's also easy to miss snapshotting all of our data.
Apropos of nothing else, something which annoyed me early in my trial was that when application icons were added to the desktop clicking them would always pop-up a window asking if we wanted to open or execute the file. We must choose to Open, Execute, or Cancel every time we click an icon to launch its program or open a document. This feature is probably meant to protect users from untrusted files which have been downloaded to the desktop, but it pretty much kills the point of having icons conveniently located on the desktop for opening programs.
Conclusions
As with most long-lived Linux distributions, siduction has some great strengths and a few problems. On the positive side of things, siduction builds on the massive collection of software from Debian and offers multiple desktop environments alongside a minimal, command line edition. This gives users a great deal of flexibility and variety of software. siduction, at least during my trial, was stable and its rolling nature means it is regularly updated with the latest upstream software.
I also really like siduction's handbook as it covers a wide range of topics clearly and practically. It also helps that the handbook is available locally. We don't need to get on-line to read the handbook to get help troubleshooting network issues.
The main feature of siduction I appreciated was Btrfs snapshots being integrated into the boot menu automatically. The Snapper tool didn't work for me, but I was able to manually create snapshots before each update and then rollback to them later if need be. More distributions, especially rolling release projects, should offer similar functionality.
The default collection of software, at least on the LXQt edition, feels like a mixed experience. There are some great, mainstream applications (such as LibreOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird). There are also some more obscure applications, some items which plain didn't work for me, and some duplication of functionality. We probably don't need multiple text editors and virtual terminals, for instance.
The main area where I ran into issues was how siduction worked with my laptop's hardware. The distribution technically worked (my wireless card was detected and audio worked), but volume controls didn't work and connecting to a wireless network was buried six steps deep. None of my issues were show-stoppers, just annoyances I had to try to work around or fix.
A minor concern was that siduction's handbook is due for an update. It looks like new material is being added, but out of date information isn't being updated or pruned. This also isn't a terrible thing, but it might confuse users who try to switch SysV init runlevels to perform upgrades when the distribution is running systemd. I also would have liked to have seen a more modern software centre included in siduction. Synaptic works and I had no problems with it, but a modern software centre could have unified Deb and Flatpak package management.
I liked siduction's performance, I liked its variety of desktop environments, and I appreciated how it implemented its rolling release. There are some rough parts, areas where it looks like the project has been stretched thin. There are a few items which could benefit from more testing or modernization. On the whole, siduction is a good rolling release project and one which showcases what the next version of Debian will include. If you like Debian, but feel it is out of date, or like rolling releases and want more stability, then siduction is a solid option.
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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
siduction has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.2/10 from 37 review(s).
Have you used siduction? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
postmarketOS packages Lomiri interface, Orbitiny desktop makes its debut, and Alpine joins the Open Collective
People running the postmarketOS mobile operating system now have a new interface option. Along with GNOME, Phosh, Plasma Mobile, and Sxmo the distribution has added support for Lomiri (previously known as Unity 8). A news post on the postmarketOS blog reports: "While preparing this blog post, breaking news came in that the Ubuntu Touch UI Lomiri has just been merged back to Edge! Luca and Bart have started the effort around seven years ago and upstreamed a whole lot of patches along the way for making it build with Alpine."
* * * * *
There is a new Linux desktop in the works. The Orbitiny desktop is a brand new desktop (not a fork) which uses the Qt development library. The new desktop uses a classic layout while introducing several interesting features: "Desktop Gestures - On the blank area of the desktop, draw a gesture pattern (like in a web browser) but on the desktop to perform an action, like for example, launch a custom command or use one of the built-in supported actions available to choose from. Up to 12 gestures are supported for both left and right mouse buttons, 12 per button + additional configurations for middle clicks. Gestures are drawn on the blank area of the desktop and they work regardless whether icons are turned off or on.
Icon Emblems - When a file is cut or copied to the clipboard, a little icon emblem with a cut or copy symbol is attached to the icon to indicate that the file is on the clipboard, either copied or cut. If the file is a directory, and contents of that directory change (like a file is created or deleted), an emblem is attached to let you know that the folder contents have changed.
File Join - Drag a text file over another text file to add the contents of the dragged file to the target file.
Paste to File - If there is ASCII content on the clipboard, right click the files and select "Paste to File" and the content will be appended to the end of the file...." Additional details can be found on the project's Codeberg page.
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The Open Collective is "a legal and financial toolbox for grassroots groups. It's a fundraising + legal status + money management platform for your community." The Alpine Linux distribution is a new member of the Collective which will help the project more reliably raise funds to pay its infrastructure bills. The announcement on the Alpine website states: "We are pleased to announce that Alpine Linux has joined Open Collective, a platform that enables individuals and organizations to financially support open source projects and communities. This move is a significant step in ensuring the long-term sustainability of Alpine Linux, particularly in light of its growing popularity. One of the primary motivations behind this decision is to reduce our reliance on a small number of sponsors. While we are immensely grateful for their support, we recognize the importance of diversifying our funding sources to mitigate potential risks."
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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) |
Two ways to time tasks
Down-to-the-second asks: I'm feeling like my new distribution is running faster than my old one, but don't know if it's just a feeling or really getting better performance. Any tips for timing tasks?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few approaches you can take, depending on what you are timing and how fine-grained you need your time measurements to be.
In situations where you want to get accurate, sub-second measurements of how long a program took to run (perhaps a tool that crunches numbers, a script that runs in the background, or a package manager running updates) then we can use the built-in shell command time. Using the time command is fairly simple. We just put the word "time" in front of any command we wish to run and it tells us how long the program took to complete.
In the following example, I time how long it takes APT to refresh my package database:
$ time sudo apt update
real 0m1.811s
user 0m0.003s
sys 0m0.005s
The important row we want to look at is "real", which shows the task took 1.811 seconds. We can do some silly things too. For example, here I time the sleep command to see how long it takes the command to pause for two seconds:
$ sleep 2
real 0m2.002s
user 0m0.002s
sys 0m0.000s
Unsurprisingly the answer is the sleep command takes almost exactly two seconds (2.002) to do nothing for two seconds.
Using the time command is useful whenever we want to record fine-grained times for tasks which involve launching a program and waiting for it to terminate. In situations where we want to measure the amount of time which has passed between two points where a task is running but not launching or terminating then we need to look at other options.
If we want to time how long it takes to sort a spreadsheet in LibreOffice or convert a series of media files in a desktop application, we might need to take an approach more akin to working with a stopwatch. We could use an actual stopwatch or the timer/clock app on a smartphone. However, if we want to use the Linux command line, we can twist the nature of the date command to our purposes.
Typically the date command simply shows us the current date and time:
$ date
Mon 18 Nov 2024 10:16:50 AM AST
When used more than once, we can create a crude stopwatch that will give us down to the second accuracy:
$ date ; rsync -a ~/Documents/ ~/Backups/ ; date
Mon 18 Nov 2024 10:18:46 AM AST
Mon 18 Nov 2024 10:18:58 AM AST
In the above example we run the date command to establish a start time. Then we run the rsync command to perform a backup of the Documents directory. Finally, we run the date command again to see when the command finished. We can see the backup took 12 seconds.
Now, in this case, we are still relying on the command in the middle (rsync) to finish its work and exit so we can time it. However, we can run the date commands without anything running between them. In this next example, I run date once, go get a glass of water, then return to run date again. It took me 17 seconds to get the water (plus tap the Up arrow and Enter):
$ date
Mon 18 Nov 2024 10:23:45 AM AST
$ date
Mon 18 Nov 2024 10:24:02 AM AST
The above approach works, but it's a little awkward when it comes to figuring out how many seconds have gone by. We can display the current time in seconds (since January 1, 1970) to make calculations easier:
$ date +"%s"
1731940021
$ date +"%s"
1731940023
In the above example we can see the two date commands were run two seconds apart. If we want, we can turn the process into a script where all we need to do is run a command to start the clock and then tap Enter to stop the clock and show us the result:
#!/bin/bash
echo "Starting the timer...."
start=$(date +"%s")
echo "Please press Enter to stop timing."
read
end=$(date +"%s")
span=$(($end - $start))
echo "Time elapsed: $span seconds"
I called the script stopwatch and the result looks like this:
$ ./stopwatch
Starting the timer....
Please press Enter to stop timing.
Time elapsed: 9 seconds
You might be thinking this is all fine, but what if we want to measure time in fractions of a second? Well, if your reflexes are that good, we can do that. The date command can measure time down to the nanosecond and we can use the bc command to perform the final calculation. The script gets modified slightly to this:
#!/bin/bash
echo "Starting the timer...."
start=$(date +"%s.%N")
echo "Please press Enter to stop timing."
read
end=$(date +"%s.%N")
span=$(echo "$end - $start" | bc)
echo "Time elapsed: $span seconds"
When we run the script, the result looks like this:
$ ./stopwatch
Starting the timer....
Please press Enter to stop timing.
Time elapsed: 5.291682925 seconds
Hopefully one of these approaches, the timed program method or the stopwatch method, will let you know whether your system is faster now than it was.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
KaOS 2025.01
The KaOS project kicks off 2025 with a new website design and a new ISO snapshot of its rolling release operating system. The project's latest version, KaOS 2025.01, includes Plasma 6.2 and Zen Browser, a Firefox-based web browser: "KaOS kicks off the new year with the availability of a new stable ISO, featuring Plasma 6.2 and KDE Applications 24.12. Updates to the base of the system were numerous and included SQLite 3.48.0, Rsync 3.4.1, DBUS 1.16.0, LLVM/Clang 19.1.7, Poppler 25.01.0, Gstreamer 1.24.11, Fwupd 2.0.4, kernel moved to Linux 6.12.11, Systemd 253.30, ZFS 2.3.0, Tzdata 2025a, OpenSSL 3.4, FFMPEG 7.1, Protobuf 29.3 and Mesa 24.3.4. Among the new packages included are Zen Browser, a Firefox based web-browser with many modern and innovative features, plus Harper, an open source grammar and spellchecker. Not directly ISO-related, but needing a News mention anyway, is the complete overhaul of the KaOS website. After almost nine years of using the same, Jekyll based website, it was time for an update/upgrade." Additional details can be found in the release announcement.
KaOS 2025.01 -- Running the Plasma desktop
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OPNsense 25.1
The OPNsense project develops an operating system for firewalls and routers based on FreeBSD. The project is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a new release, OPNsense 25.1: "For an entire decade now, OPNsense is driving innovation through modularising and hardening the open source firewall, with simple and reliable firmware upgrades, multi-language support, fast adoption of upstream software updates as well as clear and stable 2-Clause BSD licensing. 25.1, nicknamed Ultimate Unicorn, features numerous MVC/API conversions, improved security zones support and documentation, ZFS snapshot support, a new UI look with a light and dark theme, PHP 8.3, FreeBSD 14.2." The release announcement shares a detailed changelog along with migration notes for people performing upgrades from previous versions of the operating system. "The access management was rewritten in MVC and contains behavioural changes including not rendering UNIX accounts for non-shell users. The integrated authentication via PAM has been the default for a long time so the option to disable it has been removed. The manual LDAP importer is no longer available since LDAP/RADIUS authenticators support on-demand creation and default group setup option."
TrueNAS 24.10.2 "SCALE"
The TrueNAS team have announced the release of an update to the project's 24.10.x SCALE series. The new 24.10.2 release focuses primarily on bug fixes and security improvements. "iXsystems is pleased to release TrueNAS 24.10.2! This is a maintenance release and includes refinement and fixes for issues discovered or outstanding after the 24.10.1 release. Do not retrieve hidden zpool properties in py-libzfs by default. These properties include name, tname, maxblocksize, maxdnodesize, dedupditto and dedupcached. Users needing these properties can see the linked ticket for the zpool command to retrieve them. A Force Remove iXVolumes checkbox is exposed on app deletion for any apps migrated from 24.04 that were unable to be deleted due to a 'dependent clones' error. New cloud backup option: Use Absolute Paths. Fix loading the nvidia_drm kernel module to populate the /dev/dri directory for NVIDIA GPU availability in apps like Plex. Fix netbiosname validation logic if AD enabled. Disallow specifying SSH credentials when rsync mode is MODULE. Simplify CPU widget logic to fix reporting issues for CPUs that have performance and efficiency cores. Properly support OCI image manifest for registries other than Docker...." Further details are provided in the release notes.
GParted Live 1.7.0-1
GParted Live is a live distribution with a single purpose - to provide tools for partitioning hard disks in an intuitive, graphical environment. The project's latest release is GParted Live 1.7.0-1 which provides recognition for network block devices and Bcachefs. "Key changes include: Recognise NBDs (Network Block Devices). Add support for Bcachefs (experimental), single device file systems only. Prevent GParted probe starting LVM Volume Groups. Increase minimum required version of libparted to 3.2. Bug fixes: Recognise NBDs (Network Block Devices). Update CI jobs for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and use Rocky Linux 8. Read exFAT file system usage from exfatprogs >= 1.2.3. Fix serial number for my USB key showing binary data. Add support for Bcachefs, single device file systems only. Prevent GParted probe starting LVM Volume Groups. Fix hang searching partitions when btrfs-progs not installed. Increase minimum required version of libparted to 3.2." Details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
Parrot 6.3
Parrot is a Debian-based, security-oriented distribution featuring a collection of utilities designed for penetration testing, computer forensics, reverse engineering, hacking, privacy, anonymity and cryptography. The project has published an update to its 6.x series, Parrot 6.3. The release announcement reports: "What's new in ParrotOS 6.3: There are several packages in the ParrotOS system that are upgradeable to newer versions. Some examples include: airgeddon 11.40; netexec 1.3.0; Linux kernel 6.11.5; maltego 4.8.1; metasploit 6.4.43; sqlmap 1.8.12; ZAP 2.15.0; sherlock 0.15.0; Seclists 2024.4; enum4linux 1.3.4; bloodhound 1.7.2; theharvester 4.6.0; burpsuite 2024.10.1.1; wireshark 4.0.17; [New] Caido 0.44.1; [New] Seclists-lite 2024.4; ...and more! Updated parrot-core and base-files with new fixes to correct the $PATH environment variables. Also fixed an issue that prevented the proper display of the Firefox launcher. In Parrot 6.2, a bug prevented the proper functioning of virtual images in .ova format for VirtualBox. This issue has now been fixed."
Nitrux 19c70056
The Nitrux project has announced the release of a new version of their distribution. The new release is called 3.9.0 "pd" in the release announcement and the ISO files carry the identifier 19c70056. The new version includes a number of new features: "New parameters were added to the distribution when booting the kernel. These changes include the following: Mitigate spurious wake events in USB devices using the module xhci. Enable the Landlock Linux security module. Consolidate the Linux security modules (Capability, AppArmor, Yama, BPF, and Landlock) used in Nitrux in a single parameter. Enable Page Table Isolation to mitigate speculative execution attacks like Meltdown. Activate the amd_pstate module for power and performance management. Information: This module is not enabled in the kernel configuration of the Liquorix kernel, but we're enabling it again. Enable the AMD Preferred Core functionality, ensuring tasks are scheduled on the CPU's most performant cores. Nitrux SB Manager is a simple utility that creates machine owner keys (MOK) compatible with Secure Boot."
Void 20250202
The Void tean has published new install media for the project's rolling release distribution. The main highlight for this release is the expansion of 64-bit ARM support to new devices: "This release introduces support for several arm64 UEFI devices: Apple Silicon, Lenovo Thinkpad X13s, Pinebook Pro. Live ISOs for aarch64 and aarch64-musl should also support other arm64 devices that support UEFI and can run a mainline (standard) kernel. Additionally, this image release includes: Linux 6.12 in live ISOs; Xfce 4.20 in xfce-flavored live ISOs; Linux 6.6.69 in Raspberry Pi PLATFORMFSes and images; xgenfstab, a new script from xtools to simplify generation of /etc/fstab for chroot installs." Additional changes can be found in the project's release announcement. Void install images are available in glibc and musl C flavours.
* * * * *
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: 3,152
- Total data uploaded: 46.4TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Have you tried Orbitiny?
In our News section we talked about a new Linux desktop called Orbitiny. The new desktop introduces a number of interesting features which make it easier to track file manager actions, use mouse gestures, and merge files. Have you tried Orbitiny and, if you did, what did you think of it? Let us know the pros and cons of your experience in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on what System76 should do with Pop!_OS and the COSMIC desktop in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Have you tried Orbitiny?
| Yes - I liked it: | 4 (0%) |
| Yes - I did not like it: | 73 (3%) |
| Yes - I am testing it now: | 6 (0%) |
| No - I plan to try it later: | 357 (17%) |
| No - I do not plan to try it: | 1662 (79%) |
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| Website News |
Facebook un-ban?
Last week I wrote about how links to DistroWatch were being blocked and removed by Facebook. At the time I mentioned a few other administrators of Linux groups had reached out and let us know they couldn't post about Linux in general or DistroWatch in particular in their own groups.
At the time, I confirmed this - posting about DistroWatch on Facebook resulted in my post being removed, appealing the removal resulted in my personal account being locked. I also encountered posts on Reddit from people experiencing similar censorship.
In an effort to make sure people had a way to follow DistroWatch news and communicate about our site on social media, I set up an account on Mastodon. We now also have a mirror of our Mastodon account on Bluesky. The responses we received were largely positive. Many people reached out with e-mails of support, lots of people followed the new Mastodon account, a few readers sent us donations in support, and several people complained about the censorship to Facebook.
I'm pleased to report that, from what I've been hearing, some people are able to link to DistroWatch again on Facebook. I can't confirm this personally as my account is still locked, but a few people reached out to say the ban was lifted. However, a few others have continued to report conversations about Linux in general or DistroWatch in particular are still being blocked. It's an ongoing issue which appears to vary by region/country. Thank you everyone who sent words of encouragement (to us) and words of appeal (to Facebook). We appreciate it and we appreciate you.
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- Malbian Linux. Malbian Linux is a Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution aimed towards malware analysis and reverse engineering. The distribution runs with custom scripts that display information in a Tmux session. Information like Internet connectivity, LAN IP address, target IP address or domain, VPN connection status and the host's connectivity state.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 10 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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| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 1, value: US$5.00) |
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
gNOX
gNOX was a Linux Operating System that you run from a CD without the need for installing. gNOX was based on the Slackware Linux distribution, and uses Dropline GNOME 2.6 as its default desktop manager, with XFce also available as the lightweight alternative. gNOX also employs a modular system. This means it was very easy to add extra software applications to gNOX by the means of modules (a growing selection available in the downloads section ) that you can permanently add to the ISO image OR run 'on the fly' from a stored location (hard drive/CD/USB drive). gNOX can be customised to suit YOUR needs, and any changes you make to the look of your gNOX can be saved, then restored again next time you use it!
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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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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