 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1111, 3 March 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
An operating system's user interface is a key and defining element of any platform. Whether we are using a graphical touch screen, a text console with a keyboard, or a desktop environment with a mouse, how a computer system interacts with the user is incredibly important. This week we talk about a relatively new user interface: the Orbitiny desktop environment. Orbitiny recently had its first public launch and the desktop, while it retains a classic look, introduces some interesting concepts and shortcuts. Our Feature Story gives a tour of Orbitiny's main features and shares thoughts on how it works. Also on the topic of desktop environments, Canonical is planning to launch a special flavour of Ubuntu featuring an immutable base with the GNOME desktop. This new edition, called Ubuntu Core Desktop, has been in the works for a while and we discuss what its launch will mean for the Linux desktop ecosystem. Then, in our Opinion Poll this week we ask whether our readers switch complete distributions or desktop environments more frequently. Do you prefer to hop between desktops or between distros? In our News section we report on Gentoo offering ready-to-go disk images while FreeBSD begins porting efforts to the PinePhone Pro. We also share an invitation from the elementary OS project to submit suggestions for new features. Plus we are pleased to share details on last week's releases and list the torrents we are seeding. 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) |
Orbitiny 0.01
Orbitiny is a new independently developed desktop environment for Linux. It's built using Qt, the same development library used by KDE Plasma and LXQt. The project's website describes the desktop as follows:
Built from the ground up using Qt and coded in C++, Orbitiny desktop is a new, 100% portable, innovative and traditional but modern looking desktop environment for Linux. Innovative because it has features not seen in any other desktop environment before while keeping traditional aspects of computing alive (desktop icons, menus etc).
At the time of writing it seems that no Linux distribution packages Orbitiny. At least no distributions are building Orbitiny from source code and bundling it up in a package for its users. The Arch User Repository offers the next best thing. It provides a script to download and unpack Orbitiny's pre-built binary, the AUR script doesn't build the source code.
I decided to try Orbitiny in its prepackaged form on a copy of the siduction distribution. I didn't have any particular reason for picking siduction other than I already had a copy installed with very few tools and just the LXQt desktop.
I downloaded Orbitiny version 0.01 which was packaged as a 105MB tarball. Expanding this archive created a directory which took up 258MB of disk space.
Once I had unpacked Orbitiny I tried running the command start-orbitiny from a terminal which displayed a series of messages about loading plugins and, after a few seconds, failed, returning me to the shell prompt.
Between reading the errors and reading the project's documentation it appears that Orbitiny does not have its down session manager and, instead, can be run "on top" of other window managers and desktops, such as Xfce. To test this, I installed the Openbox window manager, logged into a completely empty Openbox session, and then ran start-orbitiny from a virtual terminal. This worked, placing orbitiny's panel, desktop, and wallpaper on my display.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- The application menu
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At this point two windows opened. One displayed text which gave a short introduction to the desktop and warned me that I was running an early development release. The second window let me know the desktop was licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and asked if I accepted the license terms.
Early impressions
Orbitiny presents us with a wallpaper showing the sky and some mountains. Eight icons sit on the desktop, clustered near the middle of the screen. These icons are called Linux System, Disks and Partitions, Trash, Documents, Features, Variables, README, and Panel README. The final four are all text or word processor documents which describe the project, its features, and some environment variables.
The desktop icons sit on an invisible grid which becomes visible (like translucent graphing paper) when an icon is clicked and dragged. I'm not sure if the grid of rectangles is meant to be a debugging feature or just a way to show the user where icons can be placed, but I like it. This gives the desktop the impression of having slots where we can put icons. As a bonus, the grid prevents icons from overlapping or being hidden behind each other. It also means we can arrange icons to form a picture by filling in the grid.
At the bottom of the display we find a panel, arranged horizontally. This panel holds several icons and widgets. To the left we find an application menu with three panes and later I will describe the menu in more detail. The panel holds quick-launch icons, a drawer that can hold additional launchers, a task switcher, and a virtual desktop widget. Next we find a CPU monitor, a "Run" input box, and a system tray. The tray holds a single icon which, when clicked, displayed an error indicating "pactl not found". I believe this was meant to offer a volume control. There was no networking widget in the system tray. To the far right I found a clock.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- The panel drawer
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Hovering the mouse pointer over panel icons did nothing for a few seconds, but eventually would display a tooltip describing the icon and any configuration options. This is useful since the icons are unique and I didn't recognize what most of them would do based on their images alone.
I'd like to dwell on the application menu for a bit. The menu has an unusual, three-pane layout. The right-hand pane shows a list of storage devices and mount points connected to the computer. Beneath each entry we can see an indication of how much storage is being consumed and a button to mount the device, if it isn't already mounted. This is an interesting idea and it can provide a quick overview of available storage. On the other hand, some of the entries are likely to confuse users. There isn't really any reason to show the /dev directory, for example. It also shows Btrfs snapshots as a separate volume and some entries have "mount" buttons that are not traditionally mounted - like the swap partition.
The middle pane shows categories of software. Some of these are fairly typical across desktop environments. There is a Development category and an Audio/Video category, for instance. There are also some less clear entries such as GTK and GNOME. It's probably not immediately obvious for a non-technical user what programs will be in these two categories or what will distinguish a GNOME application from a GTK application. The left panel shows launchers in the selected category.
I'd like to point out that, to the left of the left pane, there is a Favourites/Pinned bar. We can drag launchers onto this bar to quickly access them in the future. Unfortunately, any items I placed on the Pinned bar did not stay there after I'd logged out and logged back in.
Key desktop features
What I'd like to do next is share descriptions of the key elements of the Orbitiny desktop which have been provided by the developer. I will then share my own observations on what I found it to be like using these 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.
When I clicked and dragged the mouse across the desktop it drew a line, sort of like a painting program. Completing a gesture popped up a message saying we can assign a command to a gesture by going into Preferences -> Desktop -> Gestures. Here I ran into a problem as I could not find this series of menu options anywhere. Following the README file I thought using Linux System icon might give me access to Preferences, but ran into a dead-end. Also, I found some desktop settings appear to rely on Xfce being installed.
The README file also suggested we look under Environment and Workspace Settings -> Advanced -> Gestures. I found the Environment and Workspace settings by right-clicking on the desktop. All this did was give me access to wallpaper settings; I found nothing called Advanced or Gestures.
Eventually found out the reason I was running into a dead-end was the Preferences window was opening too close to the top of the screen and the top inch was cut off. This was hiding tabs which gave access to changing default applications, adjusting fonts, setting up gestures, and changing UI themes.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- Defining actions when a gesture is performed
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I went into the Gestures tab and assigned a few simple mouse movements (up, down, left, and right) to various commands. Half of them were preset options we can select from a drop-down menu, the others were commands I typed into a nearby field. Once these gestures were set up, any gestures I had mapped to a specific, typed command worked. However, any preset options, like opening the overview dash or clipboard, failed. So this feature, once I found it, worked sometimes. It's easy to use (when it works) but it seems the preset options aren't implemented yet.
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.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- The copy emblem is displayed on the test.txt file icon
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This is a straightforward concept which worked well, at least on the desktop. When I opted to cut or copy a file the desktop showed a little cut or copy symbol by the upper-right corner of the icon. This is a convenient reminder of what we are in the process of doing.
File Join - Drag a text file over another text file to add the contents of the dragged file to the target file.
This did not work for me. Dragging one text file on top of another on the desktop did nothing. Both text files remained unchanged.
Paste to File - If there is ASCII content on the clipboard, right-click the file and select "Paste to File" and the content will be appended to the end of the file. Prepending is also available. If the selected file is a folder, the text content will be pasted into that folder and a file gets generated automatically. There is also image pasting. If the clipboard has an image, right-click + paste will generate an image file.
Both of these features worked. I could open one text file, copy its contents, then right-click on any text file's icon to append the data to the second file. If I right-clicked on a folder and chose to paste the contents of the clipboard the text from my clipboard would be copied into a new file called "00.Text File.txt". This is a neat shortcut. It's a great way to dump text without manually opening a new text file.
Multi Paste - Select a set of folders on the desktop and click "Paste" and the content from the clipboard will be pasted to all of the selected folders. Text content will also be pasted automatically by generating a unique file name and a file (works with images too).
This is an extension of the previous feature and I confirmed this works too. I'm not sure if I'd ever need to use it to paste text or images to multiple folders at the same time, but Orbitiny will do it if we wish.
Custom Desktop Directories - Choose any folder and use it as a desktop directory. It doesn't have to be $HOME/Desktop.
This is a neat idea, but I didn't find any way to do it. I thought maybe right-clicking a folder in the file manager would give me the option of assigning an alternative desktop location, but couldn't find an option for setting a folder as the desktop. I like the concept, I just can't find the screen where we implement the change.
Independent Desktops - Each screen is a separate desktop so on one screen you can have one desktop with its own set of icons (by selecting a desktop directory of your choice) and on another screen, you can have another desktop with its own icon by selecting a different desktop folder. Of course, works with wallpapers too. So it's like two different computers running on two screens.
This is a very cool idea and one which I could see catching on, especially for people who want to split their work and personal environments. I just have the one screen on my testing laptop and could not verify how well this feature works. Though, as I mentioned above, I didn't find the option to select a custom desktop directory anyway.
Beautiful and Non-Blocking Custom Context Menus. Non-blocking means your traditional shortcuts you have assigned in X11, will continue to work when a context menu is open, the shortcut won't get caught/blocked by it like it is the case with many other applications that use standard context menus. The context menus are custom made, not using the QMenu component.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- The desktop context menu
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This is both accurate and a wonderful feature. I often run into situations where I want to do something, perhaps take a screenshot using a shortcut, while a context menu is open. Orbitiny handles this beautifully. The context menus look nice too - pretty without being messy or overly flashy.
On the other hand, I found error pop-ups blocked accessing the desktop's context menu. For example, if I tried to open the keyboard settings an error would appear and report the xfce4-keyboard-settings application could not be found. Then I couldn't access context menus until that error window had been closed.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- Failing to open keyboard settings
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Open Multiple Terminals - Select several folders, right-click and select Open Terminal and a new terminal will open for all of the selected folders.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- The Orbitiny file manager
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This works as advertised. When multiple directories are selected in the file manager, we can right-click and choose to open a terminal in each location. This opens multiple terminal windows and automatically changes the working directory to match the selected folders. This is a convenient feature. I think it would be cool to see this ability extended a little so we could type in one window and have it mirrored to each terminal. This feature exists in remote administration tools like ClusterSSH and it would be nice to have it work locally too.
Built-in Run Drop-down Box (Combo Box) in the context menus allows you to run a command against the selected files (highly experimental and new).
I think this is referred to as Custom Actions in the file manager's context menu. It looks like we can perform one of the predefined actions from a menu. There is also an option to create custom actions based on file type. This is still, as the notes point out, in the early stages, so editing in new actions takes some manual text file editing to define custom actions. But they did work. For example, I selected a few files and chose to put them in a file archive and the system created a 7z archive with the multiple files in it for me.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- Performing context-specific actions
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Multi Profile Support on the Panel - Right-click the edge button on the panel and create a new profile or select one of the previously created ones to get a new configuration / sets of applets. You can switch between profiles like you switch different TV channels.
This seems to work, more or less as expected. It took me a while to get used to having multiple panels with different applets and settings. But it can be done. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to load/clone an old profile onto a new panel (the same profile can't be loaded onto two panels at the same time to avoid conflicting changes). I also discovered right-clicking on a panel and selecting "Exit" would terminal all panels. If I wanted to dismiss just one panel I needed to right-click on the panel and select "Close".
Full Drag & Support on the Panel - Drop any File/Folder from the Desktop or a File Manager or Drag and Re-arrange any applet, any icon on the panel. No special "Edit Mode" is required. Just grab the applet on the panel or a file from the desktop / file manager and drop it straight onto the panel and an icon for it gets created or the dragged one gets re-positioned. So to be clear: Launch Thunar, Nemo, Dolphin or whatever and drop any file / folder from it onto the panel, either on the Quick Launch or anywhere else and a file icon gets created. This, Drag & Drop Support was my primary goal. The panel can be resized, and placed on any corner of the screen by dragging its handle or you can put it on the middle of the screen if you wish, or turn it into a dock with auto-resizing, or a deskbar that takes the width or the height of the screen. It's highly configurable. I use it as a deskbar as I am used to it.
This is an accurate description which was reflected in my trial. I sometimes found the movement of the panel (or the icons on the panel) unpredictable. Icons sometimes ended up zooming to the far end of the panel when I tried to move them. Otherwise, I agree, the panel is highly flexible and much easier to configure than other desktop panels. I also found the panel would change its length without my knowing what had triggered it. I sometimes found myself re-enabling the option to expand the panel to take up the full desktop width as the panel would occasionally shrink without warning.
Another problem I had was I couldn't get desktop icons to transfer/copy to the panel. I could add them to the drawer on the panel, but not the panel itself.
While the panel looks nice when it's aligned horizontally, the panel looks squished and text is not aligned well when panel is placed vertically along the side of the screen.
Orbitiny 0.01 -- Placing the panel vertically
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A Comprehensive Start Menu / Application Launcher applet and again with full Drag & Drop support. You can re-arrange icons within the menu, from / in the menu, and there is designated area for a sidebar too on the menu which you can also attach / remove icons from and in to it.
I could not get icons to switch order or move around in the application menu. I could drag and drop icons into the Favourites/Pinned area on the far left of the menu, but could not rearrange them within the menu.
Directory Browser inside the right-click context menu.
This is a cool shortcut feature! In the file manager we can right-click in a directory and move up or down the directory tree from the context menu. We can also open sub-directories from this tree menu in a new file manager tab. This makes navigating to other locations easy and it helps us bookmark our previous place since the original folder remains open in the previous tab.
Dashboard Window - click any edge on the desktop to launch a dashboard window that shows you running tasks + installed applications. Search/Filter is available. At the moment, the running applications only work with X11.
This is semi-accurate. I found that the task overview only opened when I clicked near the top edge of the screen. Clicking any other edge (the right, left, or bottom) did nothing. Double-clicking anywhere on the screen opened a clipboard manager. The dashboard has two tabs, as mentioned above. The first one shows a list of open applications and the second acts as a second application menu.
Portable Mode - All the files needed to run along with the applications it comes with can be downloaded to a USB flash drive (or a folder) along with the settings so you can just take the whole folder with you and run it on any Linux computer and the settings will remain the same so the settings are also portable.
This is both true and convenient. You can put Orbitiny's directory anywhere and run it. It's highly portable. It doesn't matter if the directory containing Orbitiny's files is on a thumb drive, in /usr/local, or in your Downloads directory, the desktop will run exactly the same. The project is nicely self-contained.
Built-in WINE and DOSBox support. All the components mentioned here support both WINE and DOSBox. This means, if you drop a Windows or DOS .exe onto the panel and click on it to launch it or double-click it from the file manager or the desktop, its path will be handed over to either WINE or DOSBox to run it.
I did not test this, but it sounds convenient.
Multi-command Support - Some of the panel applets such as the launcher applet, quick launch and the drawer menu along with its items allow you to add two commands per launcher. One for left-click and another one for middle-click.
Tried this with the drawer icon and it worked. We can set right- and left- clicks to do any custom command we wish. This is flexible and a cool way to pack extra functionality into the panel.
Multi-content Search Support in File Manager - The file manager supports searching for content inside files but it also gives you an option to search for an additional word on the same line the match is found.
This is another feature which sounds interesting, but I could not find how to activate the search option.
Right-Click + Zoom - To increase / decrease the icon size, along the standard CTRL + Wheel to zoom in / out, you can also click and hold the right-hand mouse button and use the scroll wheel - up/down.
This works, sort of. The images inside an icon's grid slot get larger and smaller when we zoom. However, the space the icon takes up (the grid rectangle containing the icon) stays the same size. The text under an icon also stays the same size. This limits the usefulness somewhat as it makes the icon picture a little larger (or smaller), but the overall icon size and its text remain unchanged.
Double-Clicking a Blank Desktop Area - Run a preset gesture or an individual command when the blank area of the desktop is clicked. Hold down right-hand mouse button and double-click - Run a preset gesture or an individual command
Double-clicking opens the clipboard manager. I imagine we can set other commands to run instead, if I could get te preset gestures to work.
Other observations/quirks
Selecting the Logout option from the application menu pops up a window saying we are being logged out. Then nothing happens. We remain logged in with the desktop displayed on the screen.
The user can kill the orbitiny-desktop and orbitiny-panel processes to effectively remove the desktop and then logout of the underlying desktop or window manager.
Orbitiny uses about 580MB of RAM when signed in with no applications running. This includes the underlying siduction core and Openbox. This makes Orbitiny a relatively lightweight desktop environment. This makes sense as there are not many services or supporting applications. It's pretty much just two processes, the panel and the desktop space.
The desktop doesn't seem to remember settings. For example, each time I logged in there were four virtual desktops. I'd reset it to one, but the next time I signed in there would be four. Though this might be an issue between the Orbitiny widget and the underlying Openbox window manager. I also noticed each time I restarted the computer, my desktop icons would change position from wherever I'd left them back to their default cluster in the middle of the interface. As I mentioned above, any changes I made to the application menu were undone when I logged out and signed back in. Other items were remembered. For instance, after the first login, I never saw the window asking me to accept the license again. Likewise, erasing a panel profile was remembered across sessions.
There is an icon on the panel called a Drawer which appears to hold multiple launchers and can be configured to perform specific actions when clicked. This feels a lot like the CDE desk drawer concept and acts like a mini application menu.
This drawer doesn't always work well. Icons need to be in the file manager or on the desktop to be dragged to the drawer (we can't add items to the drawer from the application menu or panel). Some launchers I added from the file manager didn't work and, instead of launching the application, clicking the icon would launch Firefox with an error saying the provided address wasn't understood. This appears to be an issue with desktop icons being treated like URLs. Some other application icons though did work and launched the programs as expected. I'm not sure why some desktop links worked when accessed from the drawer and some did not.
Moving icons around the panel or accessing the drawer widget sometimes caused the panel to crash, but rarely. When this happened I could run "orbitiny-panel" from a terminal to restart the panel. I also found moving icons around the desktop would occasionally cause a crash. I think Orbitiny crashed entirely on me once a day during my four day trial.
There is a Run widget on panel which provides us with a way to quickly find and run a program by typing its name. Past commands are saved for quick access later in a drop-down menu next to the Run widget. This Run widget works, but every time it is used a terminal window opens on the desktop to launch the program name we just typed. This makes the desktop messy after we've opened a handful of programs as the terminals are not closed automatically after they launch the command we typed.
I found out the hard way "resetting" the panel settings wipes them and causes the panel to be completely empty, permanently. We need to either recreate the panel's layout manually or wipe the panel settings and re-launch the desktop to get the original panel back.
Conclusions
The new desktop has some neat concepts and lots of intriguing shortcuts. The environment is very customizable and flexible. Orbitiny reminds me of a modern take on CDE in some ways with its drawer and flexible panel. I feel like this is what CDE might have become if someone wanted to add gestures and multiple folder actions to the classic desktop.
Some options are either hidden from view or missing. I had to dig a bit to find some configuration options and others didn't work because I wasn't running Orbitiny on top of Xfce. But what I found was generally good, especially for a first release.
I ran into a few crashes, the desktop isn't entirely stable, but I had fewer problem than expected for an initial release. I also like that Orbitiny is relatively light on resources.
This feels like a really good first attempt and, as the author suggests, it's a good balance between classic layout with modern features.
Note: There has been a new version of Orbitiny published since the 0.01 release, though I haven't been able to try it out yet because it looks like the project's Codeberg repository is off-line at the time of writing. I did find a copy of the release announcement on-line and it looks like the settings panel has been reorganized and a handful of bugs fixed. The overall design and style of the desktop seem to be unchanged though.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Gentoo offers ready-to-go disk images, elementary OS invites feature suggestions, FreeBSD starts porting efforts to the PinePhone Pro, Mint warns about upcoming Firefox issue
The Gentoo project is making it easier to get started with the meta-distribution in virtual machines and cloud environments. The project is now publishing QCOW2 disk images which are ready to mount and immediately boot. "We are very happy to announce new official downloads on our website and our mirrors: Gentoo for amd64 (x86-64) and arm64 (aarch64), as immediately bootable disk images in qemu's QCOW2 format! The images, updated weekly, include an EFI boot partition and a fully functional Gentoo installation; either with no network activated but a password-less root login on the console ("no root pw"), or with network activated, all accounts initially locked, but cloud-init running on boot ("cloud-init"). Enjoy, and read on for more!" The project's news post offers additional information.
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The elementary OS team is inviting people to share thoughts on what features they would like to see in future versions of the distribution. "If you have ideas about what you think we should start working on for OS 8.1 - or OS 9 - now is the absolute best time to start a new discussion post or upvote an existing one." The project's GitHub page has an Ideas section where users can chime in with suggestions. Some of the more popular suggestions include making it easier to connect with cloud accounts, changing the style of the desktop dock, and including a new system monitor.
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When people think about FreeBSD they usually picture servers or massive network-attached storage pools. It's not often the venerable operating system is associated with mobile devices. At least one developer is working to change this. In FreeBSD's latest Quarterly Report one of the key areas being worked on is porting FreeBSD to the PinePhone Pro: "The next steps are to enable UEFI-based framebuffer support to enable output to the screen, and to enable USB on-the-go functionality, which might allow for plugging in a USB keyboard and/or Ethernet. Porting the Linux driver for WiFi will also be looked into. Any developers wanting to assist are encouraged to get in touch. Additional feedback and testers are welcome." The report also discusses improvements to the package manager, updates to several key ports, and efforts to better supports laptop computers.
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Over the past week the tech media has been discussing Mozilla, the company's Firefox web browser, and the licensing terms for Firefox a lot. In particular, there has been a lot of discussion around Mozilla's new licensing terms which allow the company to use information entered into Firefox and Mozilla's retraction of the company's promise not to sell users' data. Meanwhile, another Firefox-related issue has largely flown under the radar and the Linux Mint February newsletter addresses the problem: "On March 14, 2025, a root certificate used by Firefox will expire.
When this happen, Firefox version 128 (and lower) will suffer significant issues related to: configuration; add-ons; signed content; DRM-protected media playback. To avoid these problems, make sure you're up to date in your Update Manager. Press Refresh and apply all updates.
This is important for security reasons, and in this case it's also important to avoid regressions. Firefox 135.0.1 is available on all supported Linux Mint releases. Firefox 135.0.1 was also sent as an emergency update to the following discontinued releases: Linux Mint 19.3, 19.2, 19.1 and 19; LMDE 5; LMDE 4." Users of other distributions should make sure their Firefox packages are up to date to avoid issues accessing content.
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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) |
Effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop?
Desktop-on-a-rock-base asks: What do you think of the upcoming Ubuntu Core Desktop edition? Is it going to have a big impact on the Linux desktop market?
DistroWatch answers: For people who might not be aware, the company behind Ubuntu (Canonical) currently has a special server and Internet-of-Things (IoT) edition of Ubuntu called Ubuntu Core. The Ubuntu Core edition offers a minimal set of features by default. It's basically a small, immutable distribution which is meant to run Snap packages and containers. The idea is to have a tiny, bullet-proof base administrators can use as a foundation. Then containers and portable Snap packages are layered on top.
For people who are interested in this kind of minimal, immutable platform, I reviewed Ubuntu Core 24 last year. I mentioned at the time that setting up Core is an error-filled experience and quite restrictive. However, once the distribution is up and running, the experience wasn't bad, though it didn't really offer anything beyond what Ubuntu Server already provided - apart from Core's read-only root filesystem.
Ubuntu Core is clearly meant for server use and for IoT devices. However, Canonical has been talking about making a desktop edition of Ubuntu Core. The idea is that the distribution would again offer a minimal base and then everything on top of that base would be a Snap package. The kernel, the desktop, the web browser, the office software - everything apart from a few core utilities would be provided by a Snap package or a container.
I think Canonical first mentioned this idea of a Core Desktop edition back around the end of 2022 or early 2023. Since then not much has come out of the plan. There have been any number of articles mentioning delays as Canonical keeps pushing back the release date. Still, some people are excited to see Canonical launch an immutable version of Ubuntu's Desktop edition which would compete with Fedora's atomic editions and openSUSE's MicroOS.
With that background provided, let me return to the original questions. First, what do I think of it? Well, it's hasn't reached a stable release yet so I'm withholding judgement until I get to try a stable version. However, for the most part, immutable editions of operating systems do not appeal to me. I understand why they appeal to the companies which make them (immutable distributions are almost exclusively developed by commercial companies). Having a super minimal base cuts down on quality assurance variables, having an immutable base means major upgrades can be atomic (they succeed or rollback), and it means the company doesn't need to support multiple versions of packages - they can deploy one portable package for all supported versions of their operating system. In short, if you're offering commercial support, quality assurance, or looking to scale back on the number of developers you need to pay then immutable distributions make a lot of sense.
However, for the most part, immutable operating systems don't offer a lot of benefits to end-users. The filesystem is more restrictive, portable packages take up more space and start slower, the user often needs to run containers to acquire less popular applications or to run development tools. A good implementation of an immutable distribution can offer some perks - slightly improved security, for example. But the atomic updates and upgrade rollbacks provided by most immutable platforms can be achieved by easier to manage, more lightweight, and less intrusive methods such as filesystem snapshots. So, from the user's point of view, the best case scenario with an immutable desktop distribution is it behaves almost exactly like a regular desktop edition while taking up more disk space. This is why almost all immutable distributions are backed by companies - community-backed distributions (such as Debian) don't get as much benefit from an immutable platform.
In other words, I see the benefit of shipping an immutable version of Ubuntu Desktop for Canonical, but not so much for Ubuntu users.
As to what sort of impact an Ubuntu Core Desktop flavour is likely to have on the Linux ecosystem, I don't have a crystal ball. However, if pressed, I'd guess the impact will be minimal. The other major Linux companies, Red Hat and SUSE, already have immutable desktop editions. These desktops editions, while still young, have been in development and accessible to users for a few years. I'd go as far as to say Fedora's latest release of its atomic desktop builds are fairly polished. There has certainly been some interest in these new, immutable editions, but they don't seem to be drawing a lot of users yet. I suspect, at least for the first few releases, Ubuntu Core Desktop will be the same: interesting, without drawing a huge crowd.
Eventually, as in five years down the road, I imagine we'll see immutable flavours of the official community editions of Ubuntu. When these projects (such a Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu), start providing immutable bases I think adoption will spread faster. We might even see some neat specialist editions which make good use of an immutable base and other powerful features like advanced filesystems and boot environments. For the near future, I suspect Ubuntu Core Desktop will be a niche, something for people to tinker with, but not something which will replace the main Ubuntu Desktop flavour for several years.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Armbian 25.2.1
Armbian is a Linux distribution designed for ARM development boards. It is usually based on one of the stable or development versions of Debian or Ubuntu and it supports a wide variety of popular ARM-based devices. The project's latest release is version 25.2.1 which introduces new hardware support. "We are thrilled to announce Armbian Release 25.2, packed with significant updates across our entire ecosystem! These updates are aimed at enhancing functionality, expanding hardware support, and refining the user experience for both developers and everyday SBC users. Let's dive into the exciting new features! Key highlights: New Board Support: Rock 2A and 2F, NanoPi R3S, Retroid Pocket RP5, RPMini, Rock 5T, GenBook, MKS-PI, SKIPR, Armsom CM5, NextThing C.H.I.P, Magicsee C400 Plus. Rockchip 3588 Improvements: Upgrade to latest vendor kernel v6.1.99 and mainline to 6.12.y, including HDMI driver updates, USB3 fixes, and Bluetooth support updates. Wireless Enhancements: RTW88 driver additions and kernel stability fixes, added automatic wireless testing infrastructure. Kernel Upgrades: most of kernels were upgraded from 6.6.y to 6.12.y, with extensive refinements in all areas. U-Boot Updates: Most of boot loaders were updated to its last stable version, 2024.10 or more recent. Easy deployment of tools like AdGuardHome, Pi-Hole, Home Assistant, Utime Kuma, NetData, Grafana, Cockpit with KVM management, NextCloud via armbian-config." The release announcement provides more details.
Murena 2.8
The Murena team have announced the launch of an update in the /e/OS 2.x series. The new version imrpoves the account manager and software centre while fixing bugs on multiple devices. The release announcement reads: "We're thrilled to announce the release of /e/OS 2.8, packed with exciting new features, improvements, and bug fixes to enhance your experience! This update brings notable enhancements, including a more user-friendly Account Manager, an improved App Lounge experience, and important software updates like the latest LineageOS 21 security fixes. We've also addressed several bug fixes across devices like the Fairphone 3, Google Pixel 5, OnePlus Nord, and more, along with updates to popular apps such as Browser and Maps. Want to know more? Dive into the full release notes and explore everything /e/OS 2.8 has to offer!" Additional details can be found in the project's release notes. A list of supported phones and install options for them can be found on the project's Devices page.
GhostBSD 25.01
The GhostBSD project maintains a desktop-focused build of FreeBSD. In the past, GhostBSD was based on FreeBSD's development (STABLE) branch, but the latest version, GhostBSD 25.01, is built on FreeBSD's RELEASE branch. "What's new in 25.01-R14.2p1: MATE Desktop at 1.28.2: Upgraded to 1.28.2, with mate-panel (1.28.4), mate-notification-daemon (1.28.3), atril (1.28.1), and more, for a refined desktop feel. 2025 Visual Refresh: New wallpapers update the MATE desktop and Slick Greeter login screen. Hardware Boost: Added QEMU USB Tablet and XHCI mouse support for live sessions and installs, plus AMD Radeon R7 240 (Device ID 0x6613) compatibility. Broader Accessibility: Brazilian Portuguese translations land in Update Station and NetworkMgr. Workstation Firewall: Default firewall now set to "Workstation" for desktop-friendly security. Improvements and Features: Tuned live session memory for a snappier start. Pulled in releng/14.2 updates from FreeBSD. Simplified driver and software management with refactored package lists. Replaced automount in ghostbsd-utils with UDISKS2 in gvfs for better media handling. Fixed USB stick unmounting for Xfce users." Additional information is provided in the release announcement.
GhostBSD 25.01 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1024x768 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: 3,166
- Total data uploaded: 46.7TB
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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) |
Do you change distributions or desktop environments more frequently?
Usually our focus is on Linux distributions, such (as with our Feature Story this week, we sometimes also turn our attention to desktop environments. In the Linux community it is almost as easy to switch an entire operating system as it is to install and customize a desktop environment. We'd like to know which you do more often? Do you more frequently install and try out a new desktop environment on its own, or perform a fresh install of a new distro?
You can see the results of our previous poll on writing software in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you install new desktop environments or new distros more frequently?
| Desktop: | 157 (9%) |
| Complete distribution: | 1232 (67%) |
| About the same: | 199 (11%) |
| I have not installed either: | 250 (14%) |
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|
| Website News |
Added Declarative tag to Search page
One of the feature requests we received recently was to make it possible to search for distributions based on whether the project offered a declarative setup. This is a relatively rare feature and only a few Linux distributions, such as NixOS, currently support the ability to setup and configure a distribution using a declarative file and package manager. This is a feature which may spread as the technology is quite useful, particularly when deploying virtual machines.
For our readers who would like to search for declarative distributions, it is now a Distribution category option on our Search page.
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New projects added to database
Bazzite
Bazzite is an atomic distribution based on Fedora. The Bazzite distribution is designed with gaming in mind. It can run on desktop computers, the Steam Deck, and other handheld gaming devices. The base system is read-only and packages are usually supplied using Flatpak bundles.
Bazzite 41 -- The KDE Plasma 6 desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 10 March 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Firefox License (by Quizzical on 2025-03-03 02:41:50 GMT from United States)
So Firefox = full throttle spyware now?
2 • Why changing DE ? (by GruntZ on 2025-03-03 06:24:17 GMT from France)
I was on Xubuntu for a very long time (since 10.10), with Compiz+Emerald as Desktop Environment (DE) and an AWN dock, but I started to want to abandon *buntu 7 or 8 years ago (because of the "snap") and I tried to find my bearings on Mint and Mint Debian Edition by testing in VMs. For 2 years, I have been switching my desktop PCs to Mint, and my laptop to LMDE. Both are now visually and functionally almost identical to my old PC (still under Xubuntu 20.04); only AWN has not found a credible replacement.
Since the interaction goes through the DE, with all the small personal adjustments that one has made over time (keyboard shortcuts and other visual habits), changing it only brings a nuisance, at best temporary, if the underlying functionalities remain the same.
New useful features are very rare, and well-thought-out improvements are made "under the hood", without changing usage habits.
If I am so attached to my habits, it is because in my former professional life, they were called "productivity". And the changes of GTK3 then GTK4 (disappearance of menus and movement of buttons), plus the "fashion effects" with "Material Design" and borderless windows are unbearable to me.
I would spend my retirement under this same DE, as long as I can keep it operational.
After all, the Unix commands that I use since SystemV have not changed and still do the job ;-)
3 • Poll (by Craig on 2025-03-03 06:38:19 GMT from United States)
"Do you install new desktop environments or new distros more frequently?"
More frequently than what? I had to read the question a few times to get it straight in my mind.
It should read, "Which do you install more frequently, desktop environments or new distros?"
4 • BSD (by Kruger on 2025-03-03 06:58:04 GMT from Australia)
Why would you choose GhostBSD which offers no encryption options as opposed to NomadBSD which provides the option to encrypt your data with GELI on install?
5 • Changing DE? No way. (by dr.j on 2025-03-03 08:17:42 GMT from Germany)
There was a time when I was looking for the perfect system for me. At that time, I tried out many distributions, DEs and application programs. But this process has been completed years ago. If I am not forced to (wayland, discontinued programs, other further developments, new boot processes for the nvme SSD etc.) everything remains as it is. Because all this “tinkering” and searching is not an end in itself, but has a purpose. Once this has been achieved, the tinkering is over.
6 • Immutable distributions (by NULL on 2025-03-03 09:57:46 GMT from Germany)
IMHO the following statement is factually wrong, at least for immutable desktop distributions:
"immutable distributions are almost exclusively developed by commercial companies"
We have the Atomic Fedoras (community), SuSE Aeon (aka MicroOS) which was also developed by an enthusiast and of course the Atomic Fedora Spin Offs like Bazzite - each one of them driven by enthusiastic individuals, not by corporations.
Of course immutable distributions are not the solution to all problems and still have some problems which hopefully get ironed out over time, they are perfect for machines that should just work and be up to date.
It is true, that packages are slightly bigger and perhaps need a few milliseconds more to start, nothing which I every really noticed when using an immutable distribution. (Has the author experienced Atomic Fedora/SuSE Aeon or is he mostly referring to snaps on Ubuntu?)
IMHO immutable distributions solve a lot of problems, especially for community distributions:
- Community distributions simply have not enough manpower to keep packages up to date, and I'd rather have LibreOffice/Firefox/etc. packaged once by the communities that should know best how to build them, than by some random package managers
- Having immutable desktops and servers allows communities to focus on core features and users to just deploy stuff which can automatically update, while allowing users to have up to date software and fearless updates.
Just for the record, at this moment I am running Debian on all my machines but my SteamDeck. For my media machines the only reason I am not running Fedora Silverblue is that standardizing on one distribution makes my life easier and my work setup is not that great yet on Silverblue but I'll happily jump ship once Silverblue (or another immutable distribtion) is friction-less for my use case. For a lot of users which mostly use their web browser and LibreOffice, immutable distros are already a perfect solution for their use cases.
Non-immutable distributions will not go away, and people will be free to use them.
I am just getting tired of the 'immutable distributions are only in the interest of big corporations' narrative. A lot of community people see value for their communities and the same is true for a lot of end users.
7 • Do you install new desktop environments or new distros more frequently? (by James on 2025-03-03 10:36:42 GMT from United States)
I never install a new desktop, not worth the effort and a good way to get yourself in trouble. It I want to try a new desktop I find an OS that features that desktop to install.
8 • @1 So Firefox = full throttle spyware now? (by James on 2025-03-03 10:40:04 GMT from United States)
Probably not, but it still reports back to the mothership more than I want. Yet there is both Waterfox and LibreWolf that are modified Firefox that don't do that. Waterfox shuts off all telemetry. LIberWolf offers even further security. LiberWolf has a repository. Waterfox does if you want Waterfox classic, but Waterfox itself has to be installed as a tarball from my experience.
9 • Firefox alternative (by Appalachian on 2025-03-03 11:30:58 GMT from United States)
LibreWolf is only an option for replacing Firefox IF you don't mind running a distro which is explicitly meant to be political, and which has firmly planted its flag in one particular camp. They are so intent on injecting politics that they think trying to remain apolitical is a bad thing.
https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/1978
10 • Immutable (by Jesse on 2025-03-03 11:33:15 GMT from Canada)
@6: "IMHO the following statement is factually wrong, at least for immutable desktop distributions:
"immutable distributions are almost exclusively developed by commercial companies"
We have the Atomic Fedoras (community), SuSE Aeon (aka MicroOS) which was also developed by an enthusiast and of course the Atomic Fedora Spin Offs like Bazzite - each one of them driven by enthusiastic individuals, not by corporations."
All of the projects you just listed are commercially backed. Fedora is backed by IBM and all of their atomic spins are based off commercially sponsored work, SUSE is a commercial entity. You just proved my point with those examples.
11 • Firefox issue (by wre on 2025-03-03 12:58:22 GMT from United States)
Am I reading this wrong -
doesn't it says version 128 or earlier
doesn't it say to update to version 128?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/root-certificate-expiration
12 • I screwed up (by wre on 2025-03-03 12:59:34 GMT from United States)
doesn't it say earlier than version 128
13 • LibreWolf (by Hank on 2025-03-03 13:22:32 GMT from Germany)
Firefox alternative (by Appalachian on 2025-03-03 11:30:58 GMT from United States)
LibreWolf is only an option for replacing Firefox IF you don't mind running a distro which is explicitly meant to be political, and which has firmly planted its flag in one particular camp. They are so intent on injecting politics that they think trying to remain apolitical is a bad thing.
What a crazy piece of disinformation.
LibreWolf can be installed or used on most distros.
It is available as appimage and portable as well as in some distribution specific formats.
14 • Immutable (by thesisko on 2025-03-03 13:46:00 GMT from United States)
What I like about immutable distributions is that it makes it easier to support non technical family members.
15 • Immutable (by NULL on 2025-03-03 14:14:59 GMT from Germany)
@10 Perhaps we have to agree to disagree.
It is true, that Fedora/SuSE get support from their respective companies.
But, to the best of my knowledge, the immutable desktops were not created by IBM or SuSE opening a position for developing immutable desktops and paying people to do so, but by volunteers in the community and by the initiative of these volunteers.
My point is, that it seems to me like a community decision to have these works streams and not dictated by the companies backing the development.
At least a dozens ;-) of people in the communities see real value from immutable distributions.
@15 points out non technical family members, where I could not agree more. Again, I am not saying that immutable distributions solve all problems or that one should not use a 'classic' distribution.
I am simply seeing too often the narrative, that this is only in the interest of companies and that there are no benefits for (end) users.
I would for example totally use a (degoogled) version of ChromeOS on my old media player laptop in the living room . For that use case, an immutable distribution with zero maintenance and up to date packages is for me a much better solution than provisioning Debian, as I do now.
16 • Firefox (by Geo. on 2025-03-03 14:15:50 GMT from Canada)
Firefox, what happened to you? Well, there's always Zen browser, or the other mentioned above. 💔
17 • Immutable (by Jesse on 2025-03-03 15:28:55 GMT from Canada)
@16: "My point is, that it seems to me like a community decision to have these works streams and not dictated by the companies backing the development."
I am afraid you have it backwards. These are company initiatives, not community ones. That's why immutable distros are almost exclusively the domain of commercially backed projects.
Community run projects like Debian, Mint, Arch, etc don't have immutable editions, just commercially sponsored projects like SUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu.
18 • Gentoo (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-03 15:40:21 GMT from United States)
Gentoo almost scared me away from Linux altogether, many years ago. I was a plebe, and had no idea it was for a certain Linux/nerd demographic who loved to compile etc. I honestly thought it was what "Linux is all about," and reluctantly tried a few others, which was good to do of course, as I learned that there is quite the range of Linux distribution philosophies as to user sensibilities etc.
As to the poll query, heck a desktop environment used to seem tied into what a distro was all about, and some still have that flavor. But as said by others a user can swap out one for the other fairly easily on most distros. But I still try other distros much more often than fooling with going from Gnome to Plasma to whatever. No reason to carve up a distro when one can get another version of the same one or another distro with the WM and/or DE one desires.
19 • DE or Distro (by Keith S. on 2025-03-03 16:38:17 GMT from United States)
I settled on Xfce some years ago after the Gnome and KDE camps started fragmenting (and often with nasty pointless years-long fights so typical of the "libré community.") I prefer lighter DEs, and experimented with LXQT / LXDE for a bit when that mess started up. I even built out a nicer-looking fvwm desktop on an OpenBSD machine once.
Xfce has everything I need and nothing I don't need, and is available on every distro that I like. I just hope their recent experiments with Wayland don't result in the inability to run it on X, or I'll be experimenting with DEs again after years of stability.
20 • Universal Blue - Bluefin (by Linux Revolution on 2025-03-03 17:09:40 GMT from United States)
I'm generally not an immutable linux distribution person. I require too much control and change. However, I do feel Universal Blue got their vision right. I also think Universal Blue's direction and philosophy is the future of linux distributions. They offer different categories of immutability. This does lend itself to more flexibility of use cases.
21 • New desktop environments or new distros? (by Ascanio on 2025-03-03 17:19:41 GMT from Italy)
The same. I install Debian stable every 2 years, with MATE desktop environment.
22 • Changing desktop vs. distro (by Jason Hsu on 2025-03-03 19:38:12 GMT from United States)
I never change the DE that comes with the distro I installed. There's too much risk and not enough benefit.
If a distro offers multiple DEs, I pick the "main" one because it has the best support. If I have questions, I have a better chance of finding answers from fellow users, wikis, help pages, etc. When it comes to fixing bugs and other issues, this one has the highest priority within the development team. The more you stray away from the "main" setup, the more you're on your own. Not all of us can be like James Bond, Magnum P.I., Dirty Harry, Axel Foley, or Indiana Jones.
23 • Changing distros over LXQT (by a humble hobbit on 2025-03-03 21:08:45 GMT from Chile)
Changing DEs often leads to glitches or little annoyances, but I was a lxde fan, and currently a lxqt one (first lubuntu release with it was bad, but it did improve a lot with time). I have tried for years to replace Lubuntu since as much as I love all the work they put in the desktop I really can't stand Ubuntu as a distro nowadays, but no other distro has such a polished LXQT implementation. Even Debian uses xfwm and lightdm instead of openbox and sddm with their default settings. Right now I'm running a Devuan based Peppermint since it is a very nice distro, but my heart aches for another LXQT-centric distro.
24 • LXQT (by Keith S. on 2025-03-03 23:56:58 GMT from United States)
@23 humble hobbit: Devuan ships with an San LXQT option. I thought Peppermint had a sort of strange LXQT/Xfce hybrid thing but it has been a few years since I looked at it. I recently tried out Devuan again and loved it. I don't know the details of which window manager they use though, but it might be worth a look.
25 • Orbitiny desktop (by rhtoras on 2025-03-04 00:43:09 GMT from Greece)
Well i am dissapointed with orbitiny desktop... there are new desktops with freedom and efficiency in mind. One example is Lumina Desktop which free of bloat components and works fine on old computers too. I don't like a desktop environment looking like a cheap copy of a windows version even if i can modify it how i like it. To give an example of what i mean. Mate desktop looks unique in a vanilla version which is exactly the oposite of gnome desktop which looks like a macos clone on steroids. And although macos looks -in my eyes- nicer than windows then gnome is just a copy of it. Where are the new ideas ? Is there anything fresh ? Calla desktop or ydesk also look nicer even if they borrow ideas from other desktops. And NO borrowing ideas is not the same as cloning. OK orbitiny is not a 100% clone of windows but it feels bloat and buggy at the same time something windows already is. I personally like simplicity. Last but not least i like the idea of a new desktop environment and orbitiny is a new one and i am watching this closely. Also using codeberg to host it's code is a breath of fresh air. Hope this desktop will improve at least in the efficiency and freedom departments. What i am saying is: using less ram and working without bloat components.
26 • 17 • Immutable (by Wally on 2025-03-04 00:48:09 GMT from Australia)
"immutable distros are almost exclusively the domain of commercially backed projects." To be fair there's Vanilla OS, Endless OS, Nitrux and rlxos. And it's still early days
27 • @,26 • 17 • Immutable, again (by Wally on 2025-03-04 01:16:35 GMT from Australia)
Missed one: blendOS. And there's astOS, which installs an immutable system using the Arch ISO.
28 • Re: LibreWolf (by Appalachian on 2025-03-04 01:32:43 GMT from United States)
@13: Perhaps you might care to follow the link I posted (which takes you to the LibreWolf forum), read the comments from one of the LibreWolf devs, and tell me where I misrepresented what they wrote. Or perhaps you would rather not, and you would instead prefer to continue tossing around words like "disinformation" to dismiss any facts you happen to find inconvenient.
29 • DE's (by Friar Tux on 2025-03-04 04:53:02 GMT from Canada)
@25 (rhtoras) While I prefer a "Windows like" desktop, I'm old and like the familiarity, I do, however, like to play with radically different DE's. One of my absolute favourite is Eagle Mode. It is a zoomable window manager (?). You just continue zooming in till you get to the file you want. Or you can zoom completely out where you'll find yourself in "space" with various apps and games you can zoom into. Definitely different if you like different.
But to answer the actual poll question, I change distros more often, but try to stay with my DE of choice - Cinnamon. (Fell in love with it when KDE stopped working a few years back.)
30 • Firefox alternatives (by Andy Prough on 2025-03-04 05:13:12 GMT from Switzerland)
If you are going to look into the different Firefox alternatives it's best to look at the fully free ones including Mullvad browser and IceCat, both of which are very serious about user privacy. And if you are fortunate enough to be running the fully free Trisquel GNU/Linux as your distro you will get the fully free and fully private Firefox fork called Abrowser.
Librewolf allows the enabling of DRM, which is a privacy nightmare, so I can't recommend it.
31 • Orbitiny New Home (by JOH451 on 2025-03-04 10:51:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
@25 You spoke too soon about Codeberg. It appears the project has been migrated to Sourceforge at https://sourceforge.net/projects/orbitiny-desktop/.
32 • Et tu, Firefox? (by El Zorro Ardiente on 2025-03-04 10:55:04 GMT from Spain)
Several comments on what Firefox is doing, and of course, condemnation. But my wondering is not about what, but about why? It may just be that good intentions and fine principles don't put meat in the soup pot. As shown by such as Microsoft and Opera, it's not easy to maintain a browser, and I expect it's not cheap. MS and Opera surrendered to Chromium, but for Firefox, that might be anathema. In it's heyday, Firefox had over 30% of the market. Today it's a paltry 2.9% or so, most of which in taken by Linux and BSD users. Users are notoriously cheap as far as contributions, and the lower the market share, the less money from the search engines, which are Firefox's main source of funds.So, my concern is not so much whether Firefox is going to sell my private goodies, (They are welcome to whatever turns them on.) but whether it's going to be around at all for long.
Privacy-focused browsers are mentioned, but every single one is based on Firefox. So, if no Firefox, then what? There is Goanna, the fork used for Pale Moon and Basilisk, and nothing else but Chromium and Apple's WebKit. May the forks be with you!
33 • Immutable (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 11:02:01 GMT from Canada)
@26: "To be fair there's Vanilla OS, Endless OS, Nitrux and rlxos. And it's still early days"
True, there are a few community projects using immutable filesystems. Though few of them have gained much traction yet.
On the flip side we can add SteamOS from Valve as another commercial example. It is probably the most widely used immutable Linux distro, outside of Android.
34 • DE or Distro? (by penguinx86 on 2025-03-04 11:37:09 GMT from United States)
When I want to try a new desktop environment, I install the full distro in Virtualbox. I'll play around with it for a few days. Then, I'll go back to using Mint or Debian as my main distro with Xfce as the DE.
35 • Distros and DEs (by Peter on 2025-03-04 13:13:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
I never change distro now. Debian is where I've laid my hat and I'm happy with it. I have a spare SSD in my main PC which I'll install a 'guest OS' if I'm interested enough in it, but I'll always go back to Debian. To be honest, and I can appreciate the irony that I'm posting this on Distrowatch. I'm not really that interested in distros anymore unless they offer something different, like I'm currently running FreeBSD as my 'guest OS' but that was just a learning exercise and it'll probably go at some point.
DEs? Perhaps I'm weird, but I like both Gnome and KDE. KDE for the desktop, Gnome for the laptop. And Xfce, I'll always have a soft spot for that, because it was the first one I used when I switched to Linux and let's face it, it really doesn't change that much!
36 • Librewolf (by Osmo on 2025-03-04 14:40:16 GMT from Sweden)
@9 please stop being so political Appalachian - its ok to use something made by someone you feel angry at for not agreeing with you.
37 • de's (by shawn on 2025-03-04 14:41:41 GMT from United States)
As for DE it's xfce, with a nvidia card and a 4k led tv it's the only choice that works, worst is KDE since wayland is terrible with nvidia like they worked to make it that bad on purpose. Gnome is just to nothing to see and I like to see my widgets but this screens switching windows maxing out stuff is silly so that moves gnome to no go, now mate I tried but it's off since it's not intuitive to me like the kde start menu is a pain with stuff where you do not expect it not new user friendly with kde and way to many options and iit's slugish if you install a bunch of themes it seems to want to stop working and with 64gb ram and a 6 core cpu that means it's not good under the hood since it should use as much ram as it needs not slow to almost a crawl after a bunch of installs that's just programming for looks and not power so more like a cheerleader and not any athlete, ones just pretty and one is functional unless fooling the user isa function.
38 • Moz terms and DE changes (by grindstone on 2025-03-04 15:19:45 GMT from United States)
@1 yes there's a Debian bug filed but...the slow death from Mozilla brain-wizards direction defies belief. Infuriatingly stupid both short and long-term. They're trying to smooth it over with word-salad but let's see what the sausage-making process does with it.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1099130
@2 Amen. Same & same (base xub 20.04). Took years to get it the way everything works (machine does a LOT).
@5 Yes--once needs met and stabilized, tinkering ends.
39 • Changing distro and desktop (by David on 2025-03-04 16:59:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm still a bot puzzled by the question! I only change when forced to by unacceptable developments, like abandoning Gnome when version 3 came out and Centos when that went downhill. So long as PCLinuxOS and Xfce exist, I'll keep using them.
40 • about distrowatch search menu (by gugl on 2025-03-04 17:38:50 GMT from Moldova)
First of all, blendos is missing from newly added "declarative" distros,
and I would like to add my 2 pennies, the people who like using nix as package manager, but at the same time a traditional distro know that not every distro supports nix, cause nix doesn't work with "selinux", so I suggest an idea for future improvement of distrowatch search:
to add a search section with security modules used (selinux, apparmor, tomoyo, none)
41 • Declarative (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 17:43:18 GMT from Canada)
@40: > "First of all, blendos is missing from newly added "declarative" distros,"
Despite what the blendOS website says, the distribution is not declarative, nor is it immutable.
> " the people who like using nix as package manager, but at the same time a traditional distro know that not every distro supports nix, cause nix doesn't work with "selinux""
Why not just turn off SELinux if you want a distribution which doesn't use SELinux?
42 • on blendos not (by gugl on 2025-03-04 18:07:54 GMT from Moldova)
thank you for answering
Agree that blendos isn't immutable, but I played with it in a VM, by default it installed GNOME, and all it took to switch it to KDE and install some apps was changing a .yaml file in which instead of
track: default-gnome
to switch to:
track: kde
packages:
- transmission-qt
- openttd
and it magically after loooong time cause it is still beta switched to KDE
so I think it is a declarative config driven distro (for now with a lot of quirks)
About disabling selinux on fedora/opensuse in order to use nix -
people who need to use selinux with RHEL/SLES and nix use a nix distro from determinate systems, which happen to work with selinux
obviously people who use nix, google what to do,
I just pointed a niche search case, which majority of linux users, don't want, cause usually nobody messes with security modules :)
43 • blendos (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 18:37:19 GMT from Canada)
@42: "I think it is a declarative config driven distro"
You can add packages to an existing blendos system using a config file, but you can't setup and configure blendos through a config file the way you can with a declarative distribution like NixOS or Guix System.
44 • Bazzite (by mocha on 2025-03-04 19:29:05 GMT from United States)
Glad to see Bazzite added! Tried it out recently on my main computer and loved it. It was my first time trying an immutable distro and was surprised how little that caused any issues, would highly recommend as a gaming or even general use/development environment.
45 • search (by shawn on 2025-03-04 21:16:47 GMT from United States)
a search term needed or you need to leave distrowatch and use google or other search engine to look it up, especially if your a new linux user is have terms like, wayland or xorg since if you own an nvidia card there is no way around the fact that wayland is terrible for nvidia and nvidia drivers are terrible with wayland so that would save a ton of bad installs for new users and trust me I went from intel cpu to amd with nvidia card and it was night and day in the stuff I could use since cinnamon is buggy with intel at times and it also hates 4k resolution and I've never had any luck with ubuntu at all except with the great mx linux an offshoot and a great one at that.
46 • search (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 21:23:50 GMT from Canada)
@45: "a search term needed or you need to leave distrowatch and use google or other search engine to look it up, especially if your a new linux user is have terms like, wayland or xorg since if you own an nvidia card there is no way around the fact that wayland is terrible for nvidia"
We've had an option for searching for systems with X.Org available for around 20 years.
Wayland isn't a specific package, since each desktop rolls their own implementation. But if you know a desktop you want to run that supports Wayland (like GNOME 40) you can search for the desktop.
47 • Firefox (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-05 12:49:44 GMT from United States)
@32 Once in a while I see a post in here that teaches me a thing or three. Thanks for that.
I'm too simple about all this to englow much worry about privacy concerns; if you type something, anything, on the internet it's highly likely that someone who is monetize minded will harvest it and sell it, including your (gathered) personal data and your aunt's bra size, irrespective of which web browser you type it in.
So, don't type it on the internet and even more importantly don't store it in your computer or phone. Let them harvest fake names and other things; pollute the data banks and clouds with phoney baloney, all the while keeping the real stuff about you in the real world.
If you don't know how to do those things then perhaps go off the grid entirely, a lot of people are doing that.
48 • Do you change distributions or desktop environments more frequently ? (by eb on 2025-03-05 17:25:13 GMT from France)
I never change distribution (Slackware since 2005)
I never changedesktop environments (I have none !:-)
I sometimes change of window manager (now JWM).
Thanks to DistroWatch.
49 • BSD (by rhtoras on 2025-03-05 18:26:33 GMT from Greece)
@4 I agree 100% i find nomad bsd a better option than ghost bsd... i only wish they could bring back the old openbox iso but even with xfce i am just fine... the only downside is -at least in my case- sound does not work out of the box and it was kinda hard to make it work... and i have made sound work on openbsd which is consider harder so i am not sure...
The installer of nomad bsd is super easy so is ghostbsd installer... a downside of ghost bsd is that they abandoned openrc init and octopkg...
I also like midnight bsd ideas but this fork of freebsd is not ready yet for daily use.
50 • change desktop environment or distribution (by Kazlu on 2025-03-06 08:37:19 GMT from France)
I have not changed my DE in over a decade. I am very happy and comfortable with Xfce and I welcome slow, mature improvements that keep my workflow the same. I have been trying a handful of distros in the recent years (Peppermint, Spiral, Void to name a few), but every time, I went for the Xfce edition... When available. I only make an exception when Xfce is not among the supported/offered options at install time, because if I go for a desktop installed after the fact, it's way more raw, not polished and probably lacks the features that make the base distro interesting. In that case, MATE does the trick, LXQt is OK. Also, I have one example where I am relying on Qt aplications, in that case I go for LXQt to have more consistency over the desktop. The Ubuntu family is an exception, the *buntu-desktop packages bring all the customizations of the sister distros' desktops and it works well. If you want, say, KDE Mint, you can install Mint and kubuntu-desktop and you'll mix the best of both worlds.
51 • @23 LXQt (by Kazlu on 2025-03-06 09:26:34 GMT from France)
LXQt outside of Ubuntu? Well, I suppose it depends on what you want to avoid in Ubuntu. If Mint is far enough from the Ubuntu problems for you, you could install Linux-Mint and then install the lubuntu-desktop package to recover the exact same Lubuntu polish. However, if you need to go further away (like I suppose you do since you went for Peppermint Devuan), you may try wattOS (still uses LXDE ;) ) or the LXQt version of Spiral Linux (very polished Debian spin with nothing but plain Debian repositories). Technically, it should be possible to mix Devuan base and the level of polish of Spiral Linux, but I am not sure what is the best route.
52 • Stay Calm and Forget Your Privacy (by Random Void User on 2025-03-07 00:24:18 GMT from United States)
Thankfully I've been using Brave in place of Firefox for some time. With the recent FF change, I deleted it. Configuring privacy was already enough work. I still use LibreWolf AppImage, FF without the labor. If I have an argument with some LibreWolf setting, I can change it.
Brave runs faster than FF in my tests. Google code is suspect but after passing Chromium and Brave teams, followed by my own tweaks, I figure it's scraped clean. Brave's cryptocurrency can be ignored, and AI nonsense shut off. Tor tabs are unique. The "bad" reviews mostly rail on the founder's politics and profit model. I just don't care. What I want is my privacy. Brave is good code, as one may expect from many teams working it.
I tried Zen, but found its defaults at odds with its claims. Google search in a "privacy" browser? And consumer-grade spyware apps in the default panel on first launch? Nothing about Zen made sense, so I dropped it. Its interface confuses, and it suffers as many privacy headaches as FF, at first blush. The website tranquilizes into calmness, instead of offering a FF build matching the tin. Others apparently feel the same.
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1f38jkp/my_privacy_review_zen_browser/
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/zen-browser/20312/27
53 • Ungoogled-Chromium (by illumos on 2025-03-07 06:07:18 GMT from Japan)
Why not use Ungoogled-Chromium?
Google's spyware remains on Chromium, but it has been completely removed from Ungoodled-Chromium.
Brave is developed by a company so I don't know when it will change licenses like Mozilla, but there is no such concern as Ungoogled-Chromium is a community-driven development.
If you're worried about FireFox or LibreWolf, you should use Ungoodled-Chromium.
54 • Small linux recovery system in a single ~35Mb file. Just drop an EFI executable (by Anon on 2025-03-07 10:49:37 GMT from United States)
FYI: https://github.com/hugochinchilla/lifeboat_linux
Small linux recovery system in a single ~35Mb file. Just drop an EFI executable in your EFI partition
55 • Distributions or desktop environments (by Just4fun on 2025-03-07 14:22:40 GMT from Sweden)
I don't use desktop environments. To keep distributions as simple as possible, I start with a minimal installation (mostly Arch or Artix) then add openbox as a window manager and a program launcher and then add ONLY the programs that are really needed.
56 • Browser Privacy Concerns (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-07 15:15:42 GMT from United States)
I'm from Mars and am not familiar with Earth's human ways, so I typed "what is all the concern about browser privacy?" in your Google.
The AI response in Google was, "The main concern about privacy in browsers is that websites and third-party companies can track users' online activity through cookies and other tracking mechanisms, collecting data about their browsing habits, interests, and location, which can then be used for targeted advertising or even sold to other entities, without the user's full knowledge or consent, potentially leading to privacy violations and unwanted profiling"
I'm sorry, I thought it was going to give a response talking about your checking accounts passwords or your medial diagnosis from that time you went on vacation with your secretary.
Not about companies harvesting individual data pieces of your population so that they can more accurately tailor advertising to your needs and tastes. It must be awful seeing those ads which are about something personal like that.
57 • @56 Browser privacy concerns (by Kazlu on 2025-03-07 15:55:09 GMT from France)
Hi there Slappy McGee and welcome to Earth! Please let me expand on this so you may better understand the issue.
First things first: you asked a Google AI for a response. Google is one of the worst companies when it comes to privacy, so it's not the best place to ask. It is not in their interests to give you an honest answer, but rather a believable not too worrying answer. It's like asking a dictator what is wrong with dictatorship: they will very likely not tell you the truth.
Personal data being used for tailored advertising is not false. But it is not the main concern. The problem is that the data is not *only* used for that. First, the data is sold to whoever is ready to pay the price for it. It may be advertising companies, but also people with mischievous intents. Second, it is also possible that this data is not well protected and therefore might be stolen. It could even be used maliciously by people inside those companies. Moreover, the information is not *just* what websites you visited. It's also everything you buy, where you booked vacation, etc. And of course, since for that purpose you use personal information like email address, phone number or physical address, that information can be associated with *everything else* associated with these from other sources. For example, the location history of the phone carrying the same phone number. In the end, it is possible to track someone, know where they were, what they did, when they did id, repeatedly or not, what they bought, who they met, what they said, what they ate, if they were sick, happy, sad, etc.
Now, what kind of mischievous intents are we talking about? Anything you can imagine: identity theft to buy stuff with your money, fake ID forgery, stalking for the purpose of blackmailing... From threatening to disclose where you were that night to your significant other to blackmailing people working in military facilities with the knowledge of where they children go to school or do sports, there is no limit.
So, yes, it can be awful. But since it is not awful every day for everyone, people tend to neglect that.
Have a safe stay here on Earth and, as far as possible, use libre software!
58 • Browser Privacy Concerns (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-07 18:02:12 GMT from United States)
@57 Thank you, Kazlu (which by coincidence is my Uncle Ulzak's name spelled backward! Small universe), for the welcome and for the expanded information. I do appreciate that!
Now, when on Earth again, if I ever do come back, I'll use libre software and stuff.
But you did miss your chance to ask, "Are you sure your concerns did not emanate from Uranus?"
59 • @56,58 Privacy concern (by Slap-Happy on 2025-03-07 18:35:32 GMT from United States)
Very funny Slappy McGee, especially the last sentence. Google is the only browser that finds my data online, on a breach, and also tells me that I have the same passwords on multiple sites. And tells me I have weak passwords...all from a company that, according to some comments here are trying to circumvent my data. Go Google Go. I've Never been hacked because of Google. Period.
Also @54, find idea on the OneFileLinux!!!
60 • @58 planetary considerations (by Kazlu on 2025-03-07 20:09:53 GMT from France)
"But you did miss your chance to ask, "Are you sure your concerns did not emanate from Uranus?" "
Well, I happen to have a couple of good Uranian friends and I know they are very sensitive when it comes to confusing planetary cultures, so I try to avoid asumptions. They have told me time and again with a lot of conviction that "nothing compares to Uranus!".
61 • Back to My Subject (by Random Void User on 2025-03-07 21:00:06 GMT from United States)
Zen calls itself a privacy browser, but ships a non-private configuration.
Corporate concerns are off. Uber-corp quasi-monopoly big brother Google pays little brother Mozilla. Mozilla now succumbs to the dark side. Meanwhile Brave runs an independent, open-source profit model that's opt-in, not opt-out like everything Google and Mozilla. That is, if they deign to compile an out for you, and by some good luck you happen to learn it, a few years into heavy browser usage.
Ungoogled Chromium is nice, but needs to ship official binaries like Brave. I'm happy for Linux users running distros that build it for them. It should be the default browser in every distro, and ultimately forked away from Google, along with Android, so that the entire web engine, and by extension the Internet, has community direction, not corporate.
Number of Comments: 61
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