 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1112, 10 March 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Rolling release distributions face a difficult task. On the one hand they are expected to be up to date with current software versions, able to showcase the latest features in the open source community. On the other hand, rolling releases also need to strive for some degree of reliability, even while packaging a constant flow of new software. It's a difficult balance to maintain and, this week, we take a look at Solus, a rolling release distribution which strives to be current, user friendly, and reliable. Read on to learn more about this distribution and the Budgie desktop it uses as its default interface. In our News section we talk about the UBports team publishing an unscheduled update to fix a security bug while another mobile operating system, postmarketOS, considers a name change. Also in mobile Linux news, Debian software will soon be supplied as part of Android. Then we talk about Secure Boot and distributions which can be run on machines with Secure Boot enabled. Plus we are pleased to share the new releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we touch upon a topic which has been debated back and forth over the past two weeks: Mozilla's new policies and documentation concerning ownership of data and the potential sale of data. Some Firefox users are considering alternatives to Mozilla's web browser and we'd like to hear which one is your favourite browser. To all of our readers, we wish you a terrific week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Solus 4.7 Budgie
Solus is an independently developed, rolling release distribution which uses the eopkg package manager. The distribution is available in several desktop flavours: Budgie, GNOME, Plasma, and Xfce. (The Xfce edition is marked as being a beta flavour.) Each of these editions is built to run on x86_64 processors exclusively.
The latest snapshot of Solus ships with Budgie 10.9.2, GNOME 47, Plasma 6.2, or Xfce 4.20, depending on which edition we download. The ISO files vary a little in size, but are generally around 3.0GB.
One of the main highlights of the release announcement for Solus 4.7 was the recommendation for people to switch from using the Solus Software Centre to one of the desktop-specific software centres, such as GNOME Software or Discover:
For audio and video multimedia playback, we offer software out-of-the-box that caters specifically to our desired experience for each edition.
Budgie and GNOME editions ship with Rhythmbox for audio playback, with the latest release of the Alternate Toolbar extension to provide a more modern user experience. Budgie and GNOME ship with Celluloid for video playback. Xfce ships with Parole for multimedia playback. Plasma ships with Elisa for audio playback and Haruna for video playback.
Try a new Software Centre: We encourage you to try one of the new software centres as a replacement for solus-sc (Solus Software Centre). A new software center gets you out-of-the-box support for Flatpaks, and better app descriptions through Appstream metadata support.
The release announcement went on to mention a few known issues with the latest version of the distribution:
There are a few known issues: Plasma ISO requires creation of a Kwallet key file before connecting to a network. When running eopkg check, linux-current and linux-lts may show as broken. These are false positives, and can be disregarded. Sometimes there is no image when booting GNOME in a VM. GNOME sometimes boots to black screen and X cursor in VM This appears to be an upstream bug. We will keep an up to date list of known issues for 4.7 on the forums.
Live desktop and installing
I downloaded the Budgie edition of Solus which is 3.0GB in size. Booting from this ISO quickly starts the Budgie desktop. The wallpaper shows a city skyline in the background. A dark panel is placed horizontally across the bottom of the screen. On the panel we find a two-pane application menu, quick-launch buttons, and a system tray. The desktop is home to three icons. One icon opens the file manager to show our home directory, another icon opens the Trash folder, and the third icon launches the Calamares system installer.
I soon discovered double-clicking an icon would launch its application twice; Budgie uses single-click actions to open folders and launch applications.
Solus 4.7 -- The Budgie application menu
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Solus makes use of the Calamares graphical system installer which smoothly walks us through a handful of configuration steps. We're asked to pick our language and timezone from lists. We pick our keyboard layout and are offered the choice of manual or guided disk partitioning. The manual approach is pretty easy to navigate. The guided option will, by default, set up two partitions (/boot on a FAT filesystem and root on an ext4 filesystem). We have the option of requesting a swap partition be created and can switch the ext4 root partition for either Btrfs or F2FS. Finally, we are asked to make up a username and password for ourselves. Calamares then quickly copied the Solus packages to the hard drive and offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My brand new copy of Solus booted to a graphical login screen. The login page is light on options, it's pretty much just there to let us pick a user account and put in our password. Signing in brings us back to the Budgie desktop.
The Budgie desktop was fairly responsive for me. There were a few more visual effects than I'd usually enjoy, but nothing which slowed down the desktop or got in the way. The default fonts are a little smaller than I'd like, but this can be fixed in one of the distribution's two settings panels. I'd like to acknowledge that, while smaller than average, fonts are usually displayed in high-contrast (white on black or black on white) which makes them show up clearly.
On the subject of colours and clarity, I'd like to discuss Budgie's theme, or lack of theme. The colours are all over the place on the Budgie desktop and one application's theme is often the inverse of (or unrelated to) another's theme. For example, the terminal application displays white text on a black background (which is fairly typical), LibreOffice puts black text on a white background (also fairly typical), but then the gedit text editor uses grey font on a blue background for no apparent reason. In the media applications, Rhythmbox uses black font on a white background, but the Celluloid media player uses white text on a black background.
Solus 4.7 -- Conflicting colours
(full image size: 372kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Even the two settings panels are opposite to each other. The Budgie Control Centre (aka GNOME Settings) uses a light theme, but the Budgie Desktop Settings panel uses a dark theme. There are two file managers - Nemo uses a light theme throughout by default while Caja looks completely broken with black text on a black background in the main pane while the menu bar uses a light theme. This makes for a jarring visual experience throughout the desktop when using the default theme.
Solus 4.7 -- Nemo, Caja, and GNOME Help on Budgie
(full image size: 883kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
I tested Solus in VirtualBox and on a laptop. I found the distribution worked well in both environments, running smoothly, and capable of booting in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. When running on the laptop my media shortcut keys worked, audio and networking functioned without any issues, and my touchpad detected taps as clicks. Scrolling on the touchpad defaults to "natural" (inverse) scrolling, but can be changed in the Budgie Control Centre to use classic scrolling.
The distribution is middle-weight, taking up 765MB of RAM when signed into the Budgie desktop and taking up 7.1GB of disk space for a fresh install. (The 7.1GB of disk space doesn't include any swap partition we might have created.)
Included software
The Budgie edition of Solus uses a two-pane application menu with software categories placed to the left and launchers to the right. Unlike most application menus, Budgie makes us click on a category to see its contents, we cannot simply hover the mouse over a category. This makes browsing the menu less fluid, but it also keeps us from getting lost due to a quick finger slip on the mouse.
Solus 4.7 -- Running LibreOffice and Nemo
(full image size: 94kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The menu contains the Firefox browser, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and the GNOME Calendar application. Celluloid and Rhythmbox are included along with popular media codecs. There are two file managers, as I mentioned above: Caja and Nemo. Nemo seems to be the default and its icon is featured on the Budgie panel.
We can also find common tools like a text editor, document viewer, and security key manager in the menu. There is an icon called Help which opens the GNOME Help application which shares tips for navigating the GNOME desktop. This feels a little out of place on the Budgie desktop, but the two desktop environments do share a lot of applications.
Solus ships with the GNU command line utilities, manual pages, the systemd init software, and version 6.12 of the Linux kernel.
I found that Rhythmbox played music files with no issues. Celluloid would also play audio files, but when I tried to play videos the player's window remained blank while I could hear the audio from the video playing. This is an issue I've had with Celluloid a few times now, across multiple distributions and desktops. I'm not sure if it's an issue with the application itself, or if distributions are not including all the needed dependencies. Later, I installed VLC and it played videos perfectly.
There is a networking icon in the system tray, however clicking it (left-clicking or right-clicking) did nothing. To change network settings or connect to wireless networks I had to open the Solus Control Centre (GNOME Settings) and access its network options.
Settings
As I mentioned earlier, the Budgie edition of Solus ships with two separate settings panels. The Budgie Control Centre, which is a rebranded copy of GNOME Settings, covers lower-level operating system settings. We can work with user accounts, printers, networking, privacy settings, and mouse pointer behaviour from the Budgie Control Centre.
Solus 4.7 -- The two settings panels
(full image size: 990kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The second settings panel is called Budgie Desktop Settings. From this second panel we can adjust the visual elements of Budgie, including its widgets, mouse cursors, window button layout, and fonts. We can also adjust the location and contents of the panel.
The two panels don't have much overlap and, as long as we can remember "Control Centre" handles lower level options while "Desktop Settings" manages the visual elements, it's usually not too confusing to have two separate panels. There were moments though where I'd find myself trying to remember if things like mouse pointer speed were a desktop feature or a underlying feature.
Software management
When we software updates become available a notification appears on the desktop letting us know. Despite the suggestion for users to move away from the Solus Software Centre in the release announcement, it is still the default tool for managing packages on the Budgie edition.
Solus 4.7 -- The software centre
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Solus Software Centre has six tabs - Home for exploring for new applications; Updates to see and install new packages; Installed to see what packages are on the system and remove items; Third-party for fetching proprietary applications such as Google Chrome, Spotify, and Slack with there being about two dozen options in total; Search for finding an item directly by name; and Settings for disabling meta data downloads and changing the frequency of checks for new packages (the default frequency is once per hour).
My first day running Solus there were 47 updates, reaching about 550MB in size. Being a rolling release distribution means Solus will update packages frequently and may use a lot of bandwidth.
I'd like to mention the Solus Software Centre handles both applications and low-level packages, it's an all-in-one solution for managing software. Or at least it handles all packages in the Solus repositories, acting as a good front-end for the eopkg package manager. The Solus Software Centre does not have any integration with Flatpak packages.
Flatpak is installed, but we need to work with it from the command line (or install another software centre, as the Solus release announcement suggested). There are no Flatpak packages on the system by default, though the Flathub repository is enabled for us, providing us with immediate access to portable packages.
I checked and found there was no Snap support included in the Solus distribution by default.
Conclusions
On the whole, my time with Solus went smoothly. The distribution provided great hardware support, the desktop was responsive, and the repositories had the applications I wanted to use.
While much of my trial with Solus was a positive experience, I ran into several minor issues which left a bad aftertaste in my mouth and prevented me from wanting to extend my time with the distribution. Looking back on the week I realized that the positive and negative experiences were easily divided into two groups. Almost everything positive I enjoyed about Solus - the hardware support, the quick package management, the system installer, the up to date packages, and the medium-sized collection of software - were all lower-level, mostly behind-the-scenes technical choices. The negative experiences almost all came from Budgie.
Budgie is, for me, far too inconsistent in its visual elements - the theme is all over the place. There are a few too many visual effects tugging at my eyes when I'm manipulating windows. The visual elements are too varied and the default fonts unusually small compared to other desktop environments. I wasn't a fan of the multi-layered window control menus (the menus which appear when right-clicking on an open application's task switcher icon). I also wasn't a fan of having two settings panels, one borrowed from GNOME and one for Budgie-specific settings, while most desktops just need one.
Using Solus felt like visiting a convention booth where the technical product sitting in the background is good, but the salesperson presenting it is fumbling. I want them to stop talking and get out of the way so I can focus on enjoying the product. Budgie sitting on top of Solus was like that for me - functional, but frequently annoying while the core technology behind the scenes was doing a good job.
I don't think Solus, the underlying distribution, does anything particularly different or eye-catching compared with other rolling release desktop distributions. It doesn't have boot environments or default to an advanced filesystem, or take any massive leaps forward. But that is what I grew to appreciate about Solus. It's an unusually stable, unusually simple to use rolling release distribution. Everything is pretty straight forward, everything works (at the lower levels), everything installed and updated smoothly. It's just a shame I was convinced to run Budgie instead of one of the other available desktop editions.
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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
Solus has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.5/10 from 201 review(s).
Have you used Solus? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS plans rebranding effort, Debian coming to Android
The UBports team have published an unscheduled security update for UBports 20.04. The new update, OTA-8, also rolls out VoLTE for a small number of phones. "Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-8 contains only a minimal number of changes due to our current focus on Ubuntu base OS upgrade. That said, we still have a few interesting changes: Support for VoLTE (Voice over LTE) is being rolled out again on Volla Phone X23 and Volla Phone 22 running Halium 12 port. Support for more devices will be rolled out in the future. (Credit goes to Nikita (@Notkit) from Volla). The ability to remove a picture from a contact entry is added.... Additional information and a list of supported devices can be found in the release announcement.
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The postmarketOS project has announced support for several new devices, including the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 10 LTE, Samsung Galaxy S10+, Motorola Moto ES, Motorola Moto E5 Plus, Khadas VIM3, and the HMD Global Nokia 1 Plus. The project is also searching for a new identity and is inviting people to submit suggestions for a new name: "We plan to give postmarketOS a new name. Back in 2017 when postmarketOS was first getting off the ground, this project was smaller scale. Just a port of Alpine Linux to devices abandoned by their manufacturers. Now, the year is 2025 and while many of our ports are still for devices past their manufacturer's supported period, we also have a lot of devices running postmarketOS far before they reach their official End of Life. For the Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5 we even had ports on the day they were released! This is one of the reasons why we are looking for a new name. Another is that postmarketOS is not easy to pronounce. It is five syllables, including the OS at the end." People can send suggestions through the project's name submission form.
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While Android is a member of the Linux family, it is an unusual branch of the Linux family tree with not much in common with Linux distributions which run on desktop and server machines. The gap is narrowing, however, as Android will soon supply a terminal application which runs Debian in a virtual machine. It's FOSS reports: "We have known of Google working on a native Linux Terminal app since late 2024. It incorporates the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and runs a local virtual machine powered by Debian that allows it to execute various Linux commands. Earlier this year, someone even managed to run Doom in it, showcasing the ability of the native terminal app to run graphical applications. And now, a recent report by Android Police has revealed that Google has quietly rolled out the Terminal app to some Android devices." This brings us a step closer to a merged ecosystem where mobile devices can be docked and used as workstation computers.
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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) |
Linux distributions which work with Secure Boot
Staying-secure asks: Can you recommend any distros which work with Secure Boot without any fiddling with the BIOS?
DistroWatch answers: Secure Boot is a security feature which allows the computer's firmware to verify the source of the software it is loading into memory. This is done by testing the signature of the software (such as a boot loader or kernel) against verification keys. The idea is that if the software is of unknown origin, or it has been tampered with, then the verification process will fail and the computer will refuse to boot.
Most of the big-name Linux distributions have support for Secure Boot and have worked with Secure Boot for several years. Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, and Debian all support installing with Secure Boot enabled. Typically, child distributions of these projects will also work with Secure Boot. Arch Linux previously had Secure Boot support, but (according to the project's wiki) dropped support about nine years ago.
Most Linux distributions which work with Secure Boot do so using a program called a shim which does some basic verification at boot time before loading software into memory. Though the existence of the shim package is not proof a distribution will work with Secure Boot, it is a good starting point. You can find distributions which include the shim package on our Search page.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP6
Neal P. Murphy has announced the release of Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP6, an updated build of the project's specialist Linux distribution for firewalls and routers with a custom web-based configuration interface: "The Smoothwall Express Team announce the release of Update 12. We updated a few packages. Kernel and system notes: Linux kernel was bumped to version 4.4.302; linux-firmware was bumped to 20241210; since SWE 3.1 is now easier to build on itself, Linux v4.4.302 was built to change NR_CPUS to 32 which should be large enough for the near future - this will enable quicker system builds; the SO_REUSEPORT define was restored in the kernel headers (version 3.4.104 to maintain compatibility with libraries and programs from the original SWE 3.1 release); nftables support is included in the kernel, while the system still uses iptables, this will facilitate migration in the future; a few steps were taken to begin removing PPTP from the system, Microsoft declared it insecure many years ago; the location of netfilter timeouts in /proc changed, requiring minor changes in rc.network; the new version of dhcpcd wants/requires user 'dhcpcd' to be present; /etc/passwd was suitably changed...." Continue to the release announcement for a complete list of changes.
Linux From Scratch 12.3
Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with the steps necessary to build your own custom Linux system from source code. The latest version of the project's handbook, version 12.3, introduces a handful of package updates and new security patches. "The LFS release includes updates to binutils-2.44 and glibc-2.41. In total, 48 packages were updated since the last release and extensive updates to the text have been made throughout the book to improve readability. The Linux kernel has also been updated to version 6.13.4. Overall there have been over 100 commits to LFS since the previous stable version of the book. Packages that have security updates include: expat, jinja2, Python, openssl, and vim. See a complete description of security updates since the last stable release. In BLFS new packages that were added include: sysmon3/sysmond, zxing-cpp, kdsoap-ws-discovery-client and plasma-activities-stats for kio-extras, docbook-xsl-ns, libgstgtk4 in support of Snapshot, cargo-c needed for librsvg, LuaJIT to replace Lua 5.2 and glslc from shaderc needed for gtk4." The release announcement offers additional information.
Clonezilla Live 3.2.1-9
Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 3.2.1-9, the latest stable version of the project's Debian-based specialist live Linux distribution designed for partitioning, backups and disk-cloning tasks. This release drops support for the i386 architecture due to Debian's decision to stop providing i386 kernel packages: "This release of Clonezilla live (3.2.1-9) includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes since 3.2.0-5: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has bee upgraded, this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2025-03-03; as mentioned in the Debian release mailing list, the i386 Linux kernel packages were dropped in our upstream, the Debian 'Sid' repository, so i686/i686-pae editions of Clonezilla Live will be no more, from this release on, only amd64 (x86-64) releases will be available; Linux kernel was updated to 6.12.17; the Partclone package has been updated to 0.3.33; the exio package has been updated to 2.0.15; Memtest86+ was updated to 7.20; built with updated and patched live-build 20250225; the live-boot package has been updated to new and patched version 20250225; merged lz4 and lz4mt, use 'lz4 -T0' by default...." Please see the release announcement for a complete changelog.
Garuda Linux 250308
Nico Jensch has announced the release of an updated version of Garuda Linux, a set of Arch-based desktop Linux distributions with a selection popular graphical desktops, including some lesser known ones, such as Sway or Hyprland. The new version, labelled as 250803, introduces Garuda Rani, a graphical settings manager: "We are excited to introduce Garuda Rani, a brand-new application designed to streamline and enhance your Garuda Linux experience. Rani, short for 'Reliable Assistant for Native Installations', is envisioned as the future of Garuda utilities, aiming to eventually replace all existing Garuda applications. Currently, Rani integrates the functionality of our popular Welcome, Gamer and Assistant apps, providing a centralized hub for essential system management and customization tasks." See the release announcement for more information and screenshots.
Garuda Linux 250308 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 1.9MB, resolution: 2560x1600 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: 3,168
- 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) |
Firefox alternatives
Over the past few weeks the Mozilla organization has found itself doing damage control after removing a promise not to sell user information from its FAQ page, adding a licensing clause which forbid the access of adult content, and adding another section granting a license to use material users entered into the browser. While Mozilla has backtracked on some statements, their explanations have usually made the situation less clear and have caused many users to question what Mozilla is doing with their data and to whom it is being sold.
There are many web browsers in the world and we'd like to know which Firefox alternatives, if any, our users are looking at adopting.
You can see the results of our previous poll on switching desktop environments or distributions in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What Firefox alternative do you like?
| LibreWolf: | 484 (18%) |
| Tor Browser: | 85 (3%) |
| Waterfox: | 130 (5%) |
| Another Firefox derivative: | 198 (7%) |
| A Chromium-based browser: | 445 (16%) |
| A text-based browser: | 14 (1%) |
| Another alternative: | 145 (5%) |
| I am sticking with Firefox: | 1107 (40%) |
| I was not using Firefox anyway: | 133 (5%) |
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|
| Website News |
New projects added to database
GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile OS for Google's Pixel line of devices with Android app compatibility developed as a non-profit open source project. It's focused on the research and development of privacy and security technology including substantial improvements to sandboxing, exploit mitigations and the permission model. The app sandbox and other security boundaries are fortified. It was founded in 2014 and was formerly known as CopperheadOS.
GrapheneOS -- The home screen
(full image size: 42kB, resolution: 1080x2400 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 17 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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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Debian
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system is called Debian. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel. Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software. Debian comes with over 50,000 packages (precompiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) - all of it free. It's a bit like a tower. At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools. Next is all the software that you run on the computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything so it all works together.
Status: Active
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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