 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1113, 17 March 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Technology is constantly reinventing itself, constantly changing, always moving towards a new concept of what "modern" software should be. Sometimes that is more minimal, or more flashy, or more secure, or the same functionality with rounded edges. This week, in our News section, we talk about changes coming to a variety of projects. These include an easier installation process for Murena powered phones, a new COSMIC desktop edition for Garuda Linux, and small improvements to Haiku. We also talk about Bodhi's new desktop theme, Ubuntu replacing its core utilities with Rust equivalents, and Chimera seeking reliable RISC-V powered computers. Do you run any RISC-V powered devices? Let us know about them in this week's Opinion Poll. First through, we talk about a member of the Gentoo family: MocaccinoOS. The MocaccinoOS distribution is a successor to Sabayon that features its own package manager, called Luet. We talk about MocaccinoOS and what it is like to run this distribution in our Feature Story. Later, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about how to contribute to the open source community. Then we are pleased to share information 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:
- Review: MocaccinoOS 1.8.1
- News: Murena extends its on-line installer, Garuda experiments with COSMIC, incremental improvements to Haiku, Bodhi tries out new desktop theme, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera drops RISC-V builds, Debian publishes 12.10 media
- Questions and answers: How to contribute to open source
- Released last week: FreeBSD 13.5, IPFire 2.29 Core 192, SystemRescue 12.00
- Torrent corner: Debian, Debian Edu, KDE neon, SparkyLinux
- Opinion poll: Do you own any RISC-V powered devices?
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
MocaccinoOS 1.8.1
It's been about four years since I previously tried out the MocaccinoOS distribution. The project describes itself as being "Gentoo-based (former Sabayon branch) suited for desktop environments." The distribution also ships with a special package manager called Luet. What does Luet do differently? The project's website tells us: "MocaccinoOS uses Luet as a package manager, which is completely static and fully based on containers." I'll get into more details in a moment.
When I previously reviewed MocaccinoOS the project sounded interesting, with its layered operating system approach and custom package manager, but (at the time) I couldn't find any way to install the distribution. The documentation was surprisingly silent on how to go about installing the operating system and there weren't any obvious tools or icon launchers to help me get started, so Mocaccino went back on the shelf.
In February one of the Mocaccino developers reached out and told me the project had been making progress. I soon found that, whatever other progress had been made, the documentation still hasn't been expanded and there still isn't any information on how to install this distribution. However, I thought maybe I would be able to guess my way through the process and decided to tackle Mocaccino once more.
Apart from being Gentoo-based, the distribution's main feature appears to be Luet and how this custom package manager handles updates: "MocaccinoOS Desktop uses a layered approach. Most common system packages and desktop environments (DE) are packaged as single installable layers, along with libraries. The system set is only composed by 2 core layers." It sounds as though Mocaccino is taking a similar approach to the BSDs and popular mobile operating systems, separating the core system from the applications we can layer on top of it. The website goes on: "Versioned rootfs as layers, delivered as upgrades or multiple single packages. You can choose the format you like. Musl? Server variant? We've got you covered."
This explanation was a light on technical details, but it seemed as though Mocaccino would provide me with layers of an operating system - core, desktop, and applications - and I'd be able to mix and match them as I wanted.
The distribution is available in five editions: Desktop Minimal, GNOME, KDE, MATE, and Xfce. These vary in size from 1.4GB for the Minimal flavour up to 2.0GB for KDE. Something I noticed right away which was odd was all the download options were offered as .tar.xz archives, compressed tarballs containing the ISO files. This is really unusual, maybe unique. Some projects compress their IMG or ISO files, but I've never seen one also place a single ISO file inside a tarball. It doesn't really make a practical difference in download size either. I fetched the KDE edition tarball which is 2,142,132,668 bytes when compressed. Once unpacked the ISO is 2,151,579,648, or about 9MB larger. Which means it takes over ten times longer to unpack the ISO file than it does to download the extra 9MB.
I can't imagine why someone would make a tar archive for a single file when they are almost exactly the same size, but, this mystery aside, I soon had my live desktop ISO ready to go.
Booting from the live media brings up a menu saying we can press Enter to see available video modes or press Space to boot immediately. When I pressed Space the screen went black for about 20 seconds and then the system started a KDE Plasma session.
The project's documentation offers us the distribution's default credentials, but I did not need them. The desktop automatically logged me in and I wasn't prompted for a password while using the live session.
MocaccinoOS 1.8.1 -- The Plasma welcome window
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The live Plasma session runs on Wayland and uses a light theme. A desktop panel is placed horizontally across the bottom of the screen. A single icon sits on the desktop and will launch the Calamares system installer. When we first sign in a welcome window appears. This welcome application gives us a quick overview of Plasma's features, offers to launch the Discover software centre, and then gets out of the way to let us explore the desktop. I found that taking the option to open Discover would launch the software centre, but then the centre displayed an error reporting Discover was unable to find any Flatpak packages. I decided that was an issue for another day and jumped into the system installer.
Installing
The first screen of the Calamares installer offers to let us pick our preferred language from a list and shows us three buttons: Release Notes, Known Issues, and Mocaccino Support. Clicking any of these three buttons accomplishes nothing, not even an error message. The following screens ask us to pick our timezone and keyboard layout.
Next, we move on to disk partitioning. Calamares offers guided partitioning which, in this case, will create one large ext4 partition for our root filesystem and a unusually large swap partition. It looks as though swap is set up to be twice the size of the computer's RAM. This was once a common general rule, back in the 1990s, but these days a swap partition is rarely as large or larger than RAM. The guided option doesn't allow us to tweak the default layout. Alternatively, we can use the manual partitioning approach which is pleasantly easy to navigate.
The final screen of Calamares asks us to make up a username and password for ourselves. Then files are copied to our disk and Calamares offers to restart the computer. The install process took about 15 minutes, start to finish.
The first time I tried setting up Mocaccino, I tried to use the manual partitioning approach. I just took the recommendation from the guided section (root filesystem on ext4, plus swap partition) and made swap smaller. When I was finished, despite having flagged my root partition as being both root and bootable, Mocaccino didn't boot. In fact, it didn't seem to even have placed any boot loader on the system. I went back through the process and tried again, taking the same settings, but using automated partitioning. This worked, setting up the distribution and placing a boot loader on my drive.
Early impressions
Mocaccino booted to a graphical login screen. The distribution uses Plasma 6 running on Wayland as the default desktop session. Plasma on X11 is provided as an alternative. When I signed into my account I was shown the Plasma desktop, decorated in a light theme, and the welcome window opened for me again. There were no icons on the desktop. The interface, while large in memory, was fairly responsive.
MocaccinoOS 1.8.1 -- The System Systems panel
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
The distribution was capable of booting in UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. When running MocaccinoOS on my laptop the distribution worked well. It set up audio and networking with no problems and my touchpad worked. The keyboard's media keys were recognized and all of my hardware just worked. Plasma was a little sluggish on my laptop, mostly due (I believed at first) to all the visual effects. Having everything fade in/out or slide around made everything feel slower than usual.
The distribution mostly worked well in VirtualBox too, running smoothly and integrating with the virtual machine environment. I think Mocaccino actually felt faster in the virtual machine because it wasn't drawing as many visual effects in response to my input. Unfortunately, I was unable to increase the desktop resolution of Plasma, either by resizing the VirtualBox window or using the System Settings panel. Plasma's resolution always stubbornly stayed at 1200x800 pixels when using the VMSVGA driver. The VBoxSVGA driver had a similar restriction and the desktop wouldn't resize, but was stuck at an even lower resolution: 800x600 pixels. I had the same problem and resolution with the VBoxVGA driver on my host machine.
The Plasma edition of Mocaccino is huge, taking up 1.3GB (1,380MB) of memory just to sign into the desktop. This is, I'm finding, typical of Plasma 6 which is currently one of the heaviest desktops available for Linux. It really is a memory hog, taking twice as much RAM as Plasma 5 and only challenged for its heavyweight champion status by GNOME and COSMIC. The distribution is fairly average in terms of space used on the disk, requiring 7.1GB of space for the root partition. Swap space takes up additional room, by default double the size of our machine's RAM.
Included software
The distribution ships with a variety of software, some popular and common across most distributions with other, less mainstream, applications in the mix. Firefox and VLC are included along with the Dolphin file manager. The Konversation chat client is included along with two process monitors (btop++ and KDE's System Monitor). KDE's Help Centre is available with documentation on many of the desktop's features and applications. A document viewer and a simple drawing program are featured alongside the Gwenview image viewer.
MocaccinoOS 1.8.1 -- The Dolphin file manager
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
There is an entry in the application menu called Phonon Audio and Video, which I thought might be a media player, but clicking its launcher did nothing. VLC appears to be the only functional media player on the distribution by default, and even it sometimes encountered problems.
Digging deeper we can find the GNU command line utilities, the system's manual pages, and systemd providing init services. I was surprised to find no compiler on the distribution, given Mocaccino's source-based, Gentoo roots. Behind the scenes the distribution runs on version 6.6 of the Linux kernel.
Software manager and updates
As on the live session, I opened the Discover software centre and it reported there were no Flatpak sources. Discover then offered to enable the Flathub repository. Clicking the offered button to enable Flathub failed with an error which said applications could not be loaded and the error blames a lack of Internet connection. I confirmed the system was on-line and could ping flathub.org. Then I found when I tried to browse applications there were actually plenty available. Discover had set up the Flathub repository successfully and displayed an error saying it had failed. From then on, Discover allowed me to browse categories and search for items.
Browsing categories of applications is easy enough, Discover is a pleasant and simple to use software centre. When I installed new packages, I could see items in the queue and my disk would show activity, but Discover didn't show any progress information. The Flatpak packages would be fetched in the background and eventually be installed successfully, but even opening the queue showed no sign of how much of the Flatpak had been downloaded, just empty progress bars.
MocaccinoOS 1.8.1 -- The Discover software centre
(full image size: 1.9MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
While Discover handles Flatpak application bundles, lower level packages appear to be in the domain of Luet. At first I found Luet wouldn't do anything when I was running it as my regular user and I had to invoke it with sudo. I then realized Luet just needed to fetch its repository information (which required root access) before it would do anything useful. Once it had a copy of its repository information stored locally I could run queries against this information without needing to use sudo.
I set about performing searches for some commonly packaged software, all of them returned no results. I tried, with and without sudo, searches using "luet search <package name>" and got zero results for: falkon, nmap, xmms, clang, supertux, firefox, and more. When I checked to see what packages were already installed, using "luet search --installed", Luet gave me no results, suggesting nothing was installed on the system.
I was starting to wonder if, despite having downloaded a bunch of repository information, if the default Mocaccino repositories might not be enabled. I ran "luet repo list" to confirm multiple repositories were enabled and they matched up with the names provided on the website. When I tried to install any package, attempting to install items from the repositories by the names listed on-line, Luet reported it first needed to update the kernel package. This led to a strange interaction where I had run "sudo luet install utils/yq" and, in response. Luet reported it must install mocaccino-lts-full and its dependencies. Who knows why I'd want to install a new kernel when asking to install yq, but I allowed Luet to fetch the new kernel.
MocaccinoOS 1.8.1 -- Searching for packages uses Luet
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
After the kernel updates, I tried to fetch yq, firefox, wireguard-go and other packages I could see in the repositories using the distribution's on-line search function. These all failed to install and failed to be found by Luet's searches. It did, however, trigger Luet to upgrade itself at one point. I thought this might fix things, since I'd be using the latest version of the package manager, but after another repository refresh with "sudo luet repo update" its behaviour remained the same and it never managed to find or download any packages I requested (just itself and the kernel).
Earlier I mentioned I tried to install several packages, including one called "utils/yq", this is because the documentation says Luet needs to be given the package category and name on the command line. For example, "luet install utils/yq" or "luet install apps/firefox". I tried running all commands both with and without the category prefix and all failed to find a match. I also double-checked that all repositories were enabled in the /etc/luet configuration files, in case they had been disabled somehow. Luet remained unable to perform any action apart from downloading upgrades to itself and the kernel.
Other observations
I didn't find anything on the project's website to indicate what Mocaccino's release and support schedule is. Since it's based on Gentoo, my assumption is that the distribution uses a rolling release approach and this appears to be confirmed by the flow of new versions/snapshots.
Earlier I mentioned the copy of VLC which ships with the distribution had some problems. Specifically, it was unable to play video files. I could heard the audio track, but the player's window remained blank when I tried to play a video. With some testing I discovered that the VLC Flatpak package did not share this problem; it played audio and video files, so the issue was only with the native package on Mocaccino.
Further experimenting revealed the blank VLC window bug in the native package only occurred when using Plasma's Wayland session. When I switched to running the X11 session both versions of VLC worked perfectly.
In a similar vein, the desktop resolution limitation I mentioned above (when running Mocaccino in VirtualBox) went away when I switched from Plasma's Wayland session to X11. The X11 session was more responsive to input and could change to any resolution I wanted. On my laptop it didn't make much of a difference if I used X11 or Wayland a the resolution always matched my screen's maximum, though the X11 session felt a little more responsive.
MocaccinoOS 1.8.1 -- The two copies of VLC
(full image size: 910kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Conclusions
MocaccinoOS is developed by a small team, four members according to the project's latest announcement. The team has some interesting ideas about operating system structure and package management. The idea of having system layers which are (ideally) interchangeable and building software using containers to compile packages strikes me as a useful way to keep software management consistent.
It is unfortunate that I didn't get to experience any of the key elements of this vision. Apart from updating a couple of packages, I was unable to get the Luet package manager to do anything. It was unable to find any packages, unable to download any new software, and unable to show me a list of what was installed. This meant that most of the key features advertised on the Mocaccino website were unavailable to me and it left me with, well, just another distribution running the Plasma 6.2 desktop.
To be fair to the project and its developers, the distribution worked well with my hardware and most the desktop experience was positive. Plasma, at least the X11 session, worked smoothly for me. I think it's unfortunate the Plasma Wayland session is the default as it still has some issues, but I'm glad the X11 session is available for when Wayland runs into its limitations.
More than the technical limitations though, the main issue I had with Mocaccino a few years ago was the lack of good documentation and that has remained true through to today. When dealing with new or unusual technology it is important to provide an explanation of how it should work and what to do when it's not working. The Download/Install documentation mentions nothing about Mocaccino's weird choice to hide ISO files inside tarballs. The Luet documentation doesn't offer any troubleshooting tips. It does show command line references, such as "sudo luet search <regex>", but skips giving any examples of these commands in use with their output or what to do when Luet isn't working as expected.
The end result is I'm left with a distribution which doesn't appear to deliver on any of its promised features and no tips on how to deal with this situation.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Murena extends its on-line installer, Garuda experiments with COSMIC, incremental improvements to Haiku, Bodhi tries out new desktop theme, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera drops RISC-V builds, Debian publishes 12.10 media
The Murena project has updated its on-line installer. "Exciting news! Our recently introduced, brand new web-based /e/OS installer is available with the support of new devices and we're thrilled to announce that it has passed numerous successful tests! This marks a significant milestone in making the installation process smoother than ever. In addition, we have great news for Fairphone 5, Pixel 8 and Pixel tablet users - the /e/OS installer now supports your devices! Find the list of devices supported by /e/OS Installer."
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The Garuda Linux project is experimenting with an edition featuring the COSMIC desktop environment. "Hi folks, we now have a new Garuda ISO featuring the COSMIC desktop environment. It is very bare bones at the moment - basically just the stock COSMIC packages on a Garuda base - but if there is community interest in this, we can certainly build it up as people chime in with their tweaks and ideas. Feel free to take it for a spin and see what you think! Please bear in mind that COSMIC is still in an Alpha state, and COSMIC bugs should not be reported to Garuda Linux." Information on how to try out the new COSMIC edition and contribute feedback can be found in the project's blog post.
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The Haiku project has published its monthly newsletter for February. The report lists the changes and development efforts which have gone into Haiku recently, including some small, but welcome changes for keyboard shortcuts: "OscarL merged the 'filteredquery' command-line tool into the 'query' tool, meaning that 'query' can now filter results by directory.
jscipione implemented support for keyboard shortcuts without the Cmd key in the Interface Kit. (Previously all menu shortcuts, no matter what other modifier keys they used, were also required to have Cmd as one of them.) He then modified some applications to make use of this feature, such as MediaPlayer's Playlist window, Tracker's 'move to trash', and others.
jscipione fixed some background color management problems in BTextView."
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The Bodhi Linux distribution is preparing for a new major release. Bodhi 8 will offer a new theme that will feature rounded windows and new visual effects. The project's new desktop theme is called Zenithal. "Zenithal, developed by Stefan Uram and based on the Ice theme by Simotek, introduces a polished light aesthetic that brings a fresh energy to Moksha. It also marks a first for Bodhi: windows and dialogs with rounded edges, pushing the boundaries of Moksha's traditional look. To complete the experience, we're working on a matching GTK theme with a little extra flair and special effects, as well as selecting an icon set that complements the design. Currently, we're exploring Delft-Gray, a continuation of the Faenza icon theme, featuring modern app icons with rounded edges to match Zenithal's style." Additional details are provided in the project's blog post.
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The Ubuntu distribution may soon have a new set of core utilities (coreutils). Traditionally, most Linux distributions (including Ubuntu) have used GNU's core utilities to provide command line programs such as copy (cp), move (mv), and directory listing (ls). This may change with Ubuntu 25.10 which is going to test alternatives to these programs which are designed to be faster and more secure. Jon Seager writes: "Starting with Ubuntu 25.10, my goal is to adopt some of these modern implementations as the default. My immediate goal is to make uutils' coreutils implementation the default in Ubuntu 25.10, and subsequently in our next Long Term Support (LTS) release, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, if the conditions are right. But... why? Performance is a frequently cited rationale for 'Rewrite it in Rust' projects. While performance is high on my list of priorities, it's not the primary driver behind this change. These utilities are at the heart of the distribution - and it's the enhanced resilience and safety that is more easily achieved with Rust ports that are most attractive to me." More information on the Rust implementation of coreutils can be found on the uutils project page.
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The Chimera Linux project is dropping new builds for the RISC-V architecture due to a lack of suitable RISC-V powered computers able to build packages. "At this point, to have a relatively sustainable base, we'd need a board that is at least as powerful as Raspberry Pi 5. This would still make the slowest builder in the fleet, but it would likely be faster than the current emulation arrangement while also being more reliable.
However, the industry does not seem to be interested in producing such machines and for most part focuses on embedded (low-end) as well as things entirely irrelevant to a distro (AI/NPU etc.) that do not help at all; at this point I don't think we can wait any longer, especially as no remedy has been announced.
We have no such problem with the other architectures; obviously x86 and ARM are at this point mainstream and this does not surprise anyone, but even the likes of LoongArch have perfectly acceptable hardware (not the fastest, but also not a bottleneck) that performs reliably." Additional information is provided in the distribution's blog post.
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The Debian project has published updated media for Debian 12 "Bookworm" which includes available fixes and security patches. "The Debian project is pleased to announce the tenth update of its stable distribution Debian 12 (codename bookworm). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 12 but only updates some of the packages included."
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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) |
How to contribute to open source
New-and-helpful asks: I'm new to coding and am looking to contribute back to Linux. How does a person go about helping open source projects?
DistroWatch answers: At the risk of sounding like a discount fortune cookie, one of the best ways to help the open source community is to help yourself.
What I mean by that is: instead of searching for a project that needs help or a person with a bug which needs fixing, figure out what it is that you wish your operating system and applications did better. Is there a vague error message you see on a regular basis? You could document what it means and how to fix it, or adjust the code to show a better error message! Do you wish your favourite command line tool had more documentation? Be the one to figure out the program's features and document them! Do you wish your package manager had a new option which would make your life easier? You can be the person to create that new option! Do you wish someone would port your favourite program to your distribution? Be that person!
Being a coder who is looking for someone to guide them to a new project is a bit like being a writer and asking for ideas for a story. There are options all around you and, chances are, you encounter them every day in your regular routine. You will be a lot more fulfilled by project which inspires you than anything someone else asks you to do. One of the cool (or frustrating) things about contributing to open source projects is, once you start working on one thing, you'll soon find related projects which need help.
For example, if you decide to port a new application to your distribution, you'll probably find the documenting is missing key pieces of information. Now you have two things to do! While building a new package you'll probably find compiler warnings for the code, and then you've got yet another thing you could be fixing!
Once you have written some documentation, created a package, made a new feature, or patched a
bug the next step is to let people know about it. Join the project's mailing list or forum and tell people what you've been doing. See if anyone else is interested in what you created, updated, or fixed. If other people find it useful then it paves the way for getting your improvements accepted by the original project. The joy of working on open source comes from a mixture of working on something you will appreciate and sharing it with others who will benefit from your efforts.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
FreeBSD 13.5
Colin Percival has announced the availability of FreeBSD 13.5, the final maintenance release of the project's legacy "stable/13" branch: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE. This is the sixth and final release of the stable/13 branch. Since this release is occurring late in a legacy stable branch, there are few new features; rather, the focus is primarily on maintenance. As such, changes since 13.4-RELEASE consist mostly of bug fixes, driver updates, and new versions of externally-maintained software. FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, aarch64, armv6, armv7, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe and riscv64 architectures. FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded as described below." See the release announcement and the detailed release notes for further information.
IPFire 2.29 Core 192
The IPFire project has announced a new update to its distribution for firewalls and routers. The project's new release, version 2.29 Core Update 192, includes an updated Linux kernel with several improvements: "This release rebases the IPFire kernel on Linux 6.12 which is the latest long-term supported version of the Linux kernel. Since the last version, IPFire is going to benefit from various improvements from the Linux kernel development community: Intel and AMD CPUs that support VAES & AVX-512 will have a 162% faster AES-GCM encryption/decryption which will massively improve IPsec throughput. Memory alignment optimisation has improved TCP performance of up to 40% due to smaller structs that result in more CPU cache hits. TCP fraglist GRO support has been added, allowing chaining multiple TCP packages together which might improve throughput for PPPoE connections on systems which lack basic checksum offloading. A lot of work has been spent on scheduling which result in the system being able to respond quicker to any load spikes. For IPFire this will result in lower latency when processing packets. New driver support has been added and extended for various network devices, both wired and wireless; for example rtl8192du. Overall, there has been a lot valuable work gone into the kernel release which will bring you the most secure version of IPFire - and it is the most snappy one. On various hardware, the system responds a lot faster and provides better throughput throughout." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
SystemRescue 12.00
François Dupoux has made available a new major release of SystemRescue, an Arch-based specialist Linux distribution for repairing computer systems and rescuing data. SystemRescue 12.00 updates the Linux kernel to the latest long-term supported (LTS) branch, version 6.12.19, while the included Firefox web browser was brought to version 128.8.0, the latest extended-support release (ESR). Also, the SystemRescue live image now includes bcachefs, a Linux filesystem with support for volume management. The distribution comes with the Xfce desktop which has received an update to version 4.20.1. "Changelog: updated the kernel to the long-term supported Linux 6.12.19; support for bcachefs (kernel module + file system tools + support in GParted); applied workaround to avoid possible display issues affecting GRUB; updated disk utilities: GParted 1.7.0, nwipe 0.38, dump 0.4b49." See the project's changelog page which has the details of all the recent changes and additions.
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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: 3,176
- Total data uploaded: 46.8TB
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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 own any RISC-V powered devices?
This week, in our News section, we talked about Chimera Linux ceasing builds for RISC-V due to limited hardware options. Not many companies sell computers powered by RISC-V processors and those which do typically sell low-specification devices. We would like to hear if you own any RISC-V powered devices. Let us know which devices in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on preferred Firefox alternatives in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you own any RISC-V powered computers?
| Yes - a tablet: | 7 (0%) |
| Yes - a single-board computer: | 63 (4%) |
| Yes - a desktop/laptop PC: | 7 (0%) |
| Yes - a phone: | 8 (0%) |
| Yes - another device: | 12 (1%) |
| Yes - more than one device: | 41 (2%) |
| No - none of the above: | 1551 (92%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 24 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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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
HKLPG Linux
HKLPG (Hong Kong Linux Player Group) Linux was a Linux distribution based on Mandrakelinux, but with improved support for both traditional and simplified Chinese, browser plugins and other enhancements.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| 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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