 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1124, 2 June 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Computers are, at their cores, machines for processing information. Their incredible speed and flexibility mean they can consume, store, and process vast amounts of data. This has led to many organizations collecting, processing, and sifting through as much data as they can, about as many people as they can. Not everyone is comfortable with their personal information being collected and stored and this week we talk about privacy. In particular, we offer some simple tips in our Questions and Answers section for keeping local information and network traffic more private. Do you install any privacy-protecting features on your Linux distribution? Let us know if you use privacy-protecting tools in this week's Opinion Poll and, if you have any favourites, let your fellow readers know about them in the comments section. Computers are not all serious business, spying and setting up defences, computers can also be used for fun and education. Our Feature Story this week talks about setting up a robot (for entertainment and education) using an inexpensive kit and an electronic brain in the form of a Raspberry Pi Pico. In our News section this week we report on Rhino Linux introducing a few new changes, including a Plasma desktop session and an upgrade to the Rhino package manager. We also share new features entering into the Arch Linux system installer and changes arriving in UBports. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week 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: Picking up a Pico
- News: Rhino Linux tests Plasma session and presents updated package manager, Arch installer offers options for Btrfs snapshots, new features landing in UBports, Ubuntu introduces regular snapshots
- Questions and answers: Protecting privacy procedures
- Released last week: AlmaLinux OS 10.0, Armbian 25.05.1, KaOS 2025.05, Alpine Linux 3.22.0, PorteuX 2.1, Network Security Toolkit 42-14476
- Torrent corner: AlmaLinux OS, Armbian, BigLinux, KDE neon, Tails
- Upcoming releases: UBports 20.04 OTA-9, Murena 3.0
- Opinion poll: Do you install any special software to protect your privacy?
- Site news: Distribution by Country of Origin page updated
- New additions: AerynOS, UOS, MODICIA O.S., Adélie Linux, Parch GNU/Linux, Lingmo OS
- New distributions: TravelerOS
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Picking up a Pico
In early April I shared that I'd been experimenting with an add-on device to the Raspberry Pi series of computers. The device, called a Sense HAT, provides sensors, lights, and a joystick interface for programmers to use in order to allow the device to interact with its environment. It was good fun to play with and, through the power of some Python libraries, wonderfully easy to use.
As someone pointed out in the comments of that article, it seemed to be the most fun I'd had playing with technology for a while and the Sense HAT experiments sparked a good deal of fun. With that in mind, I turned my attention to another member of the Raspberry Pi family. This tiny device is called a Pico and it's a microcontroller. This means that it's basically a tiny computer, but without any of the usual ports to attach a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. The Pico optionally comes with connector pins and also optionally includes a wireless network add-on. I decided to pick up one with both the pins and wireless capability. The little Pico, which is about the size of my pinkie finger, costs a little under $10.
The Pico next to a pair of scissors used to open its packaging.
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You might be wondering: if the Pico doesn't have any ports for a keyboard, mouse, or monitor, how does one interact with this mini computer and what do we do with it? The Pico has a USB port at one end and we can use this to plug it into a computer. We can then communicate with the Pico in one of two ways and I'll get into those shortly. The idea is we will be able to run programs on the Pico to have it perform calculations, monitor other devices, communicate wirelessly, and (if we plug it into another circuit board) it can be used to manage other electronics.
In short, the Pico acts as a tiny brain in do-it-yourself home electronics. It does not have many features on its own, it just has an LED light and a temperature sensor, but it can be used as a controller connected to other equipment. If you've ever wanted to create your own weather station, garage door opener, plant watering automation, or maybe a robot vacuum cleaner, then this is a device for you!
Getting started
My Pico shipped with a USB cable. Getting started with the Pico begins by holding down the sole button on the Pico, which is labelled "BOOTSEL", then plugging it into a computer, and releasing the button. This causes the Pico to present itself as a USB storage device. We can then transfer files to the Pico, including a custom Python environment called MicroPython. To install the MicroPython development software on the Pico we can download the latest version from links in the Pico documentation. We can then copy the downloaded file (called rp2-pico-w-latest.uf2 in my case) to the Pico's storage. When I attempted to drag-and-drop the file in my file manager I found out my user didn't have write access to the Pico's partition. I got around this by running a copy command from the command line:
$ sudo cp rp2-pico-w-latest.uf2 /media/$(whoami)/RPI-RP2/
The Pico now has MicroPython on it, meaning it can run Python programs. But we still need a way to get Python code onto the Pico device. There are a couple of ways we can do this. Both approaches involve installing a program which can talk over a serial port, in my case I opted to use the minicom package. In the Debian family we can install minicom by running the following:
sudo apt install minicom
From now on, whenever we attach the Pico to our computer over a USB cable (without pressing the BOOTSEL button), it will show up as a serial console. We can then talk to the Pico by running minicom and passing it the name of the Pico device. This device usually appears as /dev/ttyACM0, but can be listed under a different name. Running the following command should reveal the Pico's device name:
$ ls /dev/ttyACM*
/dev/ttyACM0
We can then use minicom to connect to the device:
$ minicom -o -D /dev/ttyACM0
Connecting to the Pico using minicom
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Once the connection is made, we will be prompted with a Python interpreter. We can type Python code directly into the terminal and have it respond, as shown here:
>>> print ("Hello")
Hello
The Pico has a small, green LED light on top of it, we can activate the light with three lines of Python:
>>> from machine import Pin
>>> led = Pin("LED", Pin.OUT)
>>> led.value(1)
The light can be turned off again by running the following line:
>>> led.value(0)
From there it is a short hop to writing a program which will blink the LED light on and off:
>>> from machine import Pin
>>> import time
>>> led = Pin("LED", Pin.OUT)
>>> for i in range(10):
>>> led.toggle()
>>> time.sleep(1)
While typing in Python code, line by line, allows us to test that the Pico is working, it is not a practical approach to software development. We are going to want an easier way to run code on the Pico. We can do this with a development tool called Thonny. Thonny is a simple development application which allows us to type Python code into the main part of the window. We can then run the code, either locally or on a connected device, and see the program's output in the bottom pane of the Thonny window. In the bottom-right corner of the Thonny window we can select where to run the code, locally or on the Pico (/dev/ttyACM0).
The Thonny Python IDE
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Thonny can be installed from most distributions' repositories or from Flathub. With Thonny set up we have the ability to run more complex programs while typing them into a more friendly environment.
Connecting the Pico to the network
Earlier, I mentioned the Pico W has wireless capabilities. We can connect the Pico to our local wireless network with a bit of Python code:
import network
ssid = "MyNetwork"
password = "MyPassword"
wlan = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF)
wlan.active(True)
wlan.connect(ssid, password)
if wlan.status() == 3:
address = wlan.ifconfig()
print (address[0])
The above code connects to the local wifi network and, assuming it is successful, displays the Pico's IP address, for example my Pico responded:
192.168.2.157
Having a working network connection opens up possibilities for us. Now, the Pico isn't just a temperature sensor plugged into the side of our computer, it's a separate platform to which we can connect and send information. All we need to do is have the Pico open up a network port:
server_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
server_socket.bind( (host, port) )
server_socket.listen(5)
print(f"Server listening on {host}:{port}")
while True:
client_socket, address = server_socket.accept()
print(f"Connected to {address}")
client_socket.send( "Ready> ".encode() )
data = client_socket.recv(1024)
What we have here is a network service which will wait for us to connect to it, possibly over a plain-text network client like telnet. When we connect, the Pico will send us the prompt "Ready>" and wait for us to send an instruction.
Just like that, we have a tiny device which will communicate over the network, sense the current temperature, and flash a light. We can teach it to fetch web pages and RSS feeds, send electric signals through its pins, or run a minimal web service - whatever we are willing to teach it to do. The possibilities are opening up! I wrote a small network service for the Pico which recognizes eight commands that can be sent to the device over the network using telnet or nc. I will skip writing out the code in this article as it will get increasingly tedious to read, but the code is all available in this GitHub repository for people who would like to follow along.
Giving the Pico a body
Earlier I mentioned the Pico can be used as the basis for a number of projects such as a greenhouse monitor, remote control, or holiday light manager. For my purposes though, I decided to live out a dream I've had since I was a kid when I watched the movie Short Circuit. I bought a small robot kit. The kit is made by Kitronik and features most of the pieces a person needs for a household robot: a body, motors, wheels, range sensor, and light detection add-on. The only things that are missing are batteries and a brain. The Pico can act as a snap-on brain for the Kitronik robot which is referred to as a "buggy" in the documentation.
The Kitronik robot buggy and manual
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For me, this was where the situation became exciting. I had a robot "brain" which could wirelessly receive commands and return feedback. Plus I had a simple robot body which could understand about a dozen instructions. These are fairly basic instructions, such as "turn on/off left motor", "turn on/off right motor", "sense distance to nearest object", "turn on/off LEDs", and "detect light level under buggy". These are the building blocks upon which we can build all sorts of functionality.
All we need to do is use the Thonny application to copy a single library from Kitronik onto the Pico and then transfer our Python instructions to the Pico under the filename "main.py". With the Pico plugged into the buggy we can pop in four AA batteries to the underside of the robot. The Pico will "wake up" and perform instructions in the "main.py" file. In my case, this caused the little device to connect to the network and await instructions.
Meet Ron the robot
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Since we already have a simple server program which will accept and interpret our commands, it's a small hop from there to writing code which will make the robot stop; detect if an object is in front of it; turn on the motors to move forward, turn left, or turn right; and blink the lights. With a little additional tweaking we can tell the robot to "move away" when an object gets too close, make more precise turns to face a specific direction, navigate a classic maze, and keep track of how far it has travelled away from its starting point.
This is probably what I love most about writing code. We can some a piece of hardware, like this robot buggy, which understands how to process just a handful of signals (start/stop motor, detect distance, turn on/off lights) and layer logic on top of it to create something significantly more interesting. In a few hours I was able to write a simple Python class for the robot which would report how far away it was from objects, charge forward, spin in a circle, and change the colour of its LED lights based on whether an object was in its way. And, from these building blocks, it was a matter of adding some timed delays between actions to allow the robot to turn a given number of degrees left or right, move forward a specified distance, and avoid running into items. It's not hard to then use those building blocks, in turn, to instruct the robot to wander, solve a maze, and return to its starting point.
To me, this is the beauty of software, it can transform a piece of $40 USD hardware which understands a half dozen simple instructions into something almost life-like that can wander about the home, interact on a basic level with its environment, map a space, or make a temperature chart of the rooms in the house. When I was getting started with this project and had just got the Kitronik buggy to the point where it would follow some basic commands (spin, drive forward, and stop) over a wireless connection, I showed it to a friend. This friend shares a creative spark and immediately made the leap to: "Since it talks over the network, we could set up a phone as a hotspot and take it outside. It could run obstacle courses in the park with other robots!"
I'm not sure if I can find many people in my area who want to program competing robots, as nice as the idea is. However, I am hoping this article will inspire others to try similar projects - it's a great way to experiment, to learn coding, or to entertain a child interested in technology. With this in mind, since I didn't find many coding examples and virtually no projects using this combination of hardware on-line, I am open sourcing my robot server code. It's not overly organized as the code grew organically as I was exploring the Pico's capabilities and the buggy's functions. Still, it offers a starting point for other people who are interested in this sort of thing, but don't have a few spare hours to get the basics working and write the infrastructure to make a home robot work. It is my hope other people find this useful and send photos or videos of their bots in action. (Like this video of my robot trying to find its way back to me after wandering away for a minute.) Maybe some people will even send patches to extend the robot's functionality! I'd love to see what creative activities people can design and code.
* * * * *
There are a few additional points I'd like to share about my experiment with the Kitronik robot buggy and its Pico brain. First, the Pico W identifies itself on the network as "PicoW", which is handy if you don't want to look up its IP address and want to refer to it by its hostname. In my head though, when I was typing "telnet picow 40801", the name sounded like "Pi cow".
Another tid-bit I'd like to share is that I purchased the buggy through PiShop. When the robot arrived its packaging looked as though it had been damaged during the transit in the mail. Once I plugged in the robot and started sending it test commands I discovered a problem: the motor on the right side would drive backward, though not forward. This meant the robot could drive in reverse and make wide turns, but it couldn't drive forward, make tight turns, or properly follow a line using its light sensors (which were mounted in the front).
I e-mailed PiShop's support channel to see if they had any repair tips. One of their representatives kindly and patiently tried to help me troubleshoot the issue and, once we'd established the problem couldn't be "fixed in the field", they volunteered to send me a replacement robot. I offered to send the original back, but they said I could keep it for spare parts/experiments. The person I was corresponding with was knowledgeable, communicated well, and was sympathetic. They also didn't know I was planning to write a review; to them I was just another customer. It's rare I encounter this level of careful, unscripted customer service and I appreciated it.
Next, if any of our readers decide to get a similar robot - I recommend it, especially if you have children interested in science and technology - then you might notice that my robot handling code has some quirks in it relating to direction and motor control. This is because, for the first week I was testing the Kitronik robot, I was trying to teach it to move, but in reverse. All of the motor and distance-sensing instructions had to be backwards to work around the damaged right-side motor. But I also knew that eventually I'd repair or replace the damaged part and the buggy would be able to drive forward. So the code was written to work in reverse, but to also work in the normal forward direction, and switch between the two modes by just changing two variables at the top of the robot.py file. It resulted in a few lines of odd-looking logic, tucked away in the lower level functions. I do know my "left" from my "right", but I was trying to teach a robot with a handicap to drive.
Finally, I know typing commands into a terminal to guide a robot is very "1980s" in style and not as likely to appeal to younger people who are just getting started with robots. With this in mind, I wrote a small client program in Python which allows the Kitronik robot to be piloted
remotely using a Nintendo Switch controller. This allows people to drive the robot remotely using the controller's axis joysticks, change the lights with the letter keys, and halt the robot using the trigger buttons. This should lower the bar for people who want to play around with the robot without a lot of typing. I hope some of you find it both fun and interesting.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Rhino Linux tests Plasma session and presents updated package manager, Arch installer offers options for Btrfs snapshots, new features landing in UBports, Ubuntu introduces regular snapshots
Rhino Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution which offers a rolling-release upgrade approach combined with a customized Xfce desktop. The project has begun testing a KDE Plasma session with the rolling distribution. "Spearheaded by one of our community members, villamorrd, after 3 months of development and fine-tuning, we are proud to bring you the UBXI KDE Desktop, based on Plasma 6. This port brings the full Unicorn experience to KDE, from the workflow to the colour scheme, and we are very happy with how it turned out - we hope you are too. To switch to the UBXI KDE desktop on Rhino Linux, simply run: 'rpk install ubxi-kde-desktop-git'. We plan to offer additional disk images with the UBXI KDE Desktop shipped out-of-the-box by the end of 2025." The distribution is also testing a new version of the distribution's package manager, called RPK. Instructions for people wishing to test the new RPK2 can be found in the project's announcement.
* * * * *
The Arch Linux distribution is often installed and configured manually, however the project does provide a system installer which helps to automate the process. The Arch Installer program has gradually been gaining more capabilities with the latest version including an option for setting up Btrfs snapshots. "New features: Add support for Btrfs snapshots post-install. Move disk encryption into disk config menu." Additional details are provided in the installer's release notes.
* * * * *
The UBports project has been working on improving the Lomiri user interface for its mobile operating system. The project has outlined key changes in the latest UBports blog post. "Lomiri has been tweaked so that the appearance of the Home button can be customized. This is mainly for Lomiri distributors. Waydroid now works for Volla tablet. Flashlight operation has been in the indicator bar until now, but the function has now been moved so that the switch can be operated from the system. Porters will be able to utilize this change." The Waydroid software makes it possible to run Android applications on UBports' mobile operating system and having it function on tablets will be a convenient feature for tablet users.
* * * * *
Canonical is experimenting with regular, more frequent development snapshots to provide testers with more frequent test images. "Starting in May 2025, we're introducing monthly snapshot releases for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not 'moving to monthly releases' or adopting a rolling release model; we're committed to our six-monthly releases with a long-term support (LTS) release every two years. That doesn't mean that our release process should be exempt from the same scrutiny that the rest of our engineering processes are subject to." The result this year will be monthly snapshots of Ubuntu's development branch in May, June, July, and August. Then a regular beta release in September leading into a final stable release in October. Details can be found in the announcement.
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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) |
Protecting privacy procedures
Keeping-secrets-safe asks: Can you share some tips on how to set up a new Linux system to protect privacy?
DistroWatch answers: When dealing with any privacy- or security-related scenario, I think the first thing to consider is: what is the threat?
In order to protect ourselves on-line, first we should consider: from whom are we guarding ourselves? What are we trying to protect? For example, if you are worried about your little sister getting a copy of your fan fiction script, you can probably set up a VeraCrypt encrypted volume and change the permissions on your home directory to allow only yourself access to your files (run "chmod 0700 ~"). Veracrypt has a great tutorial for beginners in their documentation. Then, so long as you remember to logout or lock your computer when you're not using it, your documents should be safe from your family's prying eyes.
Perhaps you are concerned about your Internet service provider (ISP) collecting information about which websites and services you visit? In which case you can change your router's DNS settings to use a third-party domain name lookup service and use a VPN (or Tor) to tunnel your network traffic to another part of the world before it seeks its final destination.
On the other hand, if you are trying to protect your privacy from a large technology company, such as Microsoft or Google, that would take some more effort. Large technology companies have a lot of services and if you are planning to avoid giving them information it cuts you off from many of the world's popular websites and infrastructure. There are some easy things you can do, such as not using Google's web search or Bing, not use Google's cloud services, or Microsoft's on-line Office suite, etc. You might want to use a web browser which blocks advertisements or includes privacy protecting extensions such as Privacy Badger. However, if you're being thorough you'll also need to consider whether to interact with other people who use those same services. It doesn't do you a lot of good to avoid using Google's contact synchronization service if everyone you know is using it and has you in their digital address book. Likewise, you can avoid running Microsoft Outlook, but if you exchange e-mails with other people who run Outlook, then your messages are still ending up on Microsoft's servers.
Whatever your concern is, my advice is to map out what you want to keep private and from whom. Then work on figuring out what protections you need in place to protect those specific pieces of information from those specific people. Trying to be entirely private all the time will, unfortunately, lead you down an impractical rabbit hole.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Armbian 25.05.1
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. One of the big improvements in version 25.05.1 is the expansion of the armbian-config configuration utility. "One of the biggest areas of growth in Armbian 25.5 is the continued evolution of armbian-config, a system utility for configuring Armbian images after installation. Whether setting up a home automation server or managing Docker containers at the edge, armbian-config now offers an impressive set of tools in a modular and approachable interface. Application library: Users can now deploy popular self-hosted applications directly from armbian-config, including Home Assistant, Stirling PDF, Navidrome, Grafana, NetData and Immich. These modules are installed in isolated environments, making them easy to deploy, manage, and remove." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
AlmaLinux OS 10.0
The AlmaLinux OS team have announced version 10.0 of their distribution which aims to be compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux while also expanding support to a wider range of hardware. "For software developers, frame pointers are critical to diagnosing and optimizing their applications. For those developers that use AlmaLinux as their base, the lack of frame pointers by default is a pain point - one that we are happy to help ease. With AlmaLinux OS 10 we are enabling frame pointers by default. This allows system-wide real-time tracing and profiling for optimizing the performance of any workload running on AlmaLinux. Within the x86-64 architecture, there are versions that represent specific CPU feature sets. With RHEL 10, Red Hat will only support x86-64-v3 and higher, which leaves numerous completely functional CPUs without support in the Enterprise Linux ecosystem. AlmaLinux OS 10 has followed Red Hat's decision to ship x86-64-v3 optimized binaries by default, but we will also provide an additional x86-64-v2 architecture, allowing users on that older hardware to continue to receive security updates for another 10 years." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
AlmaLinux OS 10.0 -- Running the GNOME desktop
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KaOS 2025.05
KaOS is an independent, rolling-release distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop. The project's latest snapshot drops Qt5 support from the default installation and introduces a Nextcloud client. Support for right-to-left languages has been improved in the file maanger. "KaOS is pleased to announce the availability of the May release of a new stable ISO image. For the Plasma desktop, the latest Plasma (6.3.5), KDE Gear (25.04.1) and Frameworks (6.14.0) are included. All built on Qt 6.9.0. Among the many changes included in KDE Gear 25.04 are: Dolphin now comes with initial support for right-to-left written languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew. KRDC allows you to scale down the remote machine's desktop to fit inside KRDC's window, adds support for the domain field in the authentication process, and now works with the new version of the FreeRDP protocol. Okular, KDE's document viewer, ramps up its support for digital signing with support for PGP/GPG based signatures and Falkon can now also block websockets. Latest applications that are now ready to use Qt6 and Frameworks 6 include Frescobaldi, Krita, Kamoso and Calligraplan." The release announcement offers additional details.
Alpine Linux 3.22.0
The Alpine Linux team have announced the release of Alpine Linux 3.22.0 which includes many key package updates along with an adjustment to the boot process. "We are pleased to announce the release of Alpine Linux 3.22.0, the first in the v3.22 stable series. Highlights: LLVM 20; Dovecot 2.4; nginx 1.28; Node.js (lts) 22.16; Ruby 3.4; Rust 1.87; Xen 4.20; BIRD 3.1; Crystal 1.16; Docker 28; GNOME 48; Go 1.24; KDE Plasma 6.3; LXQt 2.2; Significant changes: systemd-efistub replaces gummiboot. The secureboot-hook no longer supports gummiboot-efistub. It now defaults to systemd-efistub (stub-only, no systemd). If you haven't changed efistub_file in /etc/kernel-hooks.d/secureboot.conf, no action is needed. gummiboot-efistub has been moved to testing and is no longer maintained. See the wiki for details." Additional information and upgrade tips can be found in the project's release announcement.
PorteuX 2.1
A new stable release of PorteuX, a Slackware-based Linux distribution that means to be fast, small, portable, modular and immutable, is now available. PorteuX 2.1 introduces the brand-new 6.15 Linux kernel and delivers various bug fixes: "PorteuX 2.1. Nothing beats a new release where the system works better and is even smaller. The default NTFS driver has been changed from ntfs-3g to ntfs3 (kernel native). After extensive development, the driver seems stable now. VirtualBox 7.1.8 (latest stable) is not compatible with kernel 6.15. So this release includes a module for VirtualBox 7.2.0 Beta 1. Wayland sessions in VirtualBox are supported but it's recommended to enable 3D Accelaration in Settings, Display. Changelog: fixed a bug where sometimes a module could be incorrectly detected as corrupted; fixed the Linux installer to be language-agnostic; fixed missing .Xresources and .Xmodmap in LightDM Xsession file; fixed login= cheatcode; fixed sudo.py not working in Openbox session; fixed PipeWire not starting in Openbox session...." Continue to the release announcement for full details.
PorteuX 2.1 -- Running the LXQt desktop
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AxOS 25.06
Adrian Arjoca has announced the release of AxOS 25.06, the latest version of the project's Arch-based desktop Linux distribution featuring a custom package manager called Epsilon. This release uses the Hyprland-based Sleex (developed in-house) as the default desktop environment: "This new 25.06 release comes with new features: Sleex is now the default desktop environment - sleek, smooth and crafted for AxOS; new installation kits, no more useless bloat; choose your vibe - Artist, Developer, Hacker; new SDDM theme; new AxOS packages come out of the box. Caution: AxOS (especially Sleex) is not virtual machine-friendly. Do you want to try it in a virtual machine anyway? Enable 3D acceleration or set up GPU passthrough; even then, expect some graphical hiccups and performance mood swings. Important: I need feedbacks, I can't improve AxOS without it." Read the the release announcement for further information and visit the distribution's documentation pages to learn about how to use AxOS and Sleex.
Network Security Toolkit 42-14476
The Network Security Toolkit (NST) project has released a new major version of the distribution. NST 42-14476 features several new improvements which are listed in the project's release announcement. "The NST WUI Network Packet Capture pages have integrated ntop nDPI (Deep Packet Inspection) tools for post capture analysis. The image below: ntopng nDPI graphic and a q text as data query demonstrate example nDPI capabilities. The RGraph Charting Library is used to generate the nDPI graphic using output from the ndpiReader testing tool. The command line nDPI analysis displays packet protocols using the q - Text as Data tool in an NST Shell Console. ntopng has be refactored and now is run as a docker container. Added a new NST WUI page for network speed testing: LibreSpeed. Added a new NST WUI page for Node-RED as a docker container. This design tool is for the creation of event-driven applications by wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. A new Environmental Science menu has been added featuring access to earth weather, space weather and earthquake seismology. An enhanced NST WUI page for viewing up to 4 simultaneous Blitzortung Lightning Signals has also been developed."
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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: 3,219
- Total data uploaded: 47.4TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Do you install any special software to protect your privacy?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about privacy and how to configure a distribution to protect privacy. There are some great tools available to keep your data safe, including VeraCrypt, Privacy Badger, and Tor Browser. Do you install any pro-privacy tools on your distribution? Let us know which ones you use in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on putting a computer to sleep in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you have any privacy protecting tools on your distro?
| I install my own privacy tools: | 687 (55%) |
| My distro pre-installed privacy tools: | 159 (13%) |
| Someone set up privacy tools for me post-install: | 10 (1%) |
| I do not use any privacy protecting tools: | 387 (31%) |
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| Website News |
Distribution by Country of Origin page updated
Many years ago, probably 15-20 years ago in fact, DistroWatch maintained a page called Distributions by Country of Origin. Back in the earlier days of DistroWatch this page was manually kept up to date, indicating from which country each distribution originated.
The page eventually fell off the radar. It wasn't being used much any more and gradually stopped being maintained. In its place the DistroWatch Search page handled finding projects based on their official origins.
Someone asked us to revive the Country of Origin page and we have, cleaning it up and somewhat automating the process of maintenance. The old, discontinued projects have been cleared out, and new active projects added.
Entries are sorted by most common countries of origin and each country's distributions are then displayed alphabetically.
Projects with multiple official countries of origin (which is rare, but happens) can be found toward the bottom of the page.
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New distributions added to database
AerynOS
AerynOS is an independently-developed, rolling-release Linux distribution designed for general desktop use. Its main features include the GNOME desktop, a custom package manager called "moss", atomic updates with rollback options, a package build system called "boulder", and smart boot management with complex EFI configuration through a utility called "blsforme".
AerynOS 2025.03 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 2.5MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
UOS
UOS is the product of UnionTech Software, which is a Chinese company focusing on Linux operating system products and services. UOS can be run on desktops, servers, and smart terminals, and also for cloud-native scenarios.
MODICIA O.S.
MODICIA O.S. is a Linux multimedia distribution designed primarily for musicians, graphic designers and video makers. It is based on Debian's "stable" branch, but uses the Cinnamon desktop and a recent Linux kernel. MODICIA O.S. comes with a set of carefully-selected, open-source multimedia software and tools, such as Audacity (audio editor), Brasero (disc-burning utility), Cheese (webcam application), Curlew (multimedia converter), GIMP (graphics editor), HandBrake (video transcoder), Kdenlive (video editor), MediaInfo (tool that provides technical data about media files), mpv (media player), Peek (animated GIF recorder), RawTherapee (photo processor), XnView (image viewer), and many others. The distribution also provides the OnlyOffice software suite for general office tasks.
Adélie Linux
Adélie Linux is an independently-developed Linux distribution for desktops and servers. It uses the musl standard C library, GNU Coreutils-based userland, the APK package manager (developed by Alpine Linux), and OpenRC and s6 init systems. The project's desktop edition offers a choice of four desktops - KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE and Xfce, while the supported processor architectures include AArch64, armv7l, i386, PPC, PPC64 and x86_64. The distribution is developed by a Canadian IT services company called Cyberlogic, founded in 1995.
Adélie Linux 1.0 beta 6 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 197kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Parch GNU/Linux
Parch GNU/Linux is an Arch-based, rolling-release Linux distribution for standard desktops as well as some ARM-based devices. Its goal is to provide a streamlined and user-friendly experience while maintaining the customisability and performance of Arch Linux. The distribution offers a choice of GNOME, KDE Plasma and Xfce desktops, the Calamares graphical installer, optimised Persian fonts for enhanced readability and aesthetics, and extensive documentation and community support.
Lingmo OS
Lingmo OS is a Debian-based Linux distribution featuring a custom-built LingmoUI desktop environment. The project's main goal is to provide users with a unified and practical desktop, software that is compatible with the desktop environment, and a smooth experience, even on low-performance hardware.
Lingmo OS -- Running the LingmoUI desktop
(full image size: 2.7MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- TravelerOS. TravelerOS is a Q4OS-based distribution featuring the Plasma 5 desktop. TravelerOS is meant to be run from a live USB drive rather than from a hard drive.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 9 June 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 • PorteuX (by vmclark on 2025-06-02 01:34:13 GMT from United States)
PorteuX is THE fastest usb system I have EVER used. For a lightweight system, nothing compares.
Now running PorteuX 2.1 XFCE
2 • Securonis (by penguinx86 on 2025-06-02 02:21:01 GMT from United States)
Last week's New Additions mentioned Securonis. I gave it a try in Virtualbox on 2 different computers, one Intel and one AMD. It worked well on both of them. It doesn't start the Tor network by default. You have to start the Tor Browser manually once it boots up. Compared to Tails, it seems to run faster and it's easier to use because you can easily install it on a hard drive or VM. The disadvantage of installing it is data gets saved instead of being 'Amnesic'.
3 • Problem with privacy today... (by moonwalker on 2025-06-02 04:12:08 GMT from United States)
...is that even if you have absolutely bullet-proof setup on your local computer, you're still leaking tons of data via any online banking/shopping/etc due to disappearing alternatives. If you're driving an electric car, sooner or later you'll have to deal with public charging stations, and to date every single one I've dealt with require you to install an app on a phone and register an account, all of which are used to siphon data about you in exchange for the "privilege" of you being able to pay for their charger. If you rent, your landlord may limit your options of making payments to a single method, e.g. Bilt, which will be collecting bunch of data about you and your financial habits and share it with everybody who's willing to pay. Sure, you'll get small discounts here and there, like a cup of coffee worth of points every few months when your rent is several grands, but I'd rather keep my data private if I could. Brick and mortar shops are going out of business, with fewer and fewer options for buying anything without leaving constant trail of data with various amazons.
Bottom line - it's a battle I'll keep fighting as hard as I can 'till I die, but it sure looks like a losing one.
4 • Privacy: cornerstone of personal security (by Dob on 2025-06-02 06:59:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sadly we can’t just unplug
It Nissan necessary to participate (to a degree) just to be able to monitor potential instances of identity theft, challenge or disassociate from any misrepresentations.
Our government’s let alone our associate’s reliance on information technology with ineffective safeguards and lack of regard for our personal boundaries will continue to betray us.
From the time you get issued with a social (in)security number
(a primary database key) the matrix has you
Resistance is futile
5 • Arduino microcontroler (by linux_user on 2025-06-02 08:41:14 GMT from Greece)
Very interesting review of Raspberry Pico and robotics aplication by Jesse. An other microcontroller is Arduino. It can be connected via usb to a computer and we can program it to perform certain actions. We can connect leds, motors, supersonic sensors, temperature sensors to it and much more. It has a very active community who provide help and ideas. We can program it in a specific simple language as explained in the arduino web site, but also in micropython. There is an arduino simulator in tinkercad.com for those wishing to test arduino whithout buying the microcontroller, wich is programed using blocks as in Scratch. It is a fantastic experience for children (and not only for children) to code and play with it.
6 • Re: Problem with privacy today (by gumb on 2025-06-02 10:15:53 GMT from France)
@3: Totally agree. I still can't believe with what ease the privacy-abandoning app culture implanted itself into society with so little pushback, just for people's supposed convenience. It's like a drug, apps present themselves like an adult candy store. People stand around bored looking at the colourful grid of apps on their home screen and think 'which one shall I choose next?'
I should count myself lucky living in France, which is always a little behind the curve with regards to technology and trends that sweep first the US, then the UK and some other northern European countries. Not necessarily that France is a hold-out or more privacy-focussed, although with any form of change there can be resistance here, more just that the society is a bit more closed in on its own routines and methods so it takes longer for people to adopt changes occurring elsewhere.
Consequently, paying with cash is still widespread and only just beginning to evolve. Try forcing the thousands of stall-holders at the commonplace markets or the boulangeries on every street to abandon cash and there'll be two years of strikes and demonstrations. Even cheques are still a thing here. I'm obliged to pay the local police for my residential parking voucher by cheque as they won't accept any other method. When I visit the UK, I'm increasingly having trouble paying with cash; cards and phones are taking over.
I begrudgingly switched to an Android phone but I run iodéOS and downright refuse to install almost any app except those that are open and privacy-conscious, typically from F-Droid. I'm thankful that I can still do my banking via the PC with Linux, Firefox et al, avoiding any obligatory app interaction and only needing a code sent by SMS, but for how much longer I'm not sure.
Some adjoining countries like Spain have WhatsApp embedded so tightly in the culture that it has not only replaced SMS for the most part, but performing many official services is practically impossible without it. As is the use of Acrobat for PDF form-filling and digital signatures. But some figures in the French government, as is the case elsewhere, are pushing for reforms that would outlaw any unofficial OS and enforce the use of either iOS or Android on phones.
Jesse writes: 'Trying to be entirely private all the time will, unfortunately, lead you down an impractical rabbit hole.' I feel like I'm already far enough down that hole to be bathed in mud, paws bruised from the continual efforts to dig further. At some point the fox will get far enough in to grab my tail.
I fear at my age I'm going to spend the latter part of my life screaming into the wind and railing against all this and almost nobody will be listening. I'm already the only hold-out amongst the thousands of employees in my company who doesn't use any of its many obligatory apps, and who is the only person to bother clicking on the company's Terms and Conditions links for its internal online procedures, only to find that they're always a generic unfinished cut-and-paste joke with placeholders and no reference to the company, and when I point that out to the upper echelons I feel like I'm looked upon as a nuisance. 'Him, the one who's avoiding all our half-baked apps. Get him!'
7 • @6 gumb: (by dragtonmouth on 2025-06-02 10:50:13 GMT from United States)
The price of convenience is privacy and security.
8 • Distribution by Country of Origin (by Dave on 2025-06-02 11:42:01 GMT from United States)
Wow, I didn't even know this page existed and honestly, I've never considered where a distro was from. I knew Mint was from Ireland, EasyOS is from Australia and Arch is Canadian. But, that's it. Thanks for creating, and updating this list.
9 • Privacy (by Wedge009 on 2025-06-02 06:42:22 GMT from Australia)
On a similar note, what 'everyone else is using' (your contacts) seems to have a large effect too, and Jesse's remarks touches on this idea. I remember not too long ago a lot of my friends and relatives started using Signal... but since then many of them have since stopped using it and gone back to whatever commercial platform they were using before.
10 • Privacy (tools) (by aguador on 2025-06-02 12:30:39 GMT from Spain)
@6. Yes the use of WhatsApp here in Spain is lamentable. I'm considered something between a cretin and a grumpy, out-of-touch old man as one of the few holdouts. Not having it has not interfered with essential transactions, but I cannot subscribe to updates from a regional cultural institute without Whatsapp. I would love to follow one of the parties here, but they use a Telegram channel...which presents other issues. Sigh! And the manager of my soon-to-be-former bank was shocked, SHOCKED I say, to learn that I refused to use the bank's app.
The mobile landscape is appalling. I followed Purism for several years before plunking down a ton of money for the Librem 5 which I will replace with an Android phone running /e/os in the not distant future. What a disappointment to buy something "innovative" that is slow, expensive, has poor battery life, has at least one essential feature I still cannot get to work, has inadequate keyboard options, is still stuck on a Debian old stable base (despite kernel and a few other essential updates) and simply is a user nightmare compared to Android-based phones (this comment from someone who is a fairly long-time Linux user!).
To address the topic of the survey, I don't do that much special with my PCs: Vivaldi and (still for now) Firefox both run with Privacy Badger and Ghostery. My set up in Evolution requires nothing more than the bocking of internet image links...and I use plain text for messages. Oops, sounds like a cretinous, grumpy old man!
11 • Security Hardening (by ManyRoads on 2025-06-02 13:26:15 GMT from United States)
Implementing security hardening is not an exercise in paranoia but a prudent approach to preparedness.
Every enhancement in security entails its own set of costs, benefits, and trade-offs—this guide endeavors to elucidate these aspects, enabling informed decision-making.
12 • Privacy tools. (by Tuxedoar on 2025-06-02 13:26:19 GMT from Argentina)
Hi. As for privacy tools, I use Firejail to run a some apps. I also use "Firejail DNS" for internet traffic generated outside the web browser.
I use GnuPG for some encrypted files and I also have some encrypted volumes with ext4.
For the time being, I'm using Firefox as my web browser. I customize its config for improved privacy and security, but I don't install any extension.
Have a nice week.
13 • Privacy (by kc1di on 2025-06-02 13:52:55 GMT from United States)
Privacy is a compromise the more locked down your system the Less net content you will beable to view. I try to stay middle of the road and do use a VPN and some encryption and add blockers. Even with that I have to at time disable the add blocker in order to get to info I need. My distro of choice is PCLinuxOS which is systemd free and I think Systemd is a bit too invasive for my tastes. That I know has been debated over and over so it's just my Opinion.
14 • Privacy (by Slappy McGee on 2025-06-02 14:20:13 GMT from United States)
I routinely switch usernames, change out my makeup, disguise my voice, and wear different clothes all the time.
Nobody online is the wiser.
15 • KDE vault (by mircea on 2025-06-02 16:16:16 GMT from Moldova)
i use kde vault, the preinstalled tool from KDE, which does 2 jobs:
1) store files in a some folder encrypted for local use
2) stores encrypted files in a folder, which is used by dropbox
so I kill 2 rabbits here, I use password encrypted folder, and backup it in cloud, so that cloud provider sees only the encrypted files, while I use file contents in dolphin/kvenview/libreoffice/kate
16 • Privacy (by dr.J on 2025-06-02 18:12:49 GMT from Germany)
I now have a clear opinion on privacy: forget it.
My Linux system was always very private (two virtual machines: Whonix Gateway+Archlinux as a workstation, both fully encrypted), but meanwhile this construction no longer works, because it's no longer about what comes in (such as unwanted advertising that you stop with an adblocker), but about what goes out. Endless trackers, hardware fingerprinting, etc. If you stop this by using Tor or a vpn, for example, the problems start.
It usually starts with geoblocking. If the page you are accessing and the ip are not from the same country... Game over. Blacklists from Tor computers, vpn servers etc. block you. The pre-selection of search engines by country is also a big problem. Meaning: you are looking for something in Europe, but have an Asian ip and the Tor Firefox has English set as the system language. Then you can forget about the search results. These examples could be continued endlessly. To quote Jesse: “Trying to be entirely private all the time will, unfortunately, lead you down an impractical rabbit hole.” That's right. And this has worsened drastically over the last 10 - 15 years.
17 • privacy tools (by Joe P on 2025-06-02 19:08:26 GMT from United States)
I use a VPN, privacy oriented search, have Tor and OnionShare available, strict firejails for applications, no social media (in fact most are in my block lists), Privacy Badger and NoScript plugins, ipsets to block known cryptominers, advertisers, and certain rouge countries in or out of my firewall. I also use macchanger, GPGP, and config options in Firefox. I distrust many CAs on my laptop and phone. I don't add any non open source apps to my phone. My laptop is encrypted with Luks and a 6 word diceware passphrase. Of course I use KeepassXC and don't have anything valuable on the phone. It's for calling only.
I still look for and appreciate ideas for more or at least not losing what privacy I have left. Even spending cash in the real world is getting hard since automatic license plate readers follow you around and there are more cameras in stores and at the point of sale.
I have nothing to hide but everything to lose. The holders of our data need to be accountable for the loss when they get hacked.
18 • privacy and CAs (by picamanic on 2025-06-02 20:44:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
@17: I was interested in "I distrust many CAs on my laptop and phone". Why? Do you remove the ones you dislike from /etc/ca-certificates.conf or adopt more radical actions as in the Tor web browser?
19 • Privacy protecting tools? (by Bert on 2025-06-02 23:06:58 GMT from Brazil)
Well, not many. I use a VPN and have the Tor browser and Brave installed. As soon I read about the new policy of Firefox, which had been my preferred browser (but not the only one installed) since I moved into Linux, I dropped it. I wish it a long life, however, as Floorp is now occupying its place (Floorp is firefox-based).
On all browsers (except for Tor) I have Privacy Badger, Ghostery and an adblocker.
20 • privacy and CAs (by Joe P on 2025-06-03 01:09:59 GMT from United States)
@18
I use s feed reader to check headlines. Over the last few years I have seen several CAs with issues that caused browser makers to issue warnings or distrust them. Recall issues with DigiNotar and just this morning I saw that Google is planning to take actions against Chungwa Telecom and NetLock in Chrome.
I used to use certutil from NSS tools. I check the cert list from time to time to make sure nothing is added via updates.
I might seem paranoid but why have certs from authorities that you aren't likely to need anyway?
21 • victims & perps (by Victorian on 2025-06-03 01:52:50 GMT from Singapore)
"Do you have any privacy protecting tools on your distro" - good question for victims, and some appt replies.
But what about a question for the cyber stalkers & hackers out there? Like...
"Do you use any apps or online courses to improve your troubled selves, and make you more adult?
22 • Privacy as in Poetteringland (by rhtoras on 2025-06-03 08:28:55 GMT from Greece)
It's funny people using privacy tools when they use systemD which is the biggest attack surface in the unix ecosystem. For example: binary logs are more easily corrupted and guess what: systemD uses binary logs...
and i won't go further messing with the power give in cgroups and so on...
to be more specific: 10 things control 10 sub things or one thing controlling 10 subthings. Which is easier to attack ? What's your opinion guys ?
In my case now: internet is not intended to be a safe place... BUT people who like safety take it seriously... be carefull where you enter and what you are doing... it's like electricity: you have to be cautious when messing with electricity!
Making updates, cleaning your system regularly and using an os with security protection proven is a good practice. I trust Openbsd and Void Linux. Others prefer Fedora. Well good luck to them...
23 • @19 Bert: (by dragonmouth on 2025-06-03 10:51:57 GMT from United States)
I suggest you read the following:
https://www.unixsheikh.com/articles/choose-your-browser-carefully.html
and then reconsider your decision about Brave and Floorp.
24 • Privacy (by Mark on 2025-06-03 01:22:11 GMT from United States)
Google kept telling me Brave may be insecure, and wanted me to use another browser to sign in to Gmail. Told me twice before I was able to log in. What the heck?? I guess Brave doesn't play right with Google (i.e. give us all your data). And I refuse to use the store, bank, restaurant, etc. apps on my Android phone. I need more marketing junk mail (paper and electronic) like I need another hole in my head.
25 • Privacy (by TiredGit on 2025-06-03 13:32:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
I use Veracrypt for all backups. I use several extensions with Firefox to remove trackers cookies etc.
26 • Dejadup and backup on the cloud (by Flavianoep on 2025-06-03 13:38:59 GMT from Brazil)
I answered that I do not use any privacy tool, but I remembered that I use one. I encrypt my backup with Dejadup before uploading it to OneDrive.
27 • Machine Language Programming (by GWBridge on 2025-06-03 16:02:07 GMT from United States)
After receiving my liberal arts degree, I worked on an electronics degree from Milwaukee Area Technical College in order to get a job and buy food. This was circa 1980 when microprocessors were the latest thing. We had to write programs in machine language for the 8080 or maybe 8085 microprocessor. No fancy interface. Quite a complex procedure just to get some LEDs to blink in a certain order, but extremely satisfying when your program finally got it to work, and then work with the fewest lines of code. Fun memory.
28 • My lack of ability to authenticate (by Clarence Perry on 2025-06-05 17:06:18 GMT from United States)
My saving company has installed 2 factor authentication, AFTER login with password. We have an ongoing problem where it doesn't work with my Android phone and the tech support says it works fine.
Needless to say I'm not going to install the app what will cure my problem.
Cleaning all those needless apps you find an occasional person who depends on them.
This is a test of wills, will they find a change that will work for everyone, including me, or do I give in?
So far
I'm still sending complaint emails.
29 • Two-Factor Authentication (by Stefan on 2025-06-06 03:48:14 GMT from Brazil)
@28 (Clarence Perry):
Sometimes, 2FA may be "a little bit troublesome", but it is certainly the most effective security measure that anyone can implement to prevent a banking account from being hacked. By the way, I use in my Android cellphone an open-source (and offline) authenticator called Aegis.
I suppose your saving company is trying to enforce the use of an online application like Microsoft Authenticator or Google Authenticator. If you still didn't learn how to configure such a kind of application, simply search for an Internet article describing in detail how to do it. Then, no bad guy will ever be capable of hacking your banking account.
But if your cellphone model is really "incompatible" with that specific application, just buy a compatible one and stop sending complaint emails. Business corporations generally don't respect their clients anyway... at least in my country!
30 • Quit surfing. (by ParanOid on 2025-06-06 07:22:24 GMT from The Netherlands)
update when the first next thing the user will do is to log in to the Google, Microsoft, Steam, etc. account?
Nobody is behind YOU—you are the one among trillions of browser connections per hour, and if 'they' are behind you, then you have a problem anyway. The light bulbs and window glass are transferring vibrations, just like your home heating pipes, and they can listen to what you talk about…
Simply use what all other people use—the most popular OS and the most popular browsers—and you reach the maximum privacy possible—you become a water drop in the ocean.
Your browser is connecting to the internet when you start the browser to connect to the internet. Imagine!
https://privacytests.org/
Don't be paranoid.
31 • Privacy tools (by Robert on 2025-06-06 13:50:00 GMT from United States)
I don't go too crazy on privacy. I use some tools as basic precautions, but I don't compromise my internet experience.
VPN, which frankly I forgot to turn on more often than not. Should probably configure it to autoconnect.
Protonmail, which for me is more about avoiding spam than for privacy.
Adblocker
Brave browser
I default to Brave search, but still use Google often enough. Despite the AI and ad garbage it still is the best tool for finding things that I know. Used to use DuckDuckGo, but its really bad.
No cloud storage for my files. Everything is on my own computers.
I could certainly do better. But I'm not really interested in going so far as to maintain a public-facing server to run my own services. I probably should install Privacy Badger again though, kinda forgot about it.
Number of Comments: 31
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| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Alinex
Alinex, developed by the Universidade de Évora, was a Ubuntu-based Portuguese Linux distribution designed for the students of the university. It includes an easy installation program, complete localisation into Portuguese, and all the necessary software the university students might need to develop new applications.
Status: Discontinued
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