 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1125, 9 June 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Linux distributions and the organizations which maintain them exist in a wide variety of shapes and all kinds of sizes. There are massive, democratic community organizations (such as Debian), small teams with benevolent dictators (such as Slackware), and large commercial companies (such as Red Hat). This week we share information and news from a range of projects of many sizes. We begin with a look at Red Hat's latest offering, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10.0. The new version from Red Hat hypes AI technology and we take the new release for a spin. In our News section we talk about Murena partnering with device makers to provide new tablets along with phones which feature privacy hardware switches. We also share news that a Redox developer has ported X11 and GTK to the Rust-based operating system. Plus we report on GNOME testing its custom Linux distribution on physical hardware while Linux Mint introduces fingerprint authentication. Then, in our Questions and Answers section, we discuss distribution longevity - how long a project is likely to survive and which projects will probably disappear within a decade. Does the expected lifespan of a distribution factor into whether you are going to install it? Let us know if this is important to you in our Opinion Poll. Finally, we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0
- News: Murena partners with phone markers, Redox developer ports X11 and GTK, GNOME testing its own distro on real hardware, Linux Mint tests fingerprint authentication
- Questions and answers: Seeking a distribution for long-term use
- Released last week: Oracle Linux 9.6, Murena 3.0, UBports 20.04 OTA-9, Rocky Linux 9.6
- Torrent corner: BigLinux, KDE neon, Rocky Linux
- Upcoming releases: FreeBSD 14.3, Ubuntu 25.10 Snapshot 2
- Opinion poll: Are you concerned with your distribution's longevity?
- New additions: FydeOS, GLF OS, GNOME OS, MocaccinoOS, Oreon, RED OS
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0
Almost exactly three years to the day after the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 9.0 the IBM-owned Linux company published version 10.0 of its enterprise-focused distribution. The release announcement presented readers with a buzz-word salad which mentions (by my count) "AI" 23 times and contains just 15 paragraphs. It's all marketing-speak rather than useful information, with lines such as this one:
Makes containers the language of the OS and new Red Hat Insights capabilities enable more informed decisions at build time; empowers the next generation of developers with support for emerging architectures and software innovation.
I also spotted this gem of corporatesse: "the dynamic demands of hybrid cloud and the transformative power of AI."
Fortunately, the release notes are better and share some useful information. Here are some of the highlights from the Major Changes section:
- RHEL 10 introduces Sequoia PGP tools sq and sqv that complement the existing GnuPG tools for managing OpenPGP encryption and signatures.
- The OpenSSL TLS toolkit introduces creation of FIPS-compliant PKCS #12 files, the pkcs11-provider for using hardware tokens, and many additional improvements.
- RHEL 10 contains the OpenSSH suite in version 9.9, which provides many fixes and improvements over OpenSSH 8.7, which was provided in RHEL 9.
- The SELinux userspace release 3.8 introduces a new option for audit2allow that provides CIL output mode, Wayland support for the SELinux sandbox, and other improvements.
- We have expanded graphical capabilities by introducing limited support for virtio-gpu on IBM Z (s390x) systems for enhanced virtualization experiences.
There are also changes to the distribution's Cockpit remote management software: "With the new File browser provided by the cockpit-files package, you can manage files and directories in the RHEL web console.... With the systemd RHEL system role you can now manage user units in addition to system units."
A list of updates to development languages and upgrades to key packages in the core operating system are also covered.
Installing
I visited Red Hat's page for downloading trial copies of the latest version of RHEL. I chose to download the Workstation edition, was prompted for my Red Hat account credentials, and signed in. The website then redirected me to a download page and automatically began downloading RHEL 9.5. This wasn't the version I was hoping to try and cancelled the download. I had to reverse a few steps in the process and select the option to download a "previous version" and then choose RHEL 10.0 from the list of options. I'm not sure why the website defaulted to offering version 9.5 or why 10.0 is considered a "previous version" to 10.0, but such is the maze we explore when visiting redhat.com.
There were a handful of download options for RHEL 10.0. There is a Minimal boot disc ISO which is 816MB in size, a "Full DVD" option which is 7.9GB, and a range of editions for virtual environments that are 816MB and smaller. I decided to download the Full edition.
Booting from the provided ISO offers to either launch the system installer or perform a self-check on the media, followed by running the installer. The media passed its check and then launched a graphical interface and opened the Anaconda system installer.
Anaconda begins by asking us for our preferred language. We're then shown a hub screen where we can access configuration modules in whichever order we like. These modules are mostly small, simple option screens that make it easy for us to choose our timezone, language, keyboard layout, package source, and kernel dumps. There are also modules for registering the system with Red Hat (I entered my credentials for my Red Hat account). There is a module for selecting the system's role, with the option which include: Server with GUI, Server, Minimal Install, Workstation, Custom, and Virtualization Host. I wanted a hybrid workstation and server and so chose Server with GUI.
Some of Anaconda's modules help us create a user account, optionally set a root password, and connect to a network. By default, RHEL does not enable the root account and, instead, grants admin access via sudo to the first regular user.
The disk partitioning module is a bit complicated and cryptic compared to most other disk partitioning tools, but it does work. It also has an automated option which will instruct Anaconda to divide the disk for us.
I ran into an issue with the network connection module. When trying to connect to a wireless network, if there are many wi-fi networks available, the list of networks extends off the screen and the window holding the list of available networks cannot be resized. This hides networks further down the list and hides the Connect button. We need to press Alt+O to connect to the selected network. This bug has existed in Anaconda for several years and still hadn't been fixed by either using a scrollbar or a resizable window.
Once all of the modules have been configured, the installer copies its packages to the local disk. The installer seemed to get stuck at 10% for a few minutes, but then jumped straight to 100% completion and offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
Once installed, RHEL 10 booted to a graphical login screen. There is a single session option: GNOME running on Wayland. Signing into my account brought up the GNOME desktop along with a pop-up and an application window. The pop-up reports the operating system has not been registered. This surprised me as I had entered my credentials to register the system during the install process, but apparently this didn't carry over for some reason. Clicking the notification opens the GNOME Settings panel where we can re-enter the credentials and the panel then reported my system was successfully registered. I think it's worth noting that if we do not register the system we are not given access to software updates.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 -- The settings panel
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The application window which had opened automatically was GNOME Tour which offered to give me an overview of the desktop and its elements.
The GNOME desktop uses a light theme by default. A panel is placed at the top of the screen which holds the Activities button (represented by the Red Hat logo) on the left side and a system tray to the right. When the Activities view is open a dock appears at the bottom of the screen. This dock holds launchers for the software centre, a terminal, a text editor, calculator, and the application menu. Opening the application menu displays a full page of launchers.
I found it interesting that GNOME seems to be a mash-up of different versions. Looking through the available software, I found GNOME Shell was at version 47.3, the GNOME Desktop package was at version 44.0, GNOME Menus was version 3.36, and GNOME Tour was version 46.0. Other elements of GNOME seem to fit into these four groups ranges, for example the Control Centre package is version 47.3 while GNOME Clocks is version 46.0.
Hardware
I had some troubles getting my RHEL trial started. This is, in part, due to the distribution's hardware requirements. RHEL requires x86_64 processors which support version 3 optimizations (x86_64-v3). My laptop could handle this, but VirtualBox 7.0 could not, it doesn't make the v3 CPU instructions available. I first had to upgrade to VirtualBox 7.1 to get RHEL to boot in a virtual machine.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 -- The GNOME desktop
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Early on I also found that if I tried to boot RHEL 10.0 in Legacy BIOS mode the system would run into a kernel panic almost immediately. Booting in UEFI mode worked without issues.
Once I had upgraded VirtualBox, I was able to boot and install RHEL, though the distribution still had some limitations. It wasn't slow in the virtual environment, but it wasn't overly responsive either. It was workable, but not snappy. Also, the mouse pointer didn't integrate with the GNOME desktop (it had to be manually captured and released by the virtual machine software). I also found the visual mouse pointer tended to "drift" away from where the mouse pointer was. This resulted in the mouse appearing to be about an inch away from where clicks actually registered, making it hard to navigate GNOME in the virtual environment.
RHEL performed quite a bit better on my laptop. The distribution detected my hardware, ran smoothly, the touchpad was detected and worked, and I was able to connect to wireless networks.
A fresh install of RHEL in the Server with GUI role was relatively small on disk, using just 4.7GB of disk space for its root filesystem. The GNOME desktop raised memory usage above average though, requiring 1.270MB (1.2GB) of memory to sign into the desktop.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 -- Trying a dark theme and running Papers
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Earlier I mentioned Anaconda offers automated partitioning. If we let Anaconda take over the entire disk, it sets up an unusual layout. The installer will create a /boot partition, formatted with XFS. It will also set up a logical volume (LVM) which holds swap space and the root partition, with the latter also using XFS as the filesystem. These days I think RHEL is the only distribution still using XFS as its default, rather than the more traditional ext4 or more feature-rich Btrfs. Other enterprise distributions, such as the openSUSE family and Ubuntu, tend to use Btrfs these days and even Fedora (RHEL's upstream distribution) uses Btrfs.
Included software
The software included in RHEL will vary depending on which role we picked for the distribution at install time. Taking the Server with GUI role did not include many applications by default, apart from standard GNOME programs. Red Hat gives the impression they intend their distribution to be a platform rather than a complete solution. RHEL is a foundation where we can add services, containers, and virtual machines. RHEL, on its own, doesn't provide a lot of packages (locally or in the repositories), but it offers a long-term support platform on which we can build.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 -- Exploring the available applications
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The Server with GUI role includes Firefox and common GNOME applications (System Monitor, Clocks, Files, Camera, and the Papers document viewer). We can also find an image viewer and disk manager. That is about it for desktop applications, apart from the GNOME Settings panel.
The distribution doesn't include a compiler or Java support. However, trying to run a program which is not installed, such as gcc or java, will cause the system to perform a search in its software repositories for a matching program. The system will then offer to install the missing application.
Something I found interesting about this approach is that the first regular user can install new software this way without providing a password. However, if we try to use the DNF command line package manager it will refuse to work without a sudo password. This means if we run "dnf install make" the command will fail because we do not have the proper privileges. However, if we run "make" the system will offer to fetch the program for us without asking for a password and then automatically run the make utility.
Looking under the hood, we find the GNU command line utilities, the systemd init software, and manual pages. Version 6.12 of the Linux kernel runs behind the scenes.
Package management
When running RHEL with a desktop environment the main approach to managing software is with the GNOME Software application. This modern software centre pulls in packages from Red Hat's RPM repositories and Red Hat's custom Flatpak repository. It does not include packages from third-party sources such as Flathub or the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux repositories.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 -- The GNOME Software centre
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GNOME Software presents us with three tabs: Explore, Installed, and Updates. these tabs offer us screens for finding, removing, and updating software, respectively. I found that updating existing packages worked seamlessly and did not require our user's password. However, installing new packages, such as from Red Hat's Flatpak repository, did require credentials - not our local password, but our Red Hat account credentials. This was the fourth time I had had to supply my Red Hat account information during the trial and the third on the operating system, and it was getting tedious. I'm not sure why RHEL doesn't store the credentials we supply at install time, but it should have a way to remember this information so it doesn't need to be entered in multiple applications.
After we have installed updates GNOME Software will suggest we restart the computer to complete the process. The next time the system boots, the start-up process will pause, display a "Do not turn off your computer," banner and apply new updates, then restart the system. This is unusually slow and awkward by Linux standards and feels like one of the worst aspects of Microsoft's design entering the Linux ecosystem.
We can, if we wish, also work with software packages from the command line. RHEL ships with dnf for managing traditional RPM packages and flatpak for handling Flatpak packages. These both worked well for me.
Lightspeed
Since the RHEL release announcement mentioned AI so much, I went looking for AI clients which might be included in the distribution. There do not appear to be any by default, but there is a command line AI assistant available in the distribution's repositories. We can install it by running "dnf install command-line-assistant".
Once installed, we can interact with the AI assistant through the c command, which is explained in the documentation. (The AI utility is called Lightspeed, so c is a cute shorthand.)
Once Lightspeed is installed we can ask it questions using natural language prompts in quotes, for example:
$ c "What is RHEL?"
I soon found that Lightspeed really only understands and answers questions about RHEL and related open source technologies. Even then, it is somewhat limited. It could briefly tell me what RHEL is and, when I asked if I should use GNU's compiler or Clang, Lightspeed was quick to tell me the GNU compiler was recommended. However, it refused to answer questions outside of RHEL topics, such as "Who is the highest paid sports player of all time?" or "Where is Nova Scotia?".
Lightspeed also does not always answer questions about RHEL accurately. For example, I asked it if RHEL provides boot environments. Lightspeed told me yes, absolutely, and provided a link to on-line documentation for working with boot environments. There were three problems with its answer. The first was that RHEL does not enable boot environments by default. The second issue was Lightspeed references RHEL version 8 in its answer, which is about six years out of date. The final issue was the link it provided was not valid and returned a "404: Page not found" error when I tried to access it. Likewise, when I asked Lightspeed how to enable the RPMFusion repositories it gave me instructions which looked real, but when executed failed.
In short, the AI assistant is very limited, it made up fake resources, and Lightspeed lied most of the time I asked it for instructions on how to accomplish tasks on RHEL. I would recommend against using it.
Other observations
One of the gems of RHEL is Cockpit, a web-based administrative portal. This service can be enabled to run on the RHEL system and then accessed remotely using a web browser. Directing the web browser to our computer's IP address (or hostname) and accessing network port 9090 brings up a login page where we can sign in as our regular user.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 -- The Cockpit web interface for managing services
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Cockpit's web interface presents us with an overview of system status and resource usage. It can also be used to manage user accounts, enable/disable services, and install system updates. Cockpit can install additional modules or add-ons which further extend its functionality. This gives us, for example, the ability to install and use a file manager from within the web-based environment.
Cockpit is one of the nicer remote administrative tools I have encountered. It worked really well for me during this trial and I like that the developers are introducing new add-ons to extend its functionality rather than cluttering the existing interface by stuffing more functions into Cockpit's core.
Something odd I ran into was, after I had created a few new user accounts on the system, RHEL would warn me that another user besides myself was logged in every time that I tried to turn off or restart the computer. This was never true, I was the only person using the computer, no other user accounts were logged in. In fact, often times no other user accounts had logged in during the machine's uptime, but the distribution continued to warn me that another person was logged in if I tried to power off the computer.
Conclusions
Red Hat's target audience is quite a bit different than that of most other Linux distributions and this shows in its approach. Most Linux distributions, whether designed with desktop or server environments in mind, tend to aim for providing "more". More features, more capabilities, more conveniences, more desktop environments, more packages, a more modern interface, a more pretty interface, more streamlining/automating of the install experience.
Red Hat is focused almost exclusively on the enterprise market and, perhaps as a side effect, tends to go in the other direction. RHEL 10 ships with relatively few packages, very limited (curated) repositories, just one desktop environment, an entirely vanilla desktop style, very few modern conveniences, and an install process which is at the far end of the spectrum from streamlined. Red Hat appears to be providing "just enough" operating system for other developers and companies to layer their own technologies on top of the distribution.
This makes sense, to a degree, Red Hat wants to support the smallest footprint possible while businesses want something supported and predictable. This makes Red Hat a fairly reasonable distribution for businesses, but as you can imagine, it's a pretty poor substitute for people who want a fully functional operating system for home or small business use. The sort of system you and I might want to run at home is probably vastly different from the one the IT team wants to run on the office servers.
What I felt made less sense was how limited and dated using RHEL 10 felt. It's not that the distribution is a long-term release and the packages are, as expected, six months or so old. I typically like running more conservative platforms, such as Debian, which are not on the cutting edge. What I mean is the distribution seems out of step with the rest of the world, even the rest of the enterprise world, when dealing with some tasks. RHEL is probably the only distribution I have used recently whose install trips over itself if it detects too many wireless networks. It's the only distribution I have used that prompts for registration credentials in at least three different places instead of remembering them. RHEL will, by default, apply updates off-line during the boot process (as Windows does) rather than just installing packages on-line. If the developers were worried about running processes they could detect and offer to restart them (the way openSUSE does) or if they wanted to use atomic updates they could spin off a new snapshot (the way FreeBSD does). Instead the distribution takes the slowest and most awkward approach.
Throughout my trial I kept running into situations where I wondered why Red Hat still feels stuck in the past. Why use LVM and XFS when Btrfs has been around and used in enterprise environments for years? Where are the automated boot environments? Why supply only a Red Hat Flatpak repository with no option to enable Flathub? Why supply only a GNOME on Wayland desktop when a conservative business just interested in getting work done will have a smoother experience with X11? Red Hat seems to feel that a decade of commercial support and two dozen mentions of "AI" in its announcement will be enough for people, but the distribution feels like it's been left behind.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.3/10 from 13 review(s).
Have you used Red Hat Enterprise Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Murena partners with phone markers, Redox developer ports X11 and GTK, GNOME testing its own distro on real hardware, Linux Mint tests fingerprint authentication
The Murena project held a live stream presentation on June 3rd which announced the launch of /e/OS 3.0, the latest version of Murena's mobile operating system. The project's team also discussed several new features, including end-to-end encrypted file vaults, using a code over SMS to find the location of a lost phone, and an updated interface for tablets. The team also reported /e/OS will default to using a privacy-protecting search engine (powered by Qwant) and will provide touchless payment transactions on supported devices through the Curve application.
The Murena project has also announced they are partnering with Volla (a company which also works with UBports) to provide new tablets. Murena will be working with another company to provide privacy-respecting phones that offer kill switches, allowing users to disable their phone's camera and microphone on the hardware level. Both the tablet and new privacy-protecting phone are expected to be available later this year.
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The Redox OS project, which works to make a modern Unix-like operating system written in Rust, published its May newsletter. The newsletter mentions Redox OS is hiring a developer for kernel development and other various tasks. The project also shared that X11 support has been ported to the young operating system. "Jeremy Soller has implemented X11 support in the Orbital display server!! This allows programs using X11 to work on Redox without changes to the GUI code. The mechanism for X11 support is conceptually similar to how Wayland supports X11 programs through XWayland. He also enabled the DRI backend to improve rendering performance, although it does not yet fully support graphics acceleration. It is expected that this code will become part of our Wayland support." The GTK3 development toolkit, widely used for making GNOME applications, has also been ported to Redox.
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The GNOME project has been working on its own Linux distribution for a while now to test the latest builds of the GNOME desktop software, but it has been mostly limited to running in virtual machines. This is changing and the GNOME OS distribution is making progress and should now run on most modern hardware. "So far, GNOME OS has mostly been used for testing in virtual machines, but what if you could just use it as your primary OS on real hardware? Turns out you can! While it's still early days and it's not recommended for non-technical audiences, GNOME OS is now ready for developers and early adopters who know how to deal with occasional bugs (and importantly, file those bugs when they occur)." People interested in testing out daily builds of GNOME can learn more by reading the project's blog post.
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The Linux Mint team is testing a new application for providing fingerprint authentication. "Linux Mint 22.2 will feature a brand new app called Fingwit. Fingwit is a fingerprint configuration tool. It detects if your computer has a fingerprint reader and lets you record your fingerprints. It then configures your system to use fingerprint authentication for: The login screen, the screensaver; sudo commands, admin apps (pkexec)." Fingwit will work across desktop environments and should function on any systems that have a fingerprint reader and PAM authentication support.
The Linux Mint May newsletter also reminds people that Linux Mint 20.x is reaching the end of its five years of support. People running version 20.x are advised to either perform a fresh install of Linux Mint 22 or upgrade in place to version 21. Tips for upgrading are provided in the newsletter.
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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) |
Seeking a distribution for long-term use
Here-for-a-long-time asks: In terms of longevity, which distros do you think are safe and which ones will disappear soon, like in the next ten years?
DistroWatch answers: These are the sorts of questions which keep system administrators awake at night: Will this operating system be around in ten years? What will the migration look like if it is not?
The way I approach this question is to look at what factors keep a Linux distribution (or any operating system) alive. Then I look at which projects fit into those categories. Here are some characteristics I look for and which projects I think fit into them, making their long-term survival likely.
- Strong corporate backing - Even in the open source community, money talks. A distribution which helps a company earn millions of dollars is likely to remain actively maintained and developed. Big, commercial distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and Ubuntu are likely to stick around for a long time. Oracle Linux also has huge corporate backing and is likely to survive as a result. Likewise, the community flavours of these distributions, such as Fedora and openSUSE, are likely to continue to exist as they provide both community engagement and testing for the big-name commercial products.
- Strong foundation/community backing - Some open source projects are not commercially successful, but offered for free and supported by foundations which raise money through donations and partnerships. This allows some open source projects to survive and raise thousands (or even millions) each year of dollars while giving away the operating system for free. The FreeBSD project comes to mind. The Debian project (and its sponsors) have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank if they need it. Likewise, the Arch Linux project brings in enough donations to keep the lights on and, like Debian, is a member of Software in the Public Interest (SPI). There are a few clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, such as AlmaLinux OS, which fit into this category too.
- Successful small business model - There are some smaller Linux distributions which, while not backed by large companies or hordes of developers, are able to be financially self-sufficient. The Linux Mint project regularly brings in thousands of dollars per month and has partnered with sponsors and hardware makers to keep the project alive. Likewise, the Manjaro Linux project has gained sponsors and business partnerships which both help spread the distribution to new users and provide some income. These projects are more likely to survive as a result.
- Interesting independent projects - There are some independent projects which don't fit into any of the above categories, but are interesting, engaging, or useful enough that I suspect they will continue to grow rather than fade. The NixOS distribution with its unusual approach to system management comes to mind. The Alpine Linux distribution is small, light, and super fast which makes it ideal for servers and containers. Both of these projects I'd expect to survive as a result of their appealing features and specialized niches. In a similar vein, Gentoo's source-focused approach is (for many people) not practical, but it does regularly attract a community of enthusiasts and power users which will likely keep the project alive for years to come.
Who does this leave? What we have left are two groups of distributions, both of which I think will struggle to survive another decade or more. The first endangered group is fairly obvious: spins of popular distributions which have small (often single-person) development teams. These distributions often rely on a single person to continue the project and the distribution can often be replaced easily. For example, there are over 20 spins of Arch Linux. Most of them can be described as "Arch Linux, but installed with Calamares and featuring [insert desktop name]." Some of them are quite nice Arch-based projects, but if any one (or six) of them disappears tomorrow people can easily migrate over to another Arch spin. Likewise there are over 50 Ubuntu-based distributions and I'm not sure I could name more than 30 of them. Many are essentially Ubuntu with a specific desktop or Ubuntu with tools for a particular field of work pre-installed. These are almost always maintained by a single person or small teams which will lose interest or retire someday. When that happens people will likely migrate to the next-closest Ubuntu-based distribution which fits their needs.
This leaves us with the second group of endangered distributions which are independent projects with relatively small or shrinking niches which likely means fewer up-and-coming users (and developers) are taking an interest in them. Of the two endangered groups this one is, in my opinion, the more dangerous to use as migrating from a niche distribution is harder than migrating away from a spin of a popular distribution. GoboLinux comes to mind. It was an interesting project, but its development has dropped off as the problems it was trying to solve have largely been addressed by mainstream distributions in other ways. The Mageia/OpenMandriva family has a great legacy, going back over 25 years, but the projects have been in a holding pattern for nearly two decades - putting out new, largely unchanged releases about once a year or two. Canonical drew away their target audience of novice Linux users and people looking for a "just works" friendly experience.
Other cornerstones of previous decades come to mind as well. PCLinuxOS continues to chug along, but common perception is that its existence hinges on the continued involvement of its founder. Slackware, the oldest surviving Linux distribution, continues to defy the odds as it keeps running, though its releases are coming less frequently and its website seems to no longer be maintained. The site still uses plain HTTP (not HTTPS) and the most recent news update was from over three years ago. CRUX is slowing down too and has published just one new major release in over three years, after consistently putting out new versions about once every 12 months.
To me, slowing release cycles are usually a good sign a project is running out of steam and will fade away. It's not a sure sign, but projects which go from regular annual releases with new features to publishing updates once every three to five years with few changes are typically fading out of existence.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Oracle Linux 9.6
Gursewak Sokhi has announced the release of Oracle Linux 9 Update 6, the new stable build of Oracle's Linux distribution built from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This version upgrades Oracle's default Linux kernel to the long-term-supported 6.12 version: "The Oracle Linux team is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 9.6 for 64-bit Intel and AMD (x86_64) and 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platforms. This release includes the following kernel options: Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 8 (UEK 8) 6.12 for the x86_64 and aarch64 platforms and Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) 5.14 for the x86_64 platform. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 8, the latest release of Oracle's purpose-built Oracle Linux kernel, is included as the default kernel in Oracle Linux 9.6 installations. UEK 8 delivers advancements in memory management, enhanced file system support, networking optimizations and platform-specific improvements. Based on the latest upstream long-term stable kernel, UEK 8 features a wide range of enhancements from Oracle and the upstream Linux community. Oracle Linux 9.6 also delivers new capabilities and enhancements spanning security, networking, container technologies, and the developer experience." See the release announcement and the release notes for more information.
Murena 3.0
The Murena organization has announced a new release of their mobile operating system, /e/OS, along with a series of new features. "/e/OS's Advanced Privacy feature now offers users a comprehensive overview of how their data is handled. New Weekly Reports provide detailed insights into invasive apps, aggressive trackers, and an overall Privacy Score. Users can even share these reports on social media to raise awareness. In addition, users can now customize app geolocation access, distinguishing which apps see true vs. fake locations. We unveil an ultra powerful tool to protect users' data on our Murena Workspace at murena.io: a user-friendly and end-to-end encrypted Online Vault, powered by the CryptPad technology, now in beta. This feature allows users to store sensitive files with end-to-end encryption-including for real-time editing and collaboration. This new test service helps explore how ultra-strong encryption can be integrated into the Murena ecosystem with minimal impact on user experience. With Find My Device via SMS in /e/OS 3.0, users can locate their device even when they're far from it-no internet connection required. This simple yet effective feature uses standard text messages (SMS) to help users geolocate their device, securely and with ease."
UBports 20.04 OTA-9
The UBports team has released an update to the project's mobile operating system, 20.04 OTA-9. The new update focuses on three main improvements: "Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-9 contains only minimal changes due to our current focus on Ubuntu base OS upgrade. Still there are interesting changes: VoLTE support is updated so that it works out-of-box with more carriers (Thanksb to Nikita (@Notkit) from Volla), Please note that we've tested VoLTE on a few Volla devices only. Other ports may have VoLTE support enabled; such support is experimental and may not always function correctly. Waydroid has been updated to version 1.5.1, containing initial support for upcoming official Android 13 images, among other fixes (Thanks to Jami (@deathmist) from Volla). Font for emoji is switched from Emoji One to Noto Color Emoji, with improved support for some of newer emojis. (Thanks to Alfred (@fredldotme))." A complete list of changes along with upgrade instructions can be found in the project's release announcement.
Rocky Linux 9.6
Rocky Linux 9.6 has been released. Rocky Linux is a community-driven enterprise Linux distribution and a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With this release, the project continues to focus on improving its KIWI image-building utility: "We are pleased to announce the general availability of Rocky Linux 9.6. Notable new features and changes: PHP 8.3 and 8.4, nginx 1.26, MySQL 8.4, Valgrind 3.24.0, SystemTap 5.2, elfutils 0.192, libabigail 2.6, Performance Co-pilot 6.3.2, Grafana 10.2.6, LLVM toolset 19.17, Rust toolset 1.84.1, Go toolset 1.23. With the release of Rocky Linux 9.6, the process of building and delivering our images continues to improve. KIWI, a modern image-building tool that allows for a more consistent and maintainable workflow, created most of the images for this release. A new image type is available in this release, Windows Subsystem for Linux (or WSL), compatible container archives can be downloaded and run on a Windows 10 or Windows 11 system with ease. Utilities for Oracle Cloud images have been updated to the most recent versions." See the release announcement and the release notes for more information.
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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: 3,222
- 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) |
Are you concerned with your distribution's longevity?
This week's Questions and Answers column talked about distribution longevity and which projects are liking to survive for at least a decade. Is this something you think about when you select which distribution to install on your computer? Or do you feel longevity does not matter and you can hop to another distribution easily?
You can see the results of our previous poll on software to protect privacy in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
FydeOS
FydeOS, developed by United Kingdom's Fyde Innovations, is a lightweight operating system that carries a Linux kernel, a browser platform and a container technology driver. It is very similar to Google Chrome OS in use. FydeOS supports the latest web application standards, and is able to run Android and Linux applications (by activating the included Android and Debian subsystems), providing a Google Chromebook-like experience. Users have a choice to use cloud services provided by Google, services powered by Fyde Innovations, or a local account. FydeOS is based on the open-source ChromiumOS and includes the Chromium browser; it is available free of charge for most standard Intel/AMD personal computers.
GLF OS
GLF OS is a gaming-oriented live Linux distribution based on NixOS. Developed by a French-speaking community called Gaming Linux FR (GLF), the distribution includes everything one would need for gaming on Linux, including Steam, Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher, as well as MangoHud, a tool for monitoring system performance and for benchmarking applications. GLF OS comes with specific hardware-management configurations for PS5 DualSense, Xbox and 8bitdo controllers. The live distribution image uses the GNOME desktop environments, but KDE Plasma is available as an option during system installation.
GNOME OS
GNOME OS is an experimental, immutable Linux distribution that ships the latest in-development GNOME desktop, core applications and stack. It serves as a reference for developers and testers. It is designed around the modern systemd and GNU-based userland built from the Freedesktop SDK. Initially, GNOME OS used a library and set of utilities called OSTree to deploy the root filesystem and manage updates, but later migrated to "systemd-sysupdate" which offers enhanced immutability, auto-updating, adaptability, factory reset, uniformity and other modernised security properties. GNOME OS can be loaded as a live image in Boxes, VirtualBox, QEMU and other virtualisation software, but it can also be installed on a standard x86_64 hardware. The distribution does not support traditional package management; however, additional software applications can be installed via the Flatpak utility which is supported out of the box.
GNOME OS 851764 -- Demonstrating the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 3.0MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
MocaccinoOS
MocaccinoOS is an independently-developed Linux distribution that has its origins in source-based Gentoo Linux and Sabayon Linux. It uses a custom-built package manager called "Luet", which acts as a front-end for container-based software. The distribution's main features are minimalism and small footprint, ease of use, native vanilla Linux kernels, and support for most important cloud technologies. MocaccinoOS is offered in several variants, including live images with GNOME, KDE Plasma, MATE and Xfce desktops, as well as command-line-only "Minimal Desktop" edition.
Oreon
Oreon is a desktop-oriented live Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, attempting to combine the stability and security of an enterprise Linux distribution with user-friendly features for desktop and laptop users. Its main features include GNOME desktop with a custom Oreon theme, ten years of support, and access to thousands of packages from Red Hat and Oreon-specific repositories.
Oreon 10 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 462kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
RED OS
RED OS is an independently-developed Russian Linux distribution for workstations and servers. It uses the RPM and DNG tools for package management. The workstation edition provides a choice of three desktops, KDE Plasma, GNOME and MATE, while the server variant includes a custom server administration utility called RED ADM. The distribution is developed by Russia's RED SOFT, a company that also provides technical support and Linux training, as well as various administration, virtualisation and database software products.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 16 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 • Longevity (by Harpo on 2025-06-09 00:51:18 GMT from United States)
Although longevity of a distro does factor in, the 2 most important things to me are stability and large repos.
I switched from Mageia after 3 years due to the small size of their repos. I found there were a lot of apps I wanted to try that just were not there, and trying to install them from alien sources was too much of a hassle. Mageia was very stable, however, even though it did have some paper cuts I did not find on other distros.
2 • Longevity (by penguinx86 on 2025-06-09 01:08:12 GMT from United States)
Yes, I am concerned about my distro's longevity. That's why I avoid lesser known distros that may be gone or unsupported in a year. I only install well know proven distros on my laptops hard drive. Sure, I install new distros in Virtualbox to try them out sometimes. But I'll stick with Linux Mint or LMDE for a permanent install.
3 • @1 re longevity/stability (by Simon on 2025-06-09 01:08:29 GMT from New Zealand)
People often talk about "stability" in the sense of "rarely crashing", but that's reliability, and is just one of the positives that goes with the kind of stability you get with e.g. Debian stable (or Ubuntu LTS or Red Hat or whatever). Yes, the fact that the system is stable (i.e. doesn't move... remains the same for a long time) means that it's also more trustworthy in the sense of reliability, because the same package set gets tested for long enough to iron out bugs; but that's only one way that a stable system saves headaches and time.
Even a perfectly working package wastes time and can require a lot of unnecessary user intervention simply by changing the way it works: changing menus, removing functions or changing the way they work, all this stuff is great fun when you're running a Linux box as a toy for playing around with new software, but a royal pain in the backside when you're just trying to get your work done and a deadline is now threatened because some developer thought it would be cool to change the way an application works. "Stable" means just that, stable rather than shifting: and in that context, longevity is part of the equation.
In other words, what's the use of a wonderful "stable" distribution if it disappears in six months and you're left having to install a different one on all your machines? The whole point of stability is to avoid those kinds of headaches... so longevity is very important, and it's no coincidence that the most popular stable distros (Ubuntu LTS and Debian stable and their derivatives like Mint, and Red Hat and its clones) are also very active communities with very little chance of disappearing overnight. Of course this can still happen (as it did with CentOS) when a corporation or small group of developers controls the project... so I have more faith in Debian, a genuinely open community-led distro with no corporate control that was one of the very first distros and will almost certainly survive to be one of the very last as well.
4 • Longevity (by Pogi Americano on 2025-06-09 01:41:12 GMT from United States)
I really don't care. A lot of times I will use a friend's computer, some run Ubuntu, some run Fedora, others will run something else, something I've never heard of before. When I do use a friend's computer I have to conform to their OS and their ways. ... Normally I'm helping them to fix a problem. I've seen problems where a specific distribution will run on one brand of computer but not on another. Some people have 4 megs ram, some 8, some 16, Some distributions run better on 8 or 16 megs than 4. Then there are video drivers, some distributions run better on one video driver over others. When some one asks me about Linux, I always say try several different ones and use the one you are most comfortable with. I've spent a few weekends with friends, trying out various distributions and explaining the differences and why one might run faster or be more reliable than another. I'm one of those people who are happy there are so many different distributions out there, I know one of them is going to work fine in any given situation. ... The "keyword" is comfortable, if the user isn't comfortable with it he or she won't use it too often.
5 • Longevity (by Friar Tux on 2025-06-09 03:45:20 GMT from Canada)
I voted "Yes, a lot". My preference is an OS that has history and shows signs of being around for years to come; shows stability and won't freeze or break down, even when updating or upgrading; stays consistent over time, meaning that I can use my years and years of muscle memory and not have to search for the "new" location of buttons or menus; and finally, an OS that I can re-theme to my heart's content - especially to get rid of that hideously ugly dark grey (#xxxxxx or rgb(xx, xx, xx)). (Yup, my biggest pet peeve.) For me, the ONLY one to tick all the boxes, is Linux Mint/Cinnamon. But I bet you all knew that already considering I can't stop flapping me guns about it.
6 • Longevity of distribution... (by Bobbie Sellers on 2025-06-09 05:12:41 GMT from United States)
Well I am 87 YOA, so I do not worry too much about how much time my distribution has
left. It is not corporate but PCLinuxOS is younger than me as is the founder/packager.
If I was too lose the updates as I did with Commodore/Amiga and with Mandriva I
would likely use MX-Linux. I have tried the corporate backed distributions and they
seem "corporate" to me. RHEL is very well backed by the corporations and the
review this month points out the problems with that distribution. Fedora is not
so stogy but I am.
bliss-Dell Precision 7730-PCLOS 2025.06-Linux 6.12.32-pclos1-KDE Plasma 5.27.11
7 • Longevity (by Andra on 2025-06-09 05:44:20 GMT from Indonesia)
Yes, of course.
I had fell in love with Solus, until their internal conflict was heard.
The distribution is very good and stable, even with small team they work hard to deliver pleasant experience.
But, it also change my preference. There are many good distribution right there. Some will suitable for us. But, the brain is the vision, and the heart is the people inside it (developer and users in community).
8 • RHEL (by Admin on 2025-06-09 06:44:13 GMT from Germany)
Red Hat seems to feel that a decade of commercial support and two dozen mentions of "AI" in its announcement will be enough for people, but the distribution feels like it's been left behind.
it has and this release is not a reason to return.
1.270 MB of memory to sign into the lumbering gloomy gnome desktop.
Confirm account multiple times. An immediate demo in of inompetence in programming
An artificial time wasting hallucinating idiot AI included
Pushing proprietary Flatpack, actually very fat-pack when size is considered.
9 • RHEL (by Admin on 2025-06-09 06:52:21 GMT from Germany)
Red Hat seems to feel that a decade of commercial support and two dozen mentions of "AI" in its announcement will be enough for people, but the distribution feels like it's been left behind.
it has and this release is not a reason to return.
1.270 MB of memory to sign into the lumbering gloomy gnome desktop.
Confirm account multiple times. An immediate demo in of incompetence in programming
An artificial time wasting hallucinating idiot AI included
Pushing proprietary Flatpack, actually very fat-pack when size is considered.
10 • Longevity (by borgio3 on 2025-06-09 08:31:48 GMT from Italy)
When one pope die, another is made.
11 • Longevity (by DaveT on 2025-06-09 09:59:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Short answer: I want a distribution that will have a long future.
Long answer: distrohopping if Devuan goes down will be a pain. I would probably have to give in and go back to Debian sid. My daily driver is OpenBSD, I only use linux for the things OpenBSD can't do. Music stuff mainly that nobody can be bothered (not even me!) to try and port across.
If the linux universe gets really bad you can build your own distro. Or be welcomed into the BSDs with open arms.
12 • Congratulations (by greetings on 2025-06-09 11:49:49 GMT from Italy)
@6 long live and prosper. Don't put a limit to your future choices.
;-)
13 • Title <> poll question (by Dirk on 2025-06-09 12:40:34 GMT from Germany)
Yes, longevity is a factor in my distro choice.
No, I'm not concerned wether Linux Mint will vanish in the coming years.
Please consider making polls less misunderstandable.
14 • (Still great to see how much could be done with so little money) (by Babids on 2025-06-09 12:46:33 GMT from France)
As "strong corporate backing" feels comforting, we've all seen what the $B company Red Hat has done with Cent OS. Even Fedora and the great corporate backing from Red Hat / IBM cannot be excluded if it's decided it doesn't make enough money (or cost too much).
As for Canonical, after launching many projects last decade (like UBTouch and UBTV), it still only about Ubuntu (and of course *a lot* of cloud, to the point that ubuntu.com is not much about Ubuntu OS), and giving how much it wants to enforce Snap and recently Uutils, it may give a hard time for forks (even if many *Ubuntu are just the base Ubuntu with another DE).
It feels like Debian wouldn't sabotage its own project (mostly because many people, companies and distros are relying on it) but maybe some future controversial decisions could divide a fair share of the community (so far, the only well know fork is Devuan, and doesn't seem to have much popularity).
Also, all theses distros could have disappear if computers were really replaced with (proprietary and source-closed) tablets a decade ago (which have not happen), so what about the next decade product that would replace computers!?
15 • Murena 3.0 (by Geo. on 2025-06-09 12:54:03 GMT from Canada)
Congrats Murena on the release of /e/OS 3.0 I use my phone as PDA so /e/OS is perfect. I cannot recommend it highly enough. 👍
16 • Longevity v. Stability (by picamanic on 2025-06-09 13:11:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Longevity. To me, this is important, but you missed out Stability [in the sense of not undergoing frequent architectural changes]. The distros that are constantly forcing on their users to adopt new technologies, and dropping perfectly good ones that "just work", are not very Stable [my opinion]. Systemd and Wayland are amongst these technologies.
Redhat and Slackware are amongst the oldest distros, but have taken very different paths. I would not consider Redhat as Stable by this test. Disclosure: I use neither.
17 • Redhat (by ghost on 2025-06-09 13:35:31 GMT from Sweden)
Redhat is killing Xorg and pushing Wayland down our throats, just like they did in the past.
I leave it for you to judge, https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-x11/2025-June/006199.html
There's a new fork of Xorg for those of us that gave-up on Linux and found a home at BSD.
18 • Longitivity (by JKL on 2025-06-09 14:33:01 GMT from United States)
When it comes to logitivity being a factor: it depends. Most of the time I do not care because I like experimenting with different distros, there are distros I recommend for less tech savvy users that want it to function and function well for a long time. If I was running a server, longitivity plays a factor as well. Longitivity isn’t my main factor of course, but it is a factor though.
19 • Longevity (by OldManBeave on 2025-06-09 15:03:27 GMT from United States)
Not concerned about it. I don't think Debian is going anywhere anytime soon. I've been using it for over 20 years also.
20 • @17: X[11]Libre (by picamanic on 2025-06-09 15:19:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
@17: I couldn't tell if X[11]Libre is a portable fork of X11 [ie will run on Linux and BSD], or not. Is it truely Open Source, or are there binary Blobs carried over from proprietary drivers?
21 • xp forever (by Will on 2025-06-09 15:21:14 GMT from United States)
Well, actually, it's prolly mint forever at this point. But if mint goes the way of xp, I'll prolly just find a debian derivative I can live with - maybe even go back to debian :).
22 • Longevity (by Robert on 2025-06-09 15:57:49 GMT from United States)
Longevity isn't completely unimportant, but it really isn't that big a deal to me.
Switching distros is not hard. The biggest differences between the vast majority of them come down to choice of desktop, package manager, and update cycle. And package managers are becoming less important for most people with flatpak and more user-friendly graphical utilities. For the remaining two, there are plenty of distros to fill most any combination of needs.
That said, I would of course prefer a distro switch to be on my own terms without it being forced on me by the death of a project.
Also for me longevity is something likely to come with distros that meet my other requirements. I want up-to-date software (no older than Fedora, rolling preferred) and a large selection of available software (either official repos or something like the AUR or OBS). These are difficult to meet for single devs or small teams that are likely to lead to a dead project.
23 • Longevity (by David on 2025-06-09 16:23:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
When my desktop died 5 years ago, I knew that it was time to abandon the Red Hat family despite having used Red Hat, Fedora, and CentOS for 20 years — it was all too gnomish. I'd tried a lot of distros and I looked at all the reviews. The result was that I chose PCLinuxOS. It had been going for 15 years, so it was not likely to vanish overnight. What's the use of a distro that's guaranteed a long life if its repository lacks the software you need and it's a pain to install and maintain?
24 • Longevity (by Martin on 2025-06-09 18:29:57 GMT from Czechia)
Longevity is one of the main reasons I use Tumbleweed, so I can install new software from the repos a decade after installing the OS without having to make a clean install of a newer version every couple of years.
25 • Longetivity depends on the use case (by vw72 on 2025-06-09 19:36:54 GMT from United States)
Longetivity depends on the use case. If one is setting up an enterprise server, it is much more important that your vendor/distro of choice will be there tomorrow. Setting up desktop linux, less so as most of the user's interaction is with the DE and applications they are running.
While there are differences in package formats, most of the "tools" are fairly standardized these days.
Redhat/Fedora, SUSE/openSUSE and Ubuntu will all be around for a long time because of their enterprise efforts. All three also support, either directly or through "spins", most major desktops.
Choosing a linux distro in 2025, is like choosing a vehicle. Toyota and Honda (or Ford and Chevy) each have their pros and cons, but once you get behind the wheel, they all operate pretty much the same way. True, they might perform differently, but that goes back to one's use case.
26 • Longevity (by Keith S on 2025-06-09 19:51:53 GMT from United States)
I have a situation much like Dave @11, apparently. OpenBSD has been around since 1995 so it fits the bill for longevity and it is my daily driver. (Although frankly I think I spend more time using Android these days.) For my Linux box, it is less important. I have found that I prefer the Debian-based distros over those based on Arch or Gentoo. I have always ended up back with MX Linux the last five or six years after trying out others.
27 • Slackware (by Keith Peter on 2025-06-09 20:05:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
Still plenty of activity if you look in the linuxquestions Slackware forum (google 'linuxquestions slackware'). The gaps between stable releases could be a reflection of the increasing complexity of a desktop linux operating system. Patrick Volkerding is still pumping out the upgrades as people can see by looking at the ChangeLogs (google 'slackware current changelog').
I'm using Slackware 15.0 which is the supported stable release. It's fine for what I need. Doesn't do anything unless I tell it to. Chugs along quite nicely. The base + packages model seems to work well as a result of the volunteer effort at slackbuilds.org.
I expect Slackware to continue to 'defy the odds' for a good few more years yet. No mention of AI in the marketing press release. In fact, there is no marketing press release. Just those ChangeLogs ticking along, and the security update emails that you can subscribe to if you wish.
28 • Longevity (by kc1di on 2025-06-09 21:24:30 GMT from United States)
I use Debian, Mint and PCLinuxOS. PCLinuxOS is the shakiest of the three as far as Longevity goes since Texstar is the primary developer and Could go away at anytime, thus rendering the Distor as well abandoned.
Debian is stable and reliable and I feel it will be around a long time yet and is a safe bet.
Mint is also developed by a great team and they seem to have stick to attitude. 2 out of three. Not Bad!
I have use many distros since 1996 some still around many not. Some just go away overnight.
29 • Redhat seems mostly server oriented (by Sebastien on 2025-06-09 21:49:45 GMT from France)
I am not sure Redhat is really targeting desktops, do they ? maybe Oreon just added to the database would make a better candidate for a Redhat based desktop ?
30 • RHEL (by Mike on 2025-06-09 22:19:52 GMT from United States)
IBM's acquisition of Red Hat had little to do with RHEL and more to do with OpenShift. I'm guessing that RHEL is now simply a base for deploying OpenShift, and is also something that IBM can charge customers to customize during deployment. Other than that, RHEL is probably little more than an afterthought at this point.
31 • Longevity (by Nate on 2025-06-09 23:26:35 GMT from United States)
Longevity isn't in my top criteria for a distribution/OS, but it often comes along for the ride. What I look for is generally simplicity, security, and support. I've settled on three operating systems that I use on a number of computers. I use Arch on my laptop because it is the most convenient for what I need to accomplish with that computer, FreeBSD as a programming environment and Void Linux (with Musl libc) for my home servers.
I like Void, and musl, because I tend to not be affected by a lot of common security concerns. A good example was the Xz rootkit. That exploit relied on a combination of SystemD, Glibc and a version of OpenSSH patched for extra SystemD functionality. Literally none of those things existed on my home servers at the time. FreeBSD gives you a great C and C++ development environment right out of the box, even before you install any additional software. And Arch is my concession to ease of use, because frankly most open source software is developed with Glibc and SystemD in mind. It's security through obscurity, which isn't the world's best security, but every bit helps.
I really doubt any of the three are going away any time soon. Definitely not Arch or FreeBSD, anyway. But all three are also what I consider at the top of the ecosystem, rather than being reliant on another project. They all have significant investments in their own bespoke software such as package managers and system management utilities, and none of them rely on another project to provide their binaries or build systems. Even a project like Mint or Manjaro I think is a poor choice because they are mostly repackaging someone else's distribution rather than being fully responsible for their whole ecosystem. I've seen people struggle with both of those distributions. Generally speaking, almost anything that is tauted as being "user-friendly" gives me a bad feeling, as those distributions seem to break quite easily the moment you try to do something out of the ordinary with them. They have their uses, particularly for bringing new users into Linux, but I need reliable systems and don't mind putting some time into configuration, especially since that's something that generally only has to be done once and never again for the life of the system.
32 • RHEL on steroids (by Theodoro on 2025-06-10 03:53:31 GMT from Brazil)
I have always rejected RHEL as a desktop system not only because of its terrible GNOME graphical environment, but mainly due to the fact that a workstation distro was never intended to deal with multimedia files, Wi-Fi streaming, or any kind of home computer application. Although it can be accomplished by installing a lot of packages from extra repositories and making a lot of tweaks. (Take a look at Dedoimedo`s articles on this subject.)
The good news is that the smart devs of AlmaLinux did all the hard work to create the perfect RHEL variant with Xfce: fully multimedia capable, containing Wi-Fi drivers, and very similar to the best Debian-based distros __ things like MX, Sparky, and Mint __ but not buggy.
In my home PC, AlmaLinux 9.6 Xfce is now the king. It completely replaced MX 21.3 Xfce. And it performs so brilliantly, that even the Wi-Fi connection became faster and more stable!
Then... What are you waiting for to start testing this masterpiece of the Linux world?
33 • Slackware_15 (by eb on 2025-06-10 07:31:20 GMT from France)
@27 : "security update emails"
Yes, very valuable. I have been running Slackware for 20 years ; today :
- with Joe's window manager on my 11 years old home mac-mini (64 bits)
- without GUI on my 19 years old (!) server (mac-mini too, 32 bits).
Both run perfectly.
34 • Longevity (by Kazlu on 2025-06-10 08:38:00 GMT from France)
Do I factor longevity? It depends. On a daily driver desktop, fairly standard and on which I am connected daily so I can add here and there funtionnality I need on the fly, it is not too concerning. However, on a server or media appliance that I tend to set up and forget, I want longevity.
35 • Mageia/OpenMandriva (by Daniel on 2025-06-10 08:39:20 GMT from United States)
The distro graveyard is vast, and project viability does matter to me, but as long as Mageia/OpenMandriva use DNF, RPM 4 (and eventually RPM 6) or another well-established package management system, and more or less stick closely to Fedora (or another major distro) and major/pervasive Linux ecosystem technological developments, I don't feel using either of these is potentially a lost investment, even if either ceases to be down the road (it's not the Linux equivalent of learning Lojban).
While Mageia/OpenMandriva aren't derivatives of Fedora [although the now defunct Mandrake/Mandriva did start as a derivative of the now defunct Red Hat Linux (not to be confused with RHEL)], if both came to an end, I think their users could slot in fairly seamlessly with Fedora (at least as Fedora exists today). Why not use Fedora then? There is certainly an argument for Fedora, but there is also an argument for being more loosely coupled with regard to corporate influence, and there are some differences (e.g., OpenMandriva offers a rolling release, doesn't seem interested at present in becoming primarily an immutable distro which for example I've seen mixed messaging from SUSE developers on and I'm not sure what Red Hat envisions as its future in this regard, OpenMandriva distinguishes itself in its preference for LLVM/Clang over GCC, etc). Neither OpenMandriva nor Mageia offer as many packages as Fedora (either of them is more comparable to openSUSE minus third-party open build service packages), but someone in OpenMandriva must be a gamer, because while I was distrohopping to OpenMandriva, in their repos I found packages for a number of gaming projects (from retro to modern, some of which are relatively obscure) I use without having to rely on third-party sources. Neither OpenMandriva nor Mandriva currently support Secure Boot, which I hope changes in the future (that should not be taken as an endorsement of Secure Boot, just an acknowledgment that it exists and is sometimes situationally unavoidable), and there are undoubtedly some sharp edges that come with either OpenMandriva or Mageia given the smaller number of developers for each project as compared to larger projects like Debian.
If I look at the documentation and community conversations, I believe Mageia as a project probably still promotes urpmi slightly over DNF, but DNF is supported in Mageia. OpenMandriva dropped urpmi in favor of DNF, which I feel was the right call. It was an obviously bad decision at the time for Mandriva to switch from RPM.org to RPM v5 (which OpenMandriva inherited), thankfully the RPM change was later reverted in OpenMandriva. It was also a bad branding decision to adopt the name "OpenMandriva" (not that many of the other suggestions like "Mandala Linux", "Moondrake", etc. were much better), when it was clear at the time that Mandriva S.A. was not long for the world, and with each passing year most new users won't know Mandrake Linux/Mandrakelinux, Conectiva, or Mandriva, but there's probably little to be gained in changing the name now (despite the risk involved of confusing potential users or alienating current users, I kind of wish they would change the name though). I thought Mageia was going to outpace OpenMandriva, but OpenMandriva has surprised me, perhaps because of how it has evolved (e.g., trying new approaches, dropping urpmi rather than holding on to the past, etc.).
36 • long-haul distros (by Kevin on 2025-06-10 09:48:53 GMT from New Zealand)
For me the choice of distro rests on these "legs":
- stay-ability: it will be there in 5 or 10 years because it has a strong user base and a solid dev team
- stabilty: tools, utilities and software that work WITH my workflow not AGAINST it.
- usability: the UI/desktop supplies an environment where I can do the actions I need.
That said, there are, for me, two A-grade distros: Mint and Manjaro.
Purist Debian or Arch are far too fidgety to configure, though I hear Arch are attempting to finally add a human-friendly installer. Also their websites are confusing on which ISO to start where with what. Ubuntu have a track record of doing wierd stuff. I find a lot of the other distros are peripheral noise. That's before you get to the one-man band distros which are interesting to look at, but at high risk of vanishing next Tuesday.
Then we move on, to the desktops. Gnome has turned into a simplified trainsmash. If you like to use your computer this way, fine, good luck, I award you no points, etc. Cinnamon has grown in complexity and weight and was my choice until about 2 years ago. KDE also added complexity until reaching middle-age and then went to the gym. At first (KDE Plasma 5) it was not so good with lots of loose flab and torn tendons, but Plasma 6 is the new six-pack abs rebound.
The other desktops are a bit light on features and functionality. Some are one-man band jobs, do your homework. I need a full-power desktop as I work with images, text and sometimes video; and cannot use the window manager type ones which are more suited in my opinion to sysadmin and system monitoring situations.
What grinds me is when devs of packages unilaterally decide to push out a new version that clearly breaks everything that has gone before. Gnome dumbs down many GNU-set tools and utils like their audience is make only of 3 year olds. GiMP broke scripting with 3.x, sending thousands of users who had custom scripts into the discard pile. For many, those scripts defined the workflow, carefully nurtured over YEARS, only to be destroyed in one upgrade. Love your users, listen to them. 10 years of development in a vacuum does NOT make a 'better' version! Mozilla are showing signs of this kind of development too - unwanted features, sudden UI changes - nevermind their ever-galloping version numbers.
My 2c.
37 • Longevity / RHEL (by Felix on 2025-06-10 07:47:43 GMT from Germany)
Longevity is not a concern for me. I gravitate to projects with high code/documentation quality. I really want reliable software that is well documented so I can do/achieve what I want/need easily. Longevity is just a side effect of high quality anyway.
I was using CentOS back in the days when it was still a thing. When IBM took over fortunately I also quit my job as an administrator and that way I did not have to use RHEL or any compatible OS any more. That was around 2017. RHEL was a good and reliable product then and it was an advantage that all my coworkers used it as well. I have no clue how RHEL, Rocky or Alma feels today. But why bother? They don't want me to use it, so I use something where people want me to use it. I chose FreeBSD.
38 • Longevity (by Dmitry on 2025-06-10 05:14:21 GMT from Russia)
Strong corporate backing for Ubuntu? Do you mean the webpage where they ask for $15 donations?
39 • Longevity - Custom distros eol potential? (by Tom Baker on 2025-06-10 11:38:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
These days i stick to fedora, not because its the best but it has a stable development and funded backing.
I appreciate these custom distros, but i find they can be abandoned at anytime and you are left with a load of custom changes that you do not have the time or energy to debug and resolve.
Also applies to custom repos.
My advise is to stick to a well funded and maintained base distro i.e. like fedora or even ubuntu
Just an opinion.
40 • Longevity of distribution.. (by Bof on 2025-06-10 12:06:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hats off to you Bobbie .. comment number 6.
I am not quite as old as you, but I have been a PcLinuxos man for over 20 years and am extremely happy with it.
I had a friend who owned computer shops and gave me anything that could not be " sold with a warranty ". Consequently, I burnt off cd's and eventually dvd's to see how they compared. Laptops, desktops, etc. Even servers. I have NEVER tried a tablet !
I must admit to having tested possibly every " distro " listed in Distrowatch columns over the past 20 years in one version or another. Always used K3b for burning media and have had a few " FAILURE " screens pop up.
My main machine / machines over the years has never strayed from PcLinuxos..... just like you Bobbie.
Sorry to say this, but there have been some " real lame ducks " as well as some superb ones that suddenly stopped / disappeared. Crunch Bang ! springs to mind. Brilliant and then stopped.
A lot of these " distros " race to release an issue without doing proper testing. A number fail due to not being user friendly OR trying to be a " widows clone " ( spelt correctly ! ) Or are totally unsuitable for day to day use. No thought about applications ! Driver support ? Game support ?
41 • @37 FreeBSD for clueless user (by Jan on 2025-06-10 12:07:34 GMT from The Netherlands)
In this weeks comments I have seen a few remarks to use FreeBSD.
I am am interested in using FreeBSD, however as a user i need a Desktop, which FreeBSD seems not to have after installing.
Now there is GhostBSD, which is the perfect solution to that. However I prefer a management with a big mnagement/community. Which seems to me FreeBSD is is better at.
So is there a save method to add a Desktop-environment (KDE/Gnome) to FreeBSD?
42 • @41 FreeBSD for clueless user (by g on 2025-06-10 19:19:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
The last time I used FreeBSD, which was probably 20+ years ago, all you needed to do was install the Ports, cd into the right directory and do a 'make install' then wait a few minutes/hours for it do its thing. I don't know how much that has changed these days...
43 • Distro longevity (by Slappy McGee on 2025-06-10 19:55:24 GMT from United States)
Which one? Fedora (and Rocky and Nobara) no. MXLinux, mmmmmm... not sure, probably no. GhostBSD, yep. I have a few others that come and go on various machines, but those are my main usage distros. Ghost could go anywhere and suddenly, I keep thinking. I'd probably then switch to FreeBSD and do my best with it.
44 • GhostBSD and FreeBSD (by Jesse on 2025-06-10 20:35:01 GMT from Canada)
@41: "So is there a save method to add a Desktop-environment (KDE/Gnome) to FreeBSD?"
What you want is GhostBSD. GhostBSD _is_ FreeBSD with the desktop pre-installed. It's not a separate "distro" like in the Linux world, it's a layer of convenience on top of FreeBSD, but it's the same operating system. The GhostBSD community is part of the FreeBSD community, not a separate entity.
@42: "The last time I used FreeBSD, which was probably 20+ years ago, all you needed to do was install the Ports, cd into the right directory and do a 'make install' then wait a few minutes/hours for it do its thing. I don't know how much that has changed these days"
A lot has changed. People don't typically use ports anymore or compile their software from source. These days you'd install FreeBSD, then run something like "pkg install kde; sysrc dbus_enable="YES"" and wait two minutes for it to install. You'd probably also install a login manager.
https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/desktop/
45 • RHEL suscription policy and clones (by Sebastien on 2025-06-10 20:59:35 GMT from France)
@30 Sounds nice. I still do not understand well how clones like Rocky, Alma, Oracle and Co are able to use freely RHEL code since Redhat stated that from nowon their code would be available for registered customers only. Did Redhat state back on this and allows everyone to use full RHEL code without paying ?
46 • RHEL suscription policy and clones (by Sébastien on 2025-06-10 21:03:10 GMT from France)
Question @32 actually
47 • THEL (by Jesse on 2025-06-10 21:04:37 GMT from Canada)
@45: "Redhat stated that from nowon their code would be available for registered customers only."
What Red Hat said was their customers could not share the source code with clone projects. Not that the code was available for registered customers only.
Red Hat still makes its source code available publicly through the CentOS git repository, it just isn't packaged up nice and neatly for clones to use. This means clones can use CentOS's repository to basically re-create RHEL.
"Did Redhat state back on this and allows everyone to use full RHEL code without paying?"
The basis for RHEL has always been publicly available without paying. This hasn't changed.
48 • Red Hat (by penguinx86 on 2025-06-10 23:44:26 GMT from United States)
I don't like RHEL because it's too proprietary. I don't want to register a username and pay a fee to use it. Selinux mode is set to Envorcing by default, making it difficult to perform routine sysadmin tasks. Then, there's Gnome desktop which I avold like the plague. Multimedia codecs are missing too. But I have used RHEL to study for Linux certification exams. At least 30% of the exam objectives were based on RHEL. Sure, I passed the certification exam, but I learned that Red Hat just isn't for me.
49 • Longevity of distribution.. (by Steve on 2025-06-11 19:55:56 GMT from Italy)
I am a casual Linux user so longevity is not an issue for me.
I have 3 laptops with PCLinuxOS installed and another one has Artix Linux on it, all of them dual booting Windows 10.
They all fit my limited needs...no server nor enterprise environment here.
I hope these distros will stay for long, if not I will simply pick another one as long as it is a rolling distro, that's the only requirement I really want.
50 • longevity distro (by incconu on 2025-06-12 08:30:10 GMT from Slovenia)
I believe deepin should be listed under strong corporate support linux distribution.
51 • @16 @27 @33 - Seeking a distribution for long-term use (by Geo. on 2025-06-12 13:36:13 GMT from Canada)
I would like to see the Arch and Slackware projects merge. I believe that they are complimentary.
52 • Re: 51 (by jc on 2025-06-12 20:48:05 GMT from Luxembourg)
"Arch and Slackware projects merge."
This is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.
Slackware does not depend on systemd, whereas Arch does.
Another systemd distor is needed like the sea needs more salt.
All hail systemd.
53 • 9nyhhe (by 📩 + 1.937089 BTC.NEXT - https://yandex.com/poll/DCTzwgNQnzCykVhgbhD581?hs=8c202c2881ee4c25ba032a5772531677& 📩 on 2025-06-13 00:13:10 GMT from Sweden)
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54 • rootkit (by jay on 2025-06-13 08:22:51 GMT from United States)
Securonis and root kit scanners? Are they new and improved or same old
55 • Securonis (by fluggel on 2025-06-13 09:56:27 GMT from Australia)
Never heard of this distro Securonis before. One man dev who writes a lot of these extra utilities in python or bash script.
Distro sounds great, but is it safe?
56 • Filesystems (by Daniel on 2025-06-13 13:50:34 GMT from Czechia)
Article somewhat mixed information about filesystems. openSUSE and SLE uses Btrfs for system partitions and XFS for data partition. Ubuntu have poor btrfs support and it uses ext4. Fedora workstation uses Btrfs, but Fedora server uses XFS.
Number of Comments: 56
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
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| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
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Rocks Cluster Distribution
Rocks was a complete "cluster on a CD" solution for x86 and x86_64 Red Hat Linux clusters. Building a Rocks cluster does not require any experience in clustering, yet a cluster architect will find a flexible and programmatic way to redesign the entire software stack just below the surface (appropriately hidden from the majority of users). Although Rocks includes the tools expected from any clustering software stack (PBS, Maui, GM support, Ganglia, etc), it was unique in its simplicity of installation.
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