 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1132, 28 July 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 30th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The deepin project recently released a major new version that changes many aspects of the distribution and introduces new features. The launch of deepin 25 brings with it promises of an immutable filesystem, a fresh design for the desktop, improvements for portable packages, and an AI agent. We begin this week with a look at deepin 25 and report on how these new changes work. Then, in our News section, we talk about a proposal to enable Flathub on Fedora instead of the project's custom Flatpak repository. We also talk about plans to introduce a pre-configured desktop install option for FreeBSD and share progress from the Wayback project. Our Questions and Answers column this week talks about infamous debates in the open source community and consider what rifts might be in store for the future. What open source debates and discussions spark your interest? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Then we are pleased to bring you a summary of last week's releases and share the torrents we are seeding. Plus we thank our readers who have sent in donations and then welcome the CalyxOS mobile operating system to our database and share highlights of this privacy-focused platform below. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: deepin 25.0.1
- News: A proposal to enable Flathub on Fedora, FreeBSD plans desktop installation option, Wayback publishes its first major release
- Questions and answers: Wars in the open source community
- Released last week: Br OS 12.11, Liya 2.4, OPNsense 25.7, DragonFly BSD 6.4.2, Slackel 8.0 "Openbox"
- Torrent corner: BigLinux, CachyOS, KDE neon, Tails
- Upcoming releases: Ubuntu 25.10 Snapshot 3
- Opinion poll: What is one of your favourite classic open source debates?
- Site news: Beginner's Guide, Donations and Sponsors
- New additions: AnuBitux, CalyxOS, spirit OS
- New distributions: AcreetionOS
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
deepin 25.0.1
The deepin distribution is a Debian-based project which features a custom desktop environment (also called Deepin) and its own portable package format (called Linyaps). The distribution's latest release is version 25 and it introduces several changes.
The latest version of the Deepin Desktop Environment features a new design and a new settings panel. The project has announced that it now ships with an AI agent which can respond to both typed and spoken commands. The Linyaps portable package format has been expanded and offers builds for all supported CPU architectures (x86_64, ARM64, and Loongarch64). The project's announcement also mentions deepin 25 offers an immutable filesystem with automatic snapshots during the update process to make it easy to rollback any issues. This is quite a list of significant features, especially when we consider the previous major release of deepin was published less than a year ago.
Live desktop environment
I decided to download the x86_64 build of deepin which is approximately 6.0GB in size. Booting from the provided ISO offers us the chance to try the live desktop environment or launch the system installer directly. The system installer options are then further broken down into installing deepin with version 6.6 of the Linux kernel or version 6.12. (For future reference, I always installed the 6.12 kernel.)
Whether we take the live desktop option or the install option, we are next shown a graphical configuration tool which asks us to pick our language from a list and accept the distribution's license agreement. We are then asked to pick our keyboard layout from a list and click our location/timezone on a map. If we took the install option, the system then moves on to partitioning, but if we took the live desktop option we are shown a graphical login screen. We can access the default user account and sign into a desktop session without providing a password.
Like the login screen, the Deepin desktop displays a soft blue background by default. A panel is placed at the bottom of the screen. On the desktop we find a few icons. One opens a file manager and another launches the system installer. There is an icon labelled "Deepin Home" which opens a window to show us links to on-line resources such as a support forum, bug reporting portal, and the project's wiki.
deepin 25 -- Exploring the desktop's application menu
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Once the live desktop loads a welcome window appears and plays a video which highlights some of the desktop features. The video appears to talk about the local AI agent and some desktop components. I couldn't be sure as the video is in Chinese and I recognize only a few words of the language. After the video finishes we are asked if we want an "align centre" or "align left" desktop. There are previews of these two concepts. An "align centre" desktop centres icons on the panel and uses a full screen grid of icons as the desktop's application menu. A "align left" desktop shifts icons on the panel to the left and uses a traditional two-pane application menu. I decided to use the "align left" layout. The welcome window's final screen offers to launch the software centre. As I was using the live desktop, at this point installing new applications felt premature and I put off using the software centre until later in the trial.
Installing
Running the deepin system installer starts out by asking us if we want to use guided, manual, or advanced disk partitioning. When using deepin on a laptop, this process (whether I used the guided or manual approach) worked fairly well. When I was installing from a virtual machine though there were more issues.
Typically I can assign around 32GB to 40GB of disk space to a distribution and that will be more than enough for a test run in a virtual machine. At least this the case for most Linux distributions. When I chose to use the guided partitioning approach deepin's installer informed me I'd need at least 45GB of free disk space or it would refuse to install. I expanded the virtual disk to 60GB and tried again. The next weird moment came when, during the guided partitioning phase, I was asked how much space to assign to the root partition and how much should be granted to user data (which I assumed was the /home partition). The installer refused to allow me to assign more than 27GB of space to the root partition. This felt weird since the installer claimed it needed 45GB, but then it refused to accept more than 27GB.
The situation became more frustrating when I tried to proceed and the installer refused to accept the 27GB root partition, claiming it needed a full 64GB of space for the operating system. (Note, the first screen asked for 45GB, the guided partitioning tool only allows us to assign 27GB, and the installer can't proceed with less than 64GB.) The situation was a bit of a mess so I went back a step and took the manual partitioning option.
The manual approach turned out to be nearly identical to the guided approach. The manual partitioning screen also refused to allow me to assign more than 27GB of space to my root partition. However, the manual approach would allow me to continue with just a 27GB root partition and the rest of the disk was given over to a "user data" partition. This led me to wonder if the various pieces of the installer were all put together by separate developers, each of which picked separate, arbitrary size limits.
Once we've sorted out partitioning the installer copies its files to the local disk and offers to restart the computer. The first time we boot into the local copy of deepin we are asked to make up a username and a password. We're asked if we want to enable "quick login", which I think means automatic login (without a password). We're also asked again to pick our language, keyboard layout, timezone, and location/region for our user. The first-run wizard then reports it needs a few minutes to "configure the system" and finishes by presenting us with a graphical login screen.
Early impressions
The first time I signed into my account I was greeted by the welcome window again which played its introduction video and offered to launch the software centre.
Something I feel deepin has always done well is produce an attractive desktop. The deepin team manages to make it look sleek and beautiful without the visuals being over distracting. The Deepin desktop continues that tradition in version 25, managing to walk the fine line between too flashy and too sparse, too many options and not enough customization choices, too old looking and too different. I think the desktop team has done a great job in creating an environment which (thanks to its various themes and layouts) can appear modern and tablet-like, while also being familiar to desktop users. That's not an easy feat and I quite like how the Deepin Desktop Environment looks these days.
Hardware
Earlier I mentioned some quirks while getting deepin installed in VirtualBox. Once the operating system was installed it ran fairly well in the virtual environment. The desktop was sometimes sluggish to respond in VirtualBox, but I was able to address this. Actually, the impression of being a little slow to respond happens when running deepin directly on my laptop's hardware too, and for a time I couldn't quite nail down why the system felt slow, even though it was working smoothly. Eventually, I realized the desktop was responding fairly quickly, but most actions (opening menus, moving windows, minimizing windows) resulted in an animation which made a nice effect, but made the desktop feel less snappy.
deepin 25 -- Running the file manager and text editor
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We can change this visual behaviour by visiting the system settings panel and going into the performance settings. There is a section where we can shift the desktop's priority between the best possible visuals and the best performance. The default is to favour visuals. Changing this setting to favour performance does away with most effects and makes the desktop feel quicker, almost instant, in its responses.
When running on my laptop the deepin distribution performed well. All of my hardware was detected. I found audio, networking, and my touchpad all functioned as expected. Scrolling on the touchpad defaults to inversed or "natural" scrolling, though this can be changed to "classic" scrolling in the settings panel. My keyboard's media and shortcut keys worked and desktop performance was good on my laptop.
Earlier I mentioned some confusion while installing the distribution because the system installer insisted on 45GB of disk space (or 64GB), but would only allow me to assign 27GB to the root partition. All of that struggle turned out to be pointless because deepin only required 7.1GB of disk space for the operating system. It also sets up 6.1GB of files on the data partition (a total of 13.2GB, a far cry from the 45/64GB of space demanded). The 7.1GB of packages on the OS partition seemed fairly normal, but I was curious about all of the files on the data/user partition. These turned out to be a combination of deepin-specific applications, settings, log files, and (strangely enough) Canon printer drivers. When using the guided and manual partitioning options deepin sets itself up on the ext4 filesystem.
Memory usage varied a bit when using the Deepin desktop. When I first signed into the desktop memory usage was about 1.1GB. Sometimes that would rise up to about 1.4GB, even with no applications open, and I think it was due to the system performing background checks for new packages.
Included software
Most of the desktop applications included in deepin are custom creations which tend to resemble their GNOME counterparts. The text editor, calendar, mail client, file manager, video player, and music player all appear to be in-house applications. The web browser, which is simply called Browser, is based on Chromium and appears to offer a vanilla Chromium experience with some rebranding. LibreOffice is one of the few applications included which is not a member of the Deepin Desktop Environment family.
deepin 25 -- Running the default web browser
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The included applications tended to be fairly simple, uncluttered, and functional. Their layouts resembled GNOME applications or Xapps, with a focus on doing one thing with minimal distractions. The media players included codecs for playing audio and video files. Something I greatly appreciated is that, while deepin is a Chinese-developed distribution, the applications are translated well and thoroughly. Effort has gone into making this distribution accessible to English speakers.
Behind the scenes the distribution includes a full range of manual pages, the GNU command line utilities and the GNU compiler suite. The systemd software is included and provides init functions. Version 6.6 or 6.12 of the Linux kernel is provided, depending on our choice at install time.
deepin 25 -- The virtual terminal and its settings
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Software management
deepin ships with a unified software centre called App Store which can handle working with both traditional Deb packages and the distribution's Linyaps portable package format. The software centre is divided into two panes. To the left we find six tabs:
- Recommended - highlighted or "editor's picks" applications
- Open source - this appears to show open source applications in either Deb or Linyaps format
- Linyaps - a page for portable packages only
- Categories - groups of packages we can browse
- Update - software updates for installed packages
- Manage - view and remove installed applications
deepin 25 -- Browsing the software centre
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While much of the deepin distribution and its applications worked well for me during my trial, the App Store was a glaring exception. The software centre regularly locked up while I was using it, typically requiring me to force-close the application. In a handful of instances the App Store managed to lock up so badly it took down the desktop environment with it, forcing me to restart the desktop or reboot the computer.
When it did work the App Store was slow to respond and often took several seconds to display information pages for applications. Even when it was working I ran into behaviour which was not ideal. For example, performing searching for applications often returned multiple, seemingly identical results. When I examined these results more closely I was able to determine one search result was for a Deb package and the other for a Linyaps package, but there isn't any way to tell them apart without clicking on the entry and viewing its information page.
While the App Store can handle fetching and installing updates, a section of the settings panel also provides quick access to updates. I had no problem with fetching and applying updates through the settings panel.
deepin's website describes the distribution as being immutable. Usually when a distribution is considered immutable it has a (mostly) read-only filesystem and traditional package managers, such as DNF and APT, do not work. This is not the case with deepin and the distribution demonstrates some unusual behaviour. I confirmed most of deepin's filesystem is immutable. For example, if I ran the command "sudo touch /usr/bin/abc" or "sudo touch /usr/games/xyz" the system would report an error and tell me I couldn't create (touch) a file because the filesystem was read-only. This was normal and expected for an immutable distribution. What I found weird was I could run the APT command line package manager, or use the App Store, to install Deb packages under the /usr directory. I installed Falkon and nmap to /usr/bin and installed the fortune program to /usr/games without any issues and without requiring a reboot.
Being able to install traditional packages on the system is nice, if unusual. I'm not sure why the APT package manager can write to parts of the "immutable" filesystem when I, as the root user, cannot. This doesn't appear to be explained in the documentation and not knowing why the root user can't write to /usr, but the package manager run by the root user can, makes me a bit puzzled and a little concerned. It means deepin doesn't act like a fully immutable distribution, just guards against some common mistakes, and the semi-immutable nature doesn't make me confident in the system's reliability.
Also on the subject of software management, I could not find a command line tool for Linyaps (more on this later). As far as I can tell, to access Linyaps we need to use the App Store.
New and special features
The deepin release announcement talked about some key features in this version of the distribution and I'd like to address some of the key elements. They are, in no particular order...
New desktop look and performance - The project's announcement talked up the look of the Deepin Desktop Environment, version 7.0. I agree with the developers, the latest version of the desktop looks nice, performs better than past versions, and has a wide range of themes. Plus I like that the desktop offers dark and light modes alongside colourful, high-contrast icons. The desktop even includes a Glass theme for people who like what Apple has been doing with their visual effects.
I especially like that the Deepin desktop is flexible. We can switch between layouts (tablet/centre or desktop/left), easily switch themes, and adjust icons. The desktop prioritizes looking nice over performance, but this can be swapped around with a few mouse clicks.
deepin 25 -- Adjusting the desktop theme
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The control centre - The updated control centre looks a lot like GNOME's current settings panel, but it is more compact. Like GNOME Settings, the Deepin settings panel uses two panes with categories on the left and options on the right. I mention the new panel is compact because it is nested. Instead of a couple of pages of categories in one long line, there are top-level categories and then sub-categories we can explore. This helps navigation as we can look for groups of settings and drill down to the right one instead of needing to find a specific group of settings in a long list. Personally, I find this makes the settings panel easier to explore.
There is a page of the settings panel that confuses me, under the user account section of the settings panel. For each user there are three options which, to me, all sound the same: auto-login, quickly load desktop with your information, and login without password. I think the "without password" option is basically the same as a guest account, rather than an automated login. But I'm not sure what the difference is between quickly loading the desktop and auto login. I didn't find any details on these features, but I think something may have been lost in translation.
AI agent / UOS AI - The release announcement talked about the distribution's AI agent and mentioned it can even handle voice commands to help us look up information or perform actions. The AI agent can be launched from the desktop panel or activated using the "meta key + spacebar" shortcut. The first time I ran the AI application the program warned me that English support was not yet "satisfactory". Which, given the distribution's Chinese origins, seems a fair limitation.
We can link the local AI application to on-line AI/LLM accounts or use the default agent provided for us. I started with the default agent since it requires no account and it is free to use.
deepin 25 -- Asking the AI agent about Linyaps
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I began by asking the AI application a few simple questions, such as if there is a command line utility for managing Linyaps packages. The AI agent responded saying it did not know of any such tool as Linyaps. It suggested I'd made a typo and possibly meant the Lynx command line web browser and gave me tips on how to install this software.
Answers from the AI agent were always prefixed by several seconds of LLM rational (thought processing) which shows how the AI agent is handling our request. Answers were always generic or empty. For example, when I asked how much memory my system was using the AI agent replied with some generic answers about how I could look up memory usage statistics on the macOS and Linux command lines. (The agent doesn't appear to be aware it is running on a Linux system.)
I tried switching the AI agent from the default to "Deepin Assistant". This requires a trip to the App Store to download the appropriate add-on and then relaunching the AI application. I asked the Deepin Assistant agent about Linyaps and if there was a command line tool for managing the portable packages. The agent responded it had no information about Linyaps. When I asked it how much disk space I was using, the agent responded by telling me Deepin's minimal disk space requirements. I asked the agent if Deepin Desktop Environment ran on a Wayland or X11 session and the AI agent told me flatly that it didn't know. (I checked and the Deepin Desktop Environment runs an X11 session using the Kwin window manager.)
I understand that the AI agent has some language limitations and I didn't expect it to answer perfectly. I did find the agent seemed to understand my queries and answered in fluent English. However, the agent wasn't able to answer any of my questions. The Deepin Assistant wasn't even able to answer any of my questions about the deepin distribution, which seems like an odd blind spot. Why wouldn't the developers at least feed their own AI agent information from their own documentation and systems?
Immutable - The distribution's release announcement mentions the distribution is immutable. It is, sort of. I found it is harder to accidentally create or delete a file under /usr, but classic packaging tools still work and make changes to the /usr directory tree.
As far as I can tell, deepin does not make snapshots or filesystem images when updates are installed. After I performed package updates there were no old versions of the operating system for me to select from the boot menu. In short, deepin seems to be on the path to becoming immutable, but it is only halfway there.
Other observations
While the new Deepin desktop was attractive and flexible, it was not always stable. During my trial the desktop locked up or crashed a handful of times, usually while I was trying to install new software packages or updates. Sometimes I could recover and relaunch the desktop, other times the system locked up entirely and required a reboot. This is a shame because it was one of the few really serious problems I encountered during my trial, but it was a big problem and persistent.
Conclusions
After a handful of days with deepin, I'm still not sure how to feel about this distribution. Part of this internal conflict arises because I think the distribution is doing a good job at identifying and (mostly) delivering features a lot of people want, but they are not features I want. Lots of people want a modern, glass-themed desktop with attractive visual effects, a built-in AI agent, and immutable filesystem. These are things I have no desire to have on my system. I am clearly not the target audience; deepin is aiming to attract people who are more mainstream.
To the development team's credit, I think it is doing a mostly-good job at delivering these features. The Deepin desktop is beautiful, it is easy to navigate, it is flexible, and it's possible to turn off the visual effects. I think the team deserves a lot of credit for their work on polishing the desktop. However, the desktop environment was not stable for me, and that was a problem throughout my trial.
In a similar fashion, the AI agent is pleasantly accessible (thanks to shortcut keys), it has flexibility in terms of providers, and it's easy to navigate. However, it doesn't recognise my (spoken) language and it was unable to answer any of my questions, even questions about the product on which it was installed. This is a pretty severe oversight if the deepin team wants the AI agent to offer support to their users.
Following this line of thought, I love that deepin is unifying its package management. The software centre seamlessly merges Deb and portable package management. I found the App Store to be easy to navigate. At the same time, the software centre is slow and locks up frequently while working, so I wouldn't recommend it to newcomers yet.
I also like deepin's approach to organising the system installer. It's streamlined and easy to navigate. The process is quick and pretty straightforward. At the same time, the system installer claims it needs a 64GB partition, only allows me to create a 27GB partition, and then uses less than 14GB of disk space. None of that part of the experience made any sense to me.
Finally, in the list of features in development, I'd like to acknowledge the deepin team is making progress with providing an immutable filesystem, but it's only immutable in some ways (somehow) and I couldn't find a way to rollback changes. In sort, it has the limitations of an immutable systems, but it doesn't appear to have the perks yet.
I suppose my days with deepin could be summed up as a lot of good ideas, many of which look great, but most of which are not complete. Everything looks good, everything is well designed, everything has clearly been carefully planned. However, the stability isn't there yet, the performance (at least with package management) isn't ready for prime time, and the AI agent is clueless about using deepin. In short, deepin 25 feels like a good beta release that shows off some great ideas and well considered features. However, virtually none of those features are finished yet, or they aren't ready for public use yet. The distribution still feels like a beta. An interesting, capable beta, but not something that is ready for its target audience to download and use, yet.
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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
deepin has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.2/10 from 143 review(s).
Have you used deepin? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
A proposal to enable Flathub on Fedora, FreeBSD plans desktop installation option, Wayback publishes its first major release
The Fedora project has had a long struggle with finding a balance in terms of providing the functionality users expect versus attempting to avoid licensing restrictions. The Fedora project strives to provide free and open source software only and it also tries to avoid patent and license restrictions. However, many users want to be able to install a wide range of software, including popular items which are limited by patents, media licensing, and non-free firmware. The result is often users enabling third-party repositories or Fedora providing packages which lack the functionality users expect. Michael Catanzaro recently published an opinion piece in a GNOME blog post that calls for Fedora to stop providing limited versions of popular applications and to enable Flathub directly to give users the software they expect. Catanzaro writes: "Feedback from Fedora's user base has been clear: among users who like Flatpaks, Flathub is extremely popular. When installing a Flatpak application, users generally expect it to come from Flathub. In contrast, many users of Fedora Flatpaks do not install them intentionally, but rather by accident, only because they are the preferred software source in GNOME Software. Users are often frustrated to discover that Fedora Flatpaks are not supported by upstream software developers and have a different set of bugs than upstream Flatpaks do. It is also common for users and even Fedora developers to entirely remove the Fedora Flatpak application source."
The blog post goes on to link to a Fedora change proposal which suggests filtering out Fedora's custom, limited Flatpak repository from the software centre. The proposal lists the issues having a custom, restricted Flatpak repository introduces. The proposal has, at the time of writing, a 78% approval rating from user feedback.
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The FreeBSD operating system has generally been viewed as a server-oriented platform. While FreeBSD can be used as a desktop system (with a little effort), its default configuration is to run a text-based terminal environment. There are plans in motion to make it easier to set up and run FreeBSD as a desktop system with the option to install a desktop environment at install time. A post in the FreeBSD Foundation's Project Laptop GitHub repository states: "For FreeBSD 15.0, our goal is to extend the FreeBSD installer to offer a minimal KDE-based desktop as an install option. The initial concept is a low-interaction installation process that, upon completion, brings the user directly to a KDE graphical login screen." Discussions and progress on this effort can be found in this issue report.
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The Wayback project seeks to create a compatibility layer which will allow X11-powered desktops to run on systems running Wayland display servers. It is intended to eventually replace the classic X.Org server, thus reducing maintenance burden of X11 applications. The project has just announced the release of Wayback 0.1, its first significant release. "Ever since Wayback was announced on June 28, we have been making lots of progress to get it as stable and functional as possible, and while this is a preview release it is already daily-drivable by users with simple requirements, as long as they don't mind bugs."
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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) |
Wars in the open source community
What-is-the-latest asks: In the past there were all sorts of "wars" in the Linux community - emacs vs vi, GNOME vs KDE, RPM vs Deb. What are the current dramas that you think will shape Linux in the years to come?
DistroWatch answers: I think it's important to keep in mind that these sorts of conflicts and debates between vocal minorities of the Linux community don't really shape anything. Developers typically are not involved in (or swayed by) these on-line debates over which technology, license, or project is better. The majority of users continue to use what works best for them or what shipped with their operating system as the default. A relatively small number of people are interested in the various conflicts over text editors, init software, package formats, and sound servers which flow through the on-line communities. Even fewer are influenced to change their habits or contribute changes to their preferred software as a result of these debates.
In other words, I don't think any of the current debates or drama will have an impact on Linux in the years to come. These discussions may be interesting and worthwhile, but they are not influential.
With that said, I suspect one of the next big topics for debate in the coming years will come about as more people realize a lot of the little debates are actually small parts of a larger schism in the open source community. The way several small islands can reveal themselves to be different parts of one big land mass when the tide recedes.
Why don't I share a few examples? When I browse around mailing lists and forums, some of the current debates I keep running into involve immutable distributions vs writable filesystems, portable package formats vs third-party community repositories, systemd vs OpenRC/runit, Wayland vs X11, and streamlined desktops vs customizable desktops. At a glance, these all seem like entirely separate topics and unrelated debates.
What I notice about these discussions though is they tend to line up with commercial interests vs community interests. Perhaps it might be better to phrase it as "business interests" vs "what gives end users the most freedom".
Going down through the list, immutable distributions are mostly developed by commercial Linux companies (Canonical, Red Hat, Valve, and SUSE). While these immutable projects have been adopted in some other realms, they are mostly created for commercial-backed distributions such as openSUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu. Likewise, portable package formats (Flatpak and Snap) have mostly been introduced and pushed by Red Hat and Canonical while community distributions tend to focus on more efficient third-party repositories such as the Arch Linux User Repository, Nixpkg, and Pacstall collections.
In a similar vein, Wayland has mostly been pushed into the spotlight by the commercially sponsored distributions Fedora and Ubuntu. Both distributions are dropping X11 support from GNOME in favour of Wayland. System76's desktop, COSMIC, is Wayland-only. Community-run projects like Xfce, LXQt, Cinnamon, and Plasma have either mostly stayed with X11 or supported both X11 and Wayland side-by-side. Similarly, streamlined desktops like GNOME and COSMIC are strongly supported by commercial vendors while desktops that offer a wider range of customization tend to developed by community-run projects.
Recently the differences in approaches between desktop environments and distributions which ship them was put on display in an interesting way. Both Fedora and Ubuntu have reported they need to drop support for X11 sessions on GNOME because the GNOME project will no longer support X11. The GNOME developers have decided to streamline and shift to producing a Wayland-only desktop. KDE and the distributions which use KDE Plasma by default have the opposite relationship. A KDE developer recently posted that around 27% of Plasma users run X11 sessions, around a third of those are likely SteamOS gamers, and the KDE project plans to continue supporting X11 for as long as distributions want to keep shipping it. I find this interesting because it shows KDE has a priority to follow its users and community while GNOME seeks to lead its users and distributions.
I don't think any of the above points will be surprising to anyone. Community projects grow and thrive by providing the features and abilities their users want. This often means putting control, options, and more flexible tools in the hand of the users. Commercial distributions, and commercially-backed projects, seek to reduce development and support costs for the parent company by removing options and features and selling add-on bundles. Commercial companies want minimal, read-only Linux distributions with one desktop and one display server. Commercial companies mostly want these minimal system to run containers or all-in-one portable package formats that can be tested once and deployed everywhere. They don't really want to be stuck supporting a wide range of options, themes, versions, and alternative technologies. They want something more appliance-like as it is easier for their developers and cheaper for their support team.
This tends to flow against the approach of many free and open source developers and users who want flexibility, control, the ability to make changes to the operating system on the fly, and more efficient package formats. Where companies usually want small foundations onto which they can place pre-built, rigid blocks of functionality, open source enthusiasts usually want flexible, interchangeable tools they can blend and customize to suite their specific needs and workflows.
I suspect, over time, we're going to see an increasing divide between what Linux companies want to provide to their users and what users want from their distributions. We've already seen splits along display servers, init software, packaging, immutable bases, and desktop styles. It will be interesting to see what else might show up in this connected archipelago of topics. I suspect AI tools will be one of the upcoming areas of debate. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one of the few Linux distribution so far to ship its own, custom AI agent (not just a front-end to someone else's AI agent) and I suspect Canonical and SUSE will follow their lead. On the other hand, I don't think many community-focused projects will see an advantage to including their own AI tools since they don't have a financial incentive to hop aboard the AI buzzword train. I think that will be the next field of debate around the Linux communities - whether local AI tools provide more benefits and conveniences, or if they are inaccurate, privacy-violating data vacuums. Feel free to weigh in with a comment.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Br OS 12.11
The Br OS project has announced the release of Br OS 12.11. The new version marks a significant milestone as the project has moved away from its Ubuntu base to using Debian as its parent distribution. "Stability is one of the things to expect, Debian stable is undoubtedly the most stable Linux distribution that exists, focusing on Debian Stable ensures that each version of Br OS is an LTS with years of support, that is, if the user does not feel safe to upgrade to the next stable version, still have a good time to upgrade, it will be br OS 12.11 will have general Debian Team support until December 2026 and LTS support until June 2028. Br OS now has its own nomenclature, each version will have its own code name, version 12.11 came with the code name Lara. Despite the long support, Br OS 12.11 is a version that aims only to mark the migration to the Debian base, this means that very soon we will be releasing Br OS 13.0 Dira, which is already in the development phase. Br OS 12.11 comes with KDE 5.27.5, KDE Frameworks 5.103, Qt 5.15.8, Kernel 6.1, and Wayland graphics server, with Xorg as an alternative graphics server." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
Liya 2.4
Liya is an Arch Linux-based, rolling release distribution. The project's latest release is Liya 2.4 which introduces optimizations and responsiveness improvements. "The system is now optimized for x86_64-v2 and v3, allowing better compiler optimizations, reduced latency, and smarter memory use. If your processor supports v3, I strongly recommend using the corresponding ISO - the speed boost is noticeable across daily tasks. Shoutout to the ALHP project for making microarch-specific builds more accessible. Switched to the Xanmod kernel. Shravya ships with the linux-xanmod kernel by default. This kernel is optimized for responsiveness and performance, making Liya snappier for daily use, gaming, creative workloads, and development. This kernel alone has significantly improved performance in benchmarks and real-world usage. Memory management has been rethought: If your system has more than 8GiB of RAM, zram will be auto-enabled at install time. For systems with 8GiB or less, zswap will be used for better compatibility. These changes improve performance and reduce swap-related disk usage without requiring user intervention." Additional details are provided in the project's release announcement.
Liya 2.4 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 2.8MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
OPNsense 25.7
OPNsense is a FreeBSD-based specialist operating system designed for firewalls and routers. The project's latest release, OPNsense 25.7, introduces several changes to the user interface and updates the base system to FreeBSD 14.3. "25.7, nicknamed 'Visionary Viper', features reusable and thoroughly revamped frontend code, an SFTP backup plugin, experimental privilege separation for the GUI, JSON container support for aliases, a new and improved firewall automation GUI, performance enhancements especially for numerous aliases being used at once, Dnsmasq DHCP support, Kea DHCPv6 support, Greek as a new language, FreeBSD 14.3 plus much more." The release announcement mentions some migration items too: "Deprecated Google Drive backups due to upstream policy changes and moved to plugins for existing users. API URLs registered in the default ACLs have been switched from 'camleCase' to 'snake_case'. API grid return values now offer '%field' for a value description when available. 'field' will now always be the literal value from the configuration. The API previously returned a display value for some field types, but not all. Reverted tunables 'hw.ibrs_disable' and 'vm.pmap.pti' to FreeBSD defaults. If you want these set differently, then add them with an explicit value. While the mirror dns-root.de has been removed it will not be stripped from a running configuration and may keep working for a while longer. To ensure updates, however, please choose a different mirror at your own convenience. Moved OpenVPN legacy to plugins as a first step to deprecation. Moved IPsec legacy to plugins as a first step to deprecation."
DragonFly BSD 6.4.2
The DragonFly BSD project has published a new update to the operating system's 6.4 series. The new release, DragonFly BSD 6.4.2, fixes a disk size issue when running in a QEMU virtual machine, corrects an issue when using IPv6 addresses, and corrects a problem when a program would crash when creating many child processes. The release announcement reports:"QEMU reported a old style disk geometry that was max 8GB, so the installer would create a too-small volume. The installer now reads true disk size. Panics when using ipv6 under certain circumstances are fixed. Crash caused when a program creates a large number of child processes is fixed. This was seen with Neovim and Chrome." The changelog covers more details and lists smaller changes, including allowing syslog to run on the operating system's install media. "Don't disable syslogd in live CD/USB We're mounting a tmpfs at /var, so it's okay to write under /var/log. Don't disable syslogd so that it could write the log files that might be helpful."
Slackel 8.0 "Openbox"
Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel 8.0, a Slackware based Linux distribution. The new version ships several key package upgrades and some custom utilities: "This release is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The 64-bit ISO supports UEFI/EFI systems as well. The 64-bit ISO image support booting on UEFI systems. ISO images are ISOhybrid. ISO images can be used as installation media. This release includes mozilla-firefox-140.0.4, mozilla-thunderbird-140.0.1esr, libreoffice 25.2.1, gimp 3.0.4, smplayer 25.6.0, mpv 0.40.0, MPlayer-20250330, exaile 4.1.3, brasero 3.12.3, ISOmaster 1.3.17, pidgin 2.14.142, transmission 2.94 and many more. It includes the Flatpak so the user has access to dozens of apps to install. GUI tools developed in house also included: 1. instonusb to create a live Slackel USB stick with persistent encryption file. 2. multibootusb to create a live USB including 32- and 64-bit live editions of Slackel. 3. SLI (Slackel Live Installer) to install Slackel to internal or external USB SSD or USB stick. 4. install-upgrade-kernel-ext-usb-gtk GUI tool to install or upgrade kernel for real installations on external USB stick or ssd disk. 5. install-upgrade-kernel-gtk GUI tool to install or upgrade kernel for real installations on internal hd or ssd or nvme disk." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
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: 3,250
- Total data uploaded: 47.9TB
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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) |
What is one of your favourite classic open source debates?
Over the years many debates have spread through the open source community. People often have strong opinions on the software they use, the licenses they prefer, and the package formats they install. People have been debating the finer points of RPM vs Deb, vi vs emacs, GPL vs BSD, microkernels vs monolithic kernels, systemd vs other service managers, and KDE vs GNOME for years. Which of these discussions do you find most engaging?
You can see the results of our previous poll on whether to review Linux Mint or Linux Mint Debian Edition in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
|
My favourite open source debate is...
| Deb vs RPM: | 59 (3%) |
| emacs vs vi: | 89 (5%) |
| GNOME vs KDE: | 203 (12%) |
| GPL vs BSD: | 38 (2%) |
| micro vs monolithic kernels: | 50 (3%) |
| rolling vs fixed: | 163 (10%) |
| systemd vs init/OpenRC/Upstart: | 329 (19%) |
| Wayland vs X11: | 212 (12%) |
| Other (will share in comment): | 36 (2%) |
| Not interested in any debates: | 534 (31%) |
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| Website News |
Beginner's Guide
About a month ago we ran a poll asking what website feature we should focus on next. The overwhelming response was people wanted a guide for beginners to help people new to DistroWatch and new to Linux.
We have started a beginner's guide and are gradually filling in information we think complete Linux novices would benefit from knowing. We'd like to hear how we can improve the guide to provide more useful information without getting bogged down in too many details.
The guide is meant to be an overview rather than step-by-step tutorial. So we'd like to hear what topics you wish you had read about at the very beginning of your Linux journey.
* * * * *
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $140 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| J S | $50 |
| Detlef O | $22 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Joshua B | $7 |
| Brian59 | $5 |
| Chris S | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| John B | $5 |
| TaiKedz | $5 |
| Steve | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| aRubes | $1 |
| Colton D | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Kai D | $1 |
| Lars N | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
AnuBitux
AnuBitux is a Debian-based Linux distribution focused on managing cryptocurrencies. It is designed to work as a live environment and aims to provide a safe and simple solution to use and manage cryptocurrency wallets, to run tools and scripts to create secure wallets, and to recover access to lost funds. It also includes extensive documentation and tutorials, as well as examples of use cases. All the tools included have been downloaded from trusted sources, such as official Debian repositories, GitHub and official websites. AnuBitux uses the Cinnamon desktop environments with customised, intuitive menus.
AnuBitux 3.5.4 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 2.2MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
CalyxOS
CalyxOS is a privacy-focused mobile operating system. The project provides a de-Googled version of Android, which replaces Google Play services with microG and uses the F-Droid and Aurora software centres in place of Google's Play store. CalyxOS also optionally installs privacy protecting utilities such as a firewall which can block or filter applications, the Tor browser, the K-9 mail client, and Signal for secure messaging and calls.
spirit OS
spirit OS is a lightweight remaster of Tiny Core Linux, designed for very old 32-bit computers without UEFI. It includes the IceWM window manager, full multimedia support (video and music with codecs), WiFi tools and the Dillo web browser. It is powered by glibc and a recent Linux kernel. The ISO image weighs less than 400 MB and includes fewer than 300 packages, including GPicView (a fast and simple image viewer), ROX-Filer (a minimal and responsive file manager), VLC (a media player), XMMS (a retro-style music player), and compression tools for handling various archive formats. Extra software can be installed using xpkg.
spirit OS 16 -- Running IceWM
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- AcreetionOS. AcreetionOS is an Arch-based Linux distribution which is available in Cinnamon and GNOME desktop editions.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 4 August 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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| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
h3knix
h3knix was a small desktop distribution. It provides a custom package management system called "capsules". Capsules can install source or binary packages, and/or configure certain aspects of the system. h3knix offers great performance and good system stability.
Status: Discontinued
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| Star Labs |
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