 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.
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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: 3,250
- 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.
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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.
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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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Clear Linux (by Name on 2025-07-28 00:12:29 GMT from United States)
So, Intel just abruptly said goodbye to Clear Linux.
Well, goodbye to Intel.
You won't be missed.
And, btw, Intel Management Engine is pure evil.
"What goes around comes around."
2 • Deepin 25 (by Tixo on 2025-07-28 00:30:01 GMT from France)
Giving how ambitious Deepin 25 is compared to Deepin 23 (which, except DE and few built-in apps, were pretty common), we can all expect few years before being as solid as when it was Debian based.
The user base and community in China seems pretty strong, and I guess many users will switch to it instead of W11, which would help sustaining the whole project/company.
Deepin has changed a lot since 15 and so and it's pretty nice to still going even if it's clearly made for the China market. This won't get as much traction as Ubuntu or Mint as beginner distro, but like written in the review, there is clearly a bunch of neat idea (like pressing space bar to get file preview ala macOS, and subtitle downloading in video player app).
3 • My favourite open source debate is... (by moonwalker on 2025-07-28 00:35:54 GMT from United States)
All of the above. As a contrarian, I just like to argue.
Jokes aside, just about all of those arguments are IMHO a bit silly - each solution has pros and cons, which one to select depends on a specific use case you need a solution for. E.g., my personal use cases call for deb, KDE, neither emacs nor vi, GPL, monolithic, rolling, systemd, and Wayland, my business/work use case calls for RPM, GNOME, vi, monolithic, fixed, systemd, and X11. And my personal/home devices run a mixture of traditional and "immutable" systems, while the managed systems we offer to our customers are all strictly traditional.
4 • Favourite Open Source Debate (by NewUser on 2025-07-28 01:05:45 GMT from Canada)
Under the given choices, I ticked off systemd vs ini.
Completely familiar with sysvinit, and on the very rare occasion there's been a problem; easy to fix.
Have also tried rcunit (with distros such as Anti-X), and really like it.
While I can use systemd, the whole implementation strikes me as corporate and very much NOT in the philosophy that "everything is a file".
This then brings us to your reader response in questions and answers about the disconnect between corporate users, and the rest of the open source community. Your observations about diverging priorities was spot-on. The worry is, key programmers and developers, especially those working on the kernel, work for, and are paid by large corporations. Many members sit on various open source committiees (FLOSS, etc.), and are in a position to directly influence direction.
The systemd debate is one that has recently received much attention here, but there are plenty of others. One particularely irksome one was Microsoft's resistance to the adoption of the open document format as a standard. There is clearly a financial aspect to that.
Then there are others. The release of wayback has sparked some interesting comments on lwn.net re X11 vs Wayland. I thought Wayland was being pushed before it was ready for prime time, but here at least, if I understand the various threads correctly, there are some valid architectural reasons for this path.
At the moment, Linux is all about choice. The fear is, worship of the Holy $ by profit driven corporations will limit choice. Also problematic is how to adequately fund independant developers (such as with the time protocol if I remember correctly - think that was ntp, network time protocol).
Some have suggested the BSD's could offer a "plan B" (hmmm, wasn't that the name os some medical product, maybe for birth control?, that also generated much controversy?).
Back to that Chinese curse about "living in interesting times"....
5 • Debates? (by Arve Eriksson on 2025-07-28 01:07:58 GMT from Sweden)
If the debates would all focus on pros and cons I wouldn't mind more coverage, but when it's all 'this or that project is absolutely the worst' I just check out.
I personally don't notice a schism between commercial and community driven solutions, but I can entertain the idea.
6 • Debate Subjects Poll (by Slappy McGee on 2025-07-28 01:15:33 GMT from United States)
I do wonder how important the debates are to the participants in the debates. I remember taking sides in most of those listed in the poll, and often vehemently so.
But did I align my Linux behaviors with my arguments? Or did I just align myself with a side of the arguments and defend that side for the sake of the argument?
Both, but most often the latter, I confess. Begging the question, do I give a rat's fuzzy fanny about systemD vs other inits? Or about KDE-Plasma vs Gnome? Well, to a point of personal taste.. I guess. But I've got distros of several inits and several DEs and WMs.
It's all good. ... Now I have to argue that point I suppose. ;oD
7 • Open Source Debate (by Lefty on 2025-07-28 02:24:51 GMT from United States)
The slow creep of corporate-backed subsytems invading open source has bothered me for some time. Corporate contributions to open source have been valuable and appreciated, but they are moving Linux away from individual freedom, and this bothers me. I suspect this trend will continue until Linux is no longer Linux.
As an individual user, I have no use for things like systemd and Wayland.I would rather use SysVInit and an updated X11.
I've thought for some time that open source is approaching a crossroads, and might veer off into total corporate control. This is why I think it might be time for at least some Linux distros that are targeted solely to the individual user. Artix and Devuan could lead the movement, but more such efforts are sorely needed.
The Fedoras and Ubuntus can become fully corporate - that's fine. But leave something for the rest of us.
8 • @7 Agreed (by grindstone on 2025-07-28 03:09:40 GMT from United States)
+1 about creep but it seems the inevitable result of maturity after economics found roots. Everyone has their reasons, it's just tiring as a long-term user.
9 • Debates (by Friar Tux on 2025-07-28 03:31:34 GMT from Canada)
I chose the last one as I don't really care one way or the other. In each pair, listed, BOTH have pros and cons - as stated earlier. Both are perfectly good to use. It all depends on personal choice. Nothing else. The debates show me that Linux users are still passionate about the OS, so I don't believe Linux will ever go completely corporate. The diversity of users is what will keep Linux BOTH community AND corporate driven. Just think - and if there is a mathematician out there, help us out - think of all the possible combinations of Linux distros just that list of pairs, alone, can provide. Now throw in ALL the DEs, WMs, etc., and watch that number grow exponentially. (I think DW will need a much bigger website.)
10 • Debates, etc. (by Bobbie Sellers on 2025-07-28 03:37:03 GMT from United States)
I like debates over things I understand enough about to have a sensible view.
I definitely do not care for systemd and its multi-functional approach.
One function at a time is enough for me. Enough for the creator
of Slackel as well.
I love KDE because when I started on Linux in 2006 or thereabouts
it was the default in Mandriva. I was able to recreate a semblance of
the AmigaOS I had been using for a considerable period.
If I was a better typist and not hampered by changes to my central
nervous system I might have moved to Linux earlier.
I have KDE 5 on this desktop replacement in laptop form factor
and have KDE 6.4.3 on my 7450 lightweight laptop as of yesterday
evening. After a bit of struggle because the keyboard on the
7450 is not in a good position for human use at present I was
able to produce something similar but not satisfied yet.
bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLOS 2025.07- Linux 6.12.40- Plasma 5.27.11
11 • Debates, etc. (by Anarchosaxophonist on 2025-07-28 06:45:51 GMT from Denmark)
It seems to me that the "wars" and "debates" section have an intersect point in the Linux vs. FreeBSD development models. This really needs to be looked at more in depth. In the Linux world, my sympathies clearly lie with the community focused development in opposition to the corporate focused development. That being said, corporate focused development appears to be more focused, systematic and analytical. This dichotomy doesn't exist within the development of FreeBSD. The entire operating system is developed together as one unit, for each release, by the FreeBSD developers.
I would argue that GNU/Linux needs to become "Linux" with a similar development strategy to FreeBSD, with a single community focused on the development of the next Linux base release and what the community wants. I realize that this would be controversial in exactly the community that I am championing, but the alternative is the community being pulled around by the nose, by large corporate interests, with little or no insight as to what their end game is, other than profit.
12 • Beginner's guide and debates (by DeepLurker on 2025-07-28 08:08:53 GMT from Switzerland)
I had a glance at the beginners' guide. I would mention Ventoy in the "Where do I start if I want to use Linux?". Even if you've decided to go with Linux Mint, for example, it might still be interesting to try out the Cinnamon, Mate and XFCE desktops. I would also mention that a benefit of a live version is testing if hardware is detected/compatible. Last I would explain what difference one might expect between a live version and an installed version, e.g. the boot time for older computers. I have also had instances where videos were laggy in the live version but smooth on the installed version.
Debates: I enjoy the debates when they are educative. Less so when they come down to preferences. IMHO emacs-vi, KDE-Gnome, rolling-fixed are part of the latter. Sometimes I enjoy the debates because they are a glance inside the kitchen and see how FOSS is actually created.
13 • Wars, debates, end users interests and the future of Linux and BSD worlds (by OneHue on 2025-07-28 10:09:17 GMT from Mali)
I have only two favourite classic debates which maybe intersects : privacy on personal computers including smartphones and smartwatches, and the world of Linux going nut with corporates needs to be profitable and viable (the war explained by Jesse). Due to that I saw myself settling on Linux Mint Mate with Windows 8.1 in a virtual machine, being more and more curious about NetBSD, and using more and more outdated technologies. That’s just means our new technologies are not for personal computing anymore and we passed a peak in the Linux land. Now Linux is too good to let it in the hands of humans. Corporates needs it on servers for AI, on desktop for secure professional governmental desktops (maybe that explains the 5% users in US) and in drones. And maybe the next operating system that will suffer corporate influence will be FreeBSD. I just wish long life to Pat (Slackware), anticapitalista (antiX) and Clement (Mint) and thanks them for keeping distributions for users who needs strong, private computing platforms. But without Debian and Canonical…:-)
14 • Debates? (by WTF? on 2025-07-28 10:11:47 GMT from Italy)
Debian should join forces more and more to face menaces from tech dictators always arising and behaving as masters, not searching for brawls.
Debates are unavoidable, but we shouldn't grow enthusiasts from their being. This poll is very divisive nowadays.
15 • What am I missing on Deepin? (by Appalachian on 2025-07-28 10:17:23 GMT from United States)
I've never tried the Deepin desktop, but I've heard many talk about how nice it looks. From the pictures in today's review it doesn't look bad, don't get me wrong, but I don't see where it is all that different either. If I didn't know any better I would think that those screenshots came from a Cinnamon session. I like Cinnamon and I'm using it right now. What do we gain from another desktop which looks just like it? I just don't see what the fuss is all about for Deepin.
16 • The corpratisation of Linux (by Tim on 2025-07-28 10:43:42 GMT from Australia)
The corporationisation of GNU/Linux is occurring right at the core (kernel) in the Linux Foundation where there are no community contributors. All they seem to want from the OS is a stable server. There is no interest in 'ordinary' desktop users.
Meanwhile freeBSD, although funded largely by corporates and receiving contributions from them is not controlled by them.
Life has been much more stable since I switched to GhostBSD (essentially freeBSD with a GUI out of the box). Now freeBSD is moving to provide a GUI option out of the box.
My GhostBSD looks for all the world like it's running a Linux distro but 'feels' so much more like a 'real' UNIX (although, ironically, cannot call itself a UNIX because they are not prepared to pay the license to do so!)
17 • Open source Debate - su vs sudo (by Michael on 2025-07-28 11:22:31 GMT from Germany)
Su vs sudo
Due to my personal situation and practice, I prefer systems with a root account.
However, I can certainly understand the arguments in favor of sudo.
Unfortunately, systems without a root account are usually not prepared to provide the optional use of the root Account.
18 • Debates (by dragonmouth on 2025-07-28 11:38:53 GMT from United States)
All of those remind me of the TV beer commercial - "Less filling vs. Tastes great!"
19 • Wars (by dragonmouth on 2025-07-28 11:48:37 GMT from United States)
"Developers typically are not involved in (or swayed by) these on-line debates"
IOW, most developers do not listen to the users. They just go on their merry way towards THEIR vision. They are convinced that THEY KNOW BEST and the users are just a bunch of whiners.
20 • Root account (by Jesse on 2025-07-28 11:50:22 GMT from Canada)
@17: "Unfortunately, systems without a root account are usually not prepared to provide the optional use of the root Account."
All Linux distributions have a root account. Any distro that doesn't make traditional use of the root account can be enabled simply by setting a password for root.
21 • Debates (by user on 2025-07-28 07:11:23 GMT from Bulgaria)
The new Debate that will shape the forthcoming years:
Classic Linux installations vs Immutable Linux installations, i.e the freedom in a design architecture of choice in installations vs the pitfall of restrictive by design and architecture subset of approved only technologies.
22 • Beginner's guide (by tomas on 2025-07-28 12:47:15 GMT from Czechia)
When I started with Linux the first thing I had to do was to make myself clear about what desktop to use.
Luckily one of my first choices of distro was Mint, (because) at the time supporting KDE, Mate, Xfce and Cinnamon. I ran all of them to choose, for other desktops I had to look elsewhere.
The first two mentioned are still my prefered though because of some hickups by Wayland I tend to change my preferences to Mate, Plasma(6).
Recently I discovered Trinity on Q4OS that now comes third.
I think that Beginner's guide should supply some info on desktop environments, not a detailed description how they work, but a beginner user's view of their use and possibilities of customization.
For a newcomer the first impression of the desktop often decides his impression of a distro.
In the time of my distrohopping I often rejected a distro that did not have my prefered desktop configured to my likiing (and the configuration tools were not handy).
23 • Deepin Security (by oldtechaa on 2025-07-28 12:50:08 GMT from New Zealand)
While Deepin sounds really cool, after I read about the OpenSUSE/Deepin debacle I do have some serious concerns about their attitude toward security, especially on something as critical as a DE. I hope they can change their focus and make a secure AND cool environment.
24 • My favourite open source debate is... (by AndyVGR on 2025-07-28 13:11:34 GMT from United States)
My favorite debate is Linux vs GNU/Linux, just because Stallman cracks me up. He's like an open source Tom Bombadil or something.
25 • Debates (by Robert on 2025-07-28 13:47:22 GMT from United States)
The big problem I have with a lot of the Linux / open source debates are that they tend to revolve around gaslighting, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.
Like with X11 vs Wayland. There have been pro vs con arguments on either side, the most recent being accessibility. But they way you hear people talk you'd think Wayland isn't suitable for *anybody's* usecase. Like everyone has accessibility requirements, or everyone needs some utility call xdotool that I'd literally never heard of for 20 years, or something particularly dumb like people who *want* screen tearing for some reason. And then people attack me for saying I have had a good experience with Wayland for 6+ years, like that's somehow impossible.
Or systemd. There are legitimate concerns about its scope creep and consuming of other projects like udev. What do people actually complain about? That this working solution is apparently a corporate Trojan horse designed explicitly so Red Hat can exert more control over the Linux ecosystem.
Deb vs RPM is just a dumb argument. The real argument is why do we even have half a dozen functionally interchangeable package formats in the first place? This is something that should have been standardized decades ago but hasn't due to some purely emotional holy war.
26 • Debates (by DivestOS on 2025-07-28 14:15:37 GMT from Canada)
For debate, I voted "other".
I am surprised at comment ~26, no one has mentioned the Rust vs C++ debate i.e. sudo-rs?
I would have voted SystemD otherwise.
Smart phone debates as mentioned above have less traction. I.e. locked boot loaders or not, proprietary vs open source, Funding of open source projects. Google no longer publishing the device trees of Pixel devices in Android 16 (GrapheneOS).
27 • Classic Open Source Debats (by Fabian Lanzy on 2025-07-28 14:33:34 GMT from United States)
Somehow I think Flatpak vs Snao vs Appimage deserves mention as one of the most discussed Linux Holy Wars of the moment (/s).
28 • Influencing developers (by John Gray on 2025-07-28 14:44:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
@19 Most developers do not listen to the users. They just go on their merry way towards THEIR vision. They are convinced that THEY KNOW BEST and the users are just a bunch of whiners.
With those views, I need to ask:
"You don't work for Microsoft, do you?"
29 • Root account (by Michael on 2025-07-28 15:41:55 GMT from Germany)
@20 "Any distro that doesn't make traditional use of the root account can be enabled simply by setting a password for root."
Of course, but it never solves the problem properly. The system will still ask for a sudoer's password for administation tasks.
30 • Debates (by David on 2025-07-28 15:51:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
I said "not interested" because most of the discussions I've seen have been long on opinion and short on fact. As for the questions raised,
Gnome or KDE — I use Xfce.
deb or rpm — I don't think it matters, but things like Flatpack are just aping Windows.
emacs or vi — I wouldn't touch either.
systemd and wayland — I don't have either, but I don't get emotional about it.
Having had problems in the past with Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical, these days I'd steer clear of company distros — I've got PCLinuxOS on the desktop and Salix on the laptop and both are just fine.
31 • Beginners Guide (by Slappy McGee on 2025-07-28 16:37:33 GMT from United States)
Wondering if we might begin to see specific troubleshooting queries in here as a sort of expectation by the readers of that new guide.
Anticipating that, I'm wondering if a mention somewhere in the guide itself that links to each listed distro's home site are provided here, and that is the place to start with issues etc.
32 • debates. something's wrong in paradise? (by dr.j on 2025-07-28 17:00:24 GMT from Germany)
My view of things is this: Microsoft builds cars, Model T in black, all the same. In the Linux world, we have an engine (the Linux kernel) and many teams around the world use it to build very different cars. I choose one or two of them. In my case, Arch and FreeBSD. Are they perfect? No. Is FreeBSD better because it doesn't use systemd? Nonsense. For me, both are a good choice. Do I have to complain that Arch has switched to systemd? No. Because no car is perfect. And I don't want to build one myself (Linux from scratch). And: I accept that car manufacturers have their own views on what is important in a car, why they use component A and not B, etc. This view is sometimes completely irrelevant or even annoying for the driver/user of the car. But that's no reason to go to war! It's simply okay.
33 • Open Source Debate (by John on 2025-07-28 17:45:27 GMT from Canada)
I picked "systemd vs init/OpenRC/Upstart" only because it is closest to my favorite. It is "BSD init vs SYSV"
A close second was "termcap vs termios". In both cases I was on the loosing side ;)
34 • gaslighting (by jorge on 2025-07-28 19:19:52 GMT from Argentina)
@25 xdotool only?
The Holy Church IBM, Rethat and the their Knights Templar have deicide the only one ecosystem is in favor of Wayland, SystemD . Gnome . KDE.,
The devil Openbox, IceWM, XFCE i3 and other software they must kneel before their master and modify all the source for to be blessings and deservingness of the best and the only one superior software. Thank you Redhat, thank you INTEL, thank you IBM for so much good and best things given to us
35 • sudo vs root (by Jesse on 2025-07-28 19:39:57 GMT from Canada)
@29: ""Any distro that doesn't make traditional use of the root account can be enabled simply by setting a password for root."
Of course, but it never solves the problem properly. The system will still ask for a sudoer's password for administation tasks."
Only if you are trying to perform tasks as a regular user through sudo access. If you're logged in as the root user then it will not. Basically if you're not using the root account then _of course_ it will prompt for credentials for your sudo user.
You're confusing two separate issues - availability of root account and how regular users perform admin functions. Basically you're saying if you enable the root account and don't use it, you'll get prompted for credentials. Which is exactly how systems with a root account enabled work too.
36 • debate is healthy and long overdue for one right now (by DR IVAN NEGA on 2025-07-28 19:46:19 GMT from United States)
specially when linux users divided is getting larger in our side from ARTIX COMMUNITY have grown lot more than 10 years since we split up from manjaro community when they decided against users interest for over oligarch red hat systemd made by microsoft employee. My issue is how many are in UNKNOWN 6% gray area that 4% is artix and 2% for others like chimera and BSD distros as counted as UNKNOWN due to our distros don't use systemd GEOIP telemtry services built in through systemd secret unit that is party of systemd-network service host that boots before user login seem illegal in UNIX philosophy that taught us in UNIX 7th edition book about the code we all should respected and followed when making clone unix-like operating system that we see apple and freebsd have not broke any those rules in the code to even allow network boot before user login. What purpose for networking need to boot during init process ?? server tracking ?? potential for malware hacks ?? no systemd devs not gonna discuss this as we are witness users freedom been taking away by company supposed to protect its community and its users from any harm but instead we are following microsoft control in entire PC market to take and sell user data for profitable margins for all websites we visit for ads to know who we are, and what we are , and sites we go will be prey to predators is after our wallets daily online. Dinit makes excellent approach i haven't seen anything like it before that it used APL2.0 license and BSD clause for API usage is written only in C++ init process. Its way advance they made that to user eyes its much much more simpler than i thought than using runit or openrc. It even surpass S6 in performance and skill can be learn in 15 min
37 • Beginners Guide (by Iron Duke on 2025-07-28 19:46:40 GMT from United States)
Don't forget that you can test drive Linux distros online on your web browser! Go to:
https://distrosea.com/
38 • Debates?!? (by Baltazar on 2025-07-28 19:48:22 GMT from United States)
... oh... yeah
Remember when Lindows came out, using root access by default? Funny how there are now a few distros that practically run the user as root in one way or another...
Guess there are times for and against certain uses.
Also, it seems that corporations like to taint OSS one way or another in the name of "safety"... all I want is to stop good functioning hardware from ending up in the landfills.
Asides from all them potential debates, I would like some database for easily opening hardware, as to be able to install linux or anything one wants on it, it is my hardware after all. Am getting tired of damned close boot loaders and BIOS, EFI and UEFI crap...
39 • Debate favorite - Emacs vs. Vi (by Brian Masinick on 2025-07-28 20:18:40 GMT from United States)
I read debates about these two editors because they're both very good and they're both "unusual" to first time users.
Vi is a modal editor, so you can't just start tying because the default mode is edit mode. It is quite straightforward to go into one of the input modes; the easiest is to type an i and then enter. When you're done editing you can type Esc and you'll return to edit mode, where you can learn a few navigation tricks or most versions allow you to use arrow keys to move around.
Emacs is just as confusing to newcomers, but the default version allows you to type immediately. The problem is that editing commands are pretty complex and the classic defaults also are not ideal for their key bindings.
It should be noted that BOTH editors have done a LOT on all counts. Vi in the form of vim and nvim have added many things found in Emacs, and Emacs/vi users should know that there is a Doom Emacs configuration that allows you to change between the two styles of key bindings, plus it adds a few more to modernize the bindings and reduce the requirement to use bindings that put too much stress on the hands.
So the true answer is that both editors are fantastic and there are other editors that mimic or modify a few characteristics of each editor, so there are spinoffs and variations too. The curious and intense editor persons should definitely research and find some of these options; all it takes are a few search commands using any of the terms I've used here, so I'm not offering you links; I'm offering you comments and you can form your own impressions, which include following the ideas or ignoring this; both are your choice and yours alone to make according to your personal preference.
40 • Deepin (by Cor on 2025-07-28 20:19:14 GMT from Germany)
This article made me try deepin, only to find out quickly that for whatever reason, and unlike other distros I tried before, you can't pick language and keyboard layout fully independently. And it's not a matter of either of the options I'd like to use being unavailable. When I changed the language my keyboard layout appeared. But only then.
Unless I totally missed an "other..." or similar somewhere down the list.
41 • Vim v. Emacs (by MattE on 2025-07-28 21:31:27 GMT from United States)
It's like pulling up to the dock with an aircraft carrier (Emacs) when a PT boat would do.
42 • Laughable debates, @19 (by Hercule Poirot on 2025-07-29 00:57:05 GMT from Belgium)
I sometimes follow, and will even contribute to debates, mostly for laughs at how ridiculous they are. Case in point: @19, "most developers do not listen to the users. They just go on their merry way towards THEIR vision. They are convinced that THEY KNOW BEST and the users are just a bunch of whiners" Of course they do, that's because most complaining users ARE just a bunch of whiners, contributing nothing but complaints. Welcome to open source. Developers at Microsoft, et al. have bosses who give direction and expect certain results. Not meeting expectations may have negative outcomes, even to the point of losing employment.. An independent open source developer can choose direction and results as they wish. Anyone can use, not use, alter, fork or do whatever with the developer's product. But instead of a boss, he/she will have hundreds, or thousands or millions of keyboard tyrants telling him/her what he should do, and when and how. At least, at Microsoft, et al. the bosses pay a salary for the privilege of telling the developer what to do. The FOSS keyboard tyrants don't even bother to say "please". Building something, developing, maintaining, take time and effort. Knocking it takes nothing but a little whine.
Running Plasma 6 on Tuxedo OS and enjoying it. No complaints.
43 • Holy wars aka debates (by Keith S on 2025-07-29 02:20:46 GMT from Japan)
Jesse's analysis of the corporate vs community split is great. Since I am "all in" on the community side, I sometimes engage in debates on systemd and Wayland in particular. What bothers me about them is that the corporate interests have worked so diligently to try to eliminate choice in the larger Linux ecosystem. I appreciate the developers of the community distros working hard to preserve choice. Without that, soon there will be no practical difference between Linux and Windows -- take it or leave it will be the one philosophy to rule computing. The only real difference would probably be backwards compatibility for large customers with legacy programs they've developed in-house (Windows) vs breaking things to keep them modern (Linux mostly; and the most extreme example being OpenBSD.)
I think the bigger split coming will be driven by the adoption or avoidance of AI. I have already begun avoiding the use of AI wherever possible, since there are so many hazards involved in using it, including the harvesting and weaponization of personal data and (not least!) the atrophying of the ability to think and reason. I guarantee the corporate interests will continue to aggressively adopt and integrate AI wherever they can.
As for actual ancient holy wars, I was shocked to learn that emacs includes a text editor. Who knew?
44 • Beginner: try Linux on M$Win in minutes, just like any app/game (by Try Vbox on 2025-07-29 08:36:18 GMT from United States)
Another fairly simple way to try lyrics
Esp without disturbing your Microsoft Windows:
Download &install virtualbox.org
(Takes only a couple minutes and is totally safe)
Download the .vdi (virtual disc image) of a pre-installed distro from osboxes.org (needs 7z extract)
Run Vbox, click 'New', for disk: 'Use existing ' (the .vdi you extracted), 'Start' it! Totally safe & can be easily deleted.
Of course, websites and YouTube's explaining this can be found.
The key is that: it's fairly simple, takes only a few minutes, totally safe & easily discarded (unlike a dual boot install 'accident' LoL)
45 • Debate: (semi OT) getting help (by Try Vbox on 2025-07-29 09:04:17 GMT from United States)
(Excuse my above speech_input calling Linux 'lyrics', LoL)
The debate in the Linux world that interests me is: getting help.
That's probably the first barrier for people who haven't tried Linux yet.
(I wonder [poll?!] How many more people would try Linux *IF* they had UNlimited guidance...)
Some people try the reddit or FB etc 'jungle'.
Some try the more sophisticated sites but run into 'GoGoogle/RTFM', esp if questions aren't well formed.
I (@gmail) enjoyed filling my idle retirement time with tutoring beginners remotely over the phone, but the logistics of arranging it and keeping interest going are difficult.
In the last couple years, AI has become a good alternative for unlimited patient hand-holding (though occasionally wrong).
46 • Poll: My favourite open source debate is... (by JustSayingWhatWe'reAllThinking on 2025-07-29 14:03:12 GMT from Finland)
...Free Beer vs Open Cola
Other open source debates are either futile or long settled:
Deb and RPM both have merit
Emacs and vi both lack merit
KDE is objectively worse than GNOME, which itself is horrible
GPL and BSD are frankly as bad as each other
Micro and monolithic kernels are good for different purposes
Rolling and fixed releases both have their own uses
SystemD is objectively worse than init/OpenRC/Upstart
Wayland is objectively worse than X11, specifically XLibre's fork which is still being developed
Rust is objectively worse than C for use in the kernel
Flatpak is objectively worse than Snap, which itself cannot hold a candle to AppImage and Nix
Every Code of Conduct is objectively worse than none
Non-profit developers invariably do worse work than for-profit ones
...
See? There's no point in debating these. So let's instead worry about the important stuff: beverage wars!
47 • Those who fight about vi/vim and emacs are fools... (by Drangleic hobbit on 2025-07-29 22:14:18 GMT from Chile)
...The right answer is obviously nano.
48 • Aurora Linux (by Toran on 2025-07-29 23:42:58 GMT from Belgium)
After distro hopping since 1999 I finally found my perfect distr, being Aurora Linux.Say it is Fedora Kinoite on steroids.Fast, secure, beautiful, and very complete for an immutable distro. I can even run my scanner. Besides, also Fedora Kinoite does provide scanner support. The thing is, Aurora is ready to go, while Kinoite is less complete (drivers, codecs) and takes time to setup. I highly recommend Aurora Linux.
49 • freeBSD and BSD vs GPL (by Tim on 2025-07-30 02:42:32 GMT from Australia)
@32 freeBSD does not use the Linux kernel. The BSDs have their own separate kernels.
The BSDs create complete operating systems which you can then run applications on. It means that the base operating systems are much more stable.
OTH Linux distributions tend to be a 'collection of bits'.
As for the licensing, the BSD license allows companies to add in proprietary bits and not contribute back to the source but they do tend to contribute to the non-proprietary base.
With the GPL (and therefore Linux) they can't keep the proprietary bits.
I think something between the two licenses would make sense where companies could keep their proprietary bits for a set period of time so they can get the return on their investment and then it reverts to GPL. Just like copyright and patents (are meant) to work.
50 • Issues disputed in Linux. (by Greg Zeng on 2025-07-30 05:45:53 GMT from Australia)
Current Linux adherents seem happy with being the Two Percenters of computer users. Occasionally, only 94%, rather than 98% of computer users, REJECT LINUX.
The preferred operating systems remain Windows, followed by Android, and then iOS. Users and application writers want applications for Linux. Their preferred binary Linux formats are TZ codes, followed by Debian, Appimage, RPM, Flatpak, and finally Snap. Most applications choose to pretend that Linux does not exist.
Much confusion exists within Linux about the importance of standard compiled code for applications. Ubuntu Snap wants to do the iOS version of proprietary scrutiny, only. Linux installations have unpredictable variations in desktop, user, and hardware settings for installation, reliability, and upgrading.
As usual, the newest versions of all software have many bugs and imperfections. Older versions cannot cope with demanding users, nor demanding and evolving hardware. Until Linux settles on either Appimage or Flatpak, the application users and writers will stay away from Linux.
51 • Beginner's guide and Issues disputed in Linux (by tomas on 2025-07-30 07:11:45 GMT from Czechia)
I would like to know how many companies sell hardware with Linux installed (not locally).
One of the reasons for low percentage of Linux users is that it is not easy to buy PCs with Linux installed.
I would object to saying users "REJECT LINUX" (@50), they generally do not know it exists.
Most of them would then ask how to get it and then would not want the risk of installing it themselves on a new PC.
Maybe the requirements of W11 will help here a bit though I am afraid that the majority involved will go the way of buying new hardware.
52 • Other engaging dicussion (by eb on 2025-07-30 07:34:27 GMT from France)
Desktop Environment versus Window Manager ?!:-)
53 • Debian other inits support dropped (by Hank on 2025-07-30 09:23:38 GMT from Germany)
Regarding init.
Debate is very badly needed on the just do it policy of the new Debian leadership.
Despite a clear General Resolution mandate to support alternative inits both that and the Debian code of conduct are being violated.
Systemd evangelist devs seemingly led by Michael Biebl [biebl@debian.org] [mail] are removing support for alternative inits, the process started in Grub but is advancing to blocking or removing anything that assists alternative init usage.
Very negative for Debian, Image, Transparancy and Accountability are being damaged while the distro is becoming more and more enslaved by blindly following corporate interests.
54 • Do users really prefer WIndows? (by picamanic on 2025-07-30 09:26:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
@50: I am not concerned, for myself, that Linux adoption is low single digits [AI search came up with 4%]. However, it is wrong to assume that users "prefer" MS Windows: Microsoft go to great lengths force PC vendors to pre-install it [the so-called Windows tax], and make it difficult to replace with Linux/BSD etc.
Despite this, there are many vendors that will sell you PCs with Linux pre-installed. I am typing this Comment on a Starlabs BYTE computer that was much less expensive than Windows based equivalents.
55 • Debate subject (by Whattteva on 2025-07-30 13:47:59 GMT from United States)
I think it is missing BSD vs Linux. Not the listed GPL vs BSD as that is more about the license model, but more about them as distinct Operating Systems.
56 • Beginners Guide & Opinion Poll (by Jupiter on 2025-07-30 14:21:23 GMT from United States)
Great to see the Beginners Guide being built up! Looking good so far plus giving them the general direction of Mint seems like a wise choice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Personally enjoyed watching the X11 vs Wayland Debate, I have just enough knowledge to know what they are but don't really play favorites for either one on the grounds of "Eh I'll just use whatever works", in my case, Wayland. I'll just Eat my Bagel and laugh at the firestorms. Never really saw the whole systemd debate though.
57 • Opinion poll (by Reefsoft on 2025-07-30 15:04:04 GMT from France)
That's an easy one: Stability (ex Debian) vs Cutting-Edge (Arch)
58 • Clear Linux (by Crackly Old Man on 2025-07-30 15:08:25 GMT from Canada)
This Reader Supplied Review for Clear Linux gave me a chuckle (dated Feb 3, 2025)
-I run Clear Linux with their LTS-kernel and it works very well for me.
-I like how if you type a command it tells you which bundle to add.
-So far among distros, none matches Clear Linux' speed
-I was hesitant at first to install this distro because I don't want it to be discontinued since it seems underground but it's actually Intel's own distro so a giant like them will not likely fall tomorrow lol
-The tweaks they've done to the kernel are so nice that Clear Linux' kernel is available in other distros such as Arch Linux
-I found myself a new home and my distro-hopping should be over for a very long time
59 • Debates (by GT on 2025-07-30 16:39:24 GMT from United States)
The thing that gets me about the systemd 'debate' is the correlation between how passionately someone hates it, and how little understanding they demonstrate of how things actually work. They could choose to use a systemd-free distro, assist those projects, and carry on with life, but instead they feel it necessary to spend their energy spreading misinformation and/or vitriol at every opportunity, as if on some crusade to 'prove' to the world that Red Hat is actively trying to destroy computing for everyone. I don't know what feeds that mindset, but for some reason, systemd triggers it in a number of users. The debate is over. Projects have made their decisions about systemd. Choose a project that aligns with your wants and needs and move on. No one cares what others think about software they themselves don't use or understand, and no amount of hyperbole shouted from the sidelines is going to change that.
60 • debate (by jc on 2025-07-30 17:33:26 GMT from The Netherlands)
GT, #59, is correct: the only thing for [evil] systemd to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Developers, be they corporate or community, have their own agenda. Many times the agenda agrees with what their product's users want, but not always. Corporate users want minimum software life cycle costs while maintaining tight control of the software ebvironment. Community users, variers with the community, typically want minimum software life cycle costs (their time to install, update, etc. is money) and either no config required or maximun configurable environment (i.e., ala cart type system). There is no such thing as a linux user, there are many different linux users. Hence one linux does not fit all.
I have written off Red Hat and derivatives and systemd distros as unsuitable for my use and therefore avoid them like a plague.
I use Devuan, MX Linux, Slackware, PClinux, etc. Should all linux distros fall prey to systemd, I will migrate to BSD.
Systemd has one major advantage, it provides a unified attack surface for hackers, state or otherwise.
61 • ...favourite open source debate is... (by R. Cain on 2025-07-30 17:59:53 GMT from United States)
...BSD vs Linux on the desktop.
__Personal__ opinion is that BSD, with its VERY-well-disciplined, tightly-controlled, highly-locked-down development structure (vs Linux's "Hey, ANYBODY can write a distro; you can too. Jump in!" approach) will win this for BSD. No contest. None at all.
You will notice that BSD is _NOT_ a "distro"--it is a single (that's a highly operative word) PRODUCT---as opposed to almost all Linux distros, which can only--charitably--be referred to as 'projects".
You will also notice that most all (> 500, and counting, at last count) Linux distros were "Vanity ("Hey; look at ME!") Distros".
At the end of the day, the only Linux distros which will be left standing are those very few which are backed by corporate entities with deep pockets (even that doesn't guarantee success; simply consider the CERN-backed 'Scientific Linux').
BSD will win this one simply because 'everyman' s Linux', as we would like to know and remember it, is killing itself; it will not--because it simply CANnot--survive.
62 • BSD versus Linux @61 (by picamanic on 2025-07-30 18:52:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
@61: I don't agree that only the small number of Corporate Linux distros will survive. Yes, the one-person Vanity Projects will come and go, but distros like Devuan, Void, Alpine and Tiny Core will persist until the Linux kernel becomes so bloated that even Redhat/Microsoft will wash their hands of it, and walk away. I can't see that far into the future; you know, getting old. Of course, that precludes a hostile act from the Redhat/Microsoft camp!
63 • anti-GNOME army (by John Doe on 2025-07-30 19:29:40 GMT from Italy)
@46
KDE is objectively better, faster and lighter than GNOME.
64 • Nvidia vs amd/intel/everyone else. (by (mandatory) on 2025-07-31 04:51:46 GMT from United States)
Seriously, how do we have "software for humanity," freedom for the masses... and LiveDVD GNU/Linux operating system images which are too big to fit on actual DVDs??!
What is wrong with these corporations which are supposedly democratic, community centered institutions? Nobody has DL DVDs anymore! (Nobody even uses Bluray DVDs!)
65 • Also, x86-64-v1 vs v2 vs v3 (by (mandatory) on 2025-07-31 04:55:43 GMT from United States)
These red hat operating systems are mostly for the privileged: those who can afford the latest processors/motherboards only.
66 • Beginner Guide Ideas (by Adrien on 2025-07-31 05:58:56 GMT from United States)
One feature that I think would be great not just for beginners, but for anyone always 'on the watch' for distro info would be to re-work your rankings column into multiple parts:
Best (simplest, friendliest, easiest) for New Users (Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin, ...)
Novel Approach (Qubes, NIxOS, ...)
Special Focus (Ubuntu Studio, DragonOS, OpenSense, TrueNAS, ...)
Lite & Modern (Lubuntu, Lite, Peppermint, ...)
Ancient Hardware Friendly (Puppy, TinyCore, Q4OS, ...)
Tinkerer Havens (Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, ...)
Privacy Focused (Tails, ...)
(examples not meant to be definitive, those would all be from the same rating system that exists, just broken up into groups, with some distros in multiple groups of course depending on their overall rating)
The idea here is to give more visibility to aspects of a distro that aren't readily apparent from the current list structure. Some distros that don't make the overall list now, might end up on one of these focused lists and get some attention, testing, feedback for improvement, etc.
On that note, I'm excited to see a TinyCore derivative just made the db. I downloaded it and will start playing with it right away. I have several 32 bit machines that I've been distro hopping in the hopes of breathing new life into them and this looks promising! (I once rescued an near ancient ThinkPad running win95 on a K6 with TinyCore proper. It eventually got a web browser, and a word processor too!) I also revived an ancient IBM with an original Pentium 1 using Puppy Classic. So this new derivative might be just the 'Spirit' it needs to modernize a bit.
67 • Debates (by Bob on 2025-07-31 07:50:01 GMT from United States)
Gnome went down the toilet when they discontinued Gnome2 14 years ago. KDE? I just don’t get it. There are plenty of other desktop environments I’d rather use.
68 • favourite Debate... (by rhtoras on 2025-07-31 09:29:31 GMT from Greece)
There is only one debate and that's why it is in the #1 position. Correct: i am talking for the systemD vs real init systems. This is the most important of all the debates not only because it will shape how linux looks in a few years, but mainly because linux existance depends on it. SystemD is hungry and sooner or later will be bigger than the whole kernel. Nowdays we say: linux with systemD but the plan is to speak for systemD with linux. EVERY other debate even bsd vs linux is a matter of prefference.As for desktop debates i.e Gnome vs KDE even there systemD is hidden behind the titles. Because Gnome is essentialy systemD. A real dictatorship in which init, logging, timers, network configuration, and many more are being controlled by a few people working for IBM and Microsoft.
please read:https://without-systemd.org/wiki/index_php/Arguments_against_systemd/
69 • PHR by type of distro (by Slappy McGee on 2025-07-31 12:07:41 GMT from United States)
@66 Those aspects of the list are inherent in the list as it is. Just look at it with an eye toward the type and you'll see which one of that type is higher on the list, and keep going down the list looking for that type.
As explained in the link in the upper right of DW pages, it's only about popularity at this site, not world wide as to usage: Pate Hit Ranking.
70 • Lines Of Code (by Pottering on 2025-07-31 16:05:20 GMT from United States)
@68
Systemd lines of code = 1.3 million
Linux Kernel lines of code = 40 MILLION
End of discussion!
71 • Distro Types (by Adrien on 2025-07-31 19:57:59 GMT from United States)
@69, I'm well aware it is just a Page Hit Ranking, it can continue to be that.
But for folks who do not know what the focus or purpose of each distro is, that info is NOT 'evident' just looking at the list. I have to click each one to get a light description, that *maybe* sheds some light on that topic. But DW already has them classified that way in the db. So it would be a matter of separating the big list by that dimension. (or really, reporting that dimension separately, as all distros would be in the list)
The 'type' info is not displayed. That's the problem. Having separate lists by 'type' would highlight those distros that folks might be interested in for those particular reasons.
72 • order in the rank(ing)s (by speckledbeard on 2025-08-01 00:18:23 GMT from New Zealand)
Funny how I was going to come here and rant a little about "certain highly-rated distros" that are fluff, magick, smoke and mirrors - but can't even properly install/function....
...and I see the discussion has already been there. Great minds think alike.
Page hits can be easily crowd-inflated, nothing new to DW. As can the 1-10 ratings be, easily misdirected in both directions. Getting a real feel for what's truly a good distro comes down to reading many sources. One very very good page is the DW page on Major Distros, and the new section for people beginning their Linus journey.
Click-ratings, yeah-nah. I'll pass.
73 • @71rankings (by picamanic on 2025-08-01 08:05:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
There is a more useful ranking of distros here, based on actual Reader Reviews:
https://distrowatch.com/dwres-mobile.php?resource=ranking
This is complicated to navigate to, which is way I give the full URL. It presents a very different top 32 distro list. I am not sure why Jesse has made it so difficult to get at this.
74 • systemD (by rhtoras on 2025-08-01 08:43:51 GMT from Greece)
@70 YES... so everything should be big. SystemD is a large attack surface because linux kernel is biiiiiig. So because linux kernel is big then desktops should be big too. 4 gigs of ram at least on idle should be the proper way to go. You are correct.
Story never ends because linux is in the hands of IBM and Microsoft... i am against!!!
75 • Lines of code (by picamanic on 2025-08-01 09:36:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
@70,@74: not everything is big: the Runit init system is only about 6k lines of C, and not growing [I am writing this from a distro that uses it].
The Linux kernel has grown that big because of support for more and more hardware. The code actually used by a typical desktop is probably sub 1 million lines of C [still a far cry from its early days, 20k lines of C].
In an era when AI is used to write large scale systems software, spotting the errors in codes that are beyond human review will become a problem.
76 • Debates / favorite (by Ken Paul Siegel on 2025-08-01 13:52:01 GMT from United States)
Jesse Smith, thank you for your time. Favorite debate of mine is "downloadable drivers VS. drivers included in Distro ISO". We need the drivers; however, not all of us can successfully install them. Stay safe, Ken Paul Siegel
77 • Beginners guide (by John on 2025-08-01 22:46:26 GMT from Canada)
@Jesse - maybe for the guide - explain disk partitioning, file formats and file system layouts?
Number of Comments: 77
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
DemoLinux
We wanted to make it possible to everybody to look at what Linux can offer, and to make it possible for software publishers wanting to show their Linux-based software to distribute a no hassle hands-off demo CD. But this kind of CD makes also a wonderful Linux-to-go solution: you might carry your favorite desktop configuration in your pocket, sit in front of a non-Linux box, boot from the CD and be in front of your preferred environment in minutes.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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