 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1165, 23 March 2026 |
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Welcome to this year's 12th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Gentoo project is home to a powerful meta-distribution which can be customized in thousands of ways. Gentoo is well known for its flexibility and powerful build system, but not everyone wants to take the time to set up this operating system manually. This week we explore a distribution which is based on Gentoo, but which seeks to make the initial setup much quicker. This distribution, called Argent Linux, is available in desktop and server editions and we share highlights from the project in this week's Feature Story. In our News section this week we discuss members of the Manjaro team going on strike as they seek to separate the business side of Manjaro from the community's development efforts. We also talk about AlmaLinux improving NVIDIA driver support and building packages for RISC-V CPUs. This past week the systemd project introduced an age tracking feature and we touch upon this change below. Our Questions and Answers column this week talks about how much disk space a fresh install of Linux will require and our poll this week asks our readers to weigh in with recommendations for the ideal root filesystem size. Plus, we are pleased to summarize the releases of the past week and share the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Argent Linux 1.5.3
Argent Linux is a Gentoo-based distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop and designed for workstations and servers. The distribution favours the epkg package manager, a wrapper over Gentoo's Portage, specially designed for working with precompiled binaries. Argent Linux maintains a semi-rolling release model, with a stable branch and a development (testing) branch.
I downloaded the project's KDE edition which features the Plasma desktop. This edition is 4.0GB in size. There is a separate Core edition which does not include a desktop environment which is 2.6GB in size.
Argent's live medium boots to the Plasma desktop and launches a welcome window. The welcome window uses Argent's theme (which is gold on black), but identifies the operating system as being Gentoo. The welcome window gives us a quick introduction to Plasma and offers to launch the Discover software centre.
The Plasma desktop is arranged with a panel placed across the bottom of the display. The panel holds the application menu, task switcher, and a system tray. The application menu uses more transparency than I'd like and is arranged in a fairly standard two-pane layout. Most of the icons on the panel are dark yellow and flat, making them seem like background images and the consistent colour makes them indistinct. Just two icons stand out on the panel, the ones for the Discover and Dolphin applications, both of which are blue.
On desktop we find two icons, one is labeled "Ask for help" and the other is called "Install Argent". The "Ask for help" icon launches Firefox and connects us with an IRC channel for chatting and getting help.
Argent Linux 1.5.3 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I found the live desktop to be sluggish to respond. I checked the system monitor and found no processes were misbehaving; nothing was using too much CPU or memory on the system, the desktop was just oddly slow to react to input. The rest of the system seemed to be working normally though and so I launched the system installer.
Installing
Argent makes use of the Calamares system installer. This popular installer walks us through the steps of picking our language, selecting our timezone, and creating a user account. On the first page of the installer there are buttons for getting access to support, reading the project's release notes, and seeing a list of known issues. None of these buttons work.
When we get to the disk partitioning section we can make use of a friendly, point-and-click interface to manually divide up the disk. Alternatively we can use an automated approach which will take over available space on the disk and create one large partition, formatted with the ext4 filesystem. We cannot pick an alternative filesystem to use, but we can select whether to create a swap file, a swap partition, or forgo swap space entirely.
The install process took a little longer than usual, but was finished in under 20 minutes and, at the end, Calamares offered to restart the computer.
First impressions
The newly installed distribution boots to a graphical login screen with a bright blue background. We can sign into our account and run the Plasma desktop in either a Wayland session (which is the default) or X11 session. The first time I signed into my account the welcome window appeared and gave me the tour of Plasma features again.
After that the desktop was quiet (literally and figuratively). There were no indications of package updates or other notifications and audio was muted.
Almost all icons on the system are flat and gold, but a few, such as the Menu Editor, Dolphin, and Discover are more detailed and blue. This makes for a somewhat inconsistent view and the all-gold icons blend together, making it harder to distinguish one from the other. This can be fixed by selecting a different icon set from the settings panel.
Argent Linux 1.5.3 -- Changing the icons
(full image size: 825kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
I found hardware support to be a mixed experience while running Argent. Some features functioned well. For example, my laptop's touchpad was detected and handled taps as clicks and wireless networking worked well. On the other hand, my laptop's display was set to a low brightness level which made it difficult to see anything until I'd used shortcut keys to brighten the screen. (On a positive note, the shortcut keys worked.) The biggest issue though was sound did not work at all and clicking on the mixer widget in the system tray indicated no sound system was detected. This appears to be a hardware issue since audio did work when I was running the distribution in a virtual machine.
Argent Linux 1.5.3 -- Changing desktop settings
(full image size: 845kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Earlier I mentioned the live desktop was sluggish, though without any apparent cause stemming from excessive CPU or memory consumption. Once the distribution was installed I had the same problem. Even when the CPU was nearly idling, Plasma lagged when responding to input. I did some looking into this and discovered two solutions.
Since Argent shipped with both Wayland and X11 sessions I tried them both and soon discovered the desktop lag was only a problem when running the Wayland session. The desktop became visibly more responsive when I switched to the X11 session. This offered me my first solution. The second fix could be unlocked by visiting the Animations section of the System Settings panel. By default animations are set at a medium level between Slow and Instant. Moving the slider most of the way over to Instant had almost no effect on the desktop animations being shown on the screen, but greatly improved how responsive the desktop was to input in the Wayland session.
The Argent distribution was relatively large on disk, taking up 12.5GB of storage space, plus (optionally) additional space for swap. When signed into Plasma I encountered a range of memory usage, depending on which session I was running. When running the Wayland session the distribution consumed 1,300MB (1.3GB) of RAM, but when signed into the X11 session the distribution used 980MB of RAM.
Included software
Despite its large on-disk size, Argent does not ship with a large collection of applications. The Firefox web browser is present along with the Konversation IRC client. Discovering Konversation on the system surprised me as the "Ask for help" icon launches Firefox to connect to a web portal which connects us with an IRC chat room. Running the dedicated IRC client to connect with the IRC channel directly would have been a more elegant solution.
The VLC media player is installed for us and includes codecs for playing audio and video files. Audio failed to play on my laptop, but the media player (and on-line videos) displayed visuals.
There are distro-specific links in the application menu under a category called "Argent" which launch Firefox and connect us with the distribution's documentation, home page, software repositories, and the Gentoo documentation. These links all worked and I appreciate the distro-specific links to resources included right in the menu, saving new users from performing web searches to find help.
The distribution ships with the Dolphin file manager, the KDE System Settings panel, a system monitor, and an archive manager. The KDE Help application is installed and some pages are included, but most links to documents in the Help application display an error message indicating the manual pages are missing. This is an unfortunate oversight as it omits most of the desktop and application documentation from the system.
Argent Linux 1.5.3 -- Browsing the local documentation
(full image size: 663kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The GNU command line tools are installed alongside the GNU Compiler Collection. Manual pages for command line utilities are included too. In the background Argent uses systemd for service management and init functionality while version 6.12 of the Linux kernel supplies hardware support.
When attempting to perform administrative tasks I did not find the sudo or doas tools on the system. To run commands as the root user I had to sign in as root directly or use the su tool to temporarily switch my user to root.
Package management
We have a few options when it comes to managing software packages on the distribution. The most obvious of these is Discover, a graphical software centre. Discover got off to a troubled start, reporting it was unable to load any application data. Discover reported no software was installed and presented no applications for downloading. There is a button to enable Flathub, but when I clicked it nothing happened, apart from the button disappearing. Clicking the software centre's refresh button did nothing. I had to close Discover and relaunch it in order to see available Flatpak packages in the Flathub repository.
Argent Linux 1.5.3 -- Checking for software updates
(full image size: 766kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
At that point I could fetch and install new applications, but I was unable to check for updates. Clicking the button to show updates caused Discover to display an error saying there was a timeout while starting the fwupd service. To fetch Flatpak updates I had to use the command line flatpak utility, which worked well for me.
There was a button for enabling Snap on Discover, on the software centre's Settings page, but clicking it did nothing.
Our remaining option for working with software packages is epkg which works with binary packages built from Gentoo's ports system. The help text for epkg is a bit difficult to parse; it is presented as a pretty solid wall of text with dozens of options. However, the key commands (install, remove, search, and upgrade) are pretty much the same as with other Linux package managers. I had no trouble searching for software, installing new items, updating the software on the system, and removing unwanted components.
Argent Linux 1.5.3 -- Running LibreOffice from a Flatpak bundle
(full image size: 170kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Something I appreciated about epkg was that, when performing package removals, it would tell me what it was about to do and then the package manager would pause for five seconds. This might seem like an inconvenient pause, but it gives the user a brief window in which to recover from a mistake. I think most administrators, eventually, end up hitting Ctrl-C in a panic after an ill-timed typo and epkg takes this into consideration.
The software management on Argent, like most Gentoo-based distributions, is a touch slow compared to other Linux package managers, but it worked well for me and I had no trouble while using epkg.
Conclusions
I've pointed out a number of issues I encountered while using Argent in this review and I feel it only fair to disclose that this version of Argent is labelled as a development release. The ISO is actually labelled with both "beta" and "rc" tags, so it is understandable there are still some problems. I wouldn't want to judge the project too harshly too soon, especially when some of the problems I encountered can be quickly fixed by adjusting Plasma's icon and animation settings.
The problems I had with Discover are a bit more serious, but are common across most builds of the software centre and can be worked around or bypassed entirely by using the operating system's command line tools.
One of the few really problematic issues with Argent was the lack of a working sound system when running the distribution on my laptop. Curiously, sound on Linux has always "just worked" on this laptop for years and it's only been a couple of distributions so far in 2026 that have suddenly had problems producing sound. This is a strange and unwelcome regression that causes me to be curious about what sort of growing pains the Linux audio stack is going through this time.
At the moment Argent is still too early in its development for me to recommend it. It's doing some things well, but there are too many little issues (such as missing documentation, software management issues, hardware compatibility gaps, and inconsistent icons) for me to recommend it. This is a project which, I suspect, in a year, will offer a good entry into the Gentoo family of distributions. At this point though it still has some issues which need to be addressed.
Zooming out
I want to put aside the specifics of my time with Argent to talk about something which crossed my mind a few times this week while using this distribution (and while finishing up my notes from my previous trial).
At this point, I have been running Linux distributions for over 25 years. During the vast majority of that time I have felt it was clear that Linux was evolving and improving. It has typically been safe to say, in my opinion, that the Linux experience (hardware support, desktop options, application capabilities, gaming options, and features) would be better next year than they were last year. With a few minor stumbles here or there, the experience Linux has offered has almost universally improved over time.
There was one exception to this general rule. There was a time, around 2008 to 2010, when several changes were rumbling through the Linux ecosystem. That was the period in which several distributions traded KDE version 3 for version 4, long before it was ready for public use. It was also the period in which PulseAudio was adopted by several distributions, again long before it was ready for the public. While both technologies eventually matured, there were a few years in that era where it was common for people to run into issues with their desktop (if it was in the KDE family) and to not have a working sound system. It was a dark time if you were providing desktop Linux support.
Fortunately, the distributions which had forsaken reason in their rush to adopt half-baked KDE releases and an untested sound system seemed to come to their senses and the migrations to GNOME 3 and systemd tended to go smoothly for most distributions. The community appeared to have learned its lesson and moved on, with evolutionary progress once again becoming the norm.
This year is the only other time, in the past 25 years, that I have felt the Linux ecosystem as a whole is regressing instead of progressing. For the first time in over a decade, I am looking at my recent experiences with Linux distributions and feeling like the experiences are getting worse rather than better.
For the first time in over a decade multiple distributions are failing to even detect my audio hardware. For the first time since about 2011 I'm noticing desktop performance getting worse instead of better (largely due to projects adopting Wayland as the primary display software and some inefficient defaults which often accompany it). This year I'm encountering more issues with package managers than I've seen in quite a while, often due to new, untested software managers being pushed out to users. For the first time in over a dozen years I'm having trouble with resume-from-suspend, thanks to issues I've traced back to systemd.
A year ago, around the time I was reviewing projects such as MX Linux 25 and Linux Mint Debian Edition 7, I would have said Linux was at the top of its game, with hardly an issue in sight. After the past month though, I'm left with the impression there are too many people experimenting with new ideas and features while not enough people are working on quality control and fixing bugs. There are some great advancements and wonderful experiences coming out of the Linux community, I still think many projects (both distributions and upstream software developers) are doing some great work. But there are also cracks in the hull of the Linux ship and problems are leaking in, faster than they are being patched. It is my hope this is addressed before we end up with another Heartbleed-style bug or another farce like the PulseAudio migration.
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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
Argent Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 10/10 from 1 review(s).
Have you used Argent Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and introduces RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking
Several members of the Manjaro community have joined together to propose a change in the way project leadership is handled. The collective members have written a statement expressing dissatisfaction with the direction of the Manjaro project and issues which have not been addressed. "It managed to sustain a sizable user base, yet it stagnated, lost trust, lost almost all of its contributors, and even became a laughingstock for repeatedly making the same mistakes and never even attempting to address these known issues. Known issues - such as, for instance, the TLS certificates not being renewed in time - are simply ignored, despite multiple team members taking the initiative and volunteering, or even building tooling, processes and infrastructure to address these issues." At the time of writing, over a dozen Manjaro contributors have agreed to pause work on and for Manjaro until their concerns are resolved.
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The AlmaLinux project has announced improved support for NVIDIA drivers, making it easier for AlmaLinux OS users to both install NVIDIA drivers and receive support from the company. "Today we are excited to share that with the release of version 13.2, NVIDIA has added official support for enterprise Linux compatible distributions, including AlmaLinux, to CUDA. That means that users of NVIDIA hardware can receive support for NVIDIA drivers and CUDA on AlmaLinux within NVIDIA's supported configurations. We are also excited to be able to ship NVIDIA's CUDA drivers in an official AlmaLinux repository - streamlining updates and uses of NVIDIA for AlmaLinux users worldwide.
NVIDIA has added official support for enterprise Linux compatible distributions, including AlmaLinux, ensuring that our users can get support from NVIDIA when using NVIDIA infrastructure. We also now have an agreement with NVIDIA that allows us to distribute NVIDIA's packages directly from our repositories, rather than users getting the drivers separately from us." Further details on this arrangement are covered in the project's announcement.
The AlmaLinux project has announced support for packages built to run on RISC-V processors. In a blog post the distribution revealed RISC-V packages and Docker support: "AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 is built for the riscv64 architecture targeting the RV64GC profile. Package repositories are publicly available and served by the AlmaLinux Mirror Service as usual, so you can install and update packages with dnf just like on any other supported architecture." At the moment there are no install images for RISC-V boards, but there are plans to offer builds for the StarFive VisionFive 2 and the SiFive HiFive Premier P550 in the future.
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Last week we talked about age verification laws, what they are and the issues surrounding these surveillance efforts. This week a new age tracking feature was added to systemd: "[This change] stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. The xdg-desktop-portal project is adding an age verification portal that needs a data source for the user's age. userdb already stores personal metadata (emailAddress, realName, location) so birthDate is a natural fit." The birthdate field can be set by the administrator only, but can be read by the user and the user's applications.
Update: Following strong feedback from the community, an attempt was made to revert the change. The attempted reversal of the change includes a comment: "Introducing birth date storage or age queries (even local-only) creates a new class of sensitive user data in the OS that didn't exist before. It risks normalizing permission-like checks inside the desktop session and could be extended to far more invasive controls in the future." The reversal was denied by project leader Pottering, who insists the tracking feature will remain.
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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) |
Disk space required by Linux
Allocating-storage asks: How much disk space do I need to run Linux?
How much storage space your Linux system will require depends upon a handful of factors. Some things we will need to take into consideration are:
- Is this a desktop, embedded/mobile, or server distro?
- Is this a full featured or minimal distro?
- How many applications or games will we want to install?
To expand on the above points, a desktop distribution will often use in the range of 6GB to 14GB of disk space, just for the initial installation. That doesn't include swap space, any of our user files, or extra applications we wish to install. On the other hand, a server distribution will likely use less than 5GB of space and mobile distributions typically use 3GB to 5GB of space.
While the above numbers are fairly typical for a mainstream, full featured distribution, there are lighter distributions (both for servers and desktop usage) which will be smaller on the disk. Some minimal Linux distributions can get down to under 1GB in size. If your computer has limited resources, choosing a small distribution can save you as much as 10GB compared to a full featured desktop system.
Lastly, we should take into consideration how many applications, games, or development tools you plan to use. If you're happy with just a few small programs and do most of your work through a web browser, you will not need much extra space, maybe a few gigabytes. However, if you regularly try out multiple office suites, develop software, or run high-end games then you may need dozens to hundreds of additional gigabytes of storage.
Suggesting an operating system may need anywhere between about 1GB and 250GB is not particularly helpful from an advice point of view, so I'm going to try to make this more practical.
Typically when I set up a mainstream, desktop distribution for friends or family, their base system and commonly used applications take up about 12GB of space. This would be applicable when using a fairly mainstream distribution such as Linux Mint or Zorin OS. When I set up my own systems, which tend to have a lighter base, but more applications installed, I typically end up using about 15GB to 20GB of disk space. This covers the operating system and applications, swap space typically takes a few more gigabytes.
In total, for my operating system, I usually end up allocating about 25GB of space. That is enough for my operating system itself, my applications, and swap space, and it leaves me about 5GB of space left over. People who have larger space requirements for more applications might want to make their root partition about 40GB to 50GB, which should be enough for just about any purpose.
I'd like to point out that the above suggestions are just for the root partition itself (where the operating system and most applications are kept). Your personal files (documents, e-mails, photos, music, and videos) will typically be kept on a separate partition called /home. This partition will need to be large enough to hold your personal files. The amount of space required to hold your own files will not change from one operating system to another, so you can check your current system to see how much space your home (or "user") directory is consuming and make sure your new Linux /home partition is larger than that.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Peropesis 3.2
The Peropesis project has published a new release, version 3.2, which introduces a dozen new software packages. "Peropesis 3.2 is released. In the new edition, part of the old software was updated and new software was installed. New software installed: 1. git 2.53.0. Git is version control system, that allows you to keep track of changes to files, especially the code of the projects. 2. Ruby 4.0.1. Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. Ruby arrives with RubyGems, which is a package manager for Ruby. The RubyGems software allows you to easily download, install, and use ruby software packages on your system. The software package is called a 'gem' which contains a packaged Ruby application or library. This is similar to Python's 'pip3' command, which has been built into Peropesis for a long time. 3. LibYAML 0.2.5. LibYAML - A C library for parsing and emitting YAML. 4. Asciidoctor 2.0.26. Asciidoctor is a fast, open source, Ruby-based text processor for parsing AsciiDoc into a document model and converting it to output formats such as HTML 5, DocBook 5, manual pages, PDF, EPUB 3, and other formats...." A complete list of new software and updated packages can be found in the release announcement.
Asahi Linux 43
Asahi Linux is an open-source project that ports Fedora to Apple computers that use Apple's Silicon-powered (AArch64) processors. The project's latest version is Fedora Asahi Remix 43. "We are happy to announce the general availability of Fedora Asahi Remix 43. This release brings Fedora Linux 43 to Apple Silicon Macs. Fedora Asahi Remix offers KDE Plasma 6.6 as our flagship desktop experience. It contains all of the new and exciting features brought by Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 43. It also features a custom Calamares-based initial setup wizard. A GNOME variant is also available, featuring GNOME 49, with both desktop variants matching what Fedora Linux offers. Fedora Asahi Remix also provides a Fedora Server variant for server workloads and other types of headless deployments. Finally, we offer a Minimal image for users that wish to build their own experience from the ground up." Additional information is provided in this release announcement. The project's remix can be installed on Apple hardware by running a script, which can be found on this page.
Parted Magic 2026_03_20
The Parted Magic project has published a new version, 2026_03_20, which introduces new tools. "An all-new Mount GUI and integrated File Manager are directly tied to the Mounter, delivering exceptional stability in live environments - outperforming lightweight alternatives like Thunar that rely on trash directories and udisks. The File Manager was written entirely from scratch and shares no code with existing file managers. The previous save session was unwieldy, blindly copying the entire /home and /etc directories to the flash drive. The new smart detection system saves only the files that have actually changed - including installed packages and objects in /usr. If you delete a file and perform a save, that file will be transparently removed on the next boot. The system also excludes unnecessary paths like /var, /tmp, and other transient system files. A new smart shutdown menu prevents accidental shutdowns and reboots with an optional countdown timer. Additional information is provided on the project's news page.
Emmabuntus DE6-1.01
The Emmabuntüs project has published an update to its Debian Edition 6 branch, which is based on Debian 13 "Trixie". The new release splits the distribution into two editions: Core and Full. "The Emmabuntüs Collective is pleased to announce the release, on March 20, 2026, of the update to Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 6 1.01 64-bit, based on Debian 13.4 'Trixie' and featuring the Xfce/LXQt desktop environments. This new evolution of our distribution now comes in two versions: a Core version, which includes the essential components of Emmabuntüs for personal use, and the previous version, which is now renamed Full version. This choice aims to offer a lighter and more modular version, intended for users who do not wish to install, for example, the educational software or accessibility features that were included by default in previous versions. When using the Core version, thanks to a new dedicated interface, users will be able to select and install the software available in the Full version that they wish to add to their own system." The project's release announcement offers additional details and screenshots.
antiX 26
The antiX project has published a new stable release, version 26, which offers five init implementation options and several window managers. "antiX-26 (Stephen Kapos) is a new release based on Debian trixie that includes 5 init systems. (runit, SysV init, dinit, s6-rc and s6-66). Default init is runit. We continue using window managers and the following are included. IceWM (default), Fluxbox, JWM and the tiling window manager - Herbstluftwm. There are 2 flavours - Full (2GB) and Core (660MB) for 64-bit and 32-bit arch. ProwlerGR deserves all the credit for integrating the various inits onto antiX as well as implementing the experimental turnstile. What's included on antiX-26-full: Based on Debian 13 (Trixie), but without systemd/libsystemd0 nor elogind/libelogind0; eudev instead of udev; Customised 5.10.240 kernel; Customised 6.6.119 kernel (x64 full only)...." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
antiX 26 -- Running the IceWM interface
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Exton Linux 260322 "ExLight"
Arne Exton has announced the release of an updated build in the "ExLight" branch of Exton Linux. Based on Debian 13, it features the Enlightenment 0.27.1 window manager: "I've made a new version of ExLight with the Enlightenment 0.27.1 desktop environment, Refracta Snapshot (to create your own Debian 'Trixie' system) and Calamares 3.3.14 installer framework. ExLight build 260322 uses Linux kernel 6.19.8 built from Debian kernel sources with Debian patches. What's new in ExLight build 260322? ExLight is now based on Debian 13.4 'Trixie'; I have upgraded the Enlightenment desktop environment ('Beauty at your fingertips') to version 0.27.1, which is the stable version of Enlightenment; I have replaced kernel 6.14 with kernel 6.19.8; ExLight's ISO file is now a ISO-hybrid image, which means that it can very easily be transferred to a USB pen drive, you can then even run ExLight from the USB stick and save all your system changes on the stick, i.e. you will enjoy persistence; another big improvement is that ExLight can run from RAM - use boot alternative 2 (load to RAM) and when the system has booted up you can remove the disc or the USB stick...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
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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: 3,409
- Total data uploaded: 49.6TB
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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) |
How big is your root partition?
In this week's Questions and Answers section we talked about disk space requirements for Linux. There are many different flavours of Linux and each will have different minimum requirements. Most of the time we can estimate how much disk space a distribution will consume if we know approximately what we plan to do with the operating system in terms of desktops, applications, and development tools. This week we would like to hear from our readers: how much disk space do you need for your root partition? Let us know how large your root filesystem is as a guide to help newcomers estimate their own storage requirements.
You can see the results of our previous poll on favourite parent distributions in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How large is your root filesystem?
| Less than 1GB: | 51 (3%) |
| 1-10GB: | 140 (9%) |
| 11-25GB: | 235 (16%) |
| 26-50GB: | 373 (25%) |
| Larger than 50GB: | 694 (46%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 30 March 2026. 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1168 (2026-04-13): pearOS 2026.03, EndeavourOS 2026.03.06, which distros are adopting age verification, Arch adjusts its firewall packages, Linux dropping i486 support, Red Hat extends its release cycle, Debian's APT introduces rollbacks, Redox improves its scheduler |
| • Issue 1167 (2026-04-06): Origami Linux 2026.03, answering questions for Linux newcomers, Ubuntu MATE seeking new contributors, Ubuntu software centre is expanding Deb support, FreeBSD fixes forum exploit, openSUSE 15 Leap nears its end of life |
| • Issue 1166 (2026-03-30): NetBSD jails, publishing software for Linux, Ubuntu joins Rust Foundation, Canonical plans to trim GRUB features, Peppermint works on new utilities, PINE64 shows off open hardware capabilities |
| • Issue 1165 (2026-03-23): Argent Linux 1.5.3, disk space required by Linux, Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and builds RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking |
| • Issue 1164 (2026-03-16): d77void, age verification laws and Linux, SUSE may be for sale, TrueNAS takes its build system private, Debian publishes updated Trixie media, MidnightBSD and System76 respond to age verification laws |
| • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • 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 | 
Fermi Linux
Fermi Linux LTS (Long-Term Support) was a distribution based on Scientific Linux, which was in essence Red Hat Enterprise Linux, recompiled. It was Scientific Linux with Fermilab's security hardening and customised configurations to allow an administrator to install Fermi Linux and have the machine meet Fermilab's security requirements with little or no extra configuration. Since Fermi Linux LTS was based on Scientific Linux, it shares it's goal that if a program runs and was certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, then it will run on the corresponding Fermi Linux LTS release. Fermi Linux has since merged with the Scientific Linux project, becoming a special edition or add-on to Scientific Linux.
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!
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| 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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