 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1175, 1 June 2026 |
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Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
This week we are thrilled to present you with a special milestone edition of DistroWatch Weekly. As I write this, DistroWatch is celebrating its 25th anniversary! Not many websites get to survive for a quarter of a century and we're thrilled our readers continue to come along for the experience. Later in this Weekly we share some thoughts on our publication turning 25 years old and provide some statistics about our little corner of the Internet.
Last week we answered a question about running Linux on tablets and why relatively few open source projects focus on developing for tablets. This week we begin with a look at an exception, the PineTab2. The PineTab2 is an open hardware tablet which is sold by PINE64 and can run ten different Linux distributions. We share details on the PineTab2 and two of its supported operating systems in our Feature Story. Which of the ten PineTab2 operating systems looks most appealing to you? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. Recently we have been seeing more organizations in Europe adopting Linux and Valve's survey numbers suggest there are more Linux gamers than ever before. In our Questions and Answers column Jesse Smith shares tips and wisdom for people new to the Linux community. Do you have any tips for newcomers? Please, share your hard-won knowledge in the comments! Last week Canonical announced it will be retiring a service used by Ubuntu users to post information and troubleshoot problems and we provide details in the News section. We also share upcoming features being developed by Murena as the organization nears 100,000 active users. Then we are pleased to provide details on last week's releases and list the torrent we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: The PineTab2 with various operating systems
- News: Canonical is shutting down Ubuntu's Pastebin, Murena nears 100k users
- Questions and answers: Less commonly shared pieces of advice
- Released last week: Rhino Linux 2026.1, MX Linux 25.2, AlmaLinux 10.2 and 9.8, IPFire 2.29 Core 202, OviOS Linux 6, Rocky Linux 9.8, Gnoppix Linux 26_6, Ubuntu Sway Remix 26.04, NixOS 26.05
- Torrent corner: IPFire, Linux Lite, MX Linux, Rocky Linux
- Opinion poll: Which of the PineTab2 operating systems do you think looks the most promising?
- Site news: DistroWatch turns 25!
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
The PineTab2 with various operating systems
I recently talked about why it is not common to find GNU/Linux distributions running on tablets. This week I decided to run a few distributions on a tablet and report on what the experience has to offer.
The PineTab2 is an open hardware tablet sold by PINE64. The device does not have an official operating system of its own, but the tablet's open nature means it is (relatively) straightforward for developers to port operating systems to the device. At the time of writing, the PineTab2 has ten Linux distributions listed in its wiki which reportedly work on the tablet, to some degree. Some of these distributions require assembling a disk image or workarounds to get running while others provide ready-to-use images which can be transferred to a microSD card and booted immediately.
The PineTab is available in three flavours. All three of the PineTab models ship with a 10.1-inch screen and a detachable, backlit keyboard. Two versions of the PineTab ship with ARM processors (with various amounts of memory and storage to distinguish the two builds) while the third PineTab model offers a RISC-V processor.
The model I purchased, second hand, featured 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space. About 9GB of the storage space was consumed by the default operating system. The unit holds 64-bit ARM processors with a maximum speed of 1.8GHz. The tablet arrived with its detachable keyboard folded over itself, doubling as a carrying case. The left side of the tablet features two USB-C ports, a microSD card slot, and what appears to be a micro-USB port. There is a power button and a pair of volume controls on the left side too. There are speakers and a headphone jack along the top edge.
When I received it, the tablet was running a custom Arch Linux build running the Plasma desktop, with X11 and Wayland session options. The seller kindly included a note with the default login credentials which use the account name "alarm" and the password "123456".
The tablet booted to a graphical login screen. From there I could sign into the default account and explore the Plasma desktop. For some reason, the developers decided to ship the traditional KDE Plasma desktop with a classic mouse-and-keyboard interface, not the Plasma Mobile desktop which is usually used for phones and tablets. Sadly, Plasma Mobile is not one of the session options. When signed into the Plasma session the system consumes about 1GB of memory. Since the tablet has 8GB of RAM this leaves us with a lot of wiggle room. We will probably not require the compressed RAM (zRAM) virtual swap space which is set up for us automatically.
When running the X11 session, the user interface acts as though it is running on a laptop which happens to have a touch screen. In other words, the interface behaves like a typical keyboard-and-mouse interface, but we can tap the screen to trigger clicks near where our finger pressed the screen. When running the Wayland session, the experience was similar, but whenever I tapped on an application window in the Wayland session which expected keyboard input a virtual keyboard would fill the bottom half of the display. I also noticed that the X11 session displayed a mouse pointer on the screen and we can drag it around with a fingertip. When running the Wayland session there is no visible mouse pointer and no launch feedback, making it difficult to tell if an icon had been tapped or if I'd merely tapped near an icon.
Arch Linux on the PineTab2 -- The KDE System Settings panel
(full image size: 276kB, resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
I found that the Plasma desktop (both sessions of it) did not recognize the touchpad built into the detachable keyboard. The keys worked and responded well, and had a nice, soft feel to them, but the touchpad didn't work. Once I found the keyboard, with its soft backlit keys, worked well I went into Plasma's System Settings panel and disabled the on-screen keyboard. This virtual keyboard can be re-enabled using just a few taps on the screen, so we do not risk losing the ability to type if the physical keyboard is detached.
The Plasma desktop, running in either session, is a bit on the sluggish side. It takes a moment or two for the interface to respond to taps, to open menus, or to launch a program. Most of the time the interface is usable, we can open programs and type or interact with applications, but there are delays and the inaccuracy with the touch-to-mouse-position translation makes any work that requires precise mouse moment difficult. This would probably not be an issue if the detachable touchpad worked, but we're left to the mercy of the touch screen interface. What I found curious about this is it seems the touchpad is detected, it shows up in the System Settings as being enabled, but the touchpad doesn't respond to touch or clicks.
Speaking of the screen, by default the brightness is set to a pleasant 50%. The screen can dim to a medium darkness, but it can also get eye-scorchingly bright at 100%. The medium default seems like a good choice in this case. The screen goes to sleep fairly quickly, after about two minutes, and this delay can be adjusted in the settings panel.
For the most part, the Arch-based distribution provides a standard KDE Plasma experience. The applications are almost all geared toward typical desktop use. The one exception I found was the Angelfish browser. Angelfish has a fairly sparse user interface and relatively light resource usage, making it the browser of choice for Plasma-based, mobile environments. The browser works fairly well - functional, but not fast. I had no trouble visiting most websites, but the tablet was not up to playing YouTube videos smoothly. Videos would play, but stutter, which I suspect is a result of the default video drivers.
Arch Linux on the PineTab2 -- The angelfish web browser
(full image size: 120kB, resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
I found the Arch-based distribution worked properly when entering sleep mode and waking. This experience was smooth and automatically locked the desktop environment. Volume buttons worked as expected and the power button brings up the logout/shutdown/sleep menu on the screen. Battery life seems to be pretty good. I wasn't expecting much since my PinePhone typically only gets a few hours of operation at a time before it needs to be recharged. With light, but ongoing usage, the PineTab's battery monitor estimates about 6.5 hours to 7.0 hours of life when running Plasma.
I was surprised to discover the distribution does not ship with any camera application or video recorder. I installed a webcam utility, but it was not able to detect the PineTab's camera. There are some multimedia applications included on the system, such as VLC, Elisa for music playing, and mpv. I attempted playing a few media files. Audio worked, though the built-in speaker does not provide a great audio experience. Playing video files also worked and the local videos played smoothly - a pleasant contrast to the choppy experience I had when streaming YouTube videos.
When new software updates become available an icon appears in the system tray and tapping this icon opens the Discover software centre. Discover is able to fetch and apply updates from the ARM spin for Arch Linux and from the Flathub repository for Flatpak packages. However, we are warned by the software centre that working with native Arch packages is not supported.
Arch Linux on the PineTab2 -- Fetching an application with Discover
(full image size: 221kB, resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
Command line tools and a terminal are available on the system, however manual pages are not included. The kernel version (6.9) which comes with the default image is getting old, though version 6.19 is available as an update. The age of the default operating system on the PineTab does make me a bit uneasy. Not because the software is out of date, but because Arch is a rolling release distribution and it appears the software is at least two years old, at the time of writing. Doing a version jump for every component on an Arch-based system that spans two years is not recommended. Performing a complete update was something I put off during most of my trial to avoid breaking the system before I had finished exploring its features.
On the whole, the experience with the default, Arch-based operating system was not bad. Most features worked, there were lots of packages available, and the KDE desktop is flexible. Sometimes it is flexible in weird ways though. For example, as long as the tablet was plugged into the detachable keyboard, the Plasma desktop was displayed properly in landscape mode and would not rotate. When the keyboard was detached the Plasma desktop would rotate its orientation. However, the orientation was always wrong, off by 90 degrees. When the tablet was in landscape orientation, the desktop was displayed in portrait mode; when the tablet was in portrait orientation then the desktop was displayed in landscape mode. This made it impractical to try to use Plasma without the keyboard attached. There is a way to override the orientation in the System Settings panel, but it means we need to open the panel and manually change the screen rotation any time we want to turn the screen.
These problems, combined with the lag in responsiveness and the lack of working touchpad, were regular stumbling blocks in the path of a good experience. I decided to switch to another distribution which is primarily geared to work on mobile devices and see how that experience would compare.
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Since UBports is probably the open source mobile operating system I have the most experience using, I decided to take a look at their build for the PineTab2. The project's documentation says the camera and brightness detection do not work, but most other features are listed as being supported. The most recent build for the PineTab is version 20.04 of the Ubuntu-based distribution; there is no build currently for the newer 24.04 release from UBports.
I downloaded the 20.04 build which was 1.6GB in size, when compressed, and the archive unpacked to 5.6GB. I then transferred the image to a microSD card. The PineTab will try to boot from the microSD card if it finds a bootable operating system, otherwise it will boot from the internal storage.
When the operating system launched it brought up a first-run wizard. It began by asking for our language and keyboard layout. I soon found the touch screen was handled well and my detachable keyboard was used properly. The first-run wizard reported it was unable to detect any wireless networks, though the Arch-based system had detected several in the area. The wizard then had me select my timezone and I was asked to create a password or passcode for myself.
The Lomiri desktop was responsive and the icons were pleasantly large, and well positioned. Apps were a little sluggish to load from the microSD card, as expected, but once opened they performed well.
UBports 20.04 -- Exploring the Lomiri application menu
(full image size: 250kB, resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
Once I explored the Lomiri desktop a bit, with its panel placed down the left side of the screen, and reacquainted myself with the swipe gestures which the interfaces uses for navigation, I set about trying to find out why I didn't have a wi-fi connection. I confirmed that UBports was not only not detecting any networks, my wireless card (which had worked with Arch) was not showing up in the list of possible network interfaces. I found a forum post which reported the same issue and recommended running the command "sudo systemctl start pinetab2-wifi-enable". Opening a terminal, running that command, and then restarting the tablet worked to enable my wireless card and I was able to connect to local networks.
The tablet's camera did not work, as it had not with the Arch-based system. In fact, the camera didn't work at any point in my experiment.
When the UBports terminal app was open it spawned the "~" character to the terminal window constantly. I couldn't find a way to stop it. What was especially strange about this was the same didn't happen in other applications. For example, if I opened the UBports note taking application, it worked normally with no extra characters appearing. The "~" character was only spammed to the terminal application.
The fix for this problem was to unplug the detachable keyboard. Once it was unplugged all applications handled text input without any issues. Disconnecting the physical keyboard also switched Lomiri from desktop mode to mobile mode. In a practical sense this means icons on the desktop panel are bottom-aligned (near the user's thumb) rather than top-aligned (near the status bar). It also means applications open in full screen mode rather than in smaller windows. The first time we enter mobile mode Lomiri launches a quick tutorial to explain how to navigate the interface using swipe gestures.
I was gratified to discover when running UBports the Lomiri interface handled rotation properly. The desktop would orient itself to match the position of the tablet, unlike Plasma which was always 90 degrees off its proper layout.
UBports 20.04 -- The settings panel
(full image size: 72kB, resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
I enjoy the Lomiri settings panel. It is nicely organized, uncluttered, and easy to navigate. In fact, the entire desktop has an unusually consistent and efficient approach which I miss when using other mobile interfaces.
I found the UBports system seemed to have equal or slightly better battery life compared to the Arch-based system. The battery consumption while I was performing light tasks gave it a capacity in the 7 to 8 hour range.
While I was running the modern version of Ubuntu Touch I could not get sound working, either through the tablet's internal speakers or through the headphone jack. The UBports website indicates audio should work, but no audio is produced when playing audio or video files. A few users on the UBports forum mentioned needing to use the alsamixer command line program to un-mute audio output. I checked and all devices were enabled and the volume controls were turned up to 50% or higher. With the volume turned up to its highest level and with default output switched from HP (headphones) to Int (internal) I managed to produce a faint static from the speaker, but nothing resembling the music I was trying to play.
After using UBports for a few hours and rebooting a couple of times, the operating system would no longer boot. It locked up while starting services, before getting to a splash screen. I tried restarting a few times, and the system kept locking up right after starting the power management daemon. I tried with and without the keyboard plugged in, with and without AC power connected - all boot attempts failed. This was strange as it occurred without me installing new apps or updates to the OS. It could be something changed in the operating system or it could be the microSD card was starting to fail. At any rate, the point may be somewhat moot. UBports no longer supports the PineTab2 (version 20.04 provided PineTab image, but 24.04 does not), so the PineTab2 is already past its end-of-life with the mobile operating system.
* * * * *
Since I still had the ARM build of Arch Linux on my tablet's internal drive, I decided to try an experiment and see what would happen if I attempted to update the operating system's packages. There were about two years worth of updates waiting and I did not expect the experience to be smooth, but I thought there was a chance I might come out the other side with a functioning operating system.
The Discover software centre, when asked to fetch the waiting 1.2GB of package archives, immediately refused, reporting unknown errors. I switched to the command line and attempted the update using pacman. The pacman tool requested permission to install packages that featured name changes - there were half a dozen of these and each package had its own prompt.
The pacman tool then refused to proceed because the freerdp2 package would break a dependency. I tried to remove freerdp2, but pacman refused to do this too as it wold also break the krdp package. I was dipping my toes into dependency hell. I followed the trail of breadcrumbs and removed krdp which freed up pacman to remove freerdp2. Then the package manager was willing to attempt the upgrade and began fetching 1,015 packages. Once it reached 800 packages, pacman quit, reporting one package was downloading too slowly. I started over and this time all of the packages were fetched, but pacman aborted again, this time reporting there was a conflict with the NVIDIA firmware package. This is an interesting situation because there was no specific NVIDIA firmware package on my tablet, but there were firmware files from NVIDIA in the filesystem. I think (though did not confirm) this was a result of the Linux firmware package being split from one giant bundle into smaller, vendor-specific firmware packages. At any rate, I removed the conflicting files on my system, since they didn't appear to be in use, and retried the update.
Eventually, pacman finished downloading all 1,015 files, verifying them, and unpacking them. The newer packages consumed a whole extra gigabyte of disk space, on top of the 1.2GB required for the cached package files. I restarted the tablet and Arch failed to boot. More specifically, the boot loader reported it was unable to find a storage device with a bootable operating system. I tried booting the tablet again with the same effect. I detached the physical keyboard from the tablet and restarted the device. This time Arch booted and presented me with a graphical login screen.
At this point I ran into another weird hurdle. I couldn't boot the tablet while the keyboard was plugged in, but the login screen didn't have a virtual keyboard anymore, there were no accessibility options on the newly updated login page. This meant I had to unplug the keyboard to boot the tablet, but then plug it in again in order to sign into my account. Once signed in, I discovered Arch had forgotten my wi-fi password during the update process.
I was quickly discovering it was possible to apply two years of updates to Arch, but there were a lot of bumps in the road as a result.
I found the updated Plasma interface still could not handle screen rotation properly, it also could no longer access buttons at bottom of the screen when in landscape mode. I could tap icons on the panel if screen was turned into a portrait position, even if desktop is still locked in landscape orientation, but anything near the bottom of the screen did not respond to taps. I fixed this by moving the panel to the top of the display where it responded without any issues.
After the update, performance seemed to be a little better than it was before the update, and the battery monitor widget suggested I probably had an extra half hour of battery life following the massive update.
Another problem I ran into post-update was the lock screen had no virtual keyboard and, even with my physical keyboard plugged in, the lock screen refused to check my password. In other words, I could type my password on the keyboard and have it appear in the password box on the screen, but pressing Enter or tapping the button to proceed had no effect. I had to disable screen locking when the tablet went into sleep mode to avoid requiring a restart. In fact, even after I made sure there were two virtual keyboards installed which would work for text input when I was signed in, I was unable to get a virtual keyboard to appear on the login screen or the lock screen. I got around the latter by enabling automatic logins for my account, which caused the operating system to act more like iOS and Android systems, automatically signing in the user at boot time.
Phosh
Since I was not having much luck with Plasma, with its login problems, rotation issues, and buttons which were set up for keyboard & mouse use rather than a touch display, I wanted to try an interface which was geared to touch. I decided to try Phosh, which has been one of my favourite convergence-enabled interfaces in recent years. The default repositories had Posh packages and I installed them without any issues. From then on I could select Phosh as a session option from the login screen (once I had disabled auto-login and plugged in a keyboard).
As with the Plasma session, audio worked from within Phosh and, like Plasma, its screen rotation was always off by 90 degrees. I tried changing the rotation settings in the Phosh control panel (as well as in the Plasma System Settings panel) and the orientation detection was always incorrect. This doesn't seem to be a hardware problem since UBports handled screen rotation properly.
Arch Linux on the PineTab2 -- The Phosh launch screen
(full image size: 187kB, resolution: 800x1280 pixels)
For the most part, Phosh worked well. Apart from the screen rotation problem, the desktop interface crashed once, but otherwise Posh proved to be fairly useful. It has a clean home screen, the controls are set up to be touch-friendly, and I found Phosh to be responsive. The one problem I had with Phosh was I couldn't logout once I had signed into the session. I could shutdown the tablet, but not logout.
Where did I finish?
Eventually I realized I was going to need to pick a task or a direction for the tablet as I was running short on time. What was I going to do with it? This is something I always struggle with when it comes to tablets. They're too small and the keyboard too flimsy to be a decent laptop substitute, they're too large to slip into a pocket like a smartphone, and they're a bit under powered to replace a docked laptop. It's rare I run into a situation where the size, weight, and capabilities of a tablet make sense as the devices fit into an awkward middle ground between laptops and phones. One of the few exceptions is a scenario where a notepad or clipboard would typically be used. Waiters, for example, often use tablets where I live. For better or worse, I'm not a waiter, so I kept brainstorming.
In the case of the PineTab, my possible options were further narrowed because of the software limitations. Whatever I did with the device would require that I didn't need to have a keyboard attached full time and didn't need to change its orientation frequently.
Arch Linux on the PineTab2 -- The Phosh settings panel
(full image size: 49kB, resolution: 800x1280 pixels)
Eventually, I settled on a series of adjustments and compromises. I set up the tablet to boot into the Arch-based distribution and automatically login to the Phosh interface. Phosh locks automatically once the session loads, which means the user needs to put in their password to use the device. However, and this is key, while the Plasma login (and lock) screens didn't work without a keyboard attached, Phosh's lock screen did. This meant the tablet would boot, launch a Phosh session, and then prompt for my passcode, which I could type on Phosh's lock screen.
Phosh also has quick-settings buttons in the settings bar at the top of the screen which makes it easy to toggle screen rotation on/off. Even though the distribution always got screen orientation wrong, I could tap the button to unlock rotation, get the screen into the orientation I wanted, then lock it again with just a tap on the screen. Then I enabled a OpenSSH server so I could transfer files to the tablet and installed the Calibre e-book manager.
At that point I had a tablet which could be used without any attachments and to which I could transfer video files and DRM-free e-books over the network. With the screen brightness turned down, the PineTab makes a pretty good e-reader with over seven hours of battery life - enough to get me through about a week of reading in the evenings.
Arch Linux on the PineTab2 -- Running the Calibre e-book manager
(full image size: 238kB, resolution: 800x1280 pixels)
Conclusions
When it comes to evaluating the experiences the PineTab2 can provide I feel it important to separate the capabilities of the hardware from the software. The PineTab2 hardware, while affordable in cost and somewhat modest in capabilities compared to a new laptop, is pretty good. It's not high end or flashy, but the PineTab2 hardware is certainly capable. It has a fairly quick processor for a mobile device, lots of cores, plenty of memory for most tasks on a Linux distribution, and enough hard drive space to store plenty of songs and videos for a long journey. When running an agreeable user interface, the hardware is certainly able to play videos, edit documents, check e-mail, and otherwise provide a no-frills desktop experience.
The one weak point in the hardware appears to be the camera. As far as I can tell, none of the Linux distributions which run on the PineTab2 have the proper drivers to work with the camera. This means the PineTab can consume media, but it's not a good video conferencing tool.
The software side of the experience was less appealing. It looks as though ten distributions have been ported to the PineTab2, but a few have already abandoned their efforts. The are no recent builds of about half of the distributions listed in the PINE64 wiki and some of the ones which are available don't have much in the way of documentation or mobile-friendly interfaces to offer. This leaves users with few appealing options.
I tried two distributions and three user interfaces during my long weekend with the PineTab2 and each of them had serious problems. Lomiri was easily the best user interface - it was fast and capable and it offered convergence. However, UBports didn't produce sound and it isn't supported any longer. I also had strange behaviour when trying to run the terminal application with the keyboard attached.
Arch running Plasma was not a good experience, for several reasons. Discover doesn't work with the ARM-Arch repository, the virtual keyboards don't work on the login/lock screens, and rotation orientation was broken. Plasma also isn't a good match for a touch interface as the elements are too close together and some programs, such as Dolphin, don't work smoothly with touch.
Arch running the Phosh interface was promising. I had sound, I had a working terminal, the keyboard worked properly, and I had sound. Performance was better under Phosh than with Plasma and the settings panel easier to navigate. The screen rotation problem persisted though and I still had the problem of not being able to login without a keyboard plugged into the system until I enabled auto-login.
There are not a lot of people in the Linux community working on mobile devices and fewer are working on open hardware tablets. It's a small community without much (if any) financial incentive. As a result, it feels as though the Linux community doesn't have a solid offering for the PineTab2. This is a shame, because it's a pretty good device, in terms of hardware and capacity to run software. However, at this time, it looks like support and interest around the PineTab are shrinking rather than growing, and the software experience is lacking in polish.
It is possible to do good and useful things with a PineTab, but it takes work, it takes tinkering, and it requires some compromises. I'm hoping the projects which run (or have run) on the PineTab will renew their efforts to provide a more polished experience because the hardware is fairly good, it just needs support from distributions to shine.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Canonical is shutting down Ubuntu's Pastebin, Murena nears 100k users
Canonical, the company which develops Ubuntu, has announced they will be shutting down the company's Pastebin instance. Pastebin is a tool for sharing information between users, often in the form of text which shows log and diagnostic data. "The Canonical IS team will be decommissioning Ubuntu Pastebin, as part of a comprehensive infrastructure modernization and migration project. Service Overview: Ubuntu Pastebin has historically provided a space for short-term exchange of pasted information between parties. Required Action: If you are linking any content found on the Ubuntu Pastebin, you will need to update the URL as it will be no longer accessible past the decommission date. Decommission Timing: The Ubuntu Pastebin server will be shutdown at the end of May 2026." Following the announcement several Ubuntu users have pointed out a week's notice is not a lot of time to transition from one service to another. It has also been noted that some Ubuntu packages link to Canonical's Pastebin instance automatically and the change will break functionality of Ubuntu packages unless some form of redirect is put into place.
* * * * *
Gaël Duval, the founder of the Murena project, has shared a blog post noting some important milestones for the project and its /e/OS operating system. Murena supplies a de-Googled version of Android with open source alternatives to proprietary applications and includes its own cloud services. According to Duval, Murena currently has over 90,000 active users and the organization has reached a point where, financially, it is self-supporting. The blog post goes on to share plans for new features: "We are going to launch /e/OS and Murena Workspace V4 with quite a number of interesting and long-awaited features. Beyond improved app compatibility (in particular for /e/OS Official), one of the new things will be a backup feature that will allow /e/OS users to reinstall a new device from an existing backup. This is very useful if your device is lost or stolen, but also when you want to use a newer device (which normally shouldn't happen too often, since we're supporting a lot increased longevity of devices with /e/OS)."
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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) |
Less commonly shared pieces of advice
Seeking-wisdom asks: Any advice to share with new Linux users? With France adopting Linux and Valve's usage numbers at their all time high, what are some tips not in most of the beginner guides?
DistroWatch answers: I think most guides will probably offer good, short-term practical tips, so if we're going to go for something less commonly shared then I think looking at some big-picture concepts might be worthwhile. I will try not to repeat my earlier advice for newcomers too much.
Ignore pointless elitism. For most of the first 15 or 20 years of the existence of Linux, distributions strove to make better, easier, and more convenient system installers. At the time, virtually no computers could be purchased with Linux pre-installed and therefore the barrier to installing distributions needed to be low. Typing commands gave way to text-based menus which were supplanted by graphical installers and then graphical installers which were mostly automated. Most distributions began offering live desktop environments, enabling users to test their hardware before committing to an installation, which was a huge time saver. In the span of ten years installing Linux went from a multi-hour process involving typing, manual disk partitioning, and swapping floppy disks to a process that just required the user to click "Next" a few times and make up a password for their account.
We had come a long way.
Almost as soon as installing Linux became easy there appeared a vocal minority which claimed to prefer doing things the hard way, who saw manually typing commands, and hand-picking drivers as virtues. They confuse, either accidentally or intentionally, the manual effort required to install some distributions with expertise or with distribution capabilities.
The result has been that, for the past decade, I've regularly been asked (or read forum threads) which essentially said that someone was new to Linux and had selected Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or Fedora as their first distribution, only to be told by friends or peers that those are "newbie" distributions and they should graduate to more "advanced" distributions.
The truth is that distributions which require more knowledge and effort to install are no more capable or powerful than other distributions. The tasks you can perform, almost all the software you can run, and the hardware which is supported is the same whether you are running Gentoo, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or openSUSE. The difference between an "advanced" distribution and a "beginner" distribution is the amount of manual effort required to install and maintain the operating system. That is it. There are no special abilities or functions which you can get from running a distribution which is harder to set up than you can get from a beginner distro. When you install Gentoo it does not magically unlock new content the way a video game would.
I will say, in defence of "hard" distributions, that distributions which require more effort to install often start out with fewer software packages. This means we start out with just a foundation and we can add only the software we want. So-called "expert" distributions can be appealing for this reason. However, there is a trade-off, which is that it takes longer to install all the applications, desktop components, and games we might want after the initial installation. On the other hand, if we install a beginner-friendly distribution we can strip it down and make it lighter and the process (of removing a few items from a beginner-friendly distro) will probably take less time than adding the software we want to a minimal, "expert" distro.
In short, there is really no practical benefit to installing a distribution which is not beginner friendly. It can be an educational exercise, but the end result - the system you end up using - is the same whether you install it by clicking "Next" a few times in a graphical interface or if you installed it by copying and pasting commands from a wiki for half an hour.
In short, ignore people who claim their distribution is more advanced or special because it doesn't make things easy. Pick the distribution which suits your goals and, if needed, make adjustments to it to fit your needs. It will be less effort for you than installing a distribution from scratch that requires manual work and doesn't include a live desktop demo.
Run software suited to your hardware, not the other way around. This may seem a bit abstract at first, but it can prove to be quite useful. I'd like to demonstrate what I mean by way of two examples.
First, consider a person who decides they want to run a "gaming" operating system, with a full featured desktop. They want to install Flatpak bundles and run lots of widgets. In order to do this, they purchase a solid workstation machine with 16 CPU cores, 32GB of memory, a 4TB hard drive, and a solid video card. They've spent a few thousand dollars to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Next, consider a person who decides to get a second-hand laptop with a dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM for $400 and, after a little research, figure that a medium-weight desktop running an efficient distribution (such as Debian or Void) will cover all of their basic needs. It isn't fancy, it doesn't look impressive, but they can accomplish everything they need with this machine.
In the end, both people in these examples are, for most practical purposes, accomplishing the same thing. Both have working desktop machines which will accomplish most of the same tasks. One is probably going to run a little faster than the other, but otherwise they will be mostly the same in terms of what they accomplish. In practical terms, the main difference is one approach cost about five times more than the other.
I mention this because I often see newcomers posting in Linux forums saying things like
"I have a machine that only has 16GB of RAM and a 2TB hard drive and a mid-level NVIDIA graphics card, will that be enough to run Linux?" Not only will that be enough machine to run Linux, but you could probably run two or three desktop Linux distributions in parallel using virtual machines if you wanted.
I think that, in the commercial operating system community, there is still an idea that people need to constantly upgrade, need to be regularly buying new hardware.
With Linux it is pretty easy to run even the hungriest distributions on mid-level hardware and, with a little careful software selection, most Linux distributions can be made to run on
low-level hardware.
Being deliberate with your software selection (choosing to use, for example, Xfce instead of GNOME
or Dillo instead of Chromium) can squeeze a lot of
performance out of even modest hardware.
As an example of this in practice, I'm writing this article on a four year old, $150
PinePhone while it processes a backup job and the system is running smoothly. In the office I have a dual-core CPU machine running FreeBSD with 4GB of RAM which is acting as a web server, torrent seedbox for open source ISO files, development tools for porting software, an e-mail server, and a Nextcloud host. It still has 1GB of free memory and its processors are mostly idle. When working with Linux, or the BSDs, a person really does not need high-end equipment to accomplish most tasks.
I'd like to point out too that being intentional with your software choices is not limited to the realm of computing performance. We benefit a lot, in the long-run, by making smart choices in terms of which services we use and whether the software we run uses open standards.
As an example, one of the biggest concerns I hear from gamers who are considering moving to Linux is whether Linux can run games with kernel-level anti-cheat features. I always find this strange because it indicates they are comfortable installing a kernel-level trojan horse on their computer. Regardless of which operating system a person is running, this is a poor approach to security and it always amazes me how many people are willing to let gaming companies install black boxes at kernel level on their machines.
There are thousands of games in the world, most of them do not require kernel-level hacks to work and many of them are open source. There is no need to limit ourselves to games produced by companies with bad engineering practices.
In a similar vein, whenever the subject of running GNU/Linux distributions on a smartphone comes up, someone always asks if Linux will run some platform dependent piece of software that requires a locked operating system. Banking apps, Uber, and Whatsapp are often mentioned. While each of these apps can be convenient, none of them are necessary (as evidenced by the fact none of them existed 15 years ago). People can use credit cards and web portals for their banks; we can use taxis instead of Uber; there are many alternative messaging platforms to Whatsapp. People who avoid relying on proprietary services have a much easier time migrating between platforms. This allows a person to choose operating systems and services that work for them rather than services which treat them like a commodity from which to harvest fees and data.
Get involved. Finally, I want to say that if you are running (or planning to run) a Linux distribution, it can be greatly to your advantage if you are willing to get involved in the community. I mean actively involved in trying to make the distribution, the community, or the situation practically better; not just hanging out on forums and commenting on the topic du jour.
Open source becomes better when more people are working on solutions. Most Linux distributions and open source projects do not have a significant amount of funding and they rely a great deal on volunteers. The open source ecosystem gets better when people are willing to write detailed bug reports, update documentation, donate funds, submit artwork, answer questions from newcomers, and fix problems in code. Much as it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a community to develop and maintain open software which is helpful to its users.
Your contribution doesn't need to be big or flashy, a lot of the important work is in the little things. Update a manual page; help a family member migrate from Outlook to Thunderbird; learn how to set up a Nextcloud instance for your friends so they can transition from OneDrive to a shared private server; set up a Raspberry Pi to act as a package mirror or torrent seedbox. You could rescue old computers people in your neighbourhood are throwing away, install a Linux distro on them, and give them to families or organizations in your area which need computers. Considering getting your hands on an old Android phone and testing a Linux distribution on it in order to give feedback to the developers.
Whatever approach you are able to take in order to improve things in the open source community, I urge you to find some way to contribute. Linux is not a free product which thrives on just having more users - raw market share is not greatly beneficial when the software is offered for free. Linux distributions are community efforts and the health and power of the ecosystem grows as more people contribute.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Rhino Linux 2026.1
The Rhino Linux team has announced the release of Rhino Linux 2026.1, a significant update of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution designed for personal computers as well as mobile devices, with a choice of Xfce or Lomiri user interfaces: "We are happy to announce the release of our 2026.1 snapshot images. Since late 2025, our focus has primarily been centered around our partnership with the UBports team and bringing Lomiri to a wider range of devices. Following from the progress we previously shared in 2025, we are happy to announce that we have shipped our generic ISO images (x86_64/arm64) for Lomiri. This work has built upon our continued and increasing collaboration with the UBports team to improve and refine the Lomiri experience, as well as making Lomiri more accessible beyond mobile hardware. Those installing Rhino Linux on standard x86_64 or ARM64 systems can now choose to experience Lomiri as their desktop environment of choice. While Lomiri support on generic systems is still considered an evolving experience, we are excited by the progress made so far and are excited to continue working closely with the UBports team to provide improvements for Lomiri users on desktop and mobile." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Rhino Linux 2026.1 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 270kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
MX Linux 25.2
The MX Linux project has announced the release of MX Linux 25.2, which carries the code name "Infinity". The release announcement offers highlights: "MX Linux 25.2 is now available. All releases feature updated 6.12.90 Debian kernels, except for Xfce-AHS which has a 7.0.9 Liquorix kernel. In addition, the AHS-enabled releases now feature Mesa 26.0.1. The new release includes all Debian updates through Debian 13.5 and all updates from the MX repositories, including patches for all the latest 'meme bugs' in the Linux kernel. There are some specific updates of note this time around. antiX live systems updates: certain initial setup actions during live boots have been moved out of rc.local; improvements to the live-kernel-updater application, which will now supports multiple kernels being installed at the same time; kernels are selectable in the GRUB boot menus, used by default on UEFI boot and select-able on legacy/BIOS boots; thanks to changes in our version of init-diversity-tools package, semi-automatic persistence saving returns to SysV init live boots; systemd live boots will still fallback to 'automatic' in the event semi-automatic is enabled...."
AlmaLinux OS 10.2, 9.8
The AlmaLinux project has published two new versions of its distribution - AlmaLinux OS 10.2 and 9.8. The combined release announcement shares new features: "AlmaLinux 10.2 introduces updated compiler toolsets, new language and database packages, and improved security. This release adds Python 3.14, PostgreSQL 18, MariaDB 11.8, Ruby 4.0 and PHP 8.4 as new packages, alongside SDL3, libkrun, trustee and FIDO Device Onboard tooling. The desktop sees GNOME 49. Container and virtualization support is updated with the latest versions of Podman, Buildah, libvirt, QEMU-KVM and skopeo. Security is improved with updates to OpenSSL, OpenSSH, SSSD, SELinux policies, crypto-policies, and Keylime. AlmaLinux 10.2 also brings i686 userspace packages - enabling legacy 32-bit software, CI pipelines, and containerized workloads on AlmaLinux 10. We first landed i686 in Kitten 10 back in April; 10.2 is where it crosses into stable. 10.2 continues to ship AlmaLinux's deviations from upstream that we've written about before: Btrfs support including the ability to boot from a Btrfs volume, the CRB repository enabled by default, and a parallel x86_64_v2 build with matching EPEL coverage for older hardware."
IPFire 2.29 Core 202
The IPFire team have announced the release of a new version, IPFire 2.29 Core Update 202. The new version mostly places a focus on addressing kernel security bugs. "We would like to encourage to install this update as soon as possible to be protected against the unusually large amount of vulnerabilities that have been discovered recently in the Linux kernel as well as lots of other software components. Ensure to reboot your IPFire system afterwards. In this release, the IPFire kernel has been rebased on Linux 6.18.32 which most notably fixes a couple of prominent security vulnerabilities: Dirty Frag - a local privilege escalation flaw disclosed on May 7, 2026 in the kernel module providing support for ESP, one of the protocols used for IPsec, allowing an unprivileged local user to escalate to root; Copy Fail - a logic flaw in the Linux kernel's cryptographic subsystem, specifically within the algif_aead module of the AF_ALG interface, disclosed April 29, 2026, that lets any unprivileged local user gain root via a tiny exploit on essentially every distribution shipping kernels built since 2017. While these vulnerabilities are serious for Linux systems in general, IPFire is by design not exposed to the most common attack paths. Both flaws require an unprivileged local user with shell access to the system, and IPFire does not provide unprivileged shell accounts on the firewall." Additional information can be found in the release announcement.
OviOS Linux 6
OviOS Linux is an independent, storage operating system. The project's latest release, version 6, makes some significant changes behind the scenes. One of the key changes is swapping out SysV init in favour of systemd: "The most fundamental change in OviOS v6 is the transition of the init system from SysVinit to systemd. This was not a decision made lightly - it reflects a clear and unavoidable shift in the Linux ecosystem. Why we moved: SysVinit has been in maintenance-only mode for years. Distribution maintainers, package authors, and upstream projects have progressively dropped SysVinit support in favour of systemd's native unit files. Shipping a modern storage appliance on a legacy init system would have meant maintaining an ever-growing pile of compatibility shims - a cost that ultimately falls on you, the administrator. Specifically: new versions of Samba, NFS utilities, iSCSI tools, and security daemons ship with systemd unit files only. Backporting SysVinit scripts for each new upstream release added fragility and delayed security updates. The move to systemd eliminates this entirely." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
Rocky Linux 9.8
The Rocky Linux project has announced the release of Rocky Linux 9.8 which retains 1:1 compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The release notes share highlights of the new version: "Major changes: This document highlights major changes between Rocky Linux (RL) 9.7 and RL 9.8. If this is your first time migrating to RL 9, you might want to review the release notes for previous versions to get a feel for all the changes you will encounter. For a complete list of major changes, see the upstream listing here. Security: Listed below are security-related highlights in the latest RL 9.8: GnuTLS 3.8.10 providing ML-KEM hybrid key exchange and ML-DSA post-quantum (PQ) algorithms; OpenSSH 9.9 with extensive improvements over OpenSSH 8.7; upgraded p11-kit packages to upstream version 0.26.1, providing support for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) definitions in PKCS clevis-pin-trustee package providing a new Clevis pin trustee that enables automatic; encryption and decryption of LUKS-encrypted volumes, by using remote attestation through the Trustee Key Broker Service (KBS); fapolicydpackages rebased to upstream version 1.4.3, providing filtering rules." See the release announcement for further information.
Gnoppix Linux 26_6
Andreas Mueller has announced the release of Gnoppix Linux 26_6, the latest version of the project's privacy-focused and AI-optimised Linux distribution. This version is based on Debian's "Testing" branch and showcases the latest Xfce desktop: "We are excited to announce the release of Gnoppix Linux 26.6. This release focuses heavily on stabilizing our underlying build system, securing repository pipelines, cleaning up the desktop user experience, and introducing highly requested live boot capabilities. The build system fix: root cause resolved - the root cause of previous build failures was identified and fixed, auto/config and auto/build were not marked as executable, causing lb config to silently skip core configurations; Debian Installer removal - the legacy Debian installer has been completely removed from the build system to prioritize a streamlined, modern live environment; per-distribution build targets - added dedicated package list directories for stable, testing, unstable, agent, pro and KDE targets. The system now automatically handles custom security updates, backports and mirrors per distribution, and features automated cache cleaning when switching targets." Continue to the release announcement for further details.
Ubuntu Sway Remix 26.04
Aleksey Samoilov has announced the release of Ubuntu Sway Remix 26.04, a major update of the project's unofficial Ubuntu variant featuring the popular Sway tiling compositor. It is intended for Linux beginners who are interested in the keyboard-oriented interface of tiling window managers and also for advanced Linux users who want a powerful, user-friendly and minimalistic desktop. The new release is available for both x86_64 and AArch64 architectures, as well as the latest Raspberry Pi computers: "This is a stable release of Ubuntu Sway Remix 26.04 'Resolute Raccoon'. Whats new? PCManFM is replaced by Thunar, as it maintains much better and contains nice improvements; lximage-qt is replaced by Ristretto; Engrampa is replaced by Xarchiver; removed Thunderbird and Audacious from base system; custom notification's script is replaced with SwayOSD; Vulkan renderer is enabled by default for NVIDIA GPUs; arm64 ISO image is available for UEFI-compatible ARM computers, e.g. Ampere Altra, Lenovo with Snapdragon CPU or virtual machines on Apple Silicon; various improvements for the Raspberry Pi image." Here are the brief release notes as published on the project's GitHub pages.
NixOS 26.05
The NixOS project has published a new snapshot of its distribution: NixOS 26.05. The new version updates initrdto be based on systemd, plans for the retirement of x86_64-darwin, and updates GNOME to version 50. "systemd stage 1: Stage 1 (a.k.a. initrd) is now based on systemd by default, and the old scripted implementation is deprecated and scheduled for removal in 26.11. Deprecation of x86_64-darwin: This will be the last release of Nixpkgs to support x86_64-darwin. Platform support will be maintained and binaries built until Nixpkgs 26.05 goes out of support at the end of 2026. For 26.11, due to Apple's deprecation of the platform and limited build infrastructure and developer time, we will no longer build packages for x86_64-darwin or support building them from source. GNOME 50: GNOME has been updated to version 50 'Tokyo', introducing accessibility enhancements, display handling improvements and more. Refer to the release notes for more details." The distribution's release announcement has additional information.
NixOS 26.05 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 138kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Armbian 26.5.1
Armbian, which is a set of Debian and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions designed primarily for ARM development boards, has been updated to version 26.5.1: "Armbian 26.5.1 delivers another strong round of improvements across the project, focusing on expanded hardware support, desktop and userland refinements, build framework modernization, and infrastructure enhancements. This release introduces new board images and platform updates, improves Ubuntu 26.04 'Resolute' integration, refines Bianbu desktop support, adds firmware and driver updates including AX210 wireless support, and continues ongoing work to strengthen the build system, CI pipelines, and developer tooling." See the release announcement and the release changelog for more information. The project's download page offers a list of supported devices, including these desktop builds for the x86_64 architecture, based on Ubuntu 26.04, with Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, MATE and Xfce desktops.
* * * * *
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: 3,453
- Total data uploaded: 50.1TB
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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) |
Which of the PineTab2 operating systems do you think looks the most promising?
In this week's review of the PineTab2 it was mentioned there are currently ten operating systems listed as running on the open hardware tablet. Which of these distributions would you want to run on the tablet or another mobile device?
You can see the results of our previous poll on owning tablets in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Which OS do you prefer for a tablet?
| Arch: | 64 (12%) |
| Fedora: | 33 (6%) |
| LuneOS: | 0 (0%) |
| Mobian: | 41 (8%) |
| NixOS: | 11 (2%) |
| Plasma Mobile on Debian: | 91 (17%) |
| postmarketOS: | 42 (8%) |
| Rhino Linux: | 3 (1%) |
| Ubuntu Touch: | 50 (9%) |
| Void: | 33 (6%) |
| Other: | 178 (33%) |
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|
| Website News |
DistroWatch turns 25!
It is with a sense of joy that I am able to say the DistroWatch website turned 25 years old on May 31st! Not many websites have, so far, had the privilege of reaching the quarter of a century milestone and I'm so pleased that DistroWatch has proved to be interesting, engaging, and even useful to thousands of people around the world for so long.
The DistroWatch web site was first published on the 31st of May, 2001 by Ladislav Bodnar. The concept started as a simple table comprising of five major distributions and the chart only compared a few features (price, version, and release date) and a few package versions (Linux kernel, KDE, GNOME, XFree86, and Apache). In trying to make it slightly more comprehensive and useful more distributions, features and packages were added until the table reached a fairly reasonable state in terms of information provided. At that stage, the table was moved from a spreadsheet into an HTML document and it was shared with the Linux community worldwide.
Of course, technology does not stand still, particularly in the software ecosystem. As the open source communities grew and evolved, we too gradually expanded and changed. When DistroWatch was launched almost no websites used HTTPS (unless they were financial institutions), there wasn't such as thing as a "mobile website", phone apps, or torrents (that's right, we're a month older than BitTorrent).
For that matter, DistroWatch is older than such well-known technologies as Facebook, Twitter, and Windows XP. We pre-date Ubuntu and Red Hat spinning off its desktop distribution to form Fedora Core. We launched before the creation of MySpace, HTML5, and iPhones. We were here before Bitcoin, before NFTs, before Web 2.0. We've seen so many design fads, new technologies, new distributions, new package formats, new init software, and new desktop environments.
While the layout and look of DistroWatch has remained fairly static over the years, we have expanded and grown with the times. Over the years we've added a glossary, a FAQ page, visitor-supplied reviews, tips for using package managers, and an archive of recent torrents. DistroWatch has expanded to feature news headlines, HTTPS, a mobile website, and a dark theme. We've added IPv6 support, a tips and tricks section, we answer weekly questions, and we've created a beginner's guide for new Linux users.
Our database has grown over the decades too. Originally we tracked a few key pieces of information for just five distributions. These days we monitor 228 key packages across 1,204 open source operating systems, 484 of which are actively maintained at the time of writing. We have 1,300,284 data points on which versions of which packages are in which distribution releases. Our search page filters dozens of categories, CPU support, and desktop environments. We've published approximately 11,600 release announcements, 1,831 news blurbs, and (as of today) 1,175 editions of our Weekly newsletter! Over the past 25 years we've written over 7 million words in articles, reviews, and release announcements. That was all us, we pre-date (and never use) generative AI bots too!
Luckily, our fingers are still healthy and limber!
DistroWatch is not corporately owned, it's largely a labour of love by a small group of individuals who are enthusiastic about open source and technology. As a result, the health and maintenance of the website depends a lot on volunteers, people who kindly send in donations, and our sponsors. There is a lengthy (and incomplete) list of contributors on our about page - thank you, we appreciate you all!
Of course, our readers are for whom we maintain DistroWatch and post content. Without you, dear reader, we'd simply be screaming (or typing) pointlessly into the void. (That's "void" with a small-v, not Void.) Each month we receive visitors from around 1.5 million unique IP addresses, and we generally serve approximately 10,000,000 pages per month, on average. We send out an average of 4,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of bandwidth per month, not including the torrents we are seeding, which usually accounts for about another 0.5TB per month. Luckily, our web server (which runs FreeBSD) has no trouble handling the traffic. It is reliable and stable, even when it is being hammered by LLM bots.
Most of our visitors are from the United States, though we also have quite a few readers who are from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, and Brazil. When DistroWatch launched, almost all of our visitors were running some form of Windows desktop computer, which made sense since Microsoft had a near-complete monopoly on personal computers at the time. I don't remember exactly when, but I think the number of visits from Linux desktops caught up to our visitors running Windows around 2010. These days, approximately 50% of our traffic comes from desktop Linux users, 33% comes from Windows desktop machines, 5% comes from macOS, and 8% reaches us from Android devices. The remainder of the traffic is mostly iOS, BSD, and about 2% is simply of an unknown origin. Almost all of our visitors run either Firefox or Chrome (it's about an even split between these two browsers) as their web browser of choice, with those two browsers making up over 90% of our traffic. About 3% run Safari and one of you is using the Lynx text-based browser (a hat tip to you, my friend).
That covers where we came from, what we've been up to, and a little bit about who our audience is. You might be wondering: what comes next? For better or worse, we are technology enthusiasts rather than psychics, so the truth is that we do not know. We are learning about what is happening in the open source community alongside you, dear readers. We hope you will come back next week, and the week after, and the week after that, to continue exploring with us. We're grateful to be able to learn, explore, and make computing fun alongside you all.
-- Jesse Smith
* * * * *
Lots of things have changed in the world of open-source operating systems in the last 25 years. When I launched the site in 2001, it carried just a dozen of Linux distributions (a few of which are still around, such as Slackware, Debian or Red Hat, also Mandrake Linux and SuSE in some form). At the time, the infrastructure for launching a Linux operating system was expensive and the bandwidth was limited. Most software was still sold as paper boxes in brick-and-mortar computers stores, while many PC magazines contained a CD or two with the latest distribution release in them. The concept of a "live CD" did not even exist! The biggest sponsor of DistroWatch was a small French company selling CDs of Linux distributions which they physically shipped to every corner of the planet. As for releases, most distributions went through a serious alpha, beta and release candidate testing stages, all properly announced and documented, before the final release which was always a big day in the Linux community.
Fast forward 25 years and we have a very different picture. Bandwidth is now affordable and available just about everywhere in the world. This resulted in an explosion of Linux distributions; together with a proliferation of various remastering tools and the availability of several free coding platforms, anybody can create a personalised variant of one of the big distros. And many people do. (Just a couple of weeks ago we received a distro submission from somebody who claimed to be 10-year old!) So anybody who knows how to create an account on SourceForge or GitHub can build and announce a new distro in little time, with virtually no cost involved. Whether this is good or bad, the opinions will vary, but there is no denial that the world of Linux has been a magnet for innovative minds, unparalleled in the world of computer operating systems. Concepts and ideas that did not exist just a few years ago, such as immutable distributions, atomic updates or tiling compositors, are now firmly established on the Linux distribution scene.
All in all, it has been an incredible ride. Many of you who read these pages regularly know that downloading and testing distributions is a highly addictive pastime. I have been an avid distro-hopper for the last 25 years and I don't see myself abandoning this activity for many more years to come.
So cheers to the DistroWatch anniversary as we look forward to the next 25 years of distro-hopping. And a big THANKS to all of you who share the passion with us!
-- Ladislav Bodnar
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 8 June 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 1176 (2026-06-08): Redcore Linux 2601, the problem with minimal system requirements, Red Hat account linked to compromised npm repositories, COSMIC to get frosted glass effect, openSUSE shows off system extension manager, Origami merges with RakuOS |
| • Issue 1175 (2026-06-01): PineTab2 with various distros, less common words of wisdom, Canonical shutting down Ubuntu's Pastebin, Murena nears 100k users, DistroWatch turns 25 |
| • Issue 1174 (2026-05-25): Solus 4.9, Linux tablets, Haiku boots on Apple M1 machines, Fedora drops Deepin packages, Mint improves Nemo performance |
| • Issue 1173 (2026-05-18): Sylve on FreeBSD, the benefit of BleachBit, Debian commits to reproducible builds, Debian publishes updated install media, Haiku introduces SMP support on ARM64 processors, Rocky Linux creates opt-in security repository, Fedora reconsiders AI tools, KDE receives generous donation |
| • Issue 1172 (2026-05-11): Fedora 44, dealing with extra fonts, Fedora plans to provide AI tools, problems with Ubuntu's new coreutils, TrueNAS extends its development cycle, postmarktetOS improves the boot splash screen, Redox ports tmux |
| • Issue 1171 (2026-05-04): Xubuntu 26.04, extending memory with VRAM, Ubuntu plans AI features, Devuan developer forks GTK2, Mint introduces hardware enablement builds, Linux running on a PlayStation 5, local kernel exploit found in Linux |
| • Issue 1170 (2026-04-27): ENux 5.2.1, picking a second distro, AlmaLinux expands CPU support, FreeBSD publishes Status Report, Ubuntu MATE skips 26.04 release |
| • Issue 1169 (2026-04-20): Lakka 6.1, free software and source-based distributions, FreeBSD Foundation publishes compatible laptop list, Debian holds Project Leader election, Haiku progresses ARM64 port, Mint to extend development cycle, Linux 7.0 released |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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MIRACLE LINUX
MIRACLE LINUX is a Japanese Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The distribution is free to use, with a 10-year support, but users can opt for a paid support provided by a company called Cybertrust, Inc. MIRACLE LINUX started as a high performance back-end server for business workgroups in the enterprise, with several specialist editions, such as MIRACLE LINUX for PostgreSQL, MIRACLE LINUX with Oracle and MIRACLE LINUX Server OS. It was also part of the Asianux consortium, now discontinued, together with some high-profile Linux distribution projects developed in China and Korea.
Status: Active
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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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