 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1180, 6 July 2026 |
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Welcome to this year's 27th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
People who work with computers often need to take on different roles. Most of the time we are computer users, running applications. Other times we might be helping other people or customizing the operating system. Sometimes we might be installing new software or fixing problems. Modern operating systems provide a range of tools to separate these tasks, including file permissions and separate user accounts. This week's Questions and Answers column talks about tools we can use to run commands as different users, which can be useful when helping others or configuring the operating system. What tool do you use to run commands as other users? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about the Asahi Linux team fixing a boot bug which affected people running computers with macOS 27. We also share reasons, apart from performance, to run the Gentoo meta-distribution and talk about Astral's new WINE port. Before diving into those topics, we begin this week with a look at FreeBSD 15.1 and talk about the anticipated install-time desktop environment planned for this version. Plus we share a summary of last week's releases and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
FreeBSD 15.1 with an install-time desktop
Back in December I reviewed FreeBSD 15.0. The then-new version of FreeBSD was significant in two ways. It offered a new method of managing the software in the base operating system (switching from distribution sets to packages managed by pkg) and it was set to debut the option to install a desktop environment from the system installer. The latter move was part of a larger effort to make FreeBSD a suitable operating system for laptop computers.
While the switch from distribution sets to the pkgbase approach to managing the software in the core operating system did show up in FreeBSD 15.0, and it did work as expected, there was no sign of an option to install a desktop environment from the system installer. With some poking around, I finally found that the project had delayed the desktop option until FreeBSD 15.1, in order to work out some final issues.
Eager to test drive the pre-configured desktop, I downloaded the full DVD build of FreeBSD 15.1 for x86_64 machines. This file is 4.3GB in size. Booting from the provided disc image brings up a text prompt offering to run the system installer, open a shell, or run a live system. Unlike Linux distributions, which usually supply a desktop environment in their "live" environments, FreeBSD does not. Instead we are presented with a login shell where we can sign into the system using the root account and no password. This gives us a chance to inspect the system, perform data recovery, or manage partitions.
Installing
The system installer provides a series of text-based menus where we are prompted with questions and can select our answers from lists or type responses in a box. The installer quickly walks us through choosing our keyboard layout and making up a hostname. We are given the choice of using classic package sets or the modern pkgbase approach to software management. I chose pkgbase. Then I was asked if I wanted to fetch software from on-line repositories or use packages on the local ISO. I chose to use the local media.
The installer then asks if we want to use automated ZFS, automated UFS, or manual disk partitioning. We are asked which operating system features we want to install, with options including the base system, development tools, the OS source code, test code, and extras. The selected packages installed and then I was asked to make up a root password, confirm my timezone, and set the system clock. I was asked which background services to run, such as network time sync, and secure shell.
One of my favourite features of FreeBSD is an option to enable extra security at install time. We can check features we want to enable from a list and these items include features such as hiding processes from other users, assigning random PIDs, and cleaning the /tmp directory upon each boot. The final option asks if we would like to create regular user accounts. Then the system installer offers to reboot the computer.
The whole process took me under ten minutes and, to my surprise, at no point was I asked if I wanted to install a desktop environment.
Wondering if I'd missed an option, I went through the installer more deliberately. This time I chose to download packages from the on-line repositories, thinking that might open up the option of fetching desktop packages. Fetching packages from remote repositories made the install process slightly slower, but otherwise it worked exactly the same. Ten minutes later, I booted into my (second) new copy of FreeBSD 15.1 and again discovered there was no desktop installed. There was no first-run wizard or tool for enabling a desktop either.
Searching for answers
From here on this article shifts from an exploration of the technical elements of FreeBSD into a quest for information. I was tempted to simply abandon the experiment and move on to something else, but the more time I spent looking for information about FreeBSD's desktop installer the more I felt sharing this journey was important. Someone commented recently: "When Jesse expresses puzzlement or disappointment or joy or pleasantness or boredom (my favorite) with a distro or some aspect of a distro then my ears perk up and I read on." What follows is largely written for them.
After two passes through the FreeBSD system installer and not seeing any obvious way to enable a desktop environment, I went back and re-read the release announcement and release notes for FreeBSD 15.1. While some work has been done to improve the experience of running FreeBSD on laptop computers, and to improve the overall desktop experience, there wasn't any specific information about setting up a desktop environment at install time. I also didn't find any indication the feature had been dropped from 15.1. There was mention of following instructions in the Handbook to get a new system installed. I checked the FreeBSD Handbook, which is always a good first-stop for information, and again did not find anything specific to setting up a pre-configured desktop.
This lack of information about how to set up a new desktop system (or what had happened to the desktop-at-install-time feature) puzzled me because, by the time FreeBSD 15.1 was officially released, there had already been multiple blog posts and reviews about it and about its new install-time desktop option. I read multiple posts from authors who claimed FreeBSD 15.1 included the feature and wrote that it provided a working KDE Plasma environment post-install. Some even posted screenshots of the installer setting up Plasma packages. So I began to wonder what I was missing.
I went back and revisited some of those articles and posts. One review, on the Sacred Heart blog, began by mentioning the latest version of FreeBSD works quite well as a desktop system. The blog post mentions some of the improvements for desktop users in 15.1 and includes a screenshot of Plasma working. Though, when I read through to the end of the post, I found (about two-thirds of the way through) that the author says they had to install all their Plasma packages manually. So their system wasn't set up as a desktop out of the box, they just managed to turn it into a desktop system.
That review, if perhaps a touch misleading at first, was honest. Other reviews, I began to suspect, were fabrications. Upon revisiting them I started to notice two things. The first was that comments about FreeBSD's new desktop-at-install-time feature all sounded the same, the way news reporters do when they are all trying to put their own spin on a press release. Or the way a large language model (LLM) will rewrite an article, putting a new spin on saying the same information in a similar way. I also noticed the posts with screenshots were, in a word, wrong. I had just installed FreeBSD 15.1 multiple times, trying different options, and was freshly aware of how the system installer looked. The screenshots didn't match.
FreeBSD 15.1 -- The system installer on Jesse's computer
(full image size: 9kB, resolution: 720x400 pixels)
Screenshot presented on other review websites
(full image size: 94kB, resolution: 800x527 pixels)
As you can see in these screenshots, the background is not the same shade of blue. In the screenshot of FreeBSD 15.1, the bar at the top of the screen is blue and dotted. In the other articles' screenshot the line is green and solid. The text "FreeBSD Installer" is also a different colour. My suspicions about the legitimacy of the content grew when I noticed multiple articles were using the same screenshot, where the colours and lines didn't match my experience.
It seemed likely these articles were generated by LLMs, perhaps using a common source. I performed a test, asking ChatGPT: "Does FreeBSD 15.1 include a system installer option to install the Plasma desktop?" The chatbot reported back with false information:
"Yes - FreeBSD 15.1 includes an installer option to install the KDE Plasma desktop (work was added to bsdinstall to offer a KDE/Plasma desktop choice)." It even provided a link for this information, which took me an article on Phoronix, published earlier in the year. The article, to be fair, says the feature is in progress: "[FreeBSD developers] are working on getting the installer option ready for FreeBSD 15.1. Adding a NVIDIA GPU driver option to the FreeBSD installer was also recently carried out." (Note: The option to add NVIDIA GPU drivers is also not in the 15.1 release.) Significantly, the Phoronix article displays the above screenshot of the new desktop installer working, and seems to be the source for all the other articles claiming FreeBSD 15.1 is shipping with the option of setting up a desktop environment at install time.
In short, either Phoronix mocked up the screenshots to demonstrate what the feature could look like, or perhaps they were testing a preview snapshot for FreeBSD 15.1 which was never shipped. Either way, it looks like other blogs and reviewers picked up on this and shared the information, presenting it as a feature which would be (or was included) in FreeBSD's latest version.
This got me wondering: What about blogs or reports which went the other way? Was anyone talking about the NVIDIA drivers and automated desktop setup being dropped from FreeBSD 15.1? Was anyone dispelling the idea that 15.1 was going to ship with these features, or that the features had been delayed? After several web searches, some browsing FreeBSD news sites, and reading forum posts, I found a single report saying the desktop setup feature had been postponed. Specifically, Over Central reported a conference speaker at the Open Source Summit (Deb Goodkin) said the feature would be delayed again until FreeBSD 15.2:
During Goodkin's talk, he noted that FreeBSD 15.1 was planned to include a KDE desktop option directly in the installer. This would be a landmark change - eliminating the need for users to install the desktop environment manually via the command line after a base installation. However, by the time the beta stage arrived in May 2026, the feature could not make the cut. It has been deferred to FreeBSD 15.2.
This seems to be accurate, but it is a story without a source. There is no recording of the talk, as far as I can tell, and no written confirmation in a presentation slide or mailing list post. The best I could dig up was a comment on an issue report on the FreeBSD Foundation's GitHub account which said:
Additional notes copy/pasted from elsewhere: The script still needs to be updated because new NVIDIA drivers have been released, and some parts have become obsolete (no longer necessary) and should be removed. After the script is committed to CURRENT, a testing period will still be required before the functionality can be merged into STABLE. Therefore, in order to provide users with the best possible solution, it was decided to target STABLE 15.2 instead.
This is a good plan, though it leaves a cold trail. There isn't any original source or link to the report from where the message was copied. It also doesn't specifically mention the desktop feature, only the way NVIDIA video drivers are being handled. In short, we can infer this means the desktop enabling feature was postponed, but the report doesn't mention it by name, it just refers to a related driver feature.
Ironically, I did eventually find a post on Phoronix (again) which suggested the desktop installer was being post-postponed until FreeBSD 15.2. Unfortunately, that post doesn't seem to have been picked up by LLMs and bloggers. It also doesn't link to a clear, official source.
Follow-up thoughts
After a few hours of digging and reading reports and comparing blog posts like a conspiracy theorist on a caffeine-binge, I surfaced with a few thoughts and conclusions.
First, I'm sure it is of no surprise to anyone that there is a lot of made up news in the world. Some of it is LLM-generated; some of it is reports which comment on possibilities, mentioned elsewhere, as facts; others were probably accurate at the time of writing, but have become outdated as developments happened. Whatever the reason for the misinformation, it is important to remember that reports on-line, especially ones which don't link to an original, official source, may be false, reframed, or misinterpreting the information.
In a similar vein, some tech blogs and news sites will copy and paste just about anything without confirming it. Some of them will even copy screenshots which either are not real or are not for the release they are covering. This is part of why DistroWatch tries to always provide its own, created in-house screenshots and we test any tips or tutorials to confirm they work as reported.
Ironically, accurate news is not always well-cited or sourced. The two reports I could find confirming FreeBSD's new features were being delayed did not have any supporting link or quote. It was a case of one person copying something someone else had told them. It appears the information was correct, but there was no way for me (someone who didn't go to the Open Source Summit) to confirm the desktop environment setup feature was being delayed.
Finally, and this may seem harsh, but I don't feel a though the FreeBSD Foundation (and the FreeBSD project) did a good job of sharing information on these new features and their eventual delay. As an example of this, the FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report in April reported the following: "A version of the [desktop setup] script was later adapted for integration into bsdinstall and into an installation ISO. After successful testing on both CURRENT and STABLE, a review has been submitted to add the desktop script to bsdinstall.
That report says the feature has been tested in the project's STABLE branch and it has been submitted to be included in the installer. That was two months prior to the 15.1 release, so it sounds like a fait accompli. As far as I can tell, there was no official report from the project or the Foundation after that, saying the feature had been pushed back to a later version. As a result, blogs and reviewers continued to run with the stale information. Some of us, such as myself, took the time to test for the feature and noticed it was missing. Others appear to have just let an LLM write their review, as one report stated: "FreeBSD 15.1 includes several enhancements over previous versions, such as improved hardware support, updated WiFi drivers, and better power management. It also introduces a new KDE Plasma desktop install option, aiming to enhance the user experience on laptops and desktops."
I feel like the confusion, and some false reports, could have been avoided if the FreeBSD project had been a bit more up front about what they were including and what they were holding back in the FreeBSD 15.1 release. As it is, there are some people out there who are probably going to wonder why they can't get the new desktop setup feature to work. The simple truth is: it doesn't yet exist.
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Visitor supplied rating
FreeBSD has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.7/10 from 82 review(s).
Have you used FreeBSD? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Asahi fixes macOS boot bug, reasons to run Gentoo, Ubuntu reverts Rust-based copy command, Astral gets WINE port
The Asahi Linux project has addressed an issue which was affecting users who had installed or upgraded to macOS 27. The issue, which prevented Asahi installations from booting, is related to a change in the macOS boot loader and a fix has been found: "The macOS Installer sets some APFS metadata before rebooting the machine, which further investigation revealed to be a flag that marks the volume as bootable. Until macOS 27, the boot tooling simply ignored this flag entirely. After setting the flag manually on an Asahi APFS container, it becomes available in the macOS 27 boot picker with no further changes. Going forward, all new Asahi installs will have this flag set automatically by the Asahi Installer. We've also added an installer mode that will fix existing installations. If you've installed the macOS 27 developer beta and cannot access your Asahi install, please run the installer again and use the 'Fix macOS 27 boot picker compatibility' option." Other changes coming to Asahi Linux can be found in the project's progress report.
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In the past, when people talked about the benefits of running Gentoo, they would often point out that software compiled for a specific architecture and with optimizations enabled could provide better performance over generic binaries. While this is true, modern processors tend to be fast enough that such optimizations are not apparent to the user. Michał Górny writes that there are a lot of good reasons to run Gentoo and performance is not one of the significant ones. "There's much more to Gentoo than that. Yes, some of it comes from building from source: the flexibility. But a lot of it comes from the wider Gentoo philosophy, the philosophy that brought us all together. The idea that Gentoo is the distribution we’re making for ourselves and people who enjoy Gentoo." Górny's post goes on to cover some of the key benefits of Gentoo and the meta-distribution's approach.
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Canonical has been migrating some of the core components of Ubuntu from C-based programs to programs written in the Rust language. Rust is designed to avoid common memory issues (and exploits) that are often found in C code. However, when major, core components change, other types of problems can arise. As Linuxiac reports, an incompatibility was found between the GNU cp command and the Rust-based equivalent: "According to the bug report, Ubuntu briefly reinstated the Rust Coreutils version of cp in coreutils-from 0.0.0~ubuntu26. This change caused failures in livecd-rootfs, one of the packages responsible for building Ubuntu live images. The bug was labeled Critical, and the immediate solution was to restore GNU cp. The technical issue involved how uutils cp handled combinations of archive and symlink-related options, particularly cases like cp -afL. In GNU cp, the -a option is equivalent to -dR --preserve=all, which includes recursive copying and attribute preservation. The Rust implementation, however, handled some mutually exclusive flags too aggressively."
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It would be understandable if our readers had not heard of Astral, an open source operating system written in the C language. The small project has not attracted much attention up to this point and has lived in the niche of hobbyist operating systems which are interesting, but not practical to run. This may be changing for Astral as the project's developer has ported a desktop environment and WINE, allowing the user to run multiple applications at once along with some games. "Today, people expect many things from a computer, and by extension, from its operating system. For example, they expect to be able to play the song they just downloaded, or to use the joystick they just plugged into the computer without rebooting. These features require not only hardware support, in the form of a sound card or a USB controller, but also operating system support. Support for audio and USB had been on my Astral TODO list for quite a while. Over the past few months, I have been working on getting both of them to work. Not only that, but I have also been porting NsCDE to Astral in order to replace the current stock FVWM interface. Progress has been great: Astral can now handle USB input, play games with audio, and play music, all while running NsCDE." The developer's blog post includes a link to a video that shows Astral running the game Minecraft. While hardware support is still limited, Astral has come a long way.
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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) |
Various tools for running admin commands
Open-the-pod-bay-doors asks: I've been reading about run0. Is there any reason to use it vs sudo or su?
DistroWatch answers: Each of these tools (run0, su, and sudo), along with a few others, are all utilities to use when we want to run a command as another user. Each tool has its own benefits and drawbacks and I will give a quick summary of each.
Since these tools all allow one user to launch commands as another user, the terminology can be confusing. To try to keep things clear, in this article I will be referring to the user sitting at the computer as the "original" user. When that user tries to run commands as someone else (such as the root user), I will refer to the other user as the "target" user. If Alice is sitting at the computer trying to run commands as root then Alice is the original user and root is the target user.
Let's look at popular tools for running commands as another user:
- su - Running the su command switches our shell from running as our regular user to another user, typically root. When we run su we will be prompted for the password of the target account and then we are effectively logged in as that user. We then run commands as the target user until we exit the shell. The su utility is fairly simple in its approach, basically logging us in as another user, without us first needing to logout.
- sudo - The sudo utility improves upon the approach of su in a few ways. When we invoke sudo we are prompted for our own password. The sudo command looks at its configuration and our user's permissions to determine whether we should be allowed to perform commands as another user, specifically the target user. Assuming our user or account group is allowed by sudo's configuration to run commands as the target user, we are able to perform one command as the target user.
The sudo command improves over su in a few ways. One is that it does not require the target user to provide the original user with their password. This means we can grant a user access to perform commands as root (or another user) without giving them the root password. The sudo command also allows us to limit which commands each user or group can run. This means handing out root access is not done in an "all or nothing" way, as it is with su. We can grant specific users the ability to set up printers, apply security updates, or mount drives without giving them full access.
The sudo command can also log actions taken by users, which is helpful when we want to audit actions on the system.
By default, sudo will drop its elevated access after performing a single command. This prevents the original user from staying logged in as the target user for longer than necessary.
- doas - The doas command is quite similar to sudo in how it works. Like sudo, doas checks to see what commands the original user is allowed to run, it prompts for the original user's password, and it performs a single command as the target user. The doas program also logs its actions.
What sets doas apart from sudo is its focus on being smaller and simpler. The sudo utility has a reputation for being complex, for having a lot of configuration options which are difficult to read, and for being relatively large. The doas command is smaller, it has fewer options, and its configuration file is relatively simple to read.
As an example, here is a fairly typical sudo configuration file:
Defaults env_reset
Defaults mail_badpass
Defaults secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"
Defaults use_pty
Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "http_proxy https_proxy ftp_proxy all_proxy no_proxy"
%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
@includedir /etc/sudoers.d
Basically, the above allows any user who is in the "sudo" group to perform any command they want as any user. Meanwhile this is a fairly typical doas configuration file which does the same thing:
permit :sudo as root
This should, in theory, make doas a smaller target for hackers and make it easier to write (and understand) its configuration.
- pkexec - The pkexec command works in a similar fashion to sudo and doas. It checks the credentials of the user and, using behind-the-scenes rules, it verifies if our original user should be able to perform actions as the target user (typically root). There are a few things which set pkexec apart. The most visible one is that it will try to prompt for the user's password using a pop-up window on the desktop, assuming we are running a desktop session. If we are running from a real text terminal then pkexec prompts for our password in the terminal.
The other visible difference when using pkexec is the utility will, by default, run any programs in the target user's home directory. This can cause some unexpected behaviour if we're not looking for it. Take the following example where we create a file and then try to read it as another user:
$ echo "Hello World" > myfile
$ pkexec cat myfile
cat: file: No such file or directory
$ cat file
Hello World
Another thing which sets pkexec apart is it uses Polkit to determine whether the original user should be allowed to perform commands as other users.
- run0 - Like pkexec, run0 uses Polkit behind the scenes to perform authorization. On the surface, run0 looks and acts a lot like sudo or doas. It accepts the names of commands we want to run and then launches them as another user, typically the administrator.
There are two things which make run0 distinct from the tools mentioned earlier. One is that it is part of the systemd suite and you will need to be running a Linux distribution which features systemd to use it. The other difference is that, unlike the commands mentioned above, run0 does not use the setuid feature.
Most utilities which allow regular users to run commands as the root user (or any other user) do so using a concept called setuid. This is a flag which can be applied to a program that allows it to run as the file's owner (typically root) instead of as the user who launches the command. In effect, this means when we run su, doas, or sudo the program is running as root, regardless of who launched it. The program then checks to see which user we want to perform the command as and changes its permissions to match the target user.
Put another way, if Alice wants to run a command as Bob, she can run "doas -u bob id". The doas command is marked as being setuid. Since the root user owns the doas program, the doas command launches as the root user. The doas program sees Alice wants to run the id program as Bob and drops its access level from root to match Bob. This is fairly standard behaviour for commands which anyone can run, but which need root-level access for certain special functions. However, for the brief time the program is running as root, it has the potential to give Alice root access if Alice can find a way to exploit a weakness in the program.
The run0 command does not run with the setuid flag, which means it does not start off running as the root user. When run0 is run by Alice, it is effectively operating as Alice, not as the root user. In theory, this behaviour is safer because it means, even if Alice finds an exploit in run0, it is still running as her user, not as the system administrator.
The trade-off is that something in the background, in this case Polkit, needs to be able to help our regular user run commands as another user. Polkit, compared to sudo and doas, is large, complex, and has an unusually complicated configuration. Using run0 is, essentially, betting that large tools like systemd-run and Polkit are coded and configured properly and more secure than small, dedicated tools like doas.
Is there a reason to use one tool vs another? In some cases, yes. For example, if you are working in a graphical desktop environment and need to prompt the user for a password, perhaps as part of a script, then pkexec is quite useful in such a situation. For most command line work, small, dedicated tools such as sudo and doas are ideal. They are relatively simple to use, fairly easy to configure, and log their interactions with users.
There is probably, in a practical sense, no reason to use su these days. It has an "all or nothing" approach, doesn't offer the same logging, and relies on handing out the target user's password to anyone who wants to run commands as that user.
As for run0, and whether it is worth switching to it from sudo or doas, I think there are two factors to consider. From a design standpoint, which do you think is better: risking running a program (such as sudo) as setuid, which might be exploited to grant root access? Or is it better to risk running systemd and Polkit which are larger and more complex, but do away with the older design of setuid? I think this is more of a personal or philosophical choice than a practical one.
Focusing on the practical side then, which is for me the more interesting decision, I think the choice really comes down to the environment. The sudo and doas commands run virtually everywhere. They run on all Linux distributions, on the BSDs, on macOS, and on the members of the Solaris family. If you know how to set up and run doas or sudo on one system you can use it on any Unix-like system. The run0 command is part of systemd and will run on Linux distributions which run systemd only. If you exclusively run mainstream Linux distributions, such as Fedora, Debian, openSUSE, and Arch then there is no drawback to setting up and learning to use run0. However, if you use non-mainstream Linux distributions (or plan to do so), or if you use other members of the Unix-like family then I'd suggest sticking with portable tools like doas and sudo. Using the same tools across platforms is not only convenient, but it also makes your configuration more consistent and, as a result, safer.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Slackel 9.0 "MATE"
Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel 9.0 "MATE" edition, the latest version of the project's Slackware-based live Linux distribution featuring the MATE desktop: "Slackel MATE 9.0 is the latest major release branch of the Greek-developed Linux distribution, built on top of the Slackware 'Current' tree and incorporating advanced administration tools borrowed from Salix Linux. This version delivers an optimized, lightweight computing environment paired with the highly stable and customizable MATE desktop interface. Core technical specifications: base distribution synchronized with the Slackware 'Current' tree; desktop environment - MATE; Linux kernel - 6.18.37 for the 64-bit architecture and 6.12.94 for the 32-bit edition; architecture - available in both 64-bit (x86_64) and 32-bit (x86) systems; package management - uses package management tools, like slapt-get and gslapt, for streamlined dependency handling. To accommodate different system requirements and user preferences, the installer supports three distinct deployment modes: full installation - deploys the comprehensive MATE environment alongside standard internet browsers, multimedia applications, and productivity tools...." Continue to the release announcement for further details.
Mageia 10
The Mageia project has released a new version, Mageia 10, which brings updates to the project's package management tools, welcome screen and CPU requirements. "We increase hardware requirements for 32bit systems, you will require a CPU with SSE2 features. You will find that extension for the packages and the part for architecture in the name of the ISO images have changed from i586 to i686. Also, due most of the software projects are dropping 32-bit support, you can find that the support is not as full as in the x86_64 systems. Our atelier and dev teams have worked hard to find the best balance between visual appeal and disk space usage. As usual, we've selected a range of resolutions for the main background to accommodate a wide variety of monitors, and we've also optimized their sizes using tools available in our repositories. For the main screensavers, we have chosen an image size of 3840x2160 and the JXL format, allowing them to look great on modern 2K and even 4K monitors, while maintaining a disk space footprint similar to those included in Mageia 9, which used lower resolutions and the JPG format." Additional information is provided in the release notes.
Mageia 10 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 2.0MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Kali Linux 2026.2
The Kali Linux project has released a new snapshot of the security- and forensics-focused distribution. The project's 2026.2 release includes several upgrades: "It's the final week of Q2, and Kali Linux 2026.2 is here - right on schedule. We have been heads down since our last release, and we are ready to share what we have been working on. This release is a mix of desktop refreshes, infrastructure improvements, and quality-of-life changes that we think you will appreciate. The summary of the changelog since the 2026.1 release from March is: desktop environments - bump to GNOME 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6; helper scripts consistency - consistency to our little launches at starting services; APT format - goodbye sources.list, hello sources.list.d/kali.source; VM boot optimisation - smaller initrd + faster boot times = happy virtual machine users; reboot warning - heads-up, polkit and xrdp upgrades require a system reboot; Kali kernel incoming - staying with 6.19 for now, how to get 7.0 early; build scripts incoming - heads-up with some changes on the way; new tools - as always, various new shiny packages have been added (9)." Additional information is provided in the release announcement.
ArchBang Linux 010726
The ArchBANG project has released a new version of ArchBANG Linux with another radical change - it has replaced labwc with the Mango Wayland compositor. The new version, labelled as 010726, comes with both graphical and command-line system installers: "Pleased to announce the release of ArchBang running the Mango window manager. This marks a full rebrand from FruitBang back to ArchBang. A new ISO image, dated 1st July, has just been uploaded as promised, carrying up-to-date packages and the latest Linux kernel. Getting started - hit the yellow rocket icon on the waybar toolbar and you're off. Most of what you need is accessible from that menu. In ~/Scripts you'll find a few useful tools, including a yay installer and abi-install, a GUI installer (optional/unwanted for terminal users, but sticking around). A note on installers: arch-browser-installer is still very much a work in progress, treat it as beta, and only test it in a virtual machine for now. abi-install isn't going anywhere; it's aimed at users less confident on the terminal, and we're interested in continuing to develop that idea. Grab the ISO image and give it a spin. Feedback and bug reports welcome as always." Continue to the release announcement for further information.
CalyxOS 7.2.2.0
The CalyxOS team have announced the return of the project to active status and, with it, the launch of version 7.2.2.0 of the mobile operating system. "CalyxOS 7.2.2.0 is up online. This release will receive all future updates. If you haven't previously installed 7.2.1.0 (test build) and want to start or continue using CalyxOS, you need to flash your phone and install 7.2.2.0. With CalyxOS releases back to normal, we will continue with other backlog issues. Join the Matrix channel for our progress and user support. Dear CalyxOS community members, we are excited to share the release of CalyxOS 7.2.2.0. This means CalyxOS is officially back from the hiatus! It has been an enduring journey for our team to resume CalyxOS releases, and we deeply appreciate all the support and solidarity we received from you along this journey, especially the latest voluntary testing you did with us. Below we are sharing some important notes for anyone planning to install or reinstall CalyxOS, along with our next steps as we work through a large backlog of issues." Additional information on the new release, plans for CalyxOS 8 (based on Android 17), and infrastructure changes can be found in the project's release announcement. A list of supported devices and install options can be found on the project's install page.
Ultramarine Linux 44
The Ultramarine Linux, a Fedora-based desktop distribution, has published a new release, version 44. The new version includes updates to three of the four desktop environments: "We have gotten tons of feedback and praise for switching to Plasma as our recommended Edition. This release comes with Plasma 6.7, the new Union theme engine, performance improvements, and bug fixes galore. Budgie has made the switch to Wayland! It now sports the SDDM window manager and a new Bluetooth app. This was the second to last Edition to be stuck on X11, so we're really excited to finally modernize it. If you're upgrading from 43 you'll be prompted to visit this wiki page and follow its instructions, we were not able to automatically transition users to SDDM for stability reasons, but you can follow our simple instructions to switch. We've made a couple improvements to GNOME Edition that make things significantly better. Most notably, we fixed that annoying 'Window is Ready' notification, now a window will just focus itself like it would on the other editions. We're also enabling the minimize and maximize buttons on every window by default, adding calculator support to the overview search, and showing the battery percentage in the panel on laptops. Sadly in this release we had to drop Pop!_Shell, it's no longer maintained and we found that a really small number of users actually use it. You can still install it with dnf, or try a similar extension, but your mileage may vary." Additional information is provided in the distribution's release announcement.
Ultramarine Linux 44 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 956kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
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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:
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What is your favourite way to run admin commands?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about several utilities which can be used to run commands as another user, typically as the system administrator. Each tool has its strengths and drawbacks. Which approach do you prefer when you want to run admin commands?
You can see the results of our previous poll on preferred release cycle in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 13 July 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • using "su -" (by Bobbie Sellers on 2026-07-06 01:28:12 GMT from United States)
I hit other because on my distribution i use "su -" to get root permissions.
We have a situation where if the hyphen "-" is omitted the "su" may
put "/home" in the root permissions which requires the use of another
command "chown" to restore the users' ownership.
This is a matter to which users must pay attention when doing administrative
work on your own machine. The use of "su -" rather than "sudo" was
motivated by the very bad implementation of "sudo" on Canonical
products.
We try to avoid logging into root because it can cause so many
problems. We have requesters for the administrative tools that
can be started from the Desktop Environment in which you must
enter the proper root password.. Tools that are in everyday use
including Timeshift and DNF Package Manager.
If I want to run a root tool from the Command Line Interface we
can just click on Console then get to a root session by
entering at the prompt "su -" and then entering the un-echoed
password to arrive at the root prompt.
bliss- Dell 7730- PCLinuxOS 2026.06 Linux 6.18.38- Plasma 6.7.2
2 • FreeBSD (by Stuart on 2026-07-06 01:47:29 GMT from United States)
Regarding FreeBSD: I could find no mention of a graphic installer in the release notes.
3 • Free BSD Install Time Desktop (by BlueIV on 2026-07-06 01:49:16 GMT from United States)
I regularly read Phoronix so I knew that the desktop install option had been delayed. That's why I was momentarily confused when Jesse began his review. What I didn't know was the confusion that exists out there and the LLM nonsense. Yikes.
4 • Chaotic sudo (by Vinfall on 2026-07-06 02:30:32 GMT from Hong Kong)
It's worth noting that most Linux distros use OpenDoas implementation instead of the original OpenBSD doas (obviously), and the persist feature in OpenDoas is potentially unsafe due to missing kernel API, which also includes the security/opendoas package in FreeBSD ports.
And to use doas instead of sudo, you have to fallback to things like `doas rnano` or `doas vim` if you want sudoedit, which is no better than just using `sudo -e` or sudo-rs.
Speaking of sudo-rs, some distros also misconfigure it to explicitly require PAM files of sudo package, so technically you have to install sudo to use sudo-rs securely, which simply does not make sense.
I have not used run0 but you should be extremely careful to make sure it works and works in the same way across different distros, as package maintainers could make the same errors I mentioned above.
5 • Mageia is astrictly governed and actively developed operating system from France (by InvisibleInk on 2026-07-06 03:37:48 GMT from United States)
If you were looking for a European "Debian-like" collective to adopt for a new "U.S.A-resistant" infrastructure in support for whatever digital sovereignty issue you care is important.
Mageia looks like a path for a European operating system untouched by any trans-Atlantic governmental interference activities cooked up in Washington D.C..
6 • Great job Jesse! Fabulous review! (by claudecat17 on 2026-07-06 04:28:05 GMT from United States)
First, an apology. As a long time reader/occasional commenter here under a variety of names I've been critical of Jesse's reviews at times for being a little dry and formulaic. This review has me rethinking all that.
This review was amazing! Fantastic description of a process many of us have experienced, albeit in different and less AI-impacted ways, Trying to diagnose why something isn't working can be an adventure, especially with the less mainstream distros. I've had to dig into void Linux's docs several times just to remind myself how to make it show the correct time consistently, just as one example (chrony!).
I've experimented with various BSD options over the years and found myself lost and confused every time. It was enlightening to see that Jesse has experienced this too, even with this new version that erroneously has been purported to have an easy to install desktop option. The lengths he went to to find answers was impressive! I now know not to even think of trying this until I get the thumbs up from Jesse. I get the impression that he'll make sure it's reported accurately here as soon as possible, which is great!
Also loved the general distrust of AI, something I believe will be causing economic meltdowns worldwide for longer than necessary due to all these sicko billionaire idiots plunging some of their inane fortunes into it like they're playing Monopoly. Real people will die for real due to all this unnecessary and unregulated mayhem.
It's staggering the degree to which the poor (me, us, you) have been powerless, their lives upended while these fools continue to pile up the wealth in offshore places so they can avoid taxes. They love to plunder the US treasury, aka our tax dollars, which should be paying for health care for all instead of Elon's latest trip past Go on the Monopoly board. Is it even fixable anymore or do the bad guys have so much power and wealth that we're screwed? I wish I had an answer, though I'm not very optimistic.
Anyway, sorry for being long winded, and thanks Jesse and everyone that contributes to Distrowatch, still my home page for going on 30 years now! Keep up the great work!
7 • Review accuracy / Admin commands (by Keith S on 2026-07-06 04:48:07 GMT from United States)
Thank you, Jesse, for another great review and for going the extra mile to show the process you use to reach your conclusions. Frankly, you and Dedoimedoare the only two I bother to read these days since I have learned that you are trustworthy.
I have tried FreeBSD and a couple of derivatives several times over the years, but they have always seemed to be more complicated than necessary to get running as anything other than a server. OpenBSD is not as easy as a Linux distro to get running with a desktop environment, but it is definitely easier than the other BSDs and has much better documentation.
And this is where I learned to love doas of course, since it was created there. I use it on Void as well. On Linux I just use sudo.
Errata: In the description of the various admin commands, you have "permit :sudo as root" as an example for doas, but I believe that should read (for example) "permit user" to permit user as root (with a password) or "permit nopass :wheel" to permit any user in group wheel as root without a password.
https://man.openbsd.org/doas.conf.5
8 • FreeBSD desktop installer (by Dave on 2026-07-06 07:08:23 GMT from Australia)
I thought I saw something around this a while ago. I found this video which I watched at the time. It also references where the script comes from - or at least at that time.
you tube video id is v=vbWOLzGDa4I
9 • Precarious `sudo` (by Lieutenant Commander Data on 2026-07-06 07:33:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
I voted `sudo` but... I seem to remember that you reported how the developer of the `sudo` utility was desperately looking for support to continue its development, which does raise serious and tragic concerns about its quality and suitability going forward in an age of A.I.-enhanced bad actors, and hence questions over the future longevity of this much-used tool. Obligatory XKCD, "Dependency." https://xkcd.com/2347/
10 • FreeBSD desktop install (by Dave on 2026-07-06 07:43:32 GMT from Australia)
In case this helps. Also had screenshots, which are real but seem to be different to what Jesse was seeing. In the video this is not part of bsdinstall, but I belive this would be the intention.
https://gitlab.com/alfix/kde-installer-dialogs
11 • doas vs OpenDoas (by Jesse on 2026-07-06 10:06:04 GMT from Canada)
@4: "It's worth noting that most Linux distros use OpenDoas implementation instead of the original OpenBSD doas (obviously), and the persist feature in OpenDoas is potentially unsafe due to missing kernel API, which also includes the security/opendoas package in FreeBSD ports.
And to use doas instead of sudo, you have to fallback to things like `doas rnano` or `doas vim` if you want sudoedit, which is no better than just using `sudo -e` or sudo-rs."
This is, unfortunately, true when running most Linux distributions. If you're installing OpenDoas you are going to run into these potential security issues and lack of equivalent utilities. For some reason most Linux distributions have chosen to package the OpenDoas alternative instead of the straight doas port.
However, if you install the doas (not OpenDoas) port then the "persist" issue is patched and there is an equivalent editing tool, called doasedit. This version of doas is the default on FreeBSD and most non-Linux platforms.
12 • Don't count your chickens before they hatch (by FreeBSD... on 2026-07-06 05:55:56 GMT from Italy)
FreeBSD 15.0 promised the feature and retreated, maybe it was kind of embarrassing doing that twice. There might be several reasons for backing out, and some could be worse of silence.
13 • FreeBSD, and LLMs (by El Pingo on 2026-07-06 11:41:39 GMT from United States)
A bit of a farce, this is, but I don't see how one blames AI or LLMs. I asked Gemini: "Is freebsd offering a desktop at install time?" The answer: "No, standard FreeBSD does not provide a graphical desktop environment option during the main installation menu." Then it pointed me to the post-install script shown at a FreeBSD Foundation webpage. I asked Duck.ai (ChatGPT) and Copilot, and got pretty much the same answer and links. So, feeling brave, I downloaded the DVD ISO. On VBox, the base install was quickly done, then I followed the instructions from the BSD page, and that's when the fun began. Seemed simple. It wasn't. It may not be the worst desktop installer out there, but it's in the competition. And maybe that's why it hasn't been added to the installer.
Example: Had a problem with VBox guest-additions. The installer asked me to choose one, but no matter what I chose it told me it didn't exist. Guess where I got the solution? ChatGPT, which told me I had to force a shutdown and install a package. Then it worked. Got XFCE running, badly. And after several tries, KDE. Still hard to scroll with the mouse and it won't shut down properly, but it's not too bad.
Yes, one needs to double-check information from LLMs. But one should double-check information from any source or website, including Distrowatch. In this case, I'd say the misunderstandings and misinformation come mostly from the original source: the BSD Foundation.
The desktop installer info is here:
https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/installing-a-desktop-environment-on-freebsd/
The screenshots seen by Jesse are from this page:
https://gitlab.com/alfix/kde-installer-dialogs/-/commit/b01d6567c7fbe4213db9fb51ce2a08cfe66badb5
14 • FreeBSD (by Dim on 2026-07-06 12:27:49 GMT from Japan)
Thanks always for straightforward reviews! Too much spam out there that may or may work.
> the post-install script
The review focuses on "an install-time desktop"; FreeBSD has ports for various desktop environments that can be installed thereafter. Not getting the point.
15 • Thanks for summary of tools for running admin commands (by David on 2026-07-06 12:47:51 GMT from United States)
Thanks Jesse for the nice summary. I really like how you provide tips and reports like that. And we can even browse the archive on distrowatch site for these. It's really a nice resource.
I have not read the FreeBSD review yet, but it's of great interest, since I do run the 3 main BSDs (Net, Free, and Open).
Best wishes to all, and thanks again!
16 • @14, FreeBSD (by El Pingo on 2026-07-06 13:38:38 GMT from United States)
"The review focuses on "an install-time desktop"" The only install-time desktop information I have seen is this script. One drops to a shell before finishing with the installer, installs the script and reboots, then chooses a desktop to install. I never got any information from LLMs or otherwise stating that the desktop installer is included with the freeBSD installer. I get that they were aiming to have it for 15.1, but I don't see or read anyone or anything claiming that it's available now. The screenshots may show how it's supposed to work, but not how it's working. There is no way, after searching and asking questions that I would have expected desktop choices to be included in the installer itself.
17 • Admin Commands (by Escaped Christchurch Mouse on 2026-07-06 20:04:16 GMT from United States)
sudo of course .. as about 80% of Linux users do (poll % as of this writing). Does the job with less risk than logging in as root or changing users to root in the terminal and does it on a job by job basis which honestly is perfect for most non tech employed distro desktop users.
18 • GhostBSD? (by Lucifer Morningstar on 2026-07-07 08:41:17 GMT from Italy)
@20 "There is already a FreeBSD with a desktop environment pre-installed. It is called GhostBSD."
That's not fully correct. GhostBSD is derived from FreeBSD, but it's not just one of its own customizations. In fact, it does not support GELI at setup, and it abandoned X.Org in favour of XLibre. I mean, should you decide to go back and forth from the former to the latter and the other way round, there would be no practical way other than full reinstall from scratch.
19 • FreeBSD 15.0 (by Черный ворон on 2026-07-07 07:00:13 GMT from Mexico)
FreeBSD 15.2 is expected to add an option in the installer to automatically install and configure a KDE Plasma desktop, making desktop setup much easier for new users.
Today, installing a desktop on FreeBSD requires several manual steps after the base installation. The new installer aims to remove much of that complexity.
This change is part of the FreeBSD Foundation's effort to improve laptop and desktop usability.
A reasonable expectation is that the easier installer will:
• attract more Linux users who want to try FreeBSD,
• reduce the number of people who give up during installation,
• make FreeBSD more appealing for laptops and workstations.
20 • GostBSD (by Rob Rickson on 2026-07-07 10:57:50 GMT from United States)
@19
“ There just aren't a lot of people looking for that kind of thing in the BSD world, and those that are looking for it have already installed GhostBSD (or even NomadBSD).”
It’s called “looking down the road”.. if Linux enshittifies with AI code added to the kernel etc the BSDs will become far more relevant.
Also, I trust FreeBSD; no idea who or what runs GhostBSD and don’t care.
21 • FreeBSD (by snapdragon on 2026-07-07 11:04:12 GMT from United States)
@20, but it is the same thing as far as a desktop-oriented, non-power user is concerned - which is exactly who a pre-installed desktop is designed for. A more technical user would not need a pre-installed desktop environment because they are technical enough to simply install one on their own. A normal/casual user who just wants a pre-installed graphical setup is not even going to be aware of the display server or GELI, let alone care about either of them. They simply want something that boots up and runs their favorite everyday programs with no fuss. GhostBSD serves that niche quite well, which is one of the reasons why other desktop-focused attempts have fallen by the wayside. I'm not against it, I just think it's strange when there is already a turnkey solution for people who are not even technical enough to understand what a display server is, and those that are technical enough would be able to follow the FreeBSD handbook to get a desktop up and running fairly quickly.
@21, Yes, indeed! I am aware of the goals of the FreeBSD foundation. The FreeBSD community itself, or at least the portion of it that interacts online, seems to hold the exact opposite goals as evidenced by some of the not so nice responses that I've witnessed in various IRC's and forums regarding desktop-focused BSD's. Personally, I'm not against it, However it's just.....unusual? There's the handbook for installing FreeBSD, and if someone doesn't want to or simply can't follow the handbook, then there is GhostBSD as a beginner-friendly turnkey solution. The former wouldn't need the desktop-installer, and the latter would not possess the knowledge or experience to appreciate the finer technical points of the OS to begin with. In the end, it's a net positive, so why not, I guess...
22 • It's not that easy (by Lucifer Morningstar on 2026-07-07 11:37:47 GMT from Italy)
@23 Your assumption is users are all framed into hard boundaries: the rookie, the normal, the aged, the expert, the guru... But the truth is, each one has a different level, knowledge, approach and habit. That's why any OS should provide a wide option list and, on top of that, detail a basic, an intermediate and an advanced procedure for setup, not just sayng "if this is too much for you, choose some other product".
GhostBSD apparently was born because there were some developers which were frustrated by the rejection of FreeBSD's community towards some easier approach to installing. Telling people you need to be a plumber even if you've got to change your shower's flexible tube makes sense just if you're a plumber...
23 • Avoiding the problem (by We all float down on 2026-07-07 12:38:14 GMT from The Netherlands)
@20 No, I already went down that road just before the BSD's first enshittified. There is no escape. Drums in the deep.
The only path forward is to accept the fact we are past Peak Linux. We can still go back, however, by letting the hot air escape instead, carefully.
24 • @21 • FreeBSD (by Nerio on 2026-07-07 12:55:36 GMT from United States)
"those that are technical enough would be able to follow the FreeBSD handbook to get a desktop up and running fairly quickly." What's technical about copying and pasting instructions? Seems to me that for some it may be an enjoyable task and for others a boring waste of time no matter how technically proficient they are. The fact that you may be an auto mechanic doesn't mean you want to buy a bunch of parts and build your own car.
"then there is GhostBSD as a beginner-friendly turnkey solution" Linux has Ubuntu, so that means you don't need Fedora or any of the others? And for those 'technical' enough there's LFS, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, etc. Way more choices than required if all you need is one of each.
25 • TUXEDO moving from Ubuntu base to Debian (by Just4fun on 2026-07-07 13:07:29 GMT from Sweden)
Very good decision, when that version is available Tuxedo will get a test spin.
26 • FreeBSD (by snapdragon on 2026-07-07 13:16:07 GMT from United States)
@22:
I apologize for coming off that way, and I meant no offence. FreeBSD is not too difficult to install. It only requires two things: a willingness to learn, and a willingness to make an effort. The FreeBSD handbook is not difficult to follow, but it requires a user to actually be willing to read it and follow it. There are also many tutorials both on the website and on Youtube that also walk you through the entire process. I didn't mean to indicate that there are hard boundaries, that was not my intention. It was more to point out that there is already a solution available to install FreeBSD with a desktop out of the box (Or FreeBSD-like if we want to be more technical). GhostBSD is the Linux mint of the BSD world, and it is always recommended for beginners to explore the BSD world similar to how Mint and Ubuntu are recommended for newcomers to Linux. Adding a desktop installer in addition to that just seems like a duplication of effort. However, like I said, I respect their decision, and I respect the effort to make the OS more accessible to the average user. If NetBSD and OpenBSD can include the option to install X11 and a window manager right out of the box, then it is only fair that FreeBSD be permitted to include a graphical setup at install time, too. My apologies for the mix up.
27 • Who uses BSD/Linux (by Friar Tux on 2026-07-07 13:57:10 GMT from Canada)
I think we're missing a group of people, here, in the BSD discussion. A group that is actually in the majority (I think). This group doesn't give an 'at's rass about whether you're beginner, intermediate, or expert. All we want is to install an OS and get our stuff done. It doesn't matter what that involves - GUI installer, BSD, Linux, X11, Wayland, or even... ugh... SystemD. We really don't care. All that matters is that the system works, and doesn't create any "lost time" downtime. For myself, when I test an OS, I use the following criteria:- How easy is the OS to install? How quickly does it install? How much post install configuration does it require? How stable is it through updates/upgrades? What the inner workings are, I don't care, so long as it works. For me, the ideal OS installs in under 15 minutes, then lets me go right to work, and continues that way, boot, after boot, after boot... So far, I've only found one - one single OS - that can do that, consistently after a couple hundred installs. (Thanx Clem.)
28 • Poll (by Robert on 2026-07-07 14:20:05 GMT from United States)
I use sudo because that's what I've always used. No actual reason with thought behind it.
Once I learned about pkexec I thought it sounded cool and thought about switching to it. Then I read about how hard and error-prone it was to configure and thought better of the idea.
There's a chance I switch to run0, but I also don't have any real reason to do so. I just like trying the shiny new stuff.
I also use 'su - ' from time to time, generally when there are several commands I need to perform. That's easier than 'sudo this' 'sudo that' 'sudo that other thing.'
29 • freebsd INSTALLERS (by rhtoraS on 2026-07-07 14:27:59 GMT from Greece)
I doubt freebsd® would ever present a version with KDE as an option. FreeBSD based systems can do whatever they want though. In the meantime best BSD installer is the one from OPEN BSD imho. Free BSD and netBSD have similar installers with the one from freeBSD being similar to linux distributions like Slackware.
To be honest we lack a proper and in depth review on how to install a BSD with all hickups explained.
30 • @27, Who uses BSD/Linux (by Nerio on 2026-07-07 14:32:59 GMT from United States)
"For me, the ideal OS installs in under 15 minutes, then lets me go right to work, and continues that way, boot, after boot, after boot... So far, I've only found one - one single OS - that can do that, consistently after a couple hundred installs. (Thanx Clem.)" I'm sorry, but I can't resist this: Linux Mint has been around for just about 20 years. If you have installed it 200 times, that would be 10 times a year assuming you've been using it from the start. That doesn't speak well for stability now, does it?. :)
Seriously, I tried Linux Mint in 2006 and was a satisfied customer for some years. I don't use it these days because I don't like the desktops offered, otherwise I'd be happy to use it.
31 • HopScotch (by vmclark on 2026-07-07 16:52:36 GMT from United States)
Years ago I use to hop around Cassidy. Haven't done that for years.
I only use one OS, thanks Mark.
32 • LLM-copypasta (by MC Grindah on 2026-07-07 18:20:54 GMT from Denmark)
Smashing review/article this week Jesse. Hilarious too. Proper journalistic effort that was. Full marks and a slice of ham on top.
33 • Ooops (by Friar Tux on 2026-07-07 20:53:05 GMT from Canada)
@30 (Nerio) Sorry, my bad, it wasn't clear. I didn't install those "couple hundred" on my computer. I, maybe, had to reinstall Mint on my laptop about a dozen, or so, times because originally I only had one laptop so when I was trying out other distros I had to use that one single laptop. Since it was so easy to reinstall Mint, each time I was done, I just went with that route. Now, I have two laptops so I don't need to do that anymore. But there are a few folks, out there, running Mint thanks to my help.
34 • FreeBSD KDE Ports and Packages (by Poldo on 2026-07-08 00:50:18 GMT from Italy)
You can install KDE software (KDE Plasma 5 on X11, KDE Applications, and KDE Extragear applications) from both packages and ports. It's a lot faster to install from packages.
Read More:
https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup/Ports
35 • Galactic Mandate (by Arve Eriksson on 2026-07-08 04:30:10 GMT from Sweden)
Uh... I just spotted this Galactic (Galaxy?) Mandate distro on the feed, and I'm... confused. It looks fancy, but... why? Why is it a thing that someone bothered to conjure into existence?
(I can see an argument about book promotion - similar things wouldn't be unheard of *cough*Office365 integration*cough* - but that seems like an insanely high effort, in context.)
36 • @35, Galactic Mandate (by Resident Alien on 2026-07-08 10:59:45 GMT from The Netherlands)
I saw Galactic Mandate and was ready to download it, but then I spotted Hannah Montana Linux and now I'm undecided. I'll wait for a review/comparison on Distrowatch. Gotta be more exciting than BSD.
37 • GhostBSD (by Lorem Ipsum the Bashful Bunny on 2026-07-08 14:40:40 GMT from United States)
GhostBSD and FreeBSD are often dropped into the conversation when the subject of systemd free computing comes up; simply, if one wants to avoid that init start checking out BSD projects for compatibility with your machine(s)... you may be very pleasantly surprised.
One stat we very seldom see is that of number of users of a particular Linux or BSD distro. Nobody keeps such data and it'd be almost impossible to know how accurate such numbers would be. GhostBSD is one project that I think is used by quite a few, and kept as a permanent daily driver by many.
The improvements in hardware support are ongoing, and I'd say very much in line with several popular Linux distros. I have it on a two year-old Dell and a 6 yeah-old Acer. Wifi/Networking and sound and bluetooth all work perfectly now, but just three years ago were a bit of a struggle to get going.
38 • printer detection (by Ripping out Hair on 2026-07-08 22:29:14 GMT from New Zealand)
I have run Mint and also Manjaro - preferring the Arch distros over time...
except for: printing
Printer detection in Mint and most Debians is automatic and instant. It is a freaking pain in Manjaro and any Arches. Is there a way to nudge or bludgeon the Manjaro|Arch side into detecting printers as smoothly as the Mint|Debian?
Example: went to see a business about printing a document. Took 2 laptops - the one running Manjaro we could not get to say hello to anything. Embarrassing 'demo' of Linux in front of people! I then hauled out an old Mint laptop and it immediately connected and _correctly_configured_ every single printer on their network!
May I ask here for assistance, or maybe Jesse can turn this into one of those excellent articles? Thanks!
39 • printer detection ( (by Roger Brown on 2026-07-09 05:43:45 GMT from Australia)
@ 38 Like many things in Linux it's just a matter of knowing how.
Either install this https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/system-config-printer/ OR
Create the file /etc/cups/client conf with the contents:
ServerName IP:port
40 • FreeBSD desktop option (by Microlinux on 2026-07-09 09:29:13 GMT from Austria)
About twenty years ago, there was PC-BSD which was a great and easy way to have FreeBSD with KDE working out of the box. It even came with great documentation with Dru Lavigne's book The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD.
Unfortunately PC-BSD has been improved to death by enshittification. First it moved from stable to current and had many more bugs. Then KDE was replaced by some bad joke of a brand-new window manager. And then PC-BSD went down the drain altogether.
41 • Not automatic (by Biff on 2026-07-09 11:47:03 GMT from United States)
@39 That adds the applet. While Arch attempts to automatically find the driver, it's not always correct and sometimes works the first time. I have found other distros to be more user friendly in this department.
I have an HP LaserJet and when testing Fedora and Ubuntu, the printer installation was easy and it worked. With Arch and Cachy, it could find the printer, but it routinely fails to either start printing or prints gibberish. When it inevitably fails to print, I spend a lot of time tinkering to get it working again. Thankfully, I don't print that much.
42 • Printer acquisition (by Friar Tux on 2026-07-09 16:56:27 GMT from Canada)
@38 & @41... Mint is not without it's quirks - printer-wise. I have an HP laptop running Mint. When I was living in my house (I lived in an apartment downstairs, my son lived in the house upstairs). My laptop picked up both printers in the house. When mine died, we just continued using my son's. Now I live in a condo, and my laptop can pick up a number of my neighbours' printers. My son lives 5 floors above me, but I can't pick up his printer, sadly.
(Not actually complaining. Just thought you all could use the laugh.)
43 • @40 Microlinux, PC-BSD desktop (by El Pingo on 2026-07-10 07:25:09 GMT from United States)
You took me down memory lane. I was playing with the BSDs after reading the review, and you reminded me I had tried PC-BSD and found it quite good at the time. But since memories can fool you, I went to ArchiveOS at Sourceforge and downloaded verision 10 from 2013. I now have it on VirtualBox.The installer is as simple and fast as most of today's Linux distros. Even Guest Additions is included and working. I'm typing this on KDE4 Konqueror. On release 9 they even had a live iso with choice of KDE, Gnome, LXDE or XFCE. It was never the same again, especially after the name change to TrueOS.. I suppose that BSD desktops have withered on the vine not because they are so difficult to do well, but because there's little interest in doing them.
44 • Printers (by Biff on 2026-07-10 11:59:57 GMT from United States)
@42 It's crazy how complicated printing can be. I'm in the camp that printers and projectors are some of the worst technologies one has to deal with.
45 • BSD "withered on the vine" (by Lorem Ipsum the Bashful Bunny on 2026-07-10 14:18:46 GMT from United States)
@43 (and others) I feel badly when I see reference to BSD projects characterized as "withering on the vine" or "dying off" or whatever. Yes, BSD is a sort of subset of open source operating systems, with Linux being the main player. But Eric Turgeon and the GhostBSD Team, and dedicated developers working on BSD projects are just as passionate about their offerings as any Linux team.
GhostBSD in particular, in my opinion, is as ready for desktop mass usage as any Linux project. Of course we an critisize this or that aspect of any Linux project/distro as we can BSDs, Ghost included. But I hate seeing BSD cast in a light of not being relevant when it most certainly is. If you do not like any project out there, BSD or Linux, the beauty of open source operating systems is that you can craft and shape and model that very distro to your liking.
Number of Comments: 45
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1180 (2026-07-06): FreeBSD 15.1 and rumours of its installer capabilities, tools for running admin commands, Asahi fixes boot issue, reasons to run Gentoo, Ubuntu reverts Rust-based copy command, Astral gets WINE port |
| • Issue 1179 (2026-06-29): PCLinuxOS 2026.05, tips for switching distros, COSMIC gets a new system monitor, Xfce tests new Wayland compositor, FreeBSD developers invite questions |
| • Issue 1178 (2026-06-22): TBLock reviewed, the AUR compromised, Fedora's growing community, reasons to avoid immutable desktop distributions, Ubuntu to get speech-to-text, Canonical updates its beta policy, highlights in Plasma 6.7 |
| • Issue 1177 (2026-06-15): TROMjaro 2026.05.08, Ubuntu MATE updates, Asahi fixes dual-boot issue with macOS 27, AUR infected with malware, setting variables across shells |
| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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