 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 941, 1 November 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 43rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Usually here on DistroWatch we talk about experimenting with open source operating systems, typically Linux distributions. Regardless of which operating system you run, chances are you spend a lot of time on-line, running a web browser. Since the web browser takes up an ever-increasing amount of a person's time and attention these days, picking the right one for you is important. This week we begin with a look at some popular web browsers for Linux as Jesse Smith searches for a new one to be his portal to the web. Which is your favourite web browser? Let us know your preference in this week's Opinion Poll. Then, in our News section, we talk about the TrueNAS project launching TrueNAS SCALE, a Debian-based platform for large storage needs. Meanwhile the Debian project calls on porters to continue work on less popular CPU architectures and DragonFly BSD announces support for creating FAT storage volumes. We also report on Project Trident slowly phasing itself out of existence. Our Tips and Tricks column this week explores a number of command line tools for preforming simple, useful tasks. We talk about how to find dictionary words matching certain patterns, sorting ZFS snapshots, and truncating audio files. Plus we are pleased to share details from the releases of the past week. We wish you all a fabulous week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (11MB) and MP3 (9MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Selecting a new web browser and feeling Brave
While I bounce around from one Linux distribution to the next like a hyper-active flea on its sixth cup of coffee, it's not very often I switch from one web browser to another. I used Opera almost exclusively for about a decade (from around 2002-2010), then mostly used QupZilla from then on. The QupZilla browser got rebranded to Falkon shortly before it was put out to pasture. Along the way I've occasionally used other browsers, either for testing purposes or when working with a client, or just to see what "this new Chromium thing is everyone keeps talking about", but I tend to be a creature of habit when it comes to browsers. I might run Firefox or Chrome for a week, but then I'm back to whatever was working for me before, often because I've grown accustomed to shortcut keys or having my bookmarks sorted a certain way.
The Falkon home screen with shortcuts
(full image size: 812kB, resolution: 1237x1024 pixels)
Recently I've been drifting a bit in terms of browsers. My previous long-term browser, Falkon, appears to have been discontinued two years ago and I've been casting about to see if there is an alternative which might suit me. Luckily, for me, many Linux distributions ship with different default browsers and this gives me an opportunity to test a range of options.
I'd like to quickly provide a rundown of some of the popular browsers I tried recently and what I liked and didn't like about them. I'd also like to talk about where I ended up and why.
Firefox
The first and perhaps most obvious choice for someone like me is Firefox. Mozilla's browser has a long track record of being stable, standards compliant, cross-platform, and capable. I use Firefox on my phone and it is shipped as the default browser in most desktop Linux distributions. However, there are two main reasons I've shied away from adopting Firefox. The first is that the browser is quite heavy. Most versions of Firefox (from about version 3 or 4 onward) have run noticeably slower on my equipment than virtually every other browser. This has been consistent across multiple machines (both mine and office machines) and across multiple network locations.
The Firefox browser and menu
(full image size: 92kB, resolution: 1326x768 pixels)
I'm also not thrilled with how much functionality Mozilla tries to cram into Firefox. Around 15 years ago I often recommended Firefox because it was "just a web browser". It handled bookmarks and web browsing and little else. Firefox 1.0 was much lighter and faster than many other browsers at the time because it was "just a browser" and didn't cram in an e-mail client, torrent client, sync options, ActiveX support, and so on. These days when I use Firefox I want to disable or remove half the functionality and distractions before I settle into using it. I don't need account syncing, suggested sites, and file sharing tools. This meant Firefox wasn't entirely eliminated from my list of options, but it wasn't my favourite choice.
Chrome, Chromium, and Vivaldi
The current versions of Chrome and Vivaldi, while popular choices and highly powerful browsers, were eliminated due to being closed source platforms. Chromium, Chrome's base and open source sibling, was a contender. However, there were two things working against it. The first was Chromium is also large. It sucks back memory like a hummingbird trying to relieve a bad case of cotton-mouth. My other issue with Chromium is that the interface doesn't suit me at all. To me it always seems awkward and washed-out, hard to read with low-contrast controls. Using Chromium makes me feel like an old man who needs glasses and who doesn't understand these new-fangled interfaces the kids are using these days.
Exploring the Chromium interface
(full image size: 64kB, resolution: 1237x1024 pixels)
Another issue which worked against Chromium, though wasn't the browser's fault, was that many people offering support for the browser do not seem to be aware that Chromium is not Chrome. The two browsers are closely related, but not identical. Whenever I'd ask on a forum how to do something with Chromium (tweak a setting, disable something, or add an extension) someone would always answer with the steps to perform the task on Chrome, which often didn't work.
GNOME Web
GNOME Web (previously known as Epiphany) looked really promising on paper. Despite its name, GNOME Web can run on any Linux distribution with GTK libraries. The browser is relatively small, simple, light, and has some nice security options. There were just two issues I faced with GNOME Web. One is that some distributions are opposed to packaging GTK-based software and this might make using the browser while testing some non-mainstream platforms difficult. The other was that GNOME Web crashed more often than a car driven by a blindfolded monkey.
Otter
Another option I looked at was the Otter browser. Otter strives to provide the same style of interface used by Opera and Falkon while being open source. This seemed quite appealing and the browser is small enough I could download its source code and built it with minimal effort. Once I got Otter compiled, I found it could import my bookmarks and did indeed have a familiar interface for people like me who liked the minimal look of Opera with a dashboard of shortcuts. However, Otter would crash immediately when opening almost any website. This quickly eliminated it as a possibility.
Brave
The next option on my list was Brave. The Brave browser has a few positive aspects working in its favour. The browser is open source (published under the Mozilla Public License) and uses Chromium as its base. Brave is cross-platform and supplies pre-built binaries for several platforms, including some mainstream Linux distributions. Brave is one of the few modern browsers which blocks ads, pop-ups, and auto-playing media by default. It also offers not only a private browsing mode (which is fairly common these days), it also provides a private browsing mode which uses the Tor network. This feature is built right into the browser and does not require third-party packages.
I soon found Brave has a customizable start page which can be used to display all sorts of information and shortcuts. The interface and shortcuts are not quite as keyboard friendly as Falkon's (causing me to use the mouse more often), but I could set up a shortcut dashboard on Brave's home screen.
The Brave settings panel
(full image size: 173kB, resolution: 1237x1024 pixels)
Once I had confirmed I could import bookmarks and passwords from other web browsers on my system, it seemed as though Brave was going to be good enough to keep around for a while. Over the coming days I discovered a few interesting features about the browser I'd like to share.
Performance
One of the first characteristics which stood out about Brave was that it is fast. Loading the browser happened at a normal rate, about halfway between Falkon and Firefox in terms of speed. Once up and running Brave performed faster than most of the other browsers I tried. Page load times were notably faster than Falkon, despite the two browsers using the same web engine.
Ad blocking and BAT
Earlier I mentioned Brave blocks advertisements and tracking by default. It actually goes a step further than this. Brave allows the user to right-click on ads they do see to hide them in the future, and it blocks invisible trackers on websites. It then goes even further and randomizes its own fingerprint.
Browser fingerprinting is a way of collecting data a browser leaks, such as its user agent, extension information, version, and supported plugins. This allows websites to uniquely identify most users, even with cookies disabled and the user's IP address changed. Brave works around this by randomizing its fingerprint in a way to mask its users. In theory it should be difficult for a website to tell one Brave user from another. According to Digital Trends, Brave was the first mainstream browser to pass the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cover Your Tracks test.
These features cover my comments on advertising and tracking, but what is BAT? BAT is short for Basic Attention Tokens. While Brave defaults to hiding ads from the user, we have the option of enabling ads from the browser itself. Brave will optionally pop-up a notification in the corner of the window from time to time asking if we wish to see an ad (the frequency of these notifications can be adjusted). If we click the button to see an ad we can earn tokens. These tokens are a form of cryptocurrency which can then be sent to participating websites as donations (or tips) for their content. We can choose which websites get our tokens and the sites can then cash in to pay for hosting or paying contributors.
Learning about BAT rewards
(full image size: 273kB, resolution: 1237x1024 pixels)
From the user's point of view this means we see virtually no ads on websites, but can choose to click an unobtrusive button from time to time to see ads and get paid for it. The money we earn can then be passed along to our favourite websites to support them. The BAT ads are disabled by default so we don't need to see the pop-ups at all if we want to avoid them.
Third-party add-ons and extensions
Brave can make use of extensions and bringing up its extension manager offers to connect us to the Chrome extension store. It appears as though Brave is compatible with all (or at least most) Chrome extensions. When visiting websites with DRM-protected media, such as Netflix, Brave offers to automatically download and install the necessary plugins. This worked smoothly for me.
Home screen
When Brave is first installed its home screen (the screen shown when a fresh tab is opened) displays a collection of information. This home page can display browser stats, including BAT earned, and frequently visited websites. At the bottom of the page is a Customize button which will open a set of options we can use to personalize the home screen.
Customizing the Brave home screen
(full image size: 396kB, resolution: 1237x1024 pixels)
The home screen can be adjusted to show various widgets, bookmarks we select (which work a lot like Opera's and Falkon's shortcut screen), and news from the Brave project. This makes the home screen flexible and it is possible to make it look and act similar to the home screens of other browsers. Alternatively we can tell Brave to display a specific web page when a new tab is opened, such as a search engine.
Crashes and recovery
I've been using Brave for around a month at the time of writing. To date I have not experienced the browser crash on any of my devices. The browser has been stable, fast, and smooth. The only time I've had to restart it was when I was testing the process of installing DRM-related plugins.
With that said, I have had one of my computers experience a power interruption while running Brave. When I restarted the machine and opened Brave the browser dutifully reported it must have closed unexpectedly and offered to send a report to the developers. It also offered to restore the tabs I had opened when the system powered off, and then did so successfully. I prefer this approach to automatically opening whatever tabs had been open before as that can be unnecessary and waste time by loading pages I no longer need.
Conclusions
The Brave browser hits most of the points I want from my primary portal to the Internet. It's quick, open source, fairly flexible, and it has been surprisingly stable. It uses a medium level of memory and CPU compared to the other browsers I tried and it's fairly easy to set up on multiple platforms (GNU/Linux desktops, mobile phones, and so on).
I greatly appreciate the browser's privacy defaults, the fact it ships with Tor as a built-in option, its private mode, and randomized browser fingerprint. The ability to right-click on unwanted elements of a web page and hide them is a great bonus and allows the user to hide ads or other items we do not wish to see on a website.
The one complaint I have about Brave is that it tends to make me switch between using the keyboard and mouse occasionally. This is fairly common, it's something I also need to do with Chromium and Firefox. However, I have been spoiled in the past by browsers like Falkon which make it easy to set almost any action, including accessing specific bookmarks, as a keyboard shortcut. Often times I didn't need to touch a mouse when using Falkon and I find the transition back and forth slows me down a little. Over time I've been learning ways to substitute in shortcuts to speed up my work on Brave, but it would be nice if this was a more naturally occurring feature.
One final thing I appreciate about Brave is that it feels like it is intended to be a web browser and just a web browser. While we can add extra extensions and enable BAT ads, by default Brave doesn't try to work with mail, or nag me to set up an account to synchronize my passwords. It just offers a portal to websites and this is primarily what I was looking to find.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian calls for port maintenance, TrueNAS SCALE launched, DragonFly BSD supports creating FAT volumes, Project Trident enters "sunset" phase
The Debian project has published a number of updates concerning changes and work going into the development branches of the project. One of the changes concerns dropping the /sbin/raw command line program following support for raw block devices being dropped from the Linux kernel. At the same time a call has gone out to developers who are willing to work on less popular CPU architectures: "The Debian release team have put out a call for porters for Debian Bookworm. If you are using any CPU architectures other than amd64 (which has an exemption) such as i386, ARM, POWER or all the less popular architectures, please consider contributing towards popcon submissions, testing packages, running testing/unstable systems, fixing toolchain issues, triaging/fixing bugs, testing/fixing d-i or maintaining/providing hardware for the architectures you care about. If you are already doing these activities or intend to do these activities for particular architectures, please respond to the release team mail with the info
requested by them before January 1st 2022." Information on Debian's many ports can be found on the Ports page of the Debian wiki.
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The TrueNAS project provides an operating system which can be used to easily manage ZFS storage devices. TrueNAS provides an easy to use web interface for handling user accounts, storage devices, and services. While TrueNAS Core and TrueNAS Enterprise are based on FreeBSD, the TrueNAS team have launched a new platform which is based on Debian. The newest member of the TrueNAS family is called TrueNAS SCALE which, as the name suggests, is intended to help organizations scale up their storage needs. "OpenZFS and Gluster combine to enable scale-out ZFS capabilities with excellent data management. Deploy a single hyperconverged node in a home/office, or cluster nodes together for a highly scalable and highly available software-defined infrastructure. TrueNAS SCALE provides simple access to the well-established Linux container ecosystem and makes application deployment easy. With support for KVM virtual machines, Kubernetes, and Docker containers, it's easy to customize and add applications to suit a wide variety of needs." Further information can be found on the TrueNAS SCALE website.
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The DragonFly BSD project has recently added support for creating new storage volumes formatted with the FAT filesystem. While FAT is aging and widely considered obsolete, it is still often used in situations where a wide degree of portability is required. The announcement reads: "You can now create FAT volumes on DragonFly. Not exactly high-tech, but a filesystem that most anything can read and write." Additional details can be found in the commit message.
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The Project Trident team maintains a Void-based distribution with the Lumina desktop and ZFS as the default filesystem. The developers have decided to shutdown Project Trident, beginning on November 1, 2021. "It is with great sadness that we are announcing that Project Trident will be entering its 'sunset' period starting Nov 1 of 2021 and will be closing up shop in March of 2022. The core team of the project has come to this decision together. With changes and events over the past two years in life, jobs, family, etc, our individual priorities have changed as well." After March 1, 2022 the project's repositories and other resources will be taken off-line.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Finding the right words, sorting filesystem snapshots, truncating audio files
One of the reasons Linux distributions are such popular operating systems, particularly among system administrators, is the powerful command line environment. Linux offers a large collection of powerful utilities which can be chained together to create unusually complex and useful tools. Today I'd like to look at a few examples of Linux command line tools at work.
The first example I'd like to share came out of a conversation with a colleague who mentioned that he had an interest in words which contain all of the English vowels. Words such as "evaluation" which include the letters a-e-i-o-u. Following our conversion I started wondering about how many such words there were and what some other examples would be. With the Linux command line this is a fairly easy thing to check. Most Linux distributions include a plain text file containing all the words in the system's default language. We can use the grep command to search for letters and patterns in words. One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask grep to search for any words containing one letter and then pass the results to another grep command which checks for the next letter we want, and so on. The command ends up looking like this:
grep a /usr/share/dict/words | grep e | grep i | grep o | grep u
The above command yields examples such as "miscellaneous", "unquestionably", "ultraviolet", and "exhaustion". On my system there were 633 results in total. How do I know this? Well, I passed the results of the above series of grep commands to the wc utility which prints out a word count. It looked like this:
grep a /usr/share/dict/words | grep e | grep i | grep o | grep u | wc -l
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Advanced filesystems such as Btrfs and ZFS can be incredibly useful, especially if you are planning to spread one filesystem across multiple physical storage devices. These advanced filesystems allow snapshots of data to be taken and stored for comparison or recovery later. When using ZFS the command to list all snapshots is:
zfs list -t snapshot
The equivalent command to see all snapshots taken by Btrfs is similar and accepts the location of where we want to find snapshots:
btrfs subvolume list /
The Btrfs command typically shows snapshots in the order of their creation, based on the snapshot ID. ZFS is a bit more liberal with the order it displays snapshots. We can make sure snapshots are listed in order of their creation by using:
zfs list -t snapshot -s creation
These commands can be useful when we want to determine which snapshots are most recent or if we're trying to figure out when a file changed by comparing sequential snapshots of the file.
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Do you have any audio files in your collection that you would like to trim down? Maybe you have a recording where the artist is introducing their song and you'd like to edit out the speech at the beginning? Or perhaps you have a video recording where there is some awkward silence at the end due to the performer reaching over to turn off the camera? Either way, there is a tool which will help with these situations. The tool is called FFmpeg and it accepts an input file along with timestamps where we would like to start copying the media and where we would like to stop.
For example, I have an audio recording where there is an audio blip in the first two seconds. Then the song runs for about three and one half minutes, followed by some discussion about the song. I don't want to hear the discussion every time, so I will remove the early blip and the trailing talk using the ffmpeg command. The program accepts the name of the original file, the start time (-ss) and the end time (-to). The last parameter is the name of the new file I plan to create. Here the start and end times are given in seconds:
ffmpeg -i original-file.mp3 -ss 2 -to 211 new-file.mp3
The above command will work on other media formats too and should work with just about any type of audio or video file. We have shared other examples of how to use ffmpeg to convert file formats and scale videos in a previous Tips and Tricks column.
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Additional tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
EasyOS 3.1
Barry Kauler has announced the release of EasyOS 3.1. The lightweight distribution features easy to use container technology which can sandbox specific applications or the entire desktop environment. The latest version includes a number of updates and changes to the filesystem layout. "There have been major functional changes: applications can now be run non-root each as its own user and group, and the folder hierarchy has become more conventional, with /clients becoming /home and /home becoming /files. As well as fixing issues in 3.0 due to the changes in directory hierarchy, version 3.1 has greatly enhanced video configurability and hardware profiling. Also, there are new RDP, VNC and SSH servers and clients available via the package manager. A lot of attention has been given to booting EasyOS from a USB-stick on different computers. Hardware profiling means that any video, bluetooth and audio configuration on one computer is remembered and automatically selected next time bootup on that same computer. Attention has also been given to the situation where video is broken at bootup, such as a black screen. There is a new 'Fix broken video' boot menu entry." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
Trisquel GNU/Linux 9.0.1
Trisquel GNU/Linux is a 100% libre Ubuntu-based Linux distribution. The project has published a new update to its 9.0 series. The new media mostly offers security fixes, particularly dealing with out of date certificates. The new 9.0.1 media also removes some binary blobs found in the Linux kernel. "This minor update to the 9.x "Etiona" series is intended to provide an up to date set of ISO images, both for use as an installation medium and as a live environment with newer packages. This addresses two main security concerns in the 9.0 original ISO images: An outdated Certificate Authority collection (package ca-certificates) included an expired root certificate for LetsEncrypt, resulting in blocked access to repositories for new packages or updates. Overlooked binary blobs were found in versions of Linux-Libre prior to v5.14. Updated packages were added to the Trisquel repositories to correct the issue, and new ISO images were produced to include the fix. Along with those fixes, the release includes any other security update published upstream since we published Etiona, and the latest version of the Mozilla-based "Abrowser" (v93)." Further details may be found in the project's release announcement. Download: (2,618MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).
ExTiX 21.11
ExTiX is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring a variety of desktop environments. The project's latest release is ExTiX 21.11 which ships with the LXQt desktop. "I have made a new version of ExTiX - The Ultimate Linux System. I call it ExTiX 21.11 LXQt Live DVD. (The previous LXQt version was 21.5 from 210516). ExTiX 21.11 is based on a pre-release (not even BETA) of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)! Ubuntu 22.04 will be supported until 2027. The best thing with ExTiX 21.11 is that while running the system live (from DVD/USB) or from hard drive you can use Refracta Snapshot (pre-installed) to create your own live installable Ubuntu system. So easy that a ten year child can do it! One other very good thing with this version of ExTiX is that it is quite light. The ISO file is of only 1580 MB, which means that you can run the system super fast from RAM. When the boot process is ready you can eject the DVD or USB stick. Use Boot alternative 3 or Advanced options -> load to RAM. Important note: Since this version of ExTiX is based on a pre-release of Ubuntu you shouldn't use it for sensitive work/business. Having said that I must also say that I haven't found any bugs." Further details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
ExTiX 21.11 -- Running the LXQt desktop
(full image size: 3.4MB, resolution: 2936x1254 pixels)
antiX 21
antiX is a lightweight, Debian-based distribution. The project's latest release is based on Debian 11 "Bullseye" and features the SysV init software along with both recent and older kernels for wider hardware support. A list of key packages is available in the project's release announcement: " Based on Debian 11 (Bullseye), but without systemd and libsystemd0. eudev instead of udev. Customised 4.9.0-279 kernel with fbcondecor splash. Customised 5.10.57 kernel (x64 full only). LibreOffice 7.0.4-4. Firefox-esr 78.14.0esr-1 on antiX-full. Seamonkey 2.53.9.1 on antiX-base. claws-mail 3.17.8-1. CUPS for printing. XMMS - for audio. Celluloid and mpv - for playing video. SMTube - play youtube videos without a using a browser. streamlight-antix - stream videos with very low RAM usage. qpdfview - pdf reader. arc-evopro2-theme-antix." The distribution is available in four editions, ranging in size from largest to smallest: Full, Base, Core, and Net.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Favourite web browser
In this week's Feature Story we talked about a range of web browsers which run on Linux. Which of the browsers mentioned is your favourite? Do you have another web browser we didn't talk about which you prefer to use? Let us know why you picked your current web browser in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on purchasing the PinePhone Pro in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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My favourite web browser is...
| Brave: | 325 (10%) |
| Chrome: | 227 (7%) |
| Chromium: | 97 (3%) |
| Edge: | 85 (3%) |
| Epiphany/GNOME Web: | 17 (1%) |
| Falkon: | 35 (1%) |
| Firefox: | 1764 (57%) |
| Firefox fork (like LibreWolf): | 139 (4%) |
| Otter: | 10 (0%) |
| Vivaldi: | 220 (7%) |
| Other: | 181 (6%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 8 November 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) is a free operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux and optimised for the Raspberry Pi hardware (the armhf processor architecture). Raspberry Pi OS comes with over 35,000 packages, or pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation on a Raspberry Pi. The initial build was completed in June of 2012, but the distribution continues to be active developed with an emphasis on improving the stability and performance of as many Debian packages as possible. Although Debian produces a distribution for the arm architecture, it is compatible only with versions later than the one used on the Raspberry Pi (ARMv7-A CPUs and higher vs the Raspberry Pi's ARMv6 CPU).
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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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