 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 943, 15 November 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the great frustrations many Android and GNU/Linux users face is that it is difficult to get traditional desktop Linux applications running on Android and it's even less likely an Android application will run on Linux desktop distributions. There are a few projects which attempt to address this issue of applications built for different Linux-based ecosystems not being portable. One such project is called Waydroid. The Waydroid team develops compatibility software designed to run Android applications on Linux distributions that are running a Wayland display server. We have more details on what Waydroid is and how it works in this week's Feature Story. In our News section we talk about the System76 team planning to develop their own desktop environment for Pop!_OS. At the same time the UBports team has published a report on various projects they are collaborating with to make Linux on mobile devices more viable. Meanwhile one OpenBSD developer is working to port more games to the secure-by-default operating system. Then we answer questions about lightweight desktop environments, comparing the LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce desktops. Of these three resource-friendly desktops which is your favourite? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Waydroid
- News: Pop!_OS plans own desktop environment, UBports collaborates with other mobile operating systems, porting games to OpenBSD
- Questions and answers: An overview of LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce
- Released last week: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5, Raspberry Pi OS 2021-10-30, 3CX Phone System 10
- Torrent corner: 3CX Phone System, Alpine Linux, ArcoLinux, kodachi, openmamba, Raspberry Pi OS, SparkyLinux
- Upcoming releases: FreeBSD 12.3 RC2
- Opinion poll: Preferred lightweight desktop
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of Waydroid
The goal of being able to run Android apps on a laptop computer or on a GNU/Linux distribution has been the driving force behind several projects. The Android-x86 project seeks to run Android itself on common laptop and workstation hardware while projects like Anbox try to run Android apps on a GNU/Linux desktop using container technology. Today I'd like to look at another project which has the goal of running Android apps on both desktop and mobile GNU/Linux distributions. This young project is called Waydroid and its website suggests we can run many Android apps as though they were regular desktop applications.
There are some caveats to this wonderful plan of running Android apps on a desktop Linux distribution. One of the limitations is Waydroid needs to run in a Wayland graphical session. This essentially limits Waydroid to running on systems running recent versions of KDE Plasma or GNOME with compatible hardware. Though I had trouble finding specifics, it seems as though Waydroid needs specific kernel options to be enabled at build time - options which I'm told are incompatible with the Fedora family of distributions, unless we want to build a custom kernel.
Getting set up
According to the Waydroid website the supported options are to run Debian 11 "Bullseye", Ubuntu 20.04 "Focal", or Ubuntu 21.04 "Hirsute" with a Wayland session. We also need to have Python 3, cURL, and the LXC Linux container software installed. Most mainstream distributions include Python 3 these days, but cURL and LXC usually need to be installed through the package manager.
The distribution I was using this week was running MATE 1.24 which does not offer Wayland support so I had to look elsewhere. For the sake of my test I decided to install Kubuntu 21.04 which includes a KDE Plasma session running on Wayland. (Wayland is not the default session, but it can be selected from the login screen.) Once Kubuntu was installed I added the LXC and cURL packages, then confirmed Python 3 was available. Finally, I confirmed I really was in a Wayland session and began installing Waydroid.
The Waydroid website has step-by-step install instructions at the bottom of the main page. These walk us through setting up a new package repository, installing a Waydroid package, and then using that to download what appears to be a copy of an Android build. The Android software is installed by running "sudo waydroid init" and worked smoothly for me. The initial package is tiny, less than 1MB in size. The Android image is quite a bit larger, about 750MB in size. I feel it worth mentioning the Android image is unpacked in the /var directory so we should make sure we have plenty of free space in that part of the filesystem.
At first, when I tried to start the Waydroid service and launch a new session, the software claimed it could not start because it was not running on a Wayland session. I confirmed again my session was Wayland (provided by KDE Plasma's Kwin window manager). I then got the idea to restart the computer and, when Kubuntu came back on-line, I was able to start the Waydroid service and launch a session. The "waydroid status" command confirmed it was up and running, correctly identified my user ID, and that I was running a Wayland session.
Early impressions
At this point I tried to launch the Waydroid software from the application menu and, after a lot of disk activity, nothing happened. When I tried running the command "waydroid show-full-ui" which is suggested on the project's website, again nothing happened.
My system monitor showed the Waydroid container software was running and I could access the Android filesystem by running "sudo waydroid shell", giving me the chance to run commands in the Waydroid container. However, I could not get any graphical applications or controls to show up.
I next tried installing a package, the F-Droid software centre, which the Waydroid documentation recommends. The software installed and I could confirm the package was on the system by running "waydroid app list", but anytime I tried to run F-Droid nothing happened.
I went digging further through the Waydroid documentation and discovered that while both GNOME and KDE Plasma desktops should work, Waydroid recommends versions of Plasma "after 5.21". I was running version 5.21.4, which seemed likely to qualify, but perhaps the documentation meant the latest version of Plasma (5.22) was required? The documentation mentions GNOME running on Pop!_OS, Fedora, or Ubuntu should work. Earlier I mentioned there were comments on various forums that Fedora's kernel was not compatible with Waydroid, so I decided to try Ubuntu 21.04.
Starting over with a clean slate
I wiped Kubuntu from my system, set up Ubuntu 21.04 with GNOME, installed the LXC and cURL software, and confirmed I was running a Wayland session. Once again I installed the Waydroid software and once again its service failed to start until I had rebooted my computer.
Once again I was able to confirm Waydroid was running, I could access its shell and filesystem, and I could get the F-Droid software centre package to install. I then tried to run the Waydroid launcher from the application menu and nothing happened. I also tried running "waydroid show-full-ui" which results in a lot of disk activity, followed by nothing.
Checking on Waydroid's status and processes
(full image size: 361kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
The Waydroid documentation explains how to install a new Android package from the command line, but is unclear about what should happen when we try to launch the same package, or whether we should refer to the app by its full name (org.fdroid.fdroid) or its simple name (fdroid). I tried both and, in both cases, nothing appeared to happen. However, I could confirm the software (along with several default Android apps such as the settings panel and clock) were installed in the container by running "waydroid app list".
I tried running the clock, settings panel, and software centre - all without any visual results. I did see these programs show up in the list of processes when I ran top or ps, meaning the programs were running somewhere, I just couldn't see them.
Conclusions
Waydroid seems like a good idea and a useful concept. It's even relatively easy to set up, assuming you are running a distribution with the necessary kernel features and a modern Wayland session. The command line syntax for Waydroid is quite straight forward and it even has little helpful blurbs on what options are available. In short, the Waydroid project seems to be doing several things well.
While I could install Android apps into the container and even run them (according to my system monitor), I was unable to ever see any Android apps or interface. Perhaps I'm missing a key component, perhaps it's a bug. I looked through the Waydroid log (kudos to the team for making logging and debugging a key feature right from the start), but I was unable to find any problem. There was a warning at times about Waydroid not being able to identify the "host_user", but the "waydroid status" output also showed it correctly found my username and ID.
I've browsed through the project's issue reports and discovered several other people with the same problem, though we do not appear to have a common distribution, video card, or error messages. In other words, Waydroid seems like a good idea and (based on other reports I've read) Waydroid is working for some people. However, it's not ready for general use yet. It's close, but most people will probably need a more friendly installation process, a little more specific documentation on installing and running apps, and (in my case) to be able to see the apps we're running in the container.
Waydroid is close and I've heard it's already running pretty well on some distributions on the PinePhone, but it still has a little ways to go before I can recommend it to people who want to run Android software on their laptop or GNU/Linux phone.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Pop!_OS plans own desktop environment, UBports collaborates with other mobile operating systems, porting games to OpenBSD
In a response to a poll about whether Pop!_OS users would be interested in seeing the distribution offer a KDE Plasma edition alongside the project's default GNOME flavour, one of the members of the Pop!_OS team revealed System76 is working on a custom desktop environment. The desktop, which will be called COSMIC, is not a fork of GNOME, but a new project written in Rust which will offer the same desktop layout and design as the one Pop!_OS already ships. When asked why System76 would put development effort into a new desktop environment, the response was: "What are you expecting us to do? We have a desktop environment that is a collection of GNOME Shell extensions which break every GNOME Shell release. Either we move towards maintaining tens of thousands of lines of monkey patches, or we do it the right way and make the next step a fully fledged desktop environment equal to GNOME Shell." This announcement comes about two months after the Solus team revealed plans to drop the GTK+ development library which the Solus team says is negatively impacted by GNOME's management of the toolkit.
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There are a number of Linux-based mobile operating systems currently available. Some of these strive to provide an open, GNU/Linux platform while others are children of the Android family. Some of these projects are able to collaborate to share code and progress. The UBports team have published a blog post which outlines various ways the developers work with other distributions and mobile platforms. One key component that gets shared is called Halium. "Halium provides a Hardware Abstraction Layer that allows GNU/Linux to run on mobile devices that come pre-installed with Android. Halium contains the device-specific Linux kernel with drivers, as well as Android services needed to talk to the hardware and the telephony stack oFono. Thanks to the Halium abstraction layer, Ubuntu Touch, Droidian, LuneOS and other mobile Linux platforms have the same way to use the Android source code, launch Android services and flash images to devices. So Halium makes sure that all these projects are able to boot on a phone. By collaborating on these low-level components, these distributions have a common Linux base. This allows each project to focus on the development of the higher layers, where they differ from each other in their user interfaces."
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The OpenBSD operating system is well known for its security, clean design, and accurate documentation. Something it is less known for is being used as a gaming platform. The OpenBSD Webzine interviewed one of the OpenBSD developers who is working on bringing games to the platform: "Working on games on OpenBSD has a very pioneering feel to it because it seems so outlandish at first sight. The advantage for me is that there is lots of (relatively) low-hanging fruit and little risk of breaking something that's critical to many users and developers. There is a certain purist take on using OpenBSD that I disagree with. Like that certain applications are frivolous and not worthy of developer attention - games, watching videos, social media... or even a graphical user interface. Instead, I hope to increase the scope of use without sacrificing the core ideas driving the project." The rest of the short interview can be found in Issue 4 of the OpenBSD Webzine.
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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) |
An overview of LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce
Untangling-desktop-differences asks: Firstly, thank you so much for your many years dedicated to DistroWatch and the advancement of Linux.
I am really confused about the desktops Xfce, LXQt and LXDE as they all say 'lightweight' and are a similar mix of letters. There may be more than just those three - all 4-letter "l" "x" something something. It seems like every few months a new one appends itself to this list.
Could you maybe one week illuminate the subject and write about the points of difference, purpose (target audience), etc about each of them?
DistroWatch answers: First, I appreciate your kind words, thank you. I have a great time working on open source software and DistroWatch.
Regarding the desktop environments, let's talk about Xfce first. Xfce describes itself as follows:
Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly.
While Xfce describes itself as being lightweight, most people would probably refer to Xfce as being a middle-weight desktop environment. As the project's description says, Xfce strives to balance speed and low resource consumption with visual appeal and user-friendly features.
Xubuntu running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 239kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In a lot of ways Xfce finds a middle ground. It offers lots of features, customization options, friendly tools, and desktop utilities. On the other side, Xfce manages to maintain a fairly small CPU and memory footprint. The desktop typically consumes less than 500MB of memory and practically idles the CPU. Xfce has a well deserved reputation for being relatively small (compared to KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, Budgie, and Deepin) while offering most of the key features and options people want to see in a modern desktop environment.
While Xfce may not ship with as many in-house applications as KDE Plasma or GNOME do, the project ships some useful key components. Xfce includes its own capable settings panel, the top-notch Thunar file manager, a bulk file renaming tool, screenshot utility, virtual terminal, and a number of other small tools which fill out the desktop experience.
The Xfce desktop is built with the GTK+3 toolkit and tends to evolve slowly and steadily. The project has a reputation for taking its time implementing changes, giving users a slowly evolving desktop experience (in contrast to GNOME and Plasma which make rapid, breaking changes).
Xfce has its own, highly capable window manager, Xfwm, which performs well and has very little overhead.
The LXDE project is the most lightweight of the three desktops we are talking about today. LXDE is built using the depreciated GTK+2 toolkit and typically uses the third-party Openbox window manager.
LXDE, in comparison with other Linux desktops, has a tendency to be viewed less as a unified, complete desktop, and more as a collection of desktop tools running on top of Openbox. The LXDE components, like the panel and file manager, tend to be updated independently rather than as a whole.
The LXDE desktop usually offers the best performance and lowest memory footprint of the popular Linux desktop environments. It probably also ships with the fewest components and tools as people who run LXDE tend to want performance and minimal resource consumption over features.
LXLE running the LXDE desktop
(full image size: 768kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Unfortunately, LXDE is mostly unmaintained these days. The LXDE project has shifted focus to working on LXQt (more on the latter desktop in a moment). The LXDE website and wiki largely consist of out of date information and broken links, a reflection of the lack of maintenance the desktop components receive these days. Some Linux distributions still ship LXDE, but most are moving on to its successor, LXQt.
The LXQt desktop started as a merger of the LXDE-Qt and Razor-qt desktop projects. It strives to provide approximately the same look and experience as LXDE, with two key differences. The first is that LXQt uses the Qt toolkit as its base (opposed to GTK+ which is used by LXDE and Xfce). The second is LXQt is actively maintained and continues to put out regular releases.
The LXQt desktop has approximately the same tools, features, and layout as LXDE. Like its sibling, LXQt uses the Openbox window manager under the hood and piles desktop components such as a panel and application menu on top. The desktop components of LXQt offer most of the same functionality and minimal approach of LXDE, but have a distinct Qt style to them that will look familiar to people who have run KDE Plasma. In fact, LXQt might be viewed as a sort of minimal cousin of the KDE Plasma desktop with many applications and options removed.
SparkyLinux running the LXQt desktop
(full image size: 289kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
While all three desktops (Xfce, LXDE, and LXQt) describe themselves as lightweight and (by modern standards) they are, there is a bit of difference in the weight of each. In my experience, Xfce tends to be the heaviest of the three with the highest number of features and conveniences. LXQt, in my tests, is smaller than Xfce, but requires about 50% more memory than LXDE while offering approximately the same features as its sibling. LXDE requires the least amount of memory and CPU but is using an outdated toolkit and is largely unmaintained.
As to who is the target audience for each desktop, that is a matter of taste. In my opinion, Xfce is a desktop for people who want a full-featured desktop environment, but who don't want the overhead of all the widgets and visual effects that comes with KDE Plasma and GNOME. LXDE is a super-light desktop that manages to run on older, less capable hardware - in part because it is so minimal and built using obsolete technology. The LXQt project fills in a middle ground. It offers modern technology and a minimal interface. It tends to be heavier than LXDE by a notable amount while usually being smaller than Xfce. The LXQt project is really ideal for people who like the look and style of KDE Plasma components, but who want a minimal interface with fewer options and features.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Raspberry Pi OS 2021-10-30
Raspberry Pi OS is a Debian-based distribution custom built for Raspberry Pi computers. The development team have published a new version of Raspberry Pi OS which carries the code name "Bullseye". The new version is based on Debian 11 and upgrades a number of desktop components. "All of the desktop components and applications are now using version 3 of the GTK+ user interface toolkit. GTK+ is a layer of software that applications can use to draw standard user interface components (known as 'widgets') such as buttons, menus and the like, so that all applications have a consistent look and feel. Up until now, most of the desktop has used version 2 of the GTK+ toolkit, but increasing numbers of Debian applications are using GTK+3, so to try and keep things consistent, we've upgraded all our software and the desktop itself to the newer version. GTK+3 has been around for several years now, and people have occasionally asked why we didn't move to it before now. The simple answer is that many things are much easier to do with GTK+2 than with GTK+3, particularly when it comes to customising the appearance of widgets - GTK+3 has removed several useful features which we relied upon. It has ended up being necessary to find work-arounds to a lot of these - hopefully no one will notice them and everything will still work as before!" Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
3CX Phone System 10
Agathoklis Prodromou has announced the release of 3CX Phone System 10, a major update of the company's specialist Linux distribution designed for VoIP telephony. The new version is based on Debian 10 "Buster" and it comes with the latest version of 3CX telephony software, build 18.0.1.237, released last month. From the release announcement: "Our latest 3CX ISO is now available bringing the latest version of Debian 10 and 3CX v18 Update 1. The new ISO image supports Microsoft Hyper-V Gen2 virtual machines with 'Secure Boot' enabled for additional protection. Debian 'Buster' version 10.11. Keeping your instance as up-to-date and secure as possible is a key priority for us. That is why, unlike other PBXs, we make sure that our ISO image files support the latest operating system. This means that you receive regular updates to strengthen security, increase performance and reduce resource requirements." Further information about the latest version of the 3CX telephony software is available in the changelog.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5
Red Hat has announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5, the lates update of the company's commercial, enterprise-class Linux distribution with bundled customer support: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5 is now generally available. It brings new features and improvements to help streamline deployments, optimize performance and help mitigate risk in your environments. RHEL 8.5 continues the tradition of new features and improvements for running Linux containers. This release brings tooling that will add flexibility and reduce friction in running Podman in a wider range of environments. Containerized Podman - the RHEL 8 Podman container image (rhel8/podman) is now GA and can help unlock the usage of Podman in cloud CI/CD systems, on WSL2 on Windows, under Docker Desktop on macOS, and (of course) on RHEL 6, 7 and 8. You can use the Podman container image to help develop and run other container images. Verify container image signatures by default - in RHEL 8.5 users can pull container images with confidence." Read the press release, the What's New blog post and the release notes for more information.
AlmaLinux OS 8.5
The AlmaLinux OS team have announced the release of a new point release in the distribution's 8.x series. The new version is built using upstream's 8.5 sources. "Hi, Community! The AlmaLinux OS Foundation is thrilled to announce that AlmaLinux OS 8.5 Stable is now available. This stable release for x86_64 and ARM architectures is ready for production installations and to power all your computing needs and workloads. So grab it from the nearest mirror and join us on the AlmaLinux Community Chat to discuss. The Raspberry Pi image is also updated to the newest version. Our Live Images, Cloud and Container images updates are in process and will be updated shortly as well." Further information on AlmaLinux OS 8.5 is available through the project's release announcement with technical information provided in the distribution's release notes.
Lakka 3.6
Tomáš Kelemen has announced the release of Lakka 3.6, the latest stable version of the project's lightweight Linux distribution that intends to transform various popular computing devices into full-blown game consoles. From the release announcement: "We are happy to announce the new and updated version of Lakka. Changes since version 3.5.2: RetroArch updated to 1.9.13.2; option to control the menu by all users is back; new option for automatic frame delay (accessible via Settings, Latency and also via Quick Menu - Advanced Settings must be enabled to access this option); cores updated to their most recent versions; beetle-fce - added new libretro core (exists besides beetle-fce-fast); ecwolf - added new libretro core; fbneo - added highscore.dat to RetroArch system folder; mame2003-plus - added artwork, cheat.dat and history.dat to RetroArch system folder; scummvm - added engine files, themes, soundfont and basic scummvm.ini file to RetroArch system folder; Mesa updated to 21.2.5; mainline kernel updated to 5.10.78; Raspberry kernel/firmware updated to 1.20211029; fixed issue with older Intel GPUs...."
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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:
- Peers connected: 1,797
- Total torrents seeded: 2,648
- Total data uploaded: 40.9TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Preferred lightweight desktop
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about the differences between three popular, lightweight desktop environments: LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce. Which of these three is your favourite? Let us know why you like your desktop in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on predictable release schedules in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Which is your preferred lightweight desktop?
| LXDE: | 276 (11%) |
| LXQt: | 250 (10%) |
| Xfce: | 1260 (48%) |
| Other: | 354 (14%) |
| I do not use a lightweight desktop: | 472 (18%) |
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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, 22 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 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 |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Namib GNU/Linux
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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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