 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 957, 28 February 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Information can take many forms and be stored in many different formats. The best way to organize and store data varies depending on what people want to do with it. In this week's Questions and Answers column we discuss web browser bookmarks and how they can be exported into various formats. We talk about transferring bookmarks from the browser to text files, to a spreadsheet, and to a database. Read on to learn more about why and how to shift bookmarks into various formats. Also on the subject of bookmarks, how large is your bookmark collection? Let us know the size of your accumulated bookmarks in this week's Opinion Poll. Before we dive into bookmarks we talk about a user friendly distribution called Pop!_OS. The Pop!_OS distribution is based on Ubuntu and developed by System76 which bundles the operating system with their own computers. Joshua Allen Holm takes Pop!_OS for a test drive and reports on his findings. Then, in our News section, we talk about the Zorin project setting up new documentation and link to steps which will install Debian on an Apple M1 computer. Plus we share a discussion taking place among the Linux kernel developers about whether to drop support for ReiserFS. We are also 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:
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| Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm) |
Pop!_OS 21.10
Pop!_OS 21.10, released in December 2021, is the latest release of Colorado-based computer vendor System76's Linux distribution. Based on Ubuntu 21.10, Pop!_OS 21.10 provides a heavily customized experience. Most packages come from Ubuntu's repositories, but the extra System76 packages change a lot. In this review, I explore what Pop!_OS 21.10 has to offer and take a look at many of the things that make the Pop!_OS desktop experience different from Ubuntu's customized GNOME and standard GNOME.
Installing Pop!_OS 21.10
There are three different downloads available for Pop!_OS 21.10: the standard image for AMD64 systems, an image for AMD64 systems with NVIDIA graphic cards that comes with the proprietary NVIDIA driver pre-installed, and an image for Raspberry Pi 4 computers. Because my testing system does not have NVIDIA graphics, I downloaded the standard image, which is 2.6GB. I copied this image to a flash drive, rebooted my computer, turned off Secure Boot per the instructions on the Pop!_OS download page, and started Pop!_OS from the flash drive.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Running the system installer from the live desktop
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Once fully booted, the Pop!_OS installer appears. This installer asks for the same information and performs mostly the same tasks as every other Linux installer, but the installer provides a nice way of performing those tasks. Two nice things the installer does is it makes it really, really easy to enable full-disk encryption, which is actually the default when setting up Pop!_OS, and it automatically creates a recovery partition when installing.
The recovery partition is a 4GB partition that contains the installation image. By pressing space at boot, the recovery partition can be accessed and used to repair or re-install Pop!_OS without having to use an external flash drive. The recovery partition is periodically updated (updates are listed in the relevant section in the GNOME Settings application), so the recovery process can provide a fresh install or repair that is newer than the original install media.
The COSMIC desktop
System76 has plans to create their own desktop environment, but in this version of Pop!_OS the COSMIC (Computer Operating System Main Interface Components) desktop is GNOME 40 plus a series of extensions. These various extensions provide several major changes to the default GNOME user experience. The changes are obvious right from the start with the initial setup dialog providing many options for customizing the desktop experience.
The initial setup dialog provides way more options than the standard GNOME setup dialog. The first screen asks the user to pick between "No dock", "Dock extends to edges", and "Dock doesn't extent to edges". The first option turns off the dock, the second option makes the dock stretch all the way across the bottom of the screen (a significant departure from Ubuntu, where the dock is on the left by default, and from GNOME that does not have a persistent dock), and the last option makes the dock only as wide as the icons it contains. The second screen configures various things about the top panel. The third and fourth screens explain how to use the Launcher and touchpad navigation gestures. The fifth screen provides an option to toggle between a light and dark theme. The sixth deals with privacy. The seventh with timezones and location. The eighth with configuring various on-line accounts. After all that, the final screen says "All done!" with a button labeled "Start Using Pop!_OS".
I selected all the default options during the initial configuration process, which meant I had a dock at the bottom of the screen that stretched all the way to the edges, the top panel has shortcuts for accessing the Workspace selector and opening the Applications Library, and the system uses a dark theme. Even if I had selected different options, I would have still ended up with a desktop experience that has some similarities with GNOME and Ubuntu's customized GNOME, but is different enough that it provides a unique experience.
There are three major components that make COSMIC unique: the Launcher, the Application Library, and the tiling window mode extension. Each of these components alters the traditional GNOME workflow.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Launcher displaying advanced search options
(full image size: 2.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
By default, the Launcher is what opens when pressing the `Super` key. This Launcher provides a lot of keyboard control for starting applications, switching between running applications, and more. Typing "?" into the Launcher provides a large number of shortcuts for searching the web, searching for local files, performing mathematical calculations, and other advanced searches.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Application Library
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Application Library brings some refinements to GNOME's full screen applications screen. It lists applications in alphabetical order and treats GNOME's application folders as separate tabs instead of listing the groups in line with individual applications. The default groups are Office, System, and Utilities, but it is easy to create new groups or add items to existing groups. The only issue I had with the folders is that the Office folder does not automatically pick up LibreOffice Base after installing that package, so manually adding the LibreOffice Base icon to the Office group was necessary. The default list of applications included in that group include only the LibreOffice components that are pre-installed, the defaults for other folders include applications that are not always installed (e.g., the NVIDIA Settings application), so adding LibreOffice Base to the Office folder's defaults should be possible. This is a minor issue, but would be a nice bit of polish.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Firefox, Terminal, and Files in tiling layout
(full image size: 358kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The tiling window manager is the biggest change of them all. This option, which is off by default, but can be turned on by pressing `Super + Y`, turns on tiling window layout. This provides a lot more control over the layout of application windows. Want two windows on the left of the screen each taking half the height of the screen next to three windows on the right each taking up a third of the height? No problem and very easy to accomplish. The only thing that takes getting used to is the fact that almost all of Pop!_OS's keyboard shortcuts are changed from standard GNOME. Pop!_OS's keyboard shortcuts are internally consistent and work well with the tiling mode, but they do require relearning how to do things.
Default software selection
There are no real surprises here. Pop!_OS 21.10 comes with many of the same popular, open source applications included with most Linux distributions. Firefox is the web browser, Geary is the email client, and LibreOffice 7.2 (except for the LibreOffice Base component) is pre-installed. The rest of the pre-installed software is a selection of utilities and other common applications, like Evince and Totem. In short, nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing particularly noteworthy, but the software included is everything needed to perform basic computer tasks like web browsing, email, and office work.
Installing additional software
Pop!_OS relies on a combination of Ubuntu's and Pop!_OS repositories for providing additional Deb packages. In addition, Flatpak is installed and pre-configured to use the Flathub repository. The GUI application for installing new packages and performing updates is Pop!_Shop, which handles both Deb packages and Flatpaks. Pop!_Shop also lists a small selection of curated "Pop!_Picks" which are a selection of popular packages like Steam and Visual Studio Code. Pop!_OS also comes with Eddy, a GUI utility for installing Deb packages. Of course, packages can also be installed from the command line with the apt or flatpak commands.
Pop!_OS 21.10 -- Pop!_Shop
(full image size: 331kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I did run into one frustrating issue with installing addition software when I compiled and installed ScummVM from source. The .desktop file for ScummVM gets installed in /usr/local/share/applications, which the Pop!_OS Launcher does not recognize as a source for applications. ScummVM correctly appears in the Application Library, at least after logging out and logging in again (this is required only the first time a new application is added in /usr/local/share/applications, subsequent applications are added instantly to the Application Library), but the Launcher never detects the applications under /usr/local. Because of this, pressing the Super key and typing "ScummVM" would not work. Alternate methods for starting the program work just fine, like Alt+F2 or the icon in the Application Library. This is disappointing because Launcher clearly labels applications as "System" or "Local" (i.e., installed in ~/.local) or Flatpak, but /usr/local is not considered a valid source.
Final thoughts
While it is not perfect (no distribution is), Pop!_OS has a lot of nice things to offer. The COSMIC desktop customizations add many nice features to the GNOME desktop, and the built-in recovery partition is a welcome feature. That is not to say there are not also some drawbacks, like being beholden to whatever Ubuntu decides to do for the majority of the package selection, but Pop!_OS has plenty to offer for desktop Linux users. There are a few issues that I mentioned above that I would like to see fixed, but those issues do not stop me from recommending Pop!_OS to anyone looking for a smartly designed Linux distribution.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
Pop!_OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.9/10 from 214 review(s).
Have you used Pop!_OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Zorin offers more help, installing Debian on Apple M1 computer, Linux developers consider dropping ReiserFS, AlmaLinux gains PPC64 build
The Zorin OS distribution is based on Ubuntu and features a desktop environment designed to feel familiar for people migrating from Windows. The project offers a number of technical utilities to facilitate migration and it has now added a collection of helpful documents to guide users through common tasks. The new documentation site offers guides for installing video drivers, setting up printers, installing the operating system, acquiring games, and many other tasks.
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It has been over a year since the first M1-powered Mac computers were launched. The new line from Apple caused a lot of excitement due to the M1 processor having a strong balance of performance and energy efficiency. At the time the new Mac computers didn't run alternative operating systems and it has been somewhat difficult to port other systems to the M1-powered devices. The Asahi Linux team has been making strides in porting Linux to the Apple devices and there are now instructions available for installing Debian on this hardware. Not everything works yet, but the distribution is reaching the point of being useful for people willing to go through the manual steps of installing it. "All systems are supported. But currently the USB-A Port on the Mac Mini will not work in u-boot and GRUB. Mark Kettenis is working on it, but first the other patches need to land in u-boot. The two additional USB-3 ports on the iMac 4 port model also don't work in u-boot, GRUB and Linux."
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The Reiser filesystem is one of several filesystems supported in the Linux kernel. In fact, it was one of the earliest filesystems with journaling support to be merged into Linux, back in 2001. While ReiserFS has maintained a following of users over the years, it has become less popular due to the introduction of other modern filesystems such as ext4 and Btrfs. There is now a discussion as to whether it makes sense to continue supporting ReiserFS in the Linux kernel since there has been little work done to maintain it in recent years. Matthew Wilcox put forward the idea of removing ReiserFS from the kernel: "Keeping ReiserFS in the tree has certain costs. For example, I would very much like to remove the 'flags' argument to ->write_begin. We have the infrastructure in place to handle AOP_FLAG_NOFS differently, but AOP_FLAG_CONT_EXPAND is still around, used only by ReiserFS. Looking over the patches to ReiserFS over the past couple of years, there are fixes for a few syzbot reports and treewide changes. There don't seem to be any fixes for user-spotted bugs since 2019. Does ReiserFS still have a large install base that is just very happy with an old stable filesystem?"
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The AlmaLinux OS distribution is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and one of the possible replacements for CentOS Linux. The project already supported x86_64 and aarch64 CPU architectures. Now the distribution can also be installed on ppc64le machines. The AlmaLinux OS wiki offers information on the new install media, which can be downloaded from the project's server.
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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) |
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Transferring bookmarks to database
Most of the Questions and Answers columns we run feature a simple query with a fairly straight forward answer. A lot of the questions we receive don't require further information or a deeper dive into the situation. However, occasionally we get into a more back-and-forth situation in e-mail with more unusual concerns. This week we'd like to share an exchange which involved a collection of bookmarks which had gotten too large and a solution that involved transferring them to other formats for improved search options.
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Managing-bookmarks asks: I am curious if you know of any other way to keep bookmarks other than the standard browser option? The reason I ask, is that I'm having a bear of a time figuring out why my friend's new install of Linux Mint keeps experiencing browser crashes. Now I think the bookmarks are part of the problem, the file size for the bookmarks are an astounding 32.3GB in size (HTML no less!). These are bookmarks that he and his brother have accrued over the years. He works in psychology and is constantly saving articles.
Jesse answers: Their bookmarks file is 32GB? A standard URL is usually only 1k or smaller when stored in HTML. Which suggests your friends have around 32 million bookmarks shared between them. Is that even physically possible? They'd need to be bookmarking something new every waking second for a couple of years to accumulate that sort of bookmark collection! For comparison, my bookmarks archive, after nearly 20 years of collecting, is about 47kB (their collection is almost a million times larger).
Which tells me one of three things has probably happened. Perhaps they're storing new bookmarks at an insane rate and really need to find a different way to index information. Perhaps the bookmarks file has some embedded information in it, such as the website's icon. Or the file is corrupted and it may be that exporting the file and re-importing it to a fresh profile will shrink it down to a sane size.
As for finding an alternative... Maybe a simple LibreOffice Base database? Get your friend to dump the bookmarks into a database and then optionally tag anything they need to use regularly. So their database would have two main fields (plus the index). One field with the URL and one with tags like "family, history". That would make it easier to search.
Managing-bookmarks asks: I guess simple math would have made me realize the file was corrupt sooner rather than later. Thank you for breaking it down for me. It totally makes sense!
Last week we spoke about my friends' bookmarks and you mentioned the possibility of downloading the bookmarks to a database and tagging them. When you have a moment can you go a little more into detail about how to do that? I think this is something that would be very helpful to my friends.
Jesse answers: The first thing to do is to export all the bookmarks from your friend's web browser into an HTML file. Each web browser does this a little differently. However, almost all web browsers have a menu option for "Bookmarks" or "Manage Bookmarks" which will lead to an option to Export the bookmarks to a file. This file is typically given an HTML extension and contains the URLs bookmarked, along with the titles of the websites. Category information may also be included if the user has sorted their bookmarks into separate folders.
This HTML file containing all the bookmarks can be opened in a web browser like a regular web page. It will be sparse and just look like a list of links, one per line. This gives us quick access to the bookmarks and we can search through them using the browser's Find function, like we'd search for any text in a web page.
This approach is simple, but slightly limiting because the browser's Find function will only locate text in the title of the bookmark, not the URL. It also lacks any tagging options.
So what can we do about that? Well, as I mention above, we can try importing the bookmark URLs and names into a database. The original suggestion I made mentioned using a graphical database tool such as LibreOffice which would usually be preferable to command line alternatives such as MariaDB or SQLite. With that in mind, let's explore LibreOffice.
Before we look at working with the database, we first have an interesting issue to overcome. Our bookmarks are stored in HTML format and we'd like to have the bookmark titles and URLs in organized, plain-text fields that can be imported into other programs. How do we do this?
Let's assume the bookmarks I exported from my web browser are stored in a file called bookmarks.html. In my case, my browser exported the bookmarks using a classic Netscape format which places a "DT" tag at the start of each bookmark. The bookmark's URL and title then follow in HTML format. The details may vary depending on which browser you are using, but it seems most modern browsers use the same format. We can separate the pieces of data from my bookmarks.html file using a couple of command lines:
grep DT bookmarks.html | cut -f 2 -d '"' > urls
grep DT bookmarks.html | cut -f 3 -d '>' | cut -f 1 -d '<' > titles
The two commands above separate the URLs out to one text file and then the titles for each bookmark into another file. Basically we're just stripping out the HTML code and meta data from the bookmarks collection. Now we smash the URLs and titles for each bookmark back together in a file with numbered fields using this command:
paste urls titles | nl > bookmarks.txt
Our bookmarks are now in plain-text format, with each field separated by a tab character, stored in bookmarks.txt. We can open this file in a text editor to confirm all the data is there and the fields (the titles and URLs) line up.
At this point we should ideally be able to copy/paste the information from the new text file full of bookmarks into a database. However, I ran into a problem. Specifically, it seems LibreOffice Base will not allow an import copy/paste action from a simple text file. It will, I found, accept data copy/pasted in from a spreadsheet. And the LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet will accept tab-separated data from a text file.
In short, my workaround was to open LibreOffice Calc and, in the top row, I placed the words "ID", "URL", "Title", and "Tags". It looked like this:
| A | B | C | D |
|---|
| 1 |
ID |
URL |
Title |
Tags |
| 2 |
I then copy/pasted the entire contents of the bookmarks.txt file into the A2 cell (first column in the second row). LibreOffice correctly identified the information as being Tab-separated fields and filled in the table for me.
We could stop here. We have all the bookmark information in a spreadsheet. It can be sorted, it can be searched, it can be edited. For many people LibreOffice Calc is the friendliest form of a simple database we can hope for and its fields will be relatively easy to edit. I'd recommend stopping at this point and saving the bookmark information in the spreadsheet and handing it over to your friend. However, if you are married to the idea of using a full-featured database there are more steps.
To transfer this information into a database we can click the LibreOffice File menu, select New, and then select Database. Choose the option to "Create a new database" and click Next. On the next page make sure the "Open the database for editing" box is checked and that "Create tables using the table wizard" is not checked. When you click the Finish button LibreOffice will ask you to name the database.
Now we have a database, we need to put a table in it. The database table organizes the bookmark information. In LibreOffice click the button "Create Table in Design View." This will bring up a window where we can tell LibreOffice the names and types of fields we want to track, along with a comment describing each one. We're going to want three fields for this exercise:
- url - type Text
- title - type Text
- tags - type Text
The three fields will hold the name, address, and meta information we wish to attach to the bookmark. When we click the Save button LibreOffice will ask us to name the table (I called mine bookmarks) and whether we want to create a primary key, which can be helpful for organizing and indexing information in some situations. We should agree to create a default primary key called ID.
LibreOffice 7.0 Base -- Setting up the database fields
(full image size: 180kB, resolution: 1423x791 pixels)
Now we have a table with four fields (ID, URL, title, and tags). We also have a spreadsheet with corresponding fields (ID, URL, and title). We can transfer the data from the spreadsheet to the database as follows.
First, go to the spreadsheet containing the bookmark data. Select the first four columns of data, including the headers. The fourth column (for tags) is blank, but we still want to copy it. Highlight the entire block of information, all the rows containing bookmark entries. Then go to the Edit menu and select Copy.
Next, switch over to the LibreOffice Base window. Select the Tables tab, select the "bookmarks" database. Click the Edit menu and select Paste. A window will pop-up confirming we want to append new data to the database and that the spreadsheet fields are in the same order as the database fields. When we confirm these steps the bookmark data will be imported into the LibreOffice Base database. We can confirm the bookmarks have been imported by double-clicking on the "bookmarks" table and looking at the records it contains. Don't forget to click the Save button once you confirm the operation was successful!
At this point you can browse the bookmarks and perform simple searches on the URL, Title, and Tags fields by double-clicking the "bookmarks" table. You can alternatively click the Queries tab to the left of the screen and use a wizard (or SQL) to find bookmarks you want using keywords.
Queries can be entered using a wizard or typed manually. This allows us to run queries to find URLs that belong to certain domains or that have titles with specific keywords. For instance, we can find all bookmarks which mention "family" in the title and which have a ".org" ending by running the following query:
SELECT url FROM bookmarks WHERE url LIKE '%.org' AND title LIKE '%family%';
This is quite flexible, but as I mentioned before, your friends might prefer sticking to the LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet. It'll be a lot more user friendly than a database and offer almost as much flexibility.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Slax 11.2.0
Tomáš Matějíček has released a new version of Slax, a distribution that started back in 2003 as a minimalist live CD based on Slackware Linux, but evolved into a minimalist live CD based on Debian. The new version continues to use the Fluxbox window manager and is available for both 64-bit and 32-bit systems. The ConnMann application is now the preferred network connection manager. "More than two years since the previous update, I am happy to announce the immediate availability of final Slax version 11.2.0. This release features EFI support for USB booting and a complete update of all packages to the versions available in Debian 'Bullseye'. Furthermore, it provides full Aufs support, so you can continue working with additional modules as in previous Slax versions, add and/or remove modules on the fly. The core of Slax remains the same as always. Network connection can now managed using ConnMan. Most importantly, Chrome is no longer a part of Slax, but you can still install it with a single click or two, as well as the VLC video player." Read the release announcement and the changelog for more information.
Ubuntu 20.04.4
There has been an update to Ubuntu's latest long-term support (LTS) release and its official community editions. The new install images carry the version number 20.04.4 and provide both security updates and new hardware support for the Ubuntu family of distributions. The release announcement states: "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support. Like previous LTS series, 20.04.4 includes hardware enablement stacks for use on newer hardware. This support is offered on all architectures. Ubuntu Server defaults to installing the GA kernel; however you may select the HWE kernel from the installer bootloader. As usual, this point release includes many updates, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS."
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,689
- Total data uploaded: 41.5TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
How large is your bookmarks collection?
In this week's Questions and Answers section we talked about migrating bookmarks to a variety of different formats, including text, a spreadsheet, and a database. Arranging bookmarks into different formats can help sort or search through large numbers of bookmark entries. How large is your bookmark collection when it's exported into HTML format? Let us know how many bookmarks you have in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on trying Distrobox in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How large is your bookmark collection?
| 1kB to 50kB: | 232 (22%) |
| 51kB to 100kB: | 81 (8%) |
| 101kB to 250kB: | 87 (8%) |
| 251kB to 500kB: | 64 (6%) |
| 501kB to 1MB: | 84 (8%) |
| Between 1MB and 5MB: | 148 (14%) |
| Greater than 5MB: | 137 (13%) |
| Unknown: | 231 (22%) |
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|
| Website News |
Donations and sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the forms of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $108 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Regis F | $39 |
| Thomas S | $23 |
| Kenneth L | $15 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Krz S | $6 |
| Steer PTY | $6 |
| DuCaked H | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Bizunas S | $1 |
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 7 March 2022. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. 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)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| TUXEDO |
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 986 (2022-09-19): Porteus 5.0, remotely wiping a hard drive, a new software centre for Ubuntu, Proxmox offers offline updates |
| • Full list of all issues |
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