 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1001, 9 January 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While many developers and open source enthusiasts were taking the last two weeks of December off work to enjoy a holiday, our Jesse Smith had other ideas. He decided to dedicate the time to playing with Arch Linux, one of the more well known rolling release distributions and the parent to over two dozen child distributions and spins. Arch has a reputation for technical simplicity and being a challenge to install and we explore those tropes in this week's Feature Story. Do you use Arch Linux or one of its many children? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss efforts to port KDE desktop software to OpenBSD along with a look back at the history of the HardenedBSD project. Meanwhile the Edubuntu distribution, which has been dormant for years, may be making a comeback in 2023. Did you use Edubuntu in the past? Let us know about your experiences with Edubuntu in the comments section. Plus we talk about the Slax distribution gaining faster access to persistent storage while Ubuntu tests out a new system installer. We also comment on OpenMandriva's new rolling release branch which is called ROME. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about verifying files, which were copied between storage drives, were transferred without any errors. 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:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Arch Linux at the end of 2022
Arch Linux is an independent Linux distribution and one of the more well known examples of the "keep it simple" (KIS) philosophy. In this case, "keep it simple" refers to simplicity from an engineering point of view. It refers to a technical simplicity rather than an uncluttered or an easy to use system from the user's point of view.
Arch is probably the world's most famous (or infamous) rolling release distribution. Its heavy focus on do-it-yourself computing, lack of a graphical system installer, and buyer beware attitude toward package upgrades has made running this project a rite of passage for many Linux users. People often talk about running Arch the same way they'd discuss earning a merit badge.
Personally, I have some complex views when it comes to the Arch Linux project. On one hand, I appreciate the concept of a technically clean, minimal distribution on which we can build things. I like having the option of starting light and adding components as needed, at least in theory. However, I often get the impression Arch Linux is trying to make things harder just for the sake of making things harder.
Arch Linux is intended to be installed via manual commands from a shell, the install media has no graphical interface and no graphical installer. Technically, there is a command line system installer, but, as I've pointed out before, it's buggy and limited. This makes it more effort to try to use the installer than to set up Arch by hand.
There doesn't seem to be any technical reason for this hands-on approach to installing Arch. There are over a dozen distributions in the DistroWatch database which are, essentially, "Arch Linux, but set up with the Calamares system installer and your option of desktop environment." Philosophically, Arch seems to want users to do more work, more reading, and more editing configuration files by hand. This approach isn't bad, necessarily, but it is more work and rarely offers an improved experience. It's similar to building your own kit car: if you have fun doing that sort of thing, that's great, but in the end it doesn't give you a benefit when you're driving on the road.
One more thought, before I talk more about my latest experience setting up and running Arch Linux: part of my mixed view with regards to Arch comes from not being sure if it is a distribution. Arch supplies a lot of packages, including the Linux kernel. It also supplies support forums, rich documentation, and a place for users to upload recipes for installing third-party software, similar to the BSD concept of ports. All of these things make Arch seem like a Linux distribution. On the other hand, Arch Linux, as an operating system, doesn't really have a design or layout of its own. It is like a box of Lego bricks we can assemble into a shape of our choosing - aided by detailed instructions - but without any automated help. It feels like a bunch of parts we can use, or not, as we like. This makes Arch more of a meta distribution than a regular Linux distribution.
These characteristics make it difficult to review Arch Linux because it doesn't really have a structure so much as optional pieces. As a reviewer, I'm basically tasked on building my own operating system from parts and then asked my opinion of it. I feel like I'm grading my own art project.
Getting started
I started experimenting with Arch in the middle of December to give myself a few weeks to experiment with the project. The Arch Linux install media at the time was 818MB in size. Before making use of it I recommend people check out the project's installation guide and its associated resources which walk the user through the steps necessary to prepare the computer's hard drive, set up time zones, enable networking, set the system clock, set a root password, install a boot loader, configure the boot loader, and add more packages.
There are a lot of manual steps, most of them covered in detail in the project's documentation. I say most, because the documentation tends to provide generic or least-tool-for-the-job instructions. There are personal preferences we can make, for example which text editor to use. We might also prefer to use more friendly tools than what the documentation suggests. For instance, I used the relatively friendly, menu-driven cfdisk partitioning tool while the wiki mentions fdisk.
At any rate, once the install steps have been completed we can reboot and load up our new copy of Arch. By default, Arch boots to a text console where we can sign in as the root user.
Post-install steps
Once I got signed into my new copy of Arch, I wanted to install software to get utilities and a desktop set up on my system. The first thing I noticed was networking wasn't enabled, though it had been working on the live disc. It turned out Network Manager was installed, but not enabled. Once the Network Manager service was enabled I was able to connect to my local network. Then I went to work installing new packages.
A quick note here on package management. Arch uses the pacman package manager which has a short, unusual command line syntax. The pacman utility is fast though and handled my requests to add, remove, and find software without problems. I sometimes found pacman to be a bit too literal with its searches where APT or DNF might be more forgiving, but on the whole it worked well.
Once I had a few command line utilities installed I set about performing the larger task of installing the X.Org display software, a desktop environment (Xfce), and a display manager. A display manager provides, among other things, a graphical login screen. Looking through the list of available display managers, I decided to go with LightDM as it is relatively independent of desktop environments. Others, such as GDM and SDDM, are often associated with specific desktops and will pull in dependencies from those desktops. LightDM seemed like safe, neutral territory.
At first, the graphical environment was not launching successfully. I thought it was perhaps because I'd freshly installed video drivers and they hadn't been detected yet. After a reboot, the graphical display still failed to launch and the LightDM service failed to start. I was still stuck at the command line.
After some troubleshooting which involved installing more generic video drivers, looking through the X.Org logs, and confirming the Xfce desktop environment would start if launched manually, I realized the issue was the LightDM service. It was crashing when launched, preventing me from getting to a graphical environment. I disabled it and installed GDM (the GNOME Display Manager) in its place. The GDM service started without problems and I was able to login to start enjoying my Xfce desktop.
Arch Linux 2022.12.01 -- Confirming Xfce runs
(full image size: 228kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Well, at first GDM logged me into GNOME rather than Xfce. The display manager had pulled in a working GNOME desktop session (two, if you count the Wayland option) and I had to switch the session option to Xfce from the login screen.
Installing Xfce and its associated xfce4-goodies package provided me with the Xfce desktop, a terminal, the Thunar file manager, a settings panel, image viewer, task monitor, screenshot tool, and the Parole music player. This is about it, as we haven't yet installed a web browser, video player, office suite, or other applications. These can be fetched using pacman.
Making it feel like home
Since Arch is largely a do-it-yourself project with a lot of options and alternatives for those options, each step we take in setting up Arch branches us further away from other people's installs of the distribution. Each time we pick a login manager, a desktop environment, an office suite, or even a text editor our setup becomes more customized and less like someone else's version of Arch.
I feel this distinction, this path toward uniqueness, accelerates after we get a graphical environment installed and start acquiring desktop applications. At this point we're less likely to be following a guide which provides suggestions for boot loaders, drivers, and desktops and more likely to be installing whatever it is we want. Earlier I mentioned setting up and then reviewing Arch feels like making my own art project and then evaluating it. This impression really kicked into high gear at this stage because I was rapidly customizing my own system and key bits of information I'd usually record became more blurry.
How much disk space does a new copy of Arch use? It depends on which software we install. How much memory does it use? It depends on which services we enable and which desktop is installed. Does Arch work with my hardware? It does if I installed the proper drivers. Does Arch support filesystem snapshots? It can if I set up the right filesystem and utilities. Can I run Flatpaks on Arch? Yes, if I install the Flatpak framework. You get the idea; with Arch virtually nothing exists or works "out of the box", it's a manual, customized experience.
At the heart of the setup process is pacman. It's a blissfully fast, if frustratingly cryptic, package manager. Both the syntax and the options it offers while working are oddly arcane compared to other package managers. It works, but in an oddly terse way. By using pacman and the official Arch repositories we can get a good deal of popular software, such as text editors, LibreOffice, the VLC media player, and Firefox. Where I find the Arch experience falls down a bit is the official repositories are not particularly large. At the time of writing, Arch's website lists just over 13,500 packages. For comparison's sake, Debian's last stable release offered 60,000 packages and Fedora was offering about 67,700. This leaves some gaps in Arch's functionality.
Arch Linux 2022.12.01 -- Running the pacman package manager
(full image size: 500kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
We have the option of using third-party repositories to fill in the gaps in Arch's official offerings. The Flatpak framework, for example, is available as a package. Installing Flatpak on Arch automatically sets up the Flathub repository, giving us access to a wide range of desktop software.
Another alternative is the Arch User Repository (AUR). This is a collection of install scripts which are provided by the Arch community to fetch and install software not available in the official repositories.
While the AUR provides access to a great range of software and is often praised by the Arch community, there are warnings about using it in the Arch wiki and there is a strong "use at your own risk" tone in the guide providing instructions on using it. This is with good reason, this software is not verified or officially supported.
To start using the AUR we usually would want to install a package manager for building the available software. To do this, we'd first build one of the AUR's package managers (there are several options) as they all appear to be part of the AUR and not in the official repositories. There is a certain "chicken and the egg" issue here where we need to build software from the AUR in order to have easy access to the AUR. It serves to underline the separation between the official project and the community maintained AUR.
We can install the necessary packages, such as fakeroot, git, make, and gcc) to get started with the AUR. Then install one of the AUR package managers and use that to then fetch additional software. I took the popular yay AUR package manager as it works quickly and has a syntax which matches pacman.
Arch Linux 2022.12.01 -- The settings panel and Thunar file manager
(full image size: 216kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I find using the AUR to supply third-party software usually works well, particularly for smaller utilities. However, I found it inconvenient when it came to desktop software and I much preferred using Flatpak when possible. Software installed from the AUR is usually compiled from source code and this means large programs may take several minutes, or in some cases, a few hours to compile. The same software can sometimes be fetched in a minute from Flatpak.
Major upgrades
One interesting characteristic of Arch Linux is its rolling release nature. Arch is constantly on the cutting edge of open source software and frequently publishes new versions of packages within a day or two of new releases becoming available upstream. I was hoping to get to try a few big upgrades during my three weeks with the distribution and I happily got my chance about a week into my trail when a new stable release of Xfce (version 4.18) became available at the same time as a kernel upgrade.
When I installed Arch, Xfce 4.16 was still the latest version of my chosen desktop environment, but within days 4.18 (the first new release of Xfce in a few years) became available. I performed a full system upgrade using pacman which pulled in a minor kernel upgrade and the new version of Xfce. The experience went smoothly and, following a reboot, I was able to enjoy the latest version of the Linux kernel and shiny new Xfce 4.18 packages.
Arch Linux 2022.12.01 -- Running the latest version of Xfce
(full image size: 389kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
One of the few issues I ran into when performing regular updates was pacman would sometimes ask me if I wanted to substitute packages I had already installed with alternatives. Which, to me, seems unnecessary and counter-intuitive. I specifically picked the packages I wanted, often from a list of alternatives. Offering to remove my selected package and replace it with an alternative I've already rejected seems pointless and risks breaking my workflow when the two packages are not compatible.
Conclusions
Eventually, I managed to fetch all the software I wanted and customized the Xfce desktop to my liking. I ended up with what I wanted - something fairly light in memory, no frills, with just the applications I wanted. Well, the applications I wanted, plus a few gigabytes of Flatpak and build dependencies which come from using non-official repositories.
Since Arch requires us to set almost everything up manually, I ended up with just the items I felt I needed (and the dependencies they needed). All the software was up to date, thanks to Arch's rolling release nature. Most software worked as expected, with the exception of the vim text editor which kept crashing when run with root privileges.
As you might expect, where I basically crafted the operating system from raw parts (parts that generally worked well), I ended up with something I liked. The issue I have with this experience, if I have any complaints, is that getting to this point takes so long. I could have installed Artix or EndeavourOS in under 15 minutes and ended up with a nearly identical user experience and collection of applications with fewer build dependencies and fewer helper tools. In short, using one of Arch's popular child distributions would take about four hours less time (including compile times for components from the AUR) and would result in a system that was about 3GB smaller on the disk.
Arch Linux 2022.12.01 -- Exploring the Xfce menu
(full image size: 312kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
This isn't to say using Arch is a bad idea, it is just that it's likely to appeal to a few very specific types of people. People who like to do everything manually, who like to be involved with the low-level processes, who want to read all the documentation, turn every knob, and tweak every file by hand. If you prefer building remote control helicopters to flying them, if you'd rather change your own car tyres rather than taking it into the shop, if you made your own cups from pottery clay, then Arch is probably ideal for you.
Arch Linux also appears to appeal to people who see doing things the hard way as a badge of honour or a rite of passage. Linux forums are often home to people who want to build Linux From Scratch just to try it, or who installed Arch just because they heard it was hard and wanted a challenge. These are perfectly valid approaches, but neither of them personally appeal to me. I can get the same result through faster, easier methods - such as one of Arch's many children with a graphical system installer and pre-configured desktop.
This isn't to say Arch is bad or unpleasant to use. The quality of the packages, the cutting edge software, and the documentation are all stellar selling points. It's just a system that is time consuming to get going compared to other projects and requires a certain amount of reading and patience. In the end though, you end up with an operating system made, in a sense, in your own image. To paraphrase Yoda, the Arch experience contains only what you take with you.
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Visitor supplied rating
Arch Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.2/10 from 190 review(s).
Have you used Arch Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Porting KDE software to OpenBSD, history of HardenedBSD, Ubuntu tests new graphical installer, Slax gets faster persistent storage, Edubuntu makes a comeback, OpenMandriva publishes rolling-release branch
Rafael Sadowski has published a status update regarding KDE Plasma running on OpenBSD. The efforts to keep KDE Plasma and its related software up to date on OpenBSD are ongoing. "This will come as a surprise to some, but I was able to port (almost) all KDE Plasma components to OpenBSD. You can find all my work on GitHub in the sizeofvoid/wip-ports repository, branch kde-plasma-wip, directory x11/kde-plasma. I've been working on it for a very long time. At some point I was so frustrated that we don't have uDev and libInput. Read more here: OpenBSD and Wayland." The full overview can be found in this blog post.
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The HardenedBSD project is a security-enhanced fork of FreeBSD which implements and tests new security features. Shawn Webb, one of the project's founders, shares a look back on the past decade of work on the project, lessons learned, and challenges faced. "This was the first large kernel development work I had ever done, so I had a lot to learn. Oliver and I worked in separate personal repos in GitHub for a while until Oliver created the HardenedBSD repo to unify our work. Our intent was to do initial development in the HardenedBSD repo with the goal of upstreaming to FreeBSD. History would take us on a different path. As we worked on our ASLR implementation, we updated our submission in FreeBSD's patch review system to solicit feedback from the FreeBSD project's official development team. With this being our first real foray into FreeBSD kernel development, we learned a lot through this review process. After two years of the development and review process, it was apparent that we differed with FreeBSD on the technical merits of our patch. Our work was not to be upstreamed due to a variety of reasons, some technical, some political. I eventually became overwhelmed and burned out and opted to abruptly discontinue the attempt at upstreaming our work."
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The Ubuntu team is testing a new graphical installer which may soon replace the distribution's long lived Ubiquity installer. The Phoronix website has a write-up on what it is like to use the new Ubuntu installer along with screenshots of the experience. "When testing some Ubuntu 23.04 daily builds over the holidays on various test systems, I was pleased to see the new installer finally being used by default. This is making use of the Subiquity/Curtin install tech already used by Ubuntu Server and leveraging Google's Flutter SDK for the user-interface. Previously this new installer was available via an alternate ISO while the latest Ubuntu 23.04 daily builds are using it by default in place of the older Ubiquity with GTK interface. The user interface in my opinion is pleasant and subtly improved over the older Ubiquity installer."
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The Slax distribution will soon be getting a new filesystem for persistent storage. DynFileFS was providing persistent storage for the distribution in the past, but the filesystem had some performance issues which are being addressed in DynFileFS 3.0. The author warns the new filesystem is not backward compatible with previous versions due to on-disk format changes. " I decided to review the code and as a result I rewrote the filesystem's internal logic completely. New DynFileFS version 3.0 is now available at GitHub. It uses different file format on disk, so it is not backward compatible, but I believe it is worth it. How does it work? Simply said, it provides a virtual file called 'virtual.dat' after mounting it to some directory. This file can be of any specified size, like 30GB, but it does not need to pre-allocate this huge amount of disk space on mount. All changes made to this virtual file are stored in an indexed storage in a different file on disk, for example called 'changes.dat', and this file grows in time as your changes are made. As a result, it stores only the changes on disk, and not the free space between them." Additional details are discussed in the Slax blog post.
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The Edubuntu distribution was once a community edition of Ubuntu which was geared toward educational environments and computer labs. Though discontinued several years ago, the Edubuntu project may soon make a comeback. In an announcement on the Ubuntu Discourse forum, an outline of what the new Edubuntu flavour will look like was shared: "We're using the GNOME desktop. Edubuntu will simply, from a .iso image standpoint, be built on-top of the Ubuntu Desktop. This will ensure ease of configurability and administration as we won't have to 'reinvent the wheel' and instead use what the Ubuntu Desktop team has already established for workstations." The Discourse post includes additional information.
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People who like using the OpenMandriva distribution, but who may not want to wait a year between releases or use the bleeding edge Cooker branch of the project are in luck. The OpenMandriva team now provides a rolling release branch intended for regular use, not just development and testing. The young branch is called ROME and is available in both KDE Plasma and GNOME editions. "ROME is the rolling release designed for individual users, it will receive the most up-to-date packages including recent security and bug fix upgrades. Our development branch, Cooker, will continue as the main point of development. It can break at any time, so if you are using Cooker and you will not get scared if your system will break every now and then, nothing changes for you. But if you are a user who needs a system to remain working, while still wanting to get the latest and greatest features without having to wait for a new point release, ROME is for you." Details on ROME can be found in the project's announcement.
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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) |
Verifying a disk's contents was copied properly
Verifying-correctness asks: Let's say I have two disks, Disk A and Disk B. I copy the contents of Disk A to Disk B. How can I confirm Disk B is now identical to Disk A without comparing the files, like with a checksum, one at a time?
DistroWatch answers: It sounds like you're wondering if you can just take a single checksum of a hard drive and confirm its entire contents is identical to another drive's checksum. This probably will not work. Even if you clone one hard drive to another, using a tool such as dd or Clonezilla Live, the two drives might not share the same checksum because they can still have different sizes. Most drives, even if they are labelled as having the same capacity, may not be exactly identical down to the byte.
If you're not cloning the drives, instead using regular copy tools, then the location of files on the drive will depend on which filesystems you're using, fragmentation, and partition layout.
In short, whether you're copying files individually or cloning a disk, you're unlikely to end up with a perfectly identical copy of your original disk on the new drive. Which means, unfortunately, to confirm each file has copied correctly you're going to need to compare and verify each file on Disk B to confirm it is the same as the corresponding file on Disk A.
One of the easiest ways to automate confirming the files in two locations match exactly is to use a tool called rsync. The rsync utility is usually used to archive files or synchronize files between two locations. By default, rsync will do a few quick checks to see if two files look to be identical. It does this by comparing the sizes and modification times of the two files. If the files have the same name, size, and modification time then rsync will assume the files are a match.
However, if we want to make really sure the files are identical then we can instruct rsync to look at the checksums of each file. This basically compares the "fingerprints" of the file in both locations and confirms they match. When rsync finds a file where the checksums do not match it will either print the name of the file that isn't identical or copy the original file to overwrite the new file.
Let's look at an example. In this instance, I'm going to assume I have two hard drives attached to my computer. One is mounted at the location /media/disk_a and the other is mounted at /media/disk_b. Using the following command, I will ask rsync to check the contents of both disks. Since I'm using the "--dry-run" flag, rsync will print out any mismatched files between the two disks, but not do anything about the files not matching. Basically, it just reports it found an issue and will not try to fix it.
rsync -av --checksum --dry-run /media/disk_a/ /media/disk_b/
Going over the flags listed here, briefly, the "-av" part means rsync should pretend it is archiving or syncing files between the two disks and print out status messages along the way. The "--checksum" flag means we want to use a checksum to verify all the files match, not just guess files match based on their size and modification times. The "--dry-run" flag tells rsync to print out the names of any mismatched files, but not take any action.
We can omit the "--dry-run" flag. This will unleash rsync to copy or overwrite any files on Drive B which do not match the contents of Drive A. In short, when rsync is done, all of the files on Drive A should be copied to (and verified on) Drive B:
rsync -av --checksum /media/disk_a/ /media/disk_b/
The "--checksum" flag, and other options the rsync command understands, are covered in detail in the rsync manual page.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Archcraft 2023.01.01
Aditya Shakya has announced the release of Archcraft 2023.01.01, a brand-new version of the project's lightweight, Arch-based Linux distribution that ships with Openbox and bspwm window managers (both highly customised) and a careful selection of lightweight applications: "January 2023 release available. You need to re-install Archcraft for this update. After that, you can update to the next release with pacman. Changelog: created the ISO image base from scratch; better network manager support, various VPN plugins; better Bluetooth support; Pipewire for sound/audio (systemwide, Bluetooth, jack); better printer support; almost all audio, video and image codecs; better file manager functionality (mounting, networking, archiving); better multi-monitor support; CJK fonts pre-installed; new themes for both Openbox and bspwm; creating user themes is super easy now; many minor changes." Here is the brief release announcement.
Archcraft 2023.01.01 -- Greeted by the welcome screen
(full image size: 3.0MB, resolution: 3840x2400 pixels)
DragonFly BSD 6.4.0
The DragonFly BSD project has published a new release, version 6.4.0, which provides the latest evolution of the 6.x series. The release announcement highlights some of the key features, particularly advancements made to the operating system's drivers. "DragonFly version 6.4 is the next step in the 6.x release series. This version has hardware support for type-2 hypervisors with NVMM, an amdgpu driver, the experimental ability to remote-mount HAMMER2 volumes, and many other changes. The details of all commits between the 6.2 and 6.4 releases are available in the associated commit messages for 6.4.0. Changes: recommend updating all systems, a locally-exploitable kernel vulnerability was fixed for this release; fix execvPe()s environment passing; fix ktrace's handling of 'long' system call return values; fix a sysv semaphore panic related to an exit race; fix a namecache bloating issue related to dead entries that could slow systems down over time...." Additional details can be found in the project's release notes for DragonFly BSD 6.4.0.
Nitrux d5c7cdff
Nitrux is a Linux distribution based on Debian's Unstable (sid) branch with additional packages pulled in from Ubuntu repositories. The distribution's latest release (which is alternatively labelled "2.6.0", "ff", and "d5c7cdff") includes version 6.1.0 of the Linux kernel, KDE Plasma 5.26.4, Pipewire, and includes Wayland as a session option. "We've updated the following components of the distribution. For other information, see Notes. KDE Plasma to version 5.26.4, KDE Frameworks to version 5.101.0, and KDE Gear to version 22.12.0. Firefox to version 108.0.1. We've updated MESA to version 23.0git. Disclaimer: We do not develop or package MESA. To file bugs against MESA, please use their bug tracker. We've added PipeWire and Wayland by default. Plasma (Wayland) is available to select from SDDM. Important: If using an NVIDIA GPU, check the KDE Wiki instructions here to use the Plasma (Wayland) session, YMMV. Disclaimer: We do not develop KWin, Wayland, Plasma Wayland or the NVIDIA proprietary driver. For the best experience using the Plasma (Wayland) session, use a Linux-friendly GPU and driver such as Intel or AMD. The Plasma (Wayland) session is not the default; the Plasma (X11) session is still the default." Additional information is provided in the release announcement.
OpenMandriva Lx 23.01 "ROME"
OpenMandriva's grand entry to the world of "rolling-release" distributions comes to fruition today with the initial release the project's "ROME" edition. It aims to continually provide the most up-to-date software packages without compromising the system stability. "To make sure you do not fall behind, we are announcing a new way to keep you up to date - ROME, the OpenMandriva rolling edition. ROME is the rolling release, designed for individual users; it will receive the most up-to-date packages, including recent security and bug-fix updates. A lot of interesting things have happened in the rolling branch since the traditional point release. Among others, KDE Frameworks 5.101, Plasma Desktop 5.26.4, KDE Applications 22.12.0 are in, and everything has been rebuilt with the Clang 15.06 compiler. Linux kernel 6.1.1 (Clang-compiled kernel as default, with the option to install GCC-compiled kernel easily from the om-welcome module)." See the release announcement and the release notes for further information.
Nobara Project 37
Nobara Project is a modified version of Fedora Linux with user-friendly fixes added to it. The distribution comes with certain features that do not ship with the regular Fedora, such as WINE dependencies, OBS Studio, 3rd party codec packages for GStreamer, NVIDIA drivers, and some package fixes. Nobara's latest release is based on Fedora 37: "Nobara packages rebased on top of Fedora 37. Notable package updates: Linux kernel updated to 6.0.16, all previous patches included, gamescope HDR patches added; glibc updated to 2.36 (still includes all previous fixes); GameScope updated to latest git; MangoHud updated to 0.6.8; GOverlay updated to 0.9.1; Blender updated to 3.4.1; ROCM OpenCL/HIP packages updated to 5.4.1; Steam Tinker Launch updated to 12.0 and re-added to Base OS; vkBasalt updated to 0.3.2.8; supergfxctl updated to 5.0.1 (removes broken/invalid 'dedicated' mode); asusctl updated to 4.5.8; AppArmor dnsmasq profile updated to allow WayDroid...." Here is the complete changelog.
Nobara Project 37 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 7.9MB, resolution: 3840x2400 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,815
- Total data uploaded: 42.7TB
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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) |
Arch Linux and its children
We began this week's Weekly newsletter with a discussion on Arch Linux, a popular rolling release distribution which has become an increasingly popular parent distribution in recent years. There are a lot of child distributions which use Arch as a base along with the Calamares system installer and a pre-configured desktop environment.
We'd like to hear how many of our readers use Arch or one of Arch's children. Let us know your reasons for choosing a member of the Arch Linux family in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on the number of partitions on our readers' hard drives in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Are you running Arch?
| I am running Arch Linux: | 433 (17%) |
| I run a child of Arch Linux: | 773 (30%) |
| I do not run a member of the Arch family: | 1407 (54%) |
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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, 16 January 2023. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. 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 |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
UberStudent
UberStudent was an Ubuntu-based distribution on a DVD designed for learning and teaching academic computing at the higher education and advanced secondary levels. UberStudent comes with software for everyday computing tasks, plus a core set of programs and features designed to teach and make easier the tasks and habits common to high-performing students of all academic disciplines. Lifelong learners, as well as any sort of knowledge worker, will equally benefit. UberStudent was supported by a free Moodle virtual learning environment.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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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