 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1004, 30 January 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 5th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A lot of people enjoy running rolling release distributions. A rolling release platform provides the latest software and new features without requiring a leap from one version of an operating system to another. Rolling releases are typically cutting edge and offer a preview of technologies that will soon arrive in fixed release distributions. This week we begin with a look at OpenMandriva ROME, a new branch of the OpenMandriva distribution which seeks to bridge the gap between the project's bleeding edge development branch and its stable releases. Then, in our News section, we talk about the Debian project adopting a package for the OpenSnitch interactive firewall application. We also share highlights from FreeBSD's latest status report, including nes about new container management software. In this week's Questions and Answers column we talk about checking the health of storage drives, especially external drives. Do you perform any health checks on your storage media or filesystems? Let us know in our Opinion Poll below. This week we are also happy to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Then we're pleased to welcome the young Athena OS project, an Arch Linux-based distribution with a collection of security and penetration-testing tools, to our database. Plus we thank our generous readers for their donations over the past month, we appreciate your support. May you all have a wonderful week and we wish you happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
OpenMandriva ROME
Typically, the OpenMandriva project publishes a new stable release around once a year. This slow, steady release cycle has been pretty consistent over the past three years. However, some people appreciate a more up to date experience and OpenMandriva's development branch, Cooker, isn't intended to be stable enough for daily use. To fill in the gap and help users have the latest software the project has started a new rolling release branch called ROME. The new ROME branch will operate for OpenMandriva much the same way Tumbleweed does for openSUSE, providing a platform for users who want to keep their software up to date with upstream releases.
The ROME branch is available in KDE and GNOME editions, both of which are about 2.6GB in size. I decided to download the KDE edition. Booting from the live media brings up a boot menu where we can select a range of keyboard and language options before launching the distribution. The operating system then loads and starts a KDE Plasma session.
The KDE Plasma session places a panel across the bottom of the screen where we can access the application menu, task switcher, virtual desktop widget, and the system tray. Icons on the desktop launch the system installer, provide a portal for sending donations to the project, and open the welcome window. (The welcome window opens for us automatically when the desktop session starts.) There is also a Join icon which launches the Falkon web browser to show us a page with information on ways to contribute to the OpenMandriva community.
The welcome window offers a greeting and several tabs for initial setup and configuration options. Almost all of these options are probably best accessed once the operating system is installed and I'll come back later to the welcome window's features.
OpenMandriva ROME -- The welcome window
(full image size: 598kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Installing
OpenMandriva uses the Calamares system installer. The installer begins by showing us buttons that can be used to launch a web browser and see a list of known issues and the distribution's release notes. We're then walked through picking our language, keyboard layout, and timezone. Disk partitioning can be manual or guided. The manual approach is fairly easy to navigate. The guided approach can take over an entire disk or a partition. The installer has guided presets which offer to set up a small swap partition, a large swap partition, a swap file, or to set up no swap at all. We're then asked to create a username and password for ourselves.
The first time I ran Calamares, the installer began copying its files to my hard drive and crashed about halfway through. This also happened with both Nobara Project's version 36 and 37 which also use Calamares. This surprises me as, up until this month, Calamares has typically been one of the easier, more reliable system installers I've used. It has had an almost pristine track record on my test machines up until this past month.
Anyway, I restarted the installer and took the same settings. This time (and in future test runs) the installer completed its work successfully and I was able to boot my new copy of OpenMandriva.
Early impressions
The first time I booted my new copy of OpenMandriva the system booted to a blank screen. Only a mouse pointer was displayed and nothing else, just a black background. I could switch to a text console using the Alt and function keys, but there were no on-screen elements in the graphical environment. I rebooted the machine and, the second time I launched the distribution, OpenMandriva brought up a graphical login screen where I could choose to sign into Plasma running on X11 or a Plasma on Wayland session. I decided to start with X11.
The first time I signed into Plasma the desktop crashed immediately, reporting a segmentation fault. A window appeared and offered me the option of restarting the desktop. The login music then played, the welcome window appeared, the Plasma panel showed up at the bottom of the screen and then the desktop crashed again. This time I was kicked back to the login screen. The third time I tried logging in, the desktop appeared, the welcome window popped up, and things seemed to be running smoothly.
OpenMandriva ROME -- One of several Plasma crash reports
(full image size: 655kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Well, some things ran smoothly. When I was exploring the application menu I discovered that right-clicking on launchers would offer some options, such as adding the launcher to the desktop or the menu's Favourites section. Adding icons to the desktop worked, but trying to add a launcher to the Favourites bar failed. Also, right-clicking on items also marked as favourites and clicking the option to remove them from the Favourites bar did nothing. Later, I discovered trying to logout of the desktop (or restart the computer) would cause the desktop to immediately freeze. The mouse and keyboard would stop responding and I had to force a power off in order to reboot the machine.
Speaking of reboots, until I managed to get software updates installed (more on that later) OpenMandriva did not always boot successfully. The first and third boot attempts failed. Then a few more boot attempts locked up during the early hours of my trial. The boot failures mostly stopped once updates had been downloaded, but still cropped up occasionally during my two weeks exploring the distribution.
Welcome window
Earlier I mentioned the welcome window which appears when we first login. This window is divided into tabs which provide us with information and tools. The first two tabs, Welcome and Features, provide us with a quick greeting and overview of the distribution's features. The last two tabs, Repositories and About, provide us with licensing information, particularly with how it is applied to the project's main software repositories. There is a Contribute tab which provides links to various ways we can join and help the project.
There is a tab called OM Features which offers buttons which will open local utilities such as the operating system's Control Centre, a repository selector, and an update manager. When I opened the update manager tool it asked me whether new updates should be downloaded and, optionally, installed automatically. When I accepted the default I was asked to provide my password and then the system locked up for about a minute. Then I was returned to the welcome window.
The repository selector opens a window where official repositories are listed. These are the main, non-free, and restricted repositories along with update options. The differences between these repositories are licensing related and the details are covered in some detail in the welcome window's Repositories tab. We can select which of these we want to access. We're also shown a list of single-purpose repositories which offer access to products such as Microsoft Teams, the Brave browser, and Chrome. We can also check a box next to each of these items we want to enable. This repository picker seemed to work well, except when I applied my changes I was prompted for my password for every single repository I'd enabled. In other words, selecting five repositories meant I was prompted for my administration password five times in a row.
There is a utility I think newcomers will find useful which switches the look and layout of the OpenMandriva desktop. This utility offers desktop presets which make Plasma look like other popular operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu.
The welcome window has a tab called Configure which provides quick access to configuration modules. These modules help us set up networking, adjust monitor settings, connect to printers, and change the desktop theme.
The Kwin window manager crashed while I was trying to setup printers. The session restored successfully, but then 20 seconds later Kwin crashed again. This time when the Plasma desktop reappeared the welcome window was gone along with the tools I'd had open.
The final tab in the welcome window is called Applications. This tab is further divided into separate tabs, each one representing a category of software. Browsing these tabs we can find entries for document readers, web browsers, development tools, and other popular items. I tried fetching a few packages and was prompted for my password each time. Applications are downloaded one at a time, we cannot queue multiple downloads at once. Kwin crashed twice more while packages were fetched, but the desktop managed to keep going and the new applications seemed to install successfully.
One of the packages I tried to install was Gambas, a graphical BASIC development tool. While it appeared to install successfully, Gambas failed to launch. Trying to run it from a command line reported a dependency (htmlview) was missing.
OpenMandriva ROME -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 394kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Dealing with crashes
At this point, not including my login attempts and Calamares crashing, I was already up to six desktop crashes in the first 15 minutes of my trial. I figured, at this rate, it would be difficult to get anything done with OpenMandriva. I decided to switch from the X11 desktop session to Wayland.
The first time I tried the Plasma Wayland session it immediately crashed and returned me to the login screen. The next time I was able to sign in, see the welcome window, and install Firefox from the welcome screen. When I tried to launch Firefox though, the desktop crashed, taking down Firefox with it. I tried launching the browser again and Plasma immediately crashed once more. The second time, it seemed to remember Firefox had been running and relaunched the application.
The crashes came less frequently in the Wayland session, maybe once or twice an hour instead of about once every five minutes when using X11, but the effects were worse, usually taking open applications down with the desktop. When running Plasma on X11 the applications often survived the crash. This pattern appeared to be similar both when running OpenMandriva in VirtualBox and on physical hardware. Though Plasma did prove to be a bit more stable when running on my workstation compared to the virtual machine. This instability in VirtualBox became all the more surprising when I confirmed OpenMandriva ROME is reportedly tested in VirtualBox.
I tried changing desktop settings, such as effects, in the KDE System Settings panel. Trying to change settings from within the panel usually caused System Settings to crash under the Wayland session. Ultimately, the changes I did make didn't seem to help the desktop's stability. When I switched to the X11 session and disabled compositing I saw a huge difference. The desktop's performance increased noticeably and crashes dropped from about once every few minutes to once an hour or less with compositing disabled in the X11 session. This still isn't great. I'm used to Linux desktops running for months without crashes or significant problems, but at least I could get some work done so long as I saved frequently.
I also discovered with compositing disabled I was able to logout or shutdown the computer. Both X11 and Wayland sessions would lock up the machine entirely when trying to sign out of Plasma when compositing was enabled.
Hardware
I started out testing OpenMandriva in VirtualBox. The X11 desktop was both prone to crashing and slow to respond at first, though performance picked up once compositing was disabled. Wayland was snappier in the virtual machine. However, while the X11 session was able to dynamically resize to match the VirtualBox window, Wayland had to be resized manually.
When I switched over to running the distribution on my workstation, the operating system detected all of my computer's hardware. Desktop performance was better and more stable. There were still some stability issues with the desktop and the issues with pinning favourites and logging out out persisted on the workstation as well as in the virtual machine. Another issue I noticed, which was of minor concern, was the audio volume was set surprisingly high when I used OpenMandriva on my workstation. It just about rattled my desk the first time I signed into Plasma. Lowering the volume was easy to do through the audio mixer in the system tray.
A fresh install of the KDE edition of the distribution took up about 7GB of disk space, plus swap. When signed into the Plasma desktop memory usage varied a lot. A fresh login took anywhere from 710MB to 910MB of RAM and seemed to change each time I signed in. This puts OpenMandriva near the higher end of the scale in terms of both disk and memory consumption when compared to other distributions.
Included software
The large size of OpenMandriva is reflected in the collection of software provided out of the box. The distribution ships with a full application menu which sometimes dives a few layers deep through categories and sub-menus. The Falkon web browser is available along with LibreOffice and the Dolphin file manager. The Okular document viewer, KMail e-mail client, and KTorrent bittorrent software are included. We can also find the KDE Connect software, multiple chat clients such as NeoChat and Kopete. There are remote desktop applications, an FTP client, and a system monitor.
Digging further we find several multimedia programs, including VLC, SMPlayer, KWave, Kdenlive, Kamoso, and Elisa. The Kleopatra security certificate manager is included along with the digiKam camera manager, a news feed reader, and the KDE Help documentation.
Burrowing deeper we find the Clang compiler (OpenMandriva is unusual in that it uses Clang instead of the GNU Compiler Collection which is more commonly used to build software on Linux distributions.) The distribution uses the systemd init software and version 6.1 of the Linux kernel.
Software management
The distribution uses Discover as the primary software centre, through there are two others provided through the Control Centre. Discover makes it fairly easy to browse categories and sub-categories of applications. We can perform searches as well as install, upgrade, and remove specific applications. One odd aspect of using Discover I found was the software centre would allow me to install any software I wanted without supplying a password. However, Discover would prompt me for my password any time I tried to remove an application.
Discover mostly worked well for me, performing fairly quickly and without problems. However, I did run into an issue when trying to perform an upgrade. Early on in my trial I tried to fetch 50 new packages and these, at first, seemed to all be downloaded successfully. However, when Discover finished it reported there had been a "transaction error", though no details were provided. When I refreshed the view of available updates, one was indeed still shown: systemd. I switched to the DNF command line package manager and ran the upgrade command. DNF confirmed systemd was the sole waiting update, fetched it, and installed it successfully. When I went back to Discover, it still showed systemd as a pending update. In fact, even if I closed and relaunched Discover and refreshed its package information, it still showed systemd as a waiting update which would fail to be applied.
OpenMandriva ROME -- Discover showing available update after DNF finishes
(full image size: 543kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
One of the other software managers I mentioned is DnfDrake which is a bit of a cluttered mess. Instead of menus or a streamlined way to browse software categories, we're provided with a search bar, a series of filters, and action buttons - there are 38 buttons in the window, plus drop-down menus and search filters - and none of it seems to be organized in any fashion. Even after I found a package and selected it to be installed I had to go through three more prompts to confirm the action.
There is one more graphical software manager included. This one, called dnfdragora, is similar to the Octopi and Synaptic low-level package managers on other distributions. It works and didn't really have any strong pros or cons to the experience as far as I could tell.
As hinted at above, OpenMandriva ships with DNF as a command line package manager. It doesn't include Flatpak or Snap support by default, but we can add Flatpak later if we want. Snap support does not appear to be available in the software repositories.
Control Centre
One of the key features of OpenMandriva, and related projects such as ROSA and PCLinuxOS, is the Control Centre. The distribution's Control Centre has changed in appearance a little over the years, it's more horizontally oriented rather than vertically now, with tabs to help us find configuration modules. There are five tabs which help us find modules for fetching software, enabling repositories, setting up user accounts, configuring the firewall, configuring Bluetooth, and adding printers. There are also two tabs which show a greeting and licensing information. There are quite a few modules and they're generally designed to be easy to navigate and can tweak the system with a few clicks.
OpenMandriva ROME -- The Control Centre
(full image size: 572kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
In the past I've argued that the Control Centre is a rare gem in the Linux community and a much-needed friendly face for configuring an operating system. I have occasionally commented that other distributions should adopt the Control Centre. While I still like the Control Centre, I feel less strongly about it being a key feature which should be ported to other desktop distributions.
The main reason for my shift in thinking is a lot of configuration used to be handled by text files or various disorganized tools. Having one unified Control Centre with beginner friendly tools was convenient and much nicer than trying to find and tweak text files. Over the years though most of the desktop environments have added their own tools. KDE, GNOME, and Xfce all have excellent configuration options and many distributions ship graphical tools for common administrative tasks. The need for OpenMandriva's Control Centre is less urgent and, in fact, may be confusing in some instances because various functions are duplicated. Items such as adjusting screen resolution, the firewall, and systemd services can be found in the System Settings panel too and this duplication may confuse users.
OpenMandriva ROME -- Managing the firewall
(full image size: 593kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Conclusions
The main characteristic of OpenMandriva, which kept coming up time and again, was that the distribution was unreliable - particularly early on. Sometimes the distribution failed to boot. Sometimes it failed to login. The Calamares installer failed on its first time through, but not future times with the same settings. Discover and DNF report the status of updates differently. The desktop crashed frequently, especially with compositing enabled. With the default settings, and whenever I used the Wayland session, the system would lock up if I tried to logout. Once I stood up to get a glass of water and left my computer unattended for two minutes and, when I returned, there were multiple error reports waiting, indicating Plasma had crashed twice while I was away. I'm not sure I've ever come across a desktop distribution which was so error prone and unreliable. To make matters worse, almost any time I launched a software management tool, such as DnfDrake, I'd be prompted for my admin password twice. Apparently once for the graphical tool and once for the underlying DNF utility.
Once I had disabled compositing and installed updates the experience got measurably better, but it still wasn't great. The desktop crashed less often and I was able to shutdown the system, but it still wasn't stable.
There were a few things which surprised me about this. One is that OpenMandriva's development branch should be fairly stable as it's been reportedly close to final release status for around five months. The other is this level of instability (with the installer, boot process, and Plasma) feels unprecedented. I've run unstable or buggy releases before, but rarely one which had problems with so many components at the same time.
I like that OpenMandriva is trying to bridge the gap between their development branch and their relatively slow pace of stable releases. It feels like a good idea. But the flip side to this is if their rolling release is buggy then it's likely to put off people from recommending or trying their stable releases.
Something else which stood out during my trial was OpenMandriva feels like a distribution with an older philosophy. Which makes sense, its history lies in Mandriva and, before that, Mandrake Linux. It feels as though its packages are being updated, but its approach is still the same as the one used by Mandrake Linux 20 years ago. It's large, shipping a lot of software, which is buried in sub-menus of the application menu. It still ships with an FTP client, two control panels, three graphical software managers, and one (or sometimes two) of just about every other type of application. It feels like an operating system from the times before high speed and single-board computers, when people needed lots of pre-installed software and more configuration tools.
This isn't a bad trait, necessarily. Especially if you're a person who lives in a region with slower Internet access or who likes having a lot of pre-installed options, or who just loves the classic desktop layout and approach of 20 years ago. All of these are entirely reasonable preferences. It's just not often I get to see FTP clients buried a few layers deep in an application menu anymore.
At this point OpenMandriva's rolling release feels like it's not done and needs more time to bake before it can be served to the general public. Hopefully that will change as OpenMandriva 5.0 gets closer to its release date.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Lenovo desktop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Hex-core Intel i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
- Storage: Western Digital 1TB hard drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 wired network card, Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe wireless adapter
- Display: Intel CometLake-S GT2
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Visitor supplied rating
OpenMandriva has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used OpenMandriva? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian adopts OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report
The Debian project is in the process of adopting the OpenSnitch interactive firewall utility, which we reviewed just over a year ago. A request to include OpenSnitch as a package in Debian was submitted back in 2018 and the newly packaged software is now being tested and reviewed. OpenSnitch is an interesting tool because it allows users to address network activity as it happens, rather than setting up rigid rules ahead of time. As Chris Lamb wrote when the subject of including OpenSnitch in Debian first came up: "OpenSnitch works on the same principles of the macOS version, being a host-based firewall that notifies users when local apps are attempting to initiate new outgoing network connections. When this happens, OpenSnitch will display a popup, asking the user for instructions on how to deal with this new process."
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The FreeBSD project has published its quarterly newsletter which includes status updates and an overview of progress being made by the project. The latest report includes information on desktop environments being updated, tools for tracking changes to the project's ports collection, and information on a new container manager called Vessel. "The goal of vessel is to expose the many powerful features of FreeBSD to application developers. Vessel accomplishes this goal by: Providing a Docker-like interface familiar to most application developers for building, running, publishing and pulling container images. Tightly integrating with FreeBSD system level interfaces (kqueue process tracing, signal handling, devd.seqpacket, rctl, cpuset) to manage running jails.
How is Vessel different from other jail management systems? There are some awesome jail management systems already. These existing systems do a great job of configuring the jail runtime environment (ZFS dataset, networking, resource control, etc). After the environment is configured though, it is just handed off to the jail program via an exec call. In addition to jail configuration and creation, Vessel aims to take the next step and implement an event loop to manage jails based on system events. An instance of vessel runs alongside each jail to assist with management. This allows "Fat Jails" and single process jails to run in the foreground and be managed by the vessel-supervisor."
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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) |
Checking the health of an external drive
Is-the-disk-still-working asks: Is there a GUI or command line utility to check the health of external drives? I can use the GNOME Disks utility to check the health of internal drives, but I haven't found a way to check my external drives.
DistroWatch answers: Something to keep in mind when it comes to checking external disks is that they may not support (or fully implement) the commands necessary to perform health checks with SMART utilities. SMART stands for "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology" which is built into most modern storage drives. The smartmontools website, which provides tools for checking the health of disks, warns:
As for USB and FireWire (IEEE 1394) disks and tape drives, the news is not good. They appear to the operating system as SCSI devices but their implementations do not usually support those SCSI commands needed by smartmontools. A consortium associated with IEEE 1394 certified some external enclosures (containing a ATA disk and a protocol bridge) as being compliant to the relevant standards. Even still, that compliance means that they tend to only support the bare minimum of commands needed for device operation (i.e. SMART support is an unsupported extra). Hopefully external USB and FireWire devices will support SAT in the future, see below. Some USB devices based on cypress chips support a proprietary protocol (ATACB) that allow to send raw ATA commands (i.e. SMART support).
Smartmontools should work correctly with SATA drives under both Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. Depending on which subsystem the SATA controller is in (i.e. drivers/ide, drivers/ata or libata (under drivers/scsi) a SATA drive will appear as /dev/hd* or /dev/sd*. Either way, smartmontools should be able to figure out what is going on and act accordingly. In some cases smartmontools may need a hint in the form of a '-d sat' or '-d ata' option on the smartctl command line or in the /etc/smartd.conf file. There may be a hint to add one of those options in the log file when smartd is run as a daemon or on the command line with smartctl. The '-d ata' option means that even though the drive has a SCSI device name, treat it as an ATA disk. Unfortunately such an approach doesn't often work."
In other words, checking external drives may work, but it's possible your external disk is older or has minimal support for the SMART standard.
You can try to check external drives by downloading the smartmontools package which is available in most major Linux distributions. Usually you can get an overview of a disk's health by running the smartctl command and passing it the name of your storage device. For example:
smartctl -a /dev/sdc
The above example checks the health of the /dev/sdc device. If you're unsure of the name of your drive, run the lsblk command line utility to get a list of disks attached to your system and their sizes.
As to a graphical application for checking disk health, you may wish to look at the GSmartControl application. This utility provides a friendly, point and click front-end on top of SMART and will try to find your disks automatically.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Peropesis 2.0
Peropesis (personal operating system) is a small-scale, minimalist, command-line-based Linux operating system. The project is expanding its small collection of included software, adding build tools, a database, and text editing utilities: "A new 2.0 release of Peropesis Linux OS released. In the new edition, part of the old software was updated and several new packages was installed. The tool Make, which controls the automatic installation of software from the source code, was installed. Database management system SQLite, command line based editor nano and terminal emulator/multiplexer Screen were also installed. New software installed: 1. sqlite 3.40.1. Sqlite - a relational database management system that allows the user to define, create, maintain and manage data in simple files (databases) using the sqlite3 command line interface or your own interfaces in C/C++ or other programming languages. 2. libedit 20221030 3.1. libedit is a library that provides command line editing, retrospection and markup functions. 3. screen 4.9.0. Screen is a screen manager that allows users to multiply the virtual console screen several times and allows users to copy and paste text between screens...." The full release announcement offers additional details.
OPNsense 23.1
OPNsense is a FreeBSD-based specialist operating system designed for firewalls and routers. The project has published a new release, OPNsesne 23.1, which includes networking improvements from FreeBSD and updated packages. "23.1, nicknamed "Quintessential Quail", features Unbound DNS statistics with a blocklist rewrite in Python, improved WAN SLAAC operability, firewall alias BGP ASN type support, PHP 8.1, assorted FreeBSD networking updates, MVC/API pages for packet capture/virtual IPs/IPsec connection management, IPsec configuration file migration to swanctl.conf, new sslh plugin, ddclient custom backend support (including Azure), WireGuard kernel module plugin variant as the new default plus much more." A complete list of changes along with download links can be found in the project's release announcement with additional information provided in the release notes.
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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: 2,822
- Total data uploaded: 42.8TB
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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) |
Checking the health of storage devices and filesystems
Checking the health of a disk and performing integrity checks on your computer's filesystems are ways to confirm stored files are being saved properly and have not become corrupted. Tools such as fsck and smartctl, which we talked about in this week's Questions and Answers column, can detect issues and help prevent data loss. We'd like to hear if you use any disk and filesystem checking tools to verify the integrity of your data.
You can see the results of our previous poll on mixing portable package types in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you use disk or filesystem checking tools?
| I run filesystem checks (fsck): | 141 (12%) |
| I run SMART tools (smartctl): | 194 (17%) |
| I run both disk and filesystem checks: | 229 (20%) |
| I run other data checking tools: | 39 (3%) |
| I use a filesystem that self-checks data: | 88 (8%) |
| I do not perform any storage/filesystem checks: | 438 (39%) |
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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 $169 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Eduard W | $23 |
| Steven K | $20 |
| Michael C | $20 |
| David F | $20 |
| Steven W | $20 |
| Tom K | $15 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Jonathon B | $7 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Matt | $5 |
| Kevin K.S.K | $4 |
| Joe H | $3 |
| Vory | $3 |
| JD L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| Peter M | $2 |
| c6wwldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New distributions added to database
Athena OS
Athena OS is an Arch-derived Linux distribution designed for penetration testing, bug-bounty hunting and InfoSec students. The distribution provides a way to connect directly to some of the e-learning hacking resources, such as Hack The Box, Offensive Security, PWNX and InfoSec certifications, and it provides integration with the Hack The Box hacking platform and connections to InfoSec communities. Athena OS also introduces InfoSec roles (e.g. penetration tester or open-source intelligence specialist) based on user preferences, so the user's system is populated with relevant tools only.
Athena OS 2023.01.23 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 1.9MB, resolution: 3840x2400 pixels)
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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, 6 February 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:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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| 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.
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
KnoppiXMAME
KnoppixMAME was a bootable arcade machine emulator with hardware detection and autoconfiguration. It works automatically on all modern and not-so-modern hardware, including gameports and joysticks. It was powered by Knoppix Debian GNU/Linux, X-MAME, and gxmame.
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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0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
