 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1021, 29 May 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Immutable distributions, operating systems which have read-only filesystems, are increasingly drawing attention in the Linux community. The immutable approach is considered beneficial for security and reliability as it maintains a consistent core operating system. This week we begin with a look at the rlxos GNU/Linux distribution, an immutable platform which focuses on the use of Flatpak packages to provide desktop applications. In our News section we link to an overview of what makes the Void project special and talk about a book which explains the powerful awk command line utility. Plus we share news that Microsoft has published its own Linux distribution, intended for use on the company's Azure cloud service. Then, if you've ever wondered why some command line programs display their output in colour and others do not, we discuss this in our Questions and Answers column. Do you have your terminal programs set up to display text in colour? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We're also grateful to be able to thank our sponsors and people who have sent us donations this month. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
rlxos GNU/Linux
A project I was recently asked to explore is called rlxos GNU/Linux. This distribution is independently developed for 64-bit (x86_64) computers and it features an immutable filesystem for the operating system. Due to its immutable nature, rlxos utilizes OSTree for core operating system updates while pulling in Flatpak packages for desktop software. The distribution also ships with the Distrobox container management software for situations where we need to run desktop applications or command line programs not available as Flatpak bundles. (We have discussed Distrobox and how to use it in a previous article.)
The rlxos website also mentions the distribution ships with the GNOME desktop and offers a personal AI assistant called Bolt. We're advised that rlxos is a semi-rolling release distribution. The project's install media includes no versioning (there are no dates or version numbers associated with the install media) and updates are made available as new over the air (OTA) images.
The rlxos distribution is available in two editions: Workstation, which is for developers and 3.7GB in size; and Desktop, which is for regular users and 3.0GB in size. I decided to try out the Desktop edition.
Installing
I found rlxos was unable to boot in Legacy BIOS mode, the distribution would only start in UEFI mode in my test environments. Once I booted from the install media, a graphical environment would be displayed. There was no desktop session, just a lone graphical installer was launched.
The system installer begins by showing us a button which just says "English". Presumably additional language options will be added later. Proceeding to the next screen gives us the chance to pick our keyboard layout and we're asked on which disk we want to install rlxos. Here we can either accept automated partitioning, which will attempt to take over free space, or we can take a "manage disk" option which launched the GParted utility. We can then choose on which partition to install the operating system.
The partitioning screen doesn't offer much flexibility. I believe this is because rlxos is designed to fit on one partition. I'll talk more about the filesystem and disk layout later, but for now it's worth noting the distribution, swap space, and user data seem to be intended to fit on one partition.
The installer pauses to confirm our settings and then starts copying files. The first time the installer finished it then displayed a button labelled Restart and locked up. This posed a problem because there is no way to close the window, no desktop from which to issue shutdown commands, and the virtual terminals are protected with an undocumented password. The system does not respond to common kill signals, such as Ctrl+Alt+Del. In other words, forcing a hard shutdown was the only way to exit the installer and try out rlxos. Later attempts to install the distribution worked without the lock-up at the end.
rlxos 2023 -- The GNOME settings panel with its dark theme
(full image size: 334kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The first time we boot into the freshly installed copy of rlxos, the distribution starts a graphical wizard to help us create a user account. We're asked to pick our language and keyboard layout again. We are then given the chance to enable/disable location services and pick our time zone. We are then asked if we want to connect any cloud accounts to our local account. Options for on-line accounts are limited to Google, Microsoft, and Nextcloud providers. We're then asked to make up a username and password for our local account. With these steps completed, the GNOME desktop loads. In the future, when we boot rlxos, the distribution will present the user with a graphical login screen.
Early impressions
When we sign into the GNOME desktop for the first time a window appears and offers to give us a feature tour. This can provide users new to GNOME with a general overview of how to navigate the desktop.
The GNOME desktop is fairly empty, with a thin panel across the top of the display which holds the Activities button, clock, and system tray. Clicking the Activities button reveals a dock at the bottom of the screen where we can access commonly used programs and an application menu. The application menu presents the user with a full screen grid of launchers and a search box.
Something that annoys me about this layout is it requires a lot of mouse movement. First, we move up to the Activities menu in the upper-left corner of the screen. Then down to the bottom-right to click the Applications button, then back to the upper-middle area of the screen to select a launcher. It would be difficult to make this process less efficient. There are shortcuts we can take. For instance, tapping the meta key and typing the name of an application we wish to launch, if we're more keyboard-oriented users. However, for people using a mouse, it's a lot of extra movement.
Shortly after I signed into my account, a notification appeared and told me there was a new version of rlxos available and I could download it from the software centre. This message seemed odd since I had just finished downloading and installing the latest version of the distribution. However, the notification simply means a new update is available, which for an immutable distribution is equivalent to a new version.
rlxos 2023 -- Checking for system updates
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Anyway, I opened GNOME Software and selected the Updates tab. Here I found a notice that a new version of the distribution was available and I could click a button to install it. No details about the new update were provided. When we click the button to fetch the update, no progress information is shown. When the software centre is finished the download we are asked to reboot the computer to apply the update. This process worked without any issues.
Software
The rlxos distribution ships with a relatively small collection of applications, all (or nearly all) of them members of the GNOME family. We're given GNOME Web for browsing the web, a document viewer, a weather app, a simple music player, the Totem video player, and the GNOME Files file browser. A terminal is included, as is the GNOME settings panel.
The distribution includes the systemd init software. We're also given the man program, though no manual pages are installed on the system. There is no compiler or Java on the Desktop edition.
I found the rlxos install media shipped with version 6.0 of the Linux kernel and GNOME 43. After an update had been installed I was upgraded to GNOME 44 while the kernel remained on Linux 6.0, though version 6.3 was available upstream by this time.
Hardware
I tested rlxos in a VirtualBox virtual machine and on my laptop. Apart from the limitation of only booting in UEFI mode, which I mentioned earlier, the distribution worked well with my environments. The system ran smoothly and played well with my hardware. The latest version of GNOME feels more responsive than it has in the past and ran well in on both test systems.
A fresh install of rlxos consumed about 5.4GB of disk space and, when logging into GNOME, the system used about 740MB of RAM. Though I noticed RAM consumption tended to rise a bit over time, even when applications had been closed. This means rlxos is slightly heavier than average in terms of resource consumption, but not by a lot.
The distribution runs on a Btrfs volume and makes use of zRAM rather than traditional swap space. This combination of zRAM and Btrfs means the distribution can fit on one partition (well, technically two when we consider the EFI partition). The operating system is set up to be read-only while our home directories are read-write.
Software management
Most software management on rlxos takes place through GNOME Software, a modern software centre divided into three tabs. I've already mentioned the Updates tab where we can check for new immutable updates which are applied as an all-or-nothing upgrade.
The Installed tab lists software already on the system. Here we can remove Flatpak packages we have installed. Applications that are part of the base system are also listed. If we try to remove one of these pre-installed programs GNOME Software will silently fail. Simply, nothing will happen and no error is displayed. Flatpaks I had already installed were removed without any problems.
rlxos 2023 -- Installing Falkon from GNOME Software
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The third tab, Explore, provides a repository of software where we can browse categories and search for new Flatpak bundles. Clicking an entry opens a full page description where we can see details about an application and click a button to install new software. Since applications are not installed as part of the operating system, no password is required. Once an application has been fetched, it can be launched from inside GNOME Software or through its icon in the application menu.
I found GNOME Software worked fairly well, apart from its silent failures when asked to remove pre-installed packages. However, if we wish to use the command line we can manage our Flatpak bundles using the flatpak program. I found Flatpak automatically connected to the Flathub repository.
Special features
Apart from being a semi-rolling, immutable distribution, rlxos's website highlights two key features. The first is Bolt, an AI chat assistant which can be accessed through the command line. We can open a terminal and run bolt, followed by a phrase or question. For instance, "bolt What is the temperature?" or "bolt What time is it?".
I played with Bolt for a while and mostly received nonsensical answers. It seemed promising at first. When I ran "bolt" on its own, with no input, the assistant introduced itself. It was also able to respond appropriately when asked, "bolt Tell me a joke". However, beyond that, Bolt failed spectacularly. When I asked what was the time, it responded with "How are you". When I asked, "bolt What is 4 + 4" it answered with "How are you". I asked "bolt What is the temperature?" and it responded with "hey". When I asked "bolt What is the weather in London?" the assistant told me it was a work in progress and provided a URL where I could learn more about training the assistant. When I opened the URL (https://rlxos.dev/wiki/bolt/), I was shown a "404 - error" page.
rlxos 2023 -- Following Bolt's suggestion to find help
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Later on, I did find documentation which includes some examples of using Bolt, but it's mostly geared toward developers who want to teach the assistant basic responses to common questions. In other words, Bolt is in its very early stages and chat bots from the 80s are generally more capable at carrying on a conversation.
The other key feature mentioned on the rlxos website is Distrobox. Distrobox is a container manager which allows us to install alternative distributions in user-managed containers and run commands in those containers as the administrator. In other words, we can install whatever software we wish and run it in a semi-isolated environment. The rlxos project doesn't offer any documentation for using Distrobox and the distribution doesn't include manual pages. Fortunately, running the distrobox command line tool with the "--help" flag will provide a summary of accepted commands.
Using Distrobox, I was able to install a guest distribution, Alpine Linux in my case, and install whatever command line or desktop applications I wanted. I could then run these utilities from within the container and have the programs appear in my terminal or on my rlxos desktop. This provides us with a wide range of functionality, inside the containers, while maintaining a fairly minimal host distribution.
Distrobox worked well for me and I had no problems with it. I feel it's a bit inconvenient to need to install and run an entirely separate distribution just to fill in functionality gaps with the main operating system. Ideally, the host distribution should, in my opinion, run most of the software I want and the container should be for one-off situations. Instead, I found rlxos was the opposite: offering a small amount of software and requiring Distrobox for a virtually all command line and applications not packaged as Flatpaks.
rlxos 2023 -- Using Distrobox to run Gwenview from an Alpine Linux container
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Conclusions
When I first began using rlxos, it soon became clear why some people would appreciate this distribution. In brief, everything is streamlined and simplified. The system installer only has three or four screens and most of them allows us to take defaults to breeze through the process. GNOME is presented with few applications and most of them are on the dock with clear names like Calendar, Weather, and Web. The software centre has a modern approach and draws almost exclusively from the Flathub repository of desktop software.
In other words, for a relatively inexperienced computer user, it's almost impossible to go astray. Everything is simplified and the distribution has a clean, modern look, helped by GNOME's uncluttered approach. We even run everything off of one partition (swap, home, and operating system in one place)!
One of the few disappointment was the Bolt assistant which is very much in its early stages and not useful in any practical way in its current state.
While rlxos offers an initial positive view by being so clean and simple to use, the distribution's streamlined nature become a problem if ever we want to venture off the narrow path it provides. For example, there is almost no documentation on the project's website, apart from a short list of features. There is no option to use a desktop on the install media, no login credentials supplied in case we want to troubleshoot something from the install media. In fact, there is no way to abort the system installer once the installer has loaded. We can move forward and backwards through its screens, but not exit the installer without performing a hard poweroff of the machine.
Also, speaking of the system installer, if we venture into its menus to seek additional information or help, we're shown a series of links to on-line support. Clicking any of these links throws an error up on the screen saying "Operation not supported."
In similar fashion, if we want to tweak the operating system we're limited by its immutable nature. If we want an alternative desktop environment, we're stuck with GNOME, if we want a feature as simple as local manual pages we need to install a whole extra distribution via Distrobox. In fact, just about any command line tool, and several desktop programs, will be available only through Distrobox containers, which often left me thinking it would be easier and more efficient to simply run the guest distribution directly rather than rlxos.
In short, rlxos makes a lot of things quick and simple. However, in doing this, it also limits us and makes anything not within the project's narrow focus unusually difficult and roundabout. People who want a simple, easy to set up system will probably find rlxos an attractive option. On the other hand, anyone wanting customization or additional options will regularly find themselves handcuffed by rlxos's approach. It's a distribution I wouldn't use for myself, but it is one I'd suggest for people who would be happy with a streamlined approach, like a more capable Chromebook.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
rlxos GNU/Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.5/10 from 2 review(s).
Have you used rlxos GNU/Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
An overview of Void's features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro
The Void distribution is independently developed and includes both unique tools and an unusual combination of system components. While a lot of reviews focus on what distributions can do, fewer focus on how a distribution accomplishes low level tasks. The Animesh Sahu blog shares a look at what makes the Void project special and showcases some of the project's unique features. "Ah, the released ISO is way too outdated and has a limited set of pre-installed packages. No problem! Void gives you ability to create your own ISO, with packages as latest as today! As well to add packages, directories and kernel-parameters to the ISO. Just clone the void-mklive repository, and run mklive.sh" The blog post continues on, exploring Void's tools, approach to packaging, and service management.
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One of the more flexible and powerful command line tools is awk. The awk command is often thought of as a capable text processing tool (and it is), but it is also an entire scripting language which can be used in all sorts of situations. The basics of awk are covered in a book called Awk One-Liners Explained. The author carefully lays out basics of using awk and gradually expands on how to use the tool in practical ways. The book contains 70 examples of using awk and some samples are included on the author's website.
For people who joined the Linux community in its first decade or two of existence, we have some news that will likely feel strange. About 22 years after its CEO tried to discredit Linux and referred to it as "a cancer", Microsoft has announced the availability of the company's own distribution, called Azure Linux. "The Azure Linux container host for AKS is a lightweight, secure, and reliable OS platform optimized for performance on Azure." The distribution appears to be tied to Microsoft's Azure cloud service for the moment and not available for testing or deployment on physical hardware.
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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) |
Finding colours in the output of some commands
All-the-pretty-colours asks: Can you tell me why some commands, like ls and grep, display information in colour while others don't?
DistroWatch answers: Some command line programs have the option of displaying key elements of their output in colour. With the grep command this is achieved by using the "--colour" flag. When using ls the flag to enable colour is "--color". For example, this will enable colour highlighting for executable files and directories, along with a few other key file types:
ls --color=always
Not all commands support displaying in colour, but a handful do and the colour is often used to highlight important pieces of information.
As to why these colour flags are being activated on your machine, while they might not show up when using other distributions, the answer is likely the use of preconfigured aliases. A command line alias is a keyword which tells the shell to substitute in commands or text whenever certain words are used on the command line.
For instance, I am using the bash shell at the moment. If I want to see which aliases are recognized by the shell, I can run the command "alias" without any parameters. The result will look like this:
$ alias
alias ls='ls --color=always'
This means whenever I run the command "ls" the shell swaps out the text "ls" for "ls --color=always". The alias acts as a short hand, allowing me to enable the colour flag without needing to type in the full "--color=always" text.
Should I wish to disable the alias, making sure I do not see colour in my directory listings anymore, I can run the following command:
unalias ls
The next time I run the ls command, no extra flags or substitution will take place and I'll get plain output without colour. Later, if I want to add the colour back, I can recreate the alias by running:
alias ls='ls --color=always'
You will probably find command line aliases you remove or change will reset themselves each time you open a new shell. Distributions usually create aliases when the shell opens using a configuration file. For the bash shell, aliases are typically stored in the ~/.bashrc text file or in /etc/bashrc. Other shells will use different configuration files, but the concept remains the same. Removing the alias from the shell's configuration file will prevent the alias from reappearing each time you open a terminal.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Oracle Linux 9.2
Simon Coter has announced the release of Oracle Linux 9 Update 2, the stable version of Oracle's distribution built from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.2 source code but optionally using a custom-compiled "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK)": "The latest releases of Oracle Linux enhance the user experience across on-premises, cloud and edge deployments, with a focus on operational consistency and improved efficiency, to accelerate time-to-market for critical infrastructure assets. Oracle Linux now supports offline upgrades. Offline upgrades can help protect a system during upgrades by performing package installations after a reboot and before libraries that might be affected by package updates have loaded. With this enhancement, running services won't be impacted by operating system updates. With offline upgrades, DNF does not apply the updates directly, but it notifies the systemd process that updates need to be applied." Read the release announcement and the detailed release notes for more information.
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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: 2,871
- Total data uploaded: 43.3TB
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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) |
Colour in terminal commands
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about seeing colours in the output of some command line programs. Do you have colour enabled in your terminal programs? Did your distribution set that up or did you decide to add a splash of colour to customize your experience?
You can see the results of our previous poll on running cutting-edge kernels in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Colours in the terminal
| I enabled colour in my terminal commands: | 318 (30%) |
| My distro enabled colour in my terminal commands: | 477 (45%) |
| I do not see colour in my terminal commands: | 226 (21%) |
| I do not use the Linux terminal: | 49 (5%) |
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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 $222 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Bruce F | $25 |
| Peter R | $20 |
| Mitchell | $50 |
| Tom K | $14 |
| Robin E | $15 |
| Josh S | $12 |
| Jonathon B | $7 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Brian G | $5 |
| Christopher J | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
| Dan M | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Matt | $5 |
| Gregory B | $3 |
| Joe H | $3 |
| Skye F | $3 |
| T.Flo | $3 |
| Vory | $3 |
| Casy S | $3 |
| Urs N | $3 |
| Christoph R | $2 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| Matthias L | $2 |
| Peter M | $2 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Ellas J | $1 |
| Pavel B | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Crystal Linux. Crystal Linux is an Arch-based Linux distribution which features a customized GNOME desktop, Timeshift for creating filesystem snapshots, and an AUR software manager called Amethyst.
- Auxtral. Auxtral is a Debian-based distribution which ships free and open source software only by default. The project is available in five desktop flavours: Budgie, Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, MATE, and Xfce.
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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, 5 June 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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| Linux Foundation Training |
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| TUXEDO |
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
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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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