 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1071, 20 May 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There is an old saying that goes: "To err is human, but to really mess up requires a computer." It highlights how quickly things can go wrong when mistakes are made at the speeds at which computers process information and commands. This week, in our Questions and Answers section, we talk about some common mistakes and tips people can use to avoid data loss. In our News column we talk about improvements coming to ReactOS, in large part due to efforts from the WINE project. We also report on Haiku making it easier to switch between light and dark themes, Canonical outlining their plans for Ubuntu 24.10 and NetBSD blocking code submissions which were generated by chatbots. First though we take the Archcraft distribution for a test run and report on how well this Arch-based project performs. Read on to learn Jesse Smith's impressions of this minimalist Archcraft distro. Then, in our Opinion Poll, we ask for your thoughts on what is the preferred way to install a distribution. Do you like a modern, graphical installer, a minimal menu-driven installer, or writing a disk image to your drive? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Archcraft 2024.04.06
Archcraft is a minimal, rolling release Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. The project provides a graphical user interface using minimal window managers rather than a full featured desktop environment. Archcraft is installed using the Calamares system installer and includes the yay package manager to facilitate fetching software from the Arch User Repository.
The distribution's website highlights three main features of Archcraft:
- Minimal - Archcraft is very minimal and lightweight. It can run [using] under 500MB of memory as it only uses window managers and some lightweight applications.
- Stunning - flat and pastel colours, the consistency among all the UI elements and various themes make Archcraft look very clean, minimal and stunning.
- Powerful - with latest softwares [sic] and built-in support for AUR and being lightweight, Archcraft gives you the power to do whatever you want on your Linux PC.
Archcraft is available in a single edition for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. The ISO file provided is about 2.7GB in size.
Live media
The Archcraft ISO boots to the Openbox window manager. Across the top of the screen we find a thin panel, adorned with bright icons and widgets. This panel holds the application menu, virtual desktop switcher, several resource monitors, a media widget and system tray. Moving the mouse over these widgets doesn't display any tool tips or hints as to what information they are displaying, but I think the resource monitors show CPU, memory, disk and network status - in that order.
Once the graphical session loads, a welcome window appears. This window presents us with a brief greeting and three buttons: Get Started, Calamares, Launch ABIF. I knew Calamares was the system installer, but was not sure what Get Started or ABIF would do. The Get Started button launches a second window which provides us with three more buttons. These connect us with Archcraft's documentation, tutorials and screenshot gallery. ABIF is a text-based system installer for Archcraft. ABIF seems a bit cryptic in its questions and options, but provides a console-based approach to installing the distribution. I suspect this option exists for people who do not have the hardware specifications to run Calamares or who simply wish not to use the graphical installer.
Installing
Calamares does a good job of walking us through the usual steps. We pick our language, a keyboard layout and select a username/password combination for ourselves. The partitioning screen supports both easy, point-and-click manual partitioning and guided partitioning. The guided approach gives us two sets of options. The first is picking the root filesystem. The default is to use ext4, but we can also select Btrfs, JFS, Reiser, XFS and F2FS. We can also select if we want a swap partition, a swap file, or no swap space at all. I went with a swap file and stuck with the default ext4 filesystem.
We are also asked which graphical environment we would like. The options are bspwm (a tiling window manager) and Openbox (a floating window manager). I decided to use Openbox.
The installer copies files to our hard drive and displays a summary of progress information while a slideshow plays, talking about the key features of Archcraft. When Calamares finishes its work it offers to restart the computer. I returned to the live desktop for a while and then tried to find a shutdown option. This proved to be a brief challenge. There is a power button on the panel, but clicking it (or right-clicking it) had no effect. There didn't appear to be any restart or poweroff option in the application menu and there is no user menu as one finds on GNOME. I eventually found that right-clicking the desktop would display a second application menu. From there selecting the System sub-menu gave me the option of powering down the computer.
Early impressions
Booting into my new copy of Archcraft brought up a graphical, dark themed, simple login screen. From there I could sign into the window manager I'd selected at install time (Openbox, in my case). Once I was signed in the Hello window (also known as the Getting Started window from the live environment) opened, offering me quick access to on-line documentation. At the bottom of the screen we find a dock offering quick-launch icons.
One of the first things I noticed while exploring the Openbox interface was that I was unable to interact with or change most of the elements on the panel directly. I was able to click on some buttons, such as the application menu and networking widget. This allowed me to launch programs and connect to wireless networks. I could also activate the media widget to play an audio clip. However, I was unable to click on or otherwise interact with the resource monitors or the power button. I was also unable to directly move or remove widgets that were on the panel. The default panel (provided by Polybar) is visually interesting, but not flexible, at least in terms with interacting directly with it. I did find that if I right-clicked on the desktop to bring up the application menu I could go into the Preferences category, select Panel/Bar and toggle between Polybar and Tint2 (an alternative panel). I found I liked Tint2 a lot better as it was more subdued, fit with the overall desktop theme better and was less cluttered.
Archcraft 2024.04.06 -- Running the Thunar file manager with Tint2 panel
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The application menu we can access from right-clicking on the desktop is a fairly standard tree-style menu. I found it easy to navigate. Clicking on the application menu button in the panel brings up a different way to launch programs. The button on the panel launches a window which appears in the middle of the screen. This window displays an alphabetical listing of desktop applications and a search box we can use to filter the list. Clicking an entry launches the application. This window also has three other buttons or tabs across the top. These are not labelled and they don't have tool tips, but I found they displayed command line applications, directories in our user's home directory and a list of currently open windows, respectively. In short, this window gives us an all-in-one way to find software, files and running programs. It's a bit awkward as the first two tabs (desktop applications and console programs) contain a lot of entries so we either need to type or scroll a lot to find what we want.
Archcraft 2024.04.06 -- Exploring applications and command line programs
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
While I found getting used to Archcraft's style of Openbox interface took some time, I will say the environment was pleasantly responsive. When running in both VirtualBox and on my laptop Openbox performed quickly. Archcraft was stable during my trial and was able to boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. When running on my laptop Archcraft detected and worked with all of my hardware.
Archcraft was heavier in memory that I had expected. The Openbox environment took up about 470MB of memory, putting it in the medium range for Linux distributions. The distribution also used a typical amount of disk space for a full featured Linux distribution, about 6GB for a fresh install, plus additional space for a swap file.
Archcraft 2024.04.06 -- The settings panel and virtual terminal
(full image size: 959kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Included software
While Archcraft is average in terms of size on the disk and RAM usage, the distribution doesn't ship with a lot of desktop software. We're given the Firefox web browser, the Atril document viewer and the Thunar file manager. The Htop system monitor is included along with the GParted disk manager and the Geany text editor. There are several modules for customizing the settings of the window manager and these generally worked smoothly.
Archcraft 2024.04.06 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 975kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Archcraft uses zsh as its default shell instead of the more commonly used bash. This shell isn't my favourite, but it works well enough and didn't cause me any problems. The distribution also ships with the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU command line utilities and it ships with manual pages installed for us. The distribution uses systemd as its init software and runs on Linux 6.8. I found the handful of included applications worked well for me. There isn't much there, but what is there works.
Package management
As far as I could tell, Archcraft does not ship with any graphical software manager. We can make use of the pacman command line package manager to add, remove and upgrade software. The pacman utility worked its usual speedy magic and, while I find pacman's syntax odd, it ran without any issues.
The Archcraft website makes mention of the fact the distribution ships with the yay utility to provide easy access to the Arch User Repository (AUR). In fact, it's one of the three main features highlighted on the website. It is true yay is installed, however I quickly ran into issues with it. I was able to perform searches for software in the AUR with yay, but any time I tried to install new items an error would be displayed telling me about a missing binary called debugedit. I checked and confirmed debugedit is a package available through the Arch repositories and it was not installed by default, rendering yay ineffective. I used pacman to install the debugedit package and, from then on, yay worked to fetch and install community-provided software from the AUR.
Archcraft 2024.04.06 -- Error while running yay
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Archcraft does not ship with Flatpak or Snap support for portable packages. However, we can add these frameworks from the repositories if we wish.
Conclusions
I want to acknowledge right up front that I like what Archcraft is trying to do. The pairing of Arch with the friendly Calamares installer is a great (and popular) combination. Likewise, the Arch Linux base with easy access to the software in the AUR is an attractive combination. I also have a special place in my heart for distributions which lean toward the minimal side - offering a desktop environment and a few basic utilities, but not cluttering up the application menu. I tend to prefer distributions which provide a small base and let us add to it.
Let's look at the distribution's three main features I mentioned at the top of this review: minimal, visually stunning and powerful (thanks to Arch's repositories and the AUR).
I want to get "stunning" out of the way first. Visual styles are subjective and one man's trash is another man's treasure. I didn't care for the default, pastel on dark combination, particularly with the crowded Polybar panel. However, once I'd made a few adjustments and swapped out the pastel-style Polybar for Tint2, I liked the general look. This feature is a matter of personal taste so I'll let people decide how well Archcraft does based on the screenshots.
Archcraft 2024.04.06 -- The Openbox interface with Polybar panel
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In terms of being minimal, I feel the results are mixed here too. Archcraft doesn't ship with a lot of applications (which I like), however the distribution also uses a surprisingly large amount of disk space for including so few applications and no full desktop environment. It even uses an average amount of RAM, despite using a light window manager in place of a full desktop. Archcraft is basically a medium-sized distribution offering a small-sized collection of software. So it's mostly succeeding in being small, but also using more resources than some more fleshed out distributions.
This brings us to the "powerful" claim and, once again, I had mixed feeling about the effect achieved. Archcraft does indeed have access to Arch's main repositories and the goodies this implies, so that is good. However, one of the distribution's three selling points is using yay for accessing the AUR and it doesn't work out of the box. It's missing a dependency, which I really feel should have been noticed before the ISO was released. This is easily fixed, but if the user needs to install packages to get access to the AUR, we're not really further ahead with Archcraft than we are with any of the other dozens of Arch-based distributions.
In short Archcraft does okay with each of its three selling points, but I feel like it doesn't deliver entirely on any of its main claims. It's doing alright and it's easy to install, it's fairly minimal, but I feel like the system could be lighter and would have benefited from a test run of its three main features before the ISO was published. I think whether people will enjoy the experience will hinge on whether the user enjoys minimal window managers and working from the command line. If so, and if a rolling release distribution appeals, then Archcraft is a decent member of the Arch Linux family. However, for people who want a more automated or point-and-click experience then Archcraft might be a bit too arcane for them.
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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
Archcraft has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.5/10 from 55 review(s).
Have you used Archcraft? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
ReactOS improves functionality and stability, Haiku makes it easier to switch themes, NetBSD sets a policy against accepting AI-generated code, Canonical outlines plans for Ubuntu 24.10
The ReactOS team have published an overview of work going into their open source operating system which strives to be compatible with Microsoft Windows. The team is welcoming four new members and opening up a range of new developments to improve multiprocessor support and import improvements from WINE. "ReactOS has fallen short for many years on updating these components as WINE has pushed further into the modern era. Updating these components means we greatly improve the stability and functionality of the components we sync, but also lets us look into the future as more NT6+ features and functionality get merged into the project. Some early experiments have shown dramatically improved application compatibility on the very early builds that come enabled with these features by default." Additional information is provided in the ReactOS newsletter.
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The Haiku project has published a newsletter outlining the work the team's developers accomplished in April. Some of the highlights include improvements to several hardware drivers, some stability improvements and a quick way to switch between light and dark themes: "waddlesplash reworked Appearance preferences to hide most system colours by default, but instead compute them automatically based off of just 3 main colours. This makes switching from "light mode" to "dark mode" much easier (just choose the "Panel background" color and make it a dark gray instead of a light gray; the font colours will automatically flip to white, etc.), though there's still more improvement that could be made here. (This required a fair bit of work to come up with sensible methods to compute the secondary colours automatically.)" Additional progress is discussed in the project's newsletter.
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The NetBSD project is taking a stance against code submissions written by AI chatbots which have been trained on unknown code. More specifically, since the licenses on code used to train AI coding assistants is often unknown or restrictive, the output of these AI tools may be considered derivative works and covered under restrictive licenses. The NetBSD team wants to make sure no code tainted by closed source or restrictive licenses can be merged with the NetBSD operating system. The NetBSD commit guidelines have been updated to include this paragraph: "If you commit code that was not written by yourself, double check that the license on that code permits import into the NetBSD source repository and permits free distribution. Check with the author(s) of the code, make sure that they were the sole author of the code and verify with them that they did not copy any other code. Code generated by a large language model or similar technology, such as GitHub/Microsoft's Copilot, OpenAI's ChatGPT, or Facebook/Meta's Code Llama, is presumed to be tainted code and must not be committed without prior written approval by core."
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Canonical is outlining plans for Ubuntu 24.10 which will be launched in October 2024. Some of the plans include switching to a Wayland session by default, even when using NVIDIA drivers, getting Ubuntu Core Desktop ready for general use and making the software centre work with third-party Deb packages. Canonical has also announced plans to expand the team working on Ubuntu's desktop: "Our plan is to grow the Ubuntu Desktop team by at least another 50% over the next year and we are opening a range of positions across all levels of seniority in the coming weeks. At Canonical we think the future is bright for the Linux desktop and if you have the passion and skills to be at the cutting edge of performance, security, immutability and accessibility then we want to hear from you." Additional plans the company has for Ubuntu 24.10 can be found in the roadmap.
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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) |
Common command line mistakes
Looking-for-trouble asks: What are some common command line mistakes? Can you talk about common pitfalls and destructive accidents waiting to happen?
DistroWatch answers: I tend to avoid writing about things people shouldn't do, in part because I believe one of the most common mistakes people make is blindly copying and pasting unfamiliar commands from on-line sources into a local terminal. I don't want to demonstrate a command that does something terrible, only to have someone copy my example to see if it really works.
Rather than talk specifically about things people should not do, I'd like to focus on some ways to avoid common console traps and errors. There are habits and tricks a person can pick up over time to avoid injuring their data and their pride while using the Linux command line. So let's look at some of those and you can infer what the worst mistakes would look like.
I think the most common issues people run into happen when using destructive commands, such as the remove (rm) command. Removing a file or directory is, at its core, a destructive - and therefore potentially dangerous - experience. Using the wrong flag when running rm, specifying the wrong filename, or accidentally using a wildcard where you shouldn't can be a recipe for instant regret. Some of these issues might be easy to overlook too.
As an example, let's say we want to clear out all of the files in the current directory and just the current directory and we use the following command where the * is a special character that means "match all files":
$ rm *
That seems simple enough, right? But there are some potential problems in this example. Let's say the directory we are in contains one sub-directory, let's call it ABC. And it also has three files: abc, xyz and -r:
$ ls
ABC abc -r xyz
Experienced command line users will recognize that the file -r is also a valid flag for the rm command, indicating we wish to remove files recursively, even in sub-directories. Which means "rm *" will be expanded by our shell and end up looking like this and erase the ABC directory and its contents:
$ rm -r ABC abc xyz
How do we avoid wiping out an entire sub-directory that we want to keep? Well, there are a few ways. First, I always recommend people run the ls command before performing a remove action to look for tricky files, ones with special characters in the name. However, a good catch-all approach is to combine two flags of our own. First, we should use the "-i" flag which runs rm in interactive mode, prompting before removing each file:
$ rm -i *
The above helps us avoid deleting files by accident most of the time, but it also gets tedious if we are deleting many files. Another trick we can do is to specify the "--" flag which means "everything after -- is a file, not a flag". Now let's look at the example again:
$ rm -- *
In the above example the shell expands the command "rm -- *" to "rm -- ABC abc xyz -r". Because of the leading "--" every file after the double-dash is treated as a file. This means the rm command will not regard the "-r" as a flag and instead treat it as just another file to be deleted. For double protection, we can combine the above techniques and use both "-i" to pause before each file removal and also use the dashes to guard against filenames with special characters, like this:
$ rm -i -- *
The above two tips would probably prevent around 25% of the accidental destruction of data I've encountered in my personal and professional lives. While I'm talking about rm, I'd like to share one more tip. Some experienced system administrators (and most Linux textbooks) will tell people to alias the rm command to something less destructive. Usually they suggest aliasing the rm command to "rm -i". What this means is every time the user runs "rm" on the command line, the shell will automatically translate it to "rm -i" for you.
In theory, this makes sense because it puts up a barrier between the user and accidentally deleting a file. However, I believe it is a bad idea for three reasons:
- It trains the user to quickly type "y" or "yes" at every file delete prompt without looking at it because they are always prompted. People eventually become blind to these sorts of prompts, causing the pause to lose its effectiveness.
- It teaches the user to use remove as though it were safe when maybe they should be using another, less destructive tool, such as the move (mv) command. Teaching people to run "mv file ~/Trash" and leave the file in the trash for a week to be erased later is, long-term, a better practice than aliasing a remove command that introduces an easily bypassed prompt.
- If the user ever switches computers or shells, they won't have the "safe" alias anymore and will be running the rm command in its natural, raw, unforgiving form. I'd rather tell people to get used to typing "rm -i --" than tell them to get used to typing "rm" and hope that the shell protects them.
Whenever I hear people talk about using aliases to make commands safer, I suggest a different approach: an alias or shell command with a different name that will provide similar functionality. For example, instead of the user learning to type "rm" to run an alias that is (hopefully) safe, like "rm -i", why not create a shell script or alias with a different name that performs a similar function? This way the user doesn't get into the bad habit of relying on the alias "catching" them and saving them from the bad command. Instead they learn a new command that won't blow up in their face when run on another machine.
Let's look at a practical example. Let's say that, instead of creating an alias for "rm" that will start interactive mode, let's create a simple shell script that moves files to a directory called ~/Trash. Such a script might just be called "remove" or "trash" and look like this:
#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
echo "Provide the name of at least one file."
exit 1
fi
mkdir -p ~/Trash
mv $@ ~/Trash/
Placing this script in our path and calling it "trash" will provide us with a way to dump unwanted files in a temporary holding directory when we no longer need them. Later we can go empty the trash or set up a scheduled job to erase the contents of the trash directory. This is a crude example, but the idea here is to get the user out of the habit of using rm, which can be immediately destructive and using another, safer tool instead.
In a similar vein, the dd command has a reputation for destroying data because it is often used to overwrite entire disks, especially thumb drives. Because it overwrites whole disks and is typically run as the root user, this can cause a lot of damage if we make even a single typo. Last year I shared a script I use called safe-dd which performs a few basic checks before copying any data. This has probably saved me from a lot of grief because I write information to thumb drives multiple times a week, but I've never had a dd-style mishap because I use my safe-dd script and it checks to make sure I'm not doing anything too dangerous.
One more example I want to touch on is that I often see people overwriting files in-place. In other words, they are changing a configuration file or a source code file and making edits to it by hand. This can be okay if there is a version control system in place. However, even if there is, it's often inconvenient to use. Which means if the person makes a mistake, forgets that change they just made, or needs to revert their change in a hurry (or all of the above) then it's not quick and easy to revert back to the original file.
I recommend always using cp to copy the original file so there is a way to immediately have a backup in case we want to revert a change. Often this looks simply like the following:
$ cp important.conf ~/important.conf.backup
$ nano important.conf # make a mistake
$ cp ~/important.conf.backup important.conf
In the above sequence we backup our important configuration file, then try to edit it. Somewhere along the line we realize a mistake was made in the edit. Rather than try to manually undo our changes, we can simply exit the text editor and copy the original file back into place.
These are some of the key tools and approaches I use to avoid disasters, both at home and at work while using the command line. Let us know your favourite tips and approaches to staying safe in the comments.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Rescuezilla 2.5
Rescuezilla is a specialist Ubuntu-based distribution designed for system rescue tasks, including backups and system restoration. The project's latest release is version 2.5 which includes an edition based on Ubuntu 24.04. "Adds release based on Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble), Ubuntu 23.10 (Mantic) and Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar) for best support of new hardware. Upgrades to latest partclone release v0.3.27 (released October 2023) from v0.3.20 (which was released in April 2022). This should improve issues with BTRFS filesystems, as it supports BTRFS v6.3.3, rather than v5.11. Added experimental command-line interface (CLI): CLI should be considered EXPERIMENTAL and UNSTABLE and behavior may change between versions without notice; CLI only supports images created by Clonezilla and Rescuezilla (the other supported formats coming in future); CLI only supports backup, verify, restore and clone operations (mount and unmount operations coming in future)." Additional details about the new version can be found in the project's release notes.
Manjaro Linux 24.0
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 24.0, a new version of the project's rolling-release distribution with separate GNOME, KDE Plasma and Xfce editions. It introduces GNOME 46 and KDE Plasma 6, as well as the brand-new Linux kernel 6.9: "Manjaro 24.0 'Wynsdey' released. Since we released Vulcan in December 2023 we worked hard to get the next release of Manjaro out there. We call it Wynsdey. This is also our first release which comes with Plasma 6. The GNOME edition has received several updates to GNOME 46 series. This includes a lot of fixes and polish when GNOME 46 originally was released in March 2024. GNOME's file manager comes with a new global search feature in GNOME 46. Global search is a great way to jump directly into search, without having to think about where the items you want are located. The new feature also leverages GNOME's existing file search capabilities, including the ability to search the contents of files and filter by file type and modification date." Read the release announcement for more details.
Manjaro Linux 24.0 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 2.0MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Endless OS 6.0.0
Endless OS is a Linux-based operating system which provides a simplified and streamlined user experience using a customized desktop environment. The project's latest release is Endless OS 6.0.0. The new version features a dark theme for night time use, updated applications for working with music and images and updated screen recording tools. "Endless OS 6 comes with a redesigned, easier to use and more interactive screenshot and screen recording experience. Tapping the PrintScr key or the new icon in the system menu brings up an interactive menu to select an area, app, or screen to take a screenshot or recording of. It even remembers the area you select between uses, making it even easier to take several screenshots for comparison. It might seem like a niche thing, but we think you'll like it the next time you want to share a screenshot or recording of something on your screen. Rounding out the new features in Endless OS 6 are a few new and updated apps. For new installs of Endless OS 6, you'll now get the clean and simple Music app for listening to a local library plus the new Decibels app to listen to one-off audio files, e.g. to preview a downloaded voicemail or other recording." The release announcement offers additional details and screenshots.
Oracle Linux 9.4
Simon Coter has announced the release of Oracle Linux 9 Update 4, the latest stable release of Oracle's Linux distribution built from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Besides a Red Hat-compatible Linux kernel 5.14, Oracle also provides a custom-built 5.15 kernel called Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK). "We are pleased to announce Oracle Linux 9 Update 4, the latest version of the premier enterprise operating system for distributed computing environments. Oracle Linux 9 Update 4 for the 64-bit Intel and AMD (x86_64) and 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platforms is now generally available. This release is application binary compatible with the corresponding Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Update 4. The following features, enhancements and changes related to programming languages, web and database servers have been introduced in Oracle Linux 9 Update 4: Python 3.12, can be installed in parallel with Python 3.9 and Python 3.11 on the same system; Ruby 3.3.0 is included in a new ruby:3.3 module stream; PHP 8.2 is included in the new php:8.2 module stream...." See the release announcement and the release notes for more information.
Br OS 24.04
Anderson Marques has announced the release of Br OS 24.04, a brand-new version of this Brazilian project's Kubuntu-based Linux distribution with Calamares as the system installer and built-in artificial intelligence (AI) features. After a heap of last-minute changes in the internal structure of Kubuntu, which delayed the release by eight days, Br OS 24.04 was made available with a new installer, new AI provider and, best of all, free of the recently-discovered Linux vulnerabilities. The release includes KDE Plasma 5.27, Qt 5.15.13, Linux kernel 6.8, the Calamares 3.3.5 installer and Flatpak 1.14.6 with the Flathub repository active. Although the system comes with Perplexity AI as the artificial inteligence provider, with its capacity to access and search the internet and to give up-to-date and precise responses, it cannot colect any information that is not typed directly inside the application's window. Applications for the office include the OnlyOffice office suite, the Evolution email client and the Okular document reader. For more secure internet browsing, Br OS uses the Libre Wolf web browser, a Firefox fork focused on security and privacy. Read the full release announcement (in Portuguese) for further details.
Br OS 24.04 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 6.9MB, resolution: 2560x1600 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: 3,001
- Total data uploaded: 44.4TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Preferred system installer method
There are a number of different approaches a distribution can use to get itself installed on a computer's hard drive. Most mainstream distributions provide a graphical system installer such as Calamares, Anaconda, or Subiquity. Other distributions use a text-based installer with a menu system provided by ncurses. A few distributions use text console installers where question prompts are displayed in a terminal and answers are typed. What is your preferred system installer style? Let us know which is your favourite system installer in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on how long X.Org is likely to be supported in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What is your preferred system installer style?
| Graphical (Fedora/Ubuntu/openSUSE): | 1418 (80%) |
| Text menu (Slackware/Void): | 197 (11%) |
| Text prompts (OpenBSD): | 38 (2%) |
| Copying an image file (UBports): | 9 (1%) |
| Typing commands manually (Arch): | 87 (5%) |
| Fully automated (no interaction): | 32 (2%) |
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| Website News |
A little housekeeping
DistroWatch turns 23 years old this month. This is a relatively long time for a website to survive, especially in the technology field. To put this span of time in context, DistroWatch is older than Facebook, older than YouTube and has outlived the Twitter brand. This website predates the iPhone, the Ubuntu distribution and the practice of most websites using HTTPS. Some pages of the DistroWatch website are older than the ZFS advanced filesystem which stores them.
Writing about open source for this long gives a person an interesting perspective on technology. When DistroWatch was started many of our readers didn't have CD/DVD burners in their computers yet and had to purchase their media from on-line shops. Many of us (myself included) were still using slow dial-up connections. HTML 4 and PHP 4 were the heights of web development technology. This brings me to my point in writing this note: DistroWatch's maintainers have always striven to write web code according to standards to make the website accessible to a wide audience. However, when a site is in operation for over two decades, it's not simply enough to try to code to standards, the question of "Which standards?" needs to be asked.
As I mentioned, HTML 4 was a new and exciting technology when we got started. That gave way to XHTML as the hot new thing shortly after and then there was the Web 2.0 craze and then HTML 5 with CSS took over once smartphones became a common way to browse the Web. These days PHP 4 has long since been swept aside and PHP 8 has taken its place.
At DistroWatch we don't have any managers demanding we rewrite the website from scratch with the latest trendy technology every few years, so the site tends to grow gradually, organically, as we see new needs and have time. The result is DistroWatch has become quite the hybrid (some might say Frankenstein's monster) of code and practices which have come onto the technological stage and then been replaced. While it is all functional and modern web browsers can navigate this mix of styles, the situation isn't ideal.
It's not in my nature to wipe out working solutions and start over, I'm more of a maintainer than an inventor, so there are not going to be sweeping changes to DistroWatch. In fact, it may take a while for anyone to notice things are being adjusted. But, for the past few weeks, I've been going through the DistroWatch code (as I have had time) and making little tweaks and corrections. I've been finding little errors, looking for areas where code could be more efficient and more consistent. With the help of web server logs and a W3C code validator, I've been gradually fixing little issues and trying to bring our HTML/CSS up to modern standards.
What does this do for us? On our end, it will hopefully make it easier to update and make evolutionary improvements to DistroWatch. It should make the code easier to read and upgrade in the future as new standards and versions of PHP arrive on the scene. What does it do for you, dear readers? While the changes are minor, individually, I hope they will amount to some positives. Niche web browsers will hopefully have an easier time navigating the site, we are seeing some small performance improvements and some pages which were getting garbled by overzealous ad blockers should display properly by the time the work is finished (hopefully around the end of May).
Why do I bring up all of this if it's just highlighting some maintenance work? There are two reasons. The first is precisely because I feel as though maintenance work doesn't get talked about enough in the open source community. It is a cliche for a reason that open source developers like to throw away old, working code in favour of starting a project over from scratch. Many an application, gaming library and desktop environment have been tossed aside and restarted from the ground up because creating is more fun than maintenance. There is a time and a place to start fresh, but I think it is often to the benefit of the developer's enthusiasm rather than the benefit of the users that this sort of thing happens. Fresh starts get headlines, minor patch updates don't. I think we should talk about project maintenance and repairing code more and praise rewrites less often.
The other reason I am sharing all of this is I wanted to explain why my processing of the waiting list has slowed recently. Usually I like to go through the list each month and either clean out dormant entries or add a new project which looks promising to our database. While that is a more exciting use of my time I think housekeeping is important too and so my focus has been there and will be for a few more weeks.
Now, if you made it this far through this note, congratulations! Thanks for sticking with me. I'd like you to help me pick an upcoming project. In the near future I want to start a series of how-to articles which will explore setting up small home projects on a minimal device like a Raspberry Pi, old laptop, or PinePhone. I plan to start off small, perhaps setting up a simple backup server and then slowly growing it, adding more functionality. Maybe the backup server becomes a file sync repository for the family, or a media server, or a Linux torrent seed box. The point is, I'd like to do some discussion and tutorials on minimal computing for the home and I want the series to be useful for our readers. So if you have a suggestion - if you want to know about setting up a chat server or a private shared calendar service - let me know in the comments. Perhaps I'll use your suggestion in the upcoming series.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- LinuxHub Prime. LinuxHub Prime is an Arch-based Linux distro that uses its own custom installer. It provides the option to choose from multiple desktop environments. Openbox being its main desktop (window manager) environment. It also comes with a utility which creates a customized ISO from a guided program for each desktop environment.
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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, 27 May 2024. 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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| Archives |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
CachyOS
CachyOS is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It focuses on speed and security optimisations - the default Linux kernel is heavily optimised using the BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) scheduler, while the desktop packages are compiled with LTO, x86-64-v3 and x86-64-v4, Zen 4 optimization, security flags and performance improvements. The available desktop environments and window managers include KDE, GNOME, Xfce, i3wm, Wayfire, LXQt, OpenBox, Cinnamon, UKUI, LXDE, MATE, Budgie, Qtile, Hyprland and Sway. CachyOS also ships with both graphical and command-line installers and provides a Firefox-based browser (called Cachy-Browser) with some security enhancements and performance optimisations.
Status: Active
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| Star Labs |
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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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