 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1131, 21 July 2025 |
|
Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Moving from one Linux distribution to another can be fun, entertaining, and educational. Each project presents a view of what the developers think an ideal operating system should be and it is interesting to see the variety of approaches. Eventually, after browsing the options, many of us want to settle on one distribution and stick with it, but which one? In our Questions and Answers column we talk about picking the right distribution for long-term use when faced with so many good options. Before that, our Feature Story this week takes a look at a project in the AlmaLinux family. HeliumOS is an atomic distribution based on AlmaLinux OS and running the KDE Plasma desktop. Read on to learn more about HeliumOS and what it is like running this desktop distribution. In our News section we talk about Linux Mint's upcoming releases which are planned for later this year. Are you more excited for the Linux Mint Ubuntu-based flavour or the project's Debian Edition? Let us know which one interests you in the Opinion Poll. Plus we share a new service management feature coming to Parabola and celebrate the return of the Plasma Bigscreen project as Intel's Clear Linux is shut down. We wrap up this week by sharing the releases of the past week and listing the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
|
| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
HeliumOS 10.0
The HeliumOS distribution offers, as the project's website says, "An atomic desktop operating system for your devices." More specifically, HeliumOS is a desktop distribution built on top of AlmaLinux OS and using the KDE Plasma desktop environment. HeliumOS offers atomic updates and mostly uses Flatpak bundles to provide additional desktop applications. Though the project is quite young, the developers are aiming to supply ten years of support, thanks to the distribution's AlmaLinux base.
There is just one edition of HeliumOS and it run on one architecture: x86_64. The ISO file for HeliumOS is 3.4GB in size.
Installing
Booting from the HeliumOS ISO brings up a menu where we are given the option of having the system perform a self-check on itself or jumping straight into the install process. HeliumOS uses the Anaconda system installer (which it shares with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and AlmaLinux OS). The experience is virtually identical to setting up AlmaLinux, except we do not select a "role" (server or workstation) for our system. The package selection is automatic and sets us up with Plasma desktop packages. While we can use manual disk partitioning, there is an automated option which sets up an ext4 root filesystem and a swap partition.
The install proceeded very quickly and, once I had made my selections, the Helium image was copied to my hard drive in about two minutes.
Early impressions
Helium boots to a graphical login screen where we can sign into a user account. There are no session options, Helium provides Plasma running on a Wayland session only. Signing into Plasma brings up the desktop with a thick panel floating just above the bottom of the screen. This panel holds (from left to right) the application menu, quick-launch buttons, the task switcher, and the system tray. There are no icons on the desktop.
HeliumOS 10.0 -- Exploring the Plasma application menu
(full image size: 2.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The first time I signed in a welcome window appeared. This window explains the elements on the desktop panel and provides a quick overview of some of the desktop's key features. The welcome window then offers to launch the Discover software centre so we can install additional applications. The final page of the welcome window asks how much data we want to send to the KDE project with the default setting indicating no telemetry is to be sent to the developers.
The Plasma desktop is set up with a plain, light grey theme. The Wayland session was responsive in my test environments, and the desktop mostly stayed out of the way while I got to work.
HeliumOS 10.0 -- The desktop settings panel
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
The Helium distribution worked well in VirtualBox, performing quickly and without serious problems. When Helium is running as a guest the mouse pointer does not automatically integrate with the virtual machine, but otherwise the experience was good. The distribution also ran well on my laptop, handling wireless networking, audio, and my touchpad without any problems.
The distribution is on the heavy side, using 1.3GB of memory when signed into the Plasma desktop. A fresh install takes up 6.1GB of disk space (not including swap space) which is about average for a mainstream Linux distribution.
Included software
While Helium takes up an average amount of disk space the distribution does not ship with many applications. The distribution's style is to provide a small base and have us add Flatpak packages on top of it. We start with some common KDE programs such as the Dolphin file manager, KDE Connect, the Okular document viewer, and the System Settings panel for customizing the environment. There are a few small games, a system monitor, and a text editor.
For a web browser we are given the minimal Angelfish browser. Angelfish is not typically used much on desktop machines, in fact I've only observed it installed by default on mobile devices. However, Angelfish does work fairly well. It displays pages, performs searches, can use bookmarks, and it can stream video. For basic web usage it's actually pleasantly straight forward and "out of the way".
In the background we find the distribution ships with manual pages, GNU command line utilities, and the GNU Compiler Collection. The system runs the systemd suite of programs and features version 6.12 of the Linux kernel.
Atomic, immutable or both?
The HeliumOS website refers to the distribution as atomic, but parts of the website make it sound like the distribution's focus is immutable. Since these terms tend to get used interchangeably and incorrectly, I was curious to see what Helium was doing under the hood. As it turns out, the distribution is both immutable (its root filesystem and /usr directory are read-only) and it uses atomic updates to the base system. This means we can write to only specific parts of the filesystem, such as /var and our home directory. It also means upgrades to the base system happen off-line and either complete entirely or not at all, making sure our system is always in a complete state.
HeliumOS 10.0 -- Adjusting the position of the desktop panel
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Software management
There are a few ways to handle software management on HeliumOS. The easiest approach is to use the Discover software centre. Discover is a modern software centre which, in this case, automatically connects to the Flathub repository to provide us with a wide range of Flatpak packages. We can browse categories, search for specific packages, and install new items with a mouse click. It's all pretty straight forward and Discover worked well for me.
HeliumOS 10.0 -- Finding new applications with Discover
(full image size: 2.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Another approach we can take is to use the built-in Distrobox container manager. Using distrobox allows us to create containers and install other distributions inside these containers. We can then install whatever packages (from those other distribution repositories) we want and run programs from inside the container. Distrobox allows us to share our home directory with containers, giving the applications we install from other distributions access to our documents.
For people unfamiliar with Distrobox and how it works, there is a friendly front-end application available through Discover called BoxBuddy. BoxBuddy makes it super easy to create new containers and access them with a couple of clicks. I set up BoxBuddy and used it to install Debian to provide some low-level programs I was missing in Helium and the whole process worked flawlessly.
HeliumOS 10.0 -- Using BoxBuddy to manage containers
(full image size: 2.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Technically, the DNF command line package manager is installed and it connects to the AlmaLinux software repositories. However, under normal usage, we cannot use DNF to install or upgrade any packages on the system. Helium's immutable nature blocks us from installing any RPM package from AlmaLinux. We could work around this, using an filesystem overlay to install software over top of the existing filesystem, however I do not think this is recommended or necessary given the other options we already have available.
Speaking of the underlying operating system, I was wondering how to approach upgrading the core of HeliumOS. Working with Flatpak packages is fairly obviously and mentioned in the welcome window. Likewise, the project advertises its ability to work with containers. However, there does not appear to be any application for managing system updates. I also could not find any documentation on the HeliumOS website on how to upgrade the core system image. I found a How-To page, but it simply says "coming soon" on it. I clicked on a link to the HeliumOS support page, but it goes to an HTTP 404 error page. None of the project's blog posts seem to talk about upgrading the base system.
HeliumOS 10.0 -- Checking for system upgrades
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Without guidance, I decided to try the approach used on the Fedora Silverblue atomic distribution and ran "rpm-ostree upgrade --check" to see if any core updates were available. This command told me it was checking for new Helium images and reported none were available. However, the Fedora documentation warns the "--check" flag is not reliable. When I then tried running "rpm-ostree upgrade" the utility found 24 image updates, downloaded them, and applied them during my next reboot. We can rollback recently applied upgrades from the boot menu if any of the changes break functionality.
Conclusions
I had some mixed feelings while running HeliumOS. My main concerns were not technical, but rather about the project's infrastructure and longevity. One of the main selling points of HeliumOS is the distribution claims to offer ten years of support (thanks to its AlmaLinux base). However, the project is quite young and, as far as I can tell, the team is very small. This makes me sceptical as to whether the project can hold on and deliver on its promised decade of updated images.
HeliumOS 10.0 -- Using the Angelfish web browser
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
My other complaint was the lack of documentation. While still a fairly young project in the grand scheme, HeliumOS has been around for over a year and a half. In that time, no one has provided any documentation, how-to tutorials, or introduced a support page. The project has not even provided a link to Fedora's documentation which would be applicable most of the time.
In short, after a year and a half Helium has almost no documentation, community, or support options. There is a Matrix chat channel, but nothing we can browse or search if we want to get help with common tasks or trade ideas with other community members and this gives me concerns about the life-span of this distribution.
I think the technical side of HeliumOS is quite good. It combines the stable (potentially long-term support) base of AlmaLinux with the flexible desktop of Plasma, and the large repository of software provided by Flathub. This is a pretty solid combination and one which worked well on my laptop and in a virtual machine. The distribution was quick, stable, offered rollbacks for upgrades, and I liked how easy it was to use Distrobox to fill in gaps in the command line tools.
On a technical level HeliumOS is doing very well and looks promising. It is the sort of distribution which could appeal to both fans of Red Hat Enterprise Linux who like Plasma and novice users who want to install-and-forget their operating system with ten years of updates available. I hope the project can attract more maintainers and fill in the gaps in its infrastructure because the technical pieces are great, it's just the human side of things that needs work.
* * * * *
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
* * * * *
Visitor supplied rating
HeliumOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used HeliumOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
|
| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Mint plans new releases, Arch finds malware in AUR, Parabola rolls out new OpenRC features, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued
The Linux Mint team have published their monthly newsletter for July. The project gives an overview of the upcoming releases of Linux Mint and Linux Mint Debian Edition: "The team is working on a beta release for Linux Mint 22.2. This new version introduces an HWE kernel, fingerprint authentication, theme updates, accent colour support and improved libAdwaita compatibility. Work also continues in the Cinnamon edition, to make input methods and keyboard layouts compatible with Wayland.
Packages and projects are being finalized. Pull requests are being merged. There is no set date for the release but we're hoping to get the beta out by the end of July or the beginning of August.
After Linux Mint 22.2 gets its stable release, the focus is likely to switch in September to LMDE 7, codenamed Gigi. Gigi will come with all the improvements featured in Linux Mint 22.2 but on top of a Debian 13 package base instead of Ubuntu 24.04. Another key improvement in LMDE 7 compared to LMDE 6 will be that it will support OEM installations."
* * * * *
The Arch Linux team have reported the discovery of malware in the project's community repository, the Arch User Repository. "On the 16th of July, at around 8pm UTC+2, a malicious AUR package was uploaded to the AUR. Two other malicious packages were uploaded by the same user a few hours later. These packages were installing a script coming from the same GitHub repository that was identified as a Remote Access Trojan (RAT). The affected malicious packages are: librewolf-fix-bin, firefox-patch-bin, zen-browser-patched-bin" Anyone who has installed these compromised packages should remove them and be aware their systems were potentially open to malicious, remote access.
* * * * *
The Parabola GNU/Linux-libre distribution is a free software branch of the Arch Linux family. The project has announced that a new feature in the OpenRC service manager will require manual intervention on the part of system administrators. The new feature is user services which allows regular user accounts to set up and manage their own account-specific services in their home directories. Additional information on this feature is provided in the Parabola wiki.
* * * * *
Plasma Bigscreen is the name of a KDE project which is designed to be used in situations where a computer will be connected to a television or a projector. When KDE launched Plasma 6 the Bigscreen project was left behind and appeared to be discontinued. Neowin reports Plasma Bigscreen is being worked on again: "The project was left behind during the big transition to Plasma 6 last year because no one had ported it in time for the mega-release. After a friend of his started poking at the code, Devin stepped in to tackle the much-needed work. He started by cleaning up the repository and then jumped into redesigning the interface, drawing inspiration from older Breeze mockups. The home screen has been flattened, removing panel backgrounds." The article highlights some changes and shares screenshots of Plasma Bigscreen running a few applications.
* * * * *
Clear Linux is a rolling release, highly optimized distribution developed by Intel. Or, it is now more accurate to say it "was", since Intel has decided to abruptly discontinue the project. Just one day after the project's latest snapshot, the following announcement was published on the distribution's forum: "Effective immediately, Intel will no longer provide security patches, updates, or maintenance for Clear Linux OS, and the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository will be archived in read-only mode. So, if you're currently using Clear Linux OS, we strongly recommend planning your migration to another actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to ensure ongoing security and stability."
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
|
| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Settling down with one distro
Stop-the-ride asks: I've been distro hopping for a while now, tried multiple distros like Mint, Manjaro, Ubuntu, and Fedora. Now I can't choose which one I want to stay on. If you were me, how would you pick one to stick with?
DistroWatch answers: It sounds like you have tried some of the big name distributions and, since you're having trouble choosing to stick with just one, I'm guessing the experiences were at least "acceptable" across each of them. (If the experience wasn't somewhat good, then it would be easy to discard the offending distribution from the list of options.)
Assuming the distributions you have been trying all work with your hardware and, for the most part, allow you to accomplish the tasks (work, gaming, multimedia, developing) you want, then I think the deciding factor is probably a matter of philosophy.
Perhaps "philosophy" is a bit too abstract a term, it might be better to think of the choice as a matter of "style". Do you want to be always on the exciting, cutting edge of technology, enjoying the updates and learning from changes? Then you probably want to stick with a rolling release. Do you want something that is reliable and predictable, only changing rarely? Then you will likely prefer a long-term support release as your "forever" distribution. Do you want a distribution with lots of features or one which is minimal and fast? Which is more important to you, software freedom ideals or access to closed source applications and hardware?
I find a big part of finding the right distribution for me is finding a project where the developers have a similar outlook and mindset to my own. Then the experience they create will likely feel more natural and familiar to me and match my own patterns of interacting with the operating system. While almost any distribution can work for me in the short-term, a project which matches my views and preferences (my philosophy) will suit me best in the long-term.
My suggestion is to try to answer the above questions for yourself (cutting edge vs fixed system, freedom vs closed, minimal vs features, convenient vs secure) and then pick the distribution which most closely matches your answers. We have filters to help you find the distribution best suited for you on our search page. You might also want to visit the Distro Chooser website which helps recommend distributions based on your preferences.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
|
| Released Last Week |
SparkyLinux 7.8
The SparkyLinux project has published an update to its Stable branch which also fixes a package conflict when working with some multimedia packages. "The 8th update of Sparky 7 - 7.8 is out. It is a quarterly updated point release of Sparky 7 'Orion Belt' of the stable line. Sparky 7 is based on and fully compatible with Debian 12 'Bookworm'. Changes: all packages updated from Debian and Sparky Stable repos as of July 14, 2025. Linux kernel PC: 6.1.140-LTS (6.15.6, 6.12.38-LTS, 6.6.98-LTS in Sparky repos). LibreOffice 7.4.7 (25.2.3 in Debian Backports repos). KDE Plasma 5.27.5; LXQt 1.2.0; MATE 1.26; Xfce 4.18; Openbox 3.6.1; Firefox 128.12.0esr (140.0.4 in Sparky repos); Thunderbird 128.12.0esr. Fixed problem with conflicted libs installed previously from debian-multimedia repos; it blocked installation of some packages, such as GIMP; to fix it manually, uninstall libavutil57 (v10:5.1.3) and its deps, and install it back (v7:5.1.6). Anyway, GIMP is preinstalled now in live media." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
RELIANOID 7.7.0
RELIANOID is a Debian-based Linux distribution for load balancing. The project's latest release, version 7.7, introduces integration with more cloud services and introduces VPN support. "RELIANOID 7.7 marks a major step forward in hybrid and multi-cloud readiness. With full integration for AWS, Azure, and GCP, users can now seamlessly deploy and manage RELIANOID instances across major cloud platforms, unlocking powerful scalability and redundancy options. In addition, the introduction of VPN support significantly extends the platform's capabilities for secure remote access, site-to-site communication, and private cloud extension. The new noid-support utility replaces the legacy supportsave, offering a more modern and comprehensive support data collection tool for faster issue resolution. The system backend has been upgraded to Debian 12.11, ensuring a secure and up-to-date operating environment. The GUI also gets a major refresh, with a full upgrade of Angular libraries and deprecated components removed, resulting in a smoother and more responsive user interface." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Rescuezilla 2.6.1
The Rescuezilla project has pubilshed updated media for its 2.6.x series. The new release fixes a bug with swap partitions remaining mounted during operations and updates the distribution's hardware support. "If you have a blank screen, try 'Graphical Fallback Mode' from the Rescuezilla boot menu (after selecting a language). If that doesn't work, try the alternative ISO image. Each variant has slightly different video drivers and Linux kernel versions, so often have slightly different graphics support. Adds release based on Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky) for best support of new hardware. Fixed regression where swap partitions stayed unintendedly mounted causing restore and clone operations to destination disks containing Linux swap partitions to fail. Impacted Ubuntu 23.10 (Mantic) and newer variants of Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble) and Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular) so on the newer variants since Rescuezilla v2.5 (2024-05-12). Fixed related (very minor) issue where the operating system time on these specific variants were not being initialized as intended due to 'hwclock' not being installed. Renabled Image Explorer (beta) after it was temporarily disabled in v2.6.0. Switched packaging the underlying "partclone-nbd" executable from the 'checkinstall' wrapper to a more canonical packaging strategy using CMake's CPack (to avoid bug in 'checkinstall' script)." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
|
| 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: 3,245
- Total data uploaded: 47.9TB
|
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
|
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Mint or Linux Mint Debian Edition?
In our News section we shared highlights from the upcoming release of Linux Mint (an Ubuntu-based distribution) and Linux Mint Debian Edition (as the name implies, the second branch is based on Debian). We plan to review one of these releases later in the year. Which one do you think we should cover?
You can see the results of our previous poll on how many shell command aliases people have in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
|
Review Linux Mint or LMDE?
| Linux Mint: | 595 (26%) |
| Linux Mint Debian Edition: | 1733 (74%) |
|
|
| Website News |
New distributions added to database
StormOS
StormOS is a desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. The project's goal is to build an operating system which is easy-to-install, beginner-friendly and usable out of the box in order to attract new users over to the world of Arch Linux.
StormOS 07-19-2025 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 403kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- HydraPWK GNU/Linux. HydraPWK GNU/Linux is a Debian-based distribution for use in a variety of industries, including penetration testing, reverse engineering, forensics, and embedded devices.
- Shanios. Shanios is an Arch-based Linux distribution with an immutable filesystem. The distribution uses Btrfs to manage atomic updates and rollbacks. The project offers two editions: Plasma and GNOME.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 28 July 2025. 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)
|
|
| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
|
|
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Archives |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
| Random Distribution | 
OzOs
OzOs was a Xubuntu-based Linux distribution that uses a heavily-customised Enlightenment 17 desktop, built from the latest development (SVN) sources. The distribution offers a minimal number of pre-installed applications, but additional ones can be added later - either via standard Debian utilities or by using the project's online package repository. It also includes optional extras - small applications, themes and eye candy for the desktop.
Status: Discontinued
|
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
