 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 130, 12 December 2005 |
Welcome to this year's 50th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. This issue covers a variety of interesting topics, including a call to protest against introducing a DMCA-style law in France, Linux migration efforts by Berlin, Prague and Cape Town, and an insider's feedback to our last week's feature on backporting newly released applications to existing distributions. In the news section we'll introduce Security Enhanced SUSE, congratulate Patrick Volkerding, and draw your attention to a newly compiled list of FreeBSD projects for volunteer programmers. Finally, we'll take a brief look at the new Ark Linux 2005.2. Happy reading!
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Content:
About software freedom and Linux migration efforts
We have seen the dangerous trend of big businesses in the United States influencing the law - by lobbying and successfully instituting controversial protection measures, such as software patents or the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Now it appears that this trend is moving across the big pond and into Europe. France is the first major target and, if not prevented, it will become the first country in Europe to have a law similar to DMCA (correction: Finland is the first). Once it happens, it will be illegal for French residents to circumvent any copy-protection or encryption technologies. As an example, those who download the libdvdcss library to watch encrypted DVDs on Linux or find a way to make a backup copy of a copy-protected music CD might face criminal penalties.
As a web site advocating the use of Free Software we find this trend unacceptable and worth fighting against. Europeans have already demonstrated their ability to get together when they protested against the adoption of software patents earlier this year, so let's hope that the current attempt by the French government to adopt another controversial law will suffer the same fate. But for this to happen, the French citizens need to mobilise once again. The leading advocate against the "loi DADVSI" is EUCD.INFO which also provides a way for readers to sign a petition against adopting the law. We would like to encourage all freedom-loving French citizens to visit the page and sign the petition - not only for the sake of preserving software freedom in France, but also to send out a message to other governments and legislators to think twice before they succumb to commercial interests of powerful multinationals.
Luckily, it's not all bad news on the European front this week. It would seem that, after Munich, Vienna and Paris, the next major cities to adopt Linux or at least encourage migration towards open source software for use in their municipalities are Berlin and Prague. According to Heise.de (link in German), the local government of the German capital is currently drafting a plan to switch their servers to Linux, while migration of some 60,000 desktops to Linux is also under consideration. Additionally, the city intends to introduce a formal requirement to buy and deploy only software with open standards and open document formats.
In the meanwhile, an interesting piece of news has reached us from across the border - from Prague. According to two news reports released by European eGovernment Services, the Czech capital has had an open source study and research plan since 2001, with the goal of cutting down the city's IT budget and "showing citizens that there are no economic, moral or ethical excuses for using illegal software since OSS is an alternative to proprietary software". As a result, the Czech government is now planning a range of activities in 2006 to actively encourage the use of open source software and to assist those municipalities that adopt a migration plan. More information is available here and here.
 And while on the subject of migration to open source software, further good news comes from Cape Town (pictured on the right). As reported by Tectonic, the municipal offices of the South Africa's second largest city currently have some 540 desktops in daily use that run open source software, while a migration of another 500 City Library computers to open source is in the planning stage. "To those that say the open source desktop is not ready for wide usage we say 'we are already doing it'," asserts Nirvesh Sooful, head of the IS&T Directorate in Cape Town. (Disappointingly, the city's open source deployment plan has so far by-passed its official web site, which is still hosted on Windows and IIS.)
The above gives a good indication that more and more municipalities and government offices around the world have started seeing the value in open source software and begun migration plans.
How about the government in your city? Is it still using your tax money to pay massive license fees for running proprietary, closed-source and closed-format software in places where Free Software would do perfectly fine?
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Miscellaneous news: SESUSE, Patrick Volkerding, FreeBSD list of projects for volunteers
 One of the positive side effects of opening up the development of SUSE Linux to public is the emergence of various specialist sub-projects based on this popular distribution. The latest addition to this growing family is SESUSE (Security Enhanced SUSE), a hardened distribution for those users who demand extra strong security features. The project is presently in early development, but the first release, based on the upcoming Alpha 4 of SUSE Linux 10.1, is expected shortly. The distribution will have SELinux enabled by default, it will ship with both KDE and GNOME, and it will include a new YaST module for configuring security profiles. For more information please see the unofficial announcement and visit the SESUSE project page.
  Followers of the Slackware current changelog were greeted with a rather unusual entry last weekend. "It's a girl!" declared the title of a new post, the first one in over a month. It turned out that Patrick Volkerding, the 38-year old maintainer of Slackware Linux and one of the most prominent personalities in the world of Linux distributions, had just had his first child: "I know a lot of you have been wondering what's going on here, and the news is that my wife Andrea delivered our first child, a daughter Briah Cecilia." Our warmest congratulations to Patrick and Andrea! More details (including some mundane stuff, such as upgrades to the Linux kernel, glibc, GCC and ALSA, and a promise that "things should be getting back to normal here (more or less) over the next couple of weeks") can be found in the Slackware current changelog.
 FreeBSD has published a new list of projects and ideas that could help to extend its features and has invited volunteers who might be interested in contribution code: "The FreeBSD project has hundreds of active developers spread all over the world, and many of them have their own parts of the source-tree that they work on. However, there are always a lot of new interesting projects and ideas that needs to be investigated and evaluated, and this is where the FreeBSD project relies on heroic efforts from volunteers." All projects are highly technical and require the ability to write code. Please see this page for more information.
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Feedback: On backporting applications
Our last week's feature on backporting newly released applications to stable distributions has stirred quite a debate. One of the more interesting posts was the one from John Dong, the Ubuntu Backports project leader. With more backporting experience than most, John has outlined some of the pitfalls of backporting complex applications to well-tested distribution releases. Some readers felt that it was worth reprinting John's posts for the benefit of those readers who don't read the forums. So here it goes:
- Backporting is a sweet way for us to enjoy the hot new things in the Open Source world without compromising stability like running a development/CVS/snapshot release.
- Backporting can be a major PITA if not done correctly! There are lots of compatibility issues that stem from poorly or recklessly done backports.
- Developers know what they're talking about, and what they're doing. Nobody's voice is being ignored. Most backports are just a handful of commands (just a few minutes of interactive work), so there is not much effort in the actual backporting process. So if a developer doesn't backport a certain package, it's been done with good reason.
For example, Firefox 1.5 has been a very popular request for the Ubuntu Backports project. However, backporting Firefox also requires recompiling over 50 source packages in the Ubuntu collection, and even then there is no guarantee that the recompiled packages would work correctly. As of now, everything from Mono applications (that use HTML rendering) to the GNOME Help viewer is broken by recklessly compiling a set of firefox backports, just to give you an idea about the degree of breakage.
Sometimes, there is more to a package than meets the eye -- especially true of Firefox. It's not just a browser (though that's what most people think) -- it's an embeddable HTML rendering library that's used at the core level by a majority of the Linux desktop programs that utilize HTML rendering. There is a lot more work than meets the eye when you do something. I hope now people see that the "I unpacked the damn 1.5 tarball, what's so difficult about backporting it?" argument does NOT work!"
I'd like to emphasize the importance of compatibility again. There are two aspects of compatibility: A platform for 3rd party developers to target, and consideration for the consequences of backports to users:
- As much as your distribution is able to package OSS (or even restricted) packages, others will at times need to make packages for Linux themselves. These could be authors of less-popular OSS software, or even large commercial vendors wanting support of the Linux community.
Either way, when they package, they need a platform that they can depend on. For example, if I am a commercial vendor that wants to make packages for RHEL, I expect the package to work with RHEL, no matter how much of RHEL's software I must link to. That's one thing enterprise-grade Linux is good at -- providing a well targetable uniform platform. For the life of RHEL, I can expect that the package I made 12 months ago will continue to function on this platform.
Ubuntu also tries to be that way, though we certainly do make more releases! Through the 18 (or more) months of support, we strive to make each release a targetable enterprise-grade platform. As a results, Backports has to be careful not to introduce incompatibilities in the process of providing updates. In the Firefox example, backporting Firefox 1.5 would cause any 3rd party package linked to the Ubuntu Firefox Gecko engine to need recompiling (meanwhile they'll crash on attempts to use Gecko), which is something I cannot do. Recompiling the 55 source packages in the Ubuntu repositories: sure, I have the authority to request that done. Telepathically recompile every 3rd party package that's made and will be made for Ubuntu Breezy 5.10 within the next 16 months? Sorry, don't think I can do that.
- A part of the Code of Conduct (the core philosophy behind Ubuntu) is to be considerate. Backports has to be considerate to other Ubuntu users, and the consequence to every user is weighed before a backport is officially made. For example, consider the Firefox backport example again (wow, this is becoming a popular example): many people heavily customize their Firefox profiles, usually through extensions. Most of us Firefox 1.5 adopters know that the Extension API in 1.5 is not compatible with 1.0.x. As a result, many extensions that work fine in 1.0 will not run when Firefox is upgraded to 1.5.
At the same time, there are many Ubuntu users who use Ubuntu as an enterprise-class workstation OS for getting job-critical work done. For me to decide to introduce a new package that breaks a core application for them is not considerate to them, and causes them countless headaches.
Maybe I and many of us amongst here are Linux hobbyists / enthusiasts that can deal with (or even enjoy) the occasional breakdown and fix here and there, but others cannot accept this and consider it downtime.
Until there is a user-friendly way to allow users to make a conscious decision as to what "potentially incompatible Backports" to install, I will tread very cautiously and only provide absolutely safe, top-quality packages to Backports users. Those hobbyists amongst us can use Backporting scripts (like ubp-build.py [google]) to make their own backport packages (oh boy, I think I have 50+ of those installed at the moment!).
John Dong, Ubuntu Backports Team Leader
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| First looks: Ark Linux 2005.2 |
Ark Linux 2005.2
 When Ark Linux was first announced in 2002, it created much excitement as it was to become the first free distribution designed for novice and non-technical computer users. The fact that it was led by such an experienced and well-known developer as Bernhard "Bero" Rosenkraenzer, previously coding for Red Hat, added more credibility and expectations to the project. But some three years and one buggy release later, the distribution has failed to attract many users. Partly responsible for this failure was the emergence of other free, user-friendly distributions, such as MEPIS or PCLinuxOS, with larger and more active communities, and more frequent releases.
Nevertheless the developers of Ark Linux have continued their work. Last week, the project's second stable release hit the mirrors and I decided to take a look. The new version 2005.2 comes with an updated system installer, the latest development kernel, X.Org 6.9 from cvs, KDE 3.5.0, Firefox 1.5, OpenOffice.org 2.0, and many other up-to-date applications, some bordering on the bleeding edge. It also includes 3D acceleration support for ATI graphics cards and the usual improvements in hardware detection, speed and usability.
The Ark Linux installer now provides an "expert mode" by integrating QTParted for custom partitioning and a screen for selecting partitions to install the distribution. While this is a welcome addition, I found it somewhat broken, with GRUB being setup incorrectly when told to write to the root partition instead of the Master Boot Record. Also, QTParted feels a little out of place, lacking "continue" button once you finish the partitioning. The installer still gives a feeling of something designed in the Caldera era of mid-nineties, somewhat awkward to use and with no support for the USB mouse wheel. I am, of course, writing this from the point of view of somebody who has performed hundreds of Linux installations so new Linux users might have a more favourable view of the installer. Nevertheless, I feel that Ark Linux should perhaps make use of one of the tried and tested open source installers, rather than re-invent the wheel.
I found the hardware detection and setup a little flaky as well. While the Realtek 8139too network card was configured correctly, the SoundBlaster Live! sound card was not (permission problem) and the screen resolution was set to 1024x768, which is lower than the maximum resolution supported by the monitor. Worse, there was no way to increase this in Ark's Mission Control - a surprising omission for a distribution designed for use by non-technical computer users. These are issues that many less beginner-friendly distributions solved a long time ago so it was disappointing to see Ark failing here.
On the positive side, after the GRUB problem was fixed and the hardware setup failures corrected, Ark turned out to be a very nice operating system. The beautifully designed Mission Control is a pleasure to use and Kynaptic and KPackage were pre-configured and ready for installing, removing and updating packages. The developers have resisted the temptation to introduce heavy customisations to KDE, the only available desktop, preserving its default look and feel. One of the more interesting aspects of the distribution is the omission of the "root" user - the system logs you straight into a user account with elevated privileges to modify system settings, but without the right to delete or alter important system files. Power users can access the root account via the "Super User Terminal".
Overall, Ark Linux 2005.2 is not a bad distribution, but I don't think it is quite ready to be called "beginner-friendly". More experienced users might, however, find it a worthwhile project, especially since it attempts to be on the bleeding edge of open source software development and its "dockyard" package repository is continuously updated. Perhaps a little extra attention to detail, some usability studies and better installer with more testing could bring it closer to the beginner-friendly league, but as it is now, this goal remains elusive.
For more information about Ark Linux please visit the project's home page at arklinux.org.
Ark Linux 2005.2 - still not quite as beginner-friendly as it would like to be.
(full image size: 1,367kB)
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| Released Last Week |
EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0.2
A new update to EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0 series has been released: "Guardian Digital is happy to announce the release of EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.2. This release includes several bug fixes and feature enhancements to the Guardian Digital WebTool, the SELinux policy, and the LiveCD environment. New features include: a new WebTool frontend to the AIDE filesystem integrity checker; daily, weekly, and monthly graphs for the Snort IDS WebTool module; the latest stable versions of MySQL (5.0.16), fetchmail (6.3.0), and Snort (2.4.3)...." Find a more complete list of changes in the release announcement.
Kate OS 2.3
The Kate OS distribution has been updated to version 2.3: "We are proud to present the newest milestone release of Kate OS II series. Kate OS 2.3 brings 2.6.14.2 kernel with Reiser4 support, the newest glibc library, XFce 4.2.3.2 desktop environment and many other applications in current versions. We have modified system boot scripts so they present the boot sequence in a clear way. Another new addition in Kate OS is a hardware detection tool 'discovery', which detects and configures system hardware. ... Additionally, the DVD edition contains GNOME 2.12.1 and KDE 3.4.3 (optimized for i686 class processors)." Read the complete release announcement on the project's home page.
Helix 1.7
Helix is a customised distribution of the Knoppix live CD dedicated to incident response and forensic analysis of compromised computer systems. A new version 1.7 has been released: "Helix 1.7 has been released. This edition revamped the GUI on the Windows side with all new code and added some new tools. The Linux side has been dramatically updated with a brand new 2.6.14 kernel that features many new RAID and SATA drivers." Read the release announcement and changelog for further information.
B2D Linux 20051207, 20051208
The December release of B2D Linux is now available for download. B2D Linux is a Taiwanese live and installation CD based on Knoppix, with complete support for traditional Chinese. The major changes in this release are: upgrade to kernel 2.6.13.3, upgrade to Firefox 1.5, inclusion of OpenOffice.org 2.0.0 (an enhanced Chinese edition packaged by OpenDesktop.org.tw), newly added ability to switch between UTF8 and Big5 locales from within a graphical utility, switch to xcin 3.0 for Chinese input, and several other enhancements. See the release notes (in Chinese) for a more detailed description of the changes.
64 Studio 0.6.0
64 Studio is a Debian-based Linux distribution with a collection of software for digital content creation on x86_64 hardware. It's based on the pure 64 port of Debian GNU/Linux, but with a specialised package selection and lots of other customisations. The latest version is 0.6, released yesterday: "I'm glad to announce the 0.6.0 version of the 64 Studio distribution. The release features many major software upgrades and system enhancement, for further details just have a look to the list of closed tickets for this milestone." More information is available in the release announcement and on the project's web site.
Ufficio Zero 0.7
Hot on the heals of the recently released version 0.6, the developers of Italy's Ufficio Zero, based on Ubuntu Linux, have announced another new release: "Ufficio Zero 0.7 has been released. This release features a big step forward with the new version of 'automatico', an automatic software installer based on gnome-app-install. A simple guide through all daily tasks has been included in the distribution so users can find information right on their desktop." Like the previous version, Ufficio Zero 0.7 is a live CD only, without a hard disk installation option. Read the full release announcement (in Italian) for further information.
ClarkConnect Gateway/Server 3.2 R1
The recently released ClarkConnect Gateway/Server 3.2 has received its first bug-fix revision: "From time to time, we release ISO downloads with all the latest updates and bug fixes. Revision Notes: intrusion detection report generation; system watch connection issues with some ISPs; PPTP VPN blocked access to local server; PPPoE configuration issue on a new network interface; Webmail configuration error on a new installation; cosmetic issue with the rpm command." Read the complete revision notes for further details.
SLAMPP 1.0 "Lite"
A "lite" edition of the SLAMPP 1.0 live CD project for home servers has been released: "As I promised before, a lite version of SLAMPP is now available for public download. It contains only essential server applications and other tools that will support your web development work. To keep SLAMPPLite small and make it easy to update, I've chosen to include a ready-made solution called XAMPP, developed by nice people at Apache Friends. ... A new linux kernel 2.6.14.3 has been used. To compile all things into a live CD, I also updated the linux live scripts which will be available for you to use as well. You can use it to edit or re-master SLAMPPLite if you have intention to do so in the future." Here is the full release announcement.
Berry Linux 0.65
A new version of Berry Linux has been released: The most important changes in version 0.65 include the following: upgrade to Linux kernel 2.6.14.3 with SMP, udev and bootsplash, upgrade to KDE 3.5.0, upgrade to Firefox 1.5, newly added Thunderbird mail client version 1.5rc1. XMMS and Mozilla have been removed and MPlayer upgraded to its latest development release. GCC has been upgraded to version 4.0.2. See the complete changelog for further information.
Coyote Linux 3.00.31
Build 31 of the Coyote Linux Personal Firewall distribution 3.00 has been released: "Coyote Linux 3.00 build 31 is available for download. This release fixes the following problems: UPnP service not working properly; web admin page not working for http remote access config; web admin reload function fixed to prevent blocking access to the web admin after a reload; several unused files were cleaned from the root firmware image. This release also contains an updated version of the firmware loader. NOTE: This release can not be upgraded to using the firmware update web admin page. Until the firmware loader specs and process are finalized, this function can not be used." The release announcement.
Ark Linux 2005.2
A new major version of Ark Linux, an easy-to-use distribution designed for non-technical users, was released today: "The Ark Linux team is pleased to announce the release of Ark Linux 2005.2. The highlights of this release include: an upgrade to the KDE 3.5 desktop; OpenOffice.org has been upgraded to version 2.0; 3D acceleration on ATI Radeon 9600 and 9800 based hardware is now supported; handling of auto running inserted CDs and DVDs has been improved; hardware support has been improved; unsupported PCI / wireless network cards can now automatically be configured to use a Windows XP driver through the Ndiswrapper emulation layer; some USB printers are configured fully automatically...." More details are available in the long press release.
Foresight Linux 0.9.2
A new version of Foresight Linux, a desktop-oriented distribution based on rPath Linux, has been released: "It has been a long hard road, but 0.9.2 ISOs are now posted. I will say they aren't perfect, but a huge jump from the previous ISOs released. What has changed? The GTK theme has been hacked to use colors that match our look better; default icon set is 'Tango'; stripped out stuff that folks won't even miss, which shaved 120MB off the 2nd CD; added laptop-tools, which includes some nice wireless drivers, NetworkManager, GNOME Power, and ndisgtk (GUI for configuring windows wireless drivers); convert back to using GNOME Systems Tools; package selection in the installer." More details can be found in the release announcement.
Wolvix 1.0.4 Games Edition
A new edition of the Wolvix live CD, featuring over 50 games, has been released: "Games Edition features over 50 games in different categories, four emulators and quite a few desktop applications. You won't find World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2 on the CD, but I've tried to include some of the finest free Linux games and I think there should be a game or two for most people, I've even added dopewars for your grandma. ;-) None of the games require 3D drivers, so you should be able to play most games on any graphics card." More in the release announcement and on the Games Edition page.
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Web Site News |
New distribution additions
- How-Tux. How-Tux is a Slackware-based, desktop-oriented Linux distribution with the installer translated into Italian and most applications localised for the benefit of Italian speakers. Compared to Slackware, How-Tux is enhanced by GWARE GNOME, OpenOffice.org, and several extra multimedia and graphics applications.
- 64 Studio. 64 Studio is a collection of software for digital content creation on x86_64 hardware (that's AMD's 64-bit CPUs and Intel's EM64T chips). It's based on the pure 64 port of Debian GNU/Linux, but with a specialised package selection and lots of other customisations. It will be marketed to hardware OEMs in the creative workstation and laptop markets as an alternative to the 64-bit version of Windows XP, or OS X on Apple hardware.
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DistroWatch database summary
And with this we'll say good-bye until next Monday. We hope you've enjoyed this issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1169 (2026-04-20): Lakka 6.1, free software and source-based distributions, FreeBSD Foundation publishes compatible laptop list, Debian holds Project Leader election, Haiku progresses ARM64 port, Mint to extend development cycle, Linux 7.0 released |
| • Issue 1168 (2026-04-13): pearOS 2026.03, EndeavourOS 2026.03.06, which distros are adopting age verification, Arch adjusts its firewall packages, Linux dropping i486 support, Red Hat extends its release cycle, Debian's APT introduces rollbacks, Redox improves its scheduler |
| • Issue 1167 (2026-04-06): Origami Linux 2026.03, answering questions for Linux newcomers, Ubuntu MATE seeking new contributors, Ubuntu software centre is expanding Deb support, FreeBSD fixes forum exploit, openSUSE 15 Leap nears its end of life |
| • Issue 1166 (2026-03-30): NetBSD jails, publishing software for Linux, Ubuntu joins Rust Foundation, Canonical plans to trim GRUB features, Peppermint works on new utilities, PINE64 shows off open hardware capabilities |
| • Issue 1165 (2026-03-23): Argent Linux 1.5.3, disk space required by Linux, Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and builds RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking |
| • Issue 1164 (2026-03-16): d77void, age verification laws and Linux, SUSE may be for sale, TrueNAS takes its build system private, Debian publishes updated Trixie media, MidnightBSD and System76 respond to age verification laws |
| • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Knoppix 64
The Knoppix 64 project provides a 64-bit development system with an up-to-date gcc 3.4 and with -march=k8 flag for AMD64 optimisations, 64-bit linker and debugger (gdb), and a very stable 2.4.21 Linux kernel. It was suitable for benchmarking 64-bit machines. It includes a fully functional KDE desktop.
Status: Discontinued
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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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