 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 214, 6 August 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The late Sunday release of Arch Linux 2007.08 provided some excitement on the otherwise quiet distribution release week, during which both Fedora and Mandriva failed to deliver the promised first development builds of their upcoming products. But on the distro news front, things were a lot more exciting: MEPIS has announced that it will switch to a Debian base before its next stable release, Ubuntu has published a detailed analysis of Automatix, Kevin Carmony has announced resignation from Linspire, a Swedish manufacturer has unveiled the world's cheapest laptop (running Fedora), and Ian Murdock has given some hints about Sun Microsystems Project Indiana in an interview. We also take a quick look at the current status of KNOPPIX and Gentoo and publish some interesting statistical data about the DistroWatch readership in Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the July 2007 DistroWatch donation is the FreeNAS project. Happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: GParted LiveCD vs Parted Magic
- Statistics: DistroWatch in Latin America and the Caribbean
- News: MEPIS returns to Debian roots, Ubuntu dismisses Automatix, Carmony leaves Linspire, Medison Celebrity offers low-cost notebook with Fedora, Murdock explains future of Solaris
- Released last week: Arch Linux 2007.08, Puppy Linux 2.17.1
- Upcoming releases: Asianux 3.0, Foresight Linux 2.0
- Donations: FreeNAS receives US$350
- New additions: Webconverger
- New distributions: CPX mini, FreevoLive, JUXlala, Klikit-Linux, OSWA-Assistant
- Reader comments
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Story |
GParted LiveCD vs Parted Magic
Following the recent announcement by GParted that its specialist live CD for disk partitioning tasks might be discontinued unless a new maintainer steps in to take over the work, I decided to take a look at one of its competitors - Parted Magic. This offered a good opportunity to compare the two distributions; although both claim to be free, intuitive hard disk partitioning utilities, there are a number of differences between them. Below is a brief summary of my tests, followed by a tabular comparison of their main features.
 GParted LiveCD is a project developed by the maintainers of GParted, an advanced graphical front-end to GNU Parted. I downloaded the 49 MB ISO image and booted it on my test machine; the initial GRUB menu offered a number of boot options - mostly related to the graphical subsystem of the computer, but also providing an option to boot from an external USB CD-ROM drive and another one for MacBook users. The default option, called "auto-configuration", unfortunately failed to set up X.Org correctly and I found myself looking at a terminal window instead. Nevertheless, after running the "Forcevideo" script, as suggested by a console message, I was able to configure X.Org by providing information about the graphics card and screen resolution. Executing "startx" then brought up the Fluxbox window manager and opened GParted. Besides the main partitioning utility, a number of other applications were also on the CD; these included an X terminal (Xterm), Vim, and a few file utilities, such as Midnight Commander, TestDisk and PartImage. The CD contained no help files or other documentation.
GParted LiveCD 0.3.4-8
(full image size: 256kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
 Like GParted LiveCD, the 36 MB Parted Magic CD also booted into a GRUB menu, but the options were limited to choices based on the available system memory. The default option worked fine and soon after choosing it I was looking at a pretty Xfce desktop (the auto-configuration script correctly detected the monitor's maximum screen resolution). Besides GParted, the neatly arranged menus provided a number of file and disk utilities, including a CD burner (Xfburn), an archive manager (Xarchiver), TestDisk, a light-weight system monitor (Conky) and several other utilities. Other popular disk tools, such as dd and ddrescue, were available from the command line. Unlike GParted LiveCD, the developers of Parted Magic have added excellent, comprehensive documentation and FAQs covering GParted and TestDisk.
Parted Magic 1.8
(full image size: 391kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Here is a comparative list of some of the features of GParted LiveCD 0.3.4-8 and Parted Magic 1.8 in a tabular format:
| Feature |
GParted LiveCD
0.3.4-8 |
Parted Magic
1.8 |
| ISO image size |
49 MB |
36 MB |
| Based on |
Gentoo Linux |
Linux From Scratch |
| Hands-off booting |
No |
Yes |
| Desktop |
Fluxbox 1.0rc3 |
Xfce 4.4.0 |
| Kernel version |
2.6.21 |
2.6.22 |
| GNU Parted version |
1.7.1 |
1.8.7 |
| GParted version |
0.3.4svn |
0.3.4svn |
| Networking |
No |
No |
| File manager |
Midnight Commander |
Thunar |
| Keyboard layout selection |
Yes |
US and French only |
| Available tools |
mc, PartImage, TestDisk |
Conky, Leafpad, PartImage, TestDisk, Xarchiver, Xfburner... |
| Documentation |
No |
Yes |
| Support for MacBooks |
Yes |
No |
|
Despite its smaller image size, Parted Magic comfortably beats GParted LiveCD in terms of available software tools, including not just GParted for disk partitioning, but a number of other useful utilities, as well as impressive documentation. On the other hand, GParted LiveCD is capable of booting on the MacBooks and offers a comprehensive choice of keyboard layouts during system boot. However, with the future of GParted LiveCD far from certain, Parted Magic gets my recommendation as a useful utility that every computer user should keep handy.
For more information:
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| Statistics |
DistroWatch in Latin America and the Caribbean
A reader from Mexico asked if we could provide statistics of visitors to DistroWatch.com from Latin American countries, similar to the ones published in last week's DistroWatch Weekly. The reader's wish has been granted - below you'll find a year-on-year tabular comparison of interest in DistroWatch among the residents of the major countries and territories of Latin America and the Caribbean, plus USA and Canada. The figures in the 2006 and 2007 columns represent the total number of visits on the DistroWatch.com index page from each country or territory during the first seven months of each of the two years. (Only countries and territories with more than 1,000 visits during the months of January to July of 2007 are listed in the table.)
| Rank |
Country |
2006 |
2007 |
% Change |
| 1 |
Brazil (BR) |
178,303 |
268,821 |
+50.8% |
| 2 |
Mexico (MX) |
92,430 |
114,682 |
+24.1% |
| 3 |
Argentina (AR) |
84,965 |
100,836 |
+18.7% |
| 4 |
Venezuela (VE) |
29,936 |
37,878 |
+26.5% |
| 5 |
Chile (CL) |
29,123 |
37,439 |
+28.6% |
| 6 |
Puerto Rico (PR) |
24,043 |
27,819 |
+15.7% |
| 7 |
Colombia (CO) |
18,858 |
26,158 |
+38.7% |
| 8 |
Peru (PE) |
15,517 |
15,569 |
+0.3% |
| 9 |
Guatemala (GT) |
7,881 |
11,887 |
+50.8% |
| 10 |
Uruguay (UY) |
9,672 |
11,790 |
+21.9% |
| 11 |
Dominican Republic (DO) |
10,732 |
11,734 |
+9.3% |
| 12 |
Costa Rica (CR) |
15,343 |
9,912 |
-35.4% |
| 13 |
El Salvador (SV) |
7,412 |
7,233 |
-2.4% |
| 14 |
Ecuador (EC) |
4,529 |
7,158 |
+58.0% |
| 15 |
Panama (PA) |
5,376 |
6,718 |
+25.0% |
| 16 |
Trinidad and Tobago (TT) |
4,564 |
5,784 |
+26.7% |
| 17 |
Jamaica (JM) |
2,362 |
3,728 |
+57.8% |
| 18 |
Bolivia (BO) |
3,133 |
3,565 |
+13.8% |
| 19 |
Honduras (HN) |
875 |
3,554 |
+306.2% |
| 20 |
Barbados (BB) |
2,687 |
3,469 |
+29.1% |
| 21 |
Cuba (CU) |
2,623 |
2,077 |
-12.8% |
| 22 |
Belize (BZ) |
1,841 |
1,765 |
-4.1% |
| 23 |
Nicaragua (NI) |
862 |
1,713 |
+98.7% |
| 24 |
Saint Lucia (LC) |
495 |
1,514 |
+205.8% |
| 25 |
Bahamas (BS) |
1,716 |
1,425 |
-17.0% |
| 26 |
Netherlands Antilles (AN) |
1,188 |
1,375 |
+15.7% |
| 27 |
US Virgin Islands (VI) |
153 |
1,236 |
+707.8% |
| 28 |
Antigua and Barbuda (AG) |
1,050 |
1,226 |
+16.8% |
| 29 |
Suriname (SR) |
407 |
1,106 |
+171.7% |
| Total |
Latin America, Caribbean |
558,076 |
719,171 |
+28.9% |
| |
|
|
|
|
| -- |
USA (US) |
6,045,984 |
7,135,032 |
+18.0% |
| -- |
Canada (CA) |
848,510 |
980,280 |
+15.5% |
|
|
| Miscellaneous News |
MEPIS returns to Debian roots, Ubuntu dismisses Automatix, Carmony leaves Linspire, Medison Celebrity offers low-cost notebook with Fedora, Murdock explains future of Solaris
 Let's start this week's news section with an announcement from MEPIS. Following an experiment during which the successful desktop distribution used Ubuntu as the base for its SimplyMEPIS line of products, MEPIS has announced that it will return to its original base - Debian GNU/Linux. Warren Woodford explained the reasons in this interview at DesktopLinux.com. He argued that basing a distribution on Ubuntu made it harder for the SimplyMEPIS developers to provide seamless, incremental updates to newer versions: "Ubuntu is almost a whole new distro each time it's released. By using the experimental code each and every time, the Ubuntu code tree is inherently less stable than the Debian code tree, which contains additional levels of testing and vetting and fixing of code. ... For the next release of MEPIS, we are using a common core based on Debian. As usual, we will have a MEPIS kernel optimized for performance and out-of-the-box hardware compatibility." The first pre-beta release of SimplyMEPIS 7.0, based on Debian 4.0 "Etch", has now been released for testing.
* * * * *
 In the meanwhile, Ubuntu's Matthew Garrett has created a stir when he published the findings about Automatix, a popular third-party software utility that significantly extends the capabilities of a desktop Ubuntu system. The report concludes that Automatix is "actively dangerous to Ubuntu." The report provides a very long list of issues found in the Automatix code, ranging from cosmetic ones, such as missing man-pages, to serious problems, such as lack of dependency management or potential race conditions that could seriously damage the installed system. The author has found that Automatix is not only unsupportable in its present state, the design of the software package makes it impossible to fix its problems. Nevertheless, the report also suggests that the functionality provided by Automatix could still be implemented: "A more reasonable method of integrating Automatix's functionality into Ubuntu would be for the Automatix team to provide deb files to act as installers for the software currently provided. These could then be installed through the existing package manager interfaces."
* * * * *
 Kevin Carmony has resigned from his position as CEO of Linspire, Linux-Watch reports. The controversial executive has been a big fan of desktop Linux and had worked hard to bring a quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution to the masses, but despite steering Linspire for years, the company's products failed to achieve any notable market share. In recent years, he has attracted attention in the media by announcing a number of headline-grabbing products and initiatives, including the community-built Freespire distribution with licensed proprietary media codecs and the CNR software installation infrastructure for a number of competing distributions, but the prolonged development of these products and some controversial changes to the way Freespire was developed alienated many members of the Freespire community. The recent Intellectual Property protection deal with Microsoft has also contributed towards the general suspicion as to the company's intentions. According to the above-mentioned article, the development of both Linspire and Freespire will continue despite Carmony's resignation."
* * * * *
 Don't you miss the good old days when a new version of KNOPPIX was released on a more or less monthly basis? Back in its early days -- around the year 2003 -- the impressive live CD with revolutionary hardware detection was a darling of reviewers and responsible for a rapid spread of desktop Linux. These days, however, we are lucky if we get one or two new KNOPPIX versions in a year, prompting some users to question the future of the project. Although many of us would like to see more frequent KNOPPIX releases, the truth is that the distribution is no longer as exciting and indispensable as it was a few years ago. Since then, just about every Linux distribution has developed a live variant and many specialist live CDs have sprung all over the Internet. As such, the future of KNOPPIX does not look particularly promising; its creator's enthusiasm seems to have shifted towards ADRIANE and, as a result of this, KNOPPIX has moved into the background. Still, am I the only one who feels nostalgic about the golden days of this innovative product?
* * * * *
 Gentoo Linux has been through a fair amount of bad press, including some harsh criticism from this web site. But maybe the amount of negative publicity has prompted those responsible for the future of the source distribution to take some action and to turn things around; at least that's what the founder of Gentoo, Daniel Robbins, seems to believe: "For the past several days I've been pretty pumped about the future of Gentoo. There seems to be a great interest among the larger Gentoo community (beyond the 'official' project) for a more open, flatter, more distributed development model that will allow for good, capable leadership, rapid innovation and result in delivering great stuff to users. And all this can be accomplished without forcing anything upon the main Gentoo organization." Also contributing to the upbeat mood at Gentoo, Donnie Berkholz has outlined his own vision for improving the quality of the distribution. Better days for Gentoo ahead?
* * * * *
 After experimenting with blue colours on its desktop, openSUSE has returned to its original green with the release of its latest alpha build. The boot screen, the installer, and the default desktop theme have all been re-themed and redesigned, and the entire distribution has a new look and feel. Of course, the colours were not the primary focus of the new release; rather, users are encouraged to test the latest enhancement to the openSUSE package manager. openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 7 comes with the very latest kernel 2.6.22.1, X.Org 7.2, KDE 3.5.7 (with a few KDE 4 games thrown in for good measure), OpenOffice.org 2.3 beta and Firefox 2.0.0.5. This was the very last alpha build and openSUSE 10.3 will now move into a fast and furious beta testing stage, with the first beta scheduled for release later this week. openSUSE 10.3 final is expected on October 4th.
openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 7 - back to the green desktop
(full image size: 896kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 For those readers who are interested in low-cost laptops, here is an exciting piece of news from Sweden: a US$150 Medison Celebrity laptop running Fedora. Dubbed as the cheapest laptop in the world, this machine has fairly decent specifications for its price: a 1.5 GHz Celeron processor, 256 MB of RAM, a 40 GB hard disk, a 14-inch display, and an Ethernet, as well as a wireless network card. Shipping is reportedly free and the laptop is available for online credit card orders through its US-based partner. Some customisation, e.g. addition of extra memory, can be arranged during check-out. Disappointingly, the company does not provide any physical address or phone numbers (so order at your own risk), but "whois medisoncelebrity.com" reveals that the domain is registered to an individual located in Huskvarna, Sweden. For more information please visit MedisonCelebrity.com.
* * * * *
 Recently, there has been quite some talk about desktop Solaris, especially after Sun Microsystems appointed ex-Debian's Ian Murdock to the position of Chief OS Platform Strategist and some leaked information about Project Indiana. But the new initiative is still clouded in mystery as Sun refuses to reveal any meaningful details. Last week, IT Jungle sat down with Ian Murdock and Marc Hamilton (a long-time executive at Sun Microsystems) to talk about their desktop Solaris vision. Ian Murdock, answering the question about the future direction of Solaris: "The one-line answer is that we are making Solaris into a distribution, too. And to the extent that you hear that Project Indiana aims to make Solaris more like Linux, that actually fundamentally misses the point. It is mostly taking the lesson that Linux has brought to the operating system and providing that for Solaris as well." Read the rest of the interview here.
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| Released Last Week |
Wolvix 1.1.0
Kenneth Granerud has announced the final release of Wolvix 1.1.0, a Slackware-based live CD featuring the Xfce desktop: "I'm pleased to announce the final release of Wolvix Cub and Wolvix Hunter version 1.1.0. This release marks a turning point in the Wolvix development as it's not longer a SLAX remaster, but now based on the stable Slackware releases and the Linux-Live scripts. New features in Wolvix 1.1.0 are: LZMA compressed modules, SMP support, NTFS write support, auto mounting through HAL, Xfce 4.4.1, and as always a full range of applications for office, graphics, multimedia and development use. Though this releases is based on Slackware 11.0 it comes with the 2.6.21.5 kernel and many other package upgrades." Read the rest of the release announcement.
Wolvix 1.1.0 - a Slackware-based live CD with Xfce
(full image size: 61kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Puppy Linux 2.17.1
Barry Kauler has announced the release of an updated version of Puppy Linux: "This is a bug-fix and minor-tweaks upgrade of Puppy 2.17." What's new? "# Enhanced dial-up: Puppy now has enhanced support for those who have to access the Internet by dial- up; for dial-up, there is a new GUI application called PupDial; enhanced printing: finally, Puppy has CUPS; Print-to-PDF: this is out-of-the-box setup for CUPS, with the 'CUPS-PDF printer' ready to go; MMC and SD cards: these are now fully automatically supported; mount image files: one-click mounting of .2fs, .3fs, .sfs and .iso files; hardware information: PupScan is my GUI application to view PCI and modules information; Pmount is a drive mounter, it has been totally revamped for 2.17; Boot from USB CD/DVD drive: the live CD will now boot from this, as well as the usual internal CD/DVD drive...." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details.
Arch Linux 2007.08
Tobias Powalowski has announced the release of Arch Linux 2007.08: "It's done, final 2007.08 'Don't Panic ISOs' for i686 and x86_64 are ready. It's mostly a 2.6.22.x ISO with some fixes to last Linuxtag ISOs. Changelog to last Duke-Linuxtag2007 installation ISO: kernel 2.6.22.1 usage; update mkinitcpio for new 2.6.22 firewire layout; update hwdetect for new rtc_sys and firewire stuff; memory requirements bumped to 128MB; serial console support in install environment; USB Keyboard issues fixed; fixed quotation marks around CONSOLEFONT and CONSOLEMAP; fixed DHCP rc.conf entry; fixed not generating glibc locales. I would like to thank you all, who assisted in testing and of course finding/fixing bugs. Happy installing and have fun." Here is the brief release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1-beta, the release announcement
- Damn Small Linux 4.0-alpha2, the changelog
- Vyatta 2.2-beta, the release announcement
- m0n0wall 1.3-beta3, the changelog
- openSUSE 10.3-alpha7, the release announcement
- SimplyMEPIS 7.0-prebeta, the release announcement
- VectorLinux 5.8.6-rc1, the release announcement
- Elive 0.9-beta "MacBook", the release notes
- Pioneer Explorer 1.0-rc1, the press release
- sidux 2007-03-pre3, the release notes
- Ekaaty 2
- Tilix 2.1-rc1
- Archie 2007.08-beta
- DragonFly BSD 1.10-RC1, 1.10-RC1
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Asianux 3.0
Asianux, an Asian Linux consortium consisting of China's Red Flag Linux, Japan's Miracle Linux and Korea's Haansoft Linux, has announced the upcoming release of Asianux 3.0 Server edition: "Asianux Server 3 is scheduled for simultaneous release in China, Japan and Korea on September 18, 2007. The Asianux consortium companies will release Asianux Server 3 as the successor to their previously available Linux server products. AXS3 will be available across four hardware platforms: IA-32, X86-64 (Intel/AMD), IA-64(IPF), and IBM p-Series. AXS3 is based on the 2.6.18 kernel." Read the full press release for further details.
Foresight Linux 2.0
The latest issue of the Foresight Linux newsletter has published preliminary release dates for the distribution's upcoming major new version: "As mentioned in the last few newsletters, work on the upcoming Foresight Linux 2.0 is happening in earnest. Foresight Linux 2.0 will be released with similar milestones to GNOME 2.20." Public testing of Foresight Linux 2.0 will start with an alpha release on August 15th and the final release is scheduled for September 19th. For full details please see the August issue of the Foresight Linux newsletter.
* * * * *
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| DistroWatch.com News |
July 2007 donation: FreeNAS receives US$350
 We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the July 2007 DistroWatch donation is the FreeNAS project. It receives US$350.00 in cash.
FreeNAS was suggested for a donation by an enthusiastic reader. FreeNAS is a specialist, FreeBSD-based NAS (Network-attached storage) server with support for CIFS (Samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC, SSH, local user authentication, and software RAID (0, 1, 5). It comes with a powerful web interface and uses very little space on the hard drive - about 32 MB. If you'd like to learn more about FreeNAS, please take a look at these reviews by Linux.com and The Storage Forum, and check out this screenshot tutorial by HowtoForge.
As always, the monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to FreeNAS.
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a PowerPack competition), digiKam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350)
Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$14,090 to various open source software projects.
* * * * *
Translations of Top Ten Distributions page
Many thanks to Georgi Marinov who has translated the Top Ten Distributions page into Bulgarian, and to Mohammed Farouk and Abdulrahman Essam who have contributed the Arabic translation. The article is now available in 13 languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish. Translations to other languages are most welcome - if you'd like to help, please email your work to distro at distrowatch dot com (preferably in plain text format using UTF-8 encoding).
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
- Webconverger. Webconverger is a live, Debian-based web kiosk. It is designed for deployments in places like offices or Internet cafés where only web applications are used.
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- CPX mini. CPX mini is a KANOTIX-based distribution designed for USB storage devices (248MB).
- FreevoLive. FreevoLive is a Mandriva-based live CD with Freevo pre-installed. It is designed for home theatre personal computers.
- JUXlala. JUXlala is a German-language, KNOPPIX-based Linux distribution designed for children.
- Klikit-Linux. Klikit-Linux is a Kubuntu-based community distribution with the goal of developing an easy-to-use Linux desktop with applications for common daily tasks.
- OSWA-Assistant. OSWA-Assistant is a self-contained, freely downloadable, wireless-auditing toolkit for both IT security professionals and end users alike.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 13 August 2007.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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KnoSciences
KnoSciences was a Knoppix-based bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. It was designed for use in educational institutions.
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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