 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 244, 17 March 2008 |
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Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! PC-BSD, a user-friendly variant of FreeBSD with a web-based software installation system, continues to deliver updated releases on a regular basis. We'll take a look at the just-released version 1.5. Does it support modern hardware well? And can it challenge the popular desktop Linux distributions? Read below for some answers. In the news section, Ubuntu enters a beta freeze stage, KNOPPIX gets busy with bug fixes, the Hungarian PCLinuxOS community releases PCe17OS, OpenBSD publishes the 4.3 information page, and Dru Lavigne announces the availability of an up-to-date BSDA certification DVD. Also in this issue, learn about pkg-get, a package management utility for OpenSolaris and follow an interesting analysis of the DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking logs as published by a group of data mining researchers in France. Happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Story |
First look at PC-BSD 1.5 (by Susan Linton)
Introduction
 I've followed the development of PC-BSD with enthusiasm since my first test drive three years ago of version 0.6. I was highly impressed with the developers' ability to provide a free BSD that was easy to install and even easier to use. Truthfully, I thought it was just amazing. I've tested various versions since, including 1.0 and 1.4, and was never severely disappointed. So, when 1.5 was released, I expected things to only be better. In many ways they were, but in the most significant way they weren't.
Installation
The PC-BSD installer hasn't changed much, if any, since 1.4. It's still a lovely graphical wizard that walks the user through a very friendly setup. It includes a partitioning tool for those needing that ability, but it is still limited to logical partitions. It sets up user accounts and the root password. It offers some extra packages, such as Firefox, Opera, KOffice, and OpenOffice.org (located on the second install CD). It installs a bootloader if desired. It's quick and easy, and it works well. The installer is still one of the most impressive aspects of PC-BSD.
During the first boot, one is presented with a graphical X.Org configuration. It offers a wide selection of resolutions and all the drivers available in X.Org 7.3, as well as three versions of the proprietary NVIDIA graphic drivers. This is a wonderful time-saver. The graphical setup tool offers basic configuration with no advanced settings (such as dual screen or special effects), but what it does it does well. It works good and allows the user some choice as opposed to auto-detection and setup. I didn't have any trouble using the NVIDIA drivers this release.
Desktop and software
If you ticked the auto-login checkbox during install, you will miss the tasteful login screen and will be taken straight to the KDE 3.5.8 desktop. The appearance hasn't change much since the last release, featuring the same gradient blue wallpaper. Many components have been updated for this release, but the software line-up remains mostly unchanged as well. It is comprised mainly of KDE applications, such as Konqueror, Kopete, and Kontact as well as some made-for-KDE applications, e.g. Amarok, KMPlayer, and Kaffeine.
One of the benefits of using PC-BSD is their pbiDIR. This is a web site listing lots of software for easy installation onto your PC-BSD system. It offers many popular packages, including The GIMP, Thunderbird, Kasablanca, Audacity, Microsoft TrueType Fonts, and a bunch of games, such as Alien Arena or Frozen Bubble. This makes installing software really easy. Just click through until the package downloads, then an install wizard (similar to what's seen with Windows) opens and guides you through the install. This usually includes the option to install a desktop icon and menu entry. I found this process works really well.
PC-BSD offers a simple way of managing the installed software packages.
(full image size: 200kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Add/Remove Software is still present and functional as is the Ports tree and pkg_add, but the menu Online Update Manager is now inoperative in lieu of the new PC-BSD Update Manager located in the system tray. It was said that among the improvements it now "allows override variables, so that administrators can use their own mirrors / servers to roll out updates to users."
One nice little addition this release is a battery monitor located in the system tray. There still weren't any CPUfreq or hibernation options, but the CPUfreq module can be configured to load at boot using the Services Manager found in the Settings menu. The System Manager appears to remain unchanged, still offering system tools (hardware detection output, cvsup for Ports) and enabling the boot splash. Also found in the menu is Network Settings, which allow very basic configuration, and Firewall, which provides an interface to set up a firewall.
Multimedia support in PC-BSD is good. I had no trouble with Flash video in Firefox and I could play local video files using one of the included players. Kaffeine is the default player for video and it was able to handle AVIs and MPEGs just fine. I did have trouble with encrypted DVDs in the graphical video players (Kaffeine and KMPlayer), but could play them using MPlayer at the command line. Audio CDs open and play fine in Amarok while OGGs and MP3s open and play in Kaffeine. I didn't have any trouble with DOCs or PPTs prepared in Windows or Mac OS using OpenOffice.org except perhaps with the spacing of some images. PDFs were no trouble at all as they opened in the integrated KPDF.
Compiz Fusion is included in this release and worked really well. There's a menu entry which, when clicked, asks if you'd like to enable it at boot. When clicked, Compiz Fusion is immediately enabled and special effects are available. I didn't suffer any instability or performance issues when using this application, but it did seem to require the restart of X to disable the feature.
PC-BSD 1.5 offers 3D desktop features, courtesy of Compiz Fusion.
(full image size: 297kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I didn't have any major issues with any of the applications or tools. They seemed quite stable and functional.
Hardware
I did have an interesting time with PC-BSD and my various machines. I found some bugs and inconsistencies that indicate possible regression and probably some new issues as well. I ended up testing PC-BSD 1.5 on three machines and discovered that support for NVIDIA boards was lacking.
First, I tested PC-BSD on my trusty HP Pavilion laptop. 1.4 did well on this machine, so I was surprised to discover that it wasn't quite as friendly this release. The first issue I noticed was that the built-in wired Ethernet chip that normally uses Forcedeth in Linux was inoperative in PC-BSD 1.5. It wasn't even detected. There were no hints of it in any of the logs. It was just completely unseen. Did the developers forget to build support for these chips into the kernel?
I didn't try to get the wireless chip to work in the previous release of PC-BSD, but I did this time. It's a Broadcom chip that usually causes most auto-detection to insert the bcm43xx driver. Mine won't work with bcm43xx and I must use NDISwrapper to import and use the Windows drivers in Linux. FreeBSD (the base for PC-BSD) includes the Ndis tools to do the same thing. I was able to "ndisgen" to convert the drivers and could load them. The kernel saw the chip, but was unable to communicate with it. As a result, I hit a brick wall with this laptop because I find a system practically useless without an Internet connection. Also, trying to boot with ACPI disabled resulted in a general protection fault.
But the weirdness didn't end just yet. I installed twice on this laptop, hoping that an ISO burned at a slower rate and a connected RJ45 cable might help, but they didn't. I noticed that with the first install, the Windows NTFS partition was detected and available, but was not seen the next. Given the simple installer, there isn't much way to change your install routine other than your choice of a few extra applications. In addition, this release of PC-BSD brings new sound card detection and support. With this same laptop, I noticed that just about every sound module was loaded at boot. Sound worked fine, but it was unsettling to see all those modules loaded. Lastly, when the screen would blank, X was frozen or remained blacked. The backlight came on, but I could not get back to the desktop without hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and logging back in.
Next, I tested PC-BSD 1.5 on a server machine with Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G Micro-ATX mainboard. This too is an NVIDIA board with a Forcedeth supported Ethernet chip, and, in fact, has several chips in common with or similar to the laptop from roughly the same era. Again, the NIC was not detected, so it really appears this was overlooked by the developers. In addition, system performance was markedly degraded using this machine. It uses SATA drives, but so does the laptop which displayed no performance issues. Interestingly, the server has four times the RAM as the laptop, which PC-BSD did see. Also, all the sound modules were loaded for this system just as with the laptop. I think it's safe to conclude that there is a problem with this release on NVIDIA-based systems.
Finally, I tested 1.5 on my basic desktop machine based on an MSI K8T Neo2 that uses a Via K8T800 chipset with Realtek Ethernet chips, NVIDIA graphics, and Creative sound. I didn't have any major issues with this machine at all - it worked wonderfully, except with my Epson R220 printer that could be configured, but not used. I found good hardware support with impressive performance and stability on this machine.
Conclusion
Given the issues experienced with my HP laptop and this release, I can't say this is uniformly a wonderful release. With 1.5 being based on the same FreeBSD 6.3 as 1.4, I'm left to conclude it was something native to PC-BSD. I believe it's safe to say that if you have an NVIDIA-based system, you may want to stick with 1.4. Otherwise, with well supported hardware, it worked as reliably as usual. There were no big changes to the eye, but underneath there were improvements to the PC-BSD tools and updates to the software.
The developers have stated that the next release will be based on the new FreeBSD 7.0, so perhaps I will have better luck at that time. For me, 1.5 was a bit disappointing and I hope I still have the 1.4 disks around here somewhere.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Ubuntu beta freeze, KNOPPIX release update, PCLinuxOS E17 edition, unofficial Gentoo live CD, BSD Certification update, package management in OpenSolaris
 The development of Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" continues at a neck-breaking pace. After some six alpha builds, the first and only beta release will be made available later this week, launching an intensive testing period that is expected to engage a much wider Ubuntu user community than any of the alphas. Also, the beta freeze is now in effect. Steve Langasek: "We are now one week from the beta release of 8.04 LTS and have just entered beta freeze. During the freeze, all uploads to main must be approved by a member of the release team, so if you have fixes which are important to get in, please do get in touch as soon as possible. Uploads to 'universe' require a manual push through the queue, but are not subject to release management approval. Issues which are important for the beta release will be tracked by the release team here."
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 The day of the public release of KNOPPIX 5.3 is approaching fast. According to a post from Klaus Knopper published on the project's mailing list, KNOPPIX 5.3.1 will be out this week: "To avoid speculations about too much delay again (again, I apologize for last year's unavailability), here is our to-do list between CeBIT and the KNOPPIX 5.3.1 release for which we have an internal release date of 'not later than 22.3.2008': fix speech plugin for ADRIANE - done; fix detection of VFAT file system in /etc/fstab- done; package updates in order to get Orca to speak in German, too - done; fix annoying 'out of room for mmap' apt-get update error - done; add missing firmware for ipw3x driver - done; kernel update - in progress; bug fixes and enhancements for screen reader in close cooperation with SBL author Marco Skambraks - in progress; fix KNOPPIX terminal server - in progress; KDE4 bugs - won't fix."
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 The Hungarian PCLinuxOS developer community has released an interesting variant of this popular desktop distribution. Called PCe17OS, this is a remastered edition of PCLinuxOS with Enlightenment 17 as the default desktop. The 1.1 GB live DVD contains Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, Nvu, Deluge BitTorrent client, tvtime, Mirage, GIMP, Songbird, a good number of GTK+ applications, several utilities, the Drakconf family of configuration tools and other pleasant surprises, all accessible from a beautiful desktop. The live DVD is set up to boot into Hungarian by default, but one can change the language to English via Enlightenment's configuration panel. Here is a brief release announcement (in Hungarian). Interested readers can download the live DVD from here: pce17os_hu.iso (1,089MB, MD5, torrent).
PCe17OS - a PCLinuxOS variant featuring Enlightenment 17
(full image size: 714kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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 After a recent flurry of news and public announcements, it seems that the Gentoo project is slowly sliding back to its old ways of presenting itself to the world: missed release schedules, absence of progress reports, silence on the front page... The distribution's Release Engineering page still calls for a beta release on the 10th of March (this is already a week late than the original plan), but despite missing the target, no update has been made either on the page itself or elsewhere on the project's web site. It isn't all bad news, though. Last week, the Gentoo user community stepped in to compensate for the continued failings of the main project to deliver a new version and released an unofficial Gentoo live CD: "You can download the Gentoo minimal installation CD for installing Gentoo Linux on your computer. The reason, why I have released an 'unofficial' Gentoo installation CD is that the last stable version is 2007.0, which is old (but still working well, of course), but the recent kernel supports more hardware." This unofficial Gentoo installation CD for the i686 architecture can be downloaded from here: install-i686-minimal-2008.Mar.13.iso (226MB, MD5). A current Portage and a "stage3" archive are also available from the same source.
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 Good news for those readers who are interested in getting certified in administering BSD system. As announced by Dru Lavigne, an updated version of the BSDA DVD, containing four BSD operating systems, plus courseware, is now available for purchase: "Late last night I finished up the ISO for a new version of the BSDA DVD. It's now available for order from the BSDCert web site or the BSDA registration web site. The DVD is a thank-you for those who can donate $40 USD to BSD Certification and proceeds are used to offset the costs of creating, delivering, and maintaining psychometrically valid examinations. If you would like a DVD but are unable to afford the $40 donation or if you would like to negotiate a bulk order for a conference or educational purposes, contact me and we'll see what we can do. This edition of the DVD contains the i386 versions of FreeBSD 6.3 (including packages and the ports collection), NetBSD 4.0 (including pkgsrc) OpenBSD 4.2 (including packages) and DragonFly BSD 1.12.0."
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 Solaris has long had a reputation as a highly reliable server operating system, but with projects such as Indiana or BeleniX now developing new, user-friendly features, a desktop Solaris could become a realistic concept in the not too distant future. One of these new features is pkg-get, a real package manager for OpenSolaris, similar to apt-get: "pkg-get provides much the same functionality as apt-get, except that PKGs get installed instead of RPMs. It seems to be a bit more on the verbose side, but, in terms of execution, and a large collection of open source software to choose from in its publicly available repositories, it's an excellent alternative to doing everything yourself. I'd imagine it's probably a better alternative to most other software packages that do the same thing for Unix (although I can't seem to find more than the two I mentioned above that aren't hacked-up versions of Linux utilities fudged into working on a Unix box)."
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| Released Last Week |
Frugalware Linux 0.8
Miklós Vajna has announced the final release of Frugalware Linux 0.8, code name "Kalgan": "The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware Linux 0.8, our eighth stable release. No new features have been added since 0.8rc2, but more than 300 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn't follow the changes during the candidate releases, here are the most important changes since 0.7: up-to-date base system - Linux kernel 2.6.24.3, glibc 2.7 and GCC 4.2.3; up-to-date desktop packages - KDE 3.5.9, GNOME 2.20, Xfce 4.4.2, OpenOffice.org 2.4rc2 (ooo-build 2.4.0) and Firefox 2.0.0.12; setup - WPA support, new supported language (Czech); new graphical tool - Frugalware Update Notifier; 4,068 changes, including 251 new packages, 1,729 updated packages and 416 closed tasks." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
Frugalware Linux 0.8 with the Gfpm package management front-end
(full image size: 233kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
PC-BSD 1.5
iXsystems has announced the release of PC-BSD 1.5, a user-friendly desktop operating system based on FreeBSD: "iXsystems announced today the release of PC-BSD Edison edition. PC-BSD is a fully functional open source desktop operating system based on FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE. FreeBSD is one of the most used UNIX-like operating systems in the world and is widely renowned as the most stable and secure server operating system. Highlights of the Edison edition include availability of an AMD 64-bit version for faster performance on hardware currently running 64-bit Intel or Athlon processors. Other new built-in features include X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8, a new system updater tool, improvements to the PBI Removal and WiFi tools, BSSID support and improved SSID support, a new sound detection program, and a new PBI icon preview library." Read the press release, release notes and changelog for further information.
Foresight Linux 2.0
Ken VanDine has announced the final release of Foresight Linux 2.0, an rPath-based distribution featuring the very latest GNOME 2.22: "Foresight Linux 2.0 has been released. New in version 2.0: a new tar-based installer that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive; PackageKit to help users update their system and add and remove software; Syslinux, a new bootloader to replace GRUB; GNOME-Do to quickly search for many items present in a GNOME desktop environment (applications, Evolution contacts, Firefox bookmarks, files, artists and albums in Rhythmbox, Pidgin buddies, etc.) and perform commonly used actions on those items. Users should also find it much easier to use binary video card drivers from NVIDIA and ATI than in Foresight 1.x. Transmission is also included as the default BitTorrent application." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Parsix GNU/Linux 1.0r1
Alan Baghumian has announced the release of the first revision of Parsix GNU/Linux 1.0, a desktop distribution based on Debian's testing branch: "An updated version of Parsix GNU/Linux 1.0, code name 'Ramon', is available now. Parsix Ramon r1 contains updated packages and several fixes for the reported defects. Ramon r1 also introduces Continent APT repository, along with the officially supported Parsix repository. The Continent repository consists of the whole Debian testing archive, minus the official Parsix repository packages. Other highlights are: updated and security patched 2.6.23.14 kernel, GNOME 2.20.3, lots of updated packages, including OpenOffice.org 2.3.1, GNU Iceweasel 2.0.0.12, GIMP 2.4.4, glibc 2.7, Pidgin 2.3.1, Exaile 0.2.11, xFarDic 0.10.3 and more. All packages have been synchronized with Debian's testing repository as of March 08, 2008." The release announcement, release notes.
Clonezilla Live 1.0.9-19
Clonezilla Live is a Debian-based live CD containing Clonezilla, a partition and disk cloning software similar to Norton Ghost. An updated version was released today: "Clonezilla Live 1.0.9-19 (stable) released. This release is a bug-fixed one with some minor updates: fixed - Memtest86, FreeDOS and Etherboot were not listed in syslinux boot; fixed - CCISS RAID device restoration was broken; fixed - when 'ocs-iso -s' or 'ocs-live-dev -c -s' was run, Etherboot and FreeDOS images were not copied; syslinux related files are now in /syslinux; added sdparm, zip and unzip; makeboot.exe is replaced by makeboot.sh so that USB flash drive will boot successfully with kernel under /casper; Partclone 0.0.6 is used now so clone.fat is available; more descriptions were added to the boot menu; an option for VGA mode 640x480 was added." Read the full release announcement for more details.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
OpenBSD 4.3
The OpenBSD project has announced that its upcoming stable release, version 4.3, will be officially out on May 1st, 2008. A long list of new features, including support for several new architectures and device drivers, can be found on the OpenBSD 4.3 Release page.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Mining DistroWatch.com logs
The Page Hit Ranking (PHR) statistics on DistroWatch have stirred many heated debates over the years. But aside from ranking distributions by page views, is there a more scientific way to analyse the huge number of data representing some 100,000 daily visits on this web site? Loïc Cerf, a Ph.D. student at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Lyon, France, and a long-time DistroWatch reader, has spent several months analysing the DistroWatch.com PHR figures in order to observe the browsing trends of visitors over a period of time. The result of this work will be presented at the International Conference on Data Mining in Atlanta, USA, next month. In the meantime, the author has published some interesting observations in an article entitled Mining DistroWatch.com Logs: "Mining the logs from the famous DistroWatch.com web site enables to formally assess the trends in the GNU/Linux ecosystem. In particular, this first part will analyze the popularity of Ubuntu with respect to the former predominance of Mandriva Linux."
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Eee PC column on Xandros page
Several readers have asked to include the Eee PC edition of Xandros Desktop on this site's Xandros Desktop page. Your wish has been granted and a new column, listing the version numbers of the included default applications, has been added to the table. The Eee PC edition of Xandros Desktop ships with Linux kernel 2.6.21.4, glibc 2.3.6, X.Org 7.2, IceWM 1.2.30, Firefox 2.0.0.9, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 and other popular software. Development tools are not included, but some non-free ones, such as Skype and Acrobat reader are. For more information please visit our Xandros page here.
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New distributions added to database
- Clonezilla Live. Clonezilla Live is a Debian-based live CD containing Clonezilla, a partition and disk cloning software similar to Norton Ghost. It saves and restores only used blocks in hard drive. With Clonezilla, one can clone a 5 GB system to 40 clients in about 10 minutes.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- LinuxMallorca. LinuxMallorca is a Debian-based distribution developed by the Council of Mallorca in Spain.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 24 March 2008.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • 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.
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| Random Distribution | 
ROCK Linux
ROCK was a distribution build kit, or in other words, a software development toolkit for building OS solutions. You can configure your personal build of ROCK and easily build your own distribution directly from source code. Most of the ROCK Linux development was done on ix86 hardware, But ROCK Linux also supports the Alpha AXP, PowerPC, Sparc32/Sparc64 and MIPS architectures.
Status: Discontinued
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| 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.
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| 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.
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