 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 357, 7 June 2010 |
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Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It was a busy week with a plethora of new releases (of mostly smaller distributions) to delight any serious distro tester. Hopefully, we'll be able to cover many of these products in upcoming issues, but today we'll turn our attention to a new version of an old favourite - Yoper Linux 2010. Now available as a set of installable live CDs with KDE 3, KDE 4, LXDE and Xfce desktops, does the new version deliver on its promise to be one of the speediest distributions around? Read on to find out. In the news section, openSUSE developers work on a new product strategy for future releases, Robby Workman introduces Slackware Linux 13.1 and its features, and Ubuntu streamlines the Firefox support model. Also not to be missed, an interesting interview with Ian Weller, a winner of the 2010 Fedora scholarship award. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the May 2010 DistroWatch.com donation is the FileZilla project. Happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Taking a look at Yoper 2010
 Yoper, which is short hand for Your Operating System, is a project aimed at providing users with a fast, up-to-date distribution. The project's web site mentions that the distro also tries to give users top-line hardware detection and support. The Yoper distro is independently developed, meaning that it's not based off another Linux distribution. While I was writing this review, the project's web site was alternatively on line and off again. I suspect this may be related to traffic due to their recent release. When the site was on line, there was a good supply of information about the distro, recent releases and a support forum. The site displays in either English or German.
The Yoper live CD boots into a curses-based menu which provides the user with the options to boot into the live environment, install the distro to the local drive or reboot the machine. Taking the live option brings the user to a bright KDE 4.4 desktop with no icons and a pleasant blue background. The user is logged in under a non-root account and administrator tasks, such as mounting volumes or installing software, can be performed via the "sudo" command. I encountered only one problem when using the live CD environment (more on that later) and rebooted to try the installer.
The Yoper installer was probably the first indication that the distribution is aimed at people with some prior Linux experience and shouldn't be considered novice-friendly. After displaying the license agreement and offering to perform a media check, it asked me to partition the hard drive. This is done using the cfdisk program, a useful partitioner with a primitive interface. Once partitioning is complete, the user is asked to select which partition will be the "system" partition (/). The user can then, optionally, select a partition to be mounted as /home and, again optionally, select a swap partition. The user is asked which file system should be used and is shown a menu containing popular choices, such as the ext family and XFS. The last two steps are to select which bootloader (if any) should be installed, GRUB or LILO, and then the user is asked to confirm their settings. All of this will be easy enough for someone with some experience installing Linux under their belt, but the combination of curses interface and technical questions will likely put off less advanced users. Really, my only complaint about the installer was that there's no option to return to a previous screen. Moving to the next screen is a one-way trip.
After the installer finishes copying over its files, the system reboots and the user is asked to create a root password. The next step is to pick a time zone from a series of text screens and then create a non-root account. The whole process is a bit strange in that it occasionally switches between interfaces. We start with a curses installer, move to a graphical boot menu, set passwords in a text environment, create a new user in a curses environment, select a time zone via a plain text menu and end up with a graphical login screen. It's quite a trip, but the bottom line is that we do eventually reach a login screen.
Yoper's application menu is piled high with software, including Firefox 3.6, KOffice 2.1, an image viewer, document viewer, blogging client and KMail. We also find a video player, audio player, the K3b disc burner and both VNC and SSH network browsers. The distro is equipped with GParted, Java, Flash and a collection of popular multimedia codecs for playing MP3 files and videos. There are the usual text editors, calculator and address book. One pleasant surprise was the Kleopatra certificate and encryption tool, encouraging users to protect their data right out of the box. Yoper additionally comes with the GNU Compiler Collection pre-installed, making life a little easier for developers and people who like to build their own software. For the most part I found the applications provided by Yoper worked well and the only problem I ran into was with Java. Attempting to run any Java program, even just running Java to check the version number, would cause the virtual machine to crash with a class exception error.
Yoper 2010 - media player and certificate manager
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As mentioned previously, I ran into one issue with the live CD. During my test drive of Yoper, I ran the distribution on two physical machines, one generic desktop PC (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card) and my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, Intel video card). I also tried running Yoper in a virtual machine to see how it would fair with less memory. On both physical machines, I found that Yoper would refuse to boot with the default settings. Turning off ACPI from the boot menu allowed both machines to boot, but prevented them from shutting down properly. Otherwise, I encountered no hardware issues on my desktop machine. My screen was set to its maximum resolution and sound worked without any configuration. My laptop didn't come through quite as well. Its screen resolution was placed at a reasonable setting, and my touchpad worked as expected without any issues. Sound worked, though unlike my desktop, it was muted at start-up. My Intel wireless card was not picked up, nor was my Novatel mobile modem properly detected. Combined with the ACPI issue, this made my laptop a poor match with Yoper.
While the web site claims that Yoper is for people who are "looking for a little bit of extra speed", I didn't find the default desktop to be noticeably faster or slower than other modern KDE systems. To be fair, the Yoper project does offer other desktop environments, such as Xfce, which may be more competitive, and I haven't tried those editions yet. I also found that the default KDE setup takes more memory than other KDE 4-centric distros I'd tried recently. When running in a virtual machine, I found Yoper needed about 1 GB of memory to function smoothly, or at least 512 MB with some swap space to run at all.
Yoper 2010 - staying organized
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The Yoper distribution uses Smart as its package manager. The command-line interface for Smart is fairly similar to that of other package managers, such as YUM or APT. While using the command-line interface, I was able to easily find, install and remove the distro's RPM packages. I found using the graphical front-end for Smart a bit less pleasant. The default layout for the package manager GUI displays a list of software categories. The user is able to click on a category to expand it and show the packages which fit into that category. Performing a search for a specific package name likewise provides a list of categories which contain packages with matching names.
My issue with Yoper's graphical front-end to package management is the number of categories listed. There are dozens and dozens of categories and some of them have very similar names. For instance, it's not immediately obvious what the difference between "System/daemon" and "System/daemons" is, or "Network/filetransfer" as opposed to "Network/file transfer" (note the space). It seems that each package appears in only one category, so selecting the correct category can be time consuming. A search for "kernel" returns five categories, only one of which contains binary kernels and drivers.
Yoper 2010 - smart package management
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Speaking of the kernel, the developers, perhaps in an effort to offer better performance across a wide range of situations, have provided a number of pre-compiled kernels. There's the vanilla, general-purpose kernel package and kernels with PAE support. There are also kernels with the alternative scheduler, BFS, and kernels with both BFS and support for PAE. Also, Yoper is a rolling-release distro, making the project's releases more snapshots of the repository than a base point from which security patches may be applied. While this means that Yoper users will be able to receive the latest software as the developers add it to the repository, it also means that they will need to be careful not to introduce version incompatibilities to their systems.
The security practices of Yoper didn't leave much to complain about, at first. The distribution runs off the live CD as a non-root user, the first-boot procedure sets passwords and creates a regular (non-root) account. From what I've seen via the package manager so far, the project provides regular updates. The big thing, which caught me by surprise, is that I found my regular user could become root via su without using a password. My root account had a password and it was required for logging in from the welcome screen, but my user could become the administrator simply by typing "su". A little poking around led me to discover the so-called regular account created during the setup process was granted special privileges, but accounts created post-setup were not. This may not be immediately apparent to people setting up their machines because the first account created acts like a regular user (unable to delete system folders, install packages or create users, etc) on its own, until the user runs su or sudo, At which point the user becomes root without requiring a password. This strikes me as a large oversight or a very unusual design.
I went into this review hoping for good hardware support and great performance, as advertised on the Yoper web site and found neither. The installer works, though it's a bit crude and the graphical package manager is one of the least friendly I've encountered. Despite the issues I ran into, ranging from web site availability to getting Java working, there are some things I feel the project is doing right. For instance, Yoper offers modern kernels in various flavours, covering a wide range of use cases. There's a good selection of software pre-installed which will probably appeal mostly to developers and system administrators. The project seems to be doing a good job of balancing a rolling release with stability too. All in all, I think the project could use some polish, but it's got some good points in its favour, especially if you like to tinker.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
openSUSE strategy meeting, interview with Slackware's Robby Workman, Ubuntu's new Firefox support model
 In recent years openSUSE's popularity has seemingly fallen behind Ubuntu and Fedora which have emerged as the leading Linux distributions available today. Is there anything that can reverse this trend? Last week, the openSUSE developers concluded a strategy meeting which attempted to summarise the strengths and weaknesses of the distribution while estimating future changes in computer usage: "Beside of the usual meeting things (introduction, ground rules, goals of the meeting) we wrapped up the stuff we did over the last months during our weekly IRC meetings. So we concentrated on our users, the strength and weakness openSUSE has, the competition we face and our expectations for future changes in the way we use computers. When building a strategy, you acknowledge that you can't be the best everywhere, you can't be everything to everybody, if you want to be successful, so you need to choose your focus -- the already existing strength might be a good start to focus on." Some of the ideas that came up during the strategy meeting are being turned into concrete proposals which openSUSE promises to present to the public later this week: "We ended up having 3 possible strategies which should be worked out to our community in smaller groups during this week and be published on June 8 for further discussion."
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 Slackware Linux is often perceived as a one-man distribution built largely by Patrick Volkerding. But going through the project's changelog it's hard not to note the presence of many active contributors who help with compiling packages or fixing bugs. One of the names that show up rather often is Robby Workman, a long-term Slackware developer who is probably Patrick's right hand in the distribution's hierarchy at the moment. Last week, the Slack World web site published an interview with Robby who introduces the recently released Slackware 13.1 and talks about other popular topics, such as the ever present "no dependency resolution feature" of Slackware Linux: "I happen to think that complaints of 'missing dependency hell' are rooted in expecting Slackware to work like $other_distro, and those individuals should just use $other_distro instead. Ultimately, I don't recall ever having any real problems with missing dependencies, and before anyone brings the 'but you're an advanced user' argument to the table, I have to point out that I've not always been an advanced user -- I was a brand new Linux user in 2004, and I started with Slackware; even then, I don't recall experiencing anything remotely similar to a 'missing dependency hell.' IMHO, that is because I didn't approach my Slackware experience expecting it to do things that it wasn't designed to do; instead, I learned how Slackware works and used it that way."
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 The Ubuntu developers have announced changes in their support model for Mozilla Firefox. Up until now, new minor versions of the popular browser were made available as part of the distribution's update procedure, but once Mozilla's official support for an older version ends, the Ubuntu developers have to back-port any security fixes to an older version of the browser themselves. This cumbersome procedure is about to end. In future, all supported Ubuntu releases will receive the latest Firefox versions as these become available: "Firefox 3.0 (and XULRunner 1.9) are now unsupported by Mozilla. Rather than back-porting security fixes to these now, we are moving to a support model where we will be introducing major new upstream versions in stable releases. The reason for this is the support periods from Mozilla are gradually becoming shorter, and it will be more and more difficult for us to maintain our current support model in the future. Next week, Mozilla will release Firefox 3.6.4 as a minor update to the 3.6 series. This will be rolled out to Lucid, Hardy, Jaunty and Karmic (along with XULRunner 1.9.2.4)."
Still on the subject of Ubuntu, a reader has emailed to tell us about an open source friendly hardware vendor based in Sydney, Australia, which sells computers pre-installed with Ubuntu: "I thought I'd pass this your way as I've seen it crop up in the comments section of the Distrowatch Weekly - there's a company (I'm not associated with this company, by the way) that's offering not only Ubuntu 10.04 as an option on all of their machines, but also an Ubuntu gaming pack that consists of some FOSS games (namely Nexuiz, Warsow and Battle for Wesnoth). These are listed side by side with Windows 7 + close-sourced games so it's cool to see Ubuntu in the mix. The link: pcg4m3r.com. I'm all for supporting any company that support Linux and especially Linux gaming -- I don't suppose you're able to mention this in the DWW?" Sure we are. So if you live in Australia and have a need for a new Linux computer, why not consider giving the pcg4m3r guys some business?
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| Interviews (by Jesse Smith) |
Chatting with Ian Weller
  In case you haven't heard of Ian Weller (pictured on the right) before, please allow me to introduce him. Ian is this year's winner of the 2010 Fedora scholarship. The scholarship program is set up to recognize college and university students (or soon-to-be students) who have contributed to open source software in general and the Fedora Project in particular. Ian has been working with Fedora for the past two years, designing, packaging and working with the Professors' Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE). He's a part of the new generation who not only understands the importance of using open-source software, but is also dedicated to working with, and giving back to, the community. I had a chance to exchange e-mails with Ian and find out how he got involved with Fedora.
DW: Let's start with a little background on yourself. Where did you grow up, and how did you first become interested in Linux?
IW: I grew up (mostly) in Salina, Kansas, USA. (For those people who don't know anything about Kansas, it's about 90 miles north of Wichita.) The reason I became interested in Linux was two-fold, and both of those reasons came from two different people. The first told me of the existence of a free (as in price) operating system, which came in handy when I wanted to build a computer. The second taught me about free software, in terms of freedom, and introduced me to the GPL. At this time I was on the family iMac (which is now proudly entering its tenth year of service) and I needed to expand.
DW: What caused you to select Fedora as your desktop OS?
IW: Both friends explained above had used Red Hat-based systems before, so I think Fedora was a no-brainer. (It was also a no-brainer since both of these guys would be able to help me get started with it and start understanding Linux. I had a bit of help already by spending about 95 per cent of my time on Mac OS in a Bash shell.)
DW: As I understand it, you first started working with the Fedora Project by packaging software for Fedora. And then you started taking on other tasks. Could you tell us a little about your initiation into the project? What was the process for becoming a contributor?
IW: Yeah, I started out with packaging. I like concrete things that can be picked apart and understood, and packaging seemed to match this ideal for the most part. A lot of people within Fedora laugh at me when I tell them about this because I undoubtedly picked one of the hardest sub-projects to join. This was also pre-FAS2, so signing up to be a Fedora contributor required that you knew how to generate both an SSH key and a GPG key (as opposed to the 1-click process to sign the Contributor License Agreement we have now). I picked a way through with a fairly high bar of participation and then proceeded to work on lowering that bar.
DW: You have also taken part in the Professors' Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE). Could you explain what that is and what your role was?
IW: POSSE is a project sponsored by Red Hat where we teach computer science professors how to teach open-source software. It's a lot better of an experience as a student when you join a large code base like Fedora or Mozilla and can say, "I did that." (Mozilla especially, because you can hack on a small feature that makes its way into a browser that almost everybody knows about.) I think professors realize this, too. So we help them understand the open-source process.
DW: It must be quite thrilling to be awarded this scholarship. Where are you going to university and what will you be studying?
IW: I'll be going to the University of Kansas, studying computer science. My college selection process was somewhat influenced by my peers within Fedora. Some of them told me they wanted to see me go to a university like Oregon State or Seneca (Toronto) where open source is a huge part of the computer science curriculum. Others told me they wanted me to go to places that seem open-source friendly and push them over that edge. I think KU is part of that last group -- they teach programming languages that are fairly standard in open source (C++ and Java) and are generally Linux friendly.
The key is learning something new, and I know only enough C and Java to get by. (I can only write Java in an IDE because I don't understand the language at all.) I already know about open source, I already know about Linux -- it's time to round out what I know.
DW: You've done work with packages and with the Fedora Project's Wiki. Are there other challenges you'd like to take on, either in the Fedora Project or in the open source community in general?
IW: One thing we're missing is updated brand guidelines. We have some usage guidelines for the Fedora logo (a trademark managed by Red Hat), but we're missing guidelines for all of the other bits you've probably seen around -- the four foundations artwork, the FUDCon logo, etc. That's one of my goals for this summer specifically.
People who read this might also have seen my work surrounding statistics within the Fedora Project. This is extremely fun -- I love being asked a question and being able to turn around in 45 minutes with a dataset that supports a wider question (such as "do we need to require a contributor to be in Fedora for a certain amount of time before they become an ambassador").
There's also mw, which is an attempt to abstract MediaWiki Wikis into version control systems like SVN and Git. It's a hack to let you use an interface more friendly to yours truly (the terminal) to work on Wikis. It has very few features other than that alone, and people are already using it just because they hate using a browser to edit a Wiki. Enough so that they've run into bugs and have been writing patches. Some serious problems have been fixed without my lifting a finger -- open source is friggin' great.
DW: What is one thing you'd like to see improve in the Linux community? Hardware support, more cross-distro collaboration, something else?
IW: People are jerks sometimes. I can barely read the devel [mailing] list any more without wanting to punch somebody for being inconsiderate or making an ass out of themselves. Before people say something, they need to stop and think what it's like to be in someone else's shoes for a moment. I know, it's a concept we all learned in kindergarten, but sometimes it needs a little bit of re-learning. A lot of people are turned off from a lot of communities because of the people in them. ( xkcd.com/438 comes to mind.)
DW: Ian, thank you very much and best of luck at the U of K.
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| Released Last Week |
Parsix GNU/Linux 3.5
Alan Baghumian has announced the release of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.5, a desktop-oriented distribution based on Debian's testing branch: "We are proud to announce that the final Parsix GNU/Linux 3.5r0 ISO images are available for immediate download. This release provides a stable computing platform for your daily uses and tasks. Package repositories are synchronized with Debian testing repositories as of April 7, 2010. Frankie ISO images will not fit on CD and a DVD is required to burn them. These images are compiled using Squashfs 4.0 with LZMA compression and for the first time GRUB 2 is used as default live DVD boot loader. The kernel build system has been modified and improved vastly to produce better kernel packages. Our brand new Linux 2.6.32.14 kernel with improved configuration is patched using the latest TuxOnIce suspension / hibernation and Kon Kolivas's BFS patches." See the release announcement and release notes for more details.
Parsix GNU/Linux 3.5 - a desktop distribution based on Debian's testing branch
(full image size: 1,296kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
SystemRescueCd 1.5.5
François Dupoux has announced the release of SystemRescueCd 1.5.5, a Gentoo-based live CD with tools for data recovery and disk partitioning tasks: "SystemRescueCd 1.5.5 comes with new installers for Linux and Windows that make it easy to install SystemRescueCd on a removable device. In other words it will be possible to just download the ISO image and run the installer. They come with up-to-date copies of the programs required during the installation so that it works even on system where recent versions of these tools are not installed. If you are running Linux on your computer, you just have to execute the script called 'usb_inst.sh' which is stored at the root of the CD-ROM ISO image." Other changes: "updated standard kernels to 2.6.32.14 and alternative kernels to 2.6.33.5; updated NTFS-3G to 2010.5.16...." See the release announcement and changelog for further details.
Vinux 3.0
Tony Sales has announced the release of Vinux 3.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution designed for blind and visually impaired computer users: "On behalf of the whole Vinux community I am happy to announce the 3rd release of Vinux - Linux for the visually impaired, based on Ubuntu 10.04. This version of Vinux provides three screen-readers, two full-screen magnifiers, dynamic font-size and colour-theme changing as well as support for USB Braille displays. Vinux is now available both as an installable live CD and as a DEB package which will automatically convert an existing Ubuntu installation into an accessible Vinux system. In addition, we now have our own Vinux package repository (from which you can install our customised packages with APT or Synaptic) and a dedicated Vinux IRC channel." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement.
aLinux 14.0
Jay Klepacs has announced the release of aLinux 14.0, a desktop distribution and live CD featuring the KDE 3 desktop. What's new in this release? "aLinux now uses a graphical installer; tons of bug fixes and many system init script updates to make the boot process quicker; RPM Manager now defaults to LZMA compressed archives aka XZ; while we fully transition to LZMA which is fully supported as of aLinux 14.0 there are still a few GZIP remnants that might not work as they once did, like in earlier Midnight Commanders; system - X.Org 7.5, KDE 3.5.10, KOffice 1.6.3, Linux kernel 2.6.34, GNOME 2.14.3, Perl 5.10.0, glibc 2.5, GCC 4.1.2, PHP 5.2.0 and MySQL 5.0.33; by default aLinux on X Window / KDE can view most common and not so common Unicode, UTF-8, ISO-10646 font/glyph locales in applications such as Konqueror, Firefox, SeaMonkey, GVim, Kedit, Konsole." Here is the brief release announcement.
aLinux 14.0 - one of the few distributions that has stayed with KDE 3
(full image size: 608kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Untangle Gateway 7.3
Untangle, a Debian-based network gateway with pluggable modules for network applications, has been updated to version 7.3: "We are pleased to announce general availability of Untangle 7.3. Our latest version has many feature enhancements and fixes. It also includes the capability to completely 'white-label' Untangle for OEM purposes. Enhanced download and upgrade UI progress meter - when Untangle applications are downloaded or when future upgrades occur, Untangle server will now display more details about the download / upgrade as it happens. Platform enhancements - our commitment to support different kinds of hardware and network interface cards (NICs) continues unabated, we now have much broader support for practically all Intel NICs and select Broadcomm cards. With this release we have also made performance improvements in Untangle to consume less memory." Read the rest of the release notes for a complete list of changes.
Pardus Linux 2009.2
Onur Küçük has announced the release of Pardus Linux 2009.2: "The second update release of the Pardus 2009 family, Pardus Linux 2009.2 is released. The newest member of the Pardus 2009 series comes with advanced driver support, enhanced desktop environment and updated versions of packages in our repositories, providing enhanced stability, performance and easily installable environment with thousands of open-source software. One of the highlights of the new release is the latest stable KDE, version 4.4.4, and Qt 4.6.2, coming with many bug fixes, new netbook mode and new features of the Plasma system. Firefox 3.6.3 to safely browse the Internet, GIMP 2.6.8 for graphical work, the OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 office suite and programming systems like Python 2.6.5 are only a few of the updated packages of the new release." Read the complete release announcement and release notes for further details.
Salix OS 13.1
George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix OS 13.1, a Slackware-based distribution with Xfce as the preferred desktop: "Salix 13.1 has been released. Available in both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, Salix 13.1 is fully backwards compatible with Slackware 13.1. Salix 13.1 is built on top of a Slackware 13.1 base and offers a streamlined Xfce desktop environment with selected applications following the 'one application per task' philosophy. Salix 13.1, can be installed using three different installation modes: 'core', 'basic' and 'full'. The 'full' installation mode installs all software that is included in the ISO images. Mozilla Firefox and Claws-Mail are the applications chosen for your web browsing and email needs, accompanied by the Pidgin instant messaging client, the Transmission torrent client and the wicd wired and wireless network manager. A complete OpenOffice.org suite is provided for all your office work." Read the rest of the release announcement to learn more about the features of this release.
Salix OS 13.1 - a Slackware-based desktop distribution with many user-friendly enhancements
(full image size: 570kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
VortexBox 1.4
Andrew Gillis has announced the release of VortexBox 1.4, a Fedora-based Linux distribution for music servers and jukeboxes: We are pleased to announce the release of VortexBox 1.4. Continuing with our goal to make VortexBox the universal server for any media player we have added full DLNA support to VortexBox. DLNA is the future of media sharing and many players such as PS3, Windows 7 Media Player, and Samsung televisions support DLNA. Now you can easily serve your music and video files to all these devices. We have also added Bliss to the VortexBox web GUI. Bliss can find cover art for even the most obscure albums. As usual there are also many other fixes and updates requested by the VortexBox community." Here is the brief release announcement.
Ylmf OS 3.0
Ylmf OS is a new Ubuntu-based distribution from China with the GNOME desktop tweaked to resemble Microsoft Windows XP. Version 3.0 was released early this week based on Ubuntu 10.04, with the major components being Linux kernel 2.6.32-22.33, X.Org Server 1.7.6, GCC 4.4.3, and GNOME 2.30.0. It allows for a live CD mode, and one can log in with username "ylmfos" and an empty password. The live CD employs Squashfs LZMA, which combines one of the best compression algorithms, LZMA, and one of the best compressed file systems available nowadays, Squashfs, so as to include as much software as possible. Ylmf OS 3.0 also supports several approaches for installation. It includes a number of classical Linux applications for both newbies and veterans, and supports Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English. Here is the full release announcement (in Chinese) with screenshots.
Ylmf OS 3.0 - a Chinese Ubuntu-based distribution with a Windows XP-like user interface
(full image size: 566kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Quirky 1.2
Barry Kauler has announced the release of Quirky 1.2, a fast, minimalist desktop Linux distribution with many characteristics of Puppy Linux, but built with a different toolkit: "Quirky 1.2. This continues bug fixing of 1.0/1.1, but also many packages are upgraded and new packages and ideas incorporated. In particular, a wider range of video/audio formats are supported, which is the main reason the live CD image file is a little bigger. There is now a very small HTML viewer for displaying local help files - this has basic CSS support. Release notes: many utilities and small applications upgraded; multimedia packages upgraded; many bug fixes; simple local-help HTML viewer with libgtkhtml. This release is supposed to play just about any audio/video file, DVD, embedded or streaming media, but not yet WebM/VP8 - I am targeting that for Quirky 1.3." Read the complete release announcement to find out more about the latest release of Quirky.
Sabayon Linux 5.3
Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 5.3, a Gentoo-based distribution for the desktop with custom package management and many cutting-edge features: "The best, refined blend of GNU/Linux, coming with bleeding edge edges is eventually here - say hello to Sabayon 5.3, available in both GNOME and KDE editions. Features: based on the new GCC 4.4 and glibc 2.10; shipped with a desktop-optimized Linux kernel 2.6.34; provides extra server-optimized and OpenVZ-enabled kernels in repositories; installable in 10 minutes; fast boot time and lightweight default system; official Btrfs file system support; features X.Org 7.5 and up-to-date open-source, NVIDIA, AMD video drivers; contains GNOME 2.28 (with GNOME Shell) and KDE 4.4.3...." Read the rest of the release notes for a full list of changes.
Ultimate Edition 2.7
Glenn Cady has announced the release of Ultimate Edition 2.7, an Ubuntu-based distribution on a DVD with several desktop environments and extra software packages: "Ultimate Edition 2.7 was built off Ultimate Edition 2.6 (Ubuntu 10.04). Major difference being that it has been fully updated and has the following environments, user selectable at the login screen: KDE, Xfce, GNOME, LXDE, Openbox. I am not going to do a huge write up on this operating system, I am sure it will be downloaded more then Ultimate Edition 2.6 was. I have said in the past, I am not a KDE man, it looks too much like that 'other OS' I will return to Ultimate Edition 2.6. That does not mean our users are not interested in exploring and using these environments. I have included a Conky script I wrote that will generate as per each computer. This script will be in your home folder when installed (your choice to run it or not)." Here is the brief release announcement for a full list of changes.
Ultimate Edition 2.7 - an Ubuntu remix on a DVD
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
May 2010 DistroWatch.com donation: FileZilla receives US$300.00
We are happy to announce that the recipient of the May 2010 DistroWatch.com donation is FileZilla, an FTP client. It receives US$300.00 in cash.
FileZilla offers an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical interface for transferring files using the FTP, FTPS and SFTP protocols. Some of its most interesting features include: "Cross-platform - runs on Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac OS X; IPv6 support; available in many languages; supports resume and transfer of large files; tabbed user interface; powerful site manager and transfer queue; bookmarks; drag & drop support; configurable transfer speed limits; file name filters; directory comparison; network configuration wizard; remote file editing; keep-alive; HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5 and FTP-Proxy support; logging to file; synchronized directory browsing; remote file search." For further information please see the project's feature page.
Launched in 2004, this monthly donations programme is a DistroWatch initiative to support free and open-source software projects and operating systems with cash contributions. Readers are welcome to nominate their favourite project for future donations. Here is the list of the projects that have 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 Sabayon Linux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
- 2008: VLC ($350), Frugalware Linux ($340), cURL ($300), GSPCA ($400), FileZilla ($400), MythDora ($500), Linux Mint ($400), Parsix GNU/Linux ($300), Miro ($300), GoblinX ($250), Dillo ($150), LXDE ($250)
- 2009: Openbox ($250), Wolvix GNU/Linux ($200), smxi ($200), Python ($300), SliTaz GNU/Linux ($200), LiVES ($300), Osmo ($300), LMMS ($250), KompoZer ($360), OpenSSH ($350), Parted Magic ($350) and Krita ($285)
- 2010: Qimo 4 Kids ($250), Squid ($250), Libre Graphics Meeting ($300), Bacula ($250), FileZilla ($300)
Since the launch of the Donations Program in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$24,478 to various open-source software projects.
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- SECmic. SECmic is a Kubuntu-based security distribution containing over 200 pre-installed security-oriented applications.
- TasOS Linux. TasOS Linux is an Ubuntu remix with a modified set of applications which include Avidemux, Bluefish, GIMP, Inkscape, Ubuntu Tweak, VLC and WINE.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 14 June 2010.
Jesse Smith and 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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| Random Distribution | 
TrX Live Firewall
TrX Live Firewall was a Turkish project. TrX produces a Debian GNU/Linux-based desktop router and firewall package. This package was bootable directly from CD-ROM, so hard disk installation was not necessary. TrX was designed to work completely off the CD-ROM, with configuration data stored on a floppy disk, harddisk partition or, in future versions, on a USB storage device.
Status: Discontinued
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