 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 478, 15 October 2012 |
Welcome to this year's 42nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It has been a relatively slow week for new releases in the open source community. Many of the big projects, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and FreeBSD, are in the process of fixing critical bugs and getting ready to launch new versions of their respective projects. In the mean time we decided to use this lull to talk about a project known for its calm, steady progression. We refer to, of course, Slackware, the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution. This week Jesse Smith takes the venerable project for a spin and reports on his findings. Read on to find out what the conservative distribution brings to the table. In the news this week we cover a new file system developed by Samsung for the Linux kernel and we talk a bit about something called The Internet Of Things. We also look at the interesting new way Webconverger is handling system updates and cover the latest developments from the Ubuntu distribution. Also in this week's edition we discuss accessing multiple home machines that reside behind a firewall. Additionally we take a look at the releases of the past week and provide easy access to news, reviews and podcasts from Around The Web. We here at DistroWatch wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (16MB) and MP3 (31MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Slackware 14.0
It may sound strange, but I always get a little excited when I see a new Slackware release announced. I say "strange" because I don't use Slackware on a regular basis and, for that matter, the distribution is very conservative, meaning there are rarely any shiny new features. However, this plain approach, these largely uneventful releases, are what make Slackware so appealing to its user base. Very little happens in Slackland, or perhaps it might be more accurate to say very little ever goes wrong.
The release announcement for Slackware 14.0 suggests, as usual, a fairly tame release. The new Slackware comes with an up to date version of Firefox, the 3.2 release of the Linux kernel and includes Network Manager as one of the utilities available for getting on-line. Also new to this release is the Clang compiler, which has been gaining followers as an alternative to the GNU Compiler Collection. The two compilers are made available side-by-side allowing the user to select their preferred development tools. Slackware is offered in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds and users can download the distribution as a series of CD images or as one medium sized (2.4GB) DVD. I opted to try the 32-bit build of the DVD.
Booting from the DVD we are asked if we would like to set any specific boot parameters and then we are asked to confirm our keyboard layout. The DVD then brings us to a text mode login prompt with a number of notes advising us on how to partition our hard drive and how to enable swap partitions prior to installing should we find ourselves using a computer with a small amount of RAM. We can login to the text console using the username "root" without a password. We are then advised we can partition the local hard drive using either the fdisk or cfdisk programs and then kick off the installer by running the command "setup". Before getting into the installer, I'd like to say this is something I appreciate about Slackware. The distribution can look primitive, yet the user is lead through the initial stages one step at a time. When in doubt we can usually just take the recommended or default option.
The distribution's installer is a series of text-based menus. While a good deal of options are presented, options we might not find in most other distributions, Slackware's installer does a pretty good job of explaining each step and we can mostly take the defaults as we walk through the process. One of the first things we will be asked to do is select our root partition and format this partition. Supported file systems include ext2/3/4, Btrfs, XFS, JFS and ReiserFS. We are then asked which software packages we would like to install. There is a pretty big list, including everything from the base system, to networking, to the X graphical system to desktop environments, development tools, the kernel's source code and games. Even the Emacs text editor gets its own software category. I opted to install just about everything, minus the kernel source code, the Xfce desktop, games and the aforementioned Emacs. I then waited while the installer copied over the selected items. My selections totaled 6.2GB of data (once packages were uncompressed) and took a little over an hour to install.
Once all of our software has been copied to the hard drive we're then taken through several configuration steps. We are asked if we would like to install a boot loader (LILO in this case). We're asked to confirm our screen's resolution, enter any custom kernel parameters and choose a location for our boot loader. Then we are asked to tell the installer what type of mouse we use (if any) and then we create a hostname for our machine. We are asked which services we would like to run in the background and we can check off our choices from a list. Then we can opt to choose a custom font, set our time zone and select a window manager from those installed. The last step in the process before we reboot the machine is to set a password for the root account.
Slackware 14.0 -- Playing media files.
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The first time we boot into Slackware we are brought to a text login prompt where we can login as root. I took this opportunity to create a regular user account and change the system's default init level so that, in the future, the distribution would boot to a graphical environment. I noticed at this time the root user had e-mail waiting, one message contained a welcome message with information on the Slackware project. The other e-mail suggested users visit the Linux Counter website to let the world know they exist.
After a reboot Slackware brought up a graphical login screen from which I could login to the KDE desktop. Slackware 14.0 comes with KDE 4.8 and the graphical environment is laid out in the traditional style. At the bottom of the screen we find an application menu and task switcher. The desktop is empty, devoid of any widgets or icons. At first I found the graphical interface to be quite sluggish, but after disabling desktop effects and search indexing KDE became much more responsive.
I ran the latest release of Slackware on my laptop (dual-core 2GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, Intel wireless and Intel video cards) and in a VirtualBox virtual machine. On the laptop Slackware worked well. The newly included Network Manager detected nearby wireless networks, sound was set to a low volume, but worked without any problems. Performance was about on par with other popular distributions. By default my screen wasn't set to its maximum resolution, but this could be fixed through the System Settings panel. While sitting idle at the KDE desktop the operating system used about 275MB of memory. When running the distribution in VirtualBox I ran into a few problems. Slackware in the virtual machine wouldn't allow me to set a high screen resolution and performance was quite slow. In fact, installing Slackware in the virtual machine took approximately three hours and boot times were about double what I would expect from other full sized distributions. Something I found interesting about the 32-bit build of Slackware was that the packages installed from the DVD were compiled for the i486 architecture, which is getting a bit dated. On the other hand, the default Slackware kernel used to install the operating system requires the computer's processor be PAE-enabled, a feature old i486 machines didn't support. It struck me as an odd combination to use as the default configuration.
Slackware 14.0 -- Desktop settings and applications.
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The selection of software which is installed will vary a good deal depending on which categories of packages we select at install time. I opted to install just about all of the end-user software, minus the Xfce desktop components, and it gave me a large collection of applications. Included in the application menu were Firefox, KMail, the KTorrent bittorrent client, the Pidgin instant messenger client, the SeaMonkey browser suite and the Thunderbird e-mail client. XChat was included, as was the gFTP file transfer software. There were a number of multimedia players, including Amarok, Audacious, the Dragon Player and Juk. The menu also featured KPlayer, MPlayer and a disc ripper. The classic XMMS player was included too. These multimedia programs were installed alongside a full array of codecs for playing popular media formats. The Calligra office suite was installed along with a document viewer and the GNU Image Manipulation Program. I didn't find Java nor Flash installed on the system, but we are given two compilers, the GNU Compiler Collection and Clang. For graphical application development we are provided with KDevelop and the Qt4 Designer programs. The application menu also holds a small collection of games and educational apps.
Slackware comes with a number of programs to make KDE more accessible, including a screen magnifier, accessibility options for the mouse pointer and a screen reader. The Kleopatra and KGpg programs are included to help protect our documents and manage security certificates. Of course, the distribution comes with other small programs for editing text files, managing archives and there is a virtual calculator. Behind the scenes, version 3.2 of the Linux kernel keeps things running smoothly.
The way Slackware handles packages is different from the way most other distributions manage their software so I want to spend a little time talking about it. Slackware does, technically, have package management, though on a very basic level and the package manager doesn't resolve dependencies. This tends to lead to some confusion. As the Slackbook states, "Apparently many people in the Linux community think that a packager manager must by definition include dependency checking. Well, that simply isn't the case, as Slackware most certainly does not. This is not to say that Slackware packages don't have dependencies, but rather that its package manager doesn't check for them. Dependency management is left up to the sysadmin, and that's the way we like it."
However, what the book doesn't say is why slackers like it that way. A Linux.com article sums up a few reasons. Personally I find it strange people are still opposed to something so useful (and, on modern distributions, reliable) as dependency checking, especially since it can be turned off in distributions which support the feature. However I'm not here to talk about other distros and how they do things, but rather Slackware and how it works.
Slackware comes with a few tools for package management, the one which will probably feel the most familiar to users of other distributions is slackpkg. The syntax of slackpkg and its actions are quite close to those of APT and YUM, but without the dependency resolution. Assuming we have installed most of the contents of the Slackware DVD dependencies shouldn't be a problem. Before using slackpkg we need to manually edit its configuration file and select one of the many available repository mirrors available. We are warned to only select one mirror to avoid confusing the package manager. At the time of writing there were no updates waiting for me, but I was able to experiment (successfully) with adding and removing software using slackpkg. For people who would like to benefit from dependency resolution there is the third-party tool, slapt-get. This program has a syntax and behaviour closely related to APT's and I found it worked well. I did find the build of slapt-get I installed, which was labeled as being built for Slackware 14, by default would connect to Slackware 13.37 repositories. Editing the slapt-get configuration file allowed me to switch to Slackware 14.0 repositories and everything worked smoothly from there.
Slackware 14.0 -- Package management with slackpkg
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Most of the time I was able to find the software I wanted in the official Slackware repositories, however, there were some items I wanted which were not available. Here is where I ran into a bit of a pickle. A quick search for up to date third-party Slackware repositories didn't yield positive results. There are third-party repositories out there, but the ones I looked at weren't up to speed with the 14.0 release (some hadn't caught up to 13.37 yet). The Slackware release notes suggest visiting Slackbuilds.org, which is home to many build scripts and the site provides links to source code. The first few days I was running Slackware Slackbuilds hadn't caught up with the new release, though by the end of the week they were providing build scripts for Slackware 14.0. Using Slackbuilds requires manually hunting down the proper software, downloading the source code and then building it, making Slackbuilds less attractive than the ports systems offered by Gentoo and FreeBSD and much less convenient than package management on most other Linux distributions.
The hunt for third-party software aside, my time with Slackware went fairly well. The distribution comes with a good deal of useful software, the desktop tended to stay out of the way and performance was normal for a modern Linux distribution. I found some of the default package options a bit strange (the Calligra office suite being installed rather than LibreOffice, for example), but the packages provided got the job done. Setting up Slackware on a new computer took longer than doing an installation of Fedora, openSUSE or Ubuntu, but once it is in place, the user can largely forget about the operating system and just go to work.
As the rest of the Linux ecosystem changes Slackware has a tendency to stay relatively fixed. The distribution's installer, package management, init system, website and file system layout have stayed remarkably consistent over the years. Whether this consistency is good or not will likely vary a great deal depending on the individual. Shortly after the release of Slackware 14.0 there were the usual comments from people on tech forums wondering if Slackware really brings anything worthwhile to the Linux community, if the distribution does anything which sets it above other distributions rather than merely apart. The answer is yes on both accounts, provided one is looking for the specific things Slackware provides. People looking for new technology, convenient features, lots of packages in the main repository, automatic package management (and dependency resolution) and a friendly installer will not find what they want in Slackware. That's not what it's here to do. What Slackware does do is remain consistent and reliable from one release to the next. Slackware today will work the same as the previous release and the next release will likely work the same as this one. It is a vanilla distribution, meaning very little is changed from the upstream sources and administrating a Slackware box will probably feel familiar to people who usually admin BSD or other UNIX-like operating systems. Slackware has a well deserved reputation for being tested and for being reliable. However, in my mind, perhaps the best characteristic of Slackware is this: the distribution does what it says it will do, no more, no less. It is rare a person runs into surprises when running Slackware because the distribution tells you exactly what it is going to do and then, with your command, does that and only that one thing. This approach means there is more manual work to installing and running Slackware compared with other distributions, but it also means things seldom go wrong. Running the Slackware distribution is a boring experience and, as the Slackbook says, that's the way slackers like it.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Samsung releases a new file system, Webconverger unveils a new update system and Ubuntu experiments with donations.
 Last week Samsung unveiled a new file system with an implementation for the Linux kernel. The new file system is named F2FS and is aimed at NAND flash memory-based storage devices. The developers hope to improve performance for SSDs and SD cards. Along with the appropriate kernel patches, userland tools for formating devices with F2FS have been released. At this time the new file system has not been widely tested and does not yet come with integrity checking or recovery tools so it isn't advisable to use it on production systems. However, it is good to see a file system designed specifically with flash storage devices in mind, especially given their increasing popularity.
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The Internet Of Things is a phrase used to describe a world in which many common objects are interconnected via the Internet. It envisions a world in which luggage, packages, airplane seats and cars are linked together, allowing people to access not just web pages about things, but the things themselves. The Contiki operating system is designed with this Internet Of Things in mind. It is a small operating system which can run on low-resource, battery-operated devices. These devices can, through Contiki, be connected to the Internet. Adam Dunkels, Contiki's creator, took some time to talk about the little OS. He discusses the goals behind the Internet Of Things, the balance between optimizing code and making things easier and he brings up the first Internet connected Lego brick. It's an interesting read, especially for people who like the idea of having their household appliances accessible from their personal computer.
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The Webconverger team recently released version 15 of their web kiosk distribution. The distribution, which is based on Debian, is designed to be run on public terminals where only web-based pages and services need to be accessed. With version 15 the developers behind Webconverger have tried something new, system updates using the git version control software. The idea is to have installations of Webconverger connect to a managed git repository and have the operating system seamlessly sync using git protocols. It is an interesting idea and should make it easier to insure system integrity and allow administrators to roll back to previous versions of packages in the event something breaks.
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 It seems as though the developers at Canonical are reconsidering their move to place Amazon search results in the Ubuntu Dash. The decision to feature Amazon results raised a number of complaints, some from people who don't want their operating system to display advertisements and others from people who didn't want their operating system sending keyword searches for local items to third-party servers. While Canonical hasn't removed the offending feature, they have introduced a way to easily turn off the Amazon ads. Work has also gone into filtering out content which some users may find offensive. While this seems like a step in the right direction, it does not appear to have won over wary users, nor addressed their key concerns. As one commenter on the story wrote, "The Amazon results should be opt-in, not opt-out and the products should be placed in their own lens."
Ubuntu unveiled another new idea this week, making it easier for users of the popular desktop distribution to donate money. When visitors to the Ubuntu website choose to download the Ubuntu Desktop edition they will be presented with a screen asking if they would like to make a donation. Contributors can choose where their donation goes (toward hardware support, performance improvements, desktop development, coordination with upstream, etc). People not wishing to donate financially can skip directly to downloading the Ubuntu ISO image. The donations model has worked well for other projects such as Linux Mint and it will be interesting to see the reaction of Ubuntu's user base.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Connecting to multiple machines behind a router
Running multiple servers asks:
Could you expand your tutorial on setting up access to your home PC to include access to a PC on your home LAN?
For example, suppose jesse.is-a-geek.net translated to your router's IP address, and you had a few machines on your home LAN (maybe with 192.168.*.* addresses, maybe using IPv6). How would you access different PCs or servers behind the router from the Internet? I tend to use different ports which the router forwards to the appropriate service (typically ssh and/or http and/or https) and machine, but wonder if there's a better way?
DistroWatch answers:
What you are describing, forwarding different ports on the router to different machines, is certainly the easy way to go and the most likely approach to work across multiple brands of routers. This would allow you to connect to your home IP address and specify a specific port to get access to a machine behind the firewall. For instance I could connect to jesse.is-a-geek.net, port 22 to get secure shell on my main machine (with IP address 192.168.0.100) and I could connect to the same hostname, port 23 to get forwarded to a second machine with IP address 192.168.0.101.
Depending on what kind of home set up you have there could be other solutions. For instance, some people might have multiple web servers (usually in virtual machines) on their home network. Rather than assign each server its own port, you could associate each website a different hostname and set up multiple virtual hosts on one server. Having multiple websites or web services running on one machine is often easier to manage than having one website per server. For a complete overview on virtual hosts and how to configure them I recommend reading Apache's documentation.
One solution, which isn't at all elegant, but which I've found useful in situations where the person connecting to my home network can only use a specific outgoing port, is to leave one home machine on all the time. Have all incoming connection requests go to that one machine. Then allow the user to login and manually connect to other machines on the network. For example, let's say I was at an office where I could only connect to remote networks using port 80. At home I could set my router to forward incoming connections on port 80 to a local machine running secure shell. Once I was logged in via secure shell on that one machine I would have the ability to connect to other resources on my home network. It's a roundabout way to go, but useful if you are contracting in places with strict firewall rules.
Do any of our readers use another method of connecting to multiple machines behind their home router? Let us know your solution in the comments section below.
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| Released Last Week |
Webconverger 15
Kai Hendry has released Webconverger 15, a specialist Debian-based distribution for web kiosks featuring the latest Firefox web browser: "Webconverger 15 realises a design goal to seamlessly upgrade. A feature that no other Linux distribution has. Currently upgrades only works on the writable install version, not the live / read-only version that you will try at first. You might be wondering what 486: and 686-pae: mean. You should be safe with the default 686-pae: live kernel choice, though if it doesn't work on ancient hardware, that is what the 486 kernel is for. In the future we will endeavour to reduce these options and make the kernel choice automatic. What else has changed? Firefox 15.0.1; xinput= touch screen calibration API; log= debug API; restored i486 support for old PC hardware; chrome=debug for browser debugging and testing; fix PDF support which was accidentally broken in 14.1; restore printing support with CUPS." Read the rest of the release notes for more details.
Snowlinux 3.1
Lars Torben Kremer has announced the release of Snowlinux 3.1, a bug-fix update of the project's Debian-based distribution for the desktop available in GNOME 2, Xfce and E17 editions: "The team is proud to announce the release of Snowlinux 3.1 GNOME 2, Xfce 4.8 and E17 released. Snowlinux 3.1 is a bug-fix release for GNOME, Xfce and E17. It solves many bugs and it also brings many features to the users. CTRL+ALT+Backspace restarts the X server if it has hung up. Click on tap was activated and lots of bugs were solved." See the release announcement for a full list of new features and some screenshots.
Parted Magic 2012_10_10
Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 2012_10_10, a specialist Linux live CD providing utilities for disk management and data rescue tasks: "Parted Magic 2012_10_10. This version of Parted Magic includes GParted 0.14.0 with LVM support and X.Org Server 1.13.0 with the latest drivers. I noticed some Reiser4 patches for the 3.5 kernel so it was included again. The reiser4progs package was patched to work with GParted and the 3.x kernels. Rdesktop was removed in favor of FreeRDP and its GUI Remmina. Two plugins were added to SpaceFM so you can mount Samba shares and use ClamAV directly from the file manager. Several minor bugs have been addressed. A large number of programs have been updated: Python 2.7.3, Mesa 9.0, Firefox 16.0, Linux kernel 3.5.6...." Visit the project's news page to read the release announcement.
GParted Live 0.14.0-1
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live 0.14.0-1, a new stable version of the project's utility live CD containing tools for disk management and data rescue tasks: "The GParted team is proud to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. The big news with this release is the added ability to move, resize, check, create, and delete physical volumes under Logical Volume Management - LVM2 PV. This major addition to GParted 0.14.0 is thanks to work by Mike Fleetwood. Other bugs fixed in this release include: fix crash when ESCape key pressed in dialogs containing number entry spin buttons; fix mounted file system size and usage determination for ext2/3/4; Fix ReiserFS UUID reading issues on Fedora and CentOS. The GParted Live 0.14.0-1 image is based based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2012-10-11." Visit the project's news page to read the full release announcement.
Zenwalk Linux 7.2
Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced the release of Zenwalk Linux 7.2, a Slackware-based desktop Linux distribution with Xfce as the preferred desktop environment: "We are happy to release Zenwalk Linux 7.2. After several months of rescheduling we think it's time to let this new jet fly. Zenwalk 7.2 is loyal to its design - providing 1 application per task, everything needed to work, play, code and create, in a single 700 MB CD image, through a 10 minutes automatic install process on any recent computer. Zenwalk 7.2 runs on kernel 3.4.8 with BFS scheduler. The Zenwalk desktop is based on the Xfce 4.10, GTK+ 2.24.10 and 3.4.4, with unique look and feel and perfect ergonomic integration of the application set - LibreOffice 3.6.2, Firefox and Thunderbird 15.0.1, GIMP 2.8.2 and much more. The Netpkg package manager has been improved with multiple mirrors support and better performance." Here is the full release announcement.
Slackel 14.0
Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel 14.0, a Slackware-based Linux distribution featuring the KDE 4.8.5 desktop and a good collection of KDE-centric software applications: "Slackel KDE 14.0 has been released. A collection of four KDE ISO images are immediately available, including 32-bit and 64-bit installation images as well as 32-bit and 64-bit live images that can be burned to a DVD or used with a USB drive. The software included in live images is exactly the same as that present in the standard Slackel KDE 14.0 installation DVDs. The Slackel live DVD images includes Linux kernel 3.2.29 and were built using SaLT (Salix Live Technology). Slackel KDE 14.0 includes the stable 14.0 tree of Slackware Linux and KDE 4.8.5 accompanied by a very rich collection of KDE-centric software." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
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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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| Around the Web |
Latest reviews
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Latest podcasts
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Latest newsletters
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- PiBang Linux. A Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi. It is inspired by Crunchbang Linux and based on Rasbian.
- Safe Internet For Kids. A browser-only operating system with content filtering.
- Core17. A re-spin of the Tiny Core distribution featuring the Enlightenment graphical interface.
- Quá ít. A Linux distribution with the latest drivers, but which tries to be stable enough to solve problems in daily work situations with modern computers.
- Turing Linux. Turing Linux is an operating system comprising a minimal base just sufficient to support VirtualBox, providing quick access to other operating systems.
- Rescatux. Rescatux is a GNU/Linux rescue CD. Rescatux comes with Rescapp, a user friendly wizard that will guide users through their rescue tasks.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 22 October 2012. To contact the authors please send email to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, suggestions and corrections: news, donations, distribution submissions, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (feedback and suggestions: podcast edition)
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Haydar Linux
Haydarlinux was aimed to be the first Arabic Linux distribution that has the full Arabic support, by supporting Arabic in both localized and enabled faces. Haydar Linux will give all Arabs the best way to enter the Linux world with ease and stability.
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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