 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 482, 12 November 2012 |
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Welcome to this year's 46th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! One of the things which makes open source software so interesting is the constant stream of changes which flow through the community. People are always working on something new or something better in order to bring about their ideal vision of modern computing. With that in mind, this issue of DistroWatch Weekly is dedicated to changes, small projects and interesting tools. In our feature review this week Jesse Smith takes the Zenwalk Linux distribution for a spin and reports on his findings. In our Questions and Answers section we talk about optimizing the priorities of system daemons and a potentially useful tool designed to assist in recovering data from hard drives. In the news this past week the Fedora developers decided to push back the release of Fedora 18 until 2013 and the FreeBSD team announced they have officially switched to using Clang as their default compiler. We also talk about a powerful system administration tool designed to let its users boot any OS from any media and we look at the unexpected new supporters of the Linux Foundation. As always we bring you all the distribution releases of the past week, look forward to upcoming releases and bring you news from all Around the Web. We here at DistroWatch wish you a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (22MB) and MP3 (31MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Zenwalk Linux 7.2 (in its various forms)
 The Zenwalk Linux distribution is one which I've always respected for its design philosophy. The project aims to be light, straight forward to use and the default installation comes with one program per task. This means that while the application menu is full, there isn't much overlap in functionality. Zenwalk is based on Slackware and attempts to remain compatible with its parent distribution. Version 7.2 of Zenwalk came out recently and I decided to download the Live edition of the distribution.
The Live edition of Zenwalk Linux is available as a 922 MB ISO image. Booting from the live media we're asked to select our preferred language from a list and then the operating system boots to a graphical environment. Our desktop is the light and powerful Xfce with a dark grey background. On the desktop we find a few icons for browsing the file system and there are two documents. Of these two PDF documents, one contains instructions on how to create and customize a live Zenwalk disc and the other provides instructions for getting the Live edition of Zenwalk to install on a local hard drive. At the top of the screen we find an application menu and task switcher. Down at the bottom of the display there is a quick-launch bar with a few programs and another button for accessing the application menu.
Zenwalk Linux 7.2 - the live desktop and application menu
(full image size: 303kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
While it is possible to install Zenwalk Linux from the live environment, the process is a bit roundabout and requires us to do work up front. For instance, to run the installer we first have to reboot the system and set a root password via the kernel parameters. Also, prior to running the install script, we need to manually partition the hard drive, which can be done using the graphic Disk Utility application. Once these steps are completed running the install script kicks off an automated process. The only question we have to answer is whether we want to install the LILO boot loader along with Zenwalk.
Having such an automated process might sound nice, but it carries some drawbacks. Installing Zenwalk Linux in this fashion basically means we have the live environment on our hard drive. The root password is still whatever we set for the live media and we are still automatically logged in as the default non-admin user. At times I found running from the local install of Zenwalk wouldn't allow me to access the package manager and I got some strange error messages regarding writing to parts of the file system. In the face of these drawbacks I decided that if I was going to run Zenwalk for more than one day I had better download and install the Standard edition of 7.2 rather than press on with the Live edition.
The Standard edition of Zenwalk Linux is provided as a 680 MB download. Booting from the media takes us directly into the text-based installer. This installer is very much in line with Slackware's installer, though I feel Zenwalk's is a bit more streamlined and skips over some of the more nit-picky options. The series of text screens in the installer gets us to select our keyboard layout, create partitions using cfdisk and then the software performs the necessary format & install. Zenwalk also has an automated installer which can take over an entire disk if we would rather take an automated approach. While the installer is copying files to the local disk we get to see a short description of each package being installed, though no overall progress is shown, making it hard to estimate how long the entire process will take. After the required files are copied to our hard drive the installer sets up the LILO boot loader, giving us the chance to set any special boot parameters.
This is where I encountered my first strange bug while using Zenwalk Linux 7.2. Upon booting I was shown a graphical splash screen and I waited to be brought to the login screen. And waited. And waited. Since no hard drive or network activity was in the works I tried switching to a virtual terminal, but nothing happened. Assuming the machine had locked up I hit the power button and, as the laptop began its shutdown process a text box appeared in the middle of the screen requesting I set a root password. It was only there a second before the system halted, but it was long enough. The next time I booted I again got the graphical splash screen and, when all hard drive activity had ceased, I typed a password once, pressed Enter and then put in the password again. Even though I couldn't see the password prompt on the screen the system apparently accepted the password and applied it to the root account because a few seconds later I was brought to a graphical login screen where I could login using the password I had just set.
Now, with my install completed and working, I went about creating a regular user account and then logged in with my non-root user. The desktop of the Standard edition of Zenwalk Linux looks just like the Live desktop. The only important distinction seemed to be that the Live edition uses the wicd program to get on-line and the Standard edition uses Network Manager. Which brings me to another quirk of Zenwalk's. For some reason Network Manager wouldn't automatically connect to my local network, even when I was using a wired connection. Further, Network Manager wouldn't let me connect to the Internet with my non-root account. I had to logout, login as root, set up a globally accessible connection and then return to my normal user account in order to get on-line.
Once I was on-line I decided it would be a good idea to grab security updates for the distribution and here I ran into my third significant issue with Zenwalk Linux. The graphical package manager which comes with the distribution, Netpkg, has a fairly simple, basic layout. It lets us select our repository from a drop-down list, refresh our package database and filter packages based on their status. While not a pretty package manager, it contains all the important parts. What I found frustrating was that some repositories didn't respond and this would leave Netpkg hanging while displaying a message saying it was loading repository data. Repositories which did work provided me with updated packages, which were smoothly downloaded and applied, but there was a notable lack of additional software. Searches for VLC, MPlayer, various graphic and office software and games all turned up zero matches. I'm not certain if this lack of results was an issue with Netpkg, or a gap in the repositories, but it limited the flexibility of the distribution quite a lot during my trial. Still, Zenwalk comes with a good deal of functionality out of the box, so let's focus on what it does have.
Zenwalk Linux 7.2 - the Netpkg package manager
(full image size: 163kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
In the application menu we find the Firefox web browser, the Pidgin instant messenger program and the Thunderbird e-mail client. The Transmission BitTorrent client is included along with the gFTP file transfer program. LibreOffice is included for us as are a document viewer, calendar program and the GNU Image Manipulation Program. In the multimedia section we find the Totem video player, a CD player application and the Brasero disc burner. In the background Zenwalk supplies codecs for playing popular audio and video formats and we're supplied with the Adobe Flash plugin. The Geany editor is included for programming and note taking. There is a huge selection of small applications, many of which are there to assist in configuring the desktop. We also find a simple text editor, an archive manager and a file syncing utility. There are also programs for managing user accounts, configuring network connections, enabling start-up services and getting information on the system's hardware. Zenwalk comes with Java and the GNU Compiler Collection and I found, by default, the operating system runs a secure shell for remote access. Behind the scenes we find the Linux kernel, version 3.4.8, running things.
I ran both the Live edition and the Standard edition of Zenwalk Linux on my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 4 GB of RAM, Intel wireless and Intel video cards). I also ran Zenwalk's Standard edition in a virtual machine for comparison. I was pleased to note Zenwalk detected all of my hardware, my screen was set to its maximum resolution, sound worked out of the box and I was able to connect with wireless networks. In the VirtualBox virtual environment I found the system also performed well and I had no serious hardware related problems. There was an odd quirk in that when running in VirtualBox Zenwalk's desktop wallpaper wouldn't display, so my desktop was always a blank black surface. It's not a big deal, but I believe this is the first time I've seen a distribution do this in a virtual machine. Zenwalk's performance was quite good and I was happy to find memory usage was very low. When sitting idle at the Xfce desktop Zenwalk used only 85 MB of RAM.
Zenwalk Linux 7.2 - running various applications
(full image size: 132kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
My experience with Zenwalk Linux this time around was a strange one with some good high points, but too many low points. The size and performance of the distribution are great, the Xfce desktop is nicely laid out and I really like the one-application-per-task philosophy. On the other hand, my issue with the system seeming to lock up while waiting at an invisible password prompt was strange to say the least. Likewise I found it strange Network Manager wouldn't connect to a wired network automatically and, further, wouldn't let a regular user set up the connection. Netpkg worked really well sometimes, but other times would just hang trying to sync with repositories and I rarely found what I was looking for in those repositories. Twice I had Zenwalk lock up on me, requiring a hard reboot be performed -- not a common occurrence in my experience with reviewing Linux distributions. If I had to apply one word to this version of Zenwalk I would use "unfinished". The design is still good and I like the clean Slackware base and elegant default software selection. I just feel there were too many problems with this release, small issues which by themselves weren't significant, but together caused a lot of frustration.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
FreeBSD moves to Clang, Fedora slips release date, OmniBoot gains new features, Linux Foundation receives unexpected support
 During the past few years the FreeBSD developers have been experimenting with the Clang compiler, trying to make sure their operating system (and as many software ports as possible) will work with the liberally licensed compiler. The switch has now been thrown and future releases of FreeBSD will default to using Clang as the C/C++ compiler. There are a number of reasons for this move toward Clang from the GNU Compiler Collection. One is the speed of the Clang compiler, another reason is the underlying design and, in part, the license comes into play. People interested in exploring the differences between the two compilers, including benchmarks of both in action, can visit the Clang comparison page.
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 The Fedora distribution typically ships a new release about once every six months. While small delays are common with such a tight schedule, usually the Red Hat sponsored project is only held back a week or two. Fedora 18 will become an exception as blocking bugs in its installer and installation upgrader will delay the distribution's upcoming version until January 2013. At present, the developers plan to get a final Beta release out at the end of November with a final release of Fedora 18 scheduled for January 8th. Information on the blocking issues can be found on the Fedora developers' mailing list.
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 OmniBoot is a multi-OS boot manager with related tools which are designed to assist system administrators in booting into just about any OS from almost any media. OmniBoot supports booting from CDs/DVDs, USB drives, hard drives and over the network. Version 0.5 of OmniBoot was released this past week and this new release allows its users to set up live network boot (PXE) servers featuring OmniBoot. Other computers on the local network can then boot from these live PXE servers and have access to the full array of OmniBoot features, which reside on the machine acting as the server. To learn more about OmniBoot's latest version, please read the release announcement.
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Some people in the open source community have the impression that Linux development happens outside of the influence of corporations and that Linux somehow represents a David-like stance against multinational tech Goliaths. The truth of the matter is, despite different development philosophies, Linux and businesses are usually partners. This past week brought us high profile examples of tech giants standing hand-in-hand with Linux developers. First it was announced HP had become a platinum member of the Linux Foundation, giving HP a seat on the Foundation's board of directors. Next, word came out that Microsoft had become a sponsor of the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon event in Europe. Finally, NVIDIA announced the company had been working with Valve Software to greatly improve the performance of the NVIDIA video drivers for Linux. The improvements made to the NVIDIA graphics driver are said to double the frame rate on select cards running on the Linux operating system. This announcement from the hardware manufacturer arrived the same day as Valve's beta release of Steam for Linux, a positive step for fans of both gaming and Linux.
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 Since the arrival of the GNOME 3 desktop the project's developers have been debating when (and if) to drop support for fallback mode, the environment which loads when 3-D support isn't available. This fallback mode is useful for people with lower-end video cards, users experiencing driver issues and people running GNOME in a virtual machine. However, maintaining fallback mode alongside GNOME Shell has been taxing and the GNOME developers have finally decided to axe fallback mode. The change is expected to take place with the release of GNOME 3.8, the next stable release of the desktop environment. What is interesting about this change is it has the potential to affect other desktop environments, not just GNOME and its users. The GNOME developers point out that Unity, LXDE and Xfce make use of components related to fallback mode and those technologies may have to adjust to the change, or maintain patches to keep the fallback functionality.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Priorities and external drives
Desktop-should-have-first-priority asks: I am noticing not a whole bunch of distributions take the care to optimize scheduling policies and priorities. And maybe aren't that aware of performance differences. Do you know of any distro that has a long experience with optimizing X server and the desktop and has everything worked out? For instance, having daemons at idle priority and X at realtime?
DistroWatch answers: Off the top of my head, no, I can't think of any distributions which fine tune the priority of the daemons and X system in order to provide better desktop performance. Mostly, I suspect, because the majority of modern desktop systems will spend a lot of their time idling (or nearly idling) which means there is very little competition for CPU resources. On a machine where the CPU is 90% inactive, you probably won't see much difference in performance by adjusting scheduling priority.
That being said, if you decide you want to run a Linux desktop with X and the various daemons reprioritized, you can do this yourself with any GNU/Linux distro. For example, to increase the priority of the X system you could put the following command in a start-up script:
renice -n -10 $(pgrep X)
The pgrep command will find the X process and the renice command will adjust the X server's priority. Likewise, you can reduce the priority of other tasks by running commands such as:
renice -n 10 $(pgrep daemon-name)
Remember that when using the renice command higher numbers indicate a less important priority and lower (negative) numbers indicate a higher priority. Putting a few of these renice commands in a script will allow you to adjust the priorities of your daemons and experiment with different settings.
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I'd like to change topics now and talk about a piece of hardware which was recently brought to my attention. Earlier this year I mentioned in a review that one of my machines didn't support booting from a USB thumb drive and several people wrote in to suggest workarounds. The Plop boot manager was mentioned frequently and with a great deal of praise. One suggestion, which took me by surprise, came from Stephen Mclaughlin who you may know as the man behind such popular podcasts as Linux For The Rest Of Us, Droid-Nation and Linux Basix, Steve kindly mailed me a device called the Zalman ZM-VE300. I quite often have people offer me software for reviews, but this may be the first time I've been mailed hardware to test and I appreciate the time and money Steve donated in doing this. (Steve doesn't work for Zalman, he is just interested in the concept of the device.)
What the ZM-VE300 is supposed to do is allow users to attach a SATA hard drive to the device and plug it into their computer via a USB cable. The device can then pretend to be a CD/DVD drive in the hopes of tricking the host computer into allowing us to boot from the external drive. The ZM-VE300 is also supposed to let us attach a hard drive to a running PC and browse the files on the external drive. This is convenient if we have a (formally) internal hard drive from which we want to recover data. We attach it as an external drive and browse it with a minimum amount of effort.
The drawback, I quickly found, is the Zalman doesn't appear to recognize Linux partitions. On the product's website it mentions support for Linux-based operating systems, but doesn't list supported file systems. When I took a working hard drive, formatted with ext3, out of a Linux box and attached it to another computer using the ZM-VE300, the Zalman's LCD display indicated it couldn't read from the drive. I have yet to test the Zalman against a drive out of a Windows machine, but it seems as though the device only works when coupled with proprietary file systems. I mentioned the Zalman to other Linux users and they confirmed they had a ZM-VE300 and had to format their external drive with NTFS in order to gain compatibility. As such I'm afraid its usefulness will be limited for Linux users. The Zalman may still be useful for helping people recover data from their NTFS-formatted drives, but it won't be helpful when dealing with drives formatted with open source file systems.
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| Released Last Week |
Snowlinux 3 "MATE", "Cinnamon & GNOME"
Lars Torben Kremer has announced the release of two new editions of Snowlinux 3 featuring the MATE, Cinnamon and GNOME 3 (fallback mode) desktop interfaces: "The team is proud to announce the release of Snowlinux 3 'White' MATE & Cinnamon & GNOME. Snowlinux 3 'White' is based upon Ubuntu 12.10. The default desktop environment is MATE 1.4. Also Cinnamon 1.6 is available besides the GNOME 3.6 Fallback mode. Our own menu, called snowMount, and a mount tool, called snowMount, has been added. Nemo 1.0.9, a fork of Nautilus 3.4, is used as the default file manager. The release uses Linux 3.5 and it comes along with Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Shotwell and Banshee." Read the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
Webconverger 15.1
Kai Hendry has announced the release of Webconverger 15.1, a minor update of the project's specialist Debian-based distribution for web kiosks featuring the latest Firefox web browser: "Webconverger 15.1. Our new automatic upgrade feature released in version 15 works well. Git-FS has helped us develop, debug and test better, and deliver to you an experience that improves every day. Just like the web does. Install users don't have to do anything to get these new features. Live users should download 15.1 and ideally switch to the install version by installing it to your hard drive. What's new: new hosts= feature for simple Internet blacklist and whitelist filtering; font hinting for smoother page rendering; faster browser boot times; feature and security updates to Fir.efox to 16.0.2; security update to Adobe Flash player 11.2.202.243; various updates to the underlying Progress Linux system." Read the complete release notes for further information.
Superb Mini Server 2.0.1
Superb Mini Server (SMS) 2.0.1, a minor update of the Slackware-based server distribution, is now available: "Superb Mini Server version 2.0.1 released. This minor release upgrades the Linux kernel to version 3.2.33, upgrades server packages to latest stable versions and introduces smsconfig, a powerful script for managing services, resetting passwords and performing various tasks. New packages in this release are qpdf - a dependency of cups-filters, lightsquid - a light and fast Squid report generator, and php-suhosin - a PHP security extension (disabled by default). New packages in the 'extra' ISO image are php_suhosin, a PHP built with suhosin-patch, rutorrent - another web front-end to rTorrent, and OpenSSH built with PAM support. A 'pasture' directory has been added, with packages often required by third-party applications." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
openSUSE 12.2 "ARM"
Jos Poortvliet has announced the release of openSUSE 12.2 "ARM" edition, an openSUSE build designed for BeagleBoard, Panda Board and other ARM-based boards devices: "As was promised last week, the openSUSE ARM team has released openSUSE 12.2 for the ARM architecture. Almost all of the usual openSUSE distribution (more than 5000 packages) builds and runs on all the ARM hardware it has been tested on. Initiated at the openSUSE Conference in 2011 in Nürnberg, the openSUSE ARM team has managed to bring one of the most important Linux distributions to the ARM architecture in a little over a year. At this point, the team is confident openSUSE 12.2 can be installed and used on the following devices: BeagleBoard (xM), Panda Board, Versatile Express (QEMU), chroot. Four more devices are supported as a 'best effort." Here is the brief release announcement. For download links and installation instructions please read the openSUSE on your ARM board page on the project's Wiki.
SystemRescueCd 3.1.1
An updated build of SystemRescueCd, version 3.1.1, is out. What's new? "Standard kernels is long-term supported Linux 3.2.33 (rescuecd + rescue64); alternative kernels updated to latest stable 3.6.6 (altker32 + altker64); re-introduced support for Reiser4 file system in the alternative kernels; fixed the 'rootpass=' boot option by updating USE flags for shadow; fixed bugs in the installation scripts for USB sticks; updated NetworkManager to 0.9.6.4; updated btrfs-progs utilities to recent upstream version; updated e2fsprogs to 1.42.5, GParted to 0.14.0, linux-firmware 20120924, tcpdump 4.3.0, Coreutils 8.16, util-linux 2.21.2, dd-rescue 1.28, Midori 0.4.7, X.Org Server 1.12.4, ClamAV 0.97.6, SpaceFM 0.7.10; added zerofree 1.0.1 (a utility to zero out all free space on a file system); the 'docache' boot option must also cache the boot and EFI directories; fixed bugs in the installation scripts for USB sticks." Here is the full changelog.
Alpine Linux 2.5.0
The Alpine Linux development team has announced the release of Alpine Linux 2.5.0, a community-developed operating system designed for x86 routers, firewalls, VPNs, VoIP boxes and servers: "We are pleased to announce Alpine Linux version 2.5. Since version 2.4, among the various bug fixes, several packages have been upgraded: Linux kernel upgraded to 3.6.6 with the grsecurity patch; Asterisk 11.0.1; Xen 4.2 Dom0 support; Freeswitch 1.2.0; PostgreSQL 9.2.1; Ruby 1.9.3; libvirt 1.0. Some of the updated packages available from the HTTP repositories are: X.Org Server 1.13, Mesa 9 and much more. The full lists of changes can be found in the git log and bug tracker." Here is the brief release announcement.
Zorin OS 6.1
Artyom Zorin has announced the release of Zorin OS 6.1, an updated build of the project's Ubuntu-based, user-friendly Linux distribution designed for newcomers to the popular open-source operating system: "The Zorin OS team is pleased to announce the release of Zorin OS 6.1 Core, our operating system designed for Windows users and those who are dissatisfied with the Unity and GNOME Shell offerings. Zorin OS 6.1 Core builds on top of our popular previous release of Zorin OS 6 Core with newly updated software and a newer kernel. As Zorin OS 6.1 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 it is an LTS (Long-Term Support) release, provided with 5 years of security updates. Users who already have Zorin OS 6 Core installed do not need to get Zorin OS 6.1 Core as all the aforementioned updates and improvements in 6.1 can be applied by installing the latest updates from the Update Manager." Here is the brief release announcement.
Manjaro Linux 0.8.2
Carl Duff has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 0.8.2, an Arch-based Linux distribution provided in four different desktop flavours (Xfce 4.10, KDE 4.9.2, GNOME 3.4.2 and Cinnamon 1.6.4): "Manjaro Linux 0.8.2 has been released. The culmination of substantial refinements and exciting new developments, Manjaro 0.8.2 is the most polished, feature-rich and accessible release yet. Just a few of the new features provided includes support for Steam gaming, automatic desktop notifications for new system updates, and -- developed exclusively for Manjaro -- a user-friendly graphical interface to easily manage and maintain the system. Experienced users can also take advantage of support for new features, including the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), B-Tree File System (btrfs)...." Read the release announcement for further details.
Manjaro Linux 0.8.2 - the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 455kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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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 |
October 2012 DistroWatch.com donation: nginx
We are happy to announce that the recipient of the October 2012 DistroWatch.com donation is nginx, an open-source, cross-platform web, mail and reverse proxy server. It receives US$250.00 in cash.
The nginx server is a relatively young project, but it has been steadily gaining users, especially those who seek a more lightweight alternative to Apache. Developed by Igor Sysoev, nginx is described as "an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server. For a long time, it has been running on many heavily loaded Russian sites including Yandex, Mail.Ru, VKontakte, and Rambler. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 11.48% busiest sites in August 2012. The sources and documentation are distributed under the 2-clause BSD-like license. Basic HTTP server features: serving static and index files, autoindexing; open file descriptor cache; accelerated reverse proxying with caching; simple load balancing and fault tolerance; accelerated support with caching of FastCGI, uwsgi, SCGI, and memcached servers; simple load balancing and fault tolerance; modular architecture; filters include gzipping, byte ranges, chunked responses, XSLT, SSI, and image transformation filter; multiple SSI inclusions within a single page can be processed in parallel if they are handled by proxied or FastCGI servers; SSL and TLS SNI support." Visit the project's about page to learn more.
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. Those readers who wish to contribute towards these donations, please use our advertising page to make a payment (PayPal and credit cards are accepted). 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), GCompris ($352), Xiph.org ($250), Clonezilla ($250), Debian Multimedia ($280), Geany ($300), Mageia ($470), gtkpod ($300)
- 2011: CGSecurity ($300), OpenShot ($300), Imagination ($250), Calibre ($300), RIPLinuX ($300), Midori ($310), vsftpd ($300), OpenShot ($350), Trinity Desktop Environment ($300), LibreCAD ($300), LiVES ($300), Transmission ($250)
- 2012: GnuPG ($350), ImageMagick ($350), GNU ddrescue ($350), Slackware Linux ($500), MATE ($250), LibreCAD ($250), BleachBit ($350), cherrytree ($260), Zim ($335), nginx ($250)
Since the launch of the Donations Program in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$33,435 to various open-source software projects.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Moniz. The Moniz Project was created to provide a re-spin based on openSUSE that supports full localisation for Portugal and Spain by default (also offering the traditional International English) with the MATE desktop environment, a fork of GNOME 2. In addition the Moniz Project aims to improve the boot code/initrd and optimise the system/user space for pure desktop deployments and provide a few enhancements that could be interesting for users.
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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, 19 November 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 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
Sonar GNU/Linux
Sonar GNU/Linux aims to be an accessible GNU/Linux distribution to people of all needs. The project's goal was to bring awareness of free accessible software to people that depend on assistive technology. It was based on Manjaro Linux.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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