 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 787, 29 October 2018 |
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Welcome to this year's 44th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Earlier this month we saw the usual scheduled October release of Ubuntu and its many community editions. One of the notable changes in the new 18.10 versions came from Lubuntu as the project changed its desktop environment from the GTK+-based LXDE to Qt-based LXQt. This adjustment brings with it a number of related changes in default applications and resource usage and we explore these differences in our Feature Story. Lubuntu's change in desktops is also the topic of our Opinion Poll and we would like to know whether you are in favour of the shift from LXDE to LXQt. In our News section we discuss efforts to compile a list of compatible hardware which works with the Haiku operating system, and cover a story on the Solus distribution's missing founder. Plus we discuss IBM purchasing Red Hat, Pine64 planning a phone running Plasma, and the Mir display software and what its status is now that it has reached its 1.0 milestone. In our Questions and Answers section we talk about how to limit application usage to specific users. We are also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Lubuntu 18.10 - now with LXQt
- News: Haiku hardware compatibility list, Solus founder out of contact, a potential new GNU/Linux phone, explaining Mir 1.0, IBM buying Red Hat
- Questions and answers: Limit application access to specific users
- Released last week: Tails 3.10.1, OpenIndiana 2018.10, Primtux 4
- Torrent corner: Archman, Bluestar, Clonezilla, Greenie, MorpheusArch, KDE neon, Nitrux, OpenIndiana, Primtux, Robolinux, Tails
- Upcoming releases: Fedora 29, FreeBSD 12.0-BETA3
- Opinion poll: Lubuntu's switch to LXQt
- New distributions: Open Secure-K OS
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (21MB) and MP3 (15MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Lubuntu 18.10 - now with LXQt
On October 18th the Ubuntu distribution and related community projects released new versions. These new releases are short term releases, receiving just nine months of support. For the most part, I did not find many big, new features listed in the announcements, but one exception was the changing of Lubuntu's desktop environment:
Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 18.10 has been released. This is the first Lubuntu release with LXQt as the main desktop environment. The Lubuntu project, in 18.10 and successive releases, will no longer support the LXDE desktop environment or tools in the Ubuntu archive and will instead focus on the LXQt desktop environment.
The project has also reported that it plans to focus on being relatively light and modern, but will no longer focus on supporting older hardware.
A shift in desktop environments, even related ones like LXDE and LXQt, struck me as interesting and I was curious to see what practical effect, if any, this would have on Lubuntu's users. With that in mind, I would like to share some information on Lubuntu's final release featuring LXDE (version 18.04) and then talk about Lubuntu 18.10 with the LXQt desktop.
* * * * *
Lubuntu 18.04 with LXDE
Let's quickly talk about some of the characteristics of Lubuntu 18.04 with the LXDE desktop. Lubuntu 18.04 was provided as a 1GB ISO file. The distribution was installed with the Ubiquity installer and a fresh copy of the operating system used up 3.6GB of disk space. The LXDE desktop on Lubuntu used about 180MB of RAM and was wonderfully light and responsive in my test environments.
Lubuntu 18.04 featured a theme that used a lot of light grey backgrounds and black text. Most applications were members of the GTK+ family of programs. Software in the default install included Firefox, Pidgin, Transmission, AbiWord, Gnumeric, MPV and Audacious. Settings were managed through modules found in the application menu, and I do not recall there being a central settings panel.
Lubuntu 18.04 -- Running LXDE
(full image size: 387kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
For software management, Lubuntu 18.04 used GNOME Software to handle desktop applications. People who wanted to deal with lower level packages could run the Synaptic package manager. there was a third tool to manage package updates.
On the whole, I would say that Lubuntu 18.04 was a solid, long-term support release. There were not a lot of standout features, and I questioned the practicality of using AbiWord and Gnumeric over the more popular LibreOffice suite, but on the whole I thought the distribution's final version with LXDE was a good, lightweight distribution.
* * * * *
Lubuntu 18.10 with LXQt
The latest release if Lubuntu is provided as a 1.6GB download in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds. Booting from the live media loads the LXQt 0.13.0 desktop. The desktop's panel is still placed at the bottom of the display. The application menu is located in the bottom-left corner of the screen and the system tray is positioned in the bottom-right corner. The theme has been adjusted slightly, generally using white text on a black background for greater contrast. This darker look works pretty well except for a few corner cases such as the volume control in the system tray. It is presented as a dark grey icon on a grey background and is difficult to see.
The new version of Lubuntu uses the Calamares system installer, which replaces Ubiquity. This strikes me as an odd choice as most of the Calamares screens look the same as Ubiquity's and the steps are very similar. I think Calamares might offer a little more flexibility with disk partitioning, but otherwise the two installers are very similar, so I am curious about the change. The installer walks us through setting our time zone, selecting our keyboard's layout, setting up disk partitions and creating a user account. It then places its files on our hard drive and we can restart the computer to try out our new copy of Lubuntu.
Lubuntu 18.10 -- Running Firefox and monitoring processes
(full image size: 488kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Lubuntu boots to a colourful, graphical login screen where we can sign into either the LXQt desktop or the Openbox window manager. The LXQt desktop is pleasantly responsive and I like the new theme and colourful icons. The desktop seems set up to avoid distracting us; there are very few notifications and there were no indication of new software updates during my trial.
Hardware
I experimented with Lubuntu 18.10 in a virtual machine and on a desktop computer. When running on the desktop computer, Lubuntu performed well. All my hardware was detected, the desktop was always responsive and Lubuntu was stable throughout my trial.
When running in VirtualBox, Lubuntu started off limiting my desktop resolution to 800x640 pixels. This could be adjusted in the display configuration module without requiring that I install any extra modules. After I sorted out my display's resolution, Lubuntu performed well in the virtual machine.
Lubuntu 18.10 required 280MB of memory when signed into LXQt, 55% more than the distribution needed to run LXDE. The new version of Lubuntu consumed 4.6GB of disk space with a fresh install, a full gigabyte more than the previous version.
Applications
Lubuntu 18.10 ships with software that is mostly part of the Qt family of applications. The application menu features the Firefox web browser, Qtransmission for downloading torrents, the Quassel IRC client and LibreOffice. The qpdfview PDF viewer is present along with the LXImage image viewer, and the FeatherPad text editor. We also find the K3b disc burning software, a calculator, archive manager and the oddly complicated QtPass password manager. Lubuntu ships with the qps process monitor and the PCmanFM-Qt file manager. Digging further we find the VLC multimedia player (I found no specific, dedicated music player). Like the previous version of Lubuntu, the distribution uses NetworkManager to set up network connections and features the systemd init software. Lubuntu 18.10 ships with version 4.18.0 of the Linux kernel.
Lubuntu 18.10 -- Browsing applications in the file manager
(full image size: 249kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I found the included programs generally worked well, were stable and did not offer any surprises. The exception was trying to play videos in VLC. Sometimes the player would crash trying to start a video, though other videos and music files played successfully.
Settings
We can access Lubuntu's settings through the application menu or through a settings panel. The panel is somewhat buried (it's three levels deep in the application menu), but it presents us with a fairly easy and familiar way to adjust the desktop. Most of the configuration modules work as we might expect, making it pretty straight forward to change the wallpaper, keyboard short-cuts and and notifications. There is also a handy tool for setting up printers.
Lubuntu 18.10 -- The settings panel
(full image size: 414kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
There were two tools which stood out as being less user friendly. The Alternative Applications module shows application types and lists which application is being used. It seems like an overly complex way to explore this information and redundant since the settings panel also has a complex File Associations module. I call it complex as the File Associations module doesn't assign a group of file types (such as text or videos) to an application, instead it assigns individual file extensions to programs. This is very flexible, but may require changing dozens of entries to get all text or media files to open in the same program.
The user account manager was mostly a positive experience for me and I like how simple it is to use. However, the user manager shows two system accounts (systemd-coredump and nobody) mixed in with regular user accounts. I suspect this may confuse people and possibly result in these system accounts getting removed.
Software management
Lubuntu 18.10 ships with two software managers. The first is Discover, an application manager which shows links for available applications, installed items and settings down the left side of the window. On the right we see programs (or settings) in the selected section. When exploring available programs we can see a program's name and icon listed on the right side of the window and we can click an entry to see more information and a screenshot.
I ran into a few problems with Discover. While the software manager worked fairly smoothly on my desktop computer, it was terribly slow when running in a virtual machine. Scrolling through a list of applications could take over ten seconds to refresh the display and Discover would appear to lock-up when switching to a new screen or loading application information. At one point I installed the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) and later found there were two entries for GIMP in the Installed section. The two GIMP packages had different description pages. At first I thought one might be a portable package, but Flatpak was not enabled on my system and a check showed no Snap packages had been installed. The low level dpkg package manager showed only one copy of GIMP was installed, so I have no explanation for where the second copy of GIMP came from in Discover's listing.
Lubuntu 18.10 -- Multiple GIMP entries in Discover
(full image size: 133kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The second software manager is the Muon package manager. Muon has a similar layout with two panes (categories on the left, programs on the right), but uses fewer visual elements and less space for entries. Muon focuses on low level packages and does not display as much information; its listings are more compact. Muon feels similar to Synaptic in its abilities and style, but with an interface that feels a bit more colourful and modern.
Both software managers offer to update packages, if new versions are available.
Lubuntu 18.10 -- The Muon package manager
(full image size: 465kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusions
I have mixed feelings about this release of Lubuntu. On the one hand most of the features worked well. The distribution was easy to install, I liked the theme, and the operating system is pretty easy to use. There were a few aspects I didn't like, usually programs or settings modules I felt were overly complex or confusing compared to their counterparts on other distributions. For the most part though, Lubuntu does a nice job of being a capable, relatively lightweight distribution.
Lubuntu 18.10 does not exist in a vacuum and I am mostly interested in how the new version compares to Lubuntu 18.04 - what is better and what is worse? In my opinion, the new, higher contrast theme is nicer to look at. I enjoyed the look of LXQt more than the older LXDE. Performance was in the same range on my machines, though I think 18.04 booted a little faster.
Some of the different programs I liked and some I did not. I think replacing AbiWord and Gnumeric with LibreOffice is a practical move. The latter might be heavier, but I think more people will be familiar with it and enjoy the greater range of features. On the other hand, swapping out GNOME Software for Discover feels like a step backwards. The former is faster, has a nicer interface (in my opinion) and I did not run into duplicate entries in the GNOME Software tool. Discover feels like a poorer tool, introduced for toolkit purity rather than capability.
For the most part I felt the switch from GTK+ to Qt applications went smoothly. We end up with most of the same capabilities and sometimes, as with Transmission, the same underlying software exists in the background.
One concern I had was with the increase in resource requirements in Lubuntu 18.10. Whether this is a big deal or not will depend a lot on how you look at the numbers. Lubuntu 18.10 has an ISO that is 60% larger than the one for 18.04. This seems like a big increase, but unless the user is on a dial-up Internet connection the download is not going to make a big difference and it is something we only need to do once.
Once installed, Lubuntu 18.10 uses up a full gigabyte more disk space. That is a big jump, proportionately, but it is unlikely to negatively affect anyone with a computer made in the past 15 years. So it looks like a step in the wrong direction, but probably not a practical issue.
I feel the same way about memory consumption. The new version is 55% heavier than the previous release in RAM. This is not ideal, but memory usage was still only 280MB. So, relatively speaking, Lubuntu's memory usage ballooned remarkably from one release to the next.However, Lubuntu's expanded resource consumption still makes it lighter than most other desktop Linux distributions, and the difference is roughly the equivalent of opening a few extra browser tabs. In short, when it comes to resources, Lubuntu is using more than before, but still so little that no computer made in the past decade or more will be impacted by the difference.
On the whole, I think the transition from LXDE to LXQt has gone smoothly. There are a few choices I didn't like, and a few I did, but mostly the changes were minor. I think most people will be able to make the leap between the two desktops fairly easily. I think a few settings modules still need polish and I'd like to see Discover replaced with just about any other modern software manager, but otherwise this felt like a graceful (and mostly positive) move from 18.04 to 18.10 and from LXDE to LXQt.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
* * * * *
Visitor supplied rating
Lubuntu has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.8/10 from 65 review(s).
Have you used Lubuntu? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Haiku hardware compatibility list, Solus founder out of contact, a potential new GNU/Linux phone, explaining Mir 1.0, IBM buying Red Hat
The Haiku operating system is a lightweight, highly responsive desktop operating system and the spiritual successor to BeOS from the 1990s. The Haiku project recently released its first beta and, while the Haiku developers have made great progress, some users still struggle with hardware compatibility. Some users are assembling a list of compatible computers and hardware that will run Haiku and posting their findings on the project's forum. "Up to now, I've been storing the new responses to a simple Google page called 'Hardware List for Haiku 10' which I don't think anyone can effectively see or use that well, and if people are taking the time to test and contribute, it'd be nice if they can see their efforts. So, as of today, I'd actually like to also put that info here and make this a Wiki page so that anyone curious what computer models are compatible with Haiku can freely take a look..." The current list can be found in this forum thread. The thread has been added to our hardware compatibility page to make it easier for our readers to find in the future.
* * * * *
A little over a year after the founder of Solus, Ikey Doherty, announced that he was leaving his job to work on Solus full-time using funds donated to the project, the Solus core team have reported they are no longer in contact with him. "Ikey reached out to us on September 7th and informing us that he was still not feeling well, but that he had paid the server up for another 30 days so that we wouldn't need to rush to finish the migration... To date, that was the last communication we or anyone in contact with us have received from Ikey."
The remaining Solus developers are working to regain control of the Solus infrastructure and accounts. They report they have been unable to get access to the Solus Patreon account and advise people funding the project to cease their Patreon donations for the time being. "Unfortunately, with Patreon's refusal to assist us, our only option is to kindly request that you immediately cease your donations to it. My personal advice would be to additionally contact Patreon for refunds and express your frustration to them for their unwillingness to assist us. We can only hope that they decide to grant us access to the funds or account. I deeply apologize that we did not take the necessary measures earlier to ensure this account was accessible to the entire team. Moving forward, we will not be accepting any monetary donations until we have measures in place to ensure it can be accessed by the entire team at any point in time." Further details can be found in the Solus blog post. The Void team faced a similar issue earlier this year.
* * * * *
Pine64 is a company which makes and sells an ARM-based laptop called the Pinebook. It's FOSS has published an article reporting that the company is looking at developing a smart phone running GNU/Linux software and the Plasma user interface. "I contacted Pine64 team and TL Lim, founder of Pine64, confirmed the plans for a Linux-based smartphone and tablet. These devices are called PinePhone and PineTab. Lim revealed some information about PinePhone development. The first PinePhone developer kit will be given to selected developers for free on November 1. This is a combo kit of PINE A64 baseboard + SOPine module + 7″ Touch Screen Display + Camera + Wifi/BT + Playbox enclosure + Lithium-Ion battery case + LTE cat 4 USB dongle. This combo kit will allow developers to jump start PinePhone development. The Pine A64 platform already has a mainline Linux OS build thanks to the Pine64 community and support [from] KDE neon."
* * * * *
Earlier this year the Mir team published version 1.0 of their display software. Following the announcement the developers realized Mir is still an often-misunderstood piece of technology. A post on the Ubuntu Community boards provides an overview of X11, Wayland, and Mir and how they relate to each other. "We've recently (OK, recently-ish) released Mir 1.0 with usable Wayland support. Yay! That brought a bunch of publicity, including on LWN. Some of the comments there and elsewhere betray a misunderstanding about what Wayland is (and is not), and this still occasionally comes up in #wayland, so I'll dust off an old blog post, polish up the rusty bits, and see if I can make this clearer for people again!"
* * * * *
The weekend brought some significant news from Red Hat, the world's largest commercial Linux company. Red Hat is being purchased by IBM: "Today, one of the largest enterprise players on the planet has agreed to take open source and Red Hat even further. By joining IBM, Red Hat can deliver even more open source innovation to customers at a larger scale. Importantly, IBM has been a long time and great partner of ours, dating back to when they made a significant early investment in Linux and then became one of the first hardware platform partners to package and bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux to their customers."
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Limit application access to specific users
Blocking-access-for-some asks: Is there a way to password protect applications so that each user needs to put in a password to run, for example, Chrome?
DistroWatch answers: Yes, technically it is possible to put blocks in place which would require the user to put in a password in order to run an application. There are tools such as sudo and doas which are designed to grant temporary permission to run a program if the user can input the right password. However, for this to work you would need to first block users from running the program, then configure special entries in the sudo or doas configuration file for them. You may need to set up new accounts to handle application-specific information. It turns into a bit of a configuration mess.
I suspect what you are trying to do is set up a shared computer so that only certain users can run certain programs. For example, on a shared family computer you might want just the parents/guardians to be able to run a web browser while the children are limited to using other programs.
If this is the case there is a relatively easy way to limit access to certain programs to a group of people. Then only users in that group will be able to run the program and everyone else will be blocked. The user needs their password to sign in, but once they are logged in, they will automatically have access to run certain applications, or be denied from running other applications.
To accomplish this we need to do three things:
- Create a new user group.
- Add privileged users to the new group.
- Change the permissions of the program to be exclusive to the new group.
On most distribution we can create a new group, which I will call parents, by using the addgroup command:
sudo addgroup parents
Next we add each person we want to be able to run the program into the parents group. In this case, I'm going to assume their names are Bob and Alice. This takes multiple commands, one for each user.
sudo adduser alice parents
sudo adduser bob parents
Now we have Alice and Bob in the parents group. Anyone else on the system is not considered a parent. Our next step is to change the permissions of the program so that only the administrator and members of the parents group can run it. In the following example, I'm going to use the Chrome browser as the target program.
sudo chown root:parents /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable
sudo chmod 750 /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable
The first line changes ownership of the program so that it is owned by the administrator (root), and it is associated with the parents group. The second line allows root to do anything with the program (such as run, upgrade or remove it). The parents are allowed to read the program into memory and run it. Anyone else gets no access and cannot run or change the application.
The next time Alice and Bob sign into their accounts they will be able to run Chrome, but no one else will. You can do this with as many programs as you like, once the special group (parents in this case) has been created.
A word of warning with this method: your package manager may change the ownership of files the next time an upgrade for the application becomes available. If this happens you will need to re-run the last two commands in the above tutorial to get the proper permissions back.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
OpenIndiana 2018.10
Alexander Pyhalov has announced the release of OpenIndiana 2018.10, a new snapshot of the project's open-source operating system built from the ashes of Oracle's defunct OpenSolaris. This version updates the MATE desktop and most other applications to newer versions and provides various improvements to the Illumos kernel: "We have released a new OpenIndiana 'Hipster' snapshot 2018.10. The noticeable changes: MATE desktop was updated to 1.20; Python 3.5 was added, a lot of Python modules are now delivered for 3.5 Python version in addition to 2.7 and 3.4; Image Packaging System (IPS) has received a lot of updates from OmniOS CE IPS and Solaris IPS; KVM zone brand now allows you to manage your KVM VMs as Illumos zones; several new compilers were added, including GCC 8 (with patches necessary to build Illumos) and Rust 1.29; many components were migrated to 64-bit only, most newly-added software defaults to 64-bit; due to recent security fixes compatibilty with some Solaris applications is broken, the most important one is VirtualBox." See the release announcement and the detailed release notes for further information.
OpenIndiana 2018.10 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution:1920x1080 pixels)
Tails 3.10.1
A new version of Tails has been released. Tails is a Debian-based live distribution whose goal is to help its users to browse the Internet anonymously and to circumvent censorship. This version is a standard security and bug-fix update: "Tails 3.10.1 is out. This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible. Upgrades and changes: hide the PIM option when unlocking VeraCrypt volumes because PIM won't be supported until Tails 4.0; rename the buttons in the confirmation dialog of Tails Installer to Install (or Upgrade) and Cancel to be less confusing; update Linux to 4.8, Tor Browser to 8.0.3, Thunderbird to 60.2.1. Fixed problems: prevent Tor Browser from leaking the language of the session; prevent Additional Software from asking to persist packages which are already configured as additional software; prevent Tails Installer from crashing when issuing an error message with international characters (non-ASCII); fix the VeraCrypt support for multiple encryption (cascades of ciphers); harden the configuration of sudo to prevent privilege escalation." Further information and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.
Primtux 4
PrimTux is a Debian-based distribution developed by a small team of school teachers and computer enthusiasts in the educational environment. The distribution's latest release is PrimTux 4 which unifies the look of the distribution's desktop environments across editions and makes it easier to customize the HandyMenu. The project's release announcement (in French) also reports updates to the parental controls. A translation of the announcement reads: "e2guardian replaces DansGuardian, privoxy replaces tinyproxy. The same browser is used for all because the filtering is done at the user level in transparent mode, the HTTPS traffic is filtered, time slots of use can be applied. In this case, a multicore processor is recommended. DansGuardian and tinyproxy are used, the HTTPS is filtered by the proxy. Desktop uniformity: all versions of PrimTux have the same desktops."
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 1,089
- Total data uploaded: 21.7TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Lubuntu's switch to LXQt
In this week's review of Lubuntu we talked about the distribution switching out their LXDE desktop for LXQt. The change not only affects some of the tools being shipped with the distribution, but also the amount of resources Lubuntu requires.
We would like to hear what our readers think about this change. Is it a good move for Lubuntu, or do you prefer the old LXDE desktop and associated applications?
You can see the results of our previous poll on running ARM-powered computers in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Lubuntu switching to LXQt
| I prefer the switch to LXQt: | 470 (34%) |
| I preferred the LXDE desktop: | 396 (29%) |
| I have no preference: | 507 (37%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Distributions added to waiting list
- Open Secure-K OS. Open Secure-K OS is a live, Debian-based operating system. It is designed to be run from a USB thumb drive and runs the GNOME desktop.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 5 November 2018. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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LinuxInstall.org Project
LinuxInstall was a distribution based on Red Hat Linux 8.0 with personal desktop packages (Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice); latest Kernel; latest software updates; auto hardware detection; auto root account creation; auto hard drive Partitioning; auto network setup using DHCP; auto package selection; no questions asked during installation; completely automated installation done in 15 minutes and best of all, it's all in ONE CD!
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