 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 831, 9 September 2019 |
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Welcome to this year's 36th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are a lot of Linux distributions which strive to deliver features, ease of use, and customized desktop environments. There are a few, though not as many, which strive for strict standards compliance and flexibility. This week we begin with a look at a young project on the DistroWatch waiting list called Adélie Linux. The project is still in its beta stages, but already supports multiple CPU architectures and features the super fast APK package manager. Jesse Smith shares his observations on Adélie in our Feature Story. In our News section we talk about the Linux Mint team polishing their desktop's look, its icons, and especially its system tray. Plus we have an update on the PinePhone, a mobile device which is able to run KDE Plasma Mobile and UBports. We have more on the PinePhone's schedule and progress below along with a report from elementary OS on changes coming to the GNOME desktop and related packages. Then we share tips for working with the command line, including an example showing how to build more complex command line tools by stringing programs together. One of our examples explains how to find out which processes are consuming the most memory on a computer running Linux and, in our Opinion Poll, we ask which is the largest application in your computer's memory. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are thrilled to add FreedomBox, a Debian-based distribution for home servers, to our database. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Adélie Linux 1.0 Beta
- News: Linux Mint team polishes system tray, PinePhone coming soon with Plasma Mobile and UBports, elementary OS gives a preview of desktop features, Manjaro takes "the next step"
- Tips and Tricks: Command line tips - using ffmpeg, awk and renice
- Released last week: Condres OS 19.09, Tails 3.16, Kali Linux 2019.3
- Torrent corner: Arch, Archman, AUSTRUMI, Bluestar, Clonezilla, Condres, Container, GParted, IPFire, Kali, Septor, Tails
- Opinion poll: Largest process in memory
- New additions: FreedomBox
- New distributions: TTOS Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Adélie Linux 1.0 Beta
Adélie Linux is a young project which was recently added to the DistroWatch waiting list. The project strives for a minimal, clean and portable design that uses free software exclusively. The project's website describes Adélie as follows:
Adélie Linux is a free, libre operating environment based on the Linux kernel. We aim for POSIX compliance, compatibility with a wide variety of computers, and ease of use without sacrificing features, setting us apart from other Linux distributions.
Adélie uses the musl c library instead of the more commonly used GNU C Library. It also uses the classic SysV init software with the OpenRC service manager instead of the widely adopted systemd init suite. Adélie makes use of the APK package manager, which is very light and fast. APK is also used by Alpine Linux, though the two projects do not appear to share any specific code or utilities apart from the package manager.
As mentioned above, Adélie's website claims the project uses only libre software. This makes it possible to audit and modify any part of the operating system. Adélie also supports a wide range of CPU architectures, including: PPC, PPC64, ARM64, PMMX (i586), and x86_64. The distribution is available in two builds: Full and Live. Live is smaller and can download packages from the network during the installation. The Full edition includes all required packages, suitable for off-line installs. The Live edition for 64-bit x86_64 is a mere 128MB in size while Full is 321MB. Both are relatively small for a modern OS. I downloaded the Full edition for my trial.
The live media boots to a text console very quickly. Adélie displays login information for the root account and an unprivileged account called "live". Neither of these two accounts are password protected on the live media. When we sign in we are told we can get useful information by installing a handbook package (adelie-handbook) First we need to get on-line though as the network is not connected by default. Once on-line, I could not find any package called adelie-handbook or any package with "handbook" in the name.
Installing
According to the project's documentation, there is an installer planned for Adélie Linux, but it is not yet complete. The official documentation has an entry for installing the distribution, but it's mostly empty at the time of writing. This left me a bit lost as to how to get Adélie on my hard drive. Luckily, I found two resources, a mailing list post and a guide in the wiki which explains more steps, and includes a guide for installing a boot loader. Both explain how to set up Adélie on a free disk partition. First though we need to create the partition, which can be done with cfdisk, a utility which is available on the live media. We will also need to format the partition and connect to a network before starting the installation.
It takes a while to get through all the install steps since they each need to be typed manually and there is sometimes some translation to be done between the device names and locations in the guides and what we have available locally. In other words, trying to install Adélie manually is not for newcomers, it will take some experience and a strong comfort with working from the command line.
In the end, I was able to complete the steps and reboot the system. My new copy of Adélie booted to a command line where we can sign in with the root account or as a user we created during the set up process. The distribution connects to the local network automatically and we are all set to dive into what Adélie has to offer.
Early impressions
When we first sign into Adélie a banner appears on the console letting us know where we can find on-line documentation and we are given a URL to the project's bug tracker. Digging through the system I soon found Adélie ships with GNU core utilities and manual pages. There are no compilers or network services installed. The distribution runs on version 4.14 of the Linux kernel and uses a combination of SysV init and OpenRC to start and manage services.
The overall design of the distribution appears to focus on being lightweight and clean. Very little runs that is not needed and an effort appears to have been made to avoid larger technologies such as GNU's C library and systemd.
Hardware
I played with the distribution in VirtualBox, where Adélie performed well and without problems. I also tried using the operating system on a laptop. Adélie performed quickly on the laptop, but was unable to make use of the computer's wireless card, probably due to excluding non-free firmware from the install media.
In either environment, a fresh install of Adélie consumed 504MB of disk space and used a mere 26MB of RAM. Memory usage went up gradually over time as I added more services. However, even with a web server and OpenSSH running, Adélie still consumed less than 100MB of RAM.
Desktop environments
The Adélie documentation mentions there are several desktop environments we can install, though a few popular ones (such as GNOME and Cinnamon) are not packaged. I decided to try setting up the KDE Plasma desktop. Installing Plasma did not pull in display server packages and I ended up also installing the X.Org server package and X.Org drivers. We may also want to install a display manager to provide a login screen. After these steps were done I could not get a graphical environment to start. I asked members of the community about this, but so far have not come up with a solution or explanation as to why graphical sessions are not starting.
Shifting gears and deciding to use Adélie as a server distribution yielded better results. I was able to set up the OpenSSH service to allow remote logins and file transfers. I also installed Apache and PHP through the APK package manager. APK runs surprisingly fast and worked well. It is a terse package manager, but runs runs so quickly compared to other package managers I sometimes questioned whether it had done anything at all.
Later on I was able to install a compiler and some build tools. These toolsets are less robust than Debian's or Fedora's. By that I mean most mainstream distributions bundle compilers with other commonly used developer tools, which makes building small projects straight forward. Adélie does not bundle these extras and it means even very simple projects require us to hunt down extra include files and libraries. Still, I managed to build and run a few small projects.
Conclusions
At the moment Adélie Linux is still in its early stages. It doesn't have a system installer, the documentation still needs to be fleshed out, and it would probably benefit from having some editions with pre-installed desktop environments. There is still a ways to go before I would recommend it to people.
However, I think Adélie presents a lot of promise based on what is already in place. The website is unusually clear in its information and design, the distribution has a clear set of goals which promise a lean operating system with great performance running on multiple architectures. I also like that the developers are maintaining a clean, minimal design that requires very little memory and places more focus on being standards compliant than having a lot of features.
While Adélie doesn't share much technology with Alpine Linux, apart from the APK package manager, the two projects do feel a lot alike. Both are minimal, fast, use some alternative technologies, and will probably make excellent bases for containers and servers. Adélie may not be ready for the general public yet, but I like its design and am hopeful the remaining pieces will fall into place soon as I want to run it again once a few more features are implemented.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Mint team polishes the system tray, PinePhone coming soon with Plasma Mobile and UBports, elementary OS gives a preview of desktop features
The Linux Mint team is working on polishing the desktop experience for their users. In the project's monthly newsletter, a number of plans were presented, including improving the look of icons on HiDPI screens and polishing the system tray: "We also looked at Gtk.StatusIcon, which is the technology used by the system tray icons. They're not only blurry in HiDPI, they have a significant number of problems: They were designed with 16px icons in mind. They are rendered by the application, not by the applet. They rely on obsolete technology such as Gtk.Plug and Gtk.Socket which won't be around in the future or compatible with what's coming next (GTK4, Wayland etc.). This is something that isn't supported by GNOME and which we're lucky to still have in GTK3. Without exaggeration I think it's quite a miracle we even managed to have this in Cinnamon." The newsletter also mentions Compulab is working on a computer that ships with Linux Mint called the MintBox 3. The new MintBox will likely be released later this year.
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In a blog post titled The PinePhone Is Real & Shipping Soon, PINE64 announced that the PinePhone's hardware has been finalized and devices will begin shipping to developers in October 2019. After that, the team plans to make last minute adjustments and improvements and deliver their mobile phone to customers in the early months of 2020. "Developer pre-orders are now live and it won't be long before core enthusiasts get their hands on the PinePhone too. This is just the start of our journey with the PinePhone, but with both software and hardware progressing at Warp 10 speed I am confident that in early 2020 everyone interested in a Linux phone will be able to purchase one." The blog post includes pictures and videos of the PinePhone in operation, running UBports and KDE's Plasma Mobile.
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Members of the elementary OS team attended this year's GNOME User And Developer Conference (GUADEC). The conference gives developers a chance to show off what they are working on and plans for changes to the GNOME desktop and related technologies. Some of the key elements discussed on the elementary blog are enhanced Flatpak features and session management components being migrated from GNOME into systemd. "Red Hat and GNOME engineer Daiki Ueno shared future improvements to the 'secrets' API that manages things like passwords and encryption keys in GNOME, elementary OS, and other desktops. He focused specifically on the implications of sandboxing with Flatpak, and how a new version of the API could be designed for this more secure future. Much of the content was above my level of knowledge, but it was encouraging to see some of the remaining questions around Flatpak being actively worked on, and this is work that will benefit elementary OS in the future. Red Hat engineer Benjamin Berg and Canonical engineer Iain Lane shared their work with moving much of the session management out of GNOME Session and into systemd. This is an area we've begun exploring in elementary OS, but it was good to hear about their experiences, some cool side-effects, and issues they had to overcome."
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Finally, a piece of interesting news from the Manjaro Linux project as published over the weekend. As the popularity of the distribution continues to grow, the project leaders have decided to look into a way to sustain the distribution for the long term and to assure its survival, while maintaining its current structure and development model. The changes include setting up a non-profit foundation as well as a commercial company: "For some time, Philip has been investigating ways to secure the project in its current form and how to allow for activities which can't be undertaken as a 'hobby project', and, along with the rest of the team, a plan of action has been created. Most importantly: Manjaro itself is not changing and the project will continue to run in its current form. The two main changes are: 1. To transfer donation funds to a non-profit 'fiscal host 56' which will then accept and administer donations on the project's behalf. This secures the donations and makes their use transparent. 2. A new established company, Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, to enable full-time employment of maintainers and exploration of future commercial opportunities." See the full blog post for further information.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
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Command line tips - using ffmpeg, awk and renice
The Linux command line is a powerful tool for finding, manipulating and displaying information. This week let's look at some ways in which the command line can be used to our advantage.
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When it comes to dealing with video files, one of the most powerful tools in the Linux toolbox is FFmpeg. The ffmpeg program can convert one video format to another, extract the audio from a video file, and scale videos. Here are a few examples of ffmpeg in action.
First, to convert one video format to another, all we need to do is provide ffmpeg with the name of the original video file and the name of the new file. The program can figure out what format the new file should be in based on its extension. For instance, here we convert original-file.avi to new-file.mp4, adjusting its format in the process from AVI to MP4:
ffmpeg -i original-file.avi new-file.mp4
The "-i" flag tells ffmpeg the first file is the original (or input) file. The process for extracting the audio stream from a video file is exactly the same. We provide ffmpeg with the name of a video file (video.mp4 in this example) and it saves the audio to a new file, which we will call audio.mp3:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 audio.mp3
Sometimes a video file does not have the resolution we want. It may be too large, or too small, for our tastes. The ffmpeg program can resize a video file using the "-vf" flag and adding the ratio to scale. In the following example we get ffmpeg to scale down our original video file to have a width of just 640 pixels.
ffmpeg -i original-video.mp4 -vf scale=640:-1 smaller-video.mp4
The scale parameter can take a width and height value (640:-1 in this case). The first number is the width. The second value is the video's new height. In this case we specified the height to be "-1" which tells ffmpeg to decide the height of the new video for us, based on the file's original ratio. This avoids changing the width:height ratio when the video is scaled down.
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Now let's put together a more complex tool using a series of common command line programs. For instance, the ps program lists processes we are running. When modified by the "aux" flags, ps will display all running processes it can see on the system:
ps aux
Next, we can add the awk program to manage the output from ps. The awk program actually provides an entire scripting language we can use to view and manipulate data. Entire books have been written about awk and we will barely scratch the surface of what it can do today. For now, we will just use awk to display select fields of the ps output. The ps command on its own prints out eleven fields of data about processes. We want to narrow that down to show just the owner of the program, the program's process ID, the amount of RAM the program is using, and the name of the program. We can do that as follows, creating an awk mini-script that just prints desired fields. Here we print the first, second, sixth, and eleventh fields displayed by ps:
ps aux | awk '{print $1, $2, $6, $11}'
Now there are two problems with the output of this command. The first is there is a header across the top which indicates what each field is. This will get in the way later when we go to use the process data. We can ask awk to skip printing the header of each column by telling it to only print rows after the first one. The awk script keeps track of which row of data it is working on in the "NR" variables, so we add an "if" statement to awk and our new command looks like this:
ps aux | awk '{if (NR > 1) print $1, $2, $6, $11}'
Now the process list we get has no header at the top, the output is pure process-related data. Earlier I mentioned there are two problems with the output we need to fix. The first was removing the column headers. The second is that many of the processes listed have an indicated RAM usage of zero. These are generally kernel services which are not of interest to us. We can remove any lines that show zero RAM usage by checking to see if the RAM usage field (field #6 in this case) has a value of zero. Then we end up only printing rows where field #6 is not equal (!=) to zero:
ps aux | awk '{if ((NR > 1)&&($6!=0)) print $1, $2, $6, $11}'
The "&&" symbol means "and". In this case we are asking awk to print rows after the first row "NR > 1" and when field #6 is not equal to zero "$6!=0".
This gives us nice, clean process information with no kernel services included. At the moment the processes are ordered by process ID (PID), which is not particularly useful. What would be more helpful is if the data was sorted based on RAM usage. The sort command will do this for us. Here we tell sort to reorder the process list, arranging the information in order based on the third field (key 3, also known as k3). The data is numeric, so we need to specify the "-n" flag to sort:
ps aux | awk '{if ((NR > 1)&&($6!=0)) print $1, $2, $6, $11}' | sort -k3 -n
This puts the processes in order, from the least RAM-hungry process, to the most. Ideally, it would be better to see the processes consuming the highest amount of RAM first. We can do this by asking sort to reverse the order of the list using the "-r" flag:
ps aux | awk '{if ((NR > 1)&&($6!=0)) print $1, $2, $6, $11}' | sort -k3 -n -r
Now our list is organized and sorted, but there are a lot of entries in the process list. On my laptop the above command prints out over a hundred processes, most of them using relatively little RAM. Adding the head command at the end of our instructions will shorten the list, displaying only the top ten RAM-consuming processes on the system:
ps aux | awk '{if ((NR > 1)&&($6!=0)) print $1, $2, $6, $11}' | sort -k3 -n -r | head
The list now shows which processes are consuming the most RAM, how much memory is used by each process (listed in kilobytes), and who is running those hungry processes.
* * * * *
Often times when I am working from the command line I am performing actions which I want to have done quietly in the background. The time it takes to perform these commands is typically less important than making sure the scripts or programs I am running do not interfere with the performance of other applications I am running. One way to do this, as I have written before, is to prefix command lines with the nice program. For instance:
nice sort my-file
Typing "nice" in front of several commands in a row is repetitive and we may forget sometimes. One way to make sure each new command we run is assigned a nice value and runs with a lower priority is to give our command line shell itself a nice value. A nice value assigned to our shell is inherited by each program we run from that shell.
To assign a new nice value to a running Bash shell we can run renice and pass it the "$$" variable, which is short-hand for the process ID of the current shell. For instance, here I assign my Bash shell a nice value of 15 (the maximum on Linux is 19) insuring it, and future programs run from the shell, operate with a lower priority.
renice -n 15 $$
This should keep all future programs run from the command line out of our way and avoid impacting system performance.
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Additional tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Condres OS 19.09
The project's latest snapshot is Condres OS 19.09 which introduces the Condres Control Center. An effort has been made to support Snap and AppImage portable applications out of the box. "Today we are proud to release Condres OS 2019.09 with the flavours KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, and Condres Control Center. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts and a custom patched version of desktop and filesystem. KDE Plasma stands at version 5.16.4, while GNOME comes in at 3.32 and Xfce at 4.14, while Cinnamon comes in at 4.2 and MATE at 1.22.1. This release comes with the name 19.09. Important news regarding the release of this version which introduces native support for default Snap and AppImage applications. Some bugs regarding hplip that required the installation of the pyqt5 package have been fixed. Added multiple support to almost all PHP versions for those who develop websites in order to have greater compatibility with future versions. The control center now also supports printer management." Further details can be found in the release announcement.
Kali Linux 2019.3
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The project's latest snapshot is Kali Linux 2019.3 which includes updates kernel packages, improved ARM support and meta-packages for better control over which tools are installed in an environment. "We are pleased to announce that our third release of 2019, Kali Linux 2019.3, is available immediately for download. This release brings our kernel up to version 5.2.9, and includes various new features across the board with NetHunter, ARM and packages (plus the normal bugs fixes and updates)." The release announcement goes on to talk about wider ARM device support and a corrected Bluetooth configuration: "For ARM devices this release, we have added support for the Pinebook as well as the Gateworks Ventana machines. The Raspberry Pi kernel has been bumped to version 4.19.66, which includes support for all of the RAM on 64-bit versions of the Raspberry Pi 4. The Raspberry Pi Zero W has seen improvements as well. Bluetooth firmware that was accidentally dropped has been added back in, and the rc.local file has been fixed to properly stop dmesg spam from showing up on the first console. All of the Raspberry Pi images have had their /boot partition increased, which is required due to the size of the new kernel packages."
IPFire 2.23 Core 135
Michael Tremer has announced the available of a new release of IPFire, a Linux distribution often used on firewalls and routers. The distribution's latest release is IPFire 2.23 Core Update 135: "This is the official release announcement for IPFire 2.23 - Core Update 135, which is packed with a new kernel, various bug fixes and we recommend to install it as soon as possible. The IPFire Linux kernel has been rebased on 4.14.138 and various improvements have been added. Most notably, this kernel - once again - fixes CPU vulnerabilities. On x86_64, the effectiveness of KASLR has been improved which prevents attackers from executing exploits or injecting code. DNS: unbound has been improved so that it will take much less time to start up in case a DNS server is unavailable. Scripts that boot up IPFire have been improved, rewritten and cleaned up for a faster boot and they now handle some error cases better. Updated packages: dhcpcd 7.2.3, nettle 3.5.1, squid 4.8, tzdata 2019b." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Tails 3.16
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The product ships with several Internet applications, including web browser, IRC client, mail client and instant messenger, all pre-configured with security in mind and with all traffic anonymised. The project's latest release is Tails 3.16 which features updates to the Linux kernel and Tor Browser while removing some unnecessary components. "Changes and upgrades: Remove LibreOffice Math. You can install LibreOffice Math again using the Additional Software feature. Remove our predefined bookmarks in Tor Browser. Remove the predefined I2P and IRC accounts in Pidgin. Update Tor Browser to 8.5.5. Update Linux to 4.19.37-5, which fixes the SWAPGS variant of the Spectre vulnerability. Update most firmware packages. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.). Fixed problems: Fix opening the persistent storage of another Tails USB stick from the Files browser." Additional information can be found in the release announcement and changelog.
Archman GNU/Linux 2019-09
Archman GNU/Linux is an Arch Linux-based distribution featuring the Calamares system installer, Pamac package manager and a selection of pre-configured desktop environments. The just-released version 2019-09 comes with a customised Xfce 4.14: "In this release you will see a 70% centered panel at the bottom of the screen. With this panel's smart hiding feature, the entire screen will be available for use. We also grouped window tasks as icons only in the panel. We have made many other cosmetic changes. We set the Papirus icon set aside and decided to use the Surfn Arc icon set. In Archman Sample Files, we put information and visual files about Şanlıurfa - Lake With Fish (Balıklıgöl) which we introduced in this release. We've fixed many bugs which you detected in earlier releases. We have also considered your recommendations and we tried to include your suggestions in this release. As an alternative package installer, we have added TkPacman to Archman repositories and we recommend that you try it." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
Archman GNU/Linux 2019-09 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size 2.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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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: 1,596
- Total data uploaded: 27.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Largest process in memory
In this week's Tips and Tricks article we shared one method for finding out which processes are using the most RAM on a Linux distribution. We would like to hear from our readers which is the biggest memory consuming device on your computer? Is it your web browser, an e-mail client, media player, or an office suite? Let us know what your top RAM-consuming processes are in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on SELinux and AppArmor in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Largest process in memory
| Cimpiler/build service: | 36 (3%) |
| Document viewer/editor: | 3 (0%) |
| E-mail client: | 12 (1%) |
| Game: | 37 (3%) |
| Image editor: | 24 (2%) |
| Media player: | 12 (1%) |
| Office suite: | 13 (1%) |
| Virtual Machine: | 103 (9%) |
| Web browser: | 802 (71%) |
| X.Org/Wayland: | 24 (2%) |
| Other: | 57 (5%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
New projects added to database
FreedomBox
FreedomBox is a Debian-based distribution, primarily used as a server operating system for home users. FreedomBox supports point-n-click settings up a number of services ranging from a calendar or jabber server to a wiki or VPN through a web interface. Firewall, domain names, user accounts, backups, and Btrfs snapshots can also be managed through a simple web-based control centre.
FreedomBox 2019-07-10 -- Browsing a list of available web applications
(full image size: 652kB, resolution: 1237x1024 pixels)
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Distributions added to waiting list
- TTOS Linux. TTOS Linux is a Debian-based desktop distribution. The main edition features the KDE Plasma desktop, though other desktop environments are available. By default, open source software is used exclusively, but non-free repositories can be enabled.
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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, 16 September 2019. 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 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
arkOS
arkOS was a flavour of Arch Linux ARM, a lightweight Linux-based operating system, that runs on embedded devices and standalone servers. arkOS allows you to run websites, email accounts, social networking profiles from its graphical interface.
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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