 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 855, 2 March 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Most people are less concerned with what operating system they are running than they are with which applications their system can run and how they can go about getting additional applications. This makes the selection of pre-installed software and desktop environments important and often heavily influences the choices people make when selecting a distribution. In our Questions and Answers section this week we talk about finding distributions which come with specific web browsers and desktop environments. Then, in our News section, we talk about the Ubuntu team changing how some default applications are packaged, swapping out Snap bundles for Deb packages. We also cover openSUSE's progress toward a new stable release of the distribution's Leap edition and Arch Linux gaining a new Project Leader. First though we share a review of the Solus distribution, a rolling release project which is available with four different desktop editions. One of these desktops is the custom-made Budgie desktop environment and Joshua Allen Holm covers its features in his review. In our Opinion Poll we ask which of the Solus desktop editions appeals the most. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Solus 4.1 "Fortitude"
- News: Arch Linux under new leadership, openSUSE's Leap edition nears stable release, Ubuntu swaps out calculator Snap package
- Questions and answers: Finding just the right software
- Released last week: Manjaro Linux 19.0, IPFire 2.25 Core 141, Android-x86 9.0-r1
- Torrent corner: Absolute, Android-x86, GhostBSD, IPFire, KaOS, KDE neon, MakuluLinux, Manjaro, Nitrux, OpenMediaVault, Raspberry Digital Signage, SystemRescueCd
- Opinion poll: Favourite Solus desktop edition
- New distributions: Linux Kamarada, Slint
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (13MB) and MP3 (10MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm) |
Solus 4.1 "Fortitude"
Solus is desktop-focused distribution that is not based on any other distribution. Many of the packages used in this distribution will be familiar, but instead of using APT, DNF, or one of the other common alternatives, Solus uses their own eopkg package manager, which is a fork of the PiSi package manager, and one of the desktop environments available for Solus is Budgie, which is developed by/for Solus.
There are four different images available to download for Solus 4.1 "Fortitude": Budgie, GNOME, MATE, and Plasma. The Budgie and Plasma images are 1.8GB. The MATE image is slightly smaller at 1.7GB and the GNOME image slightly larger at 1.9GB. Each image provides a live desktop environment and installer that installs Solus with the desktop environment that the image is focused on.
Solus 4.1 -- The live Budgie desktop
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
For this review I selected the Solus 4.1 image that has the Budgie desktop environment. I began by downloading the ISO and copying to a flash drive. I rebooted the computer and found that I had to turn off Secure Boot before I could boot from the image, but once I did that, Solus started very quickly from my USB 3.0 flash drive. Once I verified that all my hardware was functioning normally, I moved on to the next step and launched the installer.
Installing Solus
Solus uses an installer that they package under the name os-installer. This installer provides all the standard options, so there should be no surprises for anyone who has installed any modern Linux distribution. One nice thing about the installer is that the steps are clearly listed in a sidebar, so it is easy to see how many steps are left in the process.
Solus 4.1 -- The installer
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I quickly worked my way through the various steps, which started with language, location, keyboard layout, and timezone options before dealing with disk partitioning, settings, and new user creation. Once all that was completed the actual installation started.
Installing Solus on my computer was fast, maybe not as fast as the Solus 4.1 release announcement brags about, but still very quick. Once that was done, I rebooted the computer and was very, very, very quickly at the login prompt; the Solus developers might have slightly oversold how quickly Solus installs (they claim that, thanks to their switch to zstd compression for the SquashFS images, copying files to the computer would be quicker than the time it takes to answer all the questions in the install wizard; the copying was fast, but not that fast), but the boot speed more than make up for that.
Budgie desktop environment
The Budgie desktop is based on GNOME 3 with several changes. The default Budgie layout features a single panel at the bottom of the screen. This panel has the same basic layout of the modern Windows desktop. On the left is an application menu and application shortcuts. On the right are controls for networking, notifications, battery, sound, Bluetooth, power off/reset/logout, time and date, and the shortcut to show the Raven panel.
Solus 4.1 -- Budgie desktop with application menu
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Raven panel pops out from the right side of the screen and by default contains two tabs: applets and notifications. The applets tab has a calendar, volume control, and more. The notification tab displays notifications from all applications. Basically, the Raven panel works very much like the same feature in recent version of Microsoft Windows.
Solus 4.1 -- Applets in Raven side panel
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Overall, Budgie takes GNOME 3 and turns it into something much closer to what Windows users would be used to. It is not a Windows clone exactly, or a KDE Plasma clone, but it provides a desktop experience much more in line with how those desktops work.
Solus 4.1 -- Budgie's desktop settings panel
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
One drawback, at least in my opinion, to Solus Budgie's customization is that the default dark theme is too dark. Maybe I am just getting old and my eyes do not work as well as they used to, but Solus's default dark reminds me of the all black ship in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that had black labels on black buttons and black indicator lights. Sometimes the contrast between a button and the window it is in is not very distinct. There is an option to turn off the dark theme in Budgie's settings, but it does not seem to work when using the default "Plata-Noir" widgets. Switching to plain "Plata" makes it so the switch toggles between a dark and light mode, and that widget's light mode is much easier on the eyes.
As nice as the Budgie desktop is, it is not without flaws. The Budgie Desktop Settings are not integrated with the GNOME 3 Settings application at all. This means that some settings are in one application, but other settings are located elsewhere. This is not too confusing, but it would be nice to have things tied together more. And while Solus's Budgie desktop uses a lot of GNOME applications, which would make this hard to do, it would be nice if there was more Budgie branding in place of the GNOME references, just for clarity. For example, the About link in the application menu, which opens the About panel in GNOME Settings identifies the distribution as "Solus 4.1 Fortitude" and mentions GNOME's version number (3.34.3), but there is no mention of Budgie at all. This makes it a little harder for people using a computer they did not set up themselves to figure out what they need to research in order to solve a problem. GNOME 3.34 instructions may, or may not, apply to Budgie.
Default software selection
Solus 4.1 comes preloaded with a decent selection of software. The default selection of software is sufficient for users who use their computers for web browsing, e-mail, and word processing. In addition to various accessories and utilities, most of which come from GNOME, Solus comes with Firefox, Thunderbird, HexChat, LibreOffice (Calc, Draw, Impress, and Writer, but not Base or Math), Rhythmbox, and GNOME MPV. The Linux kernel version the distribution runs on is 5.4.12. Nothing too extraordinary here, but the overall Solus experience brings all the component pieces together well.
The only bad thing about the default software selection is the use of GNOME MPV. With just the default packages installed, I could not get GNOME MPV to successfully play 1080p videos without the video immediately lagging. Hardware acceleration was not enabled, but passing the "-hwdec" option to MPV was not enough to fix the problem. In order to everything working properly, I had to install the libva-intel-driver package before the "--hwdec" option worked properly. The frustrating thing was that when I installed GNOME Videos (Totem), which is the first thing I tried to see if a different media player worked, it played videos flawlessly even though it did not need to install the package that I needed to get GNOME MPV to work. Solus comes with codecs that many other distributions do not ship by default (or at all), but has a default video player with extremely sub-par performance on modest hardware, which does not make a lot of sense to me.
Installing additional software
The default selection of software pre-installed in Solus is great, but there is a lot more software available to install. Software Center is the graphic tool for doing this, and it is excellent way to find packages and install updates. The Home tab shows categories of software that are further sub-divided into more specific categories. I found this really helped me discover what applications were available when I needed software that could perform a specific function, but did not have any specific application in mind. For when I knew exactly what I wanted the search function worked very quickly. There is also a "Third Party" tab that lists various popular third-party packages like GitKraken, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Skype, Slack, Spotify, Android Studio and several JetBrains IDEs. Overall, I very impressed with the software selection. I was even able to install RStudio from Software Center. On most distributions I have to download the RStudio Deb or RPM from the RStudio website and install it manually.
Solus 4.1 -- Third-party software in Software Center
(full image size: 129kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
On the command line, Solus uses eopkg to manage packages. There are a few differences, but for the most part eopkg works much like APT and YUM/DNF. I found the functionality available to be very good. The search and info options worked quickly and provided useful information. The "install" and "remove" commands worked as expected for packages that had no dependencies, but "autoremove" works better for packages with dependencies. Just using "remove" leaves unused dependencies in place, and "autoremove" removes the dependencies. There is also a "history" function that can display a log of transactions and rollback to earlier states. Because it is not exactly like other command line package managers, it took a little while to adjust to using eopkg, but once I had adjusted it was wonderful to use.
Solus also comes with Snap and Flatpak support pre-installed. There are no Snaps installed by default, but installing something with the snap command will install a package from the Snapcraft.io site. On the other hand, Flatpak comes with no repositories pre-configured, so heading over to Flathub and following the instructions there to enable the Flathub repository (or doing the same thing for some other repository) is necessary to make Flatpak support usable.
Final thoughts
With the exception of the issues I had with GNOME MPV not being able to play high definition videos on my computer without having to tweak a few things first, Solus 4.1 is a very polished distribution. Maybe users with more powerful hardware do not need to enable hardware decoding and install additional packages to make GNOME MPV work with high definition video without lagging, but the issues I had with video playback were my one major critique of the distribution. Everything else is well thought out and the default software selection is excellent. There are a few minor issues with some of the Budgie Desktop Settings application, but those are minor.
If you are looking for a desktop Linux that does its own thing instead of being yet another "Ubuntu plus a few extra packages" distribution, Solus is an excellent choice. The Budgie desktop environment and the eopkg tool are very good. I highly recommend this distribution as a general use desktop distribution for users of all levels of experience.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
Solus has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.5/10 from 194 review(s).
Have you used Solus? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Arch Linux under new leadership, openSUSE's Leap edition nears stable release, Ubuntu swaps out calculator Snap package
The Arch Linux team has been talking about how best to pick a leader to guide the project and, after some discussion, the developers have decided to elect new leaders for terms lasting two years. "In a team effort, the Arch Linux staff devised a new process for determining future leaders. From now on, leaders will be elected by the staff for a term length of two years. Details of this new process can be found here. In the first official vote with Levente Polyak (anthraxx), Gaetan Bisson (vesath), Giancarlo Razzolini (grazzolini), and Sven-Hendrik Haase (svenstaro) as candidates, and through 58 verified votes, a winner was chosen." Levente Polyak has been declared the new Arch Linux Project Leader. Congratulations, Polyak, and good luck!
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The openSUSE Leap edition is getting close to a final release. During its development cycle openSUSE Leap, version 15.2, is updated as a rolling release platform rather than publishing fixed alpha and beta snapshots. "There are no concrete milestones in the rolling development model. As bugs are fixed and new packages introduced or excluded, snapshots of the latest beta phase builds will be released once they pass openQA testing. After the gold master is released, the rolling development model will stop and maintenance and security updates will then be released for the new minor version of the Leap 15 series." The final, stable release of openSUSE 15.2 is expected to happen on May 7th, 2020.
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For the past few years the Ubuntu team has been encouraging people to use Snap packages, portable packages that are bundled with their dependencies. The Ubuntu developers have even replaced the Deb packages of some commonly installed applications, such as the Chromium web browser, with equivalent Snaps. The trend may be reversing though as a recent change to the upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 release replaces the Snap bundle for GNOME Calculator with its equivalent Deb package. Snap packages have been criticised for being larger than their Deb counterparts and slower to start, which makes some users disinclined to use them for desktop applications.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Finding just the right software
Looking-for-a-specific-browser asks: Is there a distro that ships with Chrome by default?
DistroWatch answers: Should you find yourself in a situation that specifically requires the Chrome web browser, and not a similar browser such as Chromium, then there are not a lot of distributions which ship with Chrome installed by default. Off the top of my head I think deepin and Q4OS do. If you are open to running Chromium in place of Chrome, then you can find distributions that include the open source browser on our Search page.
Typically it is fairly straight forward to add a new browser to the system once the operating system is installed so the default browser is not usually a deciding factor, which makes me think you may be working in an environment where you cannot install new software. If that is the case then you may want to look at Endless OS too as it offers large editions with lots of software for off-line use and ships with (I believe) Chromium as the default browser.
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Seeking-older-packages asks: Are there any distros or third-party repositories that still offer KDE 4? I cannot stand using KDE 5.
DistroWatch answers: While there are a lot of changes behind the scenes and some new features, the look and behaviour of KDE 5 should probably not be all that different from what you are used to when running KDE 4. If it is, then I suspect you can adjust KDE 5 to act like the older version of the desktop you are used to by changing the theme and colours in the System Settings panel. KDE Plasma is, if nothing else, amazingly flexible and can be configured to look and act very differently if its defaults are not to your liking.
Getting back to the original question, not many distributions still offer KDE 4 packages as it is not being worked on anymore upstream. I think Slackware 14.2 might be one of the last supported distributions to offer KDE 4 packages. Debian 8 "Jessie" shipped with KDE 4, but it only receives a few more months of official support. The CentOS 6.10 release is similarly close to the end of its supported life, but it includes KDE 4 packages.
If you crave even older versions of the KDE desktop, Q4OS ships with the Trinity desktop, which is a fork of KDE3. That may be going back to an older generation of desktop than you want, but it is still supported.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
IPFire 2.25 Core 141
IPFire is an independent Linux distribution designed with firewalls and routers in mind and features a web-based interface for easy remote administration. The project's latest release updates several base packages and reworks DNS lookups. "IPFire is a modern distribution as we change and update many essential system components regularly. That allows us to keep you safe, support new features and of course be fast by taking advantage of modern hardware. In this update, we have rebased the system on GCC 9 and added support for Go and Rust. We have included Python 3 to the base system and deprecated Python 2 which is out of support by now. Not everything has been converted to use Python 3 yet, but we will hopefully soon be able to drop support for Python 2 altogether. Unfortunately the system is growing larger and larger with every update. Software in general is quite bloated although we are trying our best to keep IPFire as small as possible. On systems that have a 2GB root partition and many add-ons installed, disk space might be running out. This update clears a lot of files that are no longer needed." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Manjaro Linux 19.0
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 19.0, the latest stable build of the project's rolling-release distribution originally forked from Arch Linux: "We are happy to publish another stable release of Manjaro Linux, named 'Kyria'. The Xfce edition remains our flagship offering and has received the attention it deserves. Only a few can claim to offer such a polished, integrated and leading-edge Xfce experience. With this release we ship Xfce 4.14 and have mostly focused on polishing the user experience with the desktop and window manager. Also we have switched to a new theme called 'Matcha'. A new Display-Profiles feature allows you to store one or more profiles for your preferred display configuration. We also have implemented auto-application of profiles when new displays are connected. Our KDE edition provides the powerful, mature and feature-rich Plasma 5.17 desktop environment with a unique look-and-feel, which we completely re-designed for this release." Read the full release announcement for further details.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Android-x86 9.0-r1
Version 9.0 of Android-x86, an unofficial port of Google's Android to standard computers using the x86 architecture, has been released. This version is based on Android "Pie": "The Android-x86 project is glad to announce the 9.0-r1 release to the public. This is the first stable release for Android-x86 9.0 (pie-x86). The 9.0-r1 release is based on the latest Android 9.0.0 Pie release (android-9.0.0_r53). The features include: support both 64-bit and 32-bit kernel and userspace with latest LTS kernel 4.19.105; support OpenGL ES 3.x hardware acceleration for Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and QEMU (virgl) by Mesa 19.3.4; support OpenGL ES 2.0 via SwiftShader for software rendering on unsupported GPU devices; support hardware accelerated codecs on devices with Intel HD and G45 graphics family; support secure booting from UEFI and installing to UEFI disk; a text-based GUI installer; add theme support to GRUB-EFI; support multi-touch, audio, WiFi, Bluetooth, sensors, camera and Ethernet (DHCP only); simulate WiFi adapter on devices with Ethernet only to increase app compatibility; auto-mount external USB drive and SD card...." See the detailed release notes for more information. The default ISO images come with Linux kernel 4.19, but there is also a separate image (k49) that uses the 4.9 version of the Linux kernel.
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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: 1,848
- Total data uploaded: 30.6TB
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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) |
Favourite Solus desktop edition
Our Feature Story this week talked about the Solus distribution, an independent, rolling release project. Solus is available in four editions, including one featuring the custom-made Budgie desktop. Which edition of Solus is your favourite?
You can see the results of our previous poll on Void's unusual features in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Favourite Solus edition
| Budgie: | 216 (15%) |
| GNOME: | 48 (3%) |
| KDE Plasma: | 151 (10%) |
| MATE: | 113 (8%) |
| No preference: | 12 (1%) |
| I do not use Solus: | 903 (63%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
Distributions added to waiting list
- Linux Kamarada. Linux Kamarada is a Brazilian distribution based on openSUSE's Leap edition which features the GNOME desktop environment.
- Slint. Slint is a Slackware-based distribution which offers multi-language support. Slint is accessible to visually impaired users, with speech and with a braille device, from installation to usage in a console and in graphical environments.
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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, 9 March 2020. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Q4OS
Q4OS is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution designed to offer classic-style user interface (Trinity) and simple accessories, and to serve stable APIs for complex third-party applications, such as Google Chrome, VirtualBox and development tools. The system is also very useful for virtual cloud environments due to its very low hardware requirements.
Status: Active
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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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0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
