 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 855, 2 March 2020 |
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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: 7.6/10 from 238 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 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Momonga Linux
Momonga Linux was a Japanese Linux distribution developed in a bazaar-style model by its developer community. The distribution's main features include secure default settings, strong support and usage of Ruby, easy handling and processing of electronic documents, packages for scientific and technical computations, an easily configurable installer, support for a large number of file systems, and selection of newest packages at the time of installation.
Status: Discontinued
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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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