 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 879, 17 August 2020 |
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Welcome to this year's 33rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Slackware Linux, the world's oldest surviving distribution, has not published a new stable version in several years. However, some Slackware-based projects continue to publish new snapshots based on Slackware's active development branch. This week we open with a look at Zenwalk Linux, a desktop distribution that merges Slackware's reliable base with the Xfce interface and Flatpak. Read on to find out how Zenwalk performs. In our News section we discuss some bugs which were found and fixed in the Tails distribution along with KDE neon upgrading its base to Ubuntu 20.04 packages. Plus we outline some of the new features and improvements coming to elementary OS 6. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we discuss MINIX running on Intel Management Engine and what the licensing implications of this might be. Do you own a computer that quietly runs MINIX in the background? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Zenwalk Linux 15.0-200703a
- News: Tails addresses welcome screen bugs, KDE neon upgrades its base, elementary OS prepares for version 6
- Questions and answers: The MINIX license and Intel's Management Engine
- Released last week: Ubuntu 16.04.7, Ubuntu 18.04.5, GhostBSD 20.08.4, Finnix 121, CAELinux 2020
- Torrent corner: Archman, EasyOS, Endless OS, Finnix, GhostBSD, LibreELEC, MX Linux, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, Voyager Live
- Opinion poll: Do you run MINIX?
- New distributions: Auxtral GNU/Linux, Quibian OS
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Zenwalk Linux 15.0-200703a
Zenwalk Linux is a Slackware-based distribution with a focus on the desktop. The distribution publishes periodic snapshots which provide users with new install media. By default the distribution ships with the Xfce interface, though other desktops can be installed later. The project's latest release includes Xfce 4.14 and support for working with Flatpak packages. Following in the steps of Slackware, Zenwalk now includes pluggable authentication modules (PAM) support. The download for Zenwalk is a 1.1GB ISO file which appears to work on 64-bit (x86_64) computers only.
Booting from the Zenwalk media brings up a screen where we are asked to type in any desired boot parameters. We can press Enter to boot with default options or press F2 to see a list of flags we can use. Another prompt then appears asking if we would like to use the default (US) keyboard mapping or see a list of alternatives. We are then brought to a text console where the system displays tips on creating partitions (we are advised to set up two partitions, one for the operating system and one for swap space). The helpful message also offers tips for working around issues with low-memory systems and computers that do not have colour displays.
We are then shown a login prompt where we can sign in as the root user without a password. Once we sign in another helpful message lets us know we can use the cfdisk and fdisk programs to partition the hard drive. Running the setup program from the command line will launch Zenwalk's installer.
Installing
I did as I was told and used cfdisk to prepare two partitions, then ran the setup command. Zenwalk's installer uses text-based menus and is quite flexible in that we can perform configuration steps in the order of our choosing. There are a lot of initial steps to perform. Each of them worked properly for me and the installer generally provides some information and context for its prompts, which is nice. Still, there are a lot of menus to get through and I'd like to list them here.
We go through selecting our keyboard layout, picking which partition to use for swap, and which partition to use for the root filesystem. We are then asked to pick which filesystem to use with options including ext2/3/4, Btrfs, JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, and F2FS. We can then select where software packages are located, such as a DVD, USB drive, or a network location.
Next we can choose which groups of packages to install. These include a Base package, development libraries, system libraries, the X display server, X (desktop) applications, and a category called Zenwalk. I opted to install everything to keep things easy for me. Files are then copied to the hard drive while detailed progress information scrolls by. Afterwards we are asked if we want to install the LILO boot loader and, if so, where. We are then asked to specify our screen's resolution and optionally provide any custom boot parameters.
The installer continues, asking us which background and network services it should launch at boot time. Options include cron, network time synchronization, secure shell, Samba, OpenVPN, and SMART disk monitoring, among others. Next we choose our timezone from a list and pick which text editor to use by default (elvis, vim, and nvi are the available options). We then make up a username and password for ourselves and create a password for the root user. At this point the installer finishes and offers to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of Zenwalk booted to a graphical login screen. We are presented with two session options, Default and Xfce. Both of these load the Xfce desktop. Something I found curious about the login screen is that it has an unlabelled text field in the middle of the screen. For most computer users it will be clear that we are to type in our username in this field, but the field is not identified in any way. At first I thought Zenwalk was going for a minimal design, one without unnecessary text cluttering the screen. However, when we press Enter the next text field that appears is labelled as a password box. Having the password field labelled while the username field is not comes across as inconsistent rather than minimal.
Zenwalk 15.0-200703a -- The Xfce desktop and application menu
(full image size: 662kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Once we get signed into the Xfce desktop we find the session uses a dark theme. Most menus and programs use dark backgrounds. Some areas, such as the virtual terminal and application menu use transparent backgrounds, making text in these areas difficult to read. An exception to this dark theme is the desktop notification area. Notifications are displayed with yellow text on a bright pink background. Buttons in the notification area are purple. The theme name for these notifications is appropriately named "ZOMG PONIES!"
Zenwalk 15.0-200703a -- Displaying colourful notifications
(full image size: 416kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Xfce does not have a visible desktop panel. Instead the application menu appears to freely float in the upper-left corner of the screen while the system tray occupies the upper-right. Icons representing open windows are grouped together in the bottom-left corner of the display. This is an unusual layout, but one which I feel makes the desktop seem larger and more open as all elements are tucked away in corners.
Hardware
I began my trial by running Zenwalk in VirtualBox. The distribution worked smoothly in the virtual machine. Zenwalk booted and shutdown quickly, the Xfce desktop was highly responsive, and I could resize my session to use my computer's full screen resolution. When I switched to running Zenwalk on my workstation the distribution again worked quickly and provided a light, responsive interface. Most of my hardware worked as expected, though I ran into trouble getting my workstation's wireless card to work. Though I haven't had as much time with Zenwalk yet as I would like to trouble-shoot the issue, it looks to be a case of missing firmware for the machine's wireless card.
Zenwalk uses relatively few resources. A full install with all available packages takes up 5.8GB of disk space and, when logged into Xfce, the distribution consumed 330MB of memory.
Applications
Zenwalk's application menu has two panes with buttons along the top of the menu to sign us out or shutdown the computer. The two panes place categories of software to the right and specific launchers in a category to the left.
The distribution ships with the Chromium web browser and Thunar file manager. We are also treated to the Transmission bittorrent client, gFTP for transferring files between computers, and the MPV media player with a full range of codecs.
The GNU Image Manipulation Program is included along with the Grsync file synchronization/backup software, and GParted for managing disks. The Htop system monitor is installed for us along with both the Clang and GNU compilers. I found the sudo authentication software is installed, though no users are able to use sudo in the default configuration. Until we get sudo set up we can use su to perform tasks as the administrator.
Zenwalk uses the SysV init software and runs on version 5.4 of the Linux kernel.
While I was browsing through Zenwalk's application menu I ran into a few quirks. Not bugs, but little issues that slowed me down. For example, in the Favourites category of the menu there are two launchers. The first is called Web Browser and it launches Chromium. The second is called Files and it brings up a window asking us to select which file manager we want to use. However, there is only one file manager, Thunar, available which makes this prompt redundant.
Zenwalk 15.0-200703a -- The Xfce terminal and its settings
(full image size: 465kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Another thing I noticed was that searching for "terminal" in the menu would bring up three results: Terminal Emulator which would launch the Xfce virtual terminal; Xfce Terminal which would also launch the virtual terminal; and a second (seemingly identical) Xfce Terminal entry which would open settings related to the terminal. As far as I can tell there isn't any way to tell the two Xfce Terminal entries apart other than to try launching them.
In a similar vein there are two similar entries called Settings Editor and Settings Manager. Both of these tools help us customize the Xfce desktop, though in entirely different ways. Most people will probably want to use the Settings Manager which provides a friendly configuration panel. The Editor displays a more registry-style interface to tweak options.
Zenwalk 15.0-200703a -- The settings panel and Settings Editor
(full image size: 431kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Last, though perhaps most visible, I noticed when I moved application windows close to the top of the screen, even if they were not on the left-hand side, the application menu would disappear. The menu was still there - I could still click on the invisible button to bring up the menu, but I could not see it until I moved the window lower or switched to another open application.
Software management
Zenwalk is coy about software management. Searching the application menu for terms such as "software" or "package" yielded no results. However, I did find an entry for Flatpak Hub which opens a graphical application (I think web-app would be more accurate) and displays software bundles available on Flathub.
The Flatpak Hub tool shows us categories of packages we can browse and each item is displayed with its name, icon, and a short description. We can click on an item to see a more complete description of the software along with a screenshot. It all looks very nice, however there is a significant problem. Or rather a few problems with this software management utility.
Zenwalk 15.0-200703a -- The Flatpak Hub software portal
(full image size: 293kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
The first is that clicking the Install button on any bundle's page does nothing. Nothing is downloaded and there is no error message telling us why. I found out, by using the command line flatpak tool that the problem is there are no Flatpak repositories enabled by default on Zenwalk. This seems strange as I'm not sure why the developers would go to the trouble of installing Flatpak and adding a graphical front-end to access Flathub while not enabling the Flathub repository.
The second issue is that the web-app provides a link we can click to see instructions on how to enable the Flathub repository on our distribution. This seems like good news, except that the instructions cover enabling Flathub on many distributions, but not on Zenwalk or Slackware. In other words the main graphical package tool does not work and its instructions for enabling it do not appear to be applicable to the distribution we are running. This can be worked around, but the steps will not be obvious to anyone not familiar with manually setting up Flatpak repositories from the command line.
There doesn't appear to be any graphical low-level package manager for Zenwalk. However, there is a command line package manager called netpkg. The netpkg tool has an unusual syntax and no manual page, which is not ideal. However, I found running "netpkg --help" on the command line would provide a brief list of commands we can use to install and update software.
The netpkg tool is further unusual in that it can connect to multiple repositories, to find software in each one, and it asks us which one it should use when performing actions. This means we might not only need to know the name of a package we want, but which repository it is in as netpkg appears to only access one server at a time.
To its credit, the netpkg tool worked when I wanted to upgrade or install software. However, it does not resolve software dependencies. This means if we install larger or graphical applications we may end up manually hunting down its dependencies and installing them afterwards. This is probably why Zenwalk has included Flatpak because adding software to the distribution using netpkg is a lot more time consuming that doing the same task under most other distributions.
Zenwalk 15.0-200703a -- Using netpkg in the terminal
(full image size: 785kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Conclusions
In some ways my experiences with the Zenwalk system installer and the distribution's netpkg software manager largely reflected my overall view of the distribution. These tools, like Zenwalk in general, cover basic needs and perform tasks quickly, but there are some rough edges and things take more steps to get working than on most other distributions.
Zenwalk covers the basics of functionality, but I found doing anything outside of that, particularly if it involved installing more software, took a long time and tended to require manual steps that most distributions would automate. Zenwalk's software tools don't work with multiple repositories seamlessly, and in the case of Flatpak Hub, the system is not set up with a repository at all. I also find the lack of dependency resolution at this point a strange omission. Not installing required dependencies automatically does not cut down on bloat, it just prevents software from working. In a similar vein, the system installer takes over twice as many steps to install as Linux Mint or Fedora, but does not offer us much additional useful customization.
Visually, in a lot of ways, Zenwalk is beautiful. I really like the layout and dark theme used by the Xfce desktop. However, the visual tone is inconsistent. Sometimes windows are dark, sometimes they are transparent. Sometimes the system looks sleek and modern, yet the notifications look like they were (to quote someone who saw me using Zenwalk) "designed by a hyper five year old." The login screen sometimes labels its input fields, and sometimes it does not. Sometimes the application menu disappears, other times it is visible and beautiful.
All of this is to say Zenwalk has some rough edges. Which is understandable, it is a development snapshot after all. However, I wonder if its classic-style base will be appealing to many users. Using text-based installers, console-based service management, and package management without dependency resolution all feel like legacies of the past at this point. They work, in their fashion, but require more manual effort on the part of the user without, in my opinion, much benefit for their minimalism. People who like Slackware and Xfce will probably appreciate Zenwalk, but I'm not sure people from outside the Slackware community will have a reason to try this distribution.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Zenwalk Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 3 review(s).
Have you used Zenwalk Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
Tails addresses welcome screen bugs, KDE neon upgrades its base, elementary OS prepares for version 6
The Tails project has a rapid release cycle which helps the distribution keep up with bugfixes and changing requirements in on-line security. This rapid cycle of new versions can also introduce new problems as it fixes others. The Tails July newsletter outlines a few issues that have appeared recently: "We started the month with Tails 4.8 and many users wrote to us because of problems with the Tails Welcome Screen: They had issues with administration passwords that had special characters. They could not access their persistent storage because changing the language on the Welcome Screen didn't change the keyboard layout as usual, although it claimed to do it. These two issues were very upsetting for the users, although had easy workarounds. They are fixed in Tails 4.9 (Apologies!)." The Tails project estimates that the distribution is booted approximately 30,700 times per day, based on the number of update checks performed by the distribution when it starts.
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The KDE neon project has updated its base platform from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 to take advantage of the upstream operating system's newer packages and long-term support. "KDE neon is our installable Linux with continuous integration and deployment. It's based on Ubuntu who had a new Long Term Support release recently so we've rebased it on Ubuntu 20.04 now. You should see a popup on your install in the next day or so. It'll ask you to make sure your system is up to date then it'll upgrade the base to 20.04 which takes a while to download and then another while to install. Afterwards it should look just the same because it's the same wonderful Plasma desktop." Detailed upgrade instructions are provided for existing KDE neon users.
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The elementary OS team has started testing features and live media for the upcoming launch of elementary OS 6. There are several new features planned for version 6, including multi-touch support and improved synchronization of items such as mail and calendars. "Major updates to communication and organization apps by leaning on the Evolution data server back-end. This is still early and currently requires setting up an account in Evolution until the Online Accounts component is completed, but is thanks in large part to work done upstream by Corentin Noël. These updates enable syncing of mail, calendar events, tasks, etc. in relevant apps with a wider variety of account providers. A major rewrite of Mail, leaning on Evolution data server instead of the custom Geary mail engine. The look and feel will be largely the same, but it has not reached feature parity yet." Further details can be found in the distribution's blog post.
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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) |
The MINIX license and Intel's Management Engine
Me-against-the-ME asks: I've read that the Intel ME is based on MINIX. Since MINIX is only free to use with copyright attribution and Intel ME is inaccessible, then doesn't Intel have to make their source code available? Why aren't they being sued for shipping MINIX in a black box in millions of computers?
DistroWatch answers: The Intel Management Engine (or Intel ME) is a special feature built into Intel processors which is designed to run autonomously from the rest of the machine. The Management Engine runs its own operating system and can continue to function even when the computer is shutdown, assuming the motherboard can still draw power. In theory Intel ME allows administrators to remotely control the computer, however there are a number of security and privacy concerns surrounding having a separate, always-on processor built into the hardware that is able to bypass the computer's build-in firewall.
One of the interesting footnotes to the Intel ME is that the hardware runs MINIX, or more likely a slightly modified version of MINIX. From a design perspective this makes a lot of sense. MINIX is a very tiny operating system that is designed to be highly reliable. The MINIX project does not change quickly meaning it is easy to keep up to date with changes in the MINIX technology and ecosystem. Given how common Intel processors are it seems likely MINIX is, in one sense, one of the most widely distributed operating systems in the world.
Many people in the open source community were unhappy about the fact Intel was shipping MINIX as part of what was widely regarded as an insecure backdoor into millions of the world's computers. However, despite the bad feelings this use of MINIX caused, there is arguably nothing about this situation which triggers a license violation.
The MINIX license is fairly permissive and not really designed to prevent distribution or specific uses. There are just four key requirements of the MINIX license. The first is focused on source code, which does not apply here. Intel was not distributing source code, just a running binary. The third clause prevents using the original developers and their names to endorse products, which has not been done. The fourth clause requires written permission if the license is to be changed, which also does not apply.
This leaves us with the second condition of the license: "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution." This would appear to be the only possible part of the license Intel could be accused of violating. Which means the question becomes whether the binary form of MINIX produces or includes a notification of the operating system's license. It probably does, unless Intel ripped out that part before shipping the Management Engine, and that seems unlikely.
The sticking point for some people is that most users never interact with Intel ME directly and therefore never see any output from it. At which point it becomes a bit of a philosophical question: Can we say the software includes its copyright notice if no one ever runs it directly and sees output from it? Some people may claim the software never prints its license anywhere for us to see it, therefore it is violation. However, I suspect this point could easily be countered by copying Intel ME's version of MINIX to another machine and running it there to confirm that, when accessed, the binary form does include the copyright notice.
In short, what Intel has done with MINIX may seem to be outside the spirit of the license, but not outside the letter of the law. We have seen similar situations with Linux. For example, when TiVo used the Linux kernel while locking down their hardware, a process now known as Tivoization. The behaviour was not in conflict with the license Linux was distributed under, it was just not a nice thing to do to the consumers who bought the product.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
GhostBSD 20.08.04
GhostBSD, a desktop operating system based on the development branch of FreeBSD has published a new version. The project now includes the option to automatically take filesystem snapshots (called boot environments) prior to performing package updates. This allows the administrator to recover in situations where package upgrades break the operating system or prevent it from booting. "I am happy to announce the availability of GhostBSD 20.08.04. This release comes with kernel, OS and software application updates. We updated the MATE desktop to 1.24.0. A new interesting feature is the boot environment backup before updates. Issue and Feature completed: Adding window to confirm changes to software on the system software-station. Change the release and dev version to yy.mm.dd. When upgrading, ask / help new user create a Boot Environment if one does not exist. Software Station: Columns should be resizeable. Disable user's ability to select 'check' button when the software is installing/uninstalling." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Finnix 121
Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian. The latest release migrates from Debian's Stable branch to Debian Testing and adds several new packages. "Today marks the release of Finnix 121, the live CD for system administrators. This release expands upon Finnix 120, and includes a number of fixes, new packages and new features. From the Finnix 121 release notes: switched back to building against Debian 'Testing'.... This release also removes the LILO boot loader, strips away some unnecessary programs, and fixes a number of bugs: "serial-getty consoles are now usable. Non-zero exit codes are now displayed in PS1. Added '0' command for easier access to keyboard configuration. GRUB is now being used for both BIOS and UEFI booting. Removed GRUB initial boot beep. Re-added shared per-user SSH agents. Fixed SSH remote access. Enabled zram swap compression, 50% of physical RAM; release ISO image layouts are again being optimized for CD-ROMs - this has no negative (or positive) effect when the ISO is written to a USB key, but speeds up CD-ROM booting." Further information can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
CAELinux 2020
Joël Cugnoni has announced the release of CAELinux 2020, a new version of the project's specialist distribution that features a collection of open-source tools designed for computer-aided engineering, based on Xubuntu 18.04: "I am happy to announce that a new CAELinux version is ready to download. CAELinux 2020 is based on Xubuntu 18.04 and, as usual, it is customized to offer many open-source simulation tools for stress analysis, thermal or fluid flow simulation and other physics, but it also contain a full range of mathematical modeling, graphic, design, CAD/CAM and prototyping software which makes it ideal for running a Fablab or a MakerSpace using purely open-source tools. CAELinux 2020 had many issues mostly related to the installer and live DVD creation or boot. The causes were related to the large size of the ISO image which could not be handled properly by most boot codes. As many software that we include become also much larger, we had to find a solution to keep proposing a full CAE workstation despite the usual 4 GB constrain on ISO images. We have now found a way to go past the barrier and still produce a valid ISO image." See the complete release announcement for further information and a list of new features.
Ubuntu 16.04.7, 18.04.5
The Ubuntu release team has announced the release of both Ubuntu 16.04.7 and 18.04.5. These releases offer up to date install media with package fixes rather than entirely new versions of the distribution. The new media includes fixes for the recent Boothole GRUB boot loader issue: "Similar to the 16.04.6 point release, 16.04.7 is a security-targeted release for the purpose of providing updated installation media which protects new installations from the recently discovered GRUB 2 vulnerabilities (USN-4432-1). Detailed information about USN-4432-1 can be found here." New 18.04.5 media is available for most community editions of Ubuntu, however just Ubuntu and Ubuntu Kylin have updated 16.04.7 media as this version is no longer covered under the three years of support most community editions offer. Further information can be found in the release announcements for 16.04.7 and 18.04.5.
MX Linux 19.2 "KDE"
The MX Linux project has announced the release of the distribution's first edition featuring the KDE Plasma desktop. The new version includes KDE Plasma 5.14.5 and ships with the familiar MX Tools collection of utilities: "MX-19.2 KDE is an Advanced Hardware Support (AHS) enabled 64-bit only version of MX featuring the KDE Plasma desktop. Applications utilizing Qt library frameworks are given a preference for inclusion on the ISO. This will be first officially supported MX/antiX family ISO utilizing the KDE Plasma desktop since the halting of the predecessor MEPIS project in 2013. MX-19.2 KDE includes the usual MX tools, antiX-live-usb-system, and snapshot technology that our users have come to expect from our standard flagship Xfce releases. Adding KDE Plasma to the existing Xfce/MX-fluxbox desktops will provide for a wider range user needs and wants." Further details and a list of known issues can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
MX Linux 19.2 "KDE" -- The Plasma desktop and application menu
(full image size: 315kB, resolution: 1360x768 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: 2,100
- Total data uploaded: 33.1TB
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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) |
Do you run MINIX?
In our Questions and Answers column we talked about the minimal MINIX operating system and how it has been used by Intel to run their Management Engine. Do you run MINIX on your computer, either intentionally, or as a result of having an Intel CPU? Let us know your thoughts about MINIX in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on being affected by the Boothole security patch in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you run MINIX?
| I run an install of MINIX: | 16 (1%) |
| I previously ran MINIX: | 108 (9%) |
| I probably run MINIX due to Intel ME: | 380 (32%) |
| I have not run MINIX: | 692 (58%) |
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| Website News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Auxtral GNU/Linux. Auxtral is a Debian-based distribution for users from Argentina. The distribution is available in Cinnamon and Xfce editions.
- Quibian OS. Quibian OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution. It is oriented to education, scientific research, robotics and software development.
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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, 24 August 2020. 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 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 | 
Aurora SPARC Linux
Aurora SPARC Linux was Red Hat-based Linux distribution ported to the Sun Microsystems' SPARC architecture. In November 2006 the distribution has become part of Fedora Secondary Architectures project.
Status: Discontinued
|
| Tips, Tricks, Q&As | | Tips and tricks: Command line tips - using ffmpeg, awk and renice |
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| Myths and misunderstandings: The value of version numbers |
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| Tips and tricks: Shell switching, battery charge, getting the system's IP address and dealing with stubborn processes |
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| Tips and tricks: Managing multimedia files |
| Questions and answers: Installing third-party software on distributions |
| Tips and tricks: Tools for rescuing the operating system and data files |
| Tips and tricks: Running the Linux-libre kernel |
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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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