 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 886, 5 October 2020 |
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Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the key components Linux users look at when selecting which distribution to run is the desktop environment. Some like the sleek simplicity of GNOME, others the flexibility of KDE Plasma, while others like the minimalism of LXDE. Another intriguing desktop choice is Deepin, a desktop interface that tries to offer an attractive interface with a familiar layout, and some custom utilities. This week we begin with a look at the deepin distribution and talk about its custom Deepin Desktop Environment. What do you think of the Deepin desktop, is it something you would like to run on your computers? Let us know if you are a Deepin Desktop Environment user in our Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss the challenges in keeping the Cinnamon desktop packages in Debian's repositories along with efforts to port Wayland-based interfaces to the NetBSD operating system. Plus we report on plans to compress Fedora's kernel firmware in order to save disk space and talk about SolydXK's leadership change. We also report on Linux Mint building its own Chromium package and new work going into the UBports installer, including the ability to support multiple operating systems on Volla mobile devices. Then, in our Questions and Answers column we explore what makes one implementation of the init software more appealing than another. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
deepin 20
deepin is a Debian-based distribution which develops and ships its own desktop interface and several desktop applications. The Deepin Desktop Environment is often praised for its appearance and the way it offers easy access to configuration options. The custom applications tend to be geared toward being simple and easy to navigate.
(I would like to say up front that, in an effort to avoid confusion, I will be referring to the distribution as a whole as "deepin" while the desktop interface will be "Deepin" or "Deepin desktop" in this review.)
The deepin 20 release announcement mentioned several new features and improvements to the distribution. Some of the highlights include changes to notifications, along with the ability to adjust (on a per application basis) which programs can display notifications, whether notifications appear on the lock screen, and if a sound should accompany notices.
The distribution offers multiple kernels with the 5.4 kernel being the default and 5.7 being available as an alternative. The distribution now includes a Device Manager utility to browse hardware information. Support for fingerprint recognition has also been added.
deepin 20 -- Getting a list of recent notifications
(full image size: 795kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
deepin now ships with a new application called Draw for simple drawing and image editing. There is a joint screen video and image capture tool and the Cheese webcam utility is included now by default.
Adding to the list of new features, the App Store can now install software updates and there is a User Feedback tool for reporting issues. Rounding out the list we find there is a voice recording app for note taking and a font manager utility. I will touch on these later. Meanwhile, details on these features can be found in the release notes.
deepin is available for 64-bit (x86_64) machines exclusively. Its ISO file is a 2.6GB Download. By default, booting from this media launches us straight into the system installer.
Installing
deepin uses a graphical installer which walks us through just a few steps. We are asked to select our preferred language and to accept the project's license agreement. Then we are asked if the installer should take over the whole disk or set up a partition on the disk. It seems as though the partitioning options are limited and I could only find a way to add one partition for the operating system. There may be a way to add other filesystems for users' home directories and swap, but if so it was not immediately clear. The installer then quickly copies its packages to the hard drive and restarts the computer.
When the computer boots into our installed copy of deepin a graphical wizard walks us through some initial configuration steps. These include picking our keyboard layout, selecting our time zone from a map, and making up a username and password. We are also given the option of customizing the network settings. The wizard then reports it is "tuning" the system and, a few minutes later we are presented with a login page.
I feel it worth mentioning there is a button on the login screen which will display a virtual (on-screen) keyboard. I think this is a nice accessibility option.
It also seems worth mentioning that while the default behaviour of the live media is to immediately launch the system installer, deepin does include a live desktop mode. To get to the live desktop though we need to edit a boot menu option and remove the "live-installer" parameter from the boot flags. This is not a friendly approach to providing a live mode, but it does work, allowing people to test drive the distribution prior to installing it.
deepin 20 -- Running Firefox and the Album picture viewer
(full image size: 617kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Early impressions
When we sign into the Deepin desktop we are asked which style of desktop we want (Effect mode or Normal mode). We are advised the Effect mode offers a "delicate" experience while Normal provides better performance.
When Deepin loads it displays a panel across the bottom of the screen. The application menu sits to the left, then we see some quick-launch buttons, the task switcher, and then the system tray to the right. The first time I signed into Deepin a welcome window opened and asked a few customization questions. We are asked if we want to run the desktop in Fashion Mode or Efficiency Mode. Then whether we want Normal or Effect mode (this question appears to be a repeat of the earlier prompt). We can then choose one of four icon themes to decorate the desktop.
We are shown previews of the various desktop modes deepin offers and, while there are small differences, the overall appearance and layout of the desktop does not appear to change much.
Something I noticed early on while using the desktop is the Settings icon launches a classic settings panel in its own window. From here we can browse modules of configuration options. Past versions of the distribution had a sidebar that opened to the right of the desktop where we could scroll through available settings. While I liked the sidebar approach, the GNOME-like settings panel will probably be more familiar to most users.
Hardware
When I experimented with running deepin on my laptop the distribution ran very well. Desktop performance was good, wireless networking functioned out of the box. Audio worked and my media keys were recognized. All in all, I had no complaints when running deepin on the laptop.
When I switched over to running deepin in VirtualBox, the experience was mostly good. The guest desktop would not dynamically resize, but I could change Deepin's resolution through the settings panel. Desktop responsiveness was okay - neither good nor bad, about average. This is actually good news. In the past when I have run deepin in a virtual machine, desktop performance tended to be poor (sometimes quite poor). The Deepin desktop is noticeably faster in deepin 20.
The distribution is fairly light on memory, using 360MB when signed into the desktop. The operating system consumed 6.4GB of space which is an improvement over past versions. When I reviewed deepin two years ago the system required 350MB of RAM and 9GB of disk space, not including swap space. So memory usage has remained about level while disk consumption has dropped a few gigabytes.
Applications
The deepin project ships a mixture of popular open source applications alongside some custom programs. Firefox and Thunderbird are included, along with the LibreOffice suite of productivity applications. The Cheese webcam utility is installed for us too. Many other applications, including the Music, Movie, and Screen Capture tools all appear to be custom creations. I found deepin shipped with media codecs and was able to play all the audio and video files I threw at it without any problems. Likewise there is a picture viewer called Album and a simple drawing program appropriately called Draw. The file manager also appears to be a custom utility. There is also a voice notes taking program and a launcher for providing user feedback.
deepin 20 -- The application menu
(full image size: 862kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
I appreciate that the application menu includes short-cuts to common folders in our home directory. The menu uses a sort of hybrid approach, using a combination of tree-style navigation with layers. It took me a little while to get used to the approach, but I grew to like it. I also like that the application menu automatically places recently used (presumably favourite) programs near the top of the menu for easy access later.
deepin ships with manual pages and the GNU Compiler Collection. It uses systemd for its init software. There are a few versions of the Linux kernel we can use. My installation ran version 5.4, but 4.19 and 5.7 were available in the repositories.
deepin includes a settings panel which resembles the GNOME two-pane settings panel. Categories of settings are listed down the left side of the window and settings in the given category are shown on the right. The two-pane approach makes navigation quicker than jumping into and out of each module. I also like how clean and uncluttered the Deepin settings panel is. I found it was fairly easy to navigate without too many options on each screen. The panel does a nice job of giving us quick access to theme, mouse, synchronization, and audio controls.
deepin 20 -- Changing themes in the settings panel
(full image size: 524kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
I especially enjoyed the notification settings where we can enable Do Not Disturb mode as well as adjust the sound and notices from each application. Another tool that is included, but I did not have a chance to test, is Deepin ID. This tool reportedly gives us access to cloud sync features for files, browser settings, and App Store data. However, Deepin ID is only available to residents of mainland China.
Another module of the settings panel offers to check for software updates. When I used it the panel reported getting new updates had failed. It is not clear from the message if the check for new packages failed or downloading new updates failed. In any case there are other software updating tools we can use.
Software management
The primary approach to working with software packages on deepin is to use the App Store software manager. App Store begins by displaying a selection of featured items (or "Hot Apps"). Down the left side of the App Store window we find categories we can browse such as Office, Video, Music, Chat, System, and Updates. To the right side of the window we find a list of top-ranked applications. There is also a search bar allowing us to locate items by name.
When we click on a program's name or icon a full page description of the software is provided along with screenshots. We can then click a button to install the software or, if the application is already on our system, the Install button turns into a button that will launch the application.
deepin 20 -- Installing a program through App Store
(full image size: 533kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
I feel it worth noting that with most applications both the names and descriptions are displayed in English. The user interface, on my system, was also displayed in English. However, there are a handful of programs where either the name or the description is presented in Chinese. I suspect these are mostly young packages that have not benefited from translation efforts yet.
For the most part App Store worked well for me. It was quick to respond, fairly easy to navigate, and showed steady progress updates while it was working. However, I ran into a few problems or limitations while using it. The first issue was I could not find a way to remove installed software. Buttons were offered for installing and updating software, but not removing existing programs.
Most programs installed cleanly, but a few (such as VLC) did not, due to missing dependencies. I believe this is linked to my third issue which was App Store was unable to download software updates. When I looked into this further I found that when running the APT command line tools, I would get "404" errors when accessing one of the distribution's repositories. This appeared to be due to a missing "Release" file on the server, which was causing the package manager to have trouble updating its information. I suspect this issue will be fixed by the time this review appears.
New and interesting features
Earlier I mentioned deepin 20 includes a few new features and applications. The User Feedback tool, as it turns out, is a launcher which opens a web browser and presents us with the deepin user forums. Here we can sign up for an account and leave comments or suggestions.
When I opened the Device Manager I had expected to discover a way to install alternative hardware drivers. The utility did provide organized information on hardware and existing drivers, however it does not appear to offer access to alternative drivers.
deepin 20 -- Browsing Driver Manager
(full image size: 357kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
There is a new Font Manager which can add, browse, and see samples of fonts on the system. We can also "favourite" specific fonts, though I'm not sure what effect marking a font as a favourite has. Should we wish to adjust which fonts are used on the interface and their size, we can visit another tool in the settings panel.
The Draw program offers a simple image editing experience somewhat similar to Tux Paint. It does not have many features at the moment, but is quite easy to get started using as its interface is straight forward.
I did not get around to testing the voice note-taking software. It is an interesting idea and one I could see handy for people on the go or who prefer not to type. However, I cannot comment at the moment as to how well it works.
Conclusions
deepin is a distribution which does a lot of things differently from other, more mainstream projects, but in my opinion it is doing a lot of things well. deepin runs on the popular Debian base, which is a common choice, but the interface, tools, and options layered on top of the Debian core are unusual.
The custom deepin installer, for example, is very streamlined and easy to use, especially if we want to take over the entire disk for the operating system. The Deepin desktop is, in a word, beautiful. A lot of care appears to have gone into making Deepin look attractive and consistent. I like that custom deepin applications can alternate seamlessly between using the system theme, a light theme, or a dark theme, independent of other applications. Despite putting effort into looking nice and offering some eye candy, Deepin runs faster and smoother now than it has in the past.
The distribution ships with some common, popular tools, though it augments these with its own programs. Most of the deepin applications, such as Draw, the audio player, and video player appear to be designed with simplicity in mind. The interfaces are streamlined, generally with large icons that are easy to find. Most of the time this approach of doing a few things well as opposed to offering many options in one program appeals to me.
There were some issues with package management during my trail. These all appear to be rooted in the missing "Release" file on one of the repository servers. It will probably be corrected soon. Apart from this issue, which mostly just blocked updates, I really liked App Store. Its interface and performance were otherwise solid.
deepin strikes me as being a good, general purpose desktop operating system. It is easy to install, looks nice, has a friendly settings panel, and the App Store is easy to navigate. I also appreciate that the Deepin desktop allows us to switch between a more attractive visual layout and a more efficient layout for better performance. The ease of switching between themes and managing notifications also feels pleasantly flexible.
All in all, despite a few minor issues, deepin provided a pleasant experience for me. The custom applications and Deepin desktop mean some things work a bit differently than on other popular distributions/desktop combinations. However, I found I liked deepin's approach to most things. The desktop was attractive, faster than it was in the past, and worked well with my hardware.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
deepin has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.1/10 from 130 review(s).
Have you used deepin? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Maintaining Cinnamon on Debian, NetBSD's Wayland progress, Fedora to compress firmware, SolydXK's leadership is changing, UBports installer to support third-party operating systems on Volla phones, Linux Mint to package Chromium browser
Norbert Preining has published a blog post in which he talks about maintaining the Cinnamon desktop package for Debian and challenges faced with maintaining complex packages. In particular, he points out Debian's Cinnamon package depends on other packages, some of which are either outdated or being removed from Debian. If these packages are not kept up to date, then they will be removed from Debian's repositories, which will in turn result in Cinnamon being dropped from Debian. "Currently, Cinnamon's cjs package depends on mozjs52, which also is probably going to be orphaned soon. This will precipitate a lot of changes, not the least being Cinnamon being removed from Debian/Testing."
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The Wayland display protocol has been gaining popularity with some Linux distributions, though it has not made many inroads into the BSD communities. One NetBSD developer, Nia Alarie, has posted an overview of the work that has gone into running a Wayland implementation on NetBSD and explains why X11 will continue to be the default for a while. "In a Wayland system, the 'compositor' (display server) is responsible for managing displays, input, and window management. Generally, this means a lot of OS-specific code is contained there. Wayland does not define protocols for features X11 users expect, like screenshots, screen locking, or window management. Either you implement these inside the compositor (lots of work that has to be redone), or you define your own protocol extension. The Wayland 'reference implementation' is a small set of libraries that can be used to build a compositor or a client application. These libraries currently have hard dependencies on Linux kernel APIs like epoll." The blog post offers further details and a list of work still left to do to bring Wayland to NetBSD.
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Fedora 33 is still on the horizon, but some developers are already looking ahead to how the next version of the distribution can be improved. One of the proposed changes suggests compressing Linux firmware to reduce the amount of disk space required. "Since the Linux 5.3 kernel there has been support for loading firmware from xz compressed firmware. The upstream linux-firmware repository is now over 900Mb, not including other kernel firmware that are in Fedora but come from other sources. By compressing the firmware with "xz -C crc32", the only option currently supported in the kernel, we can reduce the ondisk size of the firmware by almost half."
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The SolydXK distribution is going through a leadership transition. The small, Debian-based project will be transferring to two new leaders while founder Arjen will be stepping back into a more background/supportive role. Arjen explains in a blog post: "More than seven years ago I started SolydXK. Just a year earlier I hardly knew anything about Linux. It has been a steep learning curve and I met some interesting people on the way. Now, I feel it is time to take a step back and focus on the things I want to spend more time on. This does not mean that SolydXK is going to stop! The two people I most relied on in the past years volunteered to take over the project. You might know them from the forums as ilu and grizzler. I will stay and maintain the SolydXK packages and help out whenever there is some programming and debugging needed." The post also mentions the project's website will be off-line for a while on October 10, 2020 as the infrastructure is moved to a new host.
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The UBports developers have been improving the project's system installer which largely automates the process of getting UBports onto new devices. Along with a number of bug fixes and improvements there are plans to support installing third-party operating systems on the upcoming Volla phones. The project's newsletter explains: "Jan has been working on the installer and has responded to and updated 200 issues. Changes in UBports installer 4.20 include improved handling of OEM unlocking, device recognition and error handling. Encrypted partitions issues will now be identified. In addition, some more device specific issues have been addressed. There are also some bug fixes and background libraries have been updated. Quite soon there will be more improvements. The intention is that some packages will download and unpack on the systems. This should also include the download of packages from external sources, not maintained by us. We will also introduce ADB side load. In a collaborative project with Volla, we will arrange that all of the OS options available for Volla phones - Sailfish, UT and Volla OS itself - will be available through the installer."
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The latest version of Linux Mint ships without a package in its repositories for the Chromium web browser. This is because Mint's upstream distribution, Ubuntu has done away with a traditional Chromium package in favour of providing Chromium through a Snap package. The Linux Mint team is now planning to build and distribute their own Chromium package using a traditional Deb package. "We're happy to confirm we will be packaging Chromium going forward and providing updates through the official repositories. We noticed significant delays between official releases and the versions available in almost all Linux distributions. For this reason we set up our own packaging and we're building directly from upstream. Some of the patches from Debian and Ubuntu were also imported." Further details on this change, along with information on a bug that hit Linux Mint 19 last month can be found in the distribution's newsletter.
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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) |
Selecting an init implementation
Picking-a-preferred-PID1 asks: Some distributions support multiple init software. Is there a guide as to which one is best in certain situations? Why would I pick one init over another?
DistroWatch answers: An operating system's init process (sometimes called PID1) is the first program the kernel runs when starting the system. The init software typically has three main responsibilities: getting the system up and running, including launching background services; collecting any abandoned zombie processes; and initiating shutdown procedures when it is time to turn off (or restart) the computer.
There are a handful of open source init implementations. The most widely used is systemd, which is relatively new and is installed on about 75% of modern Linux distributions. The SysV (System V) init software is probably the oldest implementation of init still widely in use and tends to be run by conservative distributions such as Slackware Linux, Devuan, and PCLinuxOS. OpenRC takes a dependency- and configuration-focused approach to service management and seems to be gaining more wide-spread use outside of its home at Gentoo. The runit software is a small, cross-platform init that is mostly commonly associated with Void, though it runs on several other platforms. While it has not yet see much adoption, the s6 init software is also gaining attention due to its minimal approach and portability.
As to why you might want to use one init over another, to be honest, in most cases the differences between the various init implementations tends to be philosophical rather than practical. Most distributions ship with one init system only and get by just fine with it because, for most people (or at least most people who are not system administrators), one init will function about as well as another. At least so far as each init will start the system, reap zombie processes, and shutdown the computer, and will probably do so transparently from the end-user's point of view.
That being said, there are a few practical aspects to consider. For instance, if you want your background services to make use of Linux control groups or you want to run Snap packages, then you will want to run systemd. As far as I know, it is the only init platform which can natively use control groups and it is a dependency of the Snap package framework.
From the point of view of speed, I have rarely seen any init software outperform runit. The distributions using runit I have tried have typically booted in half the time of their closest competitors. The runit software is incredibly light and fast, using very little memory and it gets the system up and running in a hurry.
In my (biased) opinion as the current maintainer of SysV init, I would say it is probably designed to be the most flexible and transparent of the init systems. One can set up SysV init to be a launch point for just about any service manager, shell script, or executable. Most distributions set it up to run shell scripts and this makes the boot and shutdown process easy for administrators to read, understand, and edit.
The OpenRC project is interesting to me because it seems to be pleasantly flexible and generally growing. I rarely use OpenRC, but there always seems to be a neat feature or configuration option to be discovered. I also like that it is cross-platform and I tend to use it more on FreeBSD-based systems than Linux distributions.
I have not had good luck with s6 and have never used it successfully, but it seems to be developed with an eye toward both performance and portability, two features that I believe will appeal to a lot of people.
Those are, in my opinion, the practical considerations to keep in mind. Philosophically, there are some ideas we can consider too. For instance, both runit and s6 seem to be trying to stay as lightweight and portable as possible. They seem to be sticking as close to the "do one thing and do it well" rule popular among UNIX programmers. On the other end of the spectrum, systemd aims to leverage every advantage and feature it can from the modern Linux kernel. The systemd project does a lot of interesting things and contains many additional tools to provide not just init software, but also a whole layer of low-level tools. This means distributions running systemd have access to a lot of tools and features, but with the side-effect of the software being a lot heavier.
The OpenRC software seems to be taking a middle ground, offering quite a few features and options, while also trying to stay relatively lean. Meanwhile the SysV init software mostly aims to stay small, stable, and reliable. It has changed little over the past twenty years and aims to avoid introducing any big changes or issues.
In short, most of the time you are probably fine running your distribution's default init software. From a practical point of view, it shouldn't make much impact to your computing experience. However, there are differences when we dig down into the various init options and, when a distribution offers more than one init, hopefully the above overview will give you an idea of which one suits your situation best.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Enso OS 0.4
Enso OS is a Linux distribution based on Xubuntu. Enso features the Xfce desktop with Gala, imported from elementary OS, as the default window manager. The latest release features a new note-taking application called Pinny along with a dark theme. Several improvements have been made to the software manager as well: "Apphive generally features in our releases as being an application manager it's integral to an operating system, helping users to search for / install and remove various applications on the system. This release is not different as Apphive has once again been given a bit of a face lift and some additional features The ability to star favourite applications has been around since the last release but has somewhat sat in the background, this has now become more of a drive for the applications listed on the home screen, using their popularity to display the most starred applications to other users while also displaying how many stars each application has received." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Enso OS 0.4 -- Running the Xfce/Gala desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, 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: 2,161
- Total data uploaded: 34.0TB
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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) |
Running the Deepin Desktop Environment
One of the key features of the deepin distribution is its custom Deepin Desktop Environment. The desktop offers an attractive, modern interface with a good deal of flexibility when it comes to adjusting the system for performance or visual effects. The Deepin environment has been ported to some other distributions, though it is rarely used as the default desktop by other projects. This week we would like to hear if you use to the Deepin desktop. Let us know what you think of the Deepin interface in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on whether you would install Linuxfx for friends or family in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you run the Deepin desktop?
| Yes - on the deepin distro: | 91 (6%) |
| Yes - on another distro: | 81 (5%) |
| No: | 1340 (89%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 12 October 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 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Baltix GNU/Linux
Baltix GNU/Linux was an Ubuntu-based distribution designed primarily for Lithuanian and Latvian speakers, as well as other users from Europe's Baltic region. Besides standard software found in an Ubuntu release, Baltix also includes a variety of educational programs, games, vector graphic and diagram drawing software, WINE integration for running Windows applications, office clipart, and internationalisation features for the supported languages.
Status: Discontinued
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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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