 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 901, 25 January 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 4th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Linux ecosystem is very dynamic with new projects being created all the time and other distributions fading away. This week we discuss a new project to the DistroWatch database, Mabox Linux. The Mabox project is based on Manjaro and we report on its key features below. In our News section we talk about the GALPon MiniNo project shutting down as the developers struggle to keep up with the changing software landscape. We also reports on Slackware testing a new version of the distribution's C library while Fedora tries out GNOME 40, and pfSense implements WireGuard VPN support. We also talk about Red Hat offering free production subscriptions in the wake of phasing out the CentOS Linux distribution while Corellium gets Ubuntu working on Apple's ARM-powered Mac Mini. One of the issues the GALPon MiniNo developers mentioned causing trouble was their project's migration to systemd. A lot of people have questions about the growing and evolving systemd software and we talk about this core component of many modern Linux distributions in our Questions and Answers column. We are then pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We conclude this week with an Opinion Poll question about parent distributions. Do you have a preferred family of Linux distributions you tend to use more than others? Let us know what you prefer about one family of Linux distributions over the others in the comments. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (10MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Mabox Linux 20.10
The Mabox Linux distribution is a rolling release project based on Manjaro Linux. The Mabox website describes itself as follows:
Mabox Linux is based on Manjaro, featuring [a] customized Openbox window manager preconfigured to be ready to use. It was inspired by CrunchBang, and [uses] some BunsenLabs utilities adapted for Manjaro. Mabox Linux uses some of Xfce and LXDE components.
The Mabox project publishes semi-regular snapshots, the latest one at the time of writing is version 20.10. The distribution is available in a single edition featuring a customized Openbox graphical environment. The ISO we can download is 1.9GB in size and runs on 64-bit (x86_64) machines only.
Before I talk about running the distribution I want to make one comment about the Mabox website. For the most part the website is clear, to the point, and easy to navigate. However, any time I visited the project's news page an access password prompt would appear telling me I was accessing the "Danger Zone". The prompt appeared every time I accessed the news page or any blog post. Cancelling the password prompt had no impact on my being able to read the news posts. This is an odd quirk or oversight for the website to have and makes it seem like something has been misconfigured.
The live media
The Mabox Linux live media presents us with a boot menu where we can start the operating system with either all open source drivers or with some proprietary drivers. Starting the distribution loads the Openbox window manager. There is a lot going on in the Openbox environment. A list of desktop shortcuts appears to the left of the screen. A Conky status panel appears to the right, showing us CPU, memory, and disk usage statistics. Across the top of the screen is a transparent panel that features two shortcut menus, an application menu, quick-launch buttons, a task switcher, and the system tray. There is also a widget for switching between virtual workspaces.
The theme is mostly black and white, with title bars and folder icons displayed in green. I found there were networking and battery icons in the system tray, though no volume control. There is a PulseAudio volume mixer in the application menu.
Mabox Linux 20.10 -- The application menu and Openbox with status panels removed
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Installing
Mabox places a button for launching the Calamares graphical system installer in its line of quick-launch icons. Calamares is a great installer that quickly walks us through selecting our keyboard layout, time zone, and setting up a user account. The installer offers both guided and manual partitioning. The manual options are quite easy to navigate and Calamares displays a graphical chart of the disk we are working on. The guided partitioning option will take over available space with a single ext4 filesystem. It does not set up a swap partition and the system does not create a swap file either. The initial installation went smoothly and I encountered no problem with Calamares.
First impressions
My new copy of Mabox Linux booted to a graphical login screen. From there we can sign into the Openbox session and we are greeted by a welcome screen. The welcome window presents us with three groups of buttons. One group accesses software management tools to help us install updates, new kernels, and new applications. The second group offers access to on-line resources such as the Mabox website, documentation, and user forums. The third group connects us to options for contributing to the project such as developer resources and donation options.
Mabox Linux 20.10 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 619kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
I will come back to the software management options a little later. For now I merely want to acknowledge the welcome window buttons work and launch utilities which also functioned properly.
Once I was finished with the welcome window my next impression of Mabox was that the desktop is very busy, even crowded. There are panels and status updates, and bars of icons all around the screen. There are two quick-access panels to the left and right sides of the display. I kept accidentally opening these when moving my mouse to click on other items because things are packed together. Some people like a lot of options and features to be front-and-centre and it's certainly a valid preference, but I prefer my desktop to be more quiet and empty.
Also on the topic of the interface, I ran into an issue when resizing application windows. The window borders are very thin and I found them difficult to drag or move. There are ways around this, but it's a little inconvenience that adds up over time.
One curious design choice I ran into was with the lock screen. When Openbox locks, instead of presenting the user with a password prompt and box in which to type, we are shown a mostly empty screen with the instructions to simply type our password. There doesn't seem to be any visible feedback to typing, but typing the correct password does cause Openbox to unlock. I don't believe I've ever encountered a lock screen like this one before. It works, but feels strange.
Hardware
I began by experimenting with Mabox in a VirtualBox environment. The distribution booted quickly and ran smoothly. The Openbox window manager was unusually light and responsive in the virtual machine. The graphical environment did not dynamically resize with the VirtualBox window, however I could adjust the desktop resolution using a tool in the application menu. Unfortunately Mabox did not remember screen resolution changes so this adjustment had to be repeated each time the distribution booted in the virtual machine.
When I ran Mabox on my laptop the distribution performed well. It again booted quickly, was fast to launch programs and the desktop was responsive. Audio volume was set unusually low, but this can be adjusted with the PulseAudio mixer utility.
A fresh install of Mabox used about 6.5GB of disk space. Signing into the Openbox session used 245MB of RAM. This amount rose slightly to 260MB when the welcome window was open.
Applications
Mabox ships with a few popular applications, but mostly uses less common programs and small utilities. The Firefox web browser is one of the few mainstream applications available out of the box. There is a Mail Reader launcher, but no e-mail client is installed for us.
Mabox Linux 20.10 -- Running Firefox and the file manager
(full image size: 282kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Mabox also ships with the Geany editor, a PDF viewer (qpdfview), the DeaDBeeF audio player, mpv for playing videos, and a full range of media codecs. There is a tool called CPU-X installed for looking up information on the CPU, hardware, and memory statistics. The GParted and Htop tools are included along with a small image viewer. The PCManFM file manager is included for us.
We are also given a useful settings panel called the Mabox Linux Control Center which I found fairly easy to navigate and quite useful when it came to customizing the distribution. There are also a lot of smaller, stand-alone configuration tools for adjusting Openbox and the desktop panels. In the background Mabox ships with the systemd init software and version 5.4 of the Linux kernel.
Some command line programs (such as free, cp, and more) in Mabox are aliased, sometimes in ways which make them conflict with parameters we might use or which can change their expected behaviour. We can work around this by unaliasing the commands or prefixing them with a backslash character.
Another configuration choice which is harder to work around is that the shortcut for switching tabs in Firefox (Ctrl+Tab) is also hardwired to open one of the desktop's side panels. This means any time the user wants to switch tabs in Firefox, they instead open a desktop panel that steals focus from the browser. There are some configuration tools which will confirm the Ctrl+Tab shortcut opens the panel, but none of them would allow me to change this setting. I'm sure there must be a way to change this shortcut conflict, but it was not immediately clear how.
Speaking of configuration changes, configuration is done through several different tools and text files. It can be difficult to find which one addresses which issue. For example, right-clicking the clock widget opens a tool to adjust date & time and time zones, but does not provide a way to change the layout or format of the clock. That setting is not even in the same control panel. It requires going through three layers into panel configuration settings, opening the Tint settings, then selecting Clock options. The time format needs to be typed manually using a format (like %H:%m) without any guide on which letters to use. I occasionally ran into the same issue with other customizations where settings were difficult to find or buried multiple levels down.
Mabox Linux 20.10 -- The Mabox Control Center
(full image size: 921kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
These issues I ran into are not bugs, but they are inconvenient. I had a similar minor issue with the screenshot utility which saves images with multiple ":" characters in the filenames. This makes it harder to transfer multiple files because common transfer utilities treat the ":" symbol as an indication of a hostname rather than a filename. Again, this is not a bug, but it is a poor default that will conflict with common tools or scripts and make the distribution just a little harder to use.
Software management
There are a few tools included in Mabox for managing software packages. Pamac is the main software manager. Choosing to install updates from the welcome window opens Pamac and we can also access the tool through the application menu. Pamac features three tabs, called Browse, Installed, and Updates. The Updates tab lists available updated packages and we can choose which ones we wish to download. The first day I was running Mabox there were 758MB of updates available, nearly half the size of the original ISO I downloaded. This makes me think the distribution is due for another install media refresh. Despite the large download, Pamac successfully grabbed and applied the waiting updates.
Mabox Linux 20.10 -- The Pamac software manager
(full image size: 604kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The Browse tab of Pamac allows us to browse available software using a few different views. The view I used most arranged items into software categories. We can select which category we wish to browse from a drop-down menu. Then clicking on a package's entry brings up a page with a short description, licensing information, and the name of the repository which holds the package. We can queue multiple items to install and apply them all at once. Pamac will pause and show us a list of dependencies before it proceeds with installing new applications.
The third tab, Installed, shows application we already have on the system. Each of the three tabs of Pamac worked fairly well. Sometimes I felt like the list of software groups, featured on the Browse tab, was too long (and too fine-grained) as it makes finding some types of software harder. For example, there are seven groups of just Kodi add-ons to browse through. This is another case of the default behaviour not being a bug, just inconvenient.
There is another tool we can use to install software and it is accessible from the welcome window. This second tool is called the Manjaro Application Utility. It begins with a list of software categories. We can click a category to expand it and see a handful of popular utilities. Clicking a box next to a desired application will queue it for installation.
Mabox Linux 20.10 -- Adding applications
(full image size: 621kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The Application Utility works and, though it is simple in its style, it makes finding and installing a handful of popular applications straight forward. I like that this utility is featured on the welcome window as it helps gets us up and running with some good open source applications right from the start.
Conclusions
For me, running Mabox was a curious experience. The reason being that the distribution never seemed to do anything objectively wrong or buggy. Everything worked properly, the system was fast, stable, and often offered multiple approaches to accomplishing tasks. Mabox inherits Arch Linux's large repositories of software and the cutting-edge packages which make its grandparent famous. The lightweight Openbox window manager is flexible and fast. Plus I like that Mabox doesn't ship a lot of applications, just some good basics, and gives us multiple tools to add more items we might want. However, Mabox never felt like a good fit for me.
It's hard to put my finger on why exactly this was because the distribution, objectively, does a lot of things well. However, the style of the distribution isn't at all to my taste. The Openbox session is very busy and I like quiet interfaces. Mabox is a cutting-edge rolling release and I like static and boring. Mabox has a tonne of status panels, shortcuts, and an elegant welcome screen. I want my operating system to stay out of the way and not distract me. Mabox has many configuration tools and they all seem to work, but the number of them (and the lack of a central organization for them) can make it harder to find the options I want to adjust.
I guess what made the experience feel odd is Mabox uses a really minimal window manager, but with all the bells and whistles enabled. It ships with very few desktop applications, yet the menu is crowded with options. The system looks really sleek and modern, but a lot of options require we tweak text-based configuration files by hand. It makes for an odd series of juxtapositions.
Objectively, I think Mabox is quite good. The only real bug I ran into was Firefox and the desktop panel using the same shortcut, but otherwise the system was fast, smooth, and capable. It just has an unusual approach to several aspects of it. Which makes me feel the distribution is objectively good, but subjectively not to my taste.
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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
Mabox Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 79 review(s).
Have you used Mabox Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
GALPon MiniNo shuts down, Slackware tests new C library, Fedora to use GNOME 40, pfSense gets WireGuard, Red Hat offers free production subscriptions, Ubuntu booting on Apple ARM
The developers of the GALPon MiniNo distribution announced recently that the project would be shutting down. The Debian-based project mostly focused on supporting older computers and featured lightweight desktop environments. While Linux distributions being discontinued is not all that unusual due to cost or time commitment limitations from the developers, this time it appears as though changing technologies in the Linux ecosystem played a larger role. The closure notice on the project's website reads: "We declare MiniNo and PicarOS officially dead, after many years of carrying out these projects with only two people, our personal complications and, recently, the complications of systemd and Wayland, have come up against our limitations and it is impossible for us to maintain the required level."
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Major software updates and changes are a regular and ongoing concern distribution maintainers need to address. The Slackware project highlighted this in a recent changelog post where testing and upgrading the distribution's C library was discussed. "With all those fixes in place (plus a few more), we have tested and found that everything in the tree compiles cleanly against glibc-2.32. So, the plan is to have another mass rebuild soon against that. Although the ABI didn't technically change, I've heard that libpthread may not be 100% compatible in some corner cases, so we'll err on the side of caution. Hopefully we can get a little testing done on the recompiled system and then go through it all again at the beginning of next month when glibc-2.33 is released. Other than that, how's Mesa working these days? If there are still issues that are resolved by dropping back to the previous branch, let's try to figure those out."
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The Fedora team plans to include the new GNOME 40 desktop in Fedora 34, expected to be released around the middle of 2021. GNOME 40 includes GTK 4 which is a new version of the graphical toolkit used to make the GNOME desktop environment. "As usual, Fedora 34 will include the latest available upstream GNOME release. This time, the GNOME release includes some noteworthy changes, and the purpose of this change proposal is to draw attention to them. GNOME is changing its versioning scheme, and the coming GNOME 40 release is the first one with following the new scheme. GNOME 40 includes GTK 4, which is a new stable release of GTK. With the release of GTK 4, upstream GTK considers GTK 2 to be end-of-life. The GNOME shell overview is being redesigned for GNOME 40.". Additional information on these changes can be found in the Fedora wiki.
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In December we reported on the FreeBSD operating system gaining support for WireGuard, a small and fast VPN technology. This VPN implementation is now coming to FreeBSD-based projects like pfSense, thanks to work sponsored by Netgate. "Sponsored by Netgate, the development of a kernel-resident WireGuard implementation for FreeBSD and pfSense has been over a year of effort in the making. It was committed to FreeBSD on November 29, 2020 and can be previewed in pfSense CE. Source code is available now via the pfSense public code repository. Binary images will be available January 20, 2021 for those who are tracking the 2.5.0 development branch update from the pfSense GUI, or who are utilizing the 2.5.0 development branch installation media."
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In December we reported on Red Hat's plan to phase out CentOS Linux and use CentOS Stream as a development platform. In the wake of Red Hat's announcement several distributions announced plans to fill the void left by CentOS Linux's demise. Red Hat itself is trying to attract former CentOS Linux users by offering more free subscriptions to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including the option of running these subscriptions in production environments. (Previously free subscriptions were restricted to development systems.) "We're addressing this by expanding the terms of the Red Hat Developer program so that the Individual Developer subscription for RHEL can be used in production for up to 16 systems. That's exactly what it sounds like: for small production use cases, this is no-cost, self-supported RHEL. You need only to sign in with a free Red Hat account (or via single sign-on through GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, and other accounts) to download RHEL and receive updates."
Meanwhile, Rocky Linux, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux created by a former CentOS developer, plans to publish its first release candidate in March.
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The Apple Mac Mini, powered by an ARM processor, impressed a lot of people in the technical community when it was launched last year, but one aspect of the device many people did not like was how locked down it was. Despite the hurdles involved, some Linux developers have made progress in getting Ubuntu running on the Apple device. "Developers at ARM virtualisation company Corellium have managed to get Ubuntu 20.04 up and running on the new Apple Silicon Mac Mini. And we're not talking 'it boots and prints a load of text' running here. No, this is the full Ubuntu desktop experience - and it's already being described as 'completely usable'!" There is still work to do in order to get Ubuntu running on the ARM-powered system in a way which will be accessible to most users.
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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) |
Deep diving into systemd
Ghost-hunter asks: Maybe Jesse could spend time explaining what systemd is, what it does and is it really dangerous? Is there really a "boogy man" in the machine? Jesse, if you have done that please point to that dissertation.
Jesse answers: I have written some articles on systemd over the years. Starting in 2011, I wrote ten articles about systemd - what it is and why it exists. I also wrote occasionally about the forks which resulted from systemd being adopted by most Linux distributions and the controversy surrounding the project. You can find all of those past articles in our archive.
Before I go any further I want to acknowledge that one of the reasons I usually don't comment on systemd directly, one way or the other these days, is that for about two years now I've been the primary maintainer for the SysV init software. Since SysV init is often used as the basis for comparison with systemd it is difficult for me to give an unbiased opinion on either project. This is why my last systemd Q&A article was written over two years ago, I try to avoid talking about my personal projects and opinions on DistroWatch. However, I am going to try to put aside my SysV init maintainer hat for a moment and answer your questions as objectively as I can.
As I mentioned, the articles I linked to above should hopefully explain what systemd is, how it tries to accomplish its goals (or at least what its original goals were), and why some people are opposed to its wide-spread adoption. Today I'll try to answer your questions that I have not covered in past articles.
First, is systemd dangerous? Most of the time, no, it's probably not dangerous. Most systems running systemd don't suffer from the experience. There have been a few bugs either caused by systemd or exposed by systemd which caused some pretty big problems in the past. The erasing files bug, the bricking hardware bug, the killing user processes at logout issue, and invalid username bug all come readily to mind. And, to be fair to people who don't like how systemd has been managed, the reactions to these bugs from the systemd developers were not diplomatic.
So there have been some serious bugs either caused by or exposed by systemd which could make running the software dangerous in the past in very specific situations. However, I don't think that is what you meant. I get the impression you weren't asking if systemd can be accidentally dangerous (any complex software can be problematic when it manages a lot of the low-level functions of an operating system), but were rather more interested in the "boogy man" concept, the idea that there is something malicious hiding in the code.
Is there something malicious in the systemd code? To be honest it is difficult to tell for sure. The systemd code, like many large and complex software projects, is huge. Version 247 of systemd included over 2,000 source code files that contained over 500,000 lines of code. This doesn't include unit tests, documentation, build rules, etc - just the source code. The whole archive is closer to 4,000 files containing about a million lines of text. In short, it's more than I will have time to read this weekend to authoritatively answer the question of whether there are any naughty bits hidden in the code.
However, with all that being said, I don't think there is any malicious code in systemd. There are certainly bugs, there are design decisions I (and others) may not agree with, but I don't think there are any hidden traps or backdoors in systemd that will compromise an operating system.
Why do I tend toward the idea that systemd is not malicious? There are a few reasons. The first is that systemd is developed as free and open source software in a public repository. For someone to insert something nasty into systemd they would need to do it not only in front of the world, but under the noses of other systemd developers. Or we need to go full on conspiracy theory and believe all the systemd developers are either malicious or unaware of the code being committed to their repository. I think both are unlikely.
Second, systemd has been around for nearly a decade. It has been widely adopted for at least half that time. If there were backdoors in systemd then it would seem odd we haven't heard about any ill effects. Where are the system administrators reporting weird network traffic from compromised machines? Where are the port scanners reporting mysterious openings? Where are the botnets of millions of Linux machines running systemd? I haven't heard of any of these things happening and you would think, after half a decade of deployment on millions of machines, if there were an exploit then at least one person would have noticed by now.
Third, and finally, as I mentioned before systemd is open source software. There are a lot of people, or at least a very vocal minority of people in the Linux community, who strongly dislike systemd, for one reason or another. Not one of them has dug into the source code for systemd and found an intentional problem. People have spotted bugs and some questionable choices in approach, but nothing that is going to turn your computer into a spam-flinging zombie. If anything, systemd's sandboxing features probably make it more secure in some situations than the alternatives.
Zooming out for a second, I'd like to point out that this "boogy man" argument crops up all the time when new software is introduced that is either different in its approach, large, or developed in a country other than the one the person is living in. It happens a lot with SELinux, with deepin, with any distribution originating from Russia, and lately it has been happening with systemd. In each case it is raising concerns about malicious intent without evidence. If someone claims there are backdoors in SELinux, systemd, or any other open source product the easiest way to address such claims are to simply ask the other person to show you where the backdoor exists in the code. The source code is all there, all visible to the public. Anyone with the time, expertise, or money can audit the code and find problems. So far no one has found backdoors or other malicious bits in systemd and I'm guessing that is because systemd isn't the result of a grand conspiracy. The systemd developers are just solving problems differently.
Traditionally Linux system tools and components have been developed as smaller, independent, interchangeable pieces. The systemd approach is more akin to developing a whole bunch of tools and functionality under one umbrella. It's a different approach, more akin to the "top-down" style of commercial Unix or other commercial vendors. It's different and that rubs a lot of people, particularly those who are accustomed to the "do one thing well" approach to Linux development, the wrong way. That doesn't make systemd malicious, just different in its philosophy.
Depending on your technical and philosophical preferences there are lots of reasons to like systemd, and there are lots of reasons to dislike it. Just as there are lots of reasons to prefer one desktop environment, office suite, or e-mail client over another. I think it's important to make a distinction between "This software project does something I don't like" versus "This software project is malicious." For some people systemd certainly falls into the former category, but I think it's a mistake to believe the latter.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
XigmaNAS 12.2.0.4
Michael Zoon has announced the release of XigmaNAS 12.2.0.4, a new stable snapshot of the project's embedded, open-source NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD. This is major update and the first released built on top of FreeBSD 12.2: "We are pleased to announce the release of XigmaNAS version 12.2.0.4.8008 'Ornithopter'. XigmaNAS 12.2.0.4.8008 is a direct upgrade for the EOL 12.1.0.4.xxxx branch. Changes: upgrade to FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE P2; WebGUI code and framework improvements; upgrade Bash to 5.1-p4; upgrade Samba to 4.13.1; upgrade lighttpd to 1.4.58; upgrade arcconf to 3_04_23699; upgrade zoneinfo to 2020f; upgrade msmtp to 1.8.14; upgrade smartmontools to 7.2; upgrade minidlna 1.3.0; upgrade syncthing to 1.12.1; upgrade ProFTPd to 1.3.7a; upgrade PHP to 7.4.14; upgrade Nano to 5.5. Fixes: fix only first lagg member is brought up; fix reload issue. Upgrade notes: make a backup of your existing system configuration and store it in a safe location - the system config.xml could be upgraded; clear your browser's cache to avoid display issues after upgrading from an older release." See the release announcement for a full changelog.
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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: 2,306
- Total data uploaded: 35.9TB
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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) |
What is your favourite parent distribution?
Original, base distributions are the backbone of the Linux family. For instance, this week we talked about the Mabox Linux distribution, which is based on Manjaro Linux, which is in turn based on Arch Linux. Arch is one of several commonly used parent distributions. There are over 22 actively maintained projects which use Arch as their parent or grandparent. There are other popular parent distributions. For example, there are at least a dozen active, Fedora-based projects, nine based on Gentoo, and seven based on Slackware Linux. Debian is by far the most commonly used parent distribution with at least 120 children, with almost half of those (about 50) in the Ubuntu branch of the family tree.
People often gravitate toward one branch of the Linux family tree. We would like to hear which parent distribution is your favourite.
You can see the results of our previous poll on methods used to perform system administrative tasks in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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My favourite parent distro is
| Arch: | 576 (20%) |
| Debian: | 1042 (37%) |
| Fedora: | 117 (4%) |
| Gentoo: | 74 (3%) |
| openSUSE: | 130 (5%) |
| Slackware: | 153 (5%) |
| Ubuntu: | 497 (18%) |
| Other: | 118 (4%) |
| I do not have a favourite: | 130 (5%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 1 February 2021. 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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Mabox Linux
Mabox Linux is a Manjaro-based rolling-release distribution. It features the Openbox window manager as its default user interface and provides a welcome screen with access to utilities which add additional software to the operating system.
Status: Active
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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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