 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 910, 29 March 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Every once in a while a Linux distribution comes along that takes an entirely different approach, either with the user interface, the available utilities, or the underlying technology. The Void distribution blazes its own trail on a number of fronts, providing the runit init software, its own package manager, and multiple implementations of system libraries. This week we begin with a look at Void and discuss some of the unique project's strengths and weaknesses. Most Linux distributions do not strive to create something unique and instead build on existing projects, called parent distributions. Some parent distributions are more popular bases than others for new projects. In our Questions and Answers column we discuss this and why we do not see more Fedora-based distributions. Do you run a Fedora-based distribution? Let us know about it in the Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about improvements coming to the Purism team's Librem 5 phone and new features available in recently released GNOME 40. Plus we report that a close relative to UNIX and Linux, called Plan 9, is now available under the open source MIT license. We also report on reactions to the news Richard M Stallman has returned to the Free Software Foundation's Board of Directors and report on Debian's latest media refresh. 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:
- Review: Void 20210218
- News: Purism polishes mobile platform, GNOME 40 released, Plan 9 released as open source, Red Hat cuts funding to Free Software Foundation, Debian updates install media
- Questions and answers: Where are the Fedora-based distributions?
- Released last week: Manjaro Linux 21.0, Tails 4.17, 4MLinux 36.0
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Alpine, ArcoLinux, Debian, Debian Edu, IPFire, KaOS, KDE neon, Manjaro, Porteus Kiosk, RaspiOS, Septor, Tails
- Upcoming releases: Ubuntu 21.04 Beta
- Opinion poll: Running Fedora or a Fedora-based distro
- New distributions: Tribblix
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (19MB) and MP3 (14MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Void 20210218
Void is an independently developed, rolling release distribution. The project features the XBPS package manager which allows for a hybrid approach to using both binary and source packages. Void also includes the runit init software which is minimal, lightweight, and works very quickly to bring the system on-line. The distribution offers several editions, including a minimal Base flavour, and several desktop editions that ship with the Cinnamon, Enlightenment, GNOME, LXDE, LXQt, Xfce, and MATE user interfaces. The distribution further supplies editions with two separate C libraries. The project offers separate install media for the glibc and musl libraries. These, along with multiple hardware architecture support that includes x86_64, i686, and ARM, means there are a lot of download options. The smallest edition of Void is Base which is about 468MB and the largest is GNOME at 1,050MB. Since I last tried the Xfce on musl combination, I decided to switch over to glibc and explore Xfce running on a glibc base, which is a 788MB download.
Booting from the Void media brings up a graphical login screen. We can sign into a regular user account or the media's root account using the password "voidlinux". The login credentials for the live media are published on the distribution's Download page. Signing into an account brings up the Xfce desktop. A thin panel is placed across the top of the screen. An application menu sits in the upper-left corner while the system tray is in the upper-right. The middle of the panel functions as a task switcher. At the bottom of the screen we find a dock with quick-launch buttons on it. On the desktop we find icons for launching the Thunar file manager.
Installing
Looking through the application menu I did not find any launcher for the Void system installer. The project's website says we can run the command line program void-installer as root (or via sudo) to get started. The Void website also warns us not to use on-line package sources when setting up a desktop environment, though not the reason behind this advice: "To install the packages for the desktop environment, DON'T choose 'install from network' choose the 'local install' option."
The installer uses text-based menus and resembles the Slackware and FreeBSD system installers. The Void installer allows us to perform configuration tasks in the order of our choosing. Going down through the list we are asked to choose our keyboard layout and enable networking, with the option of using DHCP. We are asked whether we wish to use local (live disc) or on-line sources for software packages. Following the project's advice, I opted to use the local packages. We are then walked through selecting our time zone from a list and making up a root password. We also have the option of creating a non-root user account.
The system installer gives us the option of setting up the GRUB boot loader and which disk should hold it. When it comes to setting up disk partitions Void's installer offers to launch either the fdisk or cfdisk console-based partition managers. We can then select which filesystem to set up on the root partition with options including Btrfs, ext2/3/4, F2FS, and Xfce. I decided to run Void on Btrfs which worked well.
With the configuration steps completed, Void's installer copies its packages to the hard drive while showing detailed progress information. When it is finished it offers to restart the computer or simply exit so we can continue using the live environment.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of Void booted to a graphical login screen with a soft blue background. Signing into the Xfce 4.16 desktop brought up the same interface I experienced on the live media. The desktop uses a mostly bright theme with thick window title bars by default. The appearance can be adjusted using a range of Xfce configuration modules.
Void 20210218 -- Exploring the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 208kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
When we start using Void there are no pop-ups, no welcome screens, no initial configuration wizards. The distribution immediately leaves us to use and customize the system the way we want.
One of the first things I noticed about Void was that applications like Firefox and Parole made no sound. This seems to go hand-in-hand with Void not shipping an audio control in the system tray the way most distributions do. There was also no obvious command line audio mixer such as alsamixer. I got around this limitation by installing the pnmixer package and setting it to run automatically at each login. This gave me a system tray volume control, though it still did not work. I had to open the mixer's configuration and provide it with the full path to the pamixer executable. This then allowed me to unmute the sound system and play audio through my speakers.
The muted audio and lack of system tray volume control seems like an odd omission to me. The PulseAudio and ALSA sound systems are installed for us already so it's not as though Void is saving disk space by not supporting audio playback out of the box. Making the user install and configuring the front-end mixer controls just seems like a lot of extra steps for something most distributions do automatically and I don't see a benefit to not including this functionality on the desktop edition of the operating system.
Void 20210218 -- Setting up an audio mixer
(full image size: 207kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Hardware
When I started using Void it was in a VirtualBox environment. I found the distribution was quick to start and responsive. Xfce worked quickly and well in the virtual machine. The desktop would not resize itself automatically to match the VirtualBox window, but I could adjust Xfce's resolution using its Display configuration module.
When I moved on to trying Void on my workstation the distribution ran into trouble at first as it was not able to boot in UEFI mode. However, when I switched to booting in Legacy BIOS mode the distribution ran smoothly. All my hardware was detected and the system was responsive.
Void is a relatively lightweight distribution. The operating system consumes 245MB when signed into the Xfce desktop, which is below average for memory consumption. A fresh install of the distribution requires just 2GB of disk space, which is about a third of the space most mainstream Linux distributions consume these days. Granted, Void doesn't ship with many applications so by the time I added all the programs I wanted, Void had doubled in size.
Void 20210218 -- Running Thunderbird and LibreOffice
(full image size: 181kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Applications
Looking through the sparse application menu, which is presented in a classic tree style, we find the Firefox web browser and Parole media player. The system ships with media codecs allowing us to play audio and video files out of the box. The Thunar file manager is present along with the Ristretto image viewer.
The Xfce 4.16 desktop ships with a handful of configuration modules and a settings panel which help us modify and customize the desktop environment. No modules for handling the lower level configuration of the operating system are included.
Void 20210218 -- Adjusting desktop settings
(full image size: 178kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Void ships with manual pages for installed software and boots using the runit init software. I find runit to be light and fast. Enabling new services is straight forward and covered in the project's documentation. In the background Void runs version 5.10.17 of the Linux kernel. As Void is a rolling release we can expect packages to gradually get upgraded over time.
Package management
Package management on Void is handled by the command line XBPS utilities. Unlike some distributions where the package manager is one program that handles a range of functionality, XBPS is broken into separate tools. This means we search for software using one tool (xbps-query) while performing installations and upgrades using another (xbps-install) rather than having one tool, such as DNF or APT handle everything.
Void 20210218 -- Downloading system updates with XBPS
(full image size: 238kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The syntax XBPS uses is unusual. Instead of using easily recognizable terms such as "search", we end up running commands like "xbps-query -Rs package name". I find this can take a little while to get used to. However, despite the unusual syntax, XBPS operates quickly and I encountered no problems with it during my trial.
The first day I was running Void there were just 19 updates available, totalling 19MB in size. These new packages were all downloaded and applied to the system without any trouble. I had similar success adding the applications I wanted to use, such as alternative media players, productivity suite, and the Thunderbird e-mail client. In fact, despite its relatively small size, the Void team seems to have been able to supply a solid collection of popular software.
Though not installed by default, the Flatpak portable package framework is available in the repositories, providing access to additional desktop programs.
One curiosity I ran into with Void is that XBPS is not set up with any remote package repositories when running on the live media. This effectively disables the package manager when we are running the live desktop. Once Void is installed to a hard drive XBPS is automatically configured with the official repositories.
Other observations
Earlier I mentioned installing Void on a Btrfs volume. This worked fairly well and I was hopeful the distribution might make use of the advanced filesystem in some way. However, this was not the case. Void does not appear to support boot environments. Btrfs was set up with a simple volume (and no sub-volumes) and, oddly enough, had file access times enabled, which distributions often turn off for better performance.
I tried installing Void's Timeshift package and it fails due to Timeshift only working with Btrfs snapshots when the filesystem is set up the same way Ubuntu creates Btrfs layouts. However, it is possible to manually create Btrfs snapshots using the filesystem's command line tools.
Also on the subject of filesystems, Void is one of the few distributions I can recall using recently that locks down the user's home directory, granting exclusive access to the user (permissions 700). I like this as I feel some distributions are too open with their home directories.
Conclusions
In the past I've installed Void a few times and it has often made a mixed impression due to one problem or another. In hindsight I suspect these past issues, often with application functionality or package management, might have been the result of trying musl editions of the distribution rather than the more mainstream glibc editions.
Even during this trial, which I feel went really well for the most part, things got off to a rocky start. Void is unusual in that it makes users sign into the live disc, it didn't boot in UEFI mode on my computer, and package management seems to be disabled on the live disc. When it comes to installing, Void's installer is functional and easy to navigate, but its text interface does look dated next to system installers such as Ubiquity and Calamares. Though I will give Void credit for having an installer that should work exactly the same whether run from a desktop or the command line.
Once Void was installed, the initial rough impression continued when I had to manually install and configure a system tray audio mixer in order to enable sound in applications such as Parole and Firefox.
After Void was installed and audio was working things really turned around. Void is unusually lightweight and fast. The Xfce desktop worked smoothly and I like that the distribution ships with a relatively small collection of applications, leaving the application menu mostly free of clutter. XBPS, despite its unusual syntax, works remarkably quickly and soon had all the extra applications I wanted installed.
Void is quick to start up and stays out of the way. I was not bogged down in configuration steps or first-run wizards. There were no flashy effects or distractions. Void is relatively minimal for a desktop distribution, but what is included works smoothly. I like the simplicity of the design, especially where runit and service management are concerned. Most distro-specific features, like runit and XBPS seem to be well documented.
What I particularly find interesting is Void feels unique. In a world with a lot of Debian and Arch Linux spins, sometimes it is nice to find a distribution that is doing something, or several things, different. Void runs most of the same software other distributions do, but a lot of the underpinnings (init, package management, core system libraries) are different. They work, they're lighter than average, and they mostly seem to be set up to make system administration simple.
Void is certainly not a beginner distribution, it feels like it is intended for more experienced users. Ones who want to squeeze more performance out of their machines, customize their experience, and will be comfortable on the command line. I certainly fall into this category and felt at home with Void once I got used to the alternative tools, like XBPS, being used. If you are familiar with the command line and crave both speed and a rolling release experience, Void feels like a great choice.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Void has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.1/10 from 249 review(s).
Have you used Void? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Purism polishes their mobile platform, GNOME 40 released, Plan 9 released as open source, Red Hat cuts funding to the Free Software Foundation, Debian updates install media
The Purism team have unveiled a series of changes and improvements coming to their mobile platform. The project has stated the next release of PureOS for the Librem 5 smartphone will include the option to encrypt the root filesystem and be based on Debian's Testing branch. "Everything is newer; this release uses the more recent base of Debian Bullseye. On top of that, the codebase between phone, laptop, desktop, and the server will be shared. There was a special repository for the phone that contained additional adaptive applications in the previous release. From this release on, the desktop and phone will use the same adaptive apps and packages." Additional information on the mobile operating system can be found in the project's blog post.
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The GNOME desktop project has hit a new milestone with the launch of GNOME 40. Despite the large version jump from 3.38 to 40, essentially dropping the "3.x" from the version number, the new release is a relatively gentle evolutionary step forward for the desktop environment. Some of the key new features include a revamped Activities Overview page, the Weather application has been redesigned, and the Maps program can now display information on locations pulled from Wikipedia. There have also been changes to the GNOME Software utility: "Software has had a number of improvements for GNOME 40. The large application banners have a new and improved look, and now cycle automatically. New version history dialogs display the recent changes for each application, the updates logic has been updated to reduce the frequency of reminders. Be it Flatpak or distribution packages, GNOME Software now tells you where you're installing your software from. Some work happened behind the scenes to improve how Software presents information about new packages." Additional information and screenshots are provided in GNOME's release notes.
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We don't generally talk about Plan 9, a cousin to UNIX (and a quirky uncle to Linux) which was developed by Bell Labs. Plan 9 is perhaps most well known for taking some UNIX concepts a step further with a focus on more network-oriented tasks. OSNews is reporting that ownership of Plan 9 has been transferred from Nokia to the Plan 9 Foundation and the source code for the revered operating system is being released under the liberal MIT open source license. "The historical releases are at the Foundation's website. Nokia also posted a press release which gives some more background about Plan 9 for those who may not know about its history."
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In 2019 Richard M Stallman, often referred to as RMS, stepped down from his position as president of the Free Software Foundation. Stallman, who founded the Free Software movement and the GNU project, has often been a controversial figure. Admit backlash over some of his public comments he removed himself from the leadership of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
Last week the FSF board silently reinstated Stallman as a member of their Board of Directors, raising a number of questions and complaints. The Open Source Initiative has published a complaint against the quiet about-face by the FSF board. This was followed by a petition to have Stallman removed from the board which has been signed by members of the GNOME and Debian projects.
Red Hat has made perhaps the strongest statement against Stallman's return, stating in a blog post: Red Hat is a long-time donor and contributor to projects stewarded by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), with hundreds of contributors and millions of lines of code contributed. Considering the circumstances of Richard Stallman's original resignation in 2019, Red Hat was appalled to learn that he had rejoined the FSF board of directors. As a result, we are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events. In addition, many Red Hat contributors have told us they no longer plan to participate in FSF-led or backed events, and we stand behind them."
The Free Software Foundation has responded, stating they will be reviewing their board memberships.
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The Debian project has published updated install media for Debian 10 "Buster". The new release is not a new variant of Debian, rather includes security updates since Debian 10 was released. "Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 10 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old Buster media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror."
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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) |
Where are the Fedora-based distributions?
Looking-for-my-hat asks: I've encountered a lot of distros based on Debian and Arch, but why are there not more Fedora-based distros? Fedora seems like a better base than those so why aren't there more Fedora distros?
DistroWatch answers: Though I've never taken a survey, there are probably a lot of little reasons for the shift toward Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch Linux platforms as a base for new projects. A lot of it, I suspect, has to do with the way the community has shifted over the years.
If we rewind to a period from around 1997 through to 2003, Red Hat Linux (which was the forerunner to Fedora) was a highly popular base for distributions. Projects like Mandrake Linux/Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Phat Linux, ROSA, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Fuduntu, and so on all owe their beginnings to Red Hat Linux/Fedora. In fact, there are 94 Linux distributions based on Fedora (or Red Hat Linux) in our database. Most of them (about 82) are inactive. For comparison's sake, there are 153 distributions in the database based on Ubuntu with 99 inactive. That's a 35% survival rate for Ubuntu, a 13% active rate for Fedora, Debian (not including Ubuntu-based children) has a 28% survival rate, and Arch has 43 total with 21 inactive giving it a survival rate of 51%.
I'm getting off track now due to my love of statistics, but my point is that there have been lots and lots of distributions based on Red Hat Linux/Fedora in the past. In fact, Fedora has spawned more than twice as many children as Arch, but only about 13% of them are still actively maintained. Which means people used to see Fedora (or Red Hat Linux before it) as a great base for a distribution, but people are not making or maintaining Fedora-based projects now. Meanwhile Arch Linux only has 43 projects that have made it into our database, but a full half of them have survived.
For the most part I believe there are four key reasons for this shift away from running Fedora-based projects and toward Debian, Ubuntu and Arch. One, and perhaps the most obvious, is that
people don't make full, independent projects based on Fedora because people who like working with Fedora create spins or labs which are incorporated in the Fedora infrastructure. If you want to throw together your own spin of Fedora with a different desktop, theme, and tools, then you can create a spin and host it with the Fedora project. Fedora Workstation, Server, Silverblue, CoreOS, and over a dozen spins & labs all live together in the same infrastructure so people don't think of them as separate projects.
In comparison, if someone wants to make a new spin of Ubuntu or Arch Linux they need to set up their own website, forms, mailing list, and so on. This makes the projects appear as though they are all separate entities while Fedora seems like one big project with many community spins. This accounts for a lot of the gap in Fedora-based projects versus Debian, Ubuntu, or Arch.
Another factor is Fedora operates in a strange middle ground compared to the other popular base distributions. Debian offers a fixed, conservative branch, and two development branches people can use as a base. Ubuntu offers both long term support releases and rapid, six-month releases. People who like rolling releases on the cutting edge can use Arch. Fedora has a rapid release cycle with fixed packages and a short support cycle. For developers this means a lot of work with little benefit because they need to constantly keep up, constantly be planning new versions, without the benefit of being able to just update in place the way a rolling distribution does.
Fedora's release and support cycle means constant work with minimal benefit for a developer. The project is in an awkward middle position where it offers neither long term support or rolling upgrades, while requiring a fast pace of updates to newer versions. That isn't appealing to many distribution maintainers.
A third issue I think may be at play is Fedora has a strict license policy. It won't package proprietary software or patent-encumbered software. The latter is really only an issue in a few countries like the United States. Debian, Arch, and Ubuntu take a relatively friendly approach which either allows for these types of software or they make it easy to enable a non-free repository with a click to provide access to less liberally licensed software. Fedora relies on third-party repositories which are not always in sync with Fedora and this poses a problem for people who want to make new desktop distributions.
Finally, I suspect a big part of why so many projects were based on Red Hat Linux (and Fedora) prior to 2003 while we see relatively few surviving projects based on it these days has to do with the perceived shift at Red Hat. Back in 2003 Red Hat did away with Red Hat Linux, turning its attention to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and spinning off Fedora as a community project with a strong focus on software development and testing new technologies. Fedora, for all its benefits, was not the solid, stable, predictable platform Red Hat Linux had been. It frequently changed package managers, introduced SELinux which caused some problems, and generally become more experimental.
Meanwhile, around the same time, Arch Linux and Ubuntu appeared on the scene. I believe Arch launched in 2002 and Ubuntu in 2004. Ubuntu was geared towards the desktop and tried to be more friendly, more beginner-oriented while Arch was more cutting edge and more geared toward experts. Ubuntu in particular did a good job of supporting hardware, having a friendly desktop, and having a huge repository of packages. It was the natural "first distro" for many people, a niche Red Hat Linux previously filled. In short, Ubuntu captured a lot of mind share. Since people tend to use what they know, this meant people who started out as beginners with Ubuntu started using it at work, installing it on servers, and modifying it.
In other words, Ubuntu (and therefore Debian) and Arch were stepping into the community spotlight at about the same time Red Hat (and Fedora) appeared to be exiting. I think this is a big part of why, in the last 15 years, we have observed so many distributions based on Arch and Ubuntu emerging while relatively few new projects are based on Fedora. The mind share of the community shifted toward more beginner friendly and more advanced distributions while Fedora occupied an awkward middle ground where it was too experimental for beginners and too heavy or static for advanced users.
In summary, I'd say that Fedora lost its position at the top of the market share charts. Then people who were using it found that, as a base, it either moved too quickly (for people who wanted long term support releases) and too slowly for people who like rolling releases. At the same time Fedora's infrastructure hosts multiple projects (over a dozen) which, in the Debian and Arch families, would be set up as entirely separate projects with their own websites and project names. This makes Fedora's share of current distributions smaller and to appear even smaller than it is.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus Kiosk 5.2.0
Tomasz Jokiel has announced the release of Porteus Kiosk 5.2.0, a new stable version of the project's single-purpose, Gentoo-based Linux distribution designed for web kiosks and restricted to internet browsing only: "I'm pleased to announce that Porteus Kiosk 5.2.0 is now available for download. Major software upgrades in this release include Linux kernel 5.20.25, Google Chrome 87.0.4280.141 and Mozilla Firefox 78.8.0 ESR. Packages from the userland are upgraded to portage snapshot tagged on 2021-03-14. This is the last kiosk release which supports Adoble FlashPlayer plugin. Within the next 6 months we are planning to upgrade the browsers to versions where Flash support is removed by the upstream developers. If your web pages still contain a Flash content then please migrate it to HTML 5 and JavaScript as soon as possible. In Kiosk 5.2.0 we have added a libva-intel-media-driver package and updated the VAAPI stack. This is in preparation for a much welcome 'hardware accelerated video decode' which should become a reality in the next kiosk version on selected GPUs. Digital signage solutions should benefit the most from this feature." See the release announcement and changelog for more information.
Tails 4.17
Version 4.17 of Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System), a Debian-based live image designed for anonymous browsing of internet websites, has been released. The new release mostly includes fixes for a smoother upgrade process, and upgrades key software packages. "This release fixes known security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible. Reliability improvements to automatic upgrades: Repair automatically the file system used during upgrades. Automatic upgrades were sometimes failing even after doing a manual upgrade because of an unclean file system. Resume automatically when the download of an upgrade fails. Other changes and updates. Update Tor Browser to 10.0.14. Update Thunderbird to 78.8.0. Update Tor to 0.4.5.7. Update GRUB to 2.04-16. Update some firmware packages. This should improve the support for some Wi-Fi interfaces, especially Intel, Broadcom, and Cypress interfaces." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the changelog.
Manjaro Linux 21.0
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 21.0, a significant update of the project's desktop-oriented, rolling-release distribution featuring the GNOME, KDE and Xfce desktops. This release updates the desktops to GNOME 3.38, KDE 2.21 and Xfce 4.16: "With our Xfce edition, we now have Xfce 4.16. The window manager received lots of updates and improvements again in the area of compositing and GLX. Support for fractional scaling was added to the display dialog, along with highlighting the preferred mode of a display with an asterisk and adding aspect ratios next to resolutions. The settings manager has improved search and filter capabilities. Thunar file manager received a boatload of fixes and quite a few notable features, including pause for copy/move operations, support for queued file transfer, remembering view settings per directory and support for transparency in GTK themes. Linux kernel 5.10 LTS is used for this release." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
Manjaro Linux 21.0 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 698kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
4MLinux 36.0
Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 36.0, the latest stable build of the project's minimalist desktop and server distribution combining "four Ms": maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), mini-server (using the inetd daemon) and mystery (providing several small Linux games). The new release ships with a number of updated packages, including LibreOffice 7.1.2, AbiWord 3.0.4, GIMP 2.10.22, Gnumeric 1.12.48, Firefox 87.0, Chromium 88.0.4324.96, Thunderbird 78.9.0, Audacious 4.0.5, VLC 3.0.12, MESA 20.3.1 and Wine 6.1. "The status of the 4MLinux 36.0 series has been changed to STABLE. As always, the new major release has some new features. Support for NBD (network block device) protocol has been added. Support for exFAT file system is now available via exfatprogs and GParted. New applications: GtkHash (a program to calculate checksums) and VeraCrypt (a popular encryption tool). Additionally, UNetbootin (a utility to create live USB images) is now available out of the box. All Flash Player dependencies have been removed from the 4MLinux repositories." See the release announcement for more information.
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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: 2,377
- Total data uploaded: 36.8TB
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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 Fedora or a Fedora-based distro
In our Questions and Answers column we talked about Fedora and how the distribution tends to spawn more official spins than completely separate distributions with their own infrastructure. We would like to learn whether you use Fedora, one of its community spins, or another Fedora-based distribution. Let us know what you enjoy about Fedora-based distros and spins in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on remote servers and services in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Running Fedora and Fedora-based projects
| I run Fedora: | 256 (14%) |
| I run a Fedora spin: | 97 (5%) |
| I run a Fedora-based distro: | 24 (1%) |
| I run a downstream distro RHEL/CentOS: | 51 (3%) |
| I do not run Fedora or a Fedora-based distro: | 1349 (76%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Tribblix. Tribblix is an operating system based on illumos and OpenIndiana. The project features ZFS support along with Zones, and DTrace. Tribblix defaults to using the Xfce desktop, though MATE and Enlightenment graphical environments are available. Tribblix runs on x86, x86_64, and SPARC processors.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 5 April 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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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
Virtual-Linux
Why was Virtual-Linux created? Well, I was pretty tired with the silly bootdisks you can download, plus I wanted to learn more about the Linux core. I then decided to build a ramdisk based system of my own, and after a while I ended up with a cdbased rescue system with a builtin firewall. Then, after having tested a few of the existing big cdbootable systems that were very slow and had very poor performance, a new project started to take shape in my mind. After some late nights investigating some existing soloutions, my own concept was born: 1. Use a commercial distribution as base (Mandrake Linux). 2. Implement as much as possible of the original functions without many hardware/memory requirements. 3. Put as much software as possible on one cd. 4. Make it easy to configure / Autodetect as much as possible. 5. Implement live filesystem compression. 6. Ramdisk Compression.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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