DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 920, 7 June 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
openSUSE is the community branch of the SUSE family. The project published a new version last week which introduces binary compatibility with its commercial sibling SUSE Linux Enterprise. We begin this week with a look at openSUSE Leap 15.3 and some of its key features. Then, in our News section, we report on the Linux Mint team adding new search functions to the Nemo file manager along with the Rocky Linux project looking for volunteers to help round out the young distribution. We also share tips on counter-acting an operating system's out of memory (OOM) process when a memory-heavy program needs to be protected. Our Questions and Answers column this week discusses writing downloaded files directly to removable media when local hard drive storage is not available. What tools do you use to write ISO and IMG files to a thumb drive? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: openSUSE 15.3
- News: Nemo gets new search capabilities, Rocky publishes status update and seeks volunteers, tips for protecting against out of memory termination
- Questions and answers: Writing an ISO directly from the web to a thumb drive
- Released last week: CentOS 8.4.2105, openSUSE 15.3, Kali 2021.2
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Arch, CentOS, Clonezilla, Kali, Lakka, NixOS, MakuluLinux, openSUSE, OviOS, Rescuezilla, Septor, Tails
- Opinion poll: Writing an ISO/IMG file to a thumb drive
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (18MB) and MP3 (13MB) formats.
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE 15.3
openSUSE Leap 15.3 is the latest release in the distribution's series of stable versions. For the most part, openSUSE 15.3 is a minor update to the 15.x series which brings the community-focused, freely available openSUSE distribution closer in its technology to the business-oriented SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE).
There is one huge change from the previous Leap versions. openSUSE Leap 15.3 is built not just from SUSE Linux Enterprise source code like in previous versions, but built with the exact same binary packages, which strengthens the flow between Leap and SLE.
There are a few other new features and upgrades. Most of these focus on containers and small improvements to development tools. For the most part major packages have stayed at the same versions they were earlier in the 15.x series. The KDE Plasma desktop is still shipping version 5.18 and GNOME remains at version 3.34. The Xfce desktop though received a major update, moving from version 4.14 to 4.16 which introduces a number of improvements.
openSUSE 15.3 offers 18 months of security updates and support. People upgrading from previous versions should first upgrade to 15.2 as upgrading from earlier releases isn't supported.
Users upgrading to openSUSE Leap 15.3 need to be aware that upgrading directly from versions before openSUSE Leap 15.2 is not recommended. Due to the upgrade path, it is highly recommended to upgrade to Leap 15.2 before upgrading to Leap 15.3.
There are several editions of openSUSE, built for multiple hardware architectures. openSUSE's installation media is available in both net-install and off-line installer flavours for x86_64, AArch64, IBM Z, and PowerPC systems. The full install images are about 4.4GB in size while the network installers tend to be about 150MB in size. There are also live desktop editions of the distribution which are available in GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, and Rescue flavours. These range in size from about 600MB up to about 950MB. For the purposes of this trial I installed openSUSE using the full install 4.4GB ISO for x86_64 machines. I also tried out the live desktop media with Xfce for the same architecture.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The Xfce desktop and application menu
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Installing
Booting from the install media offers to perform a media check for us, start a new install, or upgrade from a previous version of openSUSE. The boot menu also offers to provide rescue tools for recovering a broken system. Taking the Install option loads a graphical environment and presents us with the distribution's custom installer.
openSUSE's installer begins by showing us its license. We can select our preferred language and keyboard layout from drop-down menus located at the top of the window. We are next asked if we would like to connect to on-line repositories in order to gain access to additional (and more up to date) packages. I agreed to enable on-line repositories, but the installer failed to connect with them, despite having an active Internet connection.
The following screen asks us to select one role from a list. We can set up openSUSE with the KDE Plasma desktop, GNOME, Xfce, or a generic minimal set of desktop packages. We also have the option of selecting a server role or openSUSE's transactional server, which uses a read-only filesystem. We can only enable one role, preventing us from choosing to install multiple desktop environments. I decided to go with the Xfce role as I was curious about openSUSE's implementation of Xfce 4.16.
The installer offers to automatically set up the distribution on a Btrfs root filesystem alongside a swap partition. Directories such as /home and /var are set up on sub-volumes of the main Btrfs partition. We can override these settings with a manual layout if we like. Though for most single-boot machines this default layout is probably well suited for most people. openSUSE's manual partition manager is a bit on the complex side. It's powerful and flexible, but offers so many tools on one page that it's likely to overwhelm less experienced users.
After that we select our time zone from a map of the world and optionally create a user account. This account can be assigned administrative access. The installer shows us a list of actions it will take and provides hyperlinks we can click to visit other pages where we can tweak specific options. I like this summary page as the links make it easier to customize settings than having us browse backward through the installer the way some distributions do. The installer then copies its files to the hard drive and automatically reboots the system when it is finished.
Early impressions
My new copy of openSUSE booted to a graphical login screen with a green theme. Signing into my account brought up the Xfce 4.16 desktop. Along the bottom of the screen is a panel holding the application menu, task switcher, and system tray. On the desktop are icons which open the Thunar file manager.
Shortly after signing in a welcome screen appears. This screen provides links to on-line documentation and support. There is also a link to a local document which includes links to an on-line wiki and instructions for gaining access to third-party package repositories and media codecs. There are also instructions for acquiring the Chrome web browser.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The welcome window
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The welcome window further provides access to a web-based software store, which I'll talk about later, and a link to the upstream Xfce documentation.
Apart from the welcome window, the desktop has a quiet, classic feel to it. The theme is relatively dull and grey. The application menu has a fairly standard two-pane layout with categories displayed on the left and program launchers on the right. The application menu has a search bar to help us find specific items.
As with many Linux distributions, openSUSE locks the desktop after just five minutes of idle time. This can be adjusted in the desktop settings panel.
Hardware
I began by testing openSUSE in VirtualBox. The distribution ran smoothly in the virtual environment. Xfce was responsive and I found it would dynamically resize to fit the dimensions of the VirtualBox window.
When I tried openSUSE on my laptop I found it would boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. The distribution was quite snappy on my laptop and Xfce was responsive. All of my laptop's hardware, including wireless card, screen resolution, and media keys were properly detected.
The operating system used about 530MB of memory to sign into the Xfce desktop. This memory usage sometimes spiked shortly after I logged in, up to about 640MB, before settling down again. I'm not sure, but I suspect this spike in RAM consumption was due to a background check for package updates. Even at the lower amount (530MB) this is still quite heavy for a distribution running Xfce. This is about twice the amount of RAM EndeavourOS uses when running Xfce and more than twice the memory consumed by Void with the same desktop environment.
A fresh install of the distribution used 5GB of disk space for the operating system, plus any space we set aside for swap space. In terms of disk consumption openSUSE is fairly average for a mainstream Linux distribution.
Applications
Browsing through the application menu we find a fairly standard collection of open source software. The Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client are available. LibreOffice and the Transmission bittorrent software are installed for us. Pidgin is present for instant messaging and TigerVNC can be used to connect to remote desktop machines. The Evince document viewer, the GNU Image manipulation Program, and Shotwell are present. I found Java is installed by default. There are simple image viewers, an archive manager, and a text editor.
openSUSE ships with the Parole media player and the Pragha audio player. Some audio codecs, including MP3, are provided by default. However video codecs are not and I will talk about this more in a moment. The distribution uses the systemd init software and runs version 5.3 of the Linux kernel.
The distribution includes the man command and manual pages, but presents unusual behaviour. Whenever I wanted to look up a manual page the man command would list any pages with similar names and ask which one I wanted. If I didn't respond for a handful of seconds, the page I'd originally requested would be shown. The man command mentions, when it shows us the list of similar commands, that we can set an environment variable to skip this unwanted and unhelpful pause before displaying the requested page.
To me this sort of behaviour seems entirely backward. New users, the ones most likely to rely on documentation, may not even know how to set an environment variable or how to make it permanent. Meanwhile more experienced users like myself don't want a long delay and a prompt effectively asking if we're sure we want to look at the page we just requested. I'm curious who this feature is supposed to help and why it was added to openSUSE as no other distributions do this. Luckily it can be disabled.
Earlier I mentioned some audio codecs ship with openSUSE, but video codecs are missing. When trying to watch a video in the Parole media player an error comes up saying the required codec is missing. We are then asked to click one button to ignore the warning or another to install the missing codec. Clicking either button does nothing other than return us to the blank Parole window.
There are a few ways a person can address this gap in functionality - varying from enabling repositories through the YaST configuration panel to trying the 1-click install method. I decided to follow the documentation provided through the welcome window as it seems likely to be the option new users, who haven't explored openSUSE before, will try.
The documentation provides instructions for enabling codecs on Tumbleweed (openSUSE's rolling branch) as well a Leap (the static branch). The instructions involve long command lines which most people will probably want to copy/paste from the website. We then need to refresh the package database, accept the new package signing key, and then we can access codecs or media players with enabled codecs.
openSUSE 15.3 -- LibreOffice and the Pragha music player
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I tried opening a video file in Parole again and it once more reported codecs were missing and offered to install them. Once more, accepting this offer does nothing. I next used the package manager to install the VLC media player from the Packman community repository. Trying to open the video in VLC immediately caused the whole desktop to lock-up. Xfce and the open applications become entirely unresponsive to mouse and keyboard input. I had to switch to a terminal and force a reboot to get the machine working again. Later on, trying to play videos in VLC worked without further problems.
Settings and options
There are two setting panels. One is part of Xfce which controls the look and behaviour of the desktop. The Xfce modules work well and can be searched. This settings panel functions the same as on other distros. There were no surprises with the Xfce panel. It is fairly well laid out and worked without any problems. The other settings panel is called YaST.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The Xfce and YaST settings panels
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YaST is the key stone to openSUSE, the central piece that links all the other pieces. YaST provides configuration modules for a great range of options and functionality. Through YaST we can manage packages and repositories, user accounts, security options, browse and compare filesystem snapshots, set up network services, manage background daemons, and handle user accounts. The list is quite extensive and, during my trial, all of these modules worked as expected.
There are some weak points in the YaST collection. Many of the tools are more geared towards experienced or advanced users than beginners. While the Mageia family has a control panel which provides easy access and beginner-friendly features, openSUSE's YaST is focused on providing many options to power users and administrators. The firewall tool is possibly the best example of this focus as it has many options, profiles, and screens, but no clear way to just enable an always-on firewall that blocks incoming traffic the way Gufw does.
openSUSE 15.3 -- Exploring firewall options
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Many of YaST's modules fit into this same pattern where we can browse through many powerful features, filters, and options, but it's sometimes an overwhelming amount of options many people probably won't use. The package management options were another good example of this pattern of offering a lot of features while making simple tasks more complicated, which brings me to...
Package management
There are a few approaches we can take for package management. The one most readily available to new users is the on-line application store which is accessible through the welcome window. The on-line repository opens in Firefox and displays a text list of categories we can browse. The page also offers a search function we can use. We can click on an entry for an application and the store shows us available download links. Typically download options for recent versions of openSUSE Leap, along with Tumbleweed, are shown.
Search results can be a bit of a mess as packages with related names, debug information, dependency data, and alternative versions are shown. For instance, searching for the Okular PDF viewer brings up over a dozen results, including: Okular5, Okular-git, Okular-dev, Okular-dbg, and Okular5-dev. I know the "-dbg" suffix is a debug package, and I suspect "-dev" is a development package. This still leaves me unsure of what Okular-git is. This seems like a mess and even if I choose the right package, then I need to select the right version of openSUSE to match it. This is likely to be a confusing mess for less experienced users.
To make matters worse, the application store kept giving me HTTPS errors due to being unable to verify the ownership of the website. Some elements on the page are not transmitted securely either, making matters worse.
openSUSE's primary local package manager is available through YaST. The software management module will assist us in browsing through available repositories and categories of software as well as listing updates. The easiest way I found to find new software was to use the package manager's search function to locate programs by name.
openSUSE 15.3 -- The primary package manager
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The package manager takes a low-level approach and tends to deliver a lot of results when performing searches so it can take a while to browse through available packages. The package manager works quickly and it has some powerful features. However, there doesn't appear to be any more modern, application-focused software centre.
openSUSE's command line package manager is called zypper. I like zypper as it is fast, has a plain, English-based syntax, shows nicely formatted output, and will optionally let us know when we need to restart programs which have been upgraded. I have no complaints when it comes to working with zypper directly. The release notes for openSUSE mention DNF, which is a Python-based package manager used by Fedora, and a C-based implementation of DNF called Micro DNF. DNF is not installed by default, but may be acquired through the distribution's repositories.
I checked for portable package support. Neither Snap nor Flatpak is installed by default. However, Flatpak is available in openSUSE's repositories. We can install it and use the command line to add new Flatpak repositories.
Btrfs and snapshots
openSUSE uses Btrfs as the default filesystem. This is one of the few distributions I am aware of to really embrace Btrfs and what it can do. Not only does it properly set up sub-volumes to make managing data easier, it also does a lot with the Btrfs snapshot feature. There are two main features openSUSE provides through Btrfs. The first is automated snapshots of the main filesystem. Whenever we make a configuration change through YaST, install a package, or download security updates, the system automatically takes a snapshot of the root filesystem. This allows us to revert changes at any time or compare differences between snapshots to see what changed and when. We can do this from the command line or through a nice, point-and-click graphical tool in the YaST panel. This means we can quickly detect and revert any configuration change, package upgrade, or file deletion. The processes involved, both the automated snapshots and working with them, happen practically instantly.
openSUSE 15.3 -- Browsing Btrfs snapshots
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The other tool openSUSE provides is the option to access Btrfs snapshots from the boot menu. We can access any past snapshot at boot time, effectively rolling back any change to the operating system by selecting an older snapshot. This makes openSUSE nearly bulletproof, short of hardware failure or someone erasing the boot loader. openSUSE is one of the only open source operating systems which offers boot time snapshot access (FreeBSD is another) and it is an unusually powerful tool which other Linux distributions have been slow to adopt.
Conclusions
I had mostly positive experiences while running openSUSE 15.3. The distribution does a lot of things well. The installer is both fairly straight forward to use and yet, under the surface, offers a lot of advanced options. This started me off with a good first impression, as did the initial welcome screen.
I deeply appreciate that openSUSE is one of the only Linux distributions to entirely embrace advanced filesystems. Its administrative tools automatically take snapshots of changes and we can rollback to previous snapshots from the boot menu. Apart from FreeBSD, I don't know of any other commonly used open source operating system which makes proper use of advanced filesystems such as Btrfs and ZFS.
Speaking of the administration tools, YaST is quite powerful. We can manipulate most aspects of the underlying operating system through YaST and, while some modules are overly complex (for less experienced users), more advanced users will find a lot of useful tools in the YaST panel.
There are some weak points in openSUSE's armour. The web-based application store, promoted by the welcome window, is really rough and overly complicated. It shows far too many package options for simple searches and depends on the user clicking on the proper link to download for the right edition of openSUSE. It will even show packages and download links for packages which haven't been built for openSUSE 15.3 yet.
The distribution offers a short support cycle. openSUSE Leap claims to be a long-term support (LTS) release, but only gets 18 months of updates. This is roughly the same as Fedora and much less than Ubuntu's community editions (which receive 36 months of support) or Ubuntu, Debian, and FreeBSD - each of which offer 60 months of support. Despite its rapid upgrade pace, the provided packages are mostly over a year old. This means openSUSE gives us the upgrade pace of Fedora along with the software age of more conservative distributions.
Not having multimedia codecs available out of the box is rare these days. This, combined with the complex command line steps outlined in the documentation and the failure of applications like Parole to find missing codecs after offering to install them (even after community repositories have been enabled), means new users have an overly complicated and confusing path ahead of them, compared against the experience offered by other distributions, if they want to watch videos.
One thing which I kept coming back to while using openSUSE is that it feels like a distribution for administrators and developers, not for regular home users. Some really complex tasks, like setting up Btrfs, working with complex firewalls, setting up network shares, comparing snapshots, and so on are quite easy (thanks to YaST). However, some basic actions such as playing video files, downloading desktop applications, or reading manual pages are unusually complex on openSUSE. It is a distribution which makes complex tasks easy and simple tasks harder than most other mainstream distributions.
The user interface is fairly polished and the newly upgraded Xfce desktop works well. The system is responsive and worked well with my test environments. I think this fairly smooth experience will entice people, particularly more experienced users, to run openSUSE. openSUSE is a little on the heavy side in terms of memory usage, but the array of convenient features that accompany it more than makes up for the difference in my opinion.
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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
openSUSE has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.7/10 from 437 review(s).
Have you used openSUSE? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Nemo gets new search capabilities, Rocky publishes status update and seeks volunteers, tips for protecting against out of memory termination
The Linux Mint team have published their monthly newsletter for May. The newsletter mentions a number of improvements and new features coming in the next version of Linux Mint (version 20.2 Beta is expected to be released in mid-June). Among the upcoming features are a bulk file renaming tool for Cinnamon and MATE along with compression options for the Warpinator file sharing tool. Plus the Nemo file manager will be able to handle content searches. "Nemo will feature content search. Until now you could only search for files. In Nemo 5.0 you'll be able to combine file search and content search, i.e. files which are named a certain way and/or which contain particular words. Regular expressions and recursive folder searches will be supported." Additional information can be found in the distribution's newsletter.
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Rocky Linux, a young clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, has published an update on their news page which provides some status information on the new project, along with suggestions as to how volunteers can contribute to the distribution. People interested in writing documentation, testing new builds, and creating tutorials or answering questions are invited to participate. "If you're interested in helping us test the Rocky Linux 8.4 RC, please join our Testing team! The Testing team meets weekly on Thursdays at 18:00 ET. There's live chat on our Mattermost server, and durable discussion on our forums. Please be sure to report any bugs you encounter."
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When a running process consumes too much memory it can starve the rest of the system, forcing the operating system to move other programs into swap space or, in more extreme cases, run a process called an out of memory (OOM) killer which terminates heavy programs. In recent years some open source operating systems, such as Fedora, have introduced background services which will monitor processes using too much memory and terminate them before the system's memory becomes overly taxed, wrecking performance.
While monitoring and terminating greedy processes can keep systems running smoothly, it also runs the risk of killing off services which are, for brief periods, intended to consume large amounts of memory. Databases in particular can consume a lot of RAM for brief periods and it is important to protect the database from being terminated during queries. Some tips on protecting heavy processes from unwanted termination are available for FreeBSD and for Linux.
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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) |
Writing an ISO directly from the web to a thumb drive
Skipping-a-step asks: Is there a way to download an ISO image and make a bootable USB thumb drive with it without first saving it? I don't have any disk space and need to get my distro ISO straight to the thumb drive.
DistroWatch answers: Yes, it is possible to download an ISO file for your preferred distribution and write it immediately to a removable drive without the intermediate step of storing it on your hard drive. The process may be a little slow, but assuming the thumb drive has enough storage capacity, you can do this.
Perhaps the easiest way to do this is with the wget command. The wget program will download a file and save it to the location of your choosing. Since thumb drives are treated as files we can write to, we can simply tell wget to save the ISO file it downloads to the thumb drive. For instance, if we are downloading a file called my-distro.iso and our USB drive is located at /dev/sdb then we can run the following command:
wget -O /dev/sdb https://example.com/my-distro.iso
If you are not sure of the device name of your thumb drive you can find it using lsblk which lists all of the storage devices attached to your computer.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the above approach is that it does not guard against files being corrupted during the download process. If your connection drops or bits of the file are lost during the transfer, the above method will not detect the problem. You will end up with a corrupted or incomplete copy of your distribution on your thumb drive without any warning.
To work around this method you could use the tee command. This allows input to be written both to a file and passed along through a pipe to another command. This means you can both write your download to the thumb drive and check its hash at the same time. The following example downloads my-distro.iso, writes it to the thumb drive located at /dev/sdb and prints the ISO file's SHA256 hash:
wget -O - https://example.com/my-distro.iso | tee /dev/sdb | sha256sum
In the above example we tell wget to save output to the file "-", which wget recognizes as meaning it should just print the contents of the file. The data is then sent through a pipe to tee. The tee command both writes the data to our thumb drive and passes it also to sha256sum to get a hash. This results in the file being written to our thumb drive at /dev/sdb and its hash printed to the console so we can verify it against the hash provided by the distribution's developers.
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Answers to other questions can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
JingOS 0.9
JingOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution for tablet computers. It can run desktop Linux applications like VS Code and LibreOffice. The project's latest release is JingOS 0.9 which features a number of key interface changes: "JingOS v0.9 updates: . Adaptive layouts: JingOS can now run perfectly on different resolution devices with adaptive layouts. Users can adjust resolutions in the Settings app. 2. Preview version of Sogou Input Method with virtual keyboard support. 3. Wallpaper settings. 4. Complex password settings: support character+number+symbol mixed password. 5. Gaussian blur effect of Notification Center and Control Panel. 6. The superposition and fusion mode of status bar and window, and solved the problem of status bar flashing when switching between apps. 7. The Files app adds support for compression and decompression (support zip, tar, 7zip, AR), also support tag, collection, sorting, OTG, etc. 8. Charging process will show on the lock screen. 9. System pop-up frame for Volume and Brightness adjustment. 10. Multi-languages support, including Chinese and English." Further details can be found in the project's release notes.
Clonezilla Live 2.7.2-38
Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 2.7.2-38, a new stable version of the project's Debian-based utility live CD for partitioning, backups and disk-cloning tasks: "Stable Clonezilla Live 2.7.2-38 released. This release includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes since 2.7.1-22: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded - this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2021-05-30; Linux kernel has been updated to 5.10.40; the systemd package was updated to 248.3 and this might have fixed this issue; added 'VGA with large font and To RAM' (using nomodeset) to the boot menu and moved 'KMS with large font and To RAM' to submenu - this can be an alternative solution for jfbterm not working in KMS mode for some VGA cards; added ocs-park-disks before rebooting or halting in Clonezilla Live; improved to process the volume header of Veracrypt; added '--force' for vgcfgrestore to force metadata restore even with thin pool LVs; added boot parameter echo_ocs_repository, so that when it's assigned as 'no', the prompt about mounting image repository can be hidden...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a full changelog.
Kali Linux 2021.2
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The distribution's team have released Kali Linux 2021.2 which includes two new significant tools: Kaboxer and Kali-Tweaks. Kaboxer allows the developers to package troublesome software in containers which are presented in a transparent fashion to the user like any other package. Kali-Tweaks helps the user customize the distribution. "Announcing Kali-Tweaks! This is our little helping hand for Kali users, with the idea to help customize Kali to your own personal taste quickly, simply, and the correct way. This should help you to stop doing repetitive tasks. Currently Kali-Tweaks will help out with: Meta packages - Installing/removing groups of tools, which may not have been available while installing Kali if you did not use the installer image. Network Repositories - Enabling/disabling 'bleeding-edge' and 'experimental' branches. Shell and Prompt - Switch between two or one line prompt, enable/disable the extra line before the prompt, or configure Bash or ZSH as the default shell..." Further information is available in the project"s release announcement.
openSUSE 15.3
The openSUSE team have announced the release of a minor update to the project's 15.x branch. openSUSE 15.3 is assembled using the same binary packages as SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) which facilitates testing and migration across both platforms. "The newest minor version of openSUSE Leap is the most recent, rock-solid addition to the openSUSE 15.x series that carries all the positive attributes of its predecessors. There is one huge change from the previous Leap versions. openSUSE Leap 15.3 is built not just from SUSE Linux Enterprise source code like in previous versions, but built with the exact same binary packages, which strengthens the flow between Leap and SLE like a yin yang." The new release features a desktop upgrade, bumping Xfce from version 4.14 to 4.16. Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
openSUSE 15.3 -- Running the GNOME desktop
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NixOS 21.5
NixOS is an independently developed GNU/Linux distribution that aims to improve the state of the art in system configuration management. In NixOS, the entire operating system, including the kernel, applications, system packages and configuration files, are built by the Nix package manager. The distribution's latest release is NixOS 21.05 "Okapi" features significant upgrades to the Linux kernel and GNU Compiler Collection, along with the GNOME, Cinnamon, and KDE Plasma desktops. "Support is planned until the end of December 2021, handing over to 21.11. In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights: Core version changes: gcc: 9.3.0 -> 10.3.0; glibc: 2.30 -> 2.32; default linux: 5.4 -> 5.10, all supported kernels available; mesa: 20.1.7 -> 21.0.1; Desktop Environments: GNOME: 3.36 -> 3.40, see its release notes; Plasma5: 5.18.5 -> 5.21.3; kdeApplications: 20.08.1 -> 20.12.3; Cinnamon: 4.6 -> 4.8.1; Programming Languages and Frameworks: Python optimizations were disabled again. Builds with optimizations enabled are not reproducible. Optimizations can now be enabled with an option. The linux_latest kernel was updated to the 5.12 series. It currently is not officially supported for use with the ZFS filesystem. If you use ZFS, you should use a different kernel version (either the LTS kernel, or track a specific one)." The project's release announcement and release notes provide more details.
Rescuezilla 2.2
Rescuezilla is a specialist Ubuntu-based distribution designed for system rescue tasks, including backups and system restoration. The project's latest version is Rescuezilla 2.2 which introduces, among other features, support for working with virtual machine disks. "Flash the Rescuezilla image to a USB stick using balenaEtcher (this will erase all data on your USB stick). Reboot your PC and boot from USB. Rescuezilla v2.2 adds the highly-requested 'cloning' feature, support for virtual machine images and more. Here is a partial list of what's changed: Implemented cloning (direct 'device-to-device' mode). Added ability to restore and explore all virtual machine image formats supported by qemu-nbd. (VirtualBox's VDI, VMWare's VMDK, Qemu's QCOW2, HyperV's VHDx, raw .dd/.img and many more). Added ability to restore and explore images created by all remaining open-source imaging frontends. (Redo Rescue, Foxclone, FSArchiver, Redo v0.9.2 and very-early handling of FOG Project images). Added ability to customize compression format (gzip, zstandard, uncompressed) and compression level. Implemented remaining Clonezilla image restore logic to improve handling of many corner cases." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
CentOS 8.4.2105
Johnny Hughes has announced the availability of an updated release of CentOS, a Linux distribution compiled from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The new version is labelled as CentOS 8.4.2105 and is derived from RHEL 8.4: "We are pleased to announce the general availability of the latest version of CentOS Linux 8. Effectively immediately, this is the current release for CentOS Linux 8 and is tagged as 2105, derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 source code. Updates released since the upstream release are all posted, across all architectures. We strongly recommend every user apply all updates, including the content released today, on your existing CentOS Linux 8 machine by just running 'dnf update'. Of particular note, this release adds the following new versions of software in optional module streams: Python 3.9, SWIG 4.0, Subversion 1.14, Redis 6, PostgreSQL 13, MariaDB 10.5. Several rolling AppStream have been rebased to newer versions: LLVM Toolset 11.0.0, Rust Toolset 1.49.0, Go Toolset 1.15.7." See the release announcement and release notes 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: 2,473
- Total data uploaded: 38.1TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Writing an ISO/IMG file to a thumb drive
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about using the wget tool to download and immediately write an ISO file to a thumb drive. While not a common approach, using wget is one of many tools which can write a downloaded file to a thumb drive. Which tool to you typically use? Let us know if we missed your tool in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on protecting a computer against physical access in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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For writing ISO files to a thumb drive I use
cat: | 7 (0%) |
cURL: | 5 (0%) |
dd: | 674 (33%) |
Startup Disk Creator: | 103 (5%) |
wget: | 14 (1%) |
Another command line tool: | 52 (3%) |
Another desktop application: | 1201 (58%) |
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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, 14 June 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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Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip. (Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
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Archives |
• Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
• Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20 |
• Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
• Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
• Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
• Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
• Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
• Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
• Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
• Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
• Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
• Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
• Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
• Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
• Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
• Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
• Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
• Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
• Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
• Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
• Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
• Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
• Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
• Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
• Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
• Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
• Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
• Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
• Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
• Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
• Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
• Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
• Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
• Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
• Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
• Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
• Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
• Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
• Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
• Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
• Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
• Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
• Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
• Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
• Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
• Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
• Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
• Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
• Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
• Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
• Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
• 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 |
Gentoox
Gentoox was an adaptation of the popular Linux distribution called Gentoo. It was compiled from Stage 1 with full optimisations to run on a Microsoft Xbox games console. Software or hardware mods are required.
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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