 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 923, 28 June 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 25th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Ideally, computers should be easy to use, predictable, and trustworthy. None of these ideals is easy to achieve and, as a result, developers are constantly trying new approaches and experimenting with different combinations of tools. In our News section this week we talk about NixOS gaining the ability to create reproducible builds along with an OpenBSD developer borrowing concepts from NixOS to predictably configure OpenBSD systems. Plus we talk about Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, offering commercial support for the Blender application to help keep this open source application running smoothly. In our Questions and Answers column we continue to discuss various solutions to problems, using command line shells as an example. There are a lot of different shells available and we talk about why this is as well as answering why bash is so popular. Which command line shell is your favourite? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Before we dive into all of these topics, we'd like to open with a look at Ubuntu MATE. Many people look at Ubuntu MATE as a continuation of what Ubuntu originally was, back before the distribution adopted the Unity and GNOME desktops. We talk about Ubuntu MATE and some of its key features in this week's Feature Story. 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: Ubuntu MATE 21.04 and Anbox
- News: NixOS gains reproducible builds, OpenBSD developer seeks to duplicate Nix features, Canonical offers commercial support for Blender
- Questions and answers: Why there are so many Linux shells
- Released last week: IPFire 2.25 Core 157, Rocky Linux 8.4, SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3
- Torrent corner: Android-x86, Gardua, IPFire, KDE neon, Robolinux, Rocky, SparkyLinux
- Opinion poll: Which is your favourite command line shell?
- New distributions: rlxos
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (10MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 and Anbox
The Ubuntu team published version 21.04, on schedule and without much in the way of surprises. Ubuntu and its many community editions, including Ubuntu MATE, appear to have spent the past six months polishing the desktop environments. There aren't many changes, no leaps forward in terms of the underlying technology like init software, filesystems, and packaging formats which sometimes shake up the Ubuntu community. This time around the big headline change for Ubuntu was adopting Wayland as the default display software for the GNOME desktop. Meanwhile the Ubuntu MATE team included some fixes, addressed some problems when switching between desktop layouts, and polished their themes.
One key item mentioned in the Ubuntu MATE 21.04 release announcement is that their fixes have been pushed upstream to Debian. This means that fixes which appear in Ubuntu MATE 21.04 will not only be available to other flavours of Ubuntu, but improvements to the MATE desktop should also appear in Debian and its dozens of derived distributions.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 is available for 64-bit (x86_64) machines. On release day ARM images were planned, but not published yet. The project's ISO file is a 2.8GB download. Booting from the Ubuntu MATE media brings up a menu asking if we'd like to run the live desktop, run the live desktop in safe graphics mode, or run the OEM install process. Taking the live desktop modes launches MATE 1.24.1. A window appears and asks us to select our language from a list and then click either a Try or Install button to proceed.
Taking the Try option brings up MATE with a classic two-panel layout. The top panel features the applications menu. The top panel also holds the system tray and a logout and user settings menu. The bottom panel acts as a task switcher.
A welcome window opens and presents us with a series of buttons for accessing information and commonly performed actions. On the information side of things there is an introduction note explaining what Ubuntu MATE is. There are documents we can read which talk about the distribution's key features as well as access the project's user forum and Discord chat room. Links to on-line documents and support open in the Firefox browser. The welcome window's action buttons help us change the desktop layout (more on that later) and launch the system installer.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 605kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Installing
Ubuntu MATE uses the Ubiquity system installer. Ubiquity has remained mostly unchanged over the past decade and it is one of the easier to navigate installers, in my opinion. It quickly walks us through choosing our preferred language and offering to show us the release notes. The release notes seem fairly conservative with few changes for this release compared to version 20.10.
We are next given the option of a Normal or Minimal installation. The minimal version essentially installs just a base system with the MATE desktop, a few utilities, and the Firefox web browser. The Normal install adds some other popular applications such as LibreOffice and a media player. On this screen we can also choose whether to install third-party software such as media codecs and non-free wireless networking support. I decided to take the Normal install option with non-free items.
When it comes to partitioning we can take a Guided option. This follows up by offering to set up Ubuntu MATE on a LVM volume or ZFS storage pool. Alternatively we can use a Manual partitioning option. The Manual screen is quite friendly and shows us a visual representation of our disk. I noticed when setting up Ubuntu MATE in a virtual machine that creating a new partition table defaulted to a GPT layout while past versions of the distribution would ask whether to use a DOS or GPT layout. As a side-effect of this, the installer now insists on setting up a EFI partition and reserved BIOS boot space. In the past an installation in a virtual machine could get by with one or two partitions (depending on whether we wanted swap space), now it requires at least four, which feels like overkill.
The final screen of the installer asks us to make up a username and password for ourselves. We have the alternative option of connecting to Active Directory for authentication. Ubiquity then copies its packages to the hard drive and concludes by offering to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My new copy of Ubuntu MATE booted to a graphical login screen with a green background. Signing into my account brought back the MATE desktop. The welcome window pops up again and this time it features a few alternative buttons. There is a Software button where the Install button used to be. This Software button launches the software centre which is called Software Boutique. I'll talk about this software centre later. Along with the buttons to access help and on-line resources there are buttons for changing the desktop layout and seeing a list of available web browsers. This latter button brings up a screen where some popular browsers such as Firefox, Chromium, Chrome, Brave, and Opera are listed. We can click a button next to any of these browsers to install them. Some are available as native packages, though others are not. Chromium, for instance, is installed as a Snap package.
The second time I logged into my account a window appeared and asked if I would like to send my hardware information to the developers. We can preview the data which would be sent, which mostly deals with the type of CPU, amount of memory, and hardware present on the computer.
The default theme of the MATE desktop is bright and makes use of a lot of white and light grey. I found this hard on my eyes and was pleased to find there are alternative dark themes available. The distribution famously supports multiple desktop layouts. We can access these alternative layouts through the welcome window or the MATE settings panel. There are layouts available which make MATE look like Ubuntu's Unity desktop, like macOS, and like the classic Windows desktop. I found that sometimes switching layouts would cause the desktop panel to crash, an issue that was reportedly fixed for this release. I will grant that having the panel crash when switching to the Unity-like layout no longer causes the whole MATE session to crash, just the panel.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 -- Exploring the application menu and running LibreOffice
(full image size: 193kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
One aspect of Ubuntu MATE I appreciated was that its screensaver does not activate until the system has been idle for 30 minutes. This is a comfortable default for me and a pleasant vacation from many modern distributions which insist on locking the desktop after five minutes on inactivity.
Hardware
I started my trial with Ubuntu MATE in a VirtualBox environment. The distribution ran smoothly in the virtual machine. The MATE desktop dynamically resized to match the application window, the system offered average performance, and I encountered no problems with it.
When I switched over to running Ubuntu MATE on my laptop I was pleasantly surprised at how responsive the MATE desktop was. Everything felt very quick and snappy. There are no distracting visual effects or animations to slow down the desktop and everything felt pleasantly quick. All of my laptop's hardware was correctly detected and worked well. Ubuntu MATE was able to boot in both Legacy BIOS and UEFI modes on my laptop.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 -- The Mutiny layout with a dark theme
(full image size: 589kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
In both test environments the operating system was stable, but the desktop panel was not. I experienced almost daily crashes of the panel in both environments. Usually the panel would come back on its own, though sometimes it needed to be manually loaded or I'd need to logout and sign back into my account to restore the panel.
Ubuntu MATE is a mid-weight distribution, creeping toward the heavier end of the scale. The system uses 590MB of memory to log into MATE and a fresh install took up about 7GB of space. This is slightly above average, but still lower than the mainstream distributions which run GNOME.
Applications
Apart from the MATE 1.24.1 desktop and the distribution's welcome window, Ubuntu MATE ships with a collection of popular open source applications. The Firefox browser is included with several other browsers readily available. The Transmission bittorrent software is included along with the LibreOffice suite and the Evolution e-mail client. The Atril document viewer is included along with the Caja file manager, and a simple image viewer. I found Rhythmbox and the Celluloid media player installed and the Webcamoid utility is available for handling web cams. The distribution ships with media codecs and was able to play all the audio and video files I threw at it. The Shotwell image manager is featured too.
The distribution also includes a user account manager, the CUPS printing configuration tool, and the GNU Compiler Collection. Ubuntu MATE runs the systemd init software and version 5.11.0 of the Linux kernel.
User menu and the Control Centre
In the upper-right corner of the desktop is a user and settings menu. This menu provides options for logging out, shutting down the system, opening the MATE documentation, and seeing some general system information. I think it's unfortunate the icon for this menu is so small and subtle as the items in the menu are all very useful and particularly helpful to new users. This menu also includes an entry for launching the system's Control Centre.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 -- The Control Centre
(full image size: 487kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The Control Centre displays a grid of icons which open settings modules. These icons are organized by category. While most of the settings modules adjust the look and behaviour of the desktop there are also modules for adjusting the firewall, setting up printers, and managing user accounts. These settings modules are all clearly presented and worked well for me.
Software management
Ubuntu MATE ships with a simple update manager which opens on the desktop whenever new packages become available. The updater lists available new packages and their overall size. We can then click boxes next to each item we want to download or ignore. There were only a few packages available when I was first running Ubuntu MATE, partially (I suspect) because components in the base system are bundled together into one item. All the updates I fetched were installed without any problems.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 -- The Software Boutique
(full image size: 468kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The main software centre on Ubuntu MATE is called Software Boutique. This software manager can be accessed through the welcome menu, the application menu, and the Control Centre. The Boutique displays a list of icons for software categories across the top of its window. Clicking on a category allows us to see curated or popular items in the category. We can then apply filters within a category to further narrow down results.
The Boutique is set up to display relatively few items in each category - just showing the more popular items in each group. We can click a button next to each item we want to install and it is added to a queue that will be processed later. We can click a button in the upper-right corner of the Boutique window to review the queue and start the download process.
The Boutique processes queued items one at a time and pauses to prompt for our password prior to each package it downloads. This means we cannot simply set-and-forget the Boutique's queue, we need to watch over it and this slows down the process. It also means installing many items becomes tedious as it results in a lot of password prompts.
Should we wish to use a software manager which offers access to the full range of packages in the distribution's repositories, or if we want to avoid these steady password prompts, the Boutique has us covered. There is a category dedicated to other software managers such as Synaptic and GNOME Software.
We also have the option of using the APT command line tools and Snap to manage packages. The Snap framework for portable packages is installed by default. The Flatpak framework is not included by default, but it is available in the repositories.
When trying to run programs from the command line which are not installed there is a pause while the system tries to find the missing program in Ubuntu MATE's repositories. If a result is found we are told what package to install to acquire the program. Usually this happens quickly but it can take several seconds if updates or new packages are already being installed.
Anbox
While not really relevant to Ubuntu MATE, I wanted to try out Anbox this week. The Anbox software strives to run Android applications in containers on a GNU/Linux desktop. Anbox's install instructions rely on Snap packages and personal package archives (PPAs) so it's mostly limited to running on the Ubuntu family.
I tried to follow the Anbox install instructions and found the PPA the project provides for some dependencies has not been updated to work with Ubuntu 21.04 (or its community editions) at the time of writing. This brought my test to a premature halt, though I hope to return to it later.
Conclusions
I was quite happy with my experiences with Ubuntu MATE 21.04. It had been a few years since I last tried this flavour of Ubuntu and I was pleased to see that the developers have mostly focused on polishing and fixing minor issues. The distribution works well with my hardware, it's responsive, and I like that we can easily switch between desktop layouts to suit the user's preference. The welcome window manages to provide access to a lot of information and resources without being too cluttered or confusing.
Ubuntu MATE 21.04 -- Exploring different desktop layouts
(full image size: 642kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The Software Boutique is an interesting idea and I have mixed feelings about it. Having a small collection of popular applications readily available in an uncluttered interface is quite attractive to newcomers. On the other hand, forcing users to install a separate software centre to gain access to less popular (though still useful) applications feels awkward. This is a tool I'd probably want to stick in front of novice users to see how they react to it before I make a decision on it.
The documentation, settings panel, and default layout all feel really polished. The installer is easy to navigate, for the most part, and Ubuntu MATE ships with fairly up to date software. I had just two issues with this release. One was that the desktop panel sometimes crashed, either when switching desktop layouts or when signing in. Usually the panel restarts itself, but sometimes I had to logout and then sign back into my account to get the panel back. The other concern is Ubuntu MATE 21.04 only receives nine months of support. I'd suggest sticking with long-term support (LTS) releases for most people. However, for those who don't mind upgrading about once every six months, 21.04 is a really solid release based on my experience. It's also one of the more user friendly distributions I have used in the past six months.
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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
Ubuntu MATE has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.2/10 from 78 review(s).
Have you used Ubuntu MATE? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
NixOS gains reproducible builds, OpenBSD developer seeks to duplicate Nix features, Canonical offers commercial support for Blender
Reproducible builds are an important part of confirming the integrity of a binary package, whether it is a program, a distribution, or a supporting library dependency. Reproducible builds allow a person to confirm the binary code they have came from a given collection of source code and has not been altered or otherwise corrupted. The NixOS project has made progress with regards to reproducible builds, getting the project's Minimal ISO to build in this verifiable way. "We've been hovering close to 100% for a while now but, with the staging-next merge a few days ago, it's finally happened. If I've done everything correctly, the 21.05 ISO also passes the check on my machine, hooray!"
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In recent years many people have come to appreciate the Nix package manager and how it can be used to manage and configure many parts of an operating system. One enterprising developer would like to experience this same deterministic approach to system configuration on OpenBSD and is working on a configuration tool called GearBSD. "I love NixOS and Guix for their easy system configuration and easy jumping from one machine to another by using your configuration file. To some extent, I want to make it possible to do so on OpenBSD with a collection of parametrized Rex modules, allowing to configure your system piece by piece from templates that you feed with variables. Let me introduce you to GearBSD, my project to do so." While still in its early stages, GearBSD can already help configure the PF firewall.
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Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu distribution has decided to offer commercial support for Blender, a popular open source application. Canonical has decided to offer support for Blender on multiple operating systems, not just Ubuntu. Beta News reports: "Blender is one of the most important open source projects, as the 3D graphics application suite is used by countless people at home, for business, and in education. The software can be used on many platforms, such as Windows, Mac, and of course, Linux. Today, Ubuntu-maker Canonical announces it will offer paid enterprise support for Blender LTS. How cool is that? Surprisingly, this support will not only be for Ubuntu users. Heck, it isn't even limited to Linux installations. Actually, Canonical will offer this support to Blender LTS users on Windows, Mac, and Linux." Professionals interested in Blender support can visit Canonical's support page for Blender.
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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) |
Why there are so many Linux shells
Selling sea shells by the sea shore asks: Why are there so many shells? What are their pros and cons? Why do most Linux users use bash?
DistroWatch answers: When it comes to shells, specifically command line shells, there are many from which to choose. Shells - such as bash, dash, tcsh, ksh, zsh, and so on - interpret the commands we type and perform actions or run programs based on our input. Most shells provide the ability to script commands to assist in automation.
As with Linux distributions, there is a lot of diversity when it comes to command line shells. Some shells focus on minimalism, some focus on performance. There are some modern shells which specifically strive to be better at performing interactive tasks as the user is typing while other shells are geared towards programmable scripts to improve automation. Each shell has its own philosophy and approach.
At times it may seem as though there are a lot of shells essentially performing the same tasks, filling the same roles, however there are some key differences in most of the major shells. For instance, dash is designed to be lightweight and is mostly used to run start-up scripts quickly while fish strives to be interactive and even predictive when the user is typing. Some shells, such as tcsh, can use a syntax that should feel familiar to C programmers and this can be helpful when writing scripts while bash is a feature-rich shell that strives to provide a balance between interacting with the user while also offering powerful scripting tools.
There are a lot of shells and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Reading the links to the shells listed above will outline each shell's focus and some of their main features. Generally speaking, each shell tries to fit into one of four roles. These four roles are: user friendliness and conveniences when interacting with the user on the command line; powerful scripting tools and programmable functions; backward compatibility; and speed, usually achieved through a minimal set of features.
As to why most Linux distributions default to using bash as the shell for users, there is some history behind that. The Bourne shell, developed by Stephen Bourne, was the default command line shell for UNIX back in the 1970s. This shell, which had the executable name sh, was quite useful at the time due to its many features.
The Free Software Foundation set out in the 1980s to make a UNIX-like operating system comprised entirely of free software. Some of the key components developed by the Foundation (and its GNU counterpart) included a compiler and a shell. Since the Bourne shell (sh) was the standard for UNIX systems, the Foundation created their own, freely licensed version. They called it the Bourne Again shell, which got shortened to bash.
Since most Linux distributions run FSF/GNU utilities and since bash was the Foundation's shell, bash soon became the default for most GNU/Linux systems. Other UNIX-based and UNIX-like operating systems use alternative defaults. The default shell for regular users on FreeBSD is tcsh, for instance. For OpenBSD the default shell is ksh. Often which shell is the default comes down to a matter of preference from the developers of the operating system.
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Answers to other questions can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
IPFire 2.25 Core 157
IPFire is an independent Linux distribution designed for use on firewalls and routers. The project has published a new update which strips away most of Python 2, replacing the code with Python 3. Python 2 reached the end of its supported life on January 1, 2020. "We have made huge efforts to migrate away from Python 2 which has reached its end of life on January 1st of this year. That includes repackaging third-party modules for Python 3 and migrating our own software to Python 3. The work will continue over the next couple of weeks and we are hopeful to remove all Python 2 code with the next release. We will keep Python 2 around for a little bit longer to give everyone with custom scripts a little bit of time to migrate them away, too. The IPFire kernel has been rebased on Linux 4.14.232 which brings various security and stability fixes." Further details may be found in the project's release announcement.
Rocky Linux 8.4
Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The project has announced its first stable release which is Rocky Linux 8.4. "We are pleased to announce the General Availability of Rocky Linux 8.4 (Green Obsidian). Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4. Since this is the first Release of Rocky Linux, the release notes below reflect only changes in upstream functionality between point releases." The distribution's release notes offer details along with tips for converting from other members of the Enterprise Linux family: "The community has created the migrate2rocky tool to aid in the conversion to Rocky Linux 8.4 from other Enterprise Linux systems. This tool has been tested and is generally known to work, however use of it is at your own risk. Community members have successfully migrated test systems to Rocky Linux from: Alma Linux (8.4), CentOS Linux (8.4), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (8.4), Oracle Linux (8.4)."
Rocky Linux 8.4 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Android-x86 8.1-r6
Android-x86 is an unofficial initiative to port Google's Android mobile operating system to run on devices powered by Intel and AMD x86 processors, rather than RISC-based ARM chips. he project began as a series of patches to the Android source code to enable Android to run on various netbooks and ultra-mobile PCs, particularly the ASUS Eee PC. The project's latest update is to its 8.1 branch. It includes graphics, sound, and kernel updates. "The 8.1-r6 is mainly a security updates of 8.1-r5 with some bugfixes. We encourage users of 8.1-r5 or older releases upgrade to this one. Update to latest Android 8.1.0 Oreo MR1 release (8.1.0_r81). Update to LTS kernel 4.19.195. Update Mesa to 19.3.5. Update alsa-lib and alsa-utils to 1.2.5, add alsa_alsamixer tool and ucm files. Fix unable to download native bridge libraries issue. Add more devices specific quirks. This release contains these files. You can choose one of them depends on your devices. Most modern devices should be able to run the 64-bit ISO. For older devices with legacy BIOS, you may try the 32-bit ISO." Further information is provided in the project's release notes.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3
SUSE has announced the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 SP3, the third service pack of the company's enterprise-class Linux distribution designed mainly for developers and administrators to deploy business-critical workloads. This is the first release that provides binary compatibility with the latest openSUSE Leap release: "With the release of SLES 15 SP3 we now have 100% binary compatibility with openSUSE Leap 15.3 (our developer platform). That means that you can smoothly move workloads from development to production environments that run SLE 15 SP3 - and back again - with assured application compatibility. This is an important milestone for openSUSE and SUSE, our users and our customers: Leap 15.3 is the first release where openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise share the same source code and use the exact same binary packages. The bottom line is that we are providing a seamless developer experience that drives faster digital transformation." See the release announcement and the comprehensive release notes for further 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: 2,498
- Total data uploaded: 38.5TB
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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) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- rlxos. rlxos is an independent, general-purpose distribution with a primary focus on "single file per application" (even for system image, rlxos boot directly from system image and save cache on hard disk) so users can have multiple version/variant of same applications (and even operating system) installed side by side.
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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 July 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Userful Desktop
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Status: Discontinued
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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