DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 925, 12 July 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 27th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Debian, the self-proclaimed "universal operating system", has a well deserved reputation for dependability, stability, and having a conservative approach when it comes to change. At least the Stable branch of Debian does, but there are other, more experimental branches of the distribution. This week we begin with a look at siduction, a rolling release distribution based on Debian's Unstable development branch. Read on to learn about the benefits and drawbacks of running siduction. Which branch of Debian is your favourite? Let us know in the Opinion Poll and tell us why in the comments. A few weeks ago we talked about different command line shells and why there are so many. In this week's Tips and Tricks column we share tips on switching between shells and determining which one is currently being used. Plus, in our News section, we talk about how DragonFly BSD handles errors when writing data to the filesystem while Nitrux revamps its Calamares system installer. We also share progress being made by the UBports team as they work toward migrating from their old base of Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 20.04. Plus we are pleased to talk about the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are pleased to welcome the Kaisen Linux distribution, a Debian-based operating system for IT professionals, to our database. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: siduction 21.1.1
- News: How DragonFly BSD handles filesystem errors, Nitrux revamps its installer, UBports works on efficiency and stability
- Tips and tricks: Navigating multiple shells
- Released last week: Linux Mint 20.2, VzLinux 8.4, Proxmox 7.0 "Virtual Environment"
- Torrent corner: ArcoLinux, Berry, Endless, ExTiX, KDE neon, Linux Mint, Proxmox, RDS, T2 SDK, VzLinux
- Upcoming releases: Tails 4.20
- Opinion poll: What's your favourite branch of Debian?
- New additions: Kaisen Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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Feature Story (by Ivan Sanders) |
siduction 21.1.1
siduction is a Debian-based distribution first released in 2011. What makes it unique is that it is one of the few Debian-based distros based off the Unstable branch (commonly known as Debian Sid, hence the name siduction). Although Debian is well known to be a very stable distro, some people look for more recent and up to date software that a rolling release distro would provide. Some common rolling release distros that are more well known are the Tumbleweed branch of openSUSE, Arch Linux, and Gentoo, and the never ending list of distros based off these. The reason siduction is such a powerful distro is that it is maintained by its community, therefore it is curated slightly more than Debian Sid. In my use case, Debian stable provides xorg-server version 1.20.4 but I require at least version 1.20.6 to properly use the NVIDIA card in my laptop with the new(ish) prime render offloading. xorg-server currently is at version 1.20.11 at the time of writing this, and siduction provides the most current version.
Installing
The siduction live USB boots to the desktop environment you chose on the download page - KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, LXDE, LXQt, Xfce, Xorg, and a no X version are available. For this review I used the KDE Plasma desktop environment because it is a very popular choice. I was actually quite disappointed there is no GNOME desktop version available for installation from siduction, although you could choose the Xorg version and install GNOME manually - but this would be not very beginner friendly. GNOME is easily one of the most popular desktop environments, far more popular than LXDE, Cinnamon, and LXQt, however I understand that these desktop environments have their own use cases such as low RAM usage, Qt environment, or GTK in the case of Xfce. I'm still shocked there is no GNOME version available from the downloads page.

siduction 21.1.1 -- The Calamares installer
(full image size: 2.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
siduction uses the Calamares installer framework and this provides a very easy, very understandable installation. I had no issues with the installation. All of my hardware worked out of the box, with the usual exception of NVIDIA - which worked easily after installation of the NVIDIA drivers.
Usage
The KDE version of siduction ships with the Discover software center. This application does a good job of installing and updating any software needed by the user. All versions of siduction ship with the Synaptic package manager, a now visually dated but very powerful package management tool. Because siduction is Debian-based, all of these package managers are really just front-end GUIs for the famous APT package manager. I had no issues with the package manager on the command line or the Discover software center, with the small exception that the user is not automatically in the sudoers file. Initially I bypassed this by switching to the root user when installing software, but eventually I just gave my user sudo rights. This was not an issue, however a beginner may have trouble on the command line if he or she is unfamiliar with changing user groups or adding a user to the sudoers file to gain administrator access. But a couple of Internet searches will square a user away with this relatively simple task.

siduction 21.1.1 -- Updating through Discover
(full image size: 2.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I was able to use my PC with siduction for all the usual tasks - streaming videos on various websites, playing games through Steam with my NVIDIA card, typing distro reviews in LibreOffice.

siduction 21.1.1 -- Watching videos on YouTube
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The bad
siduction is a great idea, and I love that it is a rolling release. It is only one of three distros on DistroWatch that report being based on Debian Unstable (Nitrux and Clonezilla being the other two). [Editor's note: There are other distributions listed on DistroWatch which are based on (or forked from) Debian's Unstable branch, though they are often distributions with their own repositories and infrastructure. Ubuntu and its derivatives being a prime example.] I did have some issues with the distro and it would be biased if I did not bring them up.
The touchpad of my laptop froze very often. I primarily use a mouse next to my laptop but when I was traveling I used the touchpad for a few days. It froze about every few minutes and for approximately 30 seconds the touchpad was unusable.

siduction 21.1.1 -- Adjusting KDE Plasma settings
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I had a major issue with a game I enjoy playing through Steam. I have never had any issues playing this game on any other distro, but on siduction it would freeze. I tried my absolute best to solve this issue. I thought the issue was related to SDDM (the display manager), but the issue persisted when I purged SDDM and tried LightDM instead. The game would completely freeze leaving only the mouse usable. It is not a recent game and usually has no problem running on ultra settings on my laptop. I brought the issue up in the siduction community but they did not know how to solve the issue, even though I can replicate the bug.
The preinstalled software is overwhelming (bloat). Those applications not provided by KDE's standard suite of applications include: Converseen, Flameshot, GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), ImageMagick, Inkscape, mpv Media Player, Midnight Commander, SMPlayer, SM Tube, Termit, Vokoscreen-ng, Xgnokii, and Xsane. I've never seen many of these before and I'm not sure why they are installed. Why siduction chooses to include these in their standard install is beyond me. There are two preinstalled KDE-provided music players (Elisa and Juk). There are at least five preinstalled video players, two torrent clients, and multiple terminal emulators.
The theming is atrocious. I like the siduction logo - the nine dots in a sideways square formation - but the theming of the distro is awful, most specifically the GRUB screen, the SDDM login screen, and the background. I realize this is superficial, but I hated the default theming.
The KDE Wallet is irritating. Every time I login I need to give KDE the password to the wallet in order to access the Internet. Every time I open Chromium I need to provide the wallet password. I hate the KDE Wallet and I don't understand it. I realize I could disable it but this came with the distro, so I'm expressing my dissatisfaction with it.

siduction 21.1.1 -- The KDE Wallet prompt
(full image size: 1.9MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
When I restart the computer, all the programs I had running immediately start on KDE Plasma. I don't know if this is related to KDE or to siduction but I dislike this very much. Sometimes I'll shut down with the Konsole, Firefox, VLC, LibreOffice, Steam, etc open. I don't expect to have to shut down a bunch of windows when I restart a computer or when I power it on for the first time in hours or days.
Compared to other rolling releases
For the purposes of this review, I will compare siduction to Arch Linux, the rolling release distro with which I have the most experience and the one that is most popular at this time. As I have discussed, siduction is Debian-based. To me, this means it is essentially Debian with a few extra repositories added to APT, the package manager. siduction is up-to-date. siduction has tons of software in its repositories, thanks to being Debian-based. But in my opinion it falls short to Arch because I never had the issues listed above on an Arch install and, quite a big point, Arch has the Arch User Repository (AUR), which has nearly endless amounts of applications. If Debian has a ton of applications, probably the most of any distro in its standard repository, when you add the AUR to Arch you get many applications that are not available in the Debian repositories or from any additional repositories you could add. In my opinion, people who package software and create software do so for Arch Linux, Ubuntu, and Fedora. Even though Ubuntu is based on Debian, Debian Stable and the standard out-of-the-box Debian is honestly too difficult for regular people to use on a daily basis, especially when you consider the need for additional drivers in the install process. Thus, Arch has an edge on siduction, but only a little.
The installer for siduction far exceeds the Arch installer, even now with the install script standard on the Arch ISO. As of writing this, the kernel versions are essentially identical. I'm not sure of the changes that the siduction team makes to their kernel but I doubt it is far off of the standard kernel or the kernels provided by Debian.
Conclusion
siduction is a great choice if you need a Debian based build with the newest software. I used siduction for almost a month installed on my laptop. Everything worked out of the box, and most of that was thanks to the siduction team and the KDE Plasma desktop environment. It was easy to install and it has an active community on the forums who are willing to help if they can. In my opinion, siduction needs to drastically improve its theme, polish the edges in regards to touchpad support, and remove a bunch of preinstalled bloat. All of the other issues I had with it were due to it being based on Debian.
siduction running KDE Plasma as the desktop environment used a surprising 988MB of RAM at startup.
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Hardware used in this review
- Laptop - Lenovo Legion Y530
- Processor: Intel Core i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz x 6
- Storage: 256GB NVMe SSD Samsung and 1TB HDD
- Memory: 16GB
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411
- Display: 1920x1080 @ 60Hz
- Graphics: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630, NVIDIA Corporation GP106M [GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile]
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Visitor supplied rating
siduction has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.1/10 from 35 review(s).
Have you used siduction? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
How DragonFly BSD handles filesystem errors, Nitrux revamps its installer, UBports works on efficiency and stability
Modern operating systems include a lot of components and a lot of variables. We tend not to notice when the thousands of pieces are working together in harmony, but if something goes wrong it's possible for the whole house of cards to fall. Matthew Dillon recently shared opinions on how systems fail and how they can attempt to fail in more positive ways, using DragonFly BSD's HAMMER2 filesystem as an example. "For DFly, an async block write failure leaves the buffer marked dirty so the filesystem data and meta-data state remains consistent on the live system (even if it cannot be flushed). This is a choice taken from a list of bad choices, because leaving a block dirty means that dirty blocks can build-up in RAM until you run out of RAM. But it is better than the alternative (presenting stale data to a filesystem and/or to an application which then causes a chain-reaction of corruption on a running system)."
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The Nitrux team is giving their copy of the Calamares system installer a makeover, adjusting the way visual elements are displayed and the overall look of the installer. A news post on the Nitrux website presents an overview of changes to the installer, how Calamares works behind the scenes, and ongoing work in updating it. "Besides sharing the news with screenshots, this blog post will also give you a quick overview of how it works and maybe inspire you to get a new look for your favourite distribution installer. The installing process consists of steps; some visual steps and some others are just executed in the background to focus on the visual ones. For each module that is a visual step, we will need to create its own QML file since Calamares will load each module at request. To make things cleaner and easier, we will use templates that can be used by all the other steps in the sequence."
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The UBports team is currently testing a new update (called OTA-18) which focuses on improving the performance and stability of the mobile operating system. Much of the work going into UBports at the moment is working toward migrating the operating system from Ubuntu 16.04 to an Ubuntu 20.04 base. "Lomiri, the Ubuntu Touch system UI, became much leaner in this release. We've taught it how to scale down and display wallpapers without negatively impacting performance. If you've got a BQ E4.5 and you're using the default wallpaper, you can expect about 60MB of RAM savings compared to OTA-17. You'll also find the entire system is more snappy on all devices, thanks to having to render a smaller image as the wallpaper. RAM savings will vary depending on your device's screen resolution and wallpaper resolution." Further information can be found in the project's blog post.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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Tips and Tricks (by Larry Kraemer) |
Navigating multiple shells
In June we talked about why there are so many command line shells in the open source community and why bash is such a popular shell for GNU/Linux distributions. Following that article being posted, Larry Kraemer wrote in to share some additional information about shells.
Kraemer shared some tips which can help people find out which shells are available on the system, which shell you are using at the moment, and how to switch shells. Here are tips Kraemer provided and we are happy to pass them along to you.
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The env command will display information on the current environment. This will include variables the shell recognizes along with which shell is currently being used. To see which shell you are running at the moment run the following command:
env | grep SHELL=
To get a list of available shells on your system, look in the /etc/shells file. This will list the available shells with their complete
path names. You can see the list of available shells by running:
cat /etc/shells
Additional shells may be available in your distribution's software repositories. Performing a search for the term "shell" in your
package manager should provide you with a list of alternative command line shells.
If you want to experiment with a shell, just for now, you can launch a shell from within the existing shell. For example, if you want to run the tcsh shell, you can run:
tcsh
When you are finished exploring tcsh you can type exit to return to the previous shell. Once you have found a shell you want to continue using you can switch which shell your account uses by default by running the chsh command. For example, if you want to switch to using the tcsh shell, you can run:
chsh -s /usr/bin/tcsh
Please note that you must provided the full directory path to the new shell.
There may be a .bash_profile file in your home directory along with .bashrc file. You can put configurations and customizations in either file, and you can create either if it doesn't exist. But, why two different files? What is the difference?
According to the bash manual page, .bash_profile is executed for login shells, while .bashrc is executed for interactive non-login shells.
If .bash_profile exists in /home/user with the following information already inserted:
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
export PATH
Append your path modifications here instead of the .bashrc file.
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Additional tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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Released Last Week |
VzLinux 8.4
VzLinux, a product of Virtuozzo International GmbH, is a free and open-source distribution built from the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The distribution's latest release is VzLinux 8.4. The release announcement outlines what is new: "New features: Libreswan IPsec VPN now supports TCP encapsulation and security labels for IKEv2. The nmstate network API for hosts is fully supported in version 8.4. Ansible modules are available for automated management of role-based access control (RBAC) in Identity Management (IdM), an Ansible role for backing up and restoring IdM servers, and an Ansible module for location management. Newer module streams are now available: Python 3.9, SWIG 4.0, Subversion 1.14, Redis 6, PostgreSQL 13, MariaDB 10.5. Compilers have been updated: GCC Toolset 10, LLVM Toolset 11.0.0, Rust Toolset 1.49.0, Go Toolset 1.15.7. Bug fix: if subscription-manager was installed, any dnf command could produce warnings about the system not being registered to Red Hat Subscription Management; now subscription-manager is no longer a dependency of a number of packages and its plugins are disabled by default." The release notes offer additional information.
Proxmox 7.0 "Virtual Environment
Proxmox is a commercial company offering specialised products based on Debian GNU/Linux. The company's latest release is Proxmox 7.0 "Virtual Environment" which is based on Debian 11 and includes support for the Btrfs and ZFS advanced filesystems. "Here is a selection of the highlights: Debian 11 Bullseye, but using a newer Linux kernel 5.11. LXC 4.0, QEMU 6.0, OpenZFS 2.0.4. Ceph Pacific 16.2 as new default; Ceph Octopus 15.2 remains supported. Btrfs storage technology with subvolume snapshots, built-in RAID, and self-healing via checksumming for data and metadata. New Repositories Panel for easy management of the package repositories with the GUI. Single Sign-On (SSO) with OpenID Connect QEMU 6.0 with io_uring, a clean-up option for un-referenced VM disks. LXC 4.0 has full support for cgroups2. Reworked Proxmox installer environment, ACME standalone plugin with improved support for dual-stacked (IPv4 and IPv6) environments. ifupdown2 as default for new installations. chrony as the default NTP daemon." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
Linux Mint 20.2
Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 20.2, the latest update of the popular desktop-oriented distribution with a choice of Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce desktops. The new version, based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, brings various improvements to Update Manager and Notification Centre, as well as new applications, such as Bulk File Renamer and Sticky Notes: "The Update Manager now supports Cinnamon spice updates (i.e. updates for applets, desklets, themes and extensions). Although they're technically different than APT updates, they are presented to you in a very similar manner. You can see the same kind of information for them, and enjoy the same features as you did already, such as the ability to blacklist a particular spice or a version of a spice. You can also automate spice updates. In automatic mode spices are upgraded shortly after you log in and the desktop environment then gets refreshed." See the release announcement (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce), release notes (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce) and what's new pages (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce) for more information. Also, read the How to upgrade to Linux Mint 20.2 blog post for upgrade instructions.

Linux Mint 20.2 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
T2 SDE 21.7
René Rebe has announced the release of a new version of T2 SDE, an open-source system development environment that allows the creation of custom Linux distributions. It is available for 18 processor architectures, with integrated support for cross compilation. "T2 SDE Linux 21.7 was released today. This is an interim update that ships with full support for the new HiFive SiHive Unmatched 64-bit quad-core RISC-V 64 board, as well as a reference for further refined smart optimizations for 32-bit and 64-bit x86. Of course, all the other architectures, including alpha, arm, arm64, hppa, ia64, m68k, mips64, mipsel, ppc, ppc64-32, ppc64le, riscv, riscv64, s390x, sparc64, superh, x86 and x86-64 can be rolling0release upated via the scripted build system. The 21.7 release received updates across the board, with latest Linux kernel 5.13.1, as well as a fix for the GCC 11 C++ templated ctor bug. There were 305 changesets. This is also the first release where our 'Data' AI bot contributed more revisions than human developers - Data 164, humans 141." Visit the project's home page to further information and release announcement.
ExTiX 21.7
The ExTiX distribution is an Ubuntu-based project which features alternative desktop environments. The project's latest release is ExTiX 21.7 which includes the LXQt desktop running on an Ubuntu 20.04.2 base. "I've made a new updated "mini" version of ExTiX - The Ultimate Linux System. It is based on Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS Focal Fossa. The ISO file is of only 1000MB, which is good if you want to run the system super fast from RAM. It should be enough with 2GB RAM. When the boot process is ready you can eject the DVD or USB stick. Use Boot alternative 2. The best thing with ExTiX 21.7 is that while running the system live (from DVD/USB) or from hard drive you can use Refracta Snapshot (pre-installed) to create your own live installable Ubuntu 20.04.2 system. So easy that a ten year child can do it! ExTiX 21.7 uses kernel 5.13.1-exton. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2025." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
EasyNAS 1.0.0
The first-ever stable build of EasyNAS, version 1.0.0, has been released. EasyNAS is a storage management system for home or small office, based on openSUSE Leap and using the Btrfs file system. It is managed through a web-based interface and it offers many advanced features, such as on-line growing of file systems, snapshots or copy-on-write. From the release announcement: "EasyNAS 1.0. It's finally here, the first version of EasyNAS, totally robust, based on OpenSUSE 15.3, with all the great features it had before, plus many others. It's now easier to update, more stable, can be customized to fit everybody's need, it has better performance, more NAS. The beta repository is now open to test new features before they go into the next stable release. There are two EasyNAS repositories - Stable and Beta. New updates will go to the Beta repository first. It will si there for two weeks before going to the Stable repository. Each EasyNAS system can install either the Beta or the Stable version."
Solus 4.3
Solus is an independent, rolling release, desktop distribution. The project is available in four desktop flavours, the primary one being the project's custom Budgie graphical user interface. The project's latest snapshot, Solus 4.3, features a number of improvements to multimedia and hardware support, as well as an update to Budgie. "Solus 4.3 ships with version 0.9.0 of the dav1d AV1 decoder, which should provide a large boost to high-bitdepth decoding on AVX2 supported CPUs. We also ship with PulseAudio 14.2, which fixes a bug related to unplug event handling. Solus ships with the latest release of our flagship desktop environment, Budgie 10.5.3. This features GNOME 40 stack support alongside all the fixes and quality-of-life improvements listed below. We welcome you to check out the full release notes listed above. Budgie 10.5.3 introduces fixes to Budgie panel applets, Raven, and various window state tracking. Drop use of Queue and Cancellable in Raven's NotificationView. Instead of using a Queue (which is not thread safe anyways), just update a reference to a NotificationWindow since we only really cared about the head of the Queue to begin with. Dropped Cancellable usage for async pixbuf scaling. There has not really been a scenario yet where we have not been able to scale an icon within the amount of time before a NotificationWindow is removed...." Additional information is provided in the distribution's release announcement.

Solus 4.3 -- Running the Budgie desktop
(full image size: 780kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,518
- Total data uploaded: 38.9TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What's your favourite branch of Debian?
In this week's review of siduction we mentioned Debian has multiple branches. The most commonly referenced branch is Stable, the basis for official releases of the distribution. There are other branches though. The other two commonly used branches are Testing and Unstable. Testing is the branch where new releases are developed and tested before they become a Stable release. The Unstable branch is where new packages are introduced and tried before they migrate into Testing.
Which is your preferred branch of Debian to run?
You can see the results of our previous poll on Bedrock Linux in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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I prefer to run Debian...
Stable: | 928 (47%) |
Testing: | 371 (19%) |
Unstable: | 119 (6%) |
Old Stable: | 17 (1%) |
Other: | 24 (1%) |
I do not run Debian: | 510 (26%) |
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Website News |
New distributions added to database
Kaisen Linux
Kaisen Linux is a rolling release, Debian-based desktop distribution. The project aims to be useful for IT professionals and includes a set of tools for system administration which can be used for diagnosing and dealing with faults or failures of an installed system and its components. Kaisen Linux is available in multiple desktop editions.

Kaisen Linux 1.6 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 368kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
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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, 19 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 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
• Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
• Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
• Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
• Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
• Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
• Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
• Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
• Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
• Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
• Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
• Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
• Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
• Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20 |
• Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
• Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
• Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
• Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
• Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
• Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
• Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
• Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
• Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
• Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
• Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
• Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
• Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
• Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
• Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
• Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
• Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
• Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
• Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
• Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
• Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• 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 |
• Full list of all issues |
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Random Distribution | 
Aleader
Aleader was a bootable live CD based on Knoppix. The Aleader software combines a video player, affective indexing, and psychometric tools into an easy to use GUI. Aleader can already test how consistently you can witness what was going on in a film. However, empirical verification of our methods was still in the early stages.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO |

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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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