 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 927, 26 July 2021 |
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Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Some operating systems strive to be general purpose platforms, capable of being adjusted and customized into any role required. Distributions such as Fedora and Ubuntu aim to be masters of no one specific task, but capable of being able to fill most roles. Other distributions, such as EasyNAS and Clonezilla Live, strive to perform one specific task very well at the exclusion of others. This week we begin with a look at a specialized, lightweight distribution called OviOS. The OviOS distribution is intended to offer on-line storage solutions and can be used to set up ZFS storage pools. Our Feature Story has more information on the independent OviOS distribution and its features. In our News section we talk about openSUSE reorganizing its software repositories while Gentoo provides new and more diverse download options. We also talk about work going into a new FreeBSD system installer along with two recent vulnerabilities which affect most Linux distributions. Plus we share some tips on how Linux organizes and reports memory usage. How much memory is your system currently consuming? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. We are also pleased to share the releases of this past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: OviOS 3.11
- News: openSUSE reorganizes repositories, Gentoo offers new download options, FreeBSD working on a new installer, Linux kernel and systemd patch vulnerabilities
- Questions and answers: Making sense of memory statistics
- Released last week: Kaisen Linux 1.7, GParted Live 1.3.1-1
- Torrent corner: Bluestar, Gardua, GParted Live, IPFire, Kaisen, KDE neon, Kodachi, NuTyX, SystemRescue
- Opinion poll: What percentage of your computer's memory is used?
- Site news: Console interviews Jesse Smith
- New additions: Archcraft
- New distributions: Zephix
- 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 Jesse Smith) |
OviOS 3.11
OviOS Linux is an independent, storage operating system which combines open source technologies to provide a dedicated, performance-oriented storage system. The goal is to keep OviOS Linux a pure storage, appliance-like platform. The operating system features a command line interface and a special utility called OviOS Shell (sometimes written ovios-shell) to assist the administrator in setting up and managing services.
There is one build of OviOS for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. The download is a relatively compact 487MB in size. Looking over the documentation on the project's website reveals a few items I feel are worth mentioning. One is that booting OviOS is only supported on Legacy BIOS, not UEFI-enabled systems. Also, OviOS takes over one entire hard drive for the operating system. The install process will wipe out anything on the disk selected to hold the distribution: "The drive chosen for the install will be automatically wiped and partitioned for OviOS, any data will be permanently lost."
Booting from the install media brings up a console where we are asked to provide login credentials. We can sign in as the root user using the password "ovios". The system automatically launches the OviOS Shell which provides customized, limited control over key parts of the operating system. I will talk about this shell later. To get to a regular command line interface we can type "linuxcmd" to get a Bash shell. We can then configure networking and install the operating system.
Installing
From Bash we can run a command called setup to start the installer. The system installer uses a series of text-based menus to walk us through a few short steps. We are asked to pick our time zone and set the system clock. We are asked which hard drive the distribution should take over. No information about the available detected disks is shown, apart from their names. We do not get to see their size or manufacturer information.
The installer takes over the first disk, installing OviOS to the second partition. When it is done we can restart the computer or return to the command line interface. Something which first occurred during the install process, and regularly happened later during my trial, was background service messages would be periodically written to the screen. This happened regardless of which terminal I was using and what program I was running. The result was that text and prompts were sometimes hidden by these status messages, making it impossible to tell what I was selecting in a menu or what a status message had told me.
Early impressions
My newly installed copy of OviOS booted to a text console where I could still sign in with the original credentials. We can reset the root password (and regular user account passwords) once we get signed in. As before, when root signs in the OviOS Shell automatically runs.
Before using the OviOS Shell, I recommend checking out the documentation which covers working with services like Samba and setting up new storage pools through the OviOS Shell utility.
While we can use the Bash command line to set up user accounts, manage services, and deal with ZFS storage pools, I wanted to focus on what sets OviOS apart from other distributions, especially those with a NAS-like focus. For the most part I tried to stick with using OviOS Shell which is the heart of the distribution.
OviOS Shell
To start with, I feel it is worth mentioning pressing the Tab key while using the shell brings up a list of commands OviOS Shell can work with. Often times we can run a command and add a question mark or "-h" after it to see supported functions. For example we can run "pool ?" or "snap ?" to see options related to storage pools and snapshots.
The shell's built-in documentation is terse and often shows only supported keywords without any description. I also found not all commands support the question mark flag. To further cause confusion, not all commands listed with the Tab key are valid commands. For instance, if I pressed Tab OviOS Shell would display "status" as a command we can run. Trying to run "status" would result in an error saying the command wasn't recognized. The same error occurred when trying to use the shell's built-in "list" command.
I found some shell commands are just front-ends for regular command line programs. Running df just shows ZFS disk usage data in df's format. Running the OviOS Shell command top displays the output of the htop program.
To get started I used the OviOS Shell's pool command to set up ZFS storage. Running "pool create" offered me a list of RAID options and asked me to type in the full device name of the target drive. Unfortunately available devices are not listed so we need to look up the name of the device some other way ahead of time. We are then asked if we want to enable compression, with the default being "yes". I typed "yes" and hit Enter, only to be told compression was disabled as a result of my choice. Despite the lack of compression, I now had a ZFS pool located at /ovios/data.
After rebooting the computer I found my new ZFS pool was not mounted. There is an option set in OviOS which skips importing available ZFS storage at boot time. We can adjust this by running the following command from the OviOS Shell: "option skip.import off". I also found networking, even wired networking, was not enabled by default. We can set up a network connection by running the netsetup command from Bash. This allows us to assign a static IP address or a dynamic address to a selected interface.
Looking around the system a little I discovered OpenSSH is enabled by default and blocks direct access to the root account. We can create a regular user and have them login over secure shell. This provides access to files and the user account. This is especially useful when paired with tools which can work over OpenSSH, such as the FileZilla file transfer tool or rsync.
I looked at enabling Samba shares for easier access to files on the network through various file managers. There are a few steps involved in this process. We need to enable and start the Samba service. Following the on-line documentation I then needed to create a new user to be created for Samba remote access. The system asked me to provide it with the location of a filesystem share it would associate with the new user. The location is requested in the format of "/pool/volume". However, I found this doesn't work. The actual format needs to be the filesystem path to the directory we want to share. For instance, with my ZFS pool called "data", the proper name would be "/ovios/data" or "/ovios/data/share-this", not "/data/share-this". Once I worked that out the system asked me to make up a new username and password for the share. I did this and, a moment later, OviOS displayed an error saying it has failed to create the new user, but gave no indication of why. I was then returned to the shell prompt.
This failed process highlights an issue I repeatedly ran into with OviOS. The documentation and on-screen messages often feel terse or incomplete. There isn't a lot of information provided on how to use the OviOS Shell. There are some hints as to how to find available options or commands we can run to set up services, but very little explains what the available options do. There are rarely examples which show using the available commands.
Resource usage
OviOS is quite small and uses few resources. A fresh install consumed about 50MB of RAM when signed into the command line. Once I had created a ZFS storage pool and added some services, such as Samba, memory usage remained at a pleasant 60MB. The operating system itself only uses about 1.6GB of disk space.
Apart from some services such as Samba, NFS, and OpenSSH the distribution does not ship with much software. There are common command line tools, but the system stays focused and lightweight. OviOS runs the SysV init software (version 2.88) and version 4.14 of the Linux kernel. Both of these packages are a few years old at the time of writing. It seems OviOS is more inclined to sticking with tried and true software than the latest versions available.
Software management
In the distribution's documentation it mentions software management can be handled with pacman, the same package manager used by Arch Linux and its derivatives: "OviOS Linux excels in its simplicity and packages can be installed or upgraded easily with pacman." While it is true pacman is installed on the system and can be used to add new software from local packages, OviOS does not enable any repositories by default. There is no mirror list on the system. I searched through the documentation and found no reference to enabling repositories. As far as I can tell, apart from performing a fresh new install of OviOS about once a year, there isn't any way to keep software on the distribution up to date, short of installing new versions of vulnerable packages manually from source code.
Conclusions
OviOS offers a concept I find appealing: a minimal distribution designed to handle network storage and virtually nothing else. It's lightweight and focused. As someone who runs a backup server on an old Raspberry Pi, this is a style of distribution I can appreciate.
However, there were a number of issues with setting up and maintaining OviOS which frustrated me and made me reluctant to recommend the distribution. Earlier I mentioned the documentation tends to be terse and the on-screen messages are sometimes vague or misleading. There are OviOS Shell commands listed which are not recognized, not all commands have help messages, and those that do don't explain what their options do. Similarly, services and built-in options are listed, but not described. When I went to set up a Samba share and user, I was told the user account couldn't be created, but not why. This leaves the administrator fumbling in the dark.
This trend continues into package management. The pacman utility is present, but only seems to work with local packages we have downloaded from other projects. Which makes me wonder how one is supposed to keep OviOS up to date with security fixes. If the project provides updates I didn't find a way to enable them, and if it doesn't that leaves the user to manually upgrade packages from upstream source code, which isn't ideal for a dedicated device.
Most other storage-focused distributions I have used tend to do two things: streamline setting up storage volumes and provide a web-based interface. OviOS does neither of these. Setting up ZFS pools takes more manual effort than it would on platforms such as Ubuntu, FreeBSD, or TrueNAS. Unlike most NAS-style platforms there is no web-based administration, everything is handled from the command line. This makes OviOS slightly smaller than the alternatives, but using it requires more work.
The key to OviOS seems to be the OviOS Shell. It makes several options more visible and this can be useful. However, the shell often acts as a front-end to other commands without simplifying their use. I usually found myself getting frustrated with the custom shell and exiting to a Bash prompt to get work done because the commands available through Bash (such as zfs and zpool) work the same across multiple operating systems and that meant I didn't need to learn OviOS's custom approach to doing things. With more time to explore OviOS I would probably get used to the way it handles options and exposing system information, it might be worthwhile too. At this point though I find it easier to work around OviOS Shell to get the system set up.
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Visitor supplied rating
OviOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used OviOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE reorganizes repositories, Gentoo offers new download options, FreeBSD working on a new installer, Linux kernel and systemd patch vulnerabilities
The openSUSE project is adjusting the way its repositories and updates are organized. The distribution, which is now compatible with SUSE Linux Enterprise, can share some of the same repositories. "The shared PackageHub and openSUSE packages known as the backports repository contains all the packages not in SUSE Linux Enterprise nor in the openSUSE specific packages. Previously, PackageHub was specific to SLE, which duplicated packages between openSUSE and PackageHub; now this single project is shared between both PackageHub and openSUSE Leap 15.3. This single repository will improve the quality of delivering updates and avoid package conflicts like zypper patch for openSUSE Leap 15.3." Additional information on the package repository changes can be found in the project's announcement.
* * * * *
The Gentoo project is publishing new download options, called "stage files", which can be used to set up the meta-distribution. "Following some technical reorganization and the introduction of new hardware, the Gentoo Release Engineering team is happy to offer a much-expanded set of stage files for download. Highlights are in particular the inclusion of musl-based stages and of POWER9-optimized ppc64 downloads, as well as additional systemd-based variants for many architectures. For amd64, Hardened/SELinux stages are now available directly from the download page, as are stages based on the lightweight C standard library musl. Note that musl requires using the musl overlay, as described on the page of the Hardened musl project. For ppc, little-endian stages optimized for the POWER9 CPU series have been added, as have been big- and little-endian Hardened musl downloads." Further information on the new download options can be found in the project's news post.
* * * * *
The FreeBSD project released its Quarterly Status Report this week which details efforts going into the operating system's infrastructure, ports, and core utilities. One change in the works is creating a new, more user-friendly system installer. "bsdinstall is FreeBSD's current installer. It is a terminal application with an unwieldy interface, and it asks some very obscure questions that are hard to understand for ordinary users. So, the purpose of this project is to create a graphical installer for FreeBSD that has a more streamlined interface, and to improve other aspects of the FreeBSD installation process. The experimental installer uses a web front-end: a web server runs locally from the installation media, and the user configures their install by filling out web forms on a browser also running on the installation media. A Web interface is flexible and accessible, so it suits an installer well. This interface can also support remote installs, where the server runs on the target and the install is configured through some other machine, though I have not done much work here."
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Two new security vulnerabilities with the potential for wide-reaching impact were published in the Linux community this past week. One issue was found in the Linux kernel itself which allows a local attacker to gain elevated access by creating super long path names for a file. "By creating, mounting, and deleting a deep directory structure whose total path length exceeds 1GB, an unprivileged local attacker can write the 10-byte string "//deleted" to an offset of exactly -2GB-10B below the beginning of a vmalloc()ated kernel buffer. We successfully exploited this uncontrolled out-of-bounds write, and
obtained full root privileges on default installations of Ubuntu 20.04,
Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 21.04, Debian 11, and Fedora 34 Workstation; other
Linux distributions are certainly vulnerable, and probably exploitable." The issue has already been patched and most distributions have published a fix.
The other vulnerability came in the form a denial of service attack which, in some circumstances, could cause the commonly used systemd software to crash the operating system. "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows any unprivileged user to cause denial of service via kernel panic. As soon as the Qualys research team confirmed the vulnerability, Qualys engaged in responsible vulnerability disclosure and coordinated with author and open-source distributions to announce the vulnerability." While this bug was also potentially serious it has been fixed and most distributions have made an update available.
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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) |
Making sense of memory statistics
Running-out-of-memory asks: I'm trying to run this application which tells me it's out of memory and then crashes. My machine has 16GB of memory, but when I check Linux says it's only using 2GB. How can I force Linux to use the remaining memory so my application will run?
DistroWatch answers: I suspect there may be some confusion here with regards to how memory consumption is measured on Linux. When the system reports it is using 2GB of memory this indicates that the operating system and its applications are currently taking up 2GB of RAM which cannot be used for anything else. The operating system, and any applications you hope to run, can see and consume all of the remaining memory. Which means, assuming your system can see all of the 16GB of physical RAM in your machine, you should have 14GB of memory left over for running programs. The extra 14GB of memory will be automatically consumed and given to any application which requests it. You do not need to do anything to help this process.
While we are talking about memory, let's look at an example with each of the different types of memory explained. Running the command "free --human --giga" from the command line will display information on memory consumption and availability in a relatively easy to read format. It will likely look like this:
| |
total |
used |
free |
shared |
buff/cache |
available |
| Mem: |
5.4G |
1.9G |
1.7G |
67M |
1.8G |
3.3G |
From the above example we can see that the machine where we ran the free command has 5.4GB of memory in total. This is the physical amount of RAM the operating can see.
The second column, used, indicates that 1.9GB of memory is currently being used. This means that the operating system, desktop environment, and any programs and services we are running are taking up 1.9GB of the 5.4GB of RAM available. This used memory cannot be used for anything else, it is effectively "locked in".
The amount of free memory is the amount of RAM not being used for anything at all. This 1.7GB has not been set aside for use by anything. It is entirely empty and can be gobbled up by a new program at a moment's notice.
The shared field is not particularly interesting to us. It's usually an indication of how much memory is used by services like temporary filesystems. We can typically ignore the shared field for all practical purposes.
The buff/cache field sometimes causes confusion. This field shows how much memory is holding copies of files which are also stored elsewhere, such as on the disk drive. Reading data from a disk drive is relatively slow and so Linux keeps files which programs have accessed recently in memory until it needs the space for something else. This makes accessing files we have already opened once much faster. In this example 1.8GB of cached files are stored in RAM. In the event we open an application which needs more memory than is currently free, Linux will replace files it has in the cache with the new application's data.
The final field is the one I suspect most people will find the most significant. The available field tells us how much data can be consumed right now by an application which needs more memory. In this instance it is 3.3GB.
You might be wondering what the difference is between free and available. When memory is free there effectively isn't anything in it; the RAM isn't being used for anything at all. There is no program data and there are no copies of files in free memory. Memory which is available may have something in it, like a cached file, but cached files can be dropped and the space can be used for something else at any time.
Getting back to the original question, assuming the free command sees the total 16GB of physical memory and assuming there is lots of memory listed as available, then that means your application is trying to consume more than what is listed as available. You'll either need to address how much memory the application needs by changing its settings, free up more memory (perhaps by running fewer services or a lighter desktop environment), or install more RAM in your computer.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Kaisen Linux 1.7
Kaisen Linux is a rolling-release, Debian-based desktop distribution. The project's latest release, Kaisen Linux 1.7, introduces improved Btrfs support, replaces noatime flags with relatime, cleans out old dependencies which are no longer required, and updates the Linux kernel. "New Btrfs mount options for Kaisen Linux. Removal of the noatime option to allow the deletion of snapshots (replaced by the relatime option to limit disk writes). Removed gksu in favor of a polkit for graphical tool launchers. Removed unused dependencies on conkycolors. Added smilies support for OpenVPN client on all interfaces. Updated Linux to 5.10.46. Updated Firefox to version 88. Guests are now installed by kaisen-build via the common folder, and removed automatically by the installer depending on the environment in which Kaisen is installed (e.g. if you use VMWare you will only have VMWare guests installed, if you don't use any hypervisor, all guests will be removed). Tools for administrators categorized in several metapackages in order to install or uninstall only a part of the tools (e.g. just the DNS tools, or the GNS3 stack, SysOps tools and not the complete set)." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.
Kaisen Linux 1.7 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 901kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
GParted Live 1.3.1-1
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live 1.3.1-1, the latest update to the project's Debian-based live CD image containing a variety of specialist disk partitioning and data rescue utilities: "GParted Live 1.3.1-1 stable release. The GParted team is pleased to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. This release includes GParted 1.3.1, updated packages and other improvements. Items of note include: includes GParted 1.3.1; fix recognition of SD and MMC device names; make XFS copy duplicate the file system label and UUID; based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2021-07-20; Linux kernel updated to 5.10.46; added the gvfs package. This release of GParted Live has been successfully tested on VirtualBox, VMware, BIOS, UEFI and physical computers with AMD/ATI, NVIDIA and Intel graphics. Note that the default boot options might fail to display an X Desktop such as on old Acer Aspire laptops. The workaround is to select Other modes of GParted Live and choose GParted Live (Safe graphics setting, vga-normal)." Here is the complete release announcement.
* * * * *
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: 2,534
- Total data uploaded: 39.0TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What percentage of your computer's memory is used?
The tasks we ask our computers to do tend to expand over time, consuming a much available memory as possible. Today we'd like to hear how much of your computer's memory is marked as being "used". At this moment, what percentage of your computer's memory is "used"?
You can see the results of our previous poll on running portable package formats in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
|
Amount of "used" memory
| 1-10%: | 175 (15%) |
| 11-20%: | 262 (22%) |
| 21-30%: | 220 (19%) |
| 31-40%: | 162 (14%) |
| 41-50%: | 112 (10%) |
| 51-60%: | 73 (6%) |
| 61-70%: | 65 (6%) |
| 71-80%: | 51 (4%) |
| 81-90%: | 26 (2%) |
| 91-100%: | 30 (3%) |
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| Website News |
Console interviews Jesse Smith
The Console newsletter has interviewed our own Jesse Smith, asking him about DistroWatch, his views on open source, programming projects, and important life lessons.
Q: What was the most surprising thing you learned while working on DistroWatch?
One thing which regularly stuns me is both how resilient and how fragile open source software can be. The open nature of Linux distributions, and their components, means anyone can improve them, anyone can fork a dormant project to keep it running, anyone can fix a security bug. Anyone can come along and make a better mousetrap to improve the ecosystem. At the same time, some critical, key pieces of infrastructure are barely maintained or abandoned.
You can read the rest of the interview on Console.
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
Archcraft
Archcraft is a minimal Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. The project provides a graphical user interface using minimal window managers rather than full featured desktop environments. Archcraft is installed using the Calamares system installer and includes the yay package manager to facilitate fetching software from the Arch User Repository.
Archcraft 2021.06.06 -- Running the Openbox window manager
(full image size: 145kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- Zephix. Zephix is a live desktop distribution which runs entirely from a USB thumb drive. The distribution is based on Debian 10 and ships with many popular desktop applications.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 2 August 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 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Moblin
Moblin was an open source project focused on building a Linux-based platform optimised for mobile devices including netbooks, mobile Internet devices, and in-vehicle infotainment systems. The central piece of the architecture was an independent layer that provides one uniform way to develop such devices. Underneath the Moblin Core sits the Linux kernel and device drivers specific to the hardware platform, and above the Moblin Core are the specific user interface and user interaction model for the target device.
Status: Discontinued
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