 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 950, 10 January 2022 |
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Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
For people who were using desktop flavours of Unix in the 1990s the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) was a familiar, often appreciated experience. While CDE has generally been viewed as technology that has been left to rot on the trash heap of history, efforts in recent years have attempted to resurrect the classic desktop environment. CDE now runs on a number of Linux distributions and BSD flavours. We begin this week with a look at CDE and how to get it running on Debian. Have you used the CDE interface? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we take a look back on work that has gone into the Gentoo project in 2021 and share news that Haiku will soon be able to run Windows applications courtesy of WINE. Plus we are pleased to report the Dolphin file manager is gaining the ability to perform privileged actions. In this week's Questions and Answers section we talk about how to limit logins to specific times. We are also pleased to share the releases of the past week. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (11MB) and MP3 (8MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) on a modern Linux distribution
Once upon a time, in a long ago age called the 1990s, I attended a class on operating systems. It was my first hands-on exposure to UNIX-like operating systems and the course focused on Solaris. One feature which was relatively new to Solaris at the time was the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).
CDE was developed, from 1993, by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) to build upon the GUI work done in Motif. Contributions came from HP, DEC, AT&T, Sun and SCO. HP donated HPVUE, which resembled what became CDE. Sun donated its desktop tools, mail, calendar, etc. AT&T gave workspace communication software and SCO the session manager and virtual desktop from Panorama. Later Fujitsu and Hitachi also contributed to the project. CDE 1.0 was released in 1995 and was quickly adopted among various UNIX vendors. SGI even used CDE for a time as an alternative to Indigo Magic Desktop.
CDE took an approach to the desktop concept I had not experienced before. Windows, at the time, focused on launching applications from its Start menu and then tracking open windows with a task manager; and macOS was mostly driven by a global menu at the time. CDE took a different approach which seemed designed to truly reflect the concept of a literal work desk. A panel along the bottom of the display contained drawers and toggle buttons. Programs and files could be accessed by opening the drawers and placing work items on the desktop. (It might be more proper to say "desktops" since CDE offered four virtual desktops by default.) Items on the desktop could be minimized or moved off to the corner of the desk when not being used.
Running CDE on Debian
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1,237x918 pixels)
While some of the approaches CDE took were unusual to me at the time I appreciated its tidy style (keeping most things tucked into drawers and organized by category). After college I didn't see the CDE desktop again for about two decades. Part of this lapse was due to CDE being proprietary software, but CDE was eventually open sourced and work went into porting it to Linux distributions and modern members of the BSD family.
A little while ago I came across a guide for compiling and install CDE on modern Linux distributions such as Debian. The guide surfaced on a number of technology blogs and it triggered my interest, so I decided to revisit my first taste of UNIX.
The guide is fairly brief and clear, which I always appreciate. I decided to follow along using an install of Debian 11 as the guide is written with Debian in mind. First we need to add package dependencies, particularly development libraries and tools.
apt install xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core xfonts-base xinit lightdm git
build-essential libxt-dev libxmu-dev libxft-dev libxinerama-dev libxpm-dev
libmotif-common libmotif-dev libxaw7-dev libx11-dev libxss-dev libtirpc-dev
x11-xserver-utils libjpeg62-turbo-dev libfreetype6-dev tcl-dev ksh m4
ncompress xfonts-100dpi xfonts-100dpi-transcoded xfonts-75dpi
xfonts-75dpi-transcoded rpcbind bison xbitmaps libjpeg-dev libssl-dev x11proto-fonts-dev
We are then told to download a copy of the CDE source code using git:
git clone http://git.code.sf.net/p/cdesktopenv/code cdesktopenv-code
cd cdesktopenv-code/cde/
The guide, along with a copy of the official documentation I found when performing a web search, then suggested we can build the CDE source code by running the command "make" or "make World", depending on which version of the code we have. These instructions did not work for me and make reported an error saying there was no matching rule for it to follow.
The README file which came with the CDE source code mentions that additional steps may be needed to successfully build CDE. While the README file does not provide explicit details it does say we can find the steps required for a variety of Linux and BSD systems by visiting the CDE wiki. The wiki recommends installing additional items, including the autoconf and automake packages which were not listed in the original guide. I fetched the remaining dependencies I needed by running the recommend line:
apt install autoconf automake libtool git build-essential g++ lib{xt,xmu,xft,xinerama,xpm,pam,motif,ssl,xaw7,x11,XSs,tirpc,jpeg,freetype6,utempter}-dev tcl-dev ksh m4 ncompress xfonts-{100,75}dpi{,-transcoded} rpcbind bison patch xbitmaps x11proto-fonts-dev flex
At this point the documentation told me to run the following three commands to build CDE's source code into something usable:
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
The last command, make, takes several minutes to run. It did complete successfully and then I could run the install command to copy CDE onto my system:
make install
There was one more step to take, adding CDE as a session option to my login screen. This could be accomplished by copying one file:
cp contrib/desktopentry/cde.desktop /usr/share/xsessions/
The next time I signed out of my existing desktop and tried to login, CDE was one of the session options. So far things were going fairly well!
The CDE interface loaded very quickly and looked much how I remembered it. Apart from the colour theme, the desktop has been preserved in its 1990s era look throughout the porting process.
The bottom panel still holds launchers for programs, drawers for tucking away items, and four large buttons representing virtual desktops. Minimized programs don't get tracked on a task bar. Instead they are compacted into a small icon which can be positioned on the desktop. This means it is difficult to have a mixture of minimized and maximized windows on a desktop, but I believe the theory here is we will make use of virtual desktops to avoid cluttering up the space. This is not entirely unlike GNOME Shell's philosophy of using multiple workspaces rather than minimizing application windows.
Running GNOME Terminal in CDE
(full image size: 954kB, resolution: 1,237x918 pixels)
Unfortunately my experiment with CDE was cut short by a surprising issue. While my mouse pointer worked and I could right-click on the desktop to bring up a context menu (allowing me to logout), left-clicking failed to work. I was unable to use the mouse to left-click on any menus, drawers, window controls, or menu options. I could work around this a little by using right-click and the keyboard to navigate context menus, but not being able to left-click greatly reduced the functionality of the desktop.
I searched for bug reports with this left-click issue, but did not find any or workarounds for the issue. The best I could do was add programs I wanted to launch at sign-in time to the bottom of my account's ~/.dtprofile file, which gets run when CDE launches. This gave me access to programs like a virtual terminal, clock, and other tools. Then I could use the terminal to open other programs, but I was still unable to interact with the majority of CDE's desktop features.
I still like the concept of CDE even if it wasn't working well for me. The style of the desktop is different than most modern desktops, but it's conceptionally one that I think is relatable, even if it's not necessarily as efficient as some other designs. I also like that CDE is relatively light. It's fast, it uses about 510MB of RAM at login time, with a GNOME terminal session open. On the same system GNOME Shell uses 875MB of RAM to sign in without any windows open.
In my opinion it would be nice to see CDE get more attention and a little polish. Not because it's particularly better in its approach or design than other desktop environments, just because it is different. It has an unusual design which sets it apart from most of the open source desktops we have at the moment and I like the variety.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Gentoo shares statistics from 2021, Haiku runs WINE port, Dolphin can perform privileged file operations
The Gentoo team have published a retrospective on the 2021 year which also provides an updated status report for the project. "The number of commits to the main ::gentoo repository has once more clearly grown in 2021, from 104,507 to 126,920, i.e., by 21%. While the number of commits by external contributors, 11,775, has remained roughly constant, this number now distributes across 435 unique external authors compared to 391 last year. We may have recruited some of the top contributors." Along with the statistics, the project has shared a look at new developers, new packages, and work going into new architectures. The news post shares all the details.
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The Haiku project will soon be gaining a powerful new feature: the ability to run many Windows applications through WINE. A developer which goes by the handle x512 has been porting WINE to the Haiku platform and has managed to get some graphical applications running. A forum thread is being updated with ongoing progress and screenshots of Windows programs running on the Haiku operating system.
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Some good news came out of the KDE camp last week for people who enjoy using the KDE Plasma desktop or at least its file manager, Dolphin. In recent years Dolphin has been unable to move, create, or copy files in directories where the user does not have write access. Attempting to write to these locations would result in an error. Now Dolphin will prompt for the administrator's password in order to gain write access to these locations. Gaming On Linux reports: "A major new feature is that Dolphin, and anything that hooks into KIO, can now create, move, copy, trash, and delete files in non-user-owned locations. Instead of just giving you a warning and not letting you do anything, it should now ask for a password and let you do what you need to without resorting to a terminal window."
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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) |
Preventing logins at specific times
Preparing-for-bed asks: I know about Unix permissions and user management and also chmod and chown. So I know how to allow the kids to use a program or directory, or even not. But I don't know how to permit them to use (log in to) the computer for a specific time. For example 3pm to 9pm and then it is time for bed.
I know to do "sudo shutdown -h 21:00" if the kids are not named in the /etc/sudoers file. But then the kids are able to start it again (if the computer is in their room).
Perhaps a script owned by root? How should this script look so that the kids are allowed to log in again next day at 3pm?
DistroWatch answers: I'd like to start off by acknowledging that you can certainly use a variety of technical methods to prevent users from logging in at specific times. This would allow you to force a logout or shutdown as you mentioned with a crontab entry and then prevent future logins until a specified time. However, I do not believe the technical answer is always the best approach.
You've got kids, presumably relatively mature kids since they might be awake after 9pm unsupervised, who have physical access to their computer. In this situation you may find they become quite creative in finding ways to circumvent the locks you place on the computer.
Let's say you put restrictions on their login times and reboot the machine at a certain hour. You may find they learn how to login as the administrator and remove the restriction on login times. Then if you password protect the boot loader and encrypt the hard drive you might find they figure out how to use a live USB to boot an alternative operating system. Or they may smuggle in mobile devices (laptops or phones) so they can use devices at night you don't control.
Since trying to lock the kids out using technical means is likely to initiate an arms race, a better approach might be to simply monitor their activity and then let them know there are consequences for breaking the rules. You can periodically sign into the machine and checks the logs. Using the last command, the history file in their home directory, and the modification times of files in the /tmp directory will all provide clues as to when people last signed into the computer. You can also run a script to log or report login attempts. I covered how to do this using PAM modules in an earlier article.
Some routers will also enable logging to let you know when devices connected to the network. Performing random checks on your computer's logs and the router will let you know when the computer is active and you can address any abnormal usage times with your children without telling them how you know they were on-line late at night.
In short, monitoring the situation and using personal/social consequences will be easier and less likely to push your children to find better ways to circumvent your rules.
With all that said, there are tools available to lock down your computer. There is a utility called Timekpr-nEXT which can be used to set limits on login sessions. Timekpr-nEXT offers a friendly, graphical interface and will warn users when their time is almost finished. Timekpr-nEXT is available for members of the Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch Linux families of distributions.
A more universal, more low-level approach is to use PAM to restrict login times. This can be done using the pam_time.so module, available on most Linux distributions. Setting up the PAM module happens in two steps. In the first step we tell PAM to use the timing module to allow logins only at specific times or on specific days. In the second step we create a file which lists which users we want to allow to login and at which times.
The first step is fairly easy. We just need to open the file /etc/pam.d/common-auth and add the following line to the bottom of the text file:
account required pam_time.so
Then save the file. I feel it worth mentioning some distributions name their common login PAM module differently. Please check with your distribution's documentation to see which PAM module is a common base for logins. This tells the system we need users signing into the computer to be doing so in a specific time range. Next we open (or create, if it doesn't exist) the text file /etc/security/time.conf. At the bottom of this file we will specify two rules - one for the kids and one for everyone else.
*;*;kid;Al1500-2100
*;*;!kid;Al0000-2400
The first rule says to allow the user kid to sign in on all days (Al) between the hours of 1500 and 2100 (3:00pm through to 9:00pm). The second rule says that everyone else (anyone not called kid) can sign in on all days from 0000 through to 2400, which is all day. This prevents us from locking ourselves out of the system.
Please note: the second rule, the one which sets the login times for everyone else ("!kid", which means "not kid") is important because we want to make sure our user can always sign into the computer. Making a mistake when setting up these rules, particularly rules which will exclude or block the root account, may prevent you from signing in or even being able to boot the operating system. I'd recommend testing out your changes in a virtual machine before enabling the rules on your home computer.
The time.conf manual page has some great tips and examples which explain how to set up rules for specific days of the week. This allows us to set alternative login times for an account depending on which day of the week it is.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
UBports 16.04 OTA-21
UBports is a community-developed fork of Canonical's Ubuntu Touch operating system for mobile devices. The project's latest release is UBports 16.04 OTA-21. The new release improves the first-run greeter and adjusts the way used storage space is calculated. "The storage statistics (free / occupied space) in the system settings got an overhaul, more categories are being shown, and the calculation of space occupied by the system partition layout and Ubuntu Touch core files has been made more precise. Greeter redesign: Most notably the style of the Greeter (the thing that is shown when the screen is about to be unlocked) has improved significantly to give a more modern and slick appearance. It shows a different style depending on if PIN or password unlock has been selected." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement. A list of devices which can run UBports can be found on the project's devices page.
GeckoLinux 153.220104.0, 999.220105.0
GeckoLinux is a member of the openSUSE family of distributions with a special focus on making the operating system desktop-ready out of the box. The project has publisehd a new set of both Static and Rolling editions along with a Next series of editions. The project's news page offers details on the new install images: "Thanks to some important improvements from the Calamares installer project, and after lots and lots of trial and error to tweak the GeckoLinux configuration, inclusion of openSUSE's famous integration of the GRUB bootloader with Btrfs and Snapper snapshots has finally arrived in GeckoLinux. This also required a major rework of the default Btrfs subvolume layout, allowing for effective snapshot rollbacks without manual manipulation of the bootloader or default subvolumes. Important note: When performing a rollback in GeckoLinux for the first time the command is slightly different from vanilla openSUSE: 'sudo snapper --ambit classic rollback' (please see the wiki entry). Another important improvement to all GeckoLinux editions is the addition of improved installation logic based on whether the system is running in EFI or legacy BIOS mode, leading to much better reliability during future GRUB bootloader updates."
Linux Mint 20.3
The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 20.3 which is available in Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce flavours. The distribution has polished a number of its desktop applications and utilities. "The Hypnotix IPTV player looks better than ever, thanks to Dark Mode support and a new set of flags:The Hypnotix IPTV player: A new search function was added so you can easily find TV channels, movies and series. In addition to M3U and local playlists, the IPTV player now also supports the Xtream API. Thingy: Linux Mint 20.3 introduces a brand new XApp called Thingy. Thingy is a Document Manager. It gives you a quick access to your favorite and recently opened documents and keeps track of your reading progress. Sticky Notes: The Sticky Notes application now has a search function. The look of the notes was improved by embedding the title within the note. Multiple text size: A new control was added inside the notes toolbar to control the size of the text. Theme Changes: Linux Mint 20.3 features an updated look and feel with larger titlebar buttons, rounded corners, a cleaner theme and support for dark mode. Titlebars and corners: The titlebars were quite small. We made them rounder with bigger buttons to make the desktop look more pleasant and generous. The hover zone around the icons was also widened to make it easier to press the buttons." Additional information can be found in each edition's release announcement (Cinnamon,MATE, Xfce).
Linux Mint 20.3 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 785kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
EasyOS 3.2
Barry Kauler has announced the release of EasyOS 3.2, an experimental Linux distribution with a focus on using containers for both applications and the entire desktop. "Since version 3.1, EasyOS has undergone major structural changes and many new applications added. Some of the structural changes include a move from ALSA-only to PulseAudio, applications running as their own user, improved hardware-profiling for audio, fixes for samba, audio and video, more video drivers, new /files top-level folder. Software changes include a recompile of all packages in OpenEmbedded (OE) and the addition of major multimedia applications such as LiVES video editor, VLC video player, OBS Studio video recorder/streamer and Scribus desktop publisher -- all cross-compiled in OE. Qt5 packages are now compiled in OE. More development packages in the 'devx' SFS, including Mercurial source-control and Nemiver debugger. Numerous bug-fixes and improvements." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
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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: 2,668
- Total data uploaded: 41.4TB
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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) |
Have you ever used CDE?
In this week's Feature Story we talked about the classic Common Desktop Environment (CDE), a user interface which gained popularity in the 1990s. Have you ever used CDE? Let us know what you thought of the desktop in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on your favourite distribution in 2021 in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Have you tried CDE?
| Yes and I liked it: | 347 (22%) |
| Yes and I did not like it: | 152 (10%) |
| I have not used CDE: | 1095 (69%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Twister OS. Twister OS is a distribution for Raspberry Pi 4 single board computers. It features the custom Twister UI user interface.
- LX4U. LX4U is a Russian project which forks the Linux From Scratch (LFS) guide to manually building a distribution from source code.
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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, 17 January 2022. 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 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Freespire
Freespire was once a community-run Linux distribution sponsored by Linspire. Freespire was discontinued in 2008. Starting in 2017 Freespire became a free operating system based on Ubuntu and run by PC/OpenSystems LLC. Freespire features the Xfce desktop environment.
Status: Active
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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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