 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 976, 11 July 2022 |
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Welcome to this year's 28th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the more interesting approaches to Linux software management is provided by the Nix package manager. Nix offers all sorts of interesting features, including package generations, instantly switching between versions of packages, rolling back updates, and reproducible builds. This week we begin with a look at Nix, both in the NixOS distribution and installed on another distribution as a third-party software manager. Have you tried Nix? Let us know how you used Nix in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss the complexities of the Linux scheduler and report on Qubes OS 4.0 nearing the end of its supported life. We also cover the Debian project publishing updated install media. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we explain how to set up a fake webcam to trick applications into thinking they are streaming live video. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
NixOS 22.05
NixOS is an interesting distribution. The operating system largely acts as a method for showcasing the advanced Nix package manager which offers atomic updates, rollbacks to previous generations of packages, and reproducible builds. This makes running a distribution with Nix as the package manager fairly flexible as well as reliable in the face of package upgrade issues.
The Nix package manager makes up the heart of the NixOS distribution and can also be run on other distributions. Nix's portability gives anyone who installs it access to over 80,000 packages which has increased from 60,000 in the past two years.
NixOS is available in three editions. There are two graphical editions, one featuring the GNOME desktop which is a 2.0GB download, and the other runs KDE Plasma and is a 1.6GB download. The third edition is a command line only flavour called Minimal which is 824MB in size. One of the big changes in the two graphical editions is the introduction of the Calamares system installer.
In the past, when I've used previous versions of NixOS the user was expected to manually partition the hard drive. Then we were asked to edit a configuration file in a text editor, inputting changes to software packages, boot loader settings, and enabling user accounts. While this process was fairly well documented, it was not geared toward beginners or even more experienced casual users. The inclusion of Calamares means users can partition the hard drive, tweak settings, and create user accounts from the comfort of a point and click application which has proven successful in many Arch-based distributions.
Live media
The NixOS live media starts off by offering a range of boot options. These include launching the installer, launching with the nomodeset parameter (other distributions call this "safe graphics mode"), or with the copytoram parameter (which loads the whole operating system into memory). The end result of using any of these is to launch NixOS, start a desktop session (KDE Plasma in my case), and automatically open the Calamares installer.
NixOS 22.05 -- The KDE System Settings panel
(full image size: 598kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Should we want to explore the live session the Plasma desktop has a thick panel at the bottom of the screen which holds the application menu, task switcher, and system tray. There are icons on the desktop which open a partition manager, launch the installer, open a terminal, and display a local copy of manual in HTML format. There are not many applications installed by default, though the Firefox web browser is included.
Installing
Calamares is a graphical installer which walks the user through completing some basic setup steps. On the first page we can select our language and there are buttons which will open Firefox to display documentation, bug reports, and the distribution's release notes. The next page gets us to select our time zone from a map. We are then asked to select our keyboard layout and create a username and password. By default the password must be complex, long, and not a dictionary word. I honestly couldn't get the password field to accept anything as any random letters and numbers I put in were flagged as coming from the dictionary. There is a checkbox we can click to disable password checks, allowing anything to be used.
The installer then asks us to select a single desktop (GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, Pantheon, Cinnamon, MATE, Enlightenment, and LXQt are offered). We can also choose to not install a desktop environment. We are asked if we want to enable non-free packages which include hardware drivers. I decided to enable non-free items. We're then asked to partition the drive. The manual option is fairly friendly and streamlined. Calamares also offers a guided option which will take over the entire disk with a single ext4 filesystem. I feel it worth mentioning the guided option does not set up any swap space, either a file or a partition. The installer copies its files to the disk and offers to restart the computer.
Early impressions
When I first booted into my new copy of NixOS the distribution offered to sign me into either Plasma running on X11 or Plasma on Wayland. The X11 session is the default. Plasma was unusually slow to load, taking around 30 seconds to start the first time on a system where logins usually take under 5 seconds. Future logins happened faster.
Once I signed into Plasma (version 5.24) I noticed there are four quick-launch icons next to the application menu. These icons are for the settings panel, showing the desktop, and launching the Dolphin file manager and Firefox browser. Clicking the Desktop icon caused an error notification to be displayed which read "Plasma Workspace: Unknown application folder." The other three icons worked as expected.
NixOS 22.05 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 990kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Not many applications are included by default. NixOS ships with Firefox, Dolphin, Gwenview, the Okular document viewer, and the Elisa music player. The KDE System Settings panel is included too to help us customize the desktop. In the background we find the GNU command line utilities and manual pages. The systemd init software is included along with version 5.15 of the Linux kernel.
Nix
The main reason I like to experiment with NixOS every few years is it gives me a chance to experiment with the advanced Nix package manager. Most of Nix's operations can be performed through the nix-env command. This command line utility helps us find, install, remove, and upgrade packages. We can also list installed packages and move forward and backwards between package generations. I'll talk more about generations in a moment.
The Nix command line tools have accompanying manual pages and running "nix-env --help" from the command line opens the appropriate manual page in the terminal. We also have a list of handy Nix functions on our Package Management page.
When I first started using Nix the process of querying packages was slow, unusually slow. Typically Nix operates at about the same speed as APT or Zypper, but it took a few minutes for Nix to search for a package. I thought this might just be due to needing to refresh the database. I performed a manual update of the database and then tried to perform an upgrade of all packages on the system. After five minutes with no sign of progress, I terminated the upgrade. I then tried installing a package and, after 5 minutes, nix-env reported it was trying to install the package. After 15 minutes I gave up and stopped the process. This slow performance with Nix 2.8.1 surprised me as past versions of Nix have worked well and quickly for me.
NixOS 22.05 -- Nix hanging when trying to upgrade packages
(full image size: 721kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I decided to reboot and try again. This time a complete system upgrade completed in 4 minutes. A few large packages each installed in under 2 minutes apiece. Newly installed applications did not appear in the application menu, either immediately or following me logging out and signing back into my account.
The next time I restarted NixOS the system booted to a text terminal and was unable to start a graphical environment. Clearly something broke during the upgrade process. This is where package generations come in handy. Each time we perform an action with nix-env, such as installing a new package or performing an upgrade, Nix takes a snapshot of its packages on the system. Each snapshot is called a generation. We can then switch between generations instantly to use different versions of packages or to rollback a problem. This is helpful both in testing different versions of software and for reverting problems.
In my case I signed in as the root user at the terminal. Then I ran the command "nix-env --list-generations" which showed there were three previous generations on the system and the latest generation was flagged as being "current". I could then run "nix-env -G 1" to revert the system back to its first generation. After that, I rebooted the system and NixOS started up and displayed the expected graphical login screen. Chances are, in the near future, whatever caused the issue with the login screen will be fixed and I'll be able to upgrade again.
This ability to rollback instantly or move ahead through snapshots of packages is quite handy. It doesn't use much space and, if we do want to clean up old generations of packages, we can delete them to free up more drive space.
Hardware
I experimented with NixOS in a VirtualBox environment and on a workstation. On the workstation performance was good, the system was stable and, some concerns with Nix getting stuck aside, things mostly worked well. I could connect to the network, listen to music, and play YouTube videos.
When I was running NixOS in VirtualBox things did not go as well. Performance was quite a bit reduced on the desktop. I also couldn't get the system to play sound, for example when opening audio files in the Elise media player. I was also unable to get YouTube videos to play in either Firefox (the default browser) or in Falkon which I installed later. I'm not sure, but I suspect the audio issues may be connected to NixOS's use of PipeWire.
A fresh install of the KDE Plasma edition of NixOS took up 6GB of disk space. When signed into the Plasma session the system used 430MB of RAM, which is below average.
Nix on AlmaLinux OS
One of the things I like about Nix is the package manager is designed to run on other distributions. The project provides a script which we can run to install the package manager on the Linux distribution of our choice:
sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --no-daemon
This script asks us for our sudo password and then advises we should source a Nix script to set up environment variable. Alternatively we can logout and login again to get the new settings.
I installed Nix on AlmaLinux OS, just because I had a copy already installed and available. One of the first things I did was try to refresh the package database and check for upgrades. This upgrade check failed with an error which read: "unexpected end of file." This wasn't elegant, but not surprising since I hadn't installed any packages yet.
I then tried to install a few packages, like Falkon, GIMP, and Firefox. These failed with the nix-env utility running into a segfault (crashing due to memory issues). I refreshed the package database and tried again. When trying to install new packages this time resulted in more "unexpected end of file" errors each time.
I was surprised by this. I've used earlier versions of Nix on other distributions in the past and never ran into problems like this. Something in the configuration processing seems to be broken in this release where it was working in past versions.
Conclusions
On the one hand I was happy to hear NixOS had added Calamares to the live media to make installing the distribution easier. I liked my past experiences with NixOS and one of the few issues I've had in previous trials was getting the Nix configuration file set up just right. Nix has a lot to offer and it was discouraging needing to go through the slow process of reading documentation and tweaking a text file to get the system set up. Calamares is a slick graphical installer which greatly reduces the barrier to trying out NixOS and the Nix package manager.
However, there were some serious problems with Nix this time around. I've tried both NixOS and Nix on other distributions in the past and, previously, the experience has been smooth, polished, and functional. While I've sometimes had to do a bit of reading of the manual pages to get the most out of Nix, past versions have worked well and NixOS as a whole has performed pretty well, like other minimal desktop distributions.
This time while NixOS generally worked okay on my workstation it ran into multiple performance and sound issues when running in VirtualBox. Nix sometimes locked up when I first started using it. The first time I successfully upgraded packages it broke the login screen, and Nix didn't work at all when I installed it on AlmaLinux OS.
I'm not sure what happened to Nix in the past year or so since I last experimented with it (and NixOS), but this felt like a big step backwards. Both the functionality of Nix and the stability of the packages available in the repositories were not up to the previous high standard. The fact I couldn't get Nix to run on AlmaLinux at all after installing past versions on distributions like Debian is concerning and I hope the issues get resolved. The user should not see debugging messages and segfaults when trying to perform package upgrades or installs.
I will say though, on a positive note, having the first upgrade of NixOS break things did give me a chance to test and confirm the value of package generations. It's not good that upgrading NixOS broke things, but it does show how quickly Nix can fix problems when upgrades damage a system.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Lenovo desktop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Hex-core Intel i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
- Storage: Western Digital 1TB hard drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 wired network card, Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe wireless adapter
- Display: Intel CometLake-S GT2
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Visitor supplied rating
NixOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.1/10 from 83 review(s).
Have you used NixOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Qubes OS 4.0 nears end of life, a dive into how Linux schedules processes, Debian publishes refreshed media for Bullseye
The Qubes OS team have announced version 4.0 of their high-security platform is nearing the end of its supported life. Qubes users are advised to upgrade to a newer release. "According to our support policy, stable Qubes OS releases are supported for six months after each subsequent major or minor release. This means that Qubes 4.0 reaches EOL six months after Qubes 4.1 was released. Since Qubes 4.1.0 was released on 2022-02-04, Qubes 4.0's EOL date is six months later, on 2022-08-04. Fun fact: Qubes 4.0.0 was initially released on 2018-03-28, which means that it will be four years, four months, and one week old when it reaches EOL. That's the longest support period for a stable Qubes release in our project's history!" Tips on upgrading and information about supported versions of Qubes OS can be found in the project's news announcement.
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One of the Linux kernel's many important jobs is the scheduling of tasks. On systems which run multiple processes it's important to keep things running smoothly, making sure each program gets a chance to run on the CPU often enough that every program appears to be running at the same time. Maxgio's blog has an article explaining how Linux schedules tasks, adjusting which programs will run by taking into consideration priorities and a queue of processes. "One of the things I was fascinated by was how Linux is able to manage and let the CPU run thousands and thousands of processes each second. To give you an idea, right now, Linux on my laptop configured with an Intel i7-1185G7 CPU switched context 28,428 times in a second! That's fantastic, isn't it?" The technical dive is explored in this blog post.
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The Debian project has published updated install media for Debian 11 "Bullseye". The new media is not a new version of the distribution, but does include security fixes for packages included on the install media. "The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian 11 (codename bullseye). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 11 but only updates some of the packages included."
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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 a fake webcam device
Faking-my-own-photo asks: Is there a way to make video conferencing software think you are using a webcam even if you don't have one? Like instead use a video or photo as the source for the image?
DistroWatch answers: It is possible to create a device which acts like a webcam and then send a video stream to it. This makes the fake device act like a webcam with an active video feed. To do this you'll need two pieces of software, one to create the video stream you want to show and one to make the fake webcam device.
There are a few tools you can use to create the video stream you want to display. One of the more universal tools, which is available on most distributions, is FFmpeg. The only software I know of which will create a fake webcam device is called v4l2loopback. Both software packages are available on most mainstream distributions. If you're running a member of the Debian/Ubuntu family of Linux distributions you can install the two necessary software packages by running:
sudo apt-get install v4l2loopback-dkms ffmpeg
The same v4l2loopback software is available through Arch Linux's Arch User Repository as v4l2loopback-dkms-git. For people running a member of the Fedora/Red Hat family this module is in the third-party RPMFusion repository.
Once both packages are installed you may need to initialize the v4l2loopback driver software by running the following command:
sudo modprobe v4l2loopback
The above command makes a new video (webcam) device. The new device will probably be called /dev/video1 or /dev/video2, depending if you have other webcams attached to your machine. Let's assume for the sake of this tutorial the new fake device is called /dev/video1. You can check for the new device by running this command:
$ ls /dev/video*
/dev/video0 /dev/video1
Now we have the fake webcam set up on our system. At the moment it doesn't have any image to transmit. We need to give it something to display. We can do this by running a long FFmpeg command. I'm going to skip over most of the details of the command. All you really need to know here is that the following command line takes the image file my-image.jpg and converts it into a streaming video which is sent to our fake webcam at /dev/video1.
ffmpeg -loop 1 -re -i my-image.jpg -f v4l2 -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p /dev/video1
When video conferencing applications or web browsers connect to the device /dev/video1 they will see a static image, constantly streaming. I feel it worth noting that some software (such as Firefox) doesn't ask us to select a webcam by its device name, but rather by a description. When prompted to select a device by its label the fake webcam we created will be called "Dummy video device".
While we'll probably usually want to display a fixed image over our fake webcam, it is possible to stream video. Though with FFmpeg the output will appear to be moving in fast-forward since it's converting the video rather than playing it. In this example, I stream a file called my-video.mp4 on a loop to my fake webcam. It plays very quickly, but might be useful if you just want to fill the space with a dynamic (non-static) series of images:
ffmpeg -stream_loop 99 -i my-video.mp4 -f v4l2 -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p /dev/video1
There are tools out there which will play video files at normal speed, but it typically involves installing third-party tools and extra steps. For most purposes the first example, with a static image, is the most straight forward approach.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus 5.0
Jay Flood has announced the release of Porteus 5.0, a set of eight live Linux distributions based on Slackware Linux and available for both x86_64 and i586 architectures: "Team Porteus is finally able to announce the immediate availability of Porteus 5.0 final in eight desktop flavours. Main changes include: Linux kernel 5.18.8; Core is based on Slackware 15.0; Perl has been moved to 05-devel; Slackware package managers included slackpkg (in core) and slpkg (in 05-devel); a simple wrapper for slackpkg, pmod, to produce a module of the package; a small script, pkginfo, to provide some info about whether a package is installed, what's in it, whether it has missing libraries and which module it's in, if any; numerous tweaks, fixes and optimizations to our core scripts." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Porteus 5.0 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 2.6MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Oracle Linux 9.0
Simon Coter has announced the release of Oracle Linux 9.0, a major update of Oracle's Linux distribution designed for enterprise use. This is the company's first stable release based on the all-new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.0: "Oracle is pleased to announce Oracle Linux 9 general availability for Intel-64/AMD-64 (x86_64) and Arm (aarch64). This release includes the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 7 (UEK R7), also generally available today, along with the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK). Oracle Linux is an optimized and secure operating environment for application development and deployment. Oracle Linux 9 with UEK R7 provides kernel, performance and security enhancements including UEK R7, based on the mainline long-term support (LTS) 5.15 release, offers the latest hardware support and is aligned with the Linux kernel community for more timely delivery of critical fixes and security updates. This release includes core scheduling, a security feature to help avoid side-channels attacks; adds CTF (C-type format) debug info data as part of the core kernel installation...." Read the release announcement and the release notes for more details.
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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: 2,741
- Total data uploaded: 42.2TB
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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) |
Using the Nix package manager
This week we began with a look at NixOS and the distribution's Nix package manager. Nix has a number of useful features, such as package generations, reproducible builds, and the ability to switch quickly between versions of packages. Do you currently use Nix, either as a part of NixOS or as a third-party package manager on another distribution? Let us know your thoughts about Nix in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using a Murena smartphone in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Using the Nix package manager
| I use Nix on NixOS: | 33 (3%) |
| I use Nix on another distro: | 24 (2%) |
| I use Nix on both NixOS and another distro: | 23 (2%) |
| I do not use Nix: | 1110 (93%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 18 July 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 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
PureOS
PureOS is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian. It is a desktop distribution that can be used as live media (CD or USB) or as full-featured operating systems installed on a hard disk. PureOS uses free and open source software exclusively and is endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. It ships with some privacy features enabled by default such as using DuckDuckGo as the search engine and the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension is enabled.
Status: Active
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
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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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