 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 987, 26 September 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 39th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A concept that has become increasingly popular over the years, particularly in the realm of commercially backed distributions, is the idea of an immutable operating system. Such an operating system has a read-only filesystem and is intended to have a fixed, low-level layer which is common across all installs. This week we begin with a look at one such immutable operating system: openSUSE's MicroOS. The system provides a read-only filesystem and uses Btrfs snapshots to provide software updates. Jesse Smith shares some practical observations about running openSUSE MicroOS in this week's Feature Story. Have you tried running MicroOS? Let us know what you thought of this special edition of openSUSE in our Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about upgrades coming to pfSense, including a new version of PHP to run the project's utilities. While pfSense is upgrading PHP, the Arch Linux team is purging the legacy version of Python and we provide details below. We also share a link to a great guide to help people navigate the Linux command line, manage packages, and monitor processes. In this week's Questions and Answers column we discuss inviting people to try Linux and other forms of open source software. We hope you'll find these tips useful when introducing potential Linux users to a new operating system. Plus we are pleased to share a list of the torrents we are seeding and talk about the distribution releases of the past week. This week we're also able to welcome the XeroLinux distribution to our database and we share an overview on this Arch Linux-based project below. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE's MicroOS
The openSUSE project is probably best known for its two main branches: Leap and Tumbleweed. Leap is a fixed release distribution which shares code with SUSE Linux Enterprise while Tumbleweed is a rolling release platform. Apart from this difference in update policy (fixed versus rolling), the two editions are mostly similar. They use the same system administration tools, support the same desktops, and use the same package manager.
Were you to just glance at the openSUSE website you might believe there are just these two editions of the distribution. However, if you poke around in the project's wiki enough you'll find another edition called MicroOS. What is MicroOS? It is an immutable operating system which, as the wiki explains, means:
Read-only root filesystem to avoid accidental modifications of the OS. The Transactional Updates technology leverages Btrfs snapshots to apply package updates without interfering with the running system.
It also mentions there is a tool to check the integrity of the operating system after each update and MicroOS is based on openSUSE Tumbleweed, making it a rolling release platform. The MicroOS edition is available for x86_64, aarach64, ppc64le, and armv7 processors. The x86_64 build is shipped as a 3.7GB ISO file.
According to the wiki, there is a new branch of MicroOS based on openSUSE Leap, but it is considered experimental at this time.
I decided to try out MicroOS's main edition. I hadn't used it before and, given there are rumours SUSE Linux Enterprise will be based on something like MicroOS for its next major release, I thought this would be a good time to become familiar with the technology. For the purposes of this review I decided to focus just on aspects of MicroOS which make it different from Leap as I reviewed openSUSE 15.4 Leap a few months ago.
Before diving into MicroOS I believe it's important to keep in mind this platform is still considered experimental, especially for desktop use. The project's documentation says:
MicroOS Desktop provides only a minimal base system with a desktop environment and basic configuration tools only. All applications, browsers, etc are provided by Flatpaks from Flathub. Warning! openSUSE MicroOS for desktop usage is still in RC (GNOME) or Alpha (KDE Plasma) stage, please keep that in mind!
Just to clarify the above quote, there isn't a separate "Desktop" edition of MicroOS. There is one edition, but during install time we can select a role, such as Desktop or Server, and I'll talk about that in a moment.
Getting started
Booting from the MicroOS media brings up a menu which allows us to either jump straight into the system installer or run a self-check on the media to confirm it has not been tampered with or corrupted. Once the self-check passes it launches the graphical system installer.
On my machine the installer launched and then immediately reported there was an incorrect checksum in its repository data. We are warned the data has been changed (by accident or compromised by an attacker). We can ignore this warning or abort the installer. We can also opt to reload repository data from the local ISO. I took this last option and the installer proceeded without further warning. I'm not sure if this means it ignored the issue or managed to correct the problem by reloading information.
The installer asks us to select a role for MicroOS. The available roles include plain MicroOS, which I believe is intended for server systems. We can also set up the distribution as a Container Host or install either the GNOME or KDE Plasma desktop. We're told that the GNOME role uses the GNOME Software utility to manage packages while the KDE Plasma role uses the Discover package manager.
At the end of the configuration screens we are shown a summary of actions the distribution's installer will take. We can browse these actions and make adjustments. For instance, MicroOS defaults to running the OpenSSH service for remote access and doesn't enable the firewall. It also defaults to the UTC timezone. We can click links next to these options to change them.
Once we accept the actions the installer starts copying its packages to the hard drive. Here things took a sharp turn into trouble. It started when the installer popped up a warning to say the RPM package for libmp3lame0 had the wrong checksum and warned against using it. We can abort the install, ignore the warning, or retry fetching the package. I chose to retry and the installer proceeded, apparently with the issue resolved.
A few seconds later the perl-base package triggered the same warning. Then the mozilla-nss package. Then another package, and another, and another. What made this increasingly frustrating was the pop-up which displayed the warning had an option to "do not show this message again", but clicking it does nothing to block future warnings. We need to click through each one and provide the solution every time. During the install process I was prompted at least 15 times about how to handle packages with bad checksums.
When the installer finally finished, it restarted the computer and booted the system to a graphical login screen. Which quickly turned black and failed to respond to keyboard or mouse input. I forced a restart and, once again, after displaying the login screen for a few moments, the system blanked the display and refused to respond. The third time, I quickly typed my credentials and the system logged me into the KDE Plasma desktop. It seems there is a timeout which will lock the system if we do not login immediately.
Early impressions
The first time I signed into the KDE Plasma desktop I was greeted by a crash report window which told me the kslashqml process had crashed. I was asked if I'd like to ignore this or restart the process. Restarting the process results in the KDE splash screen being shown again, followed by the process crashing, and a new report pop-up. After I installed waiting updates, this crash report stopped appearing at login.
openSUSE MicroOS -- Exploring the bare application menu
(full image size: 671kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Plasma desktop is arranged with a panel at the bottom of the screen. The panel holds our application menu, task switcher, and system tray. On the desktop we find two icons for opening the Dolphin file manager.
The application menu holds a small number of application launchers. We can launch the Discover software manager, the Dolphin file manager, the Kate text editor, a virtual terminal, and the System Settings panel. That's about it. There is no web browser or other heavy applications. Looking further I found MicroOS does ship with the same command line tools as other openSUSE editions, but it doesn't ship with manual pages.
It appears as though YaST isn't included in MicroOS. I suspect the administrative panel isn't compatible with a read-only filesystem. This is unfortunate as YaST is one of the great gems of the typical openSUSE experience and I missed having it included by default.
Despite not including much software and not enabling any swap space with the default guided partitioning setup, a fresh install of MicroOS takes up 2.8GB of disk space. Logging into KDE Plasma requires about 640MB of RAM, which is slightly on the heavy side.
Software management
People who have used other editions of openSUSE are probably familiar with the Zypper package manager. Zypper is included in MicroOS, but cannot be used as the distribution uses a read-only filesystem. Instead we need to use the Discover graphical package manager which we can launch from the application menu.
The first time I launched Discover it reported there were 46 updates waiting. I chose to install these and Discover downloaded the waiting packages. It then crashed while finishing up the transaction. I re-opened Discover and it reported there were no new packages to fetch.
openSUSE MicroOS -- Installing software with Discover
(full image size: 143kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Discover displays categories and sub-categories of software we can browse to the left of the window. Entries for specific applications are shown on the right. Each application is listed with its name, a short description, icon, and a rating. I decided to download two applications to start: FileZilla and Firefox. Discover reported no issues during the download, but the new items didn't show up in my application menu. After Firefox finished downloading, Discover crashed again.
I re-launched Discover and tried to install VLC which quickly caused Discover to crash once more. I began to wonder if I might need to restart the computer in order to complete the earlier update. I rebooted and, when I logged in, I found FileZilla had been added to my application menu, but Firefox and VLC had not. FileZilla launched and worked which seemed promising.
I returned to Discover and tried to install the Falkon browser. This appeared to be successful, but the application was not added to my menu and clicking its Launch button from within Discover accomplished nothing. I tried logging out and back in, but this didn't refresh the application menu. In order to make Falkon show up in the menu I had to reboot the computer again.
This pattern continued with Discover regularly crashing and the system insisting I restart the computer in order to see newly installed programs in my application menu.
Conclusions
I want to acknowledge the MicroOS documentation does warn that the desktop roles of the distribution are still in development. We shouldn't expect an entirely polished experience. Still, despite this warning, I was surprised at how poorly the MicroOS system functioned. I could understand some things not working smoothly, such as Discover not adding application launchers to the menu automatically. However, getting pestered with checksum errors (15 or more of them) during the initial install seems excessive. It was all the more frustrating that the installer doesn't respect the "don't ask me again" option after it shows the checksum errors.
openSUSE MicroOS -- Exploring the System Settings panel
(full image size: 153kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The login screen blanks and causes the system to stop responding if we don't login fast enough, the first window that greets the user upon logging in isn't a welcome window, but a crash report. There is very little software on the system and the Discover software centre crashes after almost every transaction.
With all of these things going wrong, the only theoretical benefit appears to be that we can install (and rollback) software updates, making for a more stable rolling release experience. Which is a good idea and I'm not knocking it, but we can already enjoy this with openSUSE Tumbleweed and its automatic Btrfs snapshots without any of the hassles which come from running MicroOS. The Tumbleweed edition will even let us use Zypper and includes more desktop software out of the box.
MicroOS has some appealing ideas, like snapshots, a read-only root filesystem, and roles we can select at install time. However, it's a lot less polished than openSUSE's other editions and, from a practical point of view, doesn't offer much benefit over the Btrfs snapshots of the other editions.
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Visitor supplied rating
openSUSE has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.7/10 from 366 review(s).
Have you used openSUSE? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
pfSense updates base system and PHP, Arch drops Python 2 packages, a guide for navigating the Linux command line
pfSense is a FreeBSD-based operating system for firewalls and routers. The project is going to be updating some key components as the developers prepare for the next major release of pfSense. Jim Thompson posted: "We are moving the version of PHP used by pfSense software to PHP 8.1. We have also taken a decision to move the base operating system version of FreeBSD used by pfSense software from 12-STABLE to the current development 'top of tree' version also known as 'main', or 'HEAD', and, at the time of writing, '14-CURRENT'. In order to minimize potential disruption to the community and customer base, public development snapshots and repository synchronization have been temporarily paused while we work on these major shifts, including internal testing of builds.
Recent releases of pfSense software have been based on PHP 7.4, which is now approaching its EOL date in late November. We are migrating the version of PHP used by pfSense software to PHP 8.1, skipping over the interim 8.0 release. This means we will be on the latest available release of PHP. PHP 8.1 is supported upstream until late 2024." Details on these moves can be found in Thompson's blog post.
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Version 2 of the Python development language is no longer receiving security updates, having been discontinued two years ago. However, because of the vast collection of software written in Python 2 (which is not compatible with Python 3), the language has continued to exist in the software repositories of many Linux distributions. The Arch Linux team has decided to remove Python 2 entirely from the distribution, purging its packages from the repositories: "Python 2 went end of life January 2020. Since then we have been actively cutting down the number of projects depending on python2 in our repositories, and we have finally been able to drop it from our distribution. If you still have python2 installed on your system consider removing it and any python2 package. If you still require the python2 package you can keep it around, but please be aware that there will be no security updates."
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People often contact us, looking for ways to learn Linux basics. People want to know how to get started with the command line, manage services, or learn what an "init" is. The answers to these questions, and several more, are available in a quick, practical guide to the Linux command line called Linux command line for you and me. The guide includes many practical tips and tricks, ways to find information, process monitoring, accessing log files, and package management. These topics and more are quickly and clearly covered in the on-line guide.
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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) |
Converting other people to using Linux
New-recruit asks: I slapped Linux on my laptop to see if I could extend its life three months ago and it's been going great! It's breathed new life into my machine and it feels like my computer is working for me now. Any tips on converting friends and family members to running Linux?
DistroWatch answers: Welcome to the Linux club. I'm glad you're finding that it's working well for you and that you're enjoying the benefits. I also think it is nice you want to share the positive experience with others.
Before you rush out to hand copies of Linux to the people in your social circle there are a few things I believe are worth considering. The first, in my mind, is people mostly see their computers as tools or entertainment systems. They are things to be used to accomplish something. Most folks don't regard computers as something they are emotionally invested in. If you approach most people with words like "open philosophy" or "converting", it's likely to make them regard the Linux community as a political group or a cult. It's unlikely to encourage them to check it out.
I find the best way to convince someone to try something new is to find out what they don't like about their current situation. Is their computer old and slow (like yours was before you switched)? Then show them how much faster yours is now. Are they upset about pop-ups and a dozen different update programs annoying them? Show them how clean and simple the update programs on most Linux distributions are. Are they regularly getting viruses or running into unpredictable behaviour? Explain to them that your system isn't targeting by most malware. In short, listen to their problem and offer a specific solution.
If someone is entirely happy with their computing system and doesn't seem interested in yours, then they might not be the right person to try to coax into the Linux community.
On a related note, sometimes a person's issues might be better fixed with changing applications rather than a full switch to an entirely new operating system. For instance, my family was having trouble with their e-mail client on Windows. Everything else was working fine for them at the time. Rather than try to sell them on the idea of making the big leap to Linux, I introduced them to the open source Thunderbird e-mail client. At another point they were having trouble with their ageing version of Microsoft Office not being compatible with new document formats and I installed LibreOffice for them, which covered all their needs. When their old movie player proved to be too slow, I introduced them to VLC.
After a few years, virtually all their desktop software was open source and cross platform. Which meant when it came time to upgrade their computer, installing a beginner-friendly Linux distribution and their now-familiar desktop software was a less jarring experience than making the leap to the latest version of Windows and its many interface changes.
My point is essentially that sometimes it's better to swap out one component to help a person solve a specific problem. Assuming it works well, they may be open to swapping out other programs in the future as they run into problems, gradually shifting them toward a more open source and user-focused experience. Sometimes a person just needs one improved screwdriver, not a whole new toolbox.
Finally, if you do plan to encourage people to switch operating systems, be prepared to be their tech support person, at least for the first few months of the transition. It can be hard to switch from one application or operating system to another. Switching to a platform with a low desktop market share means it'll be hard for the people migrating to get support. Not only with little things like learning how to use the file manager or installing new software, but they may find they run into errors using on-line services, or cannot install applications their employer uses for business. A lot of support people won't be able to help them navigate Linux, so make sure you're available to be on call if they need help.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
ExTiX 22.9
The ExTiX distribution is an Ubuntu-based project which features alternative desktop environments. The latest version of ExTiX uses the KDE Plasma desktop and ships with the Anbox software for running Android applications. The release announcement shares details: "News about ExTiX 22.9 Build 220922 with the KDE Plasma Desktop environment together with Anbox (Android in a Box), Refracta Installer and Refracta Snapshot: 1. ExTiX KDE Plasma is based on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS Jammy Jellyfish. KDE Plasma is used as the desktop environment together with Anbox (Android in a Box). All packages have been updated to the latest version by 220922. 2. I have pre-installed Anbox (Android in a Box) with Google Play Store. So GAPPS (Google Play Services and Google Play Store) are pre-installed in this version of ExTiX. Anbox won't run live (from a DVD or a USB stick) or in VirtualBox. You will get an error message. That's because VirtualBox as of yet does not support nested virtualization. In this version of ExTiX KDE/Anbox you can run the YouTube app with good video and sound quality. Not with the very best quality."
ExTiX 22.9 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 118kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,773
- Total data uploaded: 42.4TB
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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) |
Running openSUSE's MicroOS
This week we began with a review of openSUSE's MicroOS, an immutable operating system combined with an openSUSE base. Have you tried MicroOS? What did you think about it? Let us know what worked for you and what did not in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on remotely accessing a laptop in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Running MicroOS
| I have tried MicroOS and liked it: | 32 (3%) |
| I have tried MicroOS and did not like it: | 50 (4%) |
| I am trying MicroOS now: | 16 (1%) |
| I have not tried MicroOS: | 1034 (91%) |
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| Website News |
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the forms of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $75 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Mitchel V | $20 |
| Peter R | $15 |
| Daniel A | $10 |
| Adiel A | $5 |
| Brian H | $5 |
| Computer Farm Sarl | $5 |
| Iamchop | $5 |
| Jonas B | $5 |
| Vory | $3 |
| tibfulv | $1 |
| Wm L | $1 |
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New distributions added to database
XeroLinux
XeroLinux is an Arch Linux-based distribution with KDE Plasma as the preferred desktop. Some of the features of the distribution include the Calamares installer, various under-the-hood tweaks and optimisations, built-in support for community-built AUR packages as well as Flatpak packages, and the availability of various desktop and bootloader themes developed in-house.
XeroLinux 2022.09 -- The KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 4.2MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 3 October 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)
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| Linux Foundation Training |
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
VideoLinux
VideoLinux was a PCLinuxOS-based distribution with focus on DVD backups, video encoding and transcoding, DVD authoring, format conversion and pretty much anything else you want to do with video.
Status: Discontinued
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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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