 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1005, 6 February 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 6th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A long time ago, in the time of floppy disks and single-core processors, there was a Unix desktop called the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). This graphical user interface was commonly seen on Solaris machines and it offered a virtual experience which tried to imitate a real world desk. These days not many people use CDE, but the desktop has been ported to modern operating systems and, this week, Jesse Smith tries out CDE on the NuTyX Linux distribution; read on to learn about his experiences. Do you use CDE or a modern clone of the desktop? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our Questions and Answers column we peek under the hood of Linux systems to talk about user identification numbers (UIDs) and why the ranges of these numbers are different across different flavours of Linux. We also share news stories, covering improvements to the new Pop!_OS COSMIC desktop environment along with better access to keyboard and mouse settings on Linux Mint. Then we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. This past week we introduced the helloSystem project to our database. helloSystem is a FreeBSD-based project which seeks to provide a macOS-like desktop experience and we have details below. We also added two new packages, nftables and ClamAV, to our software version tables and Search page which we hope you will find useful. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
NuTyX 22.12.0 and a return to CDE
About a year ago I decided to revisit the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) to see how the experience held up to my 20 year old memory of running the desktop on Solaris. I ended up installing CDE on Debian. While I did get the aging desktop running, there were some severe limitations, such as the inability to use the mouse to click on icons and menus, and my trial soon came to a close.
The idea of revisiting CDE stayed with me though and, last month while I was tinkering with Arch Linux, I noticed NsCDE is in the Arch User Repository (AUR). NsCDE (the Not So Common Desktop Environment) is a modern implementation of CDE using FVWM minimal window manager. I decided to try installing NsCDE on my Arch system, which already had GNOME and Xfce running on it, to see how the experience held up.
I tried to perform the install of NsCDE from the AUR using the yay assistant, but the build failed due to missing dependencies. I tracked these down and the build failed again, with more missing dependencies. Then failed again. I manually added more dependencies. Then the build failed again with less clear errors. So I gave up on running NsCDE on Arch and went looking for another distribution which might offer NsCDE or the real, original CDE. I found what I was looking for in NuTyX.
NuTyX offers about a dozen editions. Most of these editions feature modern desktop environments and some include lightweight window managers. There is a minimalist, command line only edition, and, yes, one edition featuring CDE!
NuTyX is built from Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch, with a custom package manager called "cards". The package manager can install individual binary packages, a group of related binary packages (e.g. desktop packages, such as KDE or Xfce), and compile source packages from ports. The distribution is designed for intermediate and advanced Linux users. I downloaded my coveted CDE edition which was available as a 1.5GB ISO file.
Installing
Booting from the NuTyX media brings up a text-based menu screen where we are asked to pick our county and language from a list. We're then asked to pick one of three options: Install, Advanced, or Help. I picked Install which asked me to pick my keyboard layout from a cryptic list of short names and then make up a username and password. The system then seemed to be loading something for a handful of seconds. The screen cleared and showed me a graphical login screen for CDE.
What took me by surprise is, at first, I still thought I was engaged in part of the install process from the live media. However, when I signed into the desktop and was greeted by no more prompts or questions I checked and confirmed NuTyX was now running from my hard drive. On one hand, it is very impressive that NuTyX installed and then rebooted so quickly that I didn't notice it had happened. I don't believe that has ever happened to me before. In the time it takes some distributions to merely load their installer or present package selection options, NuTyX finished its install process.
On the other hand, I'm concerned about the fact NuTyX took over my hard drive, wiping the entire disk clean, without warning. I didn't see any prompt asking me about partitioning or erasing data. NuTyX simple took the nuclear option without fanfare. This is not going to make for a great first impression for most users. I went to the distribution's website and read the documentation about installing. To be fair, it does say the default Install option on the live media offers automated partitioning. However, it does not seem to indicate the disk is erased and partitioning happens without warning. Lots of distributions offer an "automated" or "guided" partitioning option, but they almost always warn the user first.
The documentation does mention the Advanced option on the live media can be used to access a command line and run disk partitioning tools. The steps outlined require a bit of Linux knowledge and manual work, but they should allow someone to set up the distribution without having it take over the entire disk. When taking the automated approach, I ended up with a single ext4 partition for the root and home directories. A swap partition is also created. According to the project's documentation, on machines with UEFI enabled, an EFI partition is created. However, I was unable to get NuTyX to boot in UEFI mode, it only ran in Legacy BIOS mode during my tests.
Early impressions
NuTyX boots to a graphical login screen where we can sign into the CDE desktop. The session loads unusually quickly and, the first time we sign in, a file browser and document explaining how to use CDE are automatically opened. Booting NuTyX takes about two seconds and loading the desktop takes about a second. The CDE desktop places a thick panel at the bottom of the screen. The panel holds quick launch icons and buttons which will open "drawers" where we can find additional applications. There is also a large virtual desktop switcher in the middle of the panel. The panel further holds buttons for locking or leaving the desktop session.
NuTyX 22.12.0 -- Changing sound and screensaver settings
(full image size: 135kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The default theme tends to use white font on a beige background which I found difficult to read. The virtual terminal uses white on black which I find easier on my eyes. We can open a settings panel which will allow us to pick alternative colour themes. However, the desktop session must be closed and we must sign back in to see the new theme, it does not change on the fly.
Application windows have maximize and minimize buttons and a general window menu for moving or resizing the application, but no dedicated close button. We can close windows by clicking the general menu button and selecting the Close entry. Most native CDE applications also have a menu built into the application which offers a Close option. I found this somewhat inconvenient, but I suppose the lack of a Close button is intended to help people avoid data loss. Clicking a window's minimize button shrinks the window to an icon and places to the left of the desktop. There is no dock or task switcher, just an open space on the desktop or holding a list of icons.
More details on CDE
I'd like to return focus to the CDE panel for a moment. The panel holds a number of application launchers and information indicators. These include a calendar, a launcher for the file manager, and a mail icon for opening an e-mail client which did not work as no mail client was installed. There are buttons for locking and leaving the CDE session, and four large buttons for switching between virtual desktops. There is a button for opening a printer browser. This print tool should let us see printers and waiting print jobs, but the utility doesn't enable us to add new printers.
Digging through the drawers of the panel we find one drawer is mostly geared toward launching applications such as text editors and the terminal. Another drawer gives us quick access to desktop settings. The desktop settings application includes modules for adjusting the theme, font size, and mouse behaviour.
NuTyX 22.12.0 -- Running Firefox and browsing application launchers
(full image size: 359kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The panel also includes a help menu where we can see a guide which explains using the CDE interface and a trash bin where we can find deleted files. Near the middle of the panel is a light which flashes when we try to launch an application. This visual feedback was more helpful back in the days when it took several seconds to a minute to launch new applications. One button on the panel minimizes the panel just like we would a window, pushing it off to the left side of the screen.
One of the drawers offers a launcher which opens a window that lists software categories and, when we select a category we are shown application launchers for popular applications. This arrangement of icons is misleading as almost none of the programs listed are actually available - they are not installed on the system. I'm not sure why this program shows us lots of icons for unavailable software. When we install new desktop applications, as I'll talk about later, launchers are added to this window. This application browser, which has its own window, feels like an early version of the modern full-screen application grid approach to launching apps used by GNOME and smartphones.
Something I find interesting about CDE is how much the environment tries to imitate a physical desk. The way we don't minimize applications to an abstract taskbar, instead moving small markers for the window to the left, for example. Or the way we open and shut drawers (which stay open until manually closed) rather than browsing a menu tree. By default, CDE saves our session when we logout, meaning when we sign back in the applications we were using open automatically and return to their previous positions. Modern desktops can save sessions, but usually do not, preferring to give us a clean slate. CDE tries to treat our digital environment like a physical one where open tasks do not disappear when we leave the room.
To the modern eye, CDE might seem dated or quaint, but I think there was a strong effort here to make the digital world feel familiar to people accustomed to working with physical equivalents of the tools provided. Which makes CDE's approach fairly easy to learn, even if it doesn't feel as efficient compared to some modern desktops.
Included software
NuTyX doesn't ship with a lot of software installed. The GNU command line programs are available along with the CDE desktop. There is no compiler on the system and no web browser. The distribution runs the SysV init software and version 6.0 of the Linux kernel, at the time of writing. The man command line utility is installed, but manual pages are not available by default. When we install new software, manual pages are an optional additional package we can fetch rather than part of the program's main package.
NuTyX 22.12.0 -- Browsing files and changing the desktop appearance
(full image size: 208kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Package management with cards
As I mentioned at the start of this review, NuTyX uses the cards package manager. The cards utility is a command line tool which uses a fairly straight forward syntax. The "cards search" command finds new software, "cards install" fetches a package, "cards remove" deletes a package, and "cards upgrade" updates installed software. We can run "cards list" to see items already installed.
In the event we forget these commands, or want to see other options cards provides, we can run "cards help" to see a summary of features the package manager offers. Something I found interesting is "cards help" displays its options in colour in the terminal. This means if we pipe the output of "cards help" through a pager, like less, the output becomes scrambled as colour codes are printed in the text, making it hard to read.
NuTyX 22.12.0 -- Running the cards package manager
(full image size: 136kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I found cards worked quickly for me, and functioned without errors. The output produced is slightly on the terse side, but cards seemed clear in its syntax and output. I quickly grew to like cards and its quick performance.
While the NuTyX repository is missing some common open source desktop applications, we can try to overcome this by using portable packages, such as Flatpak. The Flatpak framework can be installed by cards and the popular Flathub repository is automatically enabled for us. I had problems installing Flatpaks though. I attempted to fetch and run four applications and three of them failed to install properly, giving checksum errors. In short, while Flatpak is an option, is did not prove to be a reliable one. Even when I then tried installing Flatpaks on NuTyX which I already had running on another distribution at the same time, the installation usually failed.
Hardware
NuTyX is a fairly light distribution. When signed into the CDE interface the system consumed about 115MB of RAM. A fresh install used about 4GB of disk space.
At first I struggled with the desktop resolution while running NuTyX in VirtualBox. The CDE desktop defaulted to displaying at 800x600 pixels, which was probably fine in 1998, but not ideal for a modern screen. To make matters worse, CDE does not include any configuration tools for adjusting the desktop resolution. On Solaris, there were external command line tools to manage CDE's resolution, but these are not included in NuTyX. I worked around these limitations by using cards to fetch the xrandr command which can query and set the screen resolution.
Doing this while logged into CDE changes the screen resolution, but not the amount of display real estate CDE consumes. The desktop stays firmly in the upper-left 800x600 corner of the screen until we sign out and log back into the desktop.
As I mentioned earlier, I got NuTyX to boot in BIOS mode, but not in UEFI mode. This prevented me from successfully running the distribution on my laptop. My trial was restricted to a VirtualBox instance.
Conclusions
As the NuTyX website makes fairly clear up front, the distribution is geared toward more experienced Linux users. People who are comfortable using the command line, manually partitioning a hard drive with command line tools, people who don't mind using a custom package manager, and manually enabling services. The distribution is very hands-on and the documentation is often brief on topics covered. This leaves the user to mostly navigate using on-line documentation as a quick-start guide and local manual pages (which must be installed separately).
I'm not thrilled with how NuTyX takes over the hard drive with no warning during the installation and virtually no hint of what will happen in the documentation. This is dangerous and a good way to put off first-time users.
After this initial surprise though, NuTyX performs fairly well. The installer is super fast, the distribution boots within two seconds and logs into CDE in about a second. (This disproves the myth the classic SysV init software is slow to boot; when it's configured properly it brings up the system almost instantly.)
NuTyX is fairly small, fairly lightweight, but offers enough popular software and options through the repositories that I think has the tools for most people to perform basic tasks. The challenge, I find, is bootstrapping enough applications onto the system in the beginning to make the minimal operating system useful for daily tasks. This can take a while as NuTyX ships with such a small collection of applications.
In short, both CDE and NuTyX are small and fast. Both do a minimal of hand holding, and both feel like trips to past popular technologies. I liked visiting CDE again after 20 years and, while it is not a desktop I'd now want to use regularly, I did appreciate how much the developers tried to make CDE feel like a familiar, physical desk. NuTyX is somewhat limited in its packages and utilities, but the trade off is a simple design and fantastic performance.
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Visitor supplied rating
NuTyX has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8/10 from 11 review(s).
Have you used NuTyX? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes mouse and keyboard options more accessible
The Pop!_OS developers have been working on a custom desktop for their distribution. The new desktop is called COSMIC and is written in Rust, a language designed for both safety and speed. The developers have published updates on their progress and included screenshots of the young desktop environment in action. "COSMIC DE uses the Wayland display server, a program which communicates with the rest of your system to run your application, show it on-screen, and register user inputs. But Wayland is relatively new compared to the X11 display server, so some applications may not be compatible. That's where XWayland comes in. The XWayland display server includes a compatibility layer for applications using X11 to run on Wayland instead. Since one of our engineers, Victoria, integrated XWayland into the cosmic-comp compositor, the engineering team has been testing how X11 applications like Firefox and Steam are faring on COSMIC DE." Additional information and highlights can be found in the project's blog post.
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The Linux Mint team have published their monthly newsletter and taken the opportunity to highlight changes coming to the next version of their distribution. Two of the notable changes include improved accessibility for changing keyboard layouts and tap-to-click is enabled for touchpads on the login screen. "System layouts defined in /etc/default/keyboard are listed first for easy access. Below that a sub-menu lists all supported layouts. Touchpad support was also improved. Tap-to-click is detected and enabled automatically in the login screen. The layout used for Onboard, the on-screen keyboard, is configurable. The keyboard navigation was improved. The arrow keys can be used to edit the password which is being typed. A revealer icon appears when the password is clicked or edited. This revealer can be used to toggle the visibility of the password. Among other small improvements Slick-greeter also received support [for] Wayland sessions, LXQt/Pademelon badges, and a scrollable session list." Additional information can be found in the project's newsletter.
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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) |
User identification number ranges across different distributions
What-is-my-number asks: I'd love to see a story about user ID numbers, 1000 for Debian, etc. And why they're different across, sometimes, common platforms.
DistroWatch answers: A user identification number, which is sometimes referred to as a user ID or UID, is a positive integer which is associated with a user account on a Linux, BSD, or other Unix-like operating system. Basically, every user is assigned a UID in order to uniquely identify their account.
A UID is also used to assign file and directory permissions. A username can change on an operating system and usually changes when moving files between operating systems. Using a numeric value instead of a name makes it easier to update access permissions in case a username changes.
As for why UIDs are different across platforms, I believe this question is referring to the fact that the range of UID values can be different on different operating systems.
Backing up a bit, the Linux kernel (and the kernels of other members of the Unix family) do not usually care about the UID associated with an account. You can assign just about any number in the range of 1 to 65535 to a user account, as long as the value is unique on your operating system. The one exception is the root user, the administrator. The root account always has a UID of 0 (zero). Apart from this special instance, UIDs can be just about any positive integer value for any account.
These days most Linux distributions (and flavours of BSD) assign UIDs to new user accounts starting at the value 1000 and rising incrementally. In other words, the first user account you make will be assigned the UID 1000, the second account will likely have a UID of 1001, the third 1002, and so on. However, some distributions (especially older ones) may start assigning UIDs at 500. So the first account gets a numeric identifier of 500, the second gets assigned 501, the third 502...
Why start with such high numbers, like 500 and 1000, instead of, 1, 2, 3, and 4 for the first four regular (non-root) users? The gap between 0 and 1000 is typically reserved for system and service accounts.
Most Linux and BSD platforms reserve UID numbers below 1000 for system services. When you run a web service, mail server, secure shell login service, or printing service these services typically get assigned a user account. These services are common and important to run, but they would carry a security risk if they were run either as your regular user account or as the root user. You don't want your mail service or network manager to have full access to your operating system, especially if it gets compromised. So these services are associated with a user account which is not allowed to login and which has limited access to everything on the system, except the files it absolutely needs. This isolates system services and prevents them from doing damage if they misbehave.
In short, the root user gets UID 0, system services are assigned reserved values from 1 to 499 (or 999), and regular user accounts start at 500 or 1000 and move up. Why 500 and 1000? They're just nice, big, round numbers which makes them easy to remember.
The reason different distributions use different ranges of numbers for regular users, typically in the range of 500+ or 1000+, is just a matter of preference on the part of the developers. I think it was previously more common to use 500 and up, but over the years most projects have shifted to 1000 and up for new user accounts. This is usually just to give more room for UIDs to be assigned to system services. In years past, when computers had more limited resources, it was pretty common to have each system just run one or two background services. Now powerful machines could run hundreds of services at a time, which I believe was the motivation for some distributions to reserve more space between the UID for root (0) and the UID of the first user account (1000). There isn't anything particularly special about the starting point for UIDs, but 1000 is a nice, round number.
If you are curious about your account's UID you can run the id command to see it. On most distributions you can see what ranges of UIDs your distribution uses by looking in the /etc/login.defs file. The lowest possible UID value for a regular user will be defined in this text file as UID_MIN and the highest will be defined by UID_MAX. On my system, these are defined in the /etc/login.defs file as:
UID_MIN 1000
UID_MAX 60000
While not generally recommended, as it can break ownership of files outside the user's home directory, it is possible to change an existing user's UID. This can be done with the usermod command. An account's UID can be changed as shown below:
usermod --uid 2000 jesse
In the above example, I have changed the UID for Jesse from its original value (1000) to 2000. This should automatically also change ownership of Jesse's files in their home directory, but will not seek out and adjust ownership of other files on the system or on removable storage media.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
elementary OS 7.0
The elementary OS team have published a new version of their Ubuntu-based distribution. The new release, elementary OS 7.0 "Horus", introduces a number of new changes, many of them focused on the software centre: "As always, AppCenter is the centerpiece of elementary OS. The primary purpose of any operating system is to support the apps that you use to work, play, and express yourself creatively. In the latest version of AppCenter we've worked on making app descriptions more engaging with more information, making it easier to update to the latest versions of apps, and improving support for sideloading and alt stores. We've also worked on improving AppCenter's responsiveness - making sure you can comfortably use it when tiling and on small displays as well as better using space on large displays. We've completely rewritten the way navigation works in AppCenter and now support two-finger swipe gestures to navigate back. The entire app loads much faster and provides more feedback when running background tasks via an overlay bar in the bottom right or left corner." Additional information, along with screenshots, can be found in the project's release announcement.
elementary OS 7.0 -- Running the Pantheon desktop
(full image size: 2.3MB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Gnoppix Linux 23.2
Andreas Mueller has announced the release of Gnoppix Linux 23.2, an updated version of the project's Debian and Kali Linux-based distribution with GNOME 43 as the default desktop: "We are proud to announce the release of Gnoppix 23.2, the latest version of our popular Linux distribution. This version includes many new features and improvements, including extensive bug fixes and improved performance, as well as support for the latest hardware and software. Gnoppix 23.2 also incorporates extensive user feedback, which we have been continuously working to implement in order to make our distribution the best it can be. This feedback has been crucial in helping us improve Gnoppix 23.2 and we are very grateful to our users for their help. On Perrit's request, we've added ChatGPT as a GNOME extension. We are now working on the next release, with GNOME 44, which is scheduled for release in March 23. This release will include the latest version of the GNOME desktop environment, as well as a number of other improvements and changes. We look forward to bringing you Gnoppix 23.3 and continuing to improve Gnoppix with your help." Continue to the release announcement for a full changelog.
Slax 11.6.0, 15.0.1
Tomáš Matějíček has announced the availability of Slax 15.0.1 (based on Slackware's "Current" branch) and 11.6.0 (based on Debian 11.6.0). Both new releases of the project's minimalist live distribution bring updated software as well as improved persistence: "I am excited to announce the release of Slax's latest versions - Slax version 15.0.1, based on Slackware 'Current' and Slax version 11.6.0, based on Debian 11.6. Both versions are available for both 32-bit and 64-bit processor architectures. One of the biggest improvements in Slax 15.0.1 and 11.6.0 are updated packages. Another key feature of the new Slax versions is the use of the newest DynFileFS which implements how 'persistent changes' are stored on writable media. This means that when you run Slax from a USB device, all the changes you make to the system will be stored in a special file (actually, a set of four files) on the USB disk, making it possible to use Slax on the go. In the past, this feature was limited to a total size of 4GB, but with the newest DynFileFS, you can store up to 16GB of data." Read the full release announcement for further 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: 2,826
- Total data uploaded: 42.8TB
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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) |
Would you consider using CDE as your daily desktop?
In this week's review of CDE, the Common Desktop Environment, we revisited an interface which was popular in the Unix community in the 1990s. While CDE has been ported to multiple operating systems, and related projects such as NsCDE try to keep CDE's style alive, this desktop environment is rarely used anymore.
With CDE (and modern clones like NsCDE) now available across multiple Linux distributions and other open source operating systems, do you have any interest in running CDE?
You can see the results of our previous poll on checking the health of storage devices in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Would you run CDE?
| I would run CDE: | 126 (9%) |
| I already run CDE: | 10 (1%) |
| I have run CDE in the past but no longer: | 212 (16%) |
| I would run NsCDE: | 61 (4%) |
| I already run NsCDE: | 5 (0%) |
| I have run NsCDE in the past but no longer: | 23 (2%) |
| I would not run CDE/NsCDE: | 922 (68%) |
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|
| Website News |
Tracking new packages
Part of the work we do here at DistroWatch is tracking the versions of popular open source software available in each Linux distribution. Information on these packages, their latest stable version numbers, and a brief description can be found on our Packages Tracked page.
This past week we added two new packages to be tracked, the nftables firewall software for Linux and the ClamAV anti-virus scanner.
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New projects added to database
helloSystem
helloSystem is a FreeBSD-based, desktop-oriented operating system. The project seeks to provide a macOS-style desktop interface and layout while using open source software.
helloSystem 0.8.0 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 353kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- blendOS. blendOS is an Arch-based Linux distribution which, using a custom package manager called blend, allows the user to install software from multiple distributions (including Ubuntu and Fedora). blendOS is an immutable distribution with a read-only root filesystem.
- QuemOS. QuemOS is a Debian-based Linux distribution featuring the Xfce desktop.
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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, 13 February 2023. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. 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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| 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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