 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1007, 20 February 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 8th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are hundred of Linux distributions in the world, not to mention lots of other open source operating systems of various types and flavours. With so many operating systems and spins - and so few weeks in which to cover them - we tend to focus on projects we feel are going to appeal to a large group of people. We want to highlight projects which are doing something interesting, something new, or which have mainstream appeal. But what about the lesser known projects? What about the hidden gems of the open source world? We were asked this week to talk about under-appreciated projects and we discuss some great projects which tend to get less attention in our Questions and Answers column. First though, we dive into a review of helloSystem, a FreeBSD-based operating system which tries to copy the look and feel of macOS. Read on to learn how the young project is performing. Then, in our News section, we talk about the Solus team's ongoing efforts to restore the project's website while SUSE tests its Micro edition. We also share updating tips from the Arch Linux family, and link to Canonical's announcement of a real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04. Plus we share the new releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we're discussing the best place to publish news stories as they happen and we'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter in this issue's Opinion Poll. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
helloSystem 0.8.0
helloSystem is a relatively new project and one of the most recent additions to the DistroWatch database. The project has an ambitious goal: to provide a computing experience which looks and acts like macOS while using open source software. The idea is to provide the privacy, security, and ability to audit the software which open source platforms provide while maintaining a macOS style desktop experience. The core system is based on FreeBSD with a lot of the configuration tools being custom made for the project.
The helloSystem project doesn't seem to have scheduled releases. Sometimes new versions happen a few months apart, sometimes they're within about four weeks of each other. Development and snapshots seem to happen at a rapid pace, at least most of the time. For the purposes of this review, I downloaded the 0.8.0 snapshot which was released in January. The install media for this version was 940MB in size and it runs exclusively on 64-bit (x86_64) machines.
Booting from the live media brings up a graphical environment. Right away a window appears and asks us to select our preferred language from a list. Once we pick one of the languages we're shown a desktop with a panel across the top of the screen. The panel contains a unified application menu which defaults to showing the Filer file manager menu. Filer acts as the default file manager as well as the desktop interface for manipulating files and icons. Also on the panel we find a drop-down menu called System which acts as an application menu where we can launch programs and configuration modules.
helloSystem 0.8.0 -- Exploring the System menu
(full image size: 372kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
There are icons on the desktop which open the Falkon web browser, launch a new Filer window and open the Trash folder. Looking around the desktop I failed to find a task switcher. With a little experimenting I found minimized windows disappear and can be restored by clicking a button on the right side of the panel and selecting the name of our minimized window from a list. The Alt-Tab key combination will also cycle through minimized windows.
Speaking of window controls, helloSystem splits up window control buttons. The close button is placed to the left while the minimize and maximize buttons are displayed in the right corner. This might be a good idea as it makes it harder to accidentally close a window when we mean to minimize it.
The desktop environment, which is powered by KDE's window manager (KWin), does have a passing resemblance to the macOS desktop. The colours, layout, and rounded buttons all remind me of using macOS.
Installing
Having explored the live session for a while I went looking for a way to install helloSystem. There is no icon for this on the desktop. I found a launcher in the System menu under the category "Applications > Utilities" called "Install FreeBSD". This seemed like a good option and turned out to be the graphical system installer I wanted.
The installer begins by showing us a description of helloSystem followed by the project's license terms. We're then asked to select a disk the system can take over. The installer warns us it will wipe the contents of any disk we pick and use it entirely. Installing helloSystem is an all-or-nothing option. Once we have selected a disk, we're asked to make up a username and password for ourselves. This user account creation screen also presents us with two options we can toggle on/off. The first asks if we want to enable remote logins through the OpenSSH service and the second offers to automatically set the system time based on guessing our location and using network time services.
Once we've made our choices the installer takes over the drive with a ZFS volume and copies its files to our hard drive. The install process is quick and takes just a few minutes. The installer then offers to restart the computer for us.
Early impressions
The first time we boot a local copy of helloSystem we are shown the language selection window again and automatically signed into our account. Once the desktop loads we're shown a first-run wizard. The wizard gives us an overview of the helloSystem mission (focusing on security and privacy) and the next screen explains how we can copy and paste using keyboard shortcuts. Then the wizard disappears.
While the wizard doesn't come back later, the language select window appears every time we boot the computer. It doesn't appear if we sign out of our account and later sign in again. However, each time the system boots we are again prompted to pick our language from a list.
Hardware
I began testing helloSystem in a VirtualBox virtual machine. The operating system worked fairly well in VirtualBox. Despite not dynamically adjusting its desktop resolution to match the window on the host machine, I was able to manually adjust the screen resolution using one of helloSystem's configuration tools. The operating system was fairly responsive and seemed to work well in VirtualBox.
I noticed the first time I signed into my local copy of helloSystem running in VirtualBox, the operating system popped up a warning window which indicated helloSystem is designed to be run on physical hardware, not in a virtual machine. The warning doesn't say what problems might occur by using a virtual machine. I found this warning odd as helloSystem ships with VirtualBox guest modules which are enabled automatically. In other words, the system includes and automatically enables software for an environment in which it claims it isn't designed to be run.
When run on my workstation, directly on physical hardware, helloSystem continued to provide good performance. My screen resolution was automatically detected and sound worked out of the box. My wireless networking card was not detected. When I launched helloSystem's wireless networking utility it reported no supported devices were found and recommended I try acquiring a USB wireless card.
The operating system, which is based on FreeBSD 13.1, is installed on a ZFS volume and does not enable any swap space. The system consumed about 1.6GB of disk space for a fresh install. When sitting idle at the desktop about 270MB of active memory was consumed for applications and 300MB of memory was used for wired memory (the kernel and ZFS).
I noticed, when running on my workstation, helloSystem was able to shutdown (power off) cleanly, but would hang if I tried to restart the computer.
Applications and settings
Browsing through the helloSystem application menu, we find several categories of programs and plenty of launchers for desktop software. An odd quirk of the operating system is many of the launchers are for applications which are not installed. Clicking on some launchers, such as the terminal, update manager, user account utility, and Falkon web browser will launch the corresponding applications. Clicking on many of the other launchers such as those for the LibreOffice suite, LMMS media application, or GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) will cause a window to appear and tell us the software can be installed. We are then asked if we wish to fetch the software and then we're prompted for our password.
Several of the configuration tools listed in the System menu are not available or not finished. For instance, clicking the display configuration module opens a window which simply displays a Python trackback error. Other tools, particularly those found under the aptly named "Under Construction" section of the System menu, typically show an error when launched or a message saying the functionality has not been implemented. Some tools are halfway completed. For instance, the user manager can create new user accounts, but not view existing accounts, edit them, or remove old accounts. Trying to remove an old account displays a message which says the feature hasn't been implemented. The user manager can only create new accounts of the type "Administrator", regular user accounts cannot be created.
One tool which does seem to have all of its functionality is called Update. Running it prompts us for our password and then offers to update the operating system. The command's output goes by quickly, but it appears to be checking for updates to FreeBSD's core operating system only, not third-party packages provided through FreeBSD's ports collection. As far as I can tell, updating packages requires a trip to the command line and the use of the FreeBSD pkg package manager.
Software management
Apart from using the pkg package manager from the command line to fetch and update packages, it looks as though the main way to acquire most new applications is by clicking their launcher in the System menu, then agreeing to download the software and providing our password. I tried using this approach with a handful of the offered applications, including LibreOffice, GIMP, LMMS, and Shotcut.
I tried LibreOffice first. After I provided my password, a window showed me a progress bar as LibreOffice files were fetched and installed. Once the suite was installed, LibreOffice was automatically launched. The LibreOffice window appeared with no menu bar or window buttons. The desktop's top panel disappeared and there was no visible way to close the LibreOffice window or launch other programs. I was able to use a shortcut key (Ctrl-Q) to close LibreOffice, but then with no desktop panel and no visible desktop icons I had no way to open new programs or logout. I ended up forcing a restart. I later tried running LibreOffice again and it would work, briefly. However, the desktop panel (with its unified menu bar) would always crash and disappear within a few minutes, resulting in a desktop which was largely unstable.
helloSystem 0.8.0 -- The desktop panel disappears once LibreOffice is launched
(full image size: 260kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Trying to install LMMS caused problems too. The software installed, tried to launch, and immediate crashed. The top panel was then stuck showing the application's name (LMMS) with no menus and no way to interact with it or access the System menu. I had to open another program from its desktop icon to reset the panel to showing menus and have it function normally again.
When I installed GIMP, the software seemed to install properly, but then an error window popped up which simply stated "perl failed" with no other details offered. Despite this warning GIMP launched and ran normally. It was one of the few programs I installed from the System menu which did not cause glaring issues.
helloSystem 0.8.0 -- Exploring launchers from the System menu
(full image size: 290kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
When installing Shotcut, after its packages were downloaded, an error window appeared and simply displayed the text "pkg:" with no other information. Shotcut was not installed and clicking its launcher simply restarted the process install process.
Other observations
I made some other observations while exploring helloSystem and I'll present them here in no particular order.
The default file manager, Filer, is quite simple. Its window is plain and mostly empty, simply showing a list (or grid) of files and folders in a directory. There are some navigation options presented in the unified menu bar, but it's otherwise quite a bare bones file manager.
The system uses zsh as the default shell. This mostly works well and, for people who would like another command line shell, sh, csh, and tcsh are available on the system. Additional shells, such as bash, can be installed using the package manager.
Any time I tried to perform an administrative action, such as adding a new user or installing applications, a pop-up window would prompt me to: "Enter password to run Password command." The prompt is a bit vague, but functional. However, if the wrong password is entered or the user cancels the action a pop-up error appears which simply reads "sudo", which isn't illuminating.
One of the first command line programs I tried to run on helloSystem was top, a process and system monitoring tool. Trying to run top resulted in the terminal displaying an error: "invalid locale". The program would then exit. What make this curious was every other command line program I tried worked normally with no issues. Programs such as ps, grep, cat, and so on all functioned normally. I found when I switched to any other shell, such as tcsh, the top command would work properly. It was only when run from the default, zsh, the process monitor failed.
When trying to run the command man to view manual pages, helloSystem produces unusual results. The operating system includes the man command, but no manual pages. Instead, an alias has been set up to intercept the man command and launch Falkon to display remote copies of manual pages in the web browser. This is unusually inefficient and doesn't make sense to me. I understand wanting to make things seem pretty or graphical for new users, but anyone running a command line (and running the man command from a shell) is already somewhat familiar with command line systems. At any rate, a bigger issue is the alias locks the command line shell while the Falkon browser is open. Pressing keys which would usually return us to a prompt (such as Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Z) are ignored. This means we can't run another command in the shell until after we close the manual page. This also seems backward as it means we need to get rid of the documentation from the screen before we can use it. There is a workaround for this, running the man command in the background, for example: "man ps &". However, this is not the normal way to run the command and it will likely take time for users to get accustomed to the new approach.
helloSystem 0.8.0 -- Accessing manual pages
(full image size: 325kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Speaking of the terminal, the default virtual terminal displays a blinding white background with white text, which isn't particularly pleasant to use. We can change the colour scheme in the terminal's preferences.
Still more observations
Earlier, I mentioned helloSystem automatically logs the first user into the desktop. This is still true if other user accounts are added to the system and there does not appear to be a way to disable auto-logins through the graphical configuration tools. We can sign out of the desktop which will result in a login screen being displayed. Users can sign in from the login screen, but there are no controls for restarting or shutting down the computer. Someone needs to login in order to power off or suspend the machine.
The operating system uses the ZFS filesystem and there is a graphical utility for creating and enabling boot environments. This gives the administrator the ability to take snapshots of the system before major configuration changes or upgrades. The boot environment manager seems to work without any issues. I was hoping the system would allow me to select a boot environment when the system first starts, the way FreeBSD and openSUSE do, but I could not get a boot menu to appear. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of boot environments (a method to rollback changes which break the system) because it means we need to have a working system in order to switch to another snapshot.
helloSystem 0.8.0 -- Switching boot environments
(full image size: 282kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
I was unable to right-click on launchers in the System menu to add them to the desktop. However, we can click on categories in the System menu. This opens the file manager and displays all the launchers in the selected category. We can then click and drag launchers to the desktop. This is a slightly indirect method for getting icons on the desktop, but functional.
The process monitor works, showing processes with their PID, memory, and CPU consumption statistics. We can select processes we want to terminate. Overall CPU and memory consumption statistics for the whole system are not shown in the process monitor, just data for individual processes.
During the install process I always opted to not enable remote logins via the OpenSSH service. Despite choosing to disable OpenSSH, the daemon was always running in the background and accepted remote login attempts.
Once, I tried logging in and selecting a different language (French) for my desktop session. Some menus and screen elements were shown in French, but some were still shown in English. For example, the System menu displayed in French and the options to sign out or restart were printed in French. However, if I chose the logout option then the confirmation window which was displayed next would be entirely in English. The translations still have a ways to go before they are complete.
Conclusions
The helloSystem project manages, to a point, to clone the look of macOS. Most of the screen elements look similar to macOS. The top panel, colours, and positions of most elements are close enough that I think macOS users would feel somewhat at home. Though there are some fairly glaring elements missing from the macOS style. There is no dock at the bottom of the screen, no unified settings panel, and the window control buttons don't imitate macOS, for example. Maybe this will change over time, or perhaps helloSystem is striving to keep some aspects of the interface different. I'm not sure how close to a clone the developers intend to get.
At this point in its development helloSystem is facing an awkward stage. It is trying to provide the benefits of two platforms, FreeBSD and macOS, but in doing so it's managing to not provide most of the strengths of either system. helloSystem brings in ZFS and its snapshots from FreeBSD, but fails to provide boot environments through the boot menu. It brings in the look of macOS, but without its configuration tools or software centre. The helloSystem desktop tries to copy the style of macOS, but is highly unstable and the panel tends to lock up or crash multiple times per day. The project claims to be trying to provide better security through its FreeBSD base, but has the only user auto-login, creates all new users as admin accounts, and leaves remote logins enabled even when the admin tries to turn off the OpenSSH service.
When we also consider several of the default application launchers fail to work properly, half the configuration modules are unfinished, and there are a few odd issues and bugs with the default zsh shell, the entire platform feels half done, at best. I couldn't use this system for more than ten minutes at a time without running into a crash, a vague error message, or something that works on vanilla FreeBSD, but does not work on helloSystem.
These issues are probably the pains of a young project, trying to get all the core pieces into place, trying to achieve several mountainous goals quickly rather than building a few working core pieces. It results in a system which looks pretty, but offers very limited functionality. It is my hope, in a few years, the developers will get more functionality into place and fix the more obvious bugs.
While using helloSystem I kept finding myself wishing I'd installed GhostBSD (another FreeBSD-based, desktop-oriented operating system) and simply changed the default theme to be similar to macOS. GhostBSD offers a somewhat macOS style desktop and all the features of FreeBSD without any of the half-finished elements or limitations of helloSystem.
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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
helloSystem has a visitor supplied average rating of: 4.8/10 from 6 review(s).
Have you used helloSystem? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Solus team works to repair website, Arch and its children recommend manually updating a package, Canonical offers real-time version of Ubuntu, SUSE tests Micro edition
Over the past few weeks several readers have written to us at DistroWatch, asking what happened to the Solus project. Several people have asked: Why did its website disappear? Why are there no more package updates coming from the project? Is the project dead? At first we individually pointed inquisitive people to the Solus project's posts on the matter, but given the increased frequency of inquiries it seemed worthwhile to share a more public post. The Solus project's servers went off-line following an upgrade on January 25th. After that, a series of issues hampered the servers coming back on-line. The team is working on getting the project's website back on-line with a new provider.
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The Arch Linux and the Parabola GNU/Linux-libre projects have published notices to their users, letting people know the base-devel package is changing and requires manual intervention from the user. "On February 2nd, the base-devel package group has been replaced by a meta package of the same name. If you installed the base-devel package group prior to this date, explicitly re-install it to get the new base-devel package installed on the system: pacman -Syu base-devel"
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Canonical has announced the release of a real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04, intended for use in situations where the timing of actions and the responses to input are essential. "Canonical today announced the general availability of real-time Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Real-time Ubuntu provides a deterministic response to an external event, aiming to minimise the response time guarantee within a specified deadline. The new enterprise-grade real-time kernel is ideal for stringent low-latency requirements. Enterprises in industrial, telecommunications, automotive, aerospace and defence, as well as public sector and retail, can now run their most demanding workloads and develop a wide range of time-sensitive applications on the open source operating system (OS)." Information on this new, real-time flavour of Ubuntu can be found in Canonical's announcement.
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SUSE is continuing to test the Micro edition of SUSE Linux Enterprise. One of the key features being tested in the new, public beta is SELinux running in enforcing mode. "SLE Micro 5.4 is based on SLES 15 SP4 (like SLE Micro 5.3) but plus Maintenance Updates. The default setting of SELinux for new installations has been changed from permissive to enforcing mode. PCP container integration in cockpit. Podman was updated from 3.x to 4.3.1. As always, we highly recommend to check our release notes for a complete overview of the changes in this new version." Additional information is provided in the company's announcement.
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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) |
Underrated distributions
Looking-under-rocks asks: What Linux distros do you think deserve more attention than they get? Looking for hidden gems.
DistroWatch answers: I receive or see various forms of this question regularly and I think it's a tricky one to answer for two reasons. First, I figure if a project deserves attention it probably already has it. The Internet is a very open place and word about projects, especially interesting or groundbreaking ones, travels quickly. Projects with broad appeal are probably already well known and more niche projects without appeal to a wide audience, well, don't necessarily deserve more attention.
The other tricky aspect about this question is it's highly subjective and I find people mostly talk about distributions they're using. After all, if they like it, the project is obviously good (for them) and therefore (in their mind) deserves attention from others.
To try to offset this trend I'm going to talk specifically about two projects which I do not use, but which I think are very interesting and worthwhile.
The first project on my "wish more people tried it" list is Void. The Void distribution is one of the fastest, lightest, most cleanly designed Linux distributions I've had the pleasure of using. Everything is trim, efficient, and surprisingly fast. I like how simple the design is, how easy it is to set up (as long as one is comfortable with some text menus and trips to the command line).
While these traits are all good and helpful, what I find particularly intriguing about Void is how unique the project is. Void features its own package manager (XBPS), the rarely used runit init software, and the option of using the light musl C library. It's quite an unusual collection of technologies and they, for the most part, come together to make a surprisingly good experience.
This might raise the question: why I don't currently use Void if it's so wonderful? There are two overlapping reasons. The first is Void has a relatively small repository of software. Most of the key applications are there, but I sometimes run into situations where I'm missing something in the official software repository. This is tricky because I often want to install new or obscure software for work and that means either being able to install a wide range of software natively or having a virtual machine at the ready to test things.
My other reason for not using Void as my main distribution is it uses a rolling release approach, regularly updating the included software. This can be useful for people who want to be on the cutting edge. However, as someone who uses their computer(s) for work as well as personal tasks, I'm adverse to having my applications change. I don't want to risk having something break, or change drastically, and get in the way of my earning a living.
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The second project which I am not currently using, but I think more people probably should consider, is Bedrock Linux. Like Void, Bedrock requires a bit of command line knowledge to set up. However, once a person gets accustomed to Bedrock it's a highly useful meta-distribution which allows the user to run software from multiple Linux distributions as if they were all one unified operating system.
In essence, with Bedrock Linux you can add new distributions as layers to your existing distribution. The user can then use the programs and tools available in each layer. Let's say you installed Debian on your computer, originally, for the stability. Later, you find that you're missing some cutting edge development tools or libraries from Fedora. Using Bedrock, you can fetch Fedora and set it up as a layer and use its tools natively without the overhead of a virtual machine or separate container. Later, maybe we want to experiment with some software from the massive Arch Linux community repository. We can fetch Arch as another layer using Bedrock and use its tools to install whichever software we want.
It might be easiest to think of Bedrock as glue which sticks together pieces of multiple distributions rather than a distribution itself. Bedrock's tools fetch, glue together, and manage the various distribution layers we attach to our operating system.
I like Bedrock for two main reasons. One is that it provides a way to access tools from multiple Linux distributions without the overhead of a virtual machine or container. Bedrock makes the pieces of distributions act like one unified operating system with virtually no overhead or performance loss.
The other aspect I enjoy is Bedrock basically reverses fragmentation. People often complain that the diversity in the Linux ecosystem makes it hard to get software working across multiple distributions or that they need to pick which distro/repository combination they want at the exclusion of others. Bedrock nullifies this argument because you can access the features of almost every major distribution from one unified platform when you use Bedrock. It almost completely de-fragments the Linux ecosystem.
This impressive collection of features again raises the question of why I'm not currently using Bedrock. Really, at this time, it's simply a case of not needing it. I have a distribution which does everything I need it to - stable base, large collection of software, access to portable applications, convenient setup, and most of the tools I want installed for me. It's not often I look at other distributions with envy for their approach or utilities. But if I did need to run a range of software, especially newer software, on another base, Bedrock would be an obvious choice to make all the pieces work together seamlessly.
At any rate, both of these projects seem to be highly useful, have small followings, and I don't have either currently installed so I think they qualify as lesser known gems for which I do not have a bias grown out of running them on my own machines.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
KaOS 2023.02
KaOS is a rolling release distribution designed for one architecture (x86_64) running one desktop environment (KDE Plasma). The project has published a new snapshot, KaOS 2023.02, which features the newly released KDE Plasma 5.27 desktop. "It is with great pleasure to present to you the February release of a new stable ISO. For the Plasma desktop, the latest Plasma (5.27.0), KDE Gear (22.12.2), and Frameworks (5.103.0) are included. All built on Qt 5.15.8+. Among the many changes included in Plasma 5.27 are the Big Multi-monitor Refactor to make working with screens much more reliable. There is also a new fine grained control tools when the user has 3 or more screens connected. For those with a large monitor KWin has long been able to place one window on the left and one on the right. Now with Meta-T the quick tiling is launched allowing complete control of where your windows are placed. Drag windows with Shift pressed and it will stick to the tiled layout. And a new System Settings module has been added to easily control the settings for Flatpaks." Additional details are shared in the project's release announcement.
KaOS 2023.02 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 3840x2400 pixels)
Parrot 5.2
Lorenzo Faletra has announced the release of Parrot 5.2, an updated version of the project's Linux distribution based on Debian's "Testing" branch. The new release updates the Linux kernel to version 6.0.12: "We are proud to introduce the latest version of Parrot. Parrot 5.2 includes several new features and improvements made since version 5.1; these mostly include security and stability updates. What's new: the Calamares installer has received several important updates to fix common installation issues; the Linux kernel has been updated to version 6.0; several security updates have been included to fix important bugs to Firefox, Chromium, sudo, dbus, nginx, libssl, OpenJDK and X.Org; Anonsurf, our popular anonymity tool, now includes better support to TOR bridges; wireless drivers for several Broadcom and Realtek cards not supported by Debian received a major upgrade to include support for the 6.x Linux kernel, along with VirtualBox and NVIDIA drivers...." Continue to the release announcement for more details and upgrade instructions.
Clonezilla Live 3.0.3-22
Clonezilla Live is a Debian-based live CD containing Clonezilla, a partition and disk cloning software. The project's latest release includes software upgrades from Debian's Sid branch and improves handling of swap partitions. "The underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded. This release is based on the Debian Sid repository (as of 2023/Feb/12). Linux kernel was updated to 6.1.11-1. Partclone was updated to 0.3.23, which has updated btrfs to 6.0.1. Show option '-j2' in the restoreparts menu, default off. The swap partition is shown in the saveparts dialog menu. Swap partition can be saved in two modes: only keep UUID/label or dumped by dd. A better mechanism is implemented to deal with these two scenarios. Improved LUKS mechanism to support multiple LUKS devices. Thanks to Swâmi Petaramesh for reporting this issue. LUKS swap device should keep UUID and label only, not using dd mode. Thanks to Swâmi Petaramesh for reporting this. Add '--powersave off' in setterm for screen not blanking in the console. Support mkinitcpio in updating initramfs mechanism. This is for restoring Arch/Manjaro Linux. New program ocs-live-ver can be used to show clonezilla live version. Replace ocs-bttrack with opentracker since python2 is not available in Debian Sid anymore.Memtest86+ was updated to v6.00. Thanks to Lord65 for suggesting this." Additional changes and bug fixes can be found in the project's release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,831
- Total data uploaded: 42.9TB
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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) |
Where we put news stories
For the past seven years DistroWatch has published news stories as they happen through our Headlines page. These stories are also available on the left sidebar of our front page and through one of our RSS feeds. These stories then appear the following Monday in this newsletter, sometimes with updates if the story is evolving.
While some people find our Headlines stories informative, many of our readers don't seem to be making use of the feature, possibly because it's not as front-and-centre on DistroWatch as new distribution releases. With this in mind, we're considering publishing news stories to the front page, making them more visible.
On the positive side, this will make news stories easier to discover. However, it means news and announcements will get pushed down the front page slightly faster than before. We'd like to hear from our readers whether publishing news stories to the front page rather than having a separate Headlines page would be helpful.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using DistroWatch providing torrent hosting and seeding in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Should we merge news stories into the front page feed?
| Yes - put news on the front page: | 514 (42%) |
| No - keep news on the separate page: | 724 (58%) |
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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, 27 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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| TUXEDO |
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!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
CalyxOS
CalyxOS is a privacy-focused mobile operating system. The project provides a de-Googled version of Android, which replaces Google Play services with microG, and uses the F-Droid and Aurora software centres in place of Google's Play store. CalyxOS also optionally installs privacy protecting utilities such as a firewall which can block or filter applications, the Tor browser, the K-9 mail client, and Signal for secure messaging and calls.
Status: Dormant
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| TUXEDO |
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!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| 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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