 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1013, 3 April 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
In the Linux community, April is known as a time of many new releases, particularly for the Ubuntu community. Ubuntu, its community editions, and closely related child distributions typically publish new version in April (and again in October). This month a new community edition, Ubuntu Cinnamon, will be featured alongside other Ubuntu flavours. We talk about Ubuntu Cinnamon in our News section and welcome the project to our database. We also report on the HardenedBSD project going off-line for a planned move in June while EndeavourOS plans a big overhaul for its next version. We also report on efforts to port the new version of UBports to the PinePhone and the steps required to make it work. First though we talk about a lightweight Linux distribution which is often run in containers. Alpine Linux is known for its small size, its unusually fast performance, and efficient package manager. This week Jesse Smith takes Alpine Linux for a test drive and reports on how it functions, both as a server platform and as a desktop operating system. Do you use Alpine? Let us know in what sort of environments you run this independent distribution in our Opinion Poll. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we discuss printing local manual pages and converting the helpful texts into alternative formats. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Alpine Linux 3.17.2
Alpine Linux is a lightweight, independent distribution with a focus on simplicity, security, and efficiency. The project has a well earned reputation for being small and well suited to working in minimal environments, such as containers and mobile devices. The project's website offers some additional key points:
Alpine Linux is built around musl libc and BusyBox. This makes it small and very resource efficient. A container requires no more than 8MB and a minimal installation to disk requires around 130MB of storage. Not only do you get a fully-fledged Linux environment but a large selection of packages from the repository. Binary packages are thinned out and split, giving you even more control over what you install, which in turn keeps your environment as small and efficient as possible.
The above comments explain the efficiency side of things, but what about security?
Alpine Linux was designed with security in mind. All userland binaries are compiled as Position Independent Executables (PIE) with stack smashing protection. These proactive security features prevent exploitation of entire classes of zero-day and other vulnerabilities.
There are several editions of Alpine Linux. First, there is the Standard edition which has a fairly minimal package set and requires a network connection to be installed. The Extended edition includes a handful of common packages and should be capable of being installed off-line. There is also a super minimal Netboot edition which installs over a network. There are additional editions for various platforms, such as the Raspberry Pi, and editions for virtual machines. Alpine is able to run on a wide range of CPU architectures, including ARM, PPC, s390x, x86, and x86_64.
I decided to explore the distribution's Extended edition for x86_64 which has an ISO file that is 777MB in size. The Standard edition is a mere 153MB in size.
I had two main areas of focus going into this review. One was to see how Alpine currently functions as a network server, specifically I wanted to set up a Nextcloud instance. I chose Nextcloud because it involves both a web service and a database, making it a semi-complex service to enable. My second focus was the desktop. I wanted to see how difficult it would be to take Alpine Linux, an intentionally minimal operating system, and use it to run a desktop environment such as LXQt or Xfce. I was also curious if the security and performance reportedly offered by Alpine would still be evident once the distribution was running a full desktop session.
Alpine's Extended ISO boots to a text console and prompts us for login credentials. We can sign in as root without a password. We can then run setup-alpine to begin the install process.
Installing
Alpine uses a bare bones text installer. The installer prints questions and we type answers in response. Some queries offer defaults. At most prompts we can type "?" to see hints or helpful background information on the options.
The installer walks us through selecting our keyboard layout and hostname. We can then choose to enable DHCP (for dynamic networking) or provide a static IP address. We're asked to make up a password for the root user and select our time zone. We can then choose to set up a network proxy if necessary.
Some of the questions are unusual for an installer and provide a lot of flexibility which, likely, most people won't need. For instance, we're asked which package mirror the APK package manager should use. We're asked which secure shell service (OpenSSH or DropBear) we want to use. We're asked which network time protocol client we want to run (Chrony, BusyBox, or OpenNTPD). These choices likely won't make a practical difference, but Alpine does try to be flexible in this regard.
One area where Alpine's installer is less flexible is in picking where to install the distribution. We are asked to select a disk which will be taken over entirely. The operation will erase the whole disk and set up Alpine on it. We are asked if we want to install the whole operating system (this option is called "sys"), just set up a data partition, or use either of these options with LVM or encryption.
The installer also asks us if we'd like to create a regular user account and protect it with a password. With these steps completed, Alpine is installed on our disk. I took the full operating system (sys) option which set up a root ext4 partition and a separate swap partition. While the prompts and typing out our many responses take a while to navigate, the process of copying Alpine to the hard drive is remarkably fast. The time between the last prompt and Alpine's installer finishing its work was about five to ten seconds.
Early impressions
My pristine copy of Alpine booted to a text console. We are shown a welcome message when we sign in which provides a link to the Alpine wiki. The wiki is a highly useful resource which covers how to perform basic tasks, set up services, and enable additional software repositories. Given Alpine is a minimal distribution and does not even, by default, include a utility to view local manual pages, the wiki is an essential resource.
Alpine does not offer a graphical environment, choosing a minimal approach. Even the command line shell uses ash rather than a more feature-rich shell. The distribution ships with OpenDoas enabled rather than the more flexible sudo for user permission elevation and authentication.
Software management
Alpine uses a light and fast package manager called APK. The APK syntax is fairly simple and easy to read, though sometimes different from the syntax used by DNF and APT. We can use "apk search name" to find a package, "apk add package" to install new software, and "apk del package" to remove unwanted software. We can upgrade installed packages by running a combination of "apk update" followed by "apk upgrade".
APK, as with the rest of the distribution, strives to be minimal. It prints very little information to the screen. There isn't much in the way of progress information or indications of what the package manager is doing. It often just shows a list of packages it is installing and then returns to the prompt. This makes it hard to tell if package upgrades worked or how long an action is going to take. Luckily, APK's minimalism means most actions take less than half the time they would when running other, more verbose package managers.
Service management
The distribution uses BusyBox's init software to bring the system on-line and then uses OpenRC to manage services. OpenRC, like the rest of Alpine is full featured and flexible, while also being unusually small and light. The Alpine documentation shares an overview of OpenRC's features. In short, we can usually use "rc-service service-name action" to complete a task. For instance, "rc-service sshd start" to launch the secure shell service. We can use the command "rc-status" to see all running background services.
Setting up Nextcloud
Earlier I mentioned wanting to set up a Nextcloud service on my Alpine system. As it happens, running Nextcloud is one of several tutorials offered in the Alpine wiki. The documentation walks us through installing a web service and database, with a few options offered for each.
The documentation for setting up Nextcloud, like the other tutorials in the wiki, is clearly organized and clearly written without a lot of extra commentary. (In this way, the documentation resembles the rest of the Alpine project.) I did run into a few minor issues with the tutorial though. For instance, I tried to install a package called nextcloud-sqlite to set up a simple database. This package was missing and unavailable until I enabled the Alpine community repository by uncommenting a line in the /etc/apk/repositories file. Later, I noticed the tutorial recommends installing the php5-cgi package which is several years out of date. Instead we should install the newer php81-cgi package.
With the tutorial steps completed, I had the Lighttpd web service and SQLite installed. Enabling the Lighttpd service allowed me to access my web service when visiting the /nextcloud directory of my web server in the browser of my choice. Following additional instructions from the wiki we can optionally add security certificates or introduce a more traditional database.
Alpine Linux 3.17.2 -- Using Firefox to access Nextcloud running on the same machine
(full image size: 540kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
in short, despite a few minor missteps in the documentation, I was able to get Nextcloud up and running in under five minutes. I could sign in to the service, install Nextcloud applications, and add user accounts to the cloud service with no issues.
Adding a desktop environment
People who want to run a graphical environment on Alpine should check out the project's wiki page on setting up X.Org. In brief, we end up adding our regular user to the video and input groups. (I could do this by running "adduser jesse video" and "adduser jesse input".) We then need to run a script called setup-xorg-base. We might also need to install additional video drivers. A list of drivers can be found by running the command "apk search xf86-video".
The wiki then offers specific instructions for installing a variety of desktops. We can pick the one we like and follow the steps listed in the documentation. I opted to install Xfce and the LightDM session manager. Once the recommended packages were installed and I had used OpenRC to enable the LightDM service, I was able to see a graphical login screen and sign into the Xfce desktop.
At first glance, things were going very smoothly during the desktop environment portion of my experiment. I had a minimal Xfce session running with just a few applications available. These included a virtual terminal, the Thunar file manager, and a settings panel. There was no office suite, no web browser, no volume control; it's a fast, light environment.
There were some surprises and limitations at first. For example, Alpine offers us version 4.16 of the Xfce desktop while 4.18 has been out for a while. By default, we cannot shutdown or restart the computer from within Xfce or from the login screen. We can fix this and give the user the ability to shutdown the system by installing two new packages: elogind and polkit-elogind.
Alpine Linux 3.17.2 -- Running the Thunar file manager on the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 249kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Early on, I tried adding some multimedia applications. At first audio, video, and web browsing applications were unable to produce sound. I added ALSA packages, following the wiki documentation, and used the alsamixer command line tool to turn up the master volume control. This helped in some cases, but some programs still failed, reporting they needed PulseAudio to deliver sound. I installed the distribution's PulseAudio package and, following a reboot, sound worked across all applications.
The distribution is quite light, even with a desktop installed. With Nextcloud and Xfce installed, my system used a mere 1.3GB of space (plus the swap partition). The system consistently used less than 250MB of RAM when signed into Xfce. Sometimes memory usage dropped further, down to about 220MB, but 250MB seemed to be the smallest amount I could get away with when first signing into Xfce.
I found the desktop software in Alpine's repositories tended to lag behind. Apart from Xfce itself, a lot of the applications (including Firefox, VLC, and LibreOffice) were often weeks or months behind upstream. We can counter this somewhat by installing the Flatpak framework. I installed Flatpak, manually enabled the Flathub repository, and was able to pull in the latest versions of most applications and games I wanted.
Alpine Linux 3.17.2 -- Running LibreOffice as a native application and VLC as a Flatpak
(full image size: 244kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Conclusions
Something which regularly floated through my mind while using Alpine Linux was this experience reminded me of why I started using Linux regularly in the first place, back in the 1990s. Back then, when Windows 98 was king of the desktop market, I was running a minimal Linux distribution at home. The Linux experience was unusually light, clean, flexible, and transparent. It was something I could examine, tweak, and it just did what I told it to do, nothing more or less. There was a pleasant simplicity to the experience.
Alpine Linux is like that. It's small, light, and super fast. There are utilities which make the system easier to use (such as the APK package manager and OpenRC), but these tools just perform one task - well and quickly. They don't try to add a lot of features or guess what I want them to do. Alpine has an unusually clean design while also supplying tools to make our lives easier.
Alpine Linux 3.17.2 -- Timing APK as it checks for new software repository information
(full image size: 224kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Too often, I feel as though "keep it simple" (KIS) distributions view making things "simple and clean" as being the same thing as "requiring the user to do a lot of manual work". While Alpine does require a bit more manual effort, especially when it comes to enabling desktop features, it doesn't often require much manual work. The distribution finds a good balance point between keeping the system technically simple while not making the user's life much harder.
I was impressed by the documentation, the distribution's performance, and how easy it was to set up web-based services. The project deserves high praise for how easy it is to get a high-speed, light web server up and running in just a few minutes.
The desktop experience is a bit weaker, understandably since desktop environments are not Alpine's focus. We can install desktop environments and applications. With a little tweaking we can even make the experience look and feel like the out-of-the-box experience of mainstream desktop distributions. However, it does take some effort. Even once we're finished setting up a desktop, we're faced with older versions of some software. Alpine is still light and fast and capable as a desktop system, but it requires more work while providing fewer tools, fewer applications, and less up to date software than we'd get from most other Linux distributions.
On the whole, I quite like Alpine. Mostly as a server operating system or something I can run in a container. It's minimal and unusually fast. I love the clean design and the default package and service management tools. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Alpine as a desktop system, but it can fit in that role if required and might be beneficial on a platform with very limited hardware.
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Visitor supplied rating
Alpine Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 30 review(s).
Have you used Alpine Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes an official Ubuntu community edition, HardenedBSD plans for outage, Endeavour OS to get a new system installer, UBports 20.04 runs on the PinePhone
The Ubuntu Cinnamon project hit a milestone this past week with the announcement the project has been recognized as an official flavour of the Ubuntu family. Ubuntu Cinnamon was welcomed to the collection of Ubuntu community editions by Lukasz Zemczak: "I'm happy to inform you that, per the Technical Board votes seen above
(and confirmed on today's TB meeting), Ubuntu Cinnamon has become an
official Ubuntu flavor! Welcome to the family!"
* * * * *
In these days of virtual machines and data centres, distributed locations and virtual private servers, it's uncommon for projects to experience significant downtime. However, this is what the HardenedBSD project is planning for this June. Due to a physical change of location, the project's servers are being taken off-line for an unknown period of time. "This move obviously will impact the project. I've spent most of March working on getting the project and the HardenedBSD Foundation ready administratively for the move. There's only three things left to do, and the Foundation will have officially moved headquarters from Maryland to Colorado. We will be leaving a skeleton organisation in Maryland in case we want to do Maryland-specific things. For example, there could be some future Maryland-specific fundraiser or service opportunity.
I plan to keep the infrastructure online as long as I can. I suspect the infrastructure will be taken offline on around 09 June 2023, when we start loading the truck. However, there's a chance that the infrastructure will be taken down up to a week in advance. Since we don't know where we're going to land, I cannot provide an ETA as to when the infrastructure would be back online." Additional details and information on the project's ongoing work can be found in HardenedBSD's March newsletter.
* * * * *
The EndeavourOS project is planning several new changes. A new theme, new default desktop for the live media (Deepin is replacing Xfce), fingerprint and facial recognition, and a new system installer called ZuckerBee. "ZuckerBee has all the features the current Calamares installer has with the addition of a VM to give our DEs and WMs a test ride before making a choice.
This VM isn't a full-blown version but a rather very stripped-down version, just enough to experience each VM or WM in a basic form." A complete overview of what the next version of EndeavourOS will look like is offered in the project's announcement.
* * * * *
This past week saw the release of UBports 20.04, a re-basing of UBports on a more modern version of Ubuntu. Ports for several devices, mostly Android phones, were provided, but new official images for the PinePhone were not provided. One developer is working on the problem and has a build of UBports 20.04 running on the PinePhone, though some functionality is missed. "PinePhone and PinePhone Pro are now both running Focal UT. PinePhone booting process moved away from U-Boot/flash-kernel to Tow-Boot/extlinux for faster booting and to align with the rest of the Pine ecosystem. Brought kernel up to 6.3 with AppArmor + Waydroid Patches. Support for the Keyboard Case enabled." Working features, known issues, and install instructions can be found in this blog post.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Printing copies of local manual pages
Making-copies asks: I want to print off copies of some man pages. Is there a command I can use to convert the manual pages to PDF or print them?
DistroWatch answers: The man command does have an option to convert documents into other formats and, as it happens, one of those formats is PostScript. PostScript is a language (or document format) which is commonly used by printers and can usually be read by common document viewers such as Okular and qpdfview.
This feature of the man command allows us to either create local files in the PostScript format which can then be viewed in most document viewing applications or sent to a printer.
Let's look at a couple of ways this can work. First, what does it look like if we simply want to convert one manual page into the PostScript format so we can view it in a local application, such as Evince or Okular? In this example we convert the page for grep into a PostScript document:
man -t grep > grep.ps
The new grep.ps file is created and we can look at it or print it using most document viewers.
Should we wish to print a manual page and we have access to a local printer, we can use the lpr command to immediately print a copy of a converted manual page. For instance, I have a printer called Office-Printer which I set up using CUPS. I can send the grep manual page to my printer using the following command:
man -t grep | lpr -P Office-Printer
The lpr command sends documents to the named printer. The lpr program can accept piped input from another command, as shown above, or send a specific file to the printer.
If we have the CUPS-PDF module installed we can send manual pages to the virtual PDF printer to be converted into a PDF document and saved in our ~/PDF directory. This action would be accomplished with the following command:
man -t grep | lpr -P CUPS-PDF
Because we piped the data from the man command to the print (lpr) command, the above example results in a strange file name such as stdin___e.pdf for our new PDF copy of the grep manual page. We can get nicer filenames by breaking the process of printing the manual page into two steps. For instance, here we make a PostScript file from the ls manual page and then send it to a virtual printer to make a PDF:
man -t ls > ls.ps ; lpr -P CUPS-PDF ls.ps
The result of the above command is a new file in our ~/PDF directory called something like ls.ps.pdf.
So far we've talked about converting a single manual page to a PostScript file, printing a single manual page, and converting one manual page to a PDF document using a virtual PDF printer. What if we want to convert every manual page on our system to a PostScript file for easy viewing or printing later?
The following set of commands will find every manual page on the system - assuming your distribution stores manual pages under the /usr/share/man directory, some distributions use alternative locations. Each manual page is then converted to a PostScript file with a .ps (PostScript) extension. These PostScript files are all dumped into the Printable-Manual-Pages directory.
mkdir Printable-Manual-Pages
cd Printable-Manual-Pages
for page in $(find /usr/share/man/man? -type f); do man -t "$page" > $(basename "$page").ps; done
The first two commands in the above example will create a new directory, called Printable-Manual-Pages, and move us into this directory. The long third line finds every manual page and then loops through handling them, one at a time. Each manual page is converted to PostScript format by the man command. The basename command strips the pathname away from the manual page and then we add the new .ps extension at the end.
With our directory now full of PostScript versions of the manual page files we can view them, convert them to PDF, or print them as we like. It's probably not a good idea to send the entire collection of manual pages to a printer all at once, as a modern Linux distribution has more than a thousand manual documents, most of them several pages in length.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Porteus Kiosk 5.5.0
Tomasz Jokiel has announced the release of Porteus Kiosk 5.5.0, an updated version of the project's Gentoo-based distribution set designed for in web kiosks: "I'm pleased to announce that Porteus Kiosk 5.5.0 is now available for download. Major software upgrades in this release include: Linux kernel 6.1.20, Google Chrome 108.0.5359.124 and Mozilla Firefox 102.9.0 ESR. Packages from the userland are upgraded to the Portage snapshot tagged on 2023-03-18. Added a possibility to enable watchdog timer in our systems. Watchdog is supposed to automatically restart the PC when a failing condition occurs. This is useful for unattended deployments, e.g. digital signage. Added support for downloading components and system updates from the server mirrors. The nearest server is determined automatically by the system. The MD5 authentication protocol is now supported in 802.1x wired networks. Added support for storage devices formatted with an exFAT filesystem. Start the X.Org session on tty1/VT1 rather than traditionally on VT7 to avoid flipping between VTs." See the release announcement and the changelog for more information.
UBports 20.04 OTA-1
UBports is a Linux distribution designed to run on phones and tablets. The project is a community-run continuation of Ubuntu Touch. The project has published a major update which upgrades the base distribution from Ubuntu 16.04 to 20.04. "Ubuntu Touch is the privacy and freedom-respecting mobile operating system by UBports. Today we are extremely happy to announce the release of Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal, the very latest update to the system! OTA-1 is will be available on the following supported Ubuntu Touch devices: Fairphone 4, Google Pixel 3a, Vollaphone 22, Vollaphone X, Vollaphone. Other UT devices that currently run Focal might not have all features working yet with OTA-1 depending on the exact status of their port, but you are free to try if you wish. The Pine64 PinePhone, PinePhone Pro and PineTab are updated independently of the rest of these devices. The stable channel for the PinePhone and PineTab will not receive an update labeled OTA-1." The release announcement offers further details.
Finnix 125
Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux distribution for system administrators, based on Debian. The project has published version 125 which attempts to offer more flexible package management through a combination of Debian's Testing and Unstable repositories. "Today marks the release of Finnix 125, the original utility live Linux distribution. Finnix 125 includes a number of fixes, new packages and new features: Linux kernel 6.1 (Debian [package] 6.1.0-6). New packages: 2048, aespipe, iperf3, ncdu, netcat-traditional, ninvaders, vitetris. Note that netcat-openbsd continues to be included and is the default nc. apt update will now download both 'testing' and 'unstable' indices, to allow for installing packages which may currently be hinted out of Testing. Apt pinning is configured so Testing will continue to be preferred to Unstable, however. Updated to memtest86+ 6.10, which now includes a UEFI version which is included in the 'Utilities' boot sub-menu when booting on a UEFI system. Note that this is not signed and will not work with Secure Boot. 7z will invoke the installed 7zr program, unless the user explicitly installs 'p7zip-full'." Additional details are provided in the release announcement.
OpenMandriva 23.03 "ROME"
OpenMandriva is a general purpose operating system. The project has published new media for the distribution's rolling release branch, called ROME. The project's latest ROME snapshot introduces new editions, including Server builds which do not have a graphical user interface. "In addition to the previously released images, ROME 23.03 adds server centric images without GUI (also released as qcow2 images for virtualization), images featuring the LXQt desktop, and images for various aarch64 based devices, such as Raspberry Pi 4 and 400, Rock 5B, Rock Pi 4, and Ampere servers. The Plasma 'Slim' ISO images offer a minimal Plasma 5 environment and leave the users free to install what they really need. Across all platforms and variants, packages have been updated, including: KDE Frameworks 5.104, Plasma Desktop 5.27.3, KDE Applications 22.12.3; kernel 6.2.6 (built with Clang); LLVM/Clang 15.0.7, systemd 253.1; Chromium browser 111.0.5563.64, with JPEG XL support patched back in; LibreOffice suite 7.5.2.1, Krita 5.1.5, DigiKam 7.10." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
OpenMandriva 23.03 "ROME" -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1440pixels)
Linux Lite 6.4
Linux Lite is a beginner-friendly Linux distribution based on Ubuntu's long-term support (LTS) release and featuring the Xfce desktop. The project has published an update to its 6.x series which improves packaging compression for custom software, offer a new reporting tool to diagnose problems, and updates the layout for the Thunderbird e-mail client. "Linux Lite 6.4 Final is now available for download and installation. Building upon the release of 6.2, we have added a number if new changes. Changes: Our in-house applications are starting to be repackaged using ZSTD compression for significantly faster decompression speeds and higher compression rates. Example: Lite Themes - old compressed package: 91.2MB; Lite Themes - new compressed package: 76.8MB. This will benefit machines from a wider range of ages. Great for slower computers when installing updates, lightning fast updates for modern machines. Added systemd report to Lite System Report: This addition will help a wide range of people in regards to diagnosing a variety of booting and general system inquiries. Our amazing support team on the forums will also find this very helpful." Additional details and screenshots can be found in the project's release announcement.
MidnightBSD 3.0.0
MidnightBSD is a desktop-oriented operating system derived from FreeBSD. The project's latest stable release is MidnightBSD 3.0.0 which is available in i386 and x86_64 builds. With this leap in version from the 2.x series, there are a number of significant changes. "There are known issues with the Firefox, Chromium-bin, Midori and Epiphany web browser packages and mports that need to be corrected. (detected late, sorry). Issues were created on github in mports repo to track these. (mesa issue, see below) i386 and amd64 packages are available, but there was an issue with our mesa version. It has been updated in mports but new packages haven't been built yet. When upgrading from a previous release, be sure to get on at least MidnightBSD 2.2.5 before jumping to 3.0. There are issues with usr.bin/lex on some systems. When doing a major upgrade from 2.x to 3.x, sometimes it's necessary to disable Perl builds in usr.bin/Makefile. If you get an error with buildworld in src/rescue/rescue, try removing camcontrol and df from the makefile temporarily." A complete list of changes can be found in the project's release notes.
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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: 2,850
- Total data uploaded: 43.1TB
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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 do you use Alpine?
In this week's review of Alpine Linux we talked about the distribution performs in a few different roles. Alpine is a popular distribution for use in minimal environments, such as containers, as well as servers. As demonstrated in this week's review, it can also function as a desktop distribution. This week we'd like to hear if you use Alpine and, if so, where?
You can see the results of our previous poll on isolating proprietary software in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Where do you run Alpine Linux?
| Containers: | 155 (13%) |
| Desktop/Laptop: | 75 (6%) |
| Server: | 36 (3%) |
| A combination of the above: | 34 (3%) |
| All of the above: | 11 (1%) |
| Nowhere: | 858 (73%) |
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| Website News |
New projects added to database
Ubuntu Cinnamon
Ubuntu Cinnamon is an official flavour of the Ubuntu distribution featuring the Cinnamon desktop. The project strives to offer modern tools while providing a friendly user desktop which will feel familiar for users coming from other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows.
Ubuntu Cinnamon 22.10 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 2.2MB, resolution: 3840x2400 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 10 April 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 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
WOMP!
WOMP! was a micro Linux distribution focused on multimedia. It takes only 13 to 30MB depending on the selected options on a bootable CD, and allows playing a wide range of multimedia files (video/audio/image) without installing any software on the computer's hard drive. Additionally, WOMP! can also be installed on the hard drive - either to run in memory just like a bootable CD, or to run from a read-only loopback file which was interesting for machines with low memory. It can then be booted either by a floppy boot disk or by a bootable CD. WOMP! uses FrameBuffer for playing videos and X for interacting with the user. Hardware acceleration was provided by vidix. Cards that support vidix include nearly all ATI and Matrox cards, and more recent NVIDIA cards.
Status: Discontinued
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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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| 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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