 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1018, 8 May 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A few weeks ago we reported on the release of Fedora 38, the latest update from the Red Hat sponsored community distribution. Fedora typically provides the latest stable versions of many software packages, including systemd and GNOME. This week Joshua Allen Holm takes Fedora 38 for a test drive and reports on his experiences. Also on the subject of Fedora, the project is looking at adding a new immutable edition. The new flavour will combine a read-only filesystem with the Budgie desktop and should be available with the launch of Fedora 39 later this year and we discuss this in our News section. Does your distribution provide an edition with an immutable filesystem? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. We also report on changes coming to the Linux Mint project, including work going into a fix for booting the Mint distribution on systems where Secure Boot is enabled. Plus we share a report of Voyager Live introducing an edition with a ChatGPT client installed by default. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we share command line tips, including how to find appropriate manual pages for a specific task and how to string a series of audio tracks into one file. We're also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm) |
Fedora 38 Workstation
The many official editions, spins, labs, and immutable desktop variants of Fedora 38 were released on April 18, 2023. The five official editions are: Workstation, Server, IoT, Cloud, and CoreOS. There are ten spins featuring alternate desktop environments and nine labs that focus on specific functionality. The specifics about these versions can be found on the newly redesigned Fedora website. Oddly, the three immutable editions (Silverblue, Kinoite, and Sericea) are relegated to the footer of the new website. All the other options, including alternate downloads, are featured more predominately.
Fedora 38 -- The GNOME desktop
(full image size: 2.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Each edition, spin, or lab offers something different. They are all based around the same base Fedora packages, but the user experience for each of them could be vastly different, depending on which variants are being compared. Sadly, time does not permit me to look at multiple variants and compare their strengths and weaknesses. For this review, I will be using the Workstation edition, which comes with the GNOME desktop environment. Some of what I cover will be applicable to all the Fedora variants, but not everything.
Installing Fedora 38 Workstation
I started by downloading the 2.1GB Fedora Workstation ISO and copying it to a flash drive. Booting from the flash drive brought up Fedora 38 Workstation's live desktop environment with the options to install Fedora or try out the live desktop. I selected Install Fedora, which started Fedora's Anaconda installer.
Fedora 38 -- The live desktop with install prompt
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Anaconda can provide a lot of options, but in Fedora 38 Workstation it only does three things: Keyboard, Time & Date, and Installation Destination. Everything else is either handled using the live desktop's settings (e.g, for configuring networking and hostname), or by the post-install initial setup wizard, which handles new user creation. This process is okay, but I mildly dislike that failing to set a hostname manually outside of Anaconda results in a volume group being created with "live" as part of the volume group's name. For partitioning, I selected all the default options and allowed Anaconda to remove all preexisting partitions, so I ended up with a 629MB EFI partition, a 1.1GB ext4 partition mounted at /boot, and a 61GB Btrfs partition for everything else. Because I did nothing to set the hostname, this Btrfs partition ended up with the name "fedora_localhost-live". That live suffix is not going to hurt anything, but it also has no reason to be there. Yes, I could have used advanced partitioning to make things exactly the way I wanted, or I could have set the hostname, but the default volume name ending does not need to be the default hostname of the live image instead of just "fedora_localhost". Ideally, it should be possible to connect to a wireless network (or some other network) and set a hostname from inside of the installer.
Fedora 38 -- The Anaconda installer
(full image size: 157kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
After Anaconda finished, I restarted the computer. The initial setup wizard ran through various steps to finish configuring the system. The steps were privacy settings for location services and automatic reporting, enabling third-party repositories, connecting to on-line accounts, and creating a new user. Pretty standard stuff, and there is nothing to say about this part of the process other than to say that it did exactly what was expected.
Fedora 38 -- Performing initial setup steps
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The GNOME 44 desktop environment
Much of what is new in the Workstation edition of Fedora 38 comes from GNOME 44. The upgrade from GNOME 43 to GNOME 44 is not major, but there are some really nice improvements. Several panels in the Settings application have been revised, the quick setting menu now has a menu for Bluetooth connections and the speaker icon next to the volume slider can be used to mute and un-mute the sound. Applications that use the GTK4 file chooser can now display items in a grid view. These enhancements are most welcome, but not massive changes.
Fedora 38 -- The Settings accessibility panel and quick settings menu
(full image size: 97kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Default software selection
Fedora 38 Workstation comes with Firefox 111 (already updated to 112), LibreOffice 7.5.2 (Calc, Impress, and Writer), and various GNOME applications and utilities. All of this is running on version 6.2 of the Linux kernel. The default selection of software is adequate. The standard selection of open source applications are included. There is a web browser, an office suite, and everything needed to do most basic computer tasks. The only issue is that Fedora does not ship patent-encumbered codecs in its repositories, so audio and video playback may be an issue for some. One other thing to note is the fact that this version of Fedora does not come with the GNU Compiler Collection and Make preinstalled. These were included with Fedora 37, but not in 38. Other developer tools, like Git and Toolbox, are still part of the default package set.
Fedora 38 -- The default software
(full image size: 280kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
While working on this review I only encountered a couple moderate issues with the included applications. The first was the fact that I frequently had Firefox freeze and then crash when trying to view and download PDF files. The first time I had this happen was when I tried to download OpenStax's new World History, Volume 1 textbook. This textbook is about 200MB, so tried again with something smaller. I tried to download some old 1980s programming books from Usborne and frequently had the same result. The misbehavior has improved significantly over the first week since release, but has not gone away entirely. The second issue was related to codecs and video playback, so I will cover this issue in the RPM Fusion section below.
Installing additional software
Additional RPM packages can be installed using either DNF on the command line or by using the GNOME Software GUI application. Flatpaks can be installed using either the flatpak command or by using GNOME Software. By default, the only Flatpaks available are from the Fedora Flatpak repository, which has the same patent-related restrictions as the RPM repositories. Enabling third-party repositories enables Flathub as a source of Flatpaks, and unlike in early Fedora releases, the Flathub repository is not filtered. Running the "flatpak remotes" command still lists Flathub as filtered, but no packages are actually filtered out and all the Flathub packages are available without having to take additional steps to install an unfiltered version of the repository from the Flathub website. The third-party RPM repositories include PyCharm, Google Chrome, and NVIDIA drivers and Steam from RPM Fusion.
Fedora 38 -- GNOME Software
(full image size: 150kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
RPM Fusion
As with all the distributions in the Red Hat family, using RPM Fusion is almost mandatory. Without enabling RPM Fusion, it is impossible to play anything that uses a patent-encumbered codec, which is a lot of media.
Adding the RPM Fusion repositories is not a complicated task, but is more complicated than checking a box in Ubuntu's installer. The initial step for adding RPM Fusion to Fedora involves copying and pasting a single line, but after that it gets a little complicated. If you want to add appstream metadata so RPM Fusion applications show up in GNOME Software, there is one command you need to run. Adding in codecs by updating the multimedia group is another command, and now that the ffmpeg-free package from Fedora's repositories conflicts the the RPM Fusion ffmpeg package, the '--allowerasing' flag is required. Honestly, the process of getting codecs installed in Fedora is actually getting slightly more complex instead of getting easier.
My preferred method of enabling all the RPM Fusion things is to use the command "dnf groupupdate workstation-product-environment --allowerasing" to bring in the appstream packages, the GStreamer codecs, and Intel graphic drivers in one step. However, this time things did not go as smoothly. It seems that the package name of the libav plugin changed recently and this was not initially updated in the multimedia group's metadata (as I write this, you can still see the discrepancy in Fedora 37, but not Fedora 38), which caused one of many problems I had with video files the first couple of days of using Fedora 38.
I also had to install the gstreamer1-vaapi package to get H.265 videos to play correctly. Before installing that package, all the videos were green garbage. For the first several days, with or without the vaapi package, the thumbnailer would produce garbage thumbnails of H.265 video files and would crash after producing a few of the broken thumbnail images. Lastly, and most oddly, I could not play Matroska files with E-AC-3 (ATSC A/52B) audio. I finally managed to solve this by uninstalling some GStreamer plugins and reinstalling them. The reinstalled packages were the same ones that were uninstalled (I triple checked that there were no updates available before trying this), so I have no idea why "turning it off and on again" actually worked. One week on and almost all of my multimedia issues have been resolved. I am just waiting on something to fix the fact that the Totem video player freezes when trying to load a external text subtitle file. Even an empty .srt file is enough to cause this to happen.
Final thoughts
Fedora 38 is not perfect, but I am sure the last few issues with be dealt with quickly. Minor issues aside, Fedora 38 is an okay, if somewhat boring, release. The new features are nice, but not anything so crucial that a Fedora 37 user needs to upgrade right away. That said, anyone who does upgrade will probably like the refinements.
Overall, I would recommend Fedora 38 Workstation to anyone who wants a Red Hat style distribution that is more up to date than CentOS Stream, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or one of the various RHEL clones. If you are not tied to the Red Hat ecosystem, Fedora 38 is still a good choice, but it does not stand out enough to recommended it above Ubuntu 23.04, openSUSE Tumbleweed, or any other distribution with recent packages.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
Fedora has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.3/10 from 458 review(s).
Have you used Fedora? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora plans new immutable flavour, Linux Mint works to correct issue with Secure Boot, Voyager Live demonstrates ChatGPT client
The Fedora project is currently considering adding a new member to the distribution's family, expanding the number of immutable filesystem options users will have. "Fedora Onyx is an immutable desktop operating system, featuring the Budgie desktop environment. Fedora Onyx leverages the same foundational technologies as other Fedora immutable variants such as Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, and Fedora Sericea (flatpak, rpm-ostree, podman, toolbx). Fedora Onyx is built for people that are attracted to / find value in the Fedora computing platform and Budgie desktop environment, but need the robust immutability and atomic capabilities that rpm-ostree provides, which are not offered through traditional Fedora spins (e.g. Fedora Budgie Spin)." Assuming the proposal goes ahead, Onyx will be available alongside other Fedora 39 releases later this year.
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The Linux Mint team have published their April newsletter. The report covers new visual changes to notifications and tooltips as well as security enhancements to the Warpinator file transfer tool. The newsletter also talks about an issue concerning Secure Boot: "An update in Ubuntu's shim-signed broke the compatibility of all Linux Mint (and past Ubuntu and derivative) ISOs with Secure Boot. If because of this you are unable to install Linux Mint, for now we recommend to disable Secure Boot. We are currently working on a fix for future ISOs and taking this opportunity to review the way we produce our images."
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In what is likely to be the beginning of a popular trend in many desktop Linux distributions, the Voyager Live team has announced a new edition of their desktop distribution which features a ChatGPT client: "We are at the dawn of a digital break with the arrival of AI (artificial intelligence) and ChatGPT, so it seems important to know what it is and to talk about it in the Linux community, as we do it at the beginning. So I installed a small application named Chat based on ChatGPT 3.5 on the latest Voyager 23.04, to give you an idea of its power, for simple queries. In the future, I won't integrate ChatGPT for other versions, it's just for this single version as a test." Additional information on the new edition can be found on the Voyager Live website.
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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) |
Finding relevant manual pages and merging audio files
Looking-for-related-topics asks: Is there a way to do a fuzzy search on manual pages? Like, if I didn't know to look up "man cp" is there a way to find any manual page about copying files?
DistroWatch answers: For some reason it took me awhile to consider this when I first started using UNIX and Linux, but the man command - which is used to display local manual pages for programs, concepts and functions - has its own manual page. We can see it by running the command:
man man
I mention this because, while the man command is mostly used for simply displaying manual pages, it has a few other features and they're listed in its own manual.
One of the more useful features of the man command, in my opinion, is its keyword search function. We can perform keyword searches by passing the man command the "-k" flag. For example, to seek manual pages about programs which can copy files we would run:
man -k copy
The above command will return a lot of results, 66 on my machine. These results will cover commands which involve file copying, programming functions which copy data, and filesystem features. Assuming we're specifically interested in command line programs which can copy files or directories we can narrow our search by filtering down the results to include only section one (1) of the manual pages. There are nine manual page sections (helpfully listed in the man manual page). Section 1 is for command line programs.
In the following example, we perform a search for manual pages which reference the term "copy" in their description and are in the first section of the manual pages:
man -k copy | grep 1
The above command returns results such as the cp program along with other programs for transferring files like scp and rsync.
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Seeking-longer-songs asks: Is there a way to merge multiple audio files together into one long track?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few ways to concatenate multiple audio files into one, ongoing audio file. For people interested in a graphical, desktop application the Audacity audio editor can do this. You can open Audacity, import multiple tracks and then copy/paste the audio stream from one track to the end of another. Then, from the File menu, select Export and then the format (MP3, OGG) you want to use.
For people who want to use the command line, there are a few utilities which will concatenate audio files. The most simple approach is to use the sox program. It will accept a list of existing audio files, followed by the name of the new file to create. For example, here we take three small audio clips and merge them into one long MP3 file:
sox small-audio1.mp3 small-audio2.mp3 small-audio3.mp3 long-audio.mp3
The sox command works fairly quickly and doesn't require any extra flags or parameters, just the list of files we want to concatenate.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Br OS 23.04
Anderson Marques has announced the release of Br OS 23.04. Br OS, developed in Brazil, is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop and a set of applications designed for web content creation. This release marks the project's third anniversary. An interesting new feature of the release is an integration of ChatGPT directly in the work area. It can be accessed by an icon located on the right side of the start menu. After clicking on the icon, the user can login with an OpenAI account or create a new account. It is important to stress that ChatGPT does not have any power over the user's computer; it runs isolated inside the application. This was purposely done to prevent ChatGPT from accessing any data on the computer. In this way, the only data ChatGPT will collect are limited to those typed by the user while interacting with the application. Br OS 23.04 ships with Linux kernel 6.2, KDE Plasma 5.27.4 and Qt 5.15.8. Other items on the changelog include various interface improvements and bug fixes. See the release announcement and the changelog (both links in Portuguese) for more information and a screenshot.
Br OS 23.04 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 5.3MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,863
- Total data uploaded: 43.2TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Would you like your distribution to provide an immutable edition?
In our News section this week we reported on Fedora providing a new immutable edition, this one featuring the Budgie desktop. Immutable filesystems offer an additional layer of security and have the potential to supply smoother upgrades over time. Would you like to see your distribution provide an immutable edition?
You can see the results of our previous poll on installing software to a manually selected location in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you want your distro to offer an immutable edition?
| Yes: | 406 (33%) |
| No: | 702 (57%) |
| My distro already has an immutable edition: | 120 (10%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Dr.Parted Live. Dr.Parted Live is a bootable GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian Testing. Live CD/USB featuring a lightweight Openbox window manager and useful applications for data backup, restore and recovery. It contains Apart GUI that is a front end to the Partclone command line utility, and is capable of bare-metal backup and recovery of disk partitions. It can use external hard drives and network shares. Dr.Parted also aims to provide an easy way to carry out administration tasks on a computer, such as creating and editing hard disk partitions.
- huronOS. huronOS is a Debian-based distribution which can be run in live mode and that is specialized in competitive programming and all the activities around it, like official contests, training camps, practice contests or tests. The huronOS distribution can synchronize files between multiple instances to improve data sharing and collaboration.
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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, 15 May 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)
- Joshua Allen Holm (feature review)
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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 |
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Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
ConnochaetOS
ConnochaetOS (formerly DeLi Linux) was an Slackware-based Linux distribution for x86 computers with limited resources. ConnochaetOS ships with free (libre) software only and removes proprietary software and binary blobs from its upstream sources, including the Linux kernel. Where possible free software alternatives are provided. ConnochaetOS strives to remain backward compatible with Slackware and Salix OS.
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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