 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1022, 5 June 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Immutable distributions are a popular concept in the Linux ecosystem at the moment. While immutable distributions, those with read-only root filesystems, mostly gained popularity on mobile devices and on some server platforms, the idea has been spreading to desktop systems. Canonical has announced a future version of Ubuntu will feature an immutable core with Snap packages providing desktop software. We share more information on this announcement in our News section. We also talk about Purism launching an updated, freedom-respecting server line for people who want to be able to audit their entire hardware and software stack while Red Hat phases out support for its LibreOffice packages. Plus we share a look at the current state of MINIX, a small operating system widely credited for inspiring the development of Linux. In our Questions and Answers section this week we discuss how to find and remove duplicate files in a large directory tree. First though, we talk about three distributions: GetFreeOS (an Arch-based, desktop distribution), Slint (a Slackware-based project for visually impaired persons), and Liya (another Arch-based project featuring the Pamac software manager). Read on to learn about the strengths and problems with these three projects. Then, in our Opinion Poll, we talk about openSUSE, a distribution which is available in many editions. A new version of openSUSE is due to be released later this week and we take a moment to ask: which branch of the project is your favourite? Plus we are 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 Jesse Smith) |
GetFreeOS 2023.05.01
One of the younger projects on the DistroWatch waiting list is GetFreeOS. The distribution is based on Arch Linux and, like its parent, offers a rolling release model. The distribution is available in two editions (KDE Plasma and i3) with both ISO files just over 3.2GB in size.
The GetFreeOS project is geared toward gamers and is reportedly intended to be used for primarily for gaming. This intention goes hand in hand with some unusually high demands in the list of system requirements. The distribution reportedly needs 8GB of RAM and 20GB of storage to run, recommending 16GB or more RAM and 60GB or more storage space. This is about four times more memory and double the storage most mainstream distributions require, so the numbers are probably intended to be a "minimal for good gaming performance" metric, rather than literal minimal requirements for the system to run properly.
I decided to try the project's KDE Plasma edition. The live media boots and loads the Plasma desktop with its panel across the top of the display. Almost immediately a notification appears near the top of the screen to let us know software updates are available. This is followed by the Plasma customization wizard being launched, which is then covered by the Calamares system installer window. In other words, it is a busy environment straight away.
Installing
The Calamares installer, which launches for us automatically, is pleasantly easy to navigate. The graphical installer walks us through picking our language, time zone, and keyboard layout. We're given the option of a manual partitioning approach which a nice, graphical interface or a guided approach that can be navigated with a couple of clicks. The guided approach defaults to setting up a single Btrfs partition. This screen can be confusing because the filesystem selection box shows ext4 as the selected filesystem, but the summary screen showing actions the installer will take shows Btrfs will be used. The installer then asks us to create a username and password for ourselves and, optionally, a different password for the root account.
Calamares was, as always, straight forward to navigate, but I noticed the mouse pointer kept disappearing or changing shape and getting stuck as a cursor bar instead of a pointer when moving between fields.
The first time I tried to install GetFreeOS I walked away while the installer was working and, when I returned, the screen had locked (due to an idle timeout). When I tried to unlock the screen (without a password) it seemed to restore my session, but then the desktop crashed. The system then locked up and refused to respond to keyboard or mouse input and I was unable to switch to a text console. When I forced a restart I found the installer had not finished its work successfully while I was away, despite having been left alone for half an hour (longer than most distributions need to complete the process).
I tried again from scratch, this time making sure the automatic screen locking feature was disabled in the System Settings panel. I again went through the Calamares steps and, about 10% of the way through the process of copying files to my hard drive, the Plasma desktop crashed, taking the installer down with it.
On a side note: the default theme presents us with a variety of text and background combinations. Some of these are difficult to read. For example, one page of the System Settings panel uses three colour combinations for fonts: black on white, white on black, and black on black. The last one is obviously impossible to read which makes it difficult to change settings.
GetFreeOS 2023.05.01 -- Various font colour combinations in the default theme
(full image size: 113kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
At this point I realized the symptoms I was seeing (crashes and odd mouse pointer behaviour) were probably the result of Plasma running on Wayland and confirmed GetFreeOS was indeed running a Wayland session. The next time I booted GetFreeOS from the live media I signed out of the default desktop session and signed back in using the Plasma on X11 session.
When running under X11, my mouse pointer behaved properly. The window manager still crashed once while navigating the install process, but didn't take Calamares down with it this time. Unfortunately, 10% of the way through the file copying process Calamares crashed again.
This was a frustrating and uphill battle with GetFreeOS where both the desktop and the installer were not stable. This brought my experiment to a halt, but not before I'd attempted four different times to run through the install process.
I think what made it especially frustrating for me is, for the past several years, I've regularly thought of Calamares as being a friendly, dependable installer. It was perhaps one of the easiest to use and dependable installers in the Linux ecosystem. For years I could very nearly install any distribution featuring Calamares while I was asleep it was so easy and reliable. Recently, around the start of 2023, this changed. Now in all three of my test environments Calamares almost always fails to complete an installation successfully. Even without Plasma crashing, Calamares once again failed to get even halfway through the file copying process. I'm not sure what changed between late 2022 and early 2023, but it has frequently meant I could not run distributions featuring this installer.
A few weeks ago I mentioned this recent series of issues and one commenter suggested Calamares might be starved for RAM, requiring around 3GB to 4GB of memory to function properly and thought this might be causing it to crash, at least in virtual machines. However, I usually have this much RAM available in virtual machines. Still, I tested this theory a few times this week. With the Plasma desktop running, a terminal open, and Calamares copying files to my hard drive GetFreeOS (and Liya, which I'll talk about later) never used more than 1.2GB of RAM. My workstation has 8GB of RAM and when I was trying the distribution in a virtual machine it had over 3GB of RAM assigned, meaning RAM was always less than half full when the installer abruptly terminated.
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Slint 15.0-3
The Slint distribution has been in our database for a little while, but hasn't been given much attention. Slint is based on Slackware Linux and ships with software to help people who are visually impaired. In particular, Slint includes support for Braille-enabled devices and text-to-speech readers.
I had originally tried version 15.0 when it first launched, but had trouble getting it to install due to a corrupted package on the install media. Since then, the developer has put together a few updates. The latest update to 15.0 includes access to a repository for installing the Xfce desktop environment (LXQt and MATE were already available).
I downloaded the lone edition of Slint which is available as a 4.0GB ISO file. After confirming the media's checksum, I booted from the install media. The system brought up a text console and asked me to type "S" if I wanted Braille and text-to-speech support or press Enter if I didn't need these features. I proceeded without the accessibility features.
The system then brought up a series of text-based menus where I was asked to select my preferred language from a list of eight European languages. I was then asked to confirm my keyboard's layout. The system then dropped me at a command line prompt where I was automatically signed in as the root user. I was told I could run the "doc" command to see documentation or "setup" to install the distribution.
I did a quick read through of the documentation and liked what I found. While it is technical in nature and assumes some basic familiarity with Linux, this is in line with the target audience of Slint. We are given tips on installing the distribution, encrypting the hard drive, and using the package manager. There is even a glossary at the end of the documentation.
Something which caught my eye in the documentation is a warning the installer requires at least 50GB of disk space. This seems like an odd statement given that Slackware (which has similarly sized install media) takes less than 12GB of disk space. It's hard to believe Slint, which is virtually the same distribution with Braille support, it more than four times larger. However, using a virtual machine, I was able to confirm the installer will refuse to proceed unless it can find a disk (or an available partition) which is at least 50GB in size. This limit exists whether we choose to use guided or manual partitioning.
I've mentioned this in a previous review, and touched on it briefly earlier this week, but it annoys me when developers make up completely arbitrary system requirements. I've run into a few installers lately which refused to run without at least 50GB or 99GB of disk space, or which would refuse to install the operating system unless at least a certain unusually high amount of RAM was available. Meanwhile their parent distributions, or even larger distributions, enforce no such artificial limitations and work perfectly well. It feels lazy and unnecessary and does not help the user or developer. I am in favour of providing a "recommended" set of specifications, but refusing to perform an install of an operating system that is less than 20GB in size unless the partition is at least 50GB is counterproductive.
Getting back to the install process, when presented with a large enough disk, running "setup" kicks off the text-based installer. We're asked to select which disk will hold Slint, the size of our root partition, and whether to encrypt it. We are asked to make up a root password and create a username and password for a regular user. We're also asked if we want to enable Braille support. We're also asked to pick our locale from a list and asked to confirm our timezone.
The installer then goes to work setting up the partitions and copying files. After a few minutes the installer reported it could not proceed because a package file on the media was corrupted. It also reports it cannot extract file /usr/bin/aria_chkand then bails out. I confirmed the install media had the correct checksum, indicating the problem is with the included package itself, not the install media on which the package is located. This brought my experiment with the accessibility-focused Slint to a close. This was the same problem I had with the original release of Slint three months ago and it's discouraging to see the corrupted package issues has not been fixed, despite refreshed media being published.
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Liya N4Si
The third project on my list this week was a young distribution called Liya. It is an Arch Linux-based operating system which includes the Calamares installer and a graphical package manager. The project's website doesn't provide much technical information. There are a lot of blurbs about the distribution being open source, simple and easy to use, approachable for people migrating from Windows, and intuitive. However, there are not many details about how the distribution accomplishes these goals.
I will say, in the project's favour, the website does include realistic system requirements. The project's ISO file is 3.4GB in size and we're advised to use a 4GB USB thumb drive for holding the install media. We're advised the distribution can run on UEFI-enabled systems and machines still using Legacy BIOS (and I confirmed this information is accurate). We're advised to have at least 2GB of RAM and 15GB of disk space, though more is recommended and these specifications are pretty realistic for a desktop Linux system. In short, while not a lot of technical information is provided, what is offered is at least accurate. I did find it curious the disk space requirements are listed as 15GB, but further down the same page we're told the root partition needs to be at least 50GB in size. In practise, the installer doesn't seem to place any limits on the disk size and 15GB is enough.
Launching the distribution from the live media loads the Cinnamon desktop with a dark theme. The desktop panel with its application menu, quick-launch buttons, and system tray are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Once the desktop appears an emoji picker window opens. The emoji window doesn't have any obvious way to close it, but it can be terminated by right-clicking on its entry in the desktop panel.
Liya N4Si -- Exploring the Cinnamon application menu
(full image size: 551kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Installing
Liya ships with the Calamares system installer. Calamares offered the same steps I mentioned earlier, in the GetFreeOS portion of this column. As before, despite the Cinnamon desktop and Calamares only consuming 800MB of RAM, the installer crashed the first two times I attempted to set up the distribution. The third time though, taking the same settings as the first two attempts, Calamares was able to complete its work successfully, despite the Cinnamon desktop crashing and restarting itself during the procedure. In the end, Calamares reported it had finished and offered to restart my computer. The system then booted to a graphical login screen.
Early impressions
Liya features icons on the desktop which open the Nemo file manager (the live session also includes an icon for launching Calamares). Cinnamon has a dark theme and is fairly responsive, both when running inside VirtualBox and when running on my workstation. When I was using Liya on my workstation the Cinnamon desktop was stable as well as working quickly. However, when running in VirtualBox the Cinnamon desktop would crash about once every five to ten minutes. While desktop applications typically survived the crash, it did regularly put a pause in my workflow and would interrupt me while navigating menus or performing tasks. This surprised me as Cinnamon is usually stable for me in my tests, regardless of the test environment.
Hardware
As advertised, Liya ran on my test equipment in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. The distribution offered good performance on the desktop. Sometimes systemd would hang for a minute while shutting down, but otherwise the experience was smooth sailing on my workstation. The experience would have been mostly good in VirtualBox too, if Cinnamon hadn't crashed several times per hour.
Liya N4Si -- Cinnamon crashing in VirtualBox
(full image size: 134kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The distribution is average in resource consumption, using about 620MB of RAM when signed into Cinnamon and consuming 8GB of disk space.
Applications
The Liya distribution ships with an unusual collection of desktop software. For instance, where most distribution ship Firefox, Liya provides Brave; where most distributions might offer LibreOffice, Liya provides OnlyOffice; while many distributions offer either Transmission or KTorrent, Liya includes Deluge. Similarly, the virtual terminal is Alacritty instead of GNOME Terminal or Konsole. I also noticed the distribution ships with zsh as the default shell rather than the more wildly used bash.
Some of the included software is more standard. Liya ships with the Nemo file manager, Thunderbird e-mail client, Rhythmbox audio player, and mpv media player. Multimedia codecs for most media formats are included. We're also given the Persepolis download manager, Timeshift for making system backups and snapshots, and the Cheese webcam utility.
Exploring further I found Liya includes manual pages, the GNU Compiler Collection, and systemd. Version 6.2 of the Linux kernel runs in the background.
It's not often I use OnlyOffice. The suite works with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. OnlyOffice seem to strive to both look like Microsoft Office and be compatible with the proprietary suite. While I'm not a fan of its ribbon-like menu system, I do like that it defaults to document tabs rather than opening new documents in their own windows. This behaviour can be changed, giving each document its own window.
I enjoy Cinnamon's settings panel. The layout is easy to navigate, most configuration modules are grouped together by category, and clearly labelled. My one concern is that some modules have similar names and purposes which is likely to confuse people new to Cinnamon. For instance, it's not immediately clear what the difference is between applets, desklets, and extensions. These are handled by three separate modules and the modules don't explain the differences between these desktop features.
Liya N4Si -- Exploring the settings panel and enabling the firewall
(full image size: 640kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
I found working from the command line was unusually slow. Whenever a program finishes and exits, the terminal seems to hang for a few seconds and then displays how long the last program took to execute. These delays are pretty noticeable and add up over time. Also with regards to the terminal, Liya ships with several aliases. Some of these are useful, but a few conflict with commands I already use and can result in errors or unexpected behaviour.
Liya N4Si -- Installing updates and running the Brave web browser
(full image size: 725kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Software management
Liya ships with the Pamac software centre which is labelled "Add/Remove Software" in the application menu. The software centre is divided into three tabs: Browse, Installed, and Updates. When I first tried using Pamac it showed no software in the Browse tab, other than items already installed on the system. Of course, the Installed tab (as expected) also showed installed items exclusively. Attempting to refresh the package database did not resolve this, making it impossible to install new applications.
The Updates tab displayed a listing of available updates with low-level packages lumped together as "OS Update". In total, there were 1.1GB of updates available. I tried to install these waiting items and Pamac crashed early in the process. When I restarted Pamac, the software centre locked up when I tried to install updates and refused to either proceed or exit.
Liya N4Si -- Trying to fetch updates with Pamac
(full image size: 565kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
I switched to the command line where we can use the pacman package manager to handle software. I found it was unable to perform actions as pacman was unable to place a lock on the package database, though its error message did not say why. Working under the assumption Pamac still had the package database locked, I located and removed the package database lock file (/var/lib/pacman/db.lck). With this file removed I was able to use pacman to fetch and install updates. It reported a few packages which had already been fetched were corrupted and helpfully removed them and reacquired new copies for me.
I'm not sure if an update fixed a problem with Pamac or if using pacman updated the package database and corrected an issue in process, but from then on I could browse for new software in Pamac's Browse tab. I was able to install a few new items and remove unwanted ones using Pamac.
Later in the week more updates became available and I gave Pamac another shot at fetching them. Pamac reported it could not find all necessary packages and dependencies to perform the update and aborted, even after I had clicked Pamac's Refresh button to update its information. Once again I turned to the command line and pacman was able to perform the upgrades successfully.
After this second wave of updates, I restarted the computer and upon trying to sign into my account the screen went blank. The system did not respond to any input and I could not switch to a text console. I forced a restart and Liya worked normally after that, without requiring that I fix anything.
Conclusions
Something I found tricky about evaluating Liya was the project didn't list much in the way of specific goals or features. The website mentions it is intuitive with a graphical package manager and open source. All of these points are true. However, beyond being an Arch-based desktop distribution, Liya doesn't seem to be trying to fix a problem or fill a niche.
Liya does some things well. It offers good performance and some useful (if uncommon) application choices. Its hardware support on physical hardware seems to be good.
There were a few areas where Liya struggled in my trial. The system installer crashed and aborted a couple of times before I managed to get it to finish an install successfully. When running in a virtual machine Cinnamon crashed frequently, interrupting work. These crashes didn't occur on my physical workstation, so this seems to be an issue with a video driver.
Package management was the consistent weak point once the install was finished with Pamac repeatedly failing to apply updates and locking up or crashing a few times. Package management from the command line worked well.
In short, Liya seems like a pretty typical Arch-based desktop distribution, just with a few unusual choices - such as running Cinnamon instead of Xfce or Plasma, and using OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice. The project doesn't seem to have found a specific goal yet and it still needs some polish. It's off to a decent start for a young project, but I feel like it needs more time to mature before I'd recommend it over other Arch-based desktop systems.
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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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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu plans Snap-based desktop variant, Purism launches new free hardware server, Red Hat dropping LibreOffice packages, a look at the status of MINIX
An article on OMG! Ubuntu suggests that a future desktop version of Ubuntu will be available as two separate editions: the classic Deb-based version and a new, immutable edition featuring Snap packages. "An all-snap Ubuntu desktop is coming - and sooner than you might think! According to Canonical's Oliver Grawert, the next long-term support release of Ubuntu will be available to download in two versions: a classic, Deb-based version (default) and, for the first time, an immutable, Snap-based build for enthusiasts to experiment with." Work going into the Ubuntu Core desktop edition can be observed on GitHub.
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Purism has announced the availability of a new version of the company's server which is built using freedom respecting components. "We've taken some of the best server hardware and hardened it with PureBoot, our fully-auditable secure boot process that replaces the existing BIOS with coreboot, disables the Intel Management Engine, and adds tamper detection for the BIOS, kernel, and all files related to the boot process using keys fully in the owner's control. Combined with our Librem Key at boot time, tamper detection is foolproof with an LED (designed to be bright enough to view over a security camera) that continually blinks red if the BIOS is tampered with." Details on the new servers can be found in the company's news post.
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For years the Red Hat Display Systems team has maintained LibreOffice suite packages (and their many dependencies) for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Fedora distribution. The Display Systems team is shifting its priorities, working more on Wayland and will no longer be building new LibreOffice packages. This has the side effect of orphaning the Fedora builds of LibreOffice. "The Red Hat Display Systems team (the team behind most of Red Hat's desktop efforts) has maintained the LibreOffice packages in Fedora for years as part of our work to support LibreOffice for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are adjusting our engineering priorities for RHEL for Workstations and focusing on gaps in Wayland, building out HDR support, building out what's needed for color-sensitive work, and a host of other refinements required by Workstation users. This is work that will improve the workstation experience for Fedora as well as RHEL users, and which, we hope, will be positively received by the entire Linux community.
The tradeoff is that we are pivoting away from work we had been doing on desktop applications and will cease shipping LibreOffice as part of RHEL starting in a future RHEL version. This also limits our ability to maintain it in future versions of Fedora."
While it will be possible for community members to volunteer to take over the LibreOffice packages for Fedora, Red Hat suspects most users will want to switch over to using the LibreOffice Flatpak package.
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There have been no new releases of the MINIX operating system for about nine years. While development has continued, with a few development snapshots published since 2014, serious work on the MINIX microkernel and userland tools has mostly lost momentum. OSNews reports on the status of the project: "It seems like MINIX 3 has pretty much stalled, and digging through the Google Groups group isn't of much help either. There's certainly interest in the platform, but even the people frequenting the list state while MINIX 3 isn't dead, because open source projects technically rarely die, it is in a 'coma', in a post from 2021. There's been various proposals for improvements or new directions - notably this very detailed one - but nothing has come of them. It probably does not help that MINIX's creator and steward, Andy Tanenbaum, retired in 2014 from VU University, my alma mater, where he and a team of doctoral students worked on MINIX 3 for a long time."
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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) |
Cleaning up crowded directories
Cleaning-out-the-closet asks: I have a directory full of family photos and vacation pictures. I know lots of them are probably duplicates, but we're talking tens of thousands of images. Is there any way to go through and remove duplicates to free up space?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few tools which can locate duplicate files. Some of these tools will offer to remove, or perform other actions, on duplicate files found.
One of the most straightforward, and widely available, command line tools for cleaning directories is rdfind. The rdfind program will locate duplicate files, make a list of which files it believes are duplicates, and optionally take an action. The action is usually either to remove extra copies of files or replace them with links. A link will take up less space while basically making a bookmark or short-cut to the original file. This can be handy if you want to keep one document or photo in multiple places, but want to avoid taking up additional space on the drive.
The rdfind command is typically run with one action instruction and then one or more directories we want to clean. The action portion of the command usually indicates we want to do one of three things: simply locate copies of files, remove copies of files, or replace copies with links. Let's look at some examples.
To get a list of duplicate files in our Photos directory, but not take any action, we can tell rdfind to perform a "dry run":
rdfind -dryrun true Photos
The above command searches the Photos directory and creates a text file named results.txt. The results.txt will contain a list of duplicate files found, along with a note indicating which one rdfind thinks is the original file and which ones are copies. This is a handy way to get a sense of how many duplicate files you have and how much space will be freed by removing the copies.
Often, my preferred way to clean up duplicate files is to replace copies of files with hard links. This requires less space while leaving a shortcut back to the original. This is especially handy if we have group pictures saved under multiple sub-directories. To replace copies of files in the Photos directory with hard links we can run the following command:
rdfind -makehardlinks true Photos
Finally, if we wish to really remove copies of duplicated files, we can run the following command. This is destructive and will wipe out any duplicates the rdfind tool locates:
rdfind -deleteduplicates true Photos
The rdfind command is one of several tools which will seek and remove duplicate files. The fdupes command, for example, is also widely available and offers the same features.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Armbian 23.05
Armbian is a Linux distribution designed for ARM development boards. It is usually based on one of the stable or development versions of Debian or Ubuntu and it supports a wide variety of popular ARM-based devices. The project's latest release is version 23.05.1 which adds the i3 window manager as a graphical user interface options. The project's release announcement offers additional details: "We are pleased to announce several improvements and enhancements at the user level: Armbian Bookworm based images: We are introducing Armbian Bookworm-based images, providing the latest features and updates from Debian community. i3 supported: i3 has been added as the fourth officially supported desktop environment, expanding the options available to our users. Fixes and Enhancements: We have addressed issues in key tools such as armbian-installer, armbian-config, and armbian-firstrun, ensuring a smoother user experience. Streamlined Packages: We have optimized our package base, making it nearly identical across different underlying package bases and desktop choices. This standardization improves predictability and enhances security. Consistent Application Packages: Regardless of the chosen package base or desktop environment, the application packages remain the same. This ensures consistent functionality and ease of use." Further details can be found in the changelog.
NixOS 23.05
NixOS is an independently developed GNU/Linux distribution that aims to improve the state of the art in system configuration management. The project's latest version, NixOS 23.05, mostly provides updates desktop enviroments and a newer Linux kernel. "In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights: Core version changes: default linux: 5.15 -> 6.1, all supported kernels available. systemd has been updated to v253.1, see the pull request for more info. It's recommended to use nixos-rebuild boot and reboot, rather than nixos-rebuild switch - since in some rare cases the switch of a live system might fail. glibc: 2.35 -> 2.37. Cinnamon has been updated to 5.6, see the pull request for what is changed. GNOME has been upgraded to version 44. Please see the release notes for details. KDE Plasma has been updated to v5.27, see the release notes for what is changed. Python implements PEP 668, providing better feedback to users that try to run pip install system-wide. nixos-rebuild now supports an extra --specialisation option that can be used to change specialisation for switch and test commands. libxcrypt, the library providing the crypt(3) password hashing function, is now built without support for algorithms not flagged strong. This affects the availability of password hashing algorithms used for system login (login(1), passwd(1)), but also Apache2 Basic-Auth, Samba, OpenLDAP, Dovecot, and many other packages." Additional details are offered in the pojrct's release notes.
NixOS 23.05 -- Exploring the Plasma application menu
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
TrueNAS 13.0-U5 "CORE"
Pee Jay Latombo has announced the release of TrueNAS CORE 13.0-U5, an updated build of the project's specialist, FreeBSD-based software designed for NAS (Network-Attached Storage) computers. The new release brings improvements in ransomware protection: "Building on the Enterprise quality of prior versions, the third update of TrueNAS 13 was released today. In addition to greater maturity and test coverage, Globally Distributed Storage provided by iX-Storj is also now included in this release. Compared to TrueNAS 12, TrueNAS 13 includes significant new components and has improved performance, scalability, and reliability in subsequent releases. In the two months since TrueNAS 13.0-U2 was released, it has already become the 2nd most deployed version of TrueNAS. TrueNAS 13.0-U5 builds on the maturity of the prior version with 30 bug fixes and security updates. It also includes enclosure management updates for the TrueNAS R50 Gen3, which was announced two weeks ago." See the release announcement and the release notes for detailed information about the product.
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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: 2,873
- Total data uploaded: 43.3TB
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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) |
Which branch of openSUSE do you prefer?
The openSUSE team will be releasing a new version of the project's Leap edition later this week. The openSUSE developers maintain several branches of the project, including Leap (a fixed release), Tumbleweed (a rolling release), and Aeon (an immutable branch). Which branch of the project do you prefer?
You can see the results of our previous poll on seeing colourful text in the output of terminal programs in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Which branch of openSUSE do you prefer?
| Aeon (previously MicroOS): | 58 (3%) |
| Leap: | 338 (18%) |
| Tumbleweed: | 498 (26%) |
| I do not use openSUSE: | 1028 (53%) |
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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, 12 June 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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| Linux Foundation Training |
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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 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Issue 1032 (2023-08-14): MX Linux 23, positioning new windows on the desktop, Linux Containers adopts LXD fork, Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form OpenELA |
| • Issue 1031 (2023-08-07): Peppermint OS 2023-07-01, preventing a file from being changed, Asahi Linux partners with Fedora, Linux Mint plans new releases |
| • Issue 1030 (2023-07-31): Solus 4.4, Linux Mint 21.2, Debian introduces RISC-V support, Ubuntu patches custom kernel bugs, FreeBSD imports OpenSSL 3 |
| • Issue 1029 (2023-07-24): Running Murena on the Fairphone 4, Flatpak vs Snap sandboxing technologies, Redox OS plans to borrow Linux drivers to expand hardware support, Debian updates Bookworm media |
| • Issue 1028 (2023-07-17): KDE Connect; Oracle, SUSE, and AlmaLinux repsond to Red Hat's source code policy change, KaOS issues media fix, Slackware turns 30; security and immutable distributions |
| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
| • Issue 992 (2022-10-31): Lubuntu 22.10, setting permissions on home directories, Linux may drop i486, Fedora delays next version for OpenSSL bug |
| • Issue 991 (2022-10-24): XeroLinux 2022.09, learning who ran sudo, exploring firewall tools, Rolling Rhino Remix gets a fresh start, Fedora plans to revamp live media |
| • Issue 990 (2022-10-17): ravynOS 0.4.0, Lion Linux 3.0, accessing low numbered network ports, Pop!_OS makes progress on COSMIC, Murena launches new phone |
| • Issue 989 (2022-10-10): Ubuntu Unity, kernel bug causes issues with Intel cards, Canonical offers free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, customizing the command line prompt |
| • Issue 988 (2022-10-03): SpiralLinux 11.220628, finding distros for older equipment and other purposes, SUSE begins releasing ALP prototypes, Debian votes on non-free firmware in installer |
| • Issue 987 (2022-09-26): openSUSE's MicroOS, converting people to using Linux, pfSense updates base system and PHP, Python 2 dropped from Arch |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Shells.com |
Your own personal Linux computer in the cloud, available on any device. Supported operating systems include Android, Debian, Fedora, KDE neon, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Manjaro and Ubuntu, ready in minutes.
Starting at US$4.95 per month, 7-day money-back guarantee
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| Random Distribution | 
PapugLinux
PapugLinux was a minimal GNU/Linux live CD based on the Gentoo Linux distribution for x86 computers. The goal of PapugLinux was to provide a minimal but functional free operating system which can be run on most computers, from old systems with as little as 64 MB of memory to the latest powerful configurations.
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.
|
| 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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