 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1047, 27 November 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 48th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Swap space is an interesting concept which allows a computer to appear to have more memory than is physically available. Swap space is typically a region of a computer's hard drive which is set aside to hold data when memory is full. This allows the operating system to move information out of memory when RAM is nearly full and copy it back into memory as needed. This week, in our Questions and Answers column, we discuss why some swap space might be used, even when the computer's memory is not full. Do you use swap space? There are a few different approaches systems can use to setting up swap, ranging from traditional swap partitions, to files, to compressed RAM. Let us know your preferred approach in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we talk about Ubuntu Budgie potentially benefiting from work the Xfce project is doing with Wayland. Plus we discuss Slackware streamlining its kernel offerings for older machines and share an overview of some problems detected in the new FreeBSD 14.0 release. One of the operating systems which uses FreeBSD as a base is GhostBSD. This week Jesse Smith takes this desktop flavour of FreeBSD for a test drive and reports on his experiences with it. This week we are also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Plus we're happy to announce the loongarch64 CPU architecture has been added to our Search page and then we give thanks to the generous readers who have donated to us this month. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
GhostBSD 23.10.1
GhostBSD is a desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD. The GhostBSD project takes a "-stable" (development) branch of FreeBSD and provides a number of convenient features. These features include a live desktop on the install media, a graphical system installer, and a pre-configured MATE desktop. (There is a community-maintained Xfce edition as well.) GhostBSD also automates setting up ZFS volumes and includes some graphical utilities to handle common tasks such as package management and connecting to networks.
The latest release of GhostBSD, version 23.10.1, includes some improvements to the network utility (called networkmgr), adding the ability to set static IP addresses and custom DNS servers. This release also updates the FreeBSD kernel and removes the os-generic-userland-devtools package from the base system to save disk space.
I downloaded the latest release which is available in a single edition (featuring the MATE desktop) for a single architecture (x86_64). The ISO file is 2.5GB in size. The project lists the minimum system requirements on the download page: 64-bit x86 processor, 4GB of RAM, 15GB of disk space, and network card. These requirements, especially the 4GB of RAM, may seem unusually high for a FreeBSD-based operating system. This is a hard requirement and it appears to be a side-effect of the live media loading the system image into RAM at boot time. This isn't the amount of memory required to run the operating system day-to-day, just to run the live session and perform the installation.
Installing
The live media boots to the MATE desktop which places panels across the top and bottom of the screen. The top panel holds the Applications menu, along with its companions, the Places and System menus. The top panel also holds the system tray. The bottom panel serves as the task switcher. Icons on the desktop open the Caja file manager and launch the system installer.
GhostBSD uses a custom system installer which looks and acts similarly to Calamares in the Linux ecosystem. This graphical installer walks us through picking our preferred language, choosing our keyboard's layout, and selecting our timezone from a list. We are then asked if we wish to manually partition disks or take a guided option. The guided approach is still fairly flexible, allowing us to select which disk to use, picking a volume name for our ZFS pool, and setting the desired size of our swap space. We can also pick which of the FreeBSD boot loaders (there are three) we wish to use.
The system installer also asks us to make up a password for the root user and create a username/password combination for ourselves. The installer then copies its files to the local hard drive. When it is finished the installer offers to restart the computer or return us to the MATE desktop. The whole experience is pleasantly straight forward, friendly, and should be easy to navigate for anyone who has installed a mainstream Linux distribution.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of GhostBSD booted to a simple, graphical login screen which was pleasantly decorated with a landscape photo. There are no session options presented by default, when we select our account and put in our password we're signed into the MATE 1.26 desktop.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- The Caja file manager
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
MATE is set up to be pleasantly quiet. There were no pop-up windows, no notifications, and no welcome screen when I signed in the first time. GhostBSD presents us with a clean environment and leaves us to get to work and use it as we see fit.
The MATE desktop is set up with a light theme, though alternative themes, including dark ones, are available through the settings panel. I found the screensaver kicked in quickly, after five minutes, and locked the screen. This is a bit aggressive for my taste, but this too can be easily changed in the settings panel.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- Exploring the settings panel
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
When I tested GhostBSD in a VirtualBox environment the operating system ran quickly and smoothly. My only problem was my desktop resolution was limited to a maximum of 1024x768 pixels. I could fix this by adjusting VirtualBox's settings to use VBoxVGA as the graphics controller instead of VMSVGA. From then onward, I could access my host system's full screen resolution.
When I ran GhostBSD on my laptop, I had an experience which was of mixed quality. The operating system ran quickly and smoothly, my touchpad was detected and would interpret taps as clicks. On the other hand, GhostBSD was unable to work with my keyboard's function keys. In other words, adjusting audio volume and screen brightness using the function keys did not work. I found GhostBSD could detect my wireless card and even use it to detect local wi-fi networks. However, GhostBSD was unable to connect to any wi-fi networks, with authentication failing each time, even after verifying the password was correct.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- Using MATE with a dark theme
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The operating system took up 5.8GB of disk space for a fresh install, plus however much we set aside for swap space. When sitting idle at the MATE desktop, GhostBSD consumed 320MB of active memory and 460MB of wired memory, most of the latter set aside for ZFS functions and cache.
Included applications
GhostBSD ships with a fairly standard collection of open source software, most of it in the GNOME/MATE family of applications. The Firefox web browser is included along with the Transmission bittorrent client. The Evolution e-mail client is included alongside a document viewer and Caja file manager. We're also given a text editor, virtual terminal, and calculator.
The operating system ships with two media players, Rhythmbox and VLC. I found VLC was able to play any audio or video file I threw at it, though audio wasn't always smooth and could stutter. Rhythmbox was unable to play MP3 files, reporting it was missing codecs. While the application offers to search for the missing software, clicking the button to perform a search for the required packages does nothing and codecs must be installed manually.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- Browsing the application menu
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
GhostBSD included the FreeBSD kernel and userland tools. Local manual pages are also included. GhostBSD's user accounts default to using the fish shell, though csh and tcsh are also available on the system. We can install other alternatives, such as bash, from the project's software repository. GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD 13.2-STABLE at the time of writing, not 13.2-RELEASE. This means the operating system is mostly stable, though slightly on the development end of things compared to fixed FreeBSD releases.
The operating system ships with sudo to provide administrator access and the first user is automatically set up with sudo access.
Software management
The GhostBSD project ships two graphical package management tools. One is called Update Station and it is a simple utility which checks for new software packages. During my trial no new packages were detected in the repositories, meaning I was unable to test its capabilities for fetching updates. I confirmed no new packages had been made available using the command line pkg package manager.
GhostBSD 23.10.1 -- The Software Station application
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The second graphical software tool is called Software Station. This is a low-level package manager, similar in style to Linux tools like Synaptic. Software categories are listed down the left side of the window and items in a selected category are shown to the right. Software Station uses FreeBSD's ports category names which can be short and cryptic. In my opinion, it's not always clear which category an application might be in. For example, would you expect to find a tool such as wget, that is used for downloading content from the web, under the "ftp", "net", or "www" category? (The correct answer turns out to be "ftp".) Fortunately, Software Station provides a search function for when we know the name of a package, but not its precise category.
Using Software Station, we can queue a series of actions, fetching and/or removing multiple packages in a batch. The application worked well and functioned quickly. I had no problems searching for, adding, or deleting software packages.
For people who prefer the command line, FreeBSD's pkg utility is available and also works quickly and ran without any problems during my trial.
Conclusions
GhostBSD does a good job, in my opinion, of doing what it sets out to do: provide a pre-configured, desktop operating system which is based on FreeBSD. The project offers a fast, stable, and wonderfully easy to set up desktop platform. I really like how fast and clean MATE is and how GhostBSD makes installing FreeBSD a point-and-click experience.
GhostBSD has added a few convenient utilities too, such as the network manager (networkmgr) and the Software Station. I still found the network utility to be less useful than Network Manager on Linux (it was unable to connect to local wireless networks), but that may be an issue with the underlying network device driver rather than networkmgr itself.
I feel the above point highlights the main drawback to trying GhostBSD. The project does a great job of installing and configuring FreeBSD to be used as a desktop operating system. In this aspect, I cannot find fault with it. However, GhostBSD also inherits its parent's weaknesses when it comes to desktop computing. Wireless drivers, running closed source applications such as Steam, and running less popular open source applications all run up against the limits of what FreeBSD is currently able to do when compared to Linux. GhostBSD is great if you have a wired network and want to run popular open source applications exclusively. It shines in this area. However, when stepping a little outside of this well-trodden ground the platform bumps up against its limitations.
For people who like FreeBSD and want to get up and running with a desktop quickly, GhostBSD is ideal. For people who enjoy Linux and stick to open source software exclusively, GhostBSD might be a good fit too. However, people who need non-free firmware, run closed-source applications, or who have exotic hardware might find GhostBSD limited compared to mainstream Linux distributions.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
GhostBSD has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.4/10 from 58 review(s).
Have you used GhostBSD? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work happening in Xfce, Slackware streamlines 32-bit kernels, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0
Over time, more Linux desktop environments are making the gradual migration from using the X11 protocol to display user interfaces and shifting to using the Wayland protocol. One of the challenges of Wayland is each desktop environment typically needs to make its own compositor, usually as part of the window manager. One exception of this duplication of work may turn out to be the Budgie team partnering with Xfce to share their efforts. The Register reports: "Budgie is being pragmatic - looking to see what can be done in the short-to-medium term, then having a longer-term view. Thus, the Budgie team has been evaluating options to move forward. Xfce are doing some really great work in this area with libxfce4windowing - a compatibility layer bridging Wayland and X11, allowing the move in a logical direction without needing a big-bang approach. To date, most of the current codebase has already been reworked and is ready for a Wayland-only approach without impacting further development and enhancements." Additional information about Budgie's migration and how it will affect Ubuntu Budgie can be found in The Register's article.
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The Slackware project is making some adjustments to its lineup of kernel offerings. The famously conservative distribution is streamlining its available kernels for 32-bit CPUs in the Testing branch, though the changelog points out even Pentium M processors (which are 20 years old at the time of writing) can still be used to run Slackware. "We have fresh 6.6 kernels in /testing! You may notice that on the 32-bit side we have done away with the -smp labeled kernel packages, but it's actually the other kernels that were retired -- the non-SMP, non-PAE ones. If you were previously using kernel-generic-smp or kernel-huge-smp, you'll need to make some adjustments to your boot loader setup to load kernel-generic or kernel-huge instead. About the only non-obsolete CPUs that may have an issue with this are the first generation Pentium M chips, which supported PAE but unfortunately did not advertise this in the CPU flags. But these will support PAE if the kernel option "forcepae" is appended at boot time."
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The latest version of FreeBSD was announced about a week after FreeBSD 14.0 was expected to be officially released. Despite this extended delay, there have been a number of issues which have surfaced, following the install media being made available to the public. Colin Percival has provided an overview of problems with the 14.0 release, along with explanations for why the problems exist and how to work around them. A few of the issues concern upgrading FreeBSD from an earlier release: "The default shell for root changed from csh to sh in FreeBSD 14. When you upgrade to FreeBSD 14, freebsd-update will prompt you to merge changes to /etc/master.passwd. Don't just take the new password line for root since it doesn't have a password. Keep your existing line and change the shell (or not, if you prefer to stick with csh)."
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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) |
Why Linux uses swap when memory is free
Has-plenty-of-room asks: Why is my Linux system using swap space when there is still room left in RAM? I thought swap was just there to catch overflow.
DistroWatch answers: As suggested, swap space is usually an area set aside on the hard drive which will temporary store data that was being used in memory (RAM). Swap space is either a disk partition or a special file where the operating system can copy data that was in memory. Once the information has been copied to swap space, the operating system can use the previously occupied space in memory for something else.
When the information which was copied to swap space is needed again it is copied back into RAM where it can be used by running applications and services.
Generally speaking, swap space is used when RAM is nearly full and the operating system is at risk of running out of space in memory needed by applications. Since swap space is used to store information which currently doesn't fit in memory, why would it be in use if memory isn't full?
What has probably happened is, at some point after the computer booted, memory filled up (or got close to being full). At that point the operating system copied some information it was not currently using out to swap space. This freed up RAM to be used by services and applications. Later, some RAM was freed, leaving more space. However, since that time, the operating system has not needed the information it pushed out to swap.
Maybe a background service has been sleeping, maybe there is an application window which hasn't been looked at for a long time. For whatever reason, the system hasn't needed to actively make use of the data in swap space. Since the information hasn't been needed, it remains in swap to avoid running into an inefficient situation where the data might get read back into RAM and then bumped out again before it is needed.
In short, chances are your system did fill up RAM in the past (or came close to filling its RAM) and the system shuffled data it wasn't currently using out to swap. The data hasn't been needed since then so the information has sat quietly in swap space. It will be loaded back into RAM when it is needed.
If you ever wish to clear data from swap space, forcing it back into RAM, you can do this on Linux using the swapoff and swapon commands. Running the command "swapoff -a" will disable all swap spaces, causing the system to load data back into RAM. We can then run "swapon -a" to re-enable swap space so that it can be used later if needed. This process effectively "flushes" swap space (when it is convenient for us) rather than waiting for the operating system to load memory from swap back into RAM on demand, which can cause small delays when the data is required.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
EndeavourOS 11-2023
Bryan Poerwo has announced the release of EndeavourOS 11-2023, code-named "Galileo", a major update of the project's Arch-based Linux distribution. In this release, the live ISO image ships with KDE Plasma desktop (instead of Xfce), Linux kernel 6.6.1 and an updated Calamares system installer: "It has taken a while to develop this release but we are still here and despite life throwing in extra challenges for each of our team members the past months, we are proud to present you our Galileo ISO with significant changes. KDE Plasma replaced Xfce as the Live environment and on the offline install option. To make development and maintenance easier for the team, we switched to KDE Plasma instead of Xfce due to a more native experience for our developers with the Calamares installer. This only affects the Live environment and the offline install option. When choosing the online install option, Xfce is still there as an option to choose from. For those who like the Xfce theme we created, this option will still be available after installation through the Welcome app." See the release announcement for a complete list of changes and screenshots.
EndeavourOS 11-2023 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 6.1MB, resolution: 2560x1440 pixels)
FreeBSD 14.0
Colin Percival (the new Release Engineering Team Lead) has announced the release of FreeBSD 14.0. It is available for the amd64, aarch64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, armv7 and riscv64 architectures. "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the stable/14 branch. Some of the highlights: OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.5p1; OpenSSL has been updated to version 3.0.12, a major upgrade from OpenSSL 1.1.1t in FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE; the bhyve hypervisor now supports TPM and GPU passthrough; FreeBSD supports up to 1024 cores on the amd64 and arm64 platforms; ZFS has been upgraded to OpenZFS release 2.2, providing significant performance improvements; it is now possible to perform background filesystem checks on UFS file systems running with journaled soft updates; experimental ZFS images are now available for AWS and Azure; the default congestion control mechanism for TCP is now CUBIC." For further information please see the release announcement and the release notes.
Rocky Linux 9.3
Louis Abel has announced the release of Rocky Linux 9.3, the latest stable version from a project that develops a community clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux: "We are pleased to announce the general availability of Rocky Linux 9.3. This release is currently available for the x86-64, aarch64, ppc64le and s390x architectures. The 9.3 release brings back cloud and container images for ppc64le that were not released with 9.2 due to issues with QEMU. These images may be divergent from the other architecture's images in some small ways, but we will work to reduce this delta in future releases of the images. The kernel-rt package has been merged into a subpackage of kernel. A new kernel-uki package was introduced as a technology preview, providing a Unified Kernel Image variant for booting. This UKI image is signed with its own SecureBoot key. A java-21-openjdk package was introduced providing a new version of Java. Current users of Rocky Linux 9 can upgrade to 9.3 from the terminal via dnf update, or from the desktop with GNOME Software, KDE Discover, etc." Read the release announcement and the release notes for further information and upgrade instructions.
Proxmox 8.1 "Virtual Environment"
Proxmox is a commercial company offering specialised products based on Debian GNU/Linux, notably Proxmox Virtual Environment. The company's latest release is Proxmox 8.1 Virtual Environment which is based on Debian 12 and features ZFS 2.2.0 along with an updated kernel. "We're very excited to announce the release 8.1 of Proxmox Virtual Environment! It's based on Debian 12.2 "Bookworm" but uses a newer Linux kernel 6.5, QEMU 8.1.2, and OpenZFS 2.2.0 (with stable fixes backported). Here is a selection of the highlights of Proxmox VE 8.1: Debian 12.2 (Bookworm), but uses a newer Linux kernel 6.5 as stable default; latest versions of QEMU 8.1.2 and ZFS 2.2.0 including the most important bugfixes from 2.2.1 already; Software-Defined Networking (SDN); Secure Boot; New flexible notification system with matcher-based approach; Ceph Server: Ceph Reef 18.2.0 is default, and Ceph; Quincy 17.2.7 comes with continued support; countless GUI and API improvements." Additional information is provided in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
rlxos 2023.11
rlxos is an independent Linux distribution which runs on an immutable filesystem and features the Xfce desktop. The project has made some significant changes for its latest stable release, swapping out the GNOME desktop in favour of Xfce and using Swupd for software updates. "Silaghana marks the major release of RLXOS, encompassing significant changes, exciting features, and the potential to break backward compatibility. Here's a glimpse of what Silaghana offers: Desktop environment switch: We've transitioned from GNOME to Xfce4 - significantly faster and lighter; simplified interface without compromising usability; highly configurable to meet various user requirements. Swupd for seamless updates - Swupd empowers both developers and end-users to flexibly manage system updates via libostree; users can review update changelogs before applying them; Swupd facilitates temporary safe mutability within the system." Additional details on the new release can be found in the project's release announcement.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
Ultramarine Linux 39
Ultramarine Linux is a Fedora-based distribution featuring extra package repositories such as RPM Fusion, the Budgie (or Cutefish) desktop, and multimedia codecs. The project's latest release, version 39, uses an in-house build system and can automatically install NVIDIA drivers when appropriate. "Changes: Rebase to Fedora 39. Build process no longer relies on Red Hat's Live Image Creator, switched to our in-house builder; Katsu. Various fixes for live image startup scripts. speech-dispatcherd is now disabled, TTS is now handled by other means. When importing COPR repositories, DNF now finally uses Fedora repos instead of EPEL. New wallpaper. Slightly refreshed looks on Flagship Edition. Default typeface is now Inter instead of Cantarell. Various Pantheon fixes. Install some elementary apps from appcenter, when available. Fix issues with XDG portals. Fix bug where wallpapers would not properly apply." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
OpenMandriva Lx 5.0
The OpenMandriva team have announced the availablity of a new release of their user-friendly, desktop-focused operating system. "OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, the long-awaited release of the independent, community controlled distribution's fixed point release branch (as opposed to its rolling release branch), has been released. This is expected to be the last major release featuring the Plasma 5 desktop. In the 1.5 years since the previous fixed point release, OMLx 4.3, many things have changed. Among others, the new release is based on kernel 6.6 LTS (kernel-desktop-6.6.2 - 6.7.0-rc2 is also available), Mesa 23.3.0-rc4, Qt 5.15.11+KDE Patches and 6.6.0, KDE Frameworks 5.112, KDE Gear 23.08.3, Plasma 5.27.9.1, LibreOffice 7.6.3, and other current open source software. Outside of component updates, this is the first fixed point release that merges the / and /usr filesystems." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
OpenMandriva Lx 5.0 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 371kB, resolution: 1680x1050 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: 2,931
- Total data uploaded: 43.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What type of swap space do you use?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about swap space getting consumed in order to hold data which had been held in RAM. There are a few different types of swap space. Traditionally swap space was held on a separate disk partition, though these days it is becoming more common to use a special file (often stored in the root partition) to hold data that has been evicted from memory. Some people also use a special approach which treats a section of RAM as compressed swap space, allowing the operating system to compress and move unused data into another region of memory rather than using a disk.
This week we would like to hear which approach you use. Feel free to tell us why you use the approach you do in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on running minimal window managers versus a full desktop environment in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What style of swap space do you use?
| File: | 233 (14%) |
| Partition: | 896 (53%) |
| zRAM/compressed RAM: | 118 (7%) |
| A combination of the above: | 119 (7%) |
| No swap space at all: | 308 (18%) |
| None of the above: | 18 (1%) |
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| Website News |
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Added loongarch64 architecture
DistroWatch has added the loongarch64 CPU architecture to our database. At the moment we know of only two distributions which are working on loongarch64 support (T2 SDE and Debian). It is now possible to use our Search page to find distributions which support the loongarch64 CPU type.
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Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $127 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| J S | $50 |
| Charles S | $20 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| David P | $9 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Skye F | $3 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| Peter M | $2 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Red OS. Red OS is a Russian project, based on the source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
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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, 4 December 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 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 |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Full list of all issues |
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AGNULA GNU/Linux Audio Distribution
AGNULA (acronym for A GNU/Linux Audio distribution, pronounced with a strong g) was the name of a project funded by the European Commission. The project was coordinated by the Centro Tempo Reale in Firenze and involves important research centers and institutions. AGNULA's main task will be the development of two reference distributions for the GNU/Linux operating system completely based on Free Software (i.e. under a FSF approved Free Software license) and completely devoted to professional and consumer audio applications and multimedia development. One distribution will be Debian-based (DeMuDi) and the other will be Red Hat-based (ReHMuDi). Both will be available on the network for download and on CD. The project started on the 1st April 2002 and will last for two years. In the second year the project will also extend to hardware platforms other than PCs (e.g. PowerPCs, 64-bit architectures).
Status: Discontinued
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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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