 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1064, 1 April 2024 |
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Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Linux kernel is undoubtably the most popular of the world's open source kernels. Linux sits at the heart of billions of smart phones, millions of servers, the world's fasted super computers, and tens of millions of desktop machines. However, Linux is far from the only open source kernel available. There are other popular kernels such as those offered by the BSDs, Haiku, and FreeDOS. This week we field a question about another open source kernel, this one from the GNU project. GNU's Hurd kernel has been around for decades and we discuss its current status in this week's Questions and Answers column. Have you ever run a computer system that used Hurd? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss the FreeBSD Foundation's plans to improve wireless networking support on FreeBSD while Canonical extends Ubuntu Pro's support term to 12 years. Plus we talk about Qubes OS offering new updates and a reminder that Qubes OS 4.1 is nearing the end of its supported life. We also discuss a compromise in the liblzma compression library. First though we talk about NixOS, a Linux distribution which showcases the powerful Nix package manager. We share details about NixOS and how to make use of Nix in our Feature Story. 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!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
NixOS 23.11
NixOS is an independently developed Linux distribution that aims to improve the state of the art in system configuration management. In NixOS, the entire operating system, including the kernel, applications, system packages and configuration files, are built (and can be configured) by the Nix package manager.
This week I want to talk about NixOS as a desktop distribution and touch upon the Nix package manager and how we can use it manage multiple aspects of the operating system.
NixOS is available in two desktop editions: GNOME and KDE Plasma. There is also a Minimal command line edition. The desktop editions are about 2.5GB in size while the Minimal edition's ISO is 949MB. The distribution runs on the x86_64, ARM64, and i686 architectures.
The list of changes for NixOS 23.11 is fairly short. We're told that, along with some background changes and package updates, the latest version ships with GNOME 45 and the LLVM developer tools have been upgraded to version 16. This version of NixOS is supported through to June 30, 2024.
I downloaded the KDE Plasma edition and verified its checksum. Here I ran into a small error. The NixOS checksum file provides the wrong filename which means automated checksum tools, such as sha256sum, will fail or report an error. The ISO file's checksum does match the checksum provided, it is just the filename which does not match (the ISO file is called "latest-nixos-plasma5-x86_64-linux.iso" and the matching checksum says the filename should be called "nixos-plasma5-23.11.2596.c1be43e8e837-x86_64-linux.iso"). After manually confirming the ISO I had downloaded was valid, I set about testing the live mode.
Booting the live media displays the GRUB boot manager with some useful options. These include booting NixOS normally, loading the distribution into RAM, and booting in safe graphics (nomodeset) mode. Each option boots and loads and Plasma desktop session. The desktop panel sits at the bottom of the screen. On the desktop we find icons for opening a terminal, launching the GParted partition manager, launching the system installer, and opening the NixOS documentation. The documentation is in HTML format, it is stored locally (on the live media), and the documentation is displayed in Firefox.
NixOS 23.11 -- The live desktop and system installer
(full image size: 525kB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
Installing
After the Plasma session appears the Calamares system installer is launched automatically. Calamares asks us to select our preferred language. On this page there are buttons for showing us support options, known issues, and the distribution's release notes. These buttons all launch Firefox to show us the appropriate on-line resources. The following Calamares screens ask us to pick our timezone, keyboard layout, and username and password. We're then asked which desktop environment we want to install. The available options are: GNOME, Plasma, Xfce, Pantheon, Cinnamon, MATE, Enlightenment, LXQt, Budgie, Deepin, or no desktop with a command line only interface. We can pick only one desktop to install and I decided to use Plasma.
Calamares then asks us if we wish to enable non-free components like firmware. Then we are given the choice to manually partition the disk or accept an automated process. The automated approach sets up a single ext4 partition. We can ask the automated partitioning tool to also create a swap partition.
The installer then copies packages to the hard drive and offers to restart the computer. The whole process was quick and trouble-free.
Early impressions
My freshly installed copy of NixOS quickly booted to a graphical login screen. By default we sign into a Plasma X11 session, though a Plasma Wayland session is also available. Plasma uses a light theme by default. The desktop for the installed operating system no longer displays icons for documentation and install options. When we sign into our account there is no welcome window or first-run wizard.
NixOS 23.11 -- The KDE System Settings panel
(full image size: 259kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
I started testing NixOS in VirtualBox. The distribution ran well in the virtual machine. Audio and networking worked and the desktop was responsive. Plasma didn't dynamically resize with the VirtualBox window, but I could adjust the desktop resolution in the System Settings panel.
When I ran NixOS on my laptop all of my hardware was detected and worked well. Networking, audio, and media shortcut keys all functioned as expected. Plasma ran well on my laptop.
A fresh install of NixOS took up 7.5GB of disk space. Memory usage varied a bit from one boot up to the next. RAM consumption ranged from 570MB to 620MB when signed into Plasma. This puts NixOS well within the middle-weight range for mainstream distributions.
Included software
The Plasma edition of NixOS ships with a fairly small collection of desktop applications. We're given the Firefox web browser and the Elisa audio player. Audio codecs are included, though there is no video player. The Okular document viewer and Gwenview image viewer are included for us. There is a text editor (Kate) and a system monitor. The Dolphin file manager is installed for us.
The System Settings configuration panel is included to help us customize the desktop. We're also provided with a copy of KDE Help for learning about the Plasma desktop and its core applications.
Digging deeper we find the GNU command line programs, a full set of manual pages, and systemd covering init duties. The sudo command provides admin access to our first user so we can perform administrative actions. Version 6.1 of the Linux kernel is installed for us.
NixOS 23.11 -- Exploring the application menu with a dark theme
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
What I found interesting about the default collection of software was the lack of some popular or commonly used items. As I mentioned above, there is no video player. We can install one using the Nix package manager if we wish. Since NixOS exists in large part to show off the Nix advanced software manager, the distribution has skipped support for Flatpak and Snap. (Flatpak is available in the NixOS repositories if we want to install it.) The vi/vim text editor, provided by most distributions, is not included, though Nano is available.
Nix and software management
The Nix package manager is the centrepiece of the NixOS distribution. It's an advanced package manager which some very useful properties which will work quietly for us in the background while presenting us with an interface which feels similar to other command line package managers. Nix performs atomic updates, meaning installed software is always in a usable state; a crash or power outage mid-upgrade won't hurt anything. Nix also separates packages in a way which allows for multiple versions of software to be installed at the same time, which is handy if two applications rely on different versions of the same library.
Perhaps one of the most useful features of Nix's package management abilities is a concept called generations. Nix uses directories and symbolic links to keep installed software logically separated. Each time we install or remove new software Nix creates a snapshot of the installed packages. This snapshot is called a generation. This means if we install a new package which breaks something we can instantly revert the change back to the previous version. It also means if we install two different versions of the same application we can switch immediately backward and forward between the two versions. This makes testing and comparing application versions quite easy.
Let's look at how all of this appears to the end user. To refresh our local database of available software we can run "nix-channel --update". To upgrade one (or multiple) packages, we can run "nix-env -u".
When we want to find a package based on its name we can use a query search such as "nix-env -qa package-name", for example "nix-env -qa vlc" to find the VLC player. To install a package we want we can use "nix-env -i package-name" and removing old software can be accomplished with "nix-env -e package-name".
Nix does not display much information to the console while it is working and it tends to be slower than other package managers such as pacman and APT. However, it did work well for me and I encountered no issues with Nix's functionality.
A few paragraphs back I mentioned Nix takes snapshots whenever we add or remove packages. We can see all of the snapshots on our system by running the command "nix-env --list-generations". Each generation is associated with a number and the currently active snapshot is marked in the list of generations. We can then jump forward or backward in time using the command "nix-env --switch-generation" and specifying the number of the snapshot. For instance, if I'm currently in snapshot 10, I can go back one step by running "nix-env --switch-generation 9".
Jumping between generations happens instantly and the snapshots don't take much space, just the size of the package which was changed. This means we can often store dozens of snapshots without noticing a significant use of storage space. If Nix ever uses too much disk space to store its generations there is a clean-up command to delete old generations, this command is called "nix-collect-garbage".
Nix configuration
While atomic updates and package snapshots are great features to have, Nix has another, more impressive, trick up its sleeve. We can configure the NixOS distribution by writing a specification of the functionality that we want on our machine in a single file and running a command. Most operating systems have a control panel or a series of configuration modules - one for managing user accounts, one for software management, one for enabling background services, and so on. With Nix we can write a terse description of users, features, and services we want and run a command. Nix then figures out how to configure the operating system based on our written instructions.
The file /etc/nixos/configuration.nix contains the current configuration of our machine, omitting any packages we added manually. Whenever we change something in this file we need to run the command "nixos-rebuild switch" to apply the new configuration and switch into this new setup. This also sets up NixOS to boot into the new configuration. Should we wish to test out the new configuration without booting into it next time the computer starts we can run a different command, "nixos-rebuild test", to effectively test drive the new instructions without making them the default when the system restarts.
NixOS 23.11 -- Browsing the system's Nix configuration file
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The NixOS manual includes information on configuration options we can put in our file along with some examples. There are also some popular options, such as OpenSSH service access, already in the configuration file and commented out to make it easier to enable them with a few keystrokes.
Something I appreciate about Nix is we can delete old items we no longer want from the Nix configuration file and Nix will remove them from the operating system. This means we can disable services, remove user accounts, or delete packages by erasing them from the configuration file and running the command "nixos-rebuild switch".
NixOS 23.11 -- Rebuilding the system configuration
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
This might seem like an odd way, or even a cryptic way, to add and remove elements of the operating system. It's a bit like having one, giant recipe for the distribution rather than a series of tools to manage specific elements. However, once you get accustomed to writing rules for services and system-wide packages, it unlocks some potential. For example, we can copy the same configuration file to another computer (or another thousand computers) running NixOS and use the configuration file to build the same operating system on the other computers in a few minutes. In other words, Nix not only offers us a central way to manage our operating system, it also provides a way for us to clone our system to other machines with a single text file and the Nix software.
Immutable?
Something I've read over and over again during the past year is the idea (often shared in articles, forum posts, and support discussions) that NixOS is an immutable distribution, meaning people think it has a read-only filesystem. I've encountered this idea so often I wanted to address it in this review. This idea that NixOS is immutable is false. The NixOS distribution has no immutable properties and we can write to any part of the root filesystem. However, this myth seems to have spread widely (even among some NixOS users) due to Nix's ability to make atomic transactions using separate directories and symbolic links. Since immutable distributions also offer atomic updates it seems this one overlapping feature has caused a lot of people to become confused.
NixOS, using its snapshots and atomic updates, can offer some of the same benefits as some distributions which are immutable. However, NixOS does not use an immutable filesystem. It achieves its atomic update magic using other means.
Conclusions
NixOS, as a general purpose distribution works quite well. On the surface it doesn't do anything particular remarkable - we install it using Calamares, it runs GNOME and KDE (and some other desktops), and ships with a fairly minimal desktop experience. It's not unlike other streamlined desktop and minimal desktop install options from other mainstream distributions. NixOS can work like just about any other desktop distribution as long as we don't mind turning to the command line to install new software.
With that said, under the surface NixOS becomes much more interesting. Its main purpose is showing off the Nix package manager and Nix is impressive. The Nix software provides many features above and beyond most other traditional Linux package managers, providing automated snapshots, multiple versions of the same package, atomic updates, and essentially a type of boot environment. It's also possible to both instantly rollback changes and jump forward through snapshots.
As I mentioned above, the real gem Nix offers is its central configuration file where we can install new software, enable services, and even manager user accounts by editing a single file and running a command. This makes Nix not just a package manager, but also a system manager. Plus it gives us the ability to set up a copy of our customized operating system on another computer by deploying the Nix configuration file to another machine and running a command. It's highly flexible and, though there is a learning curve, this makes deploying (or redeploying) our distribution virtually effortless.
In addition to all of this, NixOS is a rare gem in that I don't think I ran into any errors while I was using it. The distribution was stable, it worked well with my hardware, and I didn't run into a single issue while running it. I feel NixOS is well worth a try, especially if you're a system administrator and want to deploy (or maintain) identical distributions across multiple machines.
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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
NixOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.1/10 from 97 review(s).
Have you used NixOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
FreeBSD Foundation to focus on wireless networking improvements, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support, Qubes OS 4.1 nearing its end of life, liblzma compromised upstream
The FreeBSD Foundation has published a series of updates which discuss work the Foundation is putting into the FreeBSD project. Some of the improvements being worked on include updating the FreeBSD wireless drivers: "The FreeBSD Foundation is making significant strides in wireless development, led by Cheng Cui and Bjoern Zeeb. Their primary goals are to fix bugs, stabilize the system, and improve iwlwifi for 802.11ac transfer speeds. Zeeb's recent contributions have brought stability fixes to native and LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers in FreeBSD 13.3. They will soon focus on enhancing iwlwifi performance to achieve faster and more reliable wireless connections on FreeBSD systems." The March 2024 Software Development Update covers additional improvements and areas of focus.
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Canonical is extending its support term for Ubuntu Pro subscribers. The company now offers 12 years of support for Ubuntu 14.04 and future long-term support (LTS) releases. The new offering is called Legacy Support and extends Ubuntu's LTS support cycles from 10 to 12 years. "Ubuntu Pro coverage for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will end in April 2024. With Legacy Support, organisations running their systems on top of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS can obtain an additional two years of expanded security maintenance and phone and ticket support. This enables IT managers to prepare a detailed upgrade plan for the next LTS, and software architects to concentrate on the application level with the support offered by Canonical's team."
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The Qubes project released version 4.2.1 of the Qubes OS platform for running tasks in isolation from each other. The release announcement was accompanied by a reminder that Qubes OS 4.1 will reach the end of its supported life in June. "Qubes OS 4.1 is scheduled to reach end-of-life (EOL) on 2024-06-18, approximately three months from the date of this announcement. If you're already using Qubes 4.2, then you don't have to do anything. This announcement doesn't affect you. If you're still using Qubes 4.1, then now is the perfect opportunity to upgrade, since a brand new Qubes OS 4.2.1 ISO was just released today! (This is also the best way to get started with Qubes if you don't have it installed yet.)"
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Andres Freund has reported the upstream xz repository has been compromised with a backdoor which can affect software which relies on the liblzma software library. This compromise can, in turn, affect secure shell logins on distributions which run systemd. "After observing a few odd symptoms around liblzma (part of the xz package) on Debian Sid installations over the last weeks (logins with ssh taking a lot of CPU, valgrind errors) I figured out the answer: The upstream xz repository and the xz tarballs have been backdoored. At first I thought this was a compromise of Debian's package, but it turns out to be upstream."
Freund's mailing list post goes on to explain how the backdoor was found and why it affects OpenSSH sessions on Debian and related distributions, even though OpenSSH does not rely on lzma. "OpenSSH does not directly use liblzma. However Debian and several other distributions patch OpenSSH to support systemd notification, and libsystemd does depend on lzma. Initially starting sshd outside of systemd did not show the slowdown, despite the backdoor briefly getting invoked. This appears to be part of some countermeasures to make analysis harder."
According to a Red Hat blog post, only versions 5.6 and newer of the xz software contain the backdoor. Versions 5.4 and earlier appear to be uncompromised.
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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) |
The status of GNU's Hurd kernel
The-thundering-herd asks: What is the current status of GNU Hurd? Is it still in development?
DistroWatch answers: For people unfamiliar with the project, Hurd is the name of GNU's microkernel project: "The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement filesystems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux)."
Hurd is still under development and the project publishes semi-regular news updates which highlight new developments in the kernel.
While still under development, the Hurd kernel has never really gained momentum the way Linux, FreeBSD kernel, or even Haiku's kernel has. The Hurd kernel does not have much in the way of hardware support and has limited CPU architecture support. It's not likely to run on most hardware or be stable enough to be used as a primary operating system.
One of the few operating systems to use the Hurd kernel is a port of the Debian project which couples GNU Hurd with the GNU userland utilities and a lightweight desktop environment. The GNU Hurd port of Debian can run in some virtual machines and is capable of running many of the same open source software applications as Debian's main Linux branch.
In the past we have talked about what it is like to run Debian's Hurd branch when running the LXDE desktop and a subset of Debian's software repositories.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
RELIANOID 7.2
RELIANOID is a Debian-based Linux distribution for load balancing. The distribution offers a load balancing oriented operating system for testing, development, and quality assurance environments. The project has published an update which improves on the distribution and scheduling of network traffic. "RELIANOID 7.2.0 comes with several key improvements to elevate your user experience. The system now operates on the solid foundation of Debian 12.5, ensuring a secure and up-to-date environment. The cluster service is now included by default, simplifying the setup for those deploying clustered environments. Additionally, we've invested in enhancing the developer documentation's syntax, making it more accessible and user-friendly. The HTTP farms parser has been fortified to improve robustness, and good practices have been applied across the core codebase to achieve Critic Level 4 compliance, ensuring the highest standards of code quality. This release addresses some bug fixes to fortify the reliability and stability of RELIANOID. Cluster replication issues have been resolved, ensuring a seamless and consistent cluster environment." Additional information is provided in the release announcement.
NetBSD 10.0
The highlight portable NetBSD operating system has reached a new milestone with the release of NetBSD 10.0. The new version introduces a number of performance and security improvements: "Benchmarks of NetBSD 10 show huge performance and scalability gains over NetBSD 9.x, especially on multiprocessor and multicore systems, for compute and filesystem-bound applications. Areas of improvement included: Switched the kernel's file path lookup cache to use faster per-directory red-black trees. Improved scheduler performance, including the ability to more appropriately spread load on a mixture of slow and fast cores (e.g. big.LITTLE Arm CPUs). Various optimizations for the machine-independent virtual memory system: Switched to a faster radix tree algorithm for memory page lookups. Improved tracking of clean/dirty pages, speeding up fsync(2) on large files by orders of magnitude. Improved parallelization: rewritten page allocator with awareness of CPU topology, replaced global counters with per-CPU counters, and reduced lock contention. Improved the performance of the select(2) and poll(2) system calls. Improved the performance of tmpfs. Implemented lazy update of atime/mtime. Various optimizations of architecture-dependent x86 and AArch64 code, vastly improved network and I/O throughput on aarch64. Various boot speed improvements. Compatibility with WireGuard: A new interface, wg(4), provides a VPN tunnel compatible with the WireGuard specification. The driver is experimental and needs more testing. A userspace implementation using a rump kernel server is also included, see wg-userspace(8). The NetBSD implementation works with WireGuard implementations used by commercial VPN providers, Android, Linux, and more." Additional details, including a list of the CPUs NetBSD supports, can be found in the project's release notes.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,982
- Total data uploaded: 44.2TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Have you ever tried running Hurd?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about GNU's Hurd kernel. The GNU microkernel project has been around for decades, but hasn't gained as much attention as other open source kernels like Linux and the BSDs. Still, Hurd has found some users through project's like Debian's Hurd port.
We'd like to hear if you've ever tried running Hurd. Let us know your opinions on the Hurd project in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on fast and slow rolling release distributions in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Have you used the Hurd kernel?
| Yes - in the past: | 118 (8%) |
| Yes - am running it now: | 11 (1%) |
| No - but plan to in the future: | 158 (11%) |
| No - and no plans to run it: | 1209 (81%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- NethSecurity. NethSecurity is a Linux-based distribution for firewalls. NethSecurity delivers the functionalities of a modern Next-Gen firewall: MultiWAN, deep packet Inspection, VPNs, and threat protection.
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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, 8 April 2024. 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 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 |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
gOS
gOS was an easy-to-use, Ubuntu-based distribution designed for less technical computer users. Its main features are the use of Enlightenment as the default desktop and tight integration of various Google products and services into the product.
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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