 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1084, 19 August 2024 |
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Welcome to this year's 34th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Many distributions these days seek to offer an experience which can be described as an easy-to-use Arch Linux. One such project is Liya, an Arch-based distribution that uses the Calamares system installer and the Cinnamon desktop. Jeff Siegel recently took Liya for a test drive and reported on his findings. Read on to learn his thoughts on the distribution in our Feature Story. In our News section we share new performance improvements coming to the Haiku project along with an announcement Gentoo is dropping IA-64 processor support next month. Plus we talk about a major collection of updates coming to Redcore users and challenges this project is facing. This week we also talk about encryption, particularly how to encrypt multiple filesystems on the same hard drive. Do you use full disk or home directory encryption? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the new releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jeff Siegel) |
Liya 2.0
Look upon Liya, a rolling release distribution based on Arch Linux, and prepare to be amazed. It's slick. It's snappy. And it somehow manages to give Arch an intuitive graphical interface for those of us who don't need to use the command line to be fulfilled as a human being.
Liya 2.0 -- The Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 455kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Most amazing, it's a one-person operation, the work of Sayed M. Hisham, who seems to have put his heart and soul - and who knows what else - into producing Liya. Who else would offer this warning? "Liya Is Not For Users Who ... Are distro-hoppers." The ISO, download, and installation procedure are as capable as anything from Fedora or Ubuntu, and that's not necessarily easy to do.
So why isn't this this a completely positive review of Liya 2.0 (codenamed Aadnya), after a week or so tinkering with Liya? Because it took me a week to navigate the balky software updater/installer, which kept throwing errors related to a series of corrupted keyring PGP signatures. The instructions for fixing the problem were incomplete and contradictory; I'd do one thing, which didn't work, and then have find another approach, which also didn't work.
And if one takes a week to figure out how to install new software and update the existing installation, that kind of puts a damper on using Liya, doesn't it?
Nevertheless, Liya is worth writing about because - assuming Hisham can clean up the documentation - it offers something that seems to fill a need. He understands this, writing that Liya's goal is to provide an Arch-based distro that isn't bloated, works on lower-spec hardware, and combines a clean and efficient interface with quality performance.
Where's the update?
The update and installation flummox was about the last thing I expected after running Liya without any trouble in VirtualBox and then installing it on my test machine. Both went off without a hitch; in fact, it was one of the smoothest VirtualBox sessions I've had when writing a DistroWatch review. The live version of Liya didn't hang up, make the screen go goofy, or any of the rest. It just worked.
Even better: it took just seven minutes to install the 64-bit Cinnamon desktop edition, which is provided through a 3.6GB ISO (there is also a 4.1GB MATE desktop edition). Requirements are 4GB of RAM, a dual core CPU, and 20GB of hard drive space - hardly overwhelming specs. Liya comes with systemd 256, Cinnamon 6.2.2 and it updates to the 6.10.0-rc6-1 mainline kernel after installation.
The Calamares installer did what it was supposed to do without any problems, even giving the option to install the distro on an ext4 or Btrfs filesystem (I chose the latter), In fact, it restored my wireless connection and remembered my screen resolution, as well as rebooting without a problem while removing the installation media, which sometimes hangs up with other distros.
Liya 2.0 -- The Calamares system installer
(full image size: 615kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The trouble started when I went to update the system after installation. I ran the Pamac software updater/installer, and got an error: "Failed to commit transaction/Failed to retrieve some files." I messed around with the settings, figuring a repository was set up incorrectly. No joy there, either. So I clicked the Forum desktop icon, which took me to the distro's wiki. Listed were three terminal commands to run after installation: refreshing the mirror list and keyring and then updating the system with "sudo pacman -Syu".
Liya 2.0 -- Failing to update packages
(full image size: 249kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
"Ah," I thought, "it's based on Arch, so my Debian-centric mind just didn't understand what needed to be done." But the provided commands from the wiki didn't work, either - the terminal kept spitting out lines about untrusted software keys and didn't do any updating.
At this point, I thought about moving on, but - to be completely honest - I didn't want to admit that an Arch-based distro had beaten me. So I put Liya away for a day or so, planning to return with a fresh mindset and to undertake some intensive DuckDuckGo-ing.
This process went on for about a week, with no more success. The only related entry in the Liya forum was more than a year old, but didn't offer a solution. And nothing turned up during various Internet searches, save for some hints that the same problem existed with Kali Linux,
And then, for no particular reason, I looked yet again at the almost too spartan Liya website. At the very bottom of the home page, there was an 11-step installation guide. I had not paid much attention to it before, since it said to use Rufus to install Liya, and I don't use Windows. But the 11th step was the difference: "After the installation, run fixpacrepo from the terminal." Which I did, and - save for one remaining annoyance where clicking "shut down" on the menu only logs out - Liya was ready to run as a daily driver.
Software and apps
The Cinnamon desktop works nicely in Liya - no stutters, no hang-ups, and a minimum of spinning wheels after launching an app. Cinnamon extensions are added through a dedicated app, and I installed the weather extension without trouble. And it is light to use, with only 8% on the CPU and 1,400MB of memory used while a YouTube video was running at the same time as a song played on the music player.
Liya 2.0 -- The Cinnamon application menu
(full image size: 339kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The default applications are a mix of Cinnamon, Arch and its underpinnings, including access to the AUR, and Hisham's selections. Cinnamon contributions include the Nemo file manager and its Actions Centre; the Pix photo viewer; xed text editor; the GNOME Terminal; and the Celluloid video player. Hisham has chosen Brave as the browser, Geary as the e-mail client, and the free version of OnlyOffice as the office suite. Also included are the Ulauncher application launcher; Vim, for those who prefer that sort of thing; Deluge for BitTorrent; Bleachbit (for the intrepid); and Exaile for music.
Brave and OnlyOffice are intriguing choices, though Ulauncher and Geary aren't common, either. Brave seemed to work as it was supposed to, though it didn't seem any lighter than Firefox. I know OnlyOffice a little (I've worked my way through most office suites, free and paid, in a vain attempt to liberate myself from LibreOffice's annoyances), and it's fine, but not appreciably different from LibreOffice. Geary, thanks to Google's security witchcraft, wouldn't recognize the Gmail account I use for these reviews, so it was easier to set up a Brave progressive web app (PWA) and run Gmail through it. Ulauncher was a pleasant surprise, though I wish it was as easy to set up to access files and documents as it is on the Albert launcher.
Liya 2.0 -- Running OnlyOffice
(full image size: 113kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
One word here about Hardinfo2, a system information and benchmark utility. Usually, one of the Neofetch clones suffices for my purposes, but Hardinfo2 is much more complete, offers the information in a user-friendly way, and allowed me to run fun, if useless, benchmarks for my older test machine.
In the end, the problems with Liya aren't about the distro itself, which is so simple to use it's almost as if it's not based on Arch. Believe it or not, there's as little need to use the command line as there is on Ubuntu. And yes, I can see using it on my older hardware as a daily driver, even though it likely does far more than I need it to do. That it was a rolling release also didn't seem to matter. Once I got everything working, nothing gummed up or to acted wonky.
Rather, the problem is - sadly - typical of so many one-person and small group Linux efforts. There's so much to do in just building the damned thing that so much else falls through the cracks. Yes, I probably should have found the instructions to run fixpacrepo to rebuild the repos and update the GPG keys sooner than I did. And, almost certainly, an Arch devotee would have known to do it as matter of course.
On the other hand, for anyone coming to Arch from elsewhere, which seems to be one of Liya's goals, one set of accurate and complete instructions located in every place anyone would look - home page, wiki, forum, whatever - is necessary, even if it's a lot of work. That's one of the basics in running a distro. Hopefully, Hisham can take that next step, since Liya deserves all the attention it can get.
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Hardware used for this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a Dell Latitude E7440 laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel i7-4600U
- Storage: 256GB SSD
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485
- Display: Intel HD Graphics 4400
When he is not testing out new versions of Linux distributions, Jeff Siegel can be found writing about all things related to wine at Wine Curmudgeon.
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Visitor supplied rating
Liya has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.5/10 from 11 review(s).
Have you used Liya? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Haiku introduces performance improvements, Redcore merges major upgrade, Gentoo dropping IA-64 support
The Haiku project has been making progress on multiple fronts. Developer x512 recently posted they have a mostly-functioning port of the Firefox web browser and offered screenshots of Firefox running on the open source operating system.
Meanwhile the project's monthly newsletter talks about performance and profile improvements: "Haiku has a built-in CPU time profiler (just called profile.) Unfortunately, it's been rather broken for years, regularly outputting data that was either empty or just didn't make any sense. In order to use it to try and track down some of the other bottlenecks, I spent a bunch of time fixing various bugs in it, as well as the debugger support code that it relies on to function, including to stack trace collection, buffer flushing, symbol lookup, scheduler callbacks, image load reporting, and more. I also implemented userspace-only profiling (ignoring kernel stack frames entirely), fixed some output buffer sizing issues, and fixed a race condition in thread resumption that also affected strace. While it isn't perfect, it's much better than before, and can now be used to profile applications and the kernel to see where CPU time is being spent; and notably it now checks the thread's CPU time counters to detect if it 'missed' profiling ticks, and if so how many."
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People who run Redcore Linux should prepare for a major upgrade of the rolling release project. Part of the flood of updates, for new and existing users, comes from time constraints. " I have promised I will merge all the changes from branch next and release an ISO at the same time, however I cannot keep that promise and I apologise. Producing an ISO image is a time consuming endeavour. It takes 3 hours to spin, followed by days of testing. If something goes wrong, I have to start from scratch. I understand many of you would prefer not to go through a lengthy update, however, for the time being, I cannot dedicate a few days to produce a new release. Branch master is, as of this post, almost 3 months behind, and it falls even further behind each time I push updates into branch next. As mentioned above, pushing frequent updates is easy, producing a new release, not so much. At the same time, holding a branch behind with the hope I might get some time to produce a release, is unreasonable. As a result, I have decided to merge all the goodies from branch next, into branch master, aka Plasma 6, LXQt 2.0, new system profile, and a new binary format." Instructions for how to handle the new flood of updates are covered in the project's blog post.
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The Gentoo project has announced it will be dropping support for the IA-64 CPU architecture in the near future, following the Linux kernel phasing out support. "Following the removal of IA-64 (Itanium) support in the Linux kernel and glibc, and subsequent discussions on our mailing list, as well as a vote by the Gentoo Council, Gentoo will discontinue all ia64 profiles and keywords. The primary reason for this decision is the inability of the Gentoo IA-64 team to support this architecture without kernel support, glibc support, and a functional development box (or even a well-established emulator). In addition, there have been only very few users interested in this type of hardware." The change will take place in early September 2024.
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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) |
Dual boot with encryption
Shields-up asks: How can I make it so the files from one Linux distro on my laptop can't be accessed by another distro on the same laptop? I only have one hard drive in the laptop.
DistroWatch answers: When you are trying to protect one operating system from another on the same hardware, you pretty much need to use encryption. Depending on which files you want to protect, you might take different approaches to using encryption. For instance, if you are only worried about protecting your user's files (data stored under your home directory) then you could use user directory encryption or encrypt the /home partition only. However, if you are worried about one operating system compromising another, not just reading the contents of private data on the filesystem, then you'll need full disk/partition encryption.
The challenge we then face is few distribution system installers make it easy to set up multiple distributions on the same hard drive, both with encrypted root filesystems. Some projects, such as Ubuntu, make it easy to wipe an entire drive and encrypt the operating system's disk, but they don't really offer a smooth way to install two operating systems side-by-side, with both of them encrypted. It's generally assumed that if you want to protect your operating system's data using encryption, then you won't install a second operating system which might be used to compromise it.
There are a few suggestions I can make for working around this assumption.
The first and easiest option is to set up your preferred distribution normally with full disk encryption. Then install your second distribution inside a virtual machine running on the original (host) distribution. This won't, technically, provide dual boot capabilities, so if that is something you really need this won't help. However, in the vast majority of cases, installing a distribution in a virtual machine and using full disk encryption in the VM is the most practical way to go. The host won't see the encrypted files inside the virtualized guest and the guest won't see the host's files.
The only situations where this will not work are if you really need the second operating system to have direct access to the hardware or you have an extremely limited amount of RAM available.
Another option would be to plug in an external hard drive to your laptop. Then install one distribution per drive, each of them using full disk encryption. Most laptops will boot from an external drive and that way each distro can have its own disk. For added security, when not using the distribution on the external drive, you could unplug it, guaranteeing the distro on the internal drive can't see the second distro at all.
The performance of the distro on the second drive will be reduced when reading from the disk, and you'll have some up front costs for the external drive, but this is probably the easiest approach if you absolutely need to dual boot.
Since most system installers do not handle setting up dual-boot, encrypted operating systems gracefully, a third option is to do the disk partitioning and encrypting ourselves. We can set up encrypted disk partitions manually and then try to install our distribution of choice into the encrypted volume. This usually only works well with highly manual distributions, such as Arch Linux or in cases where the user knows how to set up a distribution manually using a live media. However, for those who are brave enough to go this route and want full control, the Arch wiki has tutorials for setting up encrypted partitions, ZFS, and LVM volumes.
This last option is certainly the most complex and involves the most work. However, if the situation really requires dual booting, full filesystem encryption, and cannot involve a second hard drive, this is probably the best option left to you.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
RebeccaBlackOS 2024-08-12
RebeccaBlackOS is a Debian-based live distribution which can be used to run Wayland desktop sessions. The project's latest release features a number of upgrades, including swapping out Qt5 for Qt6 and dropping support for 32-bit processors. "New in these ISOs since 2023-01-16: Only 64-bit ISOs are made as QtWebEngine refuses to build in 32 bit chroots. Config files in packages built by checkinstall are correctly marked as config files. Files from the build process are all part of packages, and are not ophaned. The number of potential file conflicts with unintalled packages from the tier 1 Debian repo has been vastly reduced. The few that remain are properly handled by dpkg-divert. Linux 6.10 is built, and drm_panic is enabled. The ttynull driver is enabled. Linux is patched directly to use /dev/ttynull as the default console device. This allows systemd to correctly log to /dev/console. The tier 1 packages are now Debian Bookworm. Qt5 is now removed in favor of Qt6." Additional information can be found in the project's release notes.
Tails 6.6
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity. The project's latest release, Tails 6.6, is focused on fixing issues and improving the persistent storage experience. "Fixed problems: Persistent storage: Increase the maximum waiting time to 4 minutes when unlocking the Persistent Storage before returning an error. Made the creation of the Persistent Storage more robust after starting a Tails USB stick for the first time. Prevent the Persistent Storage settings from freezing after opening a link to the documentation. Prevent Additional Software from crashing when installing virtual packages. Networking: Fix connecting to the Tor network using default bridges. Allow enabling multiple network interfaces again." The release announcement offers additional information.
deepin 23
The deepin distribution is based on Debian and features the custom-made Deepin Desktop Environment (Deepin DE). The project's latest release is version 23 which introduces atomic updates and support for a wider range of CPU architectures. The new CPU support includes install media and packages for ARM and RISC-V processors. "The system repository packages have been comprehensively upgraded to enhance stability and security, and better support new hardware and architectures such as ARM64, RISC-V, and LoongArch64. Established a new V23 repository for the upgrade of over 8,000 core packages. Introduced a new installation and upgrade mechanism to reduce disk space occupation during whole disk installation. Provided a flexible upgrade backup mechanism to ensure user rollback capability in case of upgrade anomalies, and offered users the ability to manage multiple versions. Optimized system backup solutions to reduce disk space usage compared to the previous A/B partition scheme. Added the "Atomic Update" capability, allowing users to flexibly roll back or switch system versions based on backup restore points." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
deepin 23 -- The Deepin desktop and application menu
(full image size: 2.6MB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
ExTiX 24.8
ExTiX is a distribution in the Debian family which offers alterative desktop environments. The project's latest release, ExTiX 24.8, is based on deepin 23. "New functions etc. in ExTiX 24.8 'Deepin': 1. VirtualBox Guest Additions are not pre-installed. No real need for them since you can run ExTiX in full screen in VirtualBox by just changing the screen resolution. 2. You can run ExTiX from RAM. Use boot alternative 2 (load to RAM) or Advanced. A wonderful way to run Linux if you have enough RAM. Everything will be super fast. When ExTiX has booted up you can remove the DVD or USB stick. 3. You can use Deepin Installer as an alternative to Refracta Installer. Use Deepin Installer preferable on UEFI computers if you want/need to install or reinstall GRUB. 4. I have installed Google Chrome 127.0.6533.119-1 as a replacement for Deepin's Browser, which suddenly can be in Chinese. 5. I've added Synaptic Package Manager. A must I think. Watch a screenshot when Synaptic is running. 6. You can watch Netflix while running Google Chrome...." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
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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: 3,055
- Total data uploaded: 45.1TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Do you encrypt your root filesystem or home directories?
In our Questions and Answers column we talked about disk encryption. When it comes to protecting data there are a few approaches people can take. One is to encrypt everything on the disk, including the operating system and user files. Some people prefer to just encrypt the data files under their account. Others may not encrypt any parts of the filesystem and, instead, use encrypted file vaults for sensitive information. We'd like to hear which approach to encryption you use.
You can see the results of our previous poll on types of smartphones our readers use in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Full disk encryption or home directory encryption?
| I use full disk encryption: | 417 (12%) |
| I encrypt home directories only: | 90 (3%) |
| I use file vaults: | 100 (3%) |
| I use a combination of the above: | 89 (3%) |
| I use another approach: | 69 (2%) |
| I use none of the above: | 2595 (77%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- BredOS. BredOS is a user-friendly Arch-based Linux distribution specifically designed for ARM-based single board computers (SBCs).
- Red OS. Red OS is a Russian distribution for servers and workstations. The distribution offers KDE, GNOME, and MATE editions for the x86_64 architecture.
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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, 26 August 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 1176 (2026-06-08): Redcore Linux 2601, the problem with minimal system requirements, Red Hat account linked to compromised npm repositories, COSMIC to get frosted glass effect, openSUSE shows off system extension manager, Origami merges with RakuOS |
| • Issue 1175 (2026-06-01): PineTab2 with various distros, less common words of wisdom, Canonical shutting down Ubuntu's Pastebin, Murena nears 100k users, DistroWatch turns 25 |
| • Issue 1174 (2026-05-25): Solus 4.9, Linux tablets, Haiku boots on Apple M1 machines, Fedora drops Deepin packages, Mint improves Nemo performance |
| • Issue 1173 (2026-05-18): Sylve on FreeBSD, the benefit of BleachBit, Debian commits to reproducible builds, Debian publishes updated install media, Haiku introduces SMP support on ARM64 processors, Rocky Linux creates opt-in security repository, Fedora reconsiders AI tools, KDE receives generous donation |
| • Issue 1172 (2026-05-11): Fedora 44, dealing with extra fonts, Fedora plans to provide AI tools, problems with Ubuntu's new coreutils, TrueNAS extends its development cycle, postmarktetOS improves the boot splash screen, Redox ports tmux |
| • Issue 1171 (2026-05-04): Xubuntu 26.04, extending memory with VRAM, Ubuntu plans AI features, Devuan developer forks GTK2, Mint introduces hardware enablement builds, Linux running on a PlayStation 5, local kernel exploit found in Linux |
| • Issue 1170 (2026-04-27): ENux 5.2.1, picking a second distro, AlmaLinux expands CPU support, FreeBSD publishes Status Report, Ubuntu MATE skips 26.04 release |
| • Issue 1169 (2026-04-20): Lakka 6.1, free software and source-based distributions, FreeBSD Foundation publishes compatible laptop list, Debian holds Project Leader election, Haiku progresses ARM64 port, Mint to extend development cycle, Linux 7.0 released |
| • Issue 1168 (2026-04-13): pearOS 2026.03, EndeavourOS 2026.03.06, which distros are adopting age verification, Arch adjusts its firewall packages, Linux dropping i486 support, Red Hat extends its release cycle, Debian's APT introduces rollbacks, Redox improves its scheduler |
| • Issue 1167 (2026-04-06): Origami Linux 2026.03, answering questions for Linux newcomers, Ubuntu MATE seeking new contributors, Ubuntu software centre is expanding Deb support, FreeBSD fixes forum exploit, openSUSE 15 Leap nears its end of life |
| • Issue 1166 (2026-03-30): NetBSD jails, publishing software for Linux, Ubuntu joins Rust Foundation, Canonical plans to trim GRUB features, Peppermint works on new utilities, PINE64 shows off open hardware capabilities |
| • Issue 1165 (2026-03-23): Argent Linux 1.5.3, disk space required by Linux, Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and builds RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking |
| • Issue 1164 (2026-03-16): d77void, age verification laws and Linux, SUSE may be for sale, TrueNAS takes its build system private, Debian publishes updated Trixie media, MidnightBSD and System76 respond to age verification laws |
| • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
| • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed |
| • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Rhino Linux
Rhino Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution which offers a rolling-release upgrade approach. The distribution uses a customised Xfce desktop environment. Rhino features a custom meta package manager which unifies Deb, Pacstall and Flatpak software management.
Status: Active
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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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