 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1133, 4 August 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 31st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are a lot of options for people to try in the Linux ecosystem. There are hundreds of distributions, dozens of desktops and window managers, and seemingly endless combinations of all of the above. This week, in our Questions and Answers section, we talk about mixing two popular options - the KDE Plasma desktop and the Linux Mint distribution - which tend not to be used together. We also discuss X11 desktop sessions and which distributions still support legacy X11 options. In our News section we report on Debian addressing a decades-old issue while the FreeBSD community talks about potential problems with the move to using a unified package manager. We also share news that the Common Desktop Environment has been ported to OpenBSD and talk about a Btrfs corruption bug which has affected people running recent kernel versions. Arch Linux's community repository was hit by more malware last week and we share details on this attack. Our Feature Story this week talks about a rare find in the Linux community: a distribution based on Devuan. Expirion Linux is a desktop distribution based on Devuan and we report on its features below. This week the world will welcome a new Debian release - Debian 13 "Trixie" - and our Opinion Poll asks which branch of the vast Debian project do you run? Please feel free to share why one branch or another is your favourite in the comments section. This week we added three new distributions to our database and we share the details below. Finally, we are pleased to share the releases of this past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: Expirion 6.0
- News: Debian addresses decades old issue, FreeBSD community discusses potential issues with its new package base, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hits Fedora users, more malware found in Arch's community repository
- Questions and answers: Linux Mint, KDE Plasma, and running X11 sessions
- Released last week: HeliumOS 10, 4MLinux 49.0, PorteuX 2.2
- Torrent corner: BigLinux
- Upcoming releases: Debian 13
- Opinion poll: Do you run one of Debian's branches?
- New additions: Shebang, TTOS Linux, XIVA Studio
- New distributions: AOSC OS, KDE Linux, OpenAnolis, Tinker WriterDeck
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Expirion 6.0
Expirion Linux is a Devuan-based desktop distribution which offers LXQt and Xfce desktop editions. The project provides separate releases built from the latest Stable and Testing branches of Devuan, with runit and SysV as init system options. Expirion ships with a more recent kernel than Devuan does and it also adds some user-friendly touches, custom themes and wallpapers, as well as productivity applications, such as LibreOffice, Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird, Audacity, Brasero and VLC.
Expirion runs on x86_64 processors only and is available in two desktop flavours: LXQt and Xfce. I downloaded the LXQt edition of Expirion Linux 6.0 which is 2.3GB in size. The boot menu offers us a few choices. We can start a live desktop session, switch languages (the default is English), or load the distribution into RAM before booting.
Expirion's live LXQt desktop uses a dark theme. The wallpaper is green and black and a panel is placed horizontally across the bottom of the display. A single icon on the desktop launches the Refracta system installer.
Expirion Linux 6.0 -- The LXQt application menu
(full image size: 450kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Installing
Clicking the system installer's icon opens a terminal window and launches another window which walks us through Refracta's configuration steps. The installer begins by showing us a list of actions and options the installer can handle and we are asked to check a box next to each applicable option. These options include using a swap partition, enabling disk encryption, using disk labels in the fstab file, whether to overwrite partitions, whether to enable automatic login, whether to have separate /boot and /home partitions, and more items. This is quite a long list and, while we can safely take the defaults, I would not expect most Linux newcomers (or even some moderately experienced Linux users) to understand all of the items in the list.
Refracta next offers to launch either GParted or cfdisk to manage partitions. Setting up partitions must be accomplished manually; there is no automatic partitioning option. Once we prepare a partition we are asked which device name (sda1, sda2, etc) to use for our root filesystem (and other filesystems).
The installer next asks us on which continent and in city we are located so it can figure out our timezone. We are shown a list of locales and asked to check which ones we want to enable. This list is cryptic, shown in the format of language_COUNTRY, with United States English (en_US) checked automatically. We are also asked to select a keyboard layout and choose whether to enable the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace shortcut.
At this point the installer window disappeared. Then I noticed the terminal window had generated a prompt and was waiting for me to answer whether I wanted to proceed with formatting the root partition. Once this step has been completed we are asked if we wish to install the GRUB boot loader and, if so, where. The final few steps ask us to make up a username and password for ourselves along with a password for the root account. Then the installer reports it has finished and we can restart the computer.
Refracta is one of the more cryptic and least friendly system installers I have used and it takes an unusually long time to get through compared to Ubiquity and Calamares. It's a curious choice for a young distribution.
Early impressions
My new copy of Expirion booted successfully to a graphical login screen with a dark background. Usernames are not listed on the login screen, we need to type both our username and our password to sign in. Once we have logged in we are shown the LXQt 2.1.0 desktop. The installed desktop looks as acts much like the live desktop did, minus the installer icon. LXQt is decorated with a dark theme, a tree-style application menu sits in the bottom-left corner of the desktop, and a system tray is placed in the bottom-right corner.
Expirion Linux 6.0 -- Exploring LXQt's settings panel
(full image size: 402kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I found LXQt to be quite responsive, offering better than average performance. The interface is snappy and distraction-free. It would have been nice if the application menu had a search box to make finding specific items faster, but the menu isn't crowded so it's not hard to find applications by browsing categories.
Included software
Expirion ships with a fairly standard collection of software, though with some overlap in certain areas. The distribution ships with the Chromium web browser, Firefox, Thunderbird, qBittorrent, and FileZilla. LibreOffice is included and, for some reason, it is the only entry in the application menu which includes the application's version number (25.2). The distribution includes a document viewer for looking at PDFs, BleachBit for cleaning up old files, and the GParted partition manager.
Expirion Linux 6.0 -- Running the Firefox browser
(full image size: 137kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I found Expirion ships with the Audacity audio editor, Brasero for burning optical media, the Cheese webcam utility, the VLC media player, and the HandBrake media transcoder. I also found an image viewer, a screenshot utility, and the PCManFM-Qt file manager. Deja Dup is provided to make it easy to create backups of our files.
Earlier I mentioned there is sometimes overlap in functionality. We see this a little with the two web browsers, and a bit more with virtual terminals as QTermina, UXTerm, and xterm are all included.
The LXQt desktop includes several configuration modules which are nicely bundled together in a settings panel. I like the small configuration tools and found they worked well.
The distribution ships with GNU command line utilities and the GNU Compiler Collection. We are also given local manual pages. Behind the scenes I found the SysV init software and version 6.12 of the Linux kernel.
The project's website states "Expirion 5.11 Xfce & LXQt is based on Devuan 5 and does not use systemd but instead uses runit." This might have been true for version 5.11, but 6.0 uses SysV init. There is no sign of runit on the system or in the Refracta install options. The project's statement is also out of date in terms of its base. Expirion 5.11 may have been based on Devuan 5, but Expirion 6 is based on Devuan's Testing branch. I'm not saying the project's website is inaccurate, it just hasn't been updated to reflect the technology being used in version 6.0.
Expirion Linux 6.0 -- Options for opening a video file
(full image size: 432kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
When I tried to play a video file by clicking it in the file manager, Expirion opened the HandBrake transcoding application. This is probably not the application people are going to want to launch when clicking a video file. We can right-click on a video file and choose to open it in VLC. I found it interesting that, by way of comparison, audio files open in the VLC video player rather than the transcoder or the Audacity audio editor. There is no dedicated music player included in the distribution.
Something Expirion does differently from most distributions is limit the main user's PATH variable to only include non-administrative utilities. The regular user account can launch files from /usr/bin, but does not see files in /usr/sbin. This is unusual because a lot of administration tools provide useful information and, often, do not require root access to work properly. For example, if I tried to run the swapon utility to get information about swap space, the utility appears to be missing. However, it is installed can we can run it by either running "/usr/sbin/swapon" or "sudo swapon" since sudo expands our PATH variable. This approach isn't wrong, but it is unusual for a desktop distribution. We can work around it by editing our shell's start-up script to expand our PATH.
Hardware
I tested Expirion in VirtualBox where the distribution ran smoothly. When I ran the distribution on my laptop the operating system detected all of my hardware. Audio, wireless networking, and keyboard shortcuts all worked. LXQt, by default, doesn't treat touchpad taps as clicks, but this can be adjusted through the settings panel. Another weird quirk of the desktop was tapping the Volume Up and Volume Down keys would cause the active window to lose and regain focus. This resulted in the media player or web browser window flickering whenever I adjusted the volume level.
Expirion Linux 6.0 -- Cleaning up old files with BleachBit
(full image size: 314kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Another audio quirk was that, even when the audio mixer in the system tray was set to 100% (and the application's volume control was also set to 100%), the volume level was unusually low, barely audible. With a little digging I found the ALSA audio level was set to about 10%, so no matter how high the desktop volume was raised, audio never went above 10%. This can be fixed by using the alsamixer command line tool to raise the ALSA volume settings. This is the first distribution I have used in many years which has required command line tools to fix volume problems.
LXQt is a light-to-middle weight desktop and so I was surprised to see it consumed a lot of memory, about 750MB. This puts LXQt running on Expirion on par with heavier desktops like Plasma 5. The distribution uses an average amount of disk space, about 7.0GB, plus any optional swap file we might set up.
Software management
The distribution provides us with Synaptic, a classic, low-level package manager. Using Synaptic we can install, remove, and upgrade packages. Synaptic isn't pretty or sleek and it doesn't allow us to browse the repositories while it is fetching new packages. On the other hand, Synaptic is fast and it worked well for me. The one problem I had with Synaptic was its repository manager screen didn't work - no repositories are shown as enabled. Despite no repositories showing up in Synaptic's configuration, the package manager worked and the APT command line package manager functioned too. Expirion pulls software from Devuan's Testing (code name: "Excalibur") repositories with no custom or added repositories.
Expirion Linux 6.0 -- Looking for repository information in Synaptic
(full image size: 302kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The Flatpak portable framework is installed, though no Flatpak repositories are enabled and there is no graphical front-end for Flatpak management included. We will need to use the command line to set up Flatpak and fetch packages.
Unlike many desktop distributions, Expirion does not notify us when new software updates become available. We need to check manually using Synaptic or the APT command line tools.
Conclusions
The Expirion website states "So what sets this apart from Devuan? Not much really the kernel for newer hardware support and LibreOffice has been updated, and some minor software & firmware changes, but that is about it and added some icons and themes - Basically I built this to suit my needs, hopefully it will satisfy yours as well."
To say it has been updated is not really accurate. The software included in Expirion is newer than Devuan's Stable branch, but only because Expirion is built on Devuan's Testing branch, which will be more up to date. We could install Devuan's Testing branch with the LXQt desktop and get approximately the same experience.
It's not a bad experience, on the whole, as long as the user has quite a bit of Linux experience. Expirion is a distribution which requires that you know the device names of your partitions, that you know how to change your PATH variable, that you can navigate multiple system installer windows working in parallel. It's not at all modern, elegant, or streamlined. This is a distribution for people who want to run a conservative, "for experts" distribution like Devuan, with LXQt preconfigured to look nice.
As the developer pointed out, this is something he made for himself and made it available for other people to use. Since I'm one of only 24 people to download the LXQt edition of Expirion since it was released, I'm guessing no many people have the same wants and style as the distribution's creator. This is a niche, conservative, expertise-required distribution and its small audience reflects that. It's a working, functional distribution, but one aimed at a highly specific audience - one that doesn't mind some effort and applying Linux knowledge to get functioning. I wouldn't recommend Expirion to many people because, chances are, if this is the distribution for you, you already know about it.
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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
Expirion has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.8/10 from 5 review(s).
Have you used Expirion? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian addresses decades old issue, FreeBSD community discusses potential issues with its new package base, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hits Fedora users, more malware found in Arch's community repository
Some Linux distributions, such as Debian and Slackware, have been around for over 30 years. This can lead to some surreal situations where old bugs, some of which would be old enough to vote, are getting updates and fixes decades after they were opened. In an amusing Debian news post, Carlos Henrique Lima Melara writes: "Sometimes we fix easy bugs, sometimes hard ones, and sometimes we fix bugs that are older than you and can have a driver's license: opened in 2003, closed in 2004, and actually fixed in 2025!" Debian's issue tracker has been around for a long time and it has become an archive which shows how much some things have changed and how many things have remained the same over the years.
* * * * *
There is an important discussion occurring in the FreeBSD community about the upcoming change to make FreeBSD's package manager (pkg) handle updates to the core operating system. Up to this point FreeBSD has used different tools to manage the core system and third-party packages. With the move to manage the whole system using pkg, streamlining software management, a few questions have be raised. One of them is how to handle situations where the administrator wants to remove all third-party software from the operating system, while leaving the core intact. An issue report for pkg discusses the problem: "Before PKGBASE this command will delete all third party packages but Base System will not be touched: 'pkg delete -af'. If You use PKGBASE it will also delete entire Base System also - which is not what someone wants. I would 'modify' pkg to have some kind of 'blacklist' option - to always mask the FreeBSD-base repo - so general pkg experience will be the same after moving to PKGBASE." It looks as though there will be a flag added to base system packages to mark them as "vital" to prevent their removal.
* * * * *
People who used Unix in the 1990s may remember the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). The legacy desktop uses a literal desktop metaphor with drawers and a workspace. An OpenBSD developer is bringing CDE to OpenBSD: "First draft at porting CDE. It's still rough around the edges and very slightly tested. I wouldn't use it as a daily driver, it's old insecure code but it's fun if you want to bring back memories." Details on the CDE project and a list of platforms it can run on are covered on the CDE SourceForge page.
* * * * *
Some people running the Fedora distribution (along with other distributions running recent versions of the Linux kernel) have reported Btr filesystem corruption issues after their computers have shutdown unexpectedly. A kernel mailing list post reports: "There has been increased reports of users reporting that they could not boot into their system anymore - sometimes after a needed force shutdown, but also according the users after a normal shutdown/reboot process. The filesystem can be accessible again, after running following command in the chroot: 'sudo btrfs rescue zero-log /dev/sdX' There is no way to reproduce this constantly." A Fedora support thread shares additional details. The issue appears to affect only users using Btrfs and version 6.15.3 (or newer) of the Linux kernel.
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Two weeks ago we shared news that multiple packages in the Arch User Repository, an optional community add-on repository for Arch Linux, had been found to contain three packages infected with malware. This week another attacker tried to compromise users' machines using a modified Google Chrome package. Linuxiac reports: "It's pretty shocking that this time around, the situation is almost exactly the same - a package called google-chrome-stable doesn't just install Google's browser, but also runs a RAT [remote access trojan] on your system. That kind of malware can potentially give attackers control over the infected machine, letting them steal data, install more malicious software, or spy on users." The offending package has since been removed. This is an important reminder that while the AUR is popular, it is also not monitored or verified by the Arch Linux team.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Mint, KDE Plasma, and running X11 sessions
Seeking-Mint-Plasma asks: I've been using Mint for a couple of months and really like it, but want to run KDE. People tell me KDE isn't supported on Mint so what's the next closest distro I can install?
DistroWatch answers: When people say the KDE Plasma desktop isn't supported on Linux Mint, what they are probably trying to say is that the Linux Mint team does not currently have an ISO file you can download which uses Plasma as the default desktop. However, that's not an issue since you are already running Linux Mint. All you need to do is install the KDE Plasma package on your existing system to experience Plasma running on your copy of Linux Mint.
From your existing Mint system you can install the kde-full package to set up a complete Plasma desktop along with associated KDE applications. Alternatively, you can install the kde-standard package to get a more basic Plasma desktop without all the extra applications. You can fetch either of these packages through Synaptic or you could install the basic KDE experience by running the following command:
sudo apt install kde-standard
If, for some reason, you do not wish to keep using Linux Mint and want to try another distribution which ships with KDE software installed automatically, the next closest distribution is probably Kubuntu. It uses the same Ubuntu packages as Linux Mint does, but uses KDE Plasma as its default desktop.
* * * * *
Seeking-the-old-ways asks: With Wayland taking over everywhere, which distributions still use X11?
DistroWatch answers: Something which tends to confuse people is that whether a desktop system is running a Wayland or X11 session is not a feature of the distribution, at least not primarily. Whether you are running a graphical session using X11 or Wayland depends on the desktop environment. When a desktop environment supports both display protocols the distribution you are running will likely determine which session runs by default, but the X11 or Wayland functionality is implemented by the desktop environment.
In other words, any Linux distribution should provide an X11 session if the desktop you are using supports working on X11 sessions. At this point almost all do, with a few rare exceptions. The COSMIC desktop, for example, is Wayland-only and GNOME 50 (and newer) are going to be Wayland-only. Virtually all other major Linux desktops (such as Plasma, Xfce, LXQt, Cinnamon, and Budgie) are still compatible with X11.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
HeliumOS 10
HeliumOS is an atomic and immutable distribution which is built upon AlmaLinux OS. The project has published HeliumOS 10 which uses Btrfs as the default filesystem, zsh for the shell, and offers version 6.12 of the Linux kernel. "HeliumOS 10 has released with some notable changes from earlier alpha releases: Version 6.12 of the Linux kernel from AlmaLinux, signed for secure boot. zsh as default shell, with a polished and minimal configuration. BTRFS as default filesystem, with an option for LUKS full-disk encryption in the installer. Docker is installed by default, see our documentation for more details. HeliumOS build sources were migrated from a collection of Bash scripts to Ansible yaml. These are built using Podman into Bootable Container images... Two critical bugs were found and fixed during the HeliumOS 10 alpha + beta: fixed a bug through the use of HeliumOS 'Edge' edition, some devices using NVIDIA GPUs previously experienced stuttering; automatically recovers from kernel panics resulting from a bug where systemd-remount-fs.service does not function properly on bootc systems." Additional details are available in the release announcement.
4MLinux 49.0
4MLinux, an independently-developed mini distribution with JWM as the preferred window manager, has been updated to version 49.0. The new release brings a large number of updates, including X.Org Server 21.1.16, JWM 2.4.6, GTK 4.18.5, ALSA 1.2.14, Tor 0.4.8.16, PCManFM 1.4.0, OpenSSH 10.0p1 with OpenSSL 3.5.0, mpv 0.40.0 and Mesa 25.1.0. The Wayland display server now appears on the list of add-ons for the very first time, and so is version 6 of the Qt library. "The status of the 4MLinux 49.0 series has been changed to STABLE. As always, the new major release has some new features. 4MLinux can now be installed on Bcachefs partitions, but only in UEFI mode. This release ships with much improved support for mobile devices, via Bluetooth and PTP/MTP protocols. Stella (Atari 2600 VCS emulator) and Brutal Chess have been added to the 4MLinux GamePack collection. Aqualung (music player), Googles (music manager), QWinFF (media converter), Fastfetch (system monitor) are now included out of the box. GIMP4, gnuplot (plots generator), ReZound (audio editor) are available as downloadable extensions. And finally, ready-to-install Intel VAPPI drivers can be found on the 4MLinux live image." See the complete release announcement for additional details and a screenshot of the distribution's default desktop.
PorteuX 2.2
The Slackware-based PorteuX project has published a new release, version 2.2, which introduces several changes to the kernel and includes a fix for Xfce not locking the desktop properly. "In Xfce current there is a potential critical issue when using an NVIDIA card with Mesa drivers 25.1.x and the Xfce compositor (xfwm4) with vsync set to glx (or auto, which usually means glx). Because of this, PorteuX now forces xfwm4's vsync to use xpresent by default. Since kernel 6.12, VirtualBox may not work because the kernel initializes virtualization on KVM module loading by default. To avoid this, PorteuX added kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0 to the APPEND line in boot/syslinux/porteux.cfg. You can revert this by editing the file, and to fix VirtualBox, you need to unload the KVM kernel modules manually with the following command: sudo modprobe -r kvm_amd kvm_intel kvm. The Kernel .config file has been significantly changed, removing support for obsolete hardware and enabling squashfs multi-threading (CONFIG_SQUASHFS_DECOMP_MULTI_PERCPU), which increased memory usage by 100 MB but improved performance. Please test and report any issues. The kernel module is now much larger due to a recent NVIDIA firmware update." Further details are offered 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: 3,251
- Total data uploaded: 48.0TB
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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 run one of Debian's branches?
The release of Debian 13 is scheduled to take place later this week. There are several branches of Debian, apart from the project's famous Stable flavour, Debian maintains older releases (suitable called Old Stable) and a legacy long-term support branch (called Old Old Stable). There are also development branches. Testing eventually turns into the next Stable release and there is a cutting edge, rolling branch called Unstable (also known as Sid). For people who want to truly be on the bleeding edge, there is an Experimental branch where new packages are tested. Which of these Debian flavours are you currently running?
You can see the results of our previous poll on classic open source debates in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Which branch of Debian do you run?
| Old Old Stable: | 23 (1%) |
| Old Stable: | 17 (1%) |
| Stable: | 1058 (52%) |
| Testing: | 248 (12%) |
| Sid: | 87 (4%) |
| Experimental: | 7 (0%) |
| A combination of the above: | 104 (5%) |
| None of the above: | 493 (24%) |
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|
| Website News |
New distributions added to database
Shebang
Shebang is a lightweight Artix-based Linux distribution with focus on simplicity, privacy and security. It uses a customised Openbox window manager suitable for both intermediate and advanced power users. Shebang is an attempt at building a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing usability and performance.
Shebang 25.8 -- Running the Openbox window manager
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
TTOS Linux
TTOS Linux is a desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch. It comes with several custom utilities and features, such as a user-friendly Internet security suite, an animated live wallpaper, NVIDIA GPU support, a ClamAV antivirus suite, Android remote messaging, UEFI support, and a net system installer with a choice of multiple desktop environments.
XIVA Studio
XIVA Studio is a multimedia-oriented Linux distribution derived from Manjaro Linux and BigLinux. It's main goal is to cater to the needs of professional creators in the area of video, audio, graphics and animation production. XIVA Studio provides optimised Linux kernels built for a number of popular processor and graphics cards configurations. It uses KDE Plasma as the default desktop environment.
XIVA Studio 2025-07-031 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 3.1MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- AOSC OS. AOSC OS is an independent Linux distribution featuring the oma package manager. The distributions runs on a wide range of CPUs, including x86_64, AArch64, and LoongArch.
- KDE Linux. KDE Linux is an immutable, desktop Linux distribution used for testing KDE software. It is considered the reference implementation for KDE software on Linux. The distribution uses Arch Linux packages in its base.
- OpenAnolis. OpenAnolis is a Chinese distribution which seeks to fill in the gap left by the replacement of CentOS Linux with CentOS Stream. OpenAnolis is a long-term support, RPM-based distribution.
- Tinker WriterDeck. Tinker is a Debian-based distribution which converts a laptop or Chromebook into a device for writing and editing text documents only. It provides no access to applications, web browsing, or notifications. Tinker boots into a text environment and runs the Tilde text editor.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 11 August 2025. 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 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Full list of all issues |
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RED OS
RED OS is an independently-developed Russian Linux distribution for workstations and servers. It uses the RPM and DNG tools for package management. The workstation edition provides a choice of three desktops, KDE Plasma, GNOME and MATE, while the server variant includes a custom server administration utility called RED ADM. The distribution is developed by Russia's RED SOFT, a company that also provides technical support and Linux training, as well as various administration, virtualisation and database software products.
Status: Active
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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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