 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1169, 20 April 2026 |
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Welcome to this year's 16th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Part of what makes Linux so flexible and powerful is its open source nature. Open source operating systems provide a way for people from around the world to add features and fix problems, sharing their progress with others. This week, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about free software operating systems and source-focused distributions. Our Feature Story this week also touches upon Linux's great flexibility as we talk about how distributions, such as Lakka, can be used to turn low-end computers into gaming consoles. Do you have a gaming console at home and is it powered by Linux? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. In our News column we talk about Linux reaching version 7.0 while the Haiku team gets their operating system to boot in an ARM64 virtual machine. We also talk about Mint's lengthening development cycle and link to a summary of work going into the next Mint release. FreeBSD's laptop compatibility is improving and we link to a list of laptops which can run the operating system. Plus, we are pleased to share a summary of last week's releases 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:
- Review: Lakka 6.1
- News: FreeBSD Foundation publishes list of compatible laptops, Haiku makes progress on ARM64 port, Mint to extend its development cycle, Linux reaches 7.0 milestone, Debian elects new Project Leader
- Questions and answers: Free software distributions and source-based distributions
- Released last week: Raspberry Pi OS 2026-04-13, Zorin OS 18.1, RakuOS 2026.04.15, ZimaOS 1.6.0, Solus 4.9, GhostBSD 26.1
- Torrent corner: GhostBSD, Raspberry Pi OS, Solus 4.9
- Upcoming releases: Fedora 44, Ubuntu 26.04
- Opinion poll: Do you have a dedicated gaming console?
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Lakka 6.1
Lakka is a lightweight Linux distribution that transforms a computer into a game console. The distribution is based on LibreELEC and runs the RetroArch console emulator. Lakka is capable of running on a variety of hardware, including personal computers, Raspberry Pi boards, and WeTek Play devices.
I decided to try the distribution on a Raspberry Pi 5. The image file for this single board computer is available as a compressed 911MB download. Unpacking the compressed file results in a disk image file that is 2,085MB (2.0GB) in size. This file can be written to a microSD card (with a tool such as dd) and then used to boot the Raspberry Pi.
Early impressions
Booting from the microSD card brings up a text console which indicates the distribution is doing some initialization work, including setting up its filesystem. Though details are not provided, I suspect Lakka is growing its filesystem and performing initial configuration of its environment. The operating system then reboots.
The second time the system comes on-line we are briefly shown the Lakka logo. The system then signs us into an account automatically and presents us with the RetroArch 1.22.2 interface. The screen's background is blue and there are seven drop-down menus displayed across the middle of the screen.
Initially, I had planned to use a console game controller to navigate the menus, but the Nintendo controller I had plugged into the Pi was not recognized. My mouse likewise was not functional. My keyboard was recognized and I was able to use arrow keys to navigate through the menus and toggle settings using the Enter key. At first, I couldn't find a way to back out of menus once I was in them. Up, Left, and Esc didn't revert me up a level and the Spacebar didn't do anything. Eventually, I discovered the Backspace key would jump back up a level of the menu. Alternatively, pressing Esc twice in rapid succession would restart the RetroArch interface, sending me back to the top-level menu.
Lakka 2.0 -- The RetroArch menu system (taken from an earlier release)
(full image size: 259kB, resolution: 1440x900 pixels)
I would like to provide a quick overview of the seven menus. They are, in order from left to right:
- Main menu. This menu offers to load cores and select which core to use. What is a core? A core is basically an environment or framework which can be used to play content. The Lakka glossary explains the concept of a core as follows: "A piece of software responsible for running content. For example, the snes9x-next libretro core can play Super Nintendo ROMs, the ffmpeg libretro core can play videos and music. Lakka is shipped with 20 to 30 libretro cores."
From the main menu we can also choose menu entries to load content, access playlists, enable netplay, run an on-line updater, and see system information. We can also restart, reboot, or shutdown the system.
- Settings. The settings menu provides tools for connecting to networks, detecting devices, and adjusting the look of the user interface. The sub-menus are: user interface, video, audio, input, core, accessibility, power management, Bluetooth, wi-fi, achievements, user, directory, services, and logging. Most of these sub-items are fairly clearly labelled. Services, in this case, refers to background services, such as Samba network shares which can be used to transfer content to and from the machine running Lakka.
- History. The history menu indicated I had no history. I suspect past games and playlists would show up here, but I was unable to confirm this.
- Favourites. This appears to be similar to the History menu. No items are shown by default, but I suspect there is another menu where we can tag games or media as favourites.
- Import content. This menu provides multiple methods of detecting new content we have transferred to the Lakka box. From here we can scan directories and scan files for new content.
- Contentless Cores. This menu lists various games that are public domain or liberally licensed. It includes 2048, Anarch, Cannonball, Cave Story, Dinothawr, Minecraft, Mr Boom, Rick Dangerous, and The Powder Toy. It's a good way to test out some small games to confirm the system works and its connected devices are working.
- Explore. There is a menu called Explore and its sole entry is labelled "show all", but it didn't show me anything when I started using Lakka. I suspect this menu is meant to display a complete list of uploaded content.
Filesystem access
To play media or run games on the Lakka box we will first need to transfer files to the console. To do this we should make sure Samba or OpenSSH are running through the Services module. Details on how to access the Lakka box are kindly provided in the Lakka documentation. OpenSSH is accessed through the root account which, by default, does not appear to have any password protection or limits on it. Files can be uploaded from other machines using file transfer applications such as FileZilla or from the command line. For example, here we upload a new ROM file to the Lakka's storage drive from a remote machine using OpenSSH:
scp my-rom.zip root@lakka:/storage/roms/
Fiddling with the settings
I tried a few of the pre-loaded games and they generally functioned well. It's nice to have a few demo games available to confirm the system is working. Or, in some cases, to discover what is not working. Earlier, I mentioned my game controller was not able to navigate the main menu. Despite the controller lighting up, indicating it had a connecting to the Pi, I was unable to use it as an input for games.
Lakka offers multiple different approaches to detecting input controllers. I decided to try going through these, one-by-one, to see if any would work with my controller. The default option wasn't working and selecting the second caused the lights of the controller to go out, indicating it had lost contact. I tried the third input option, at which point RetroArch crashed and the system got stuck in a loop, repeatedly printing to the screen that the RetroArch service had failed to start.
I forced a reboot and, at that point, the distribution failed to boot beyond the Lakka logo. Switching inputs can, apparently, damage the operating system to the point it needs to be re-installed.
On a related note, I did some reading through the documentation about which controllers are supported and, to some degree, which are not. According to the distribution's FAQ document, only Xbox360 and PS3 controllers are supported: "For now, the only primary joypads supported are wired XBOX360 and PS3. Most other pads have 15 buttons only, and the RETROPAD abstraction needs 16." Perhaps this information is out of date, as it seems odd the distribution would support only controllers which are over a decade old. Especially since most modern controllers (or at least wired ones) I have tried work properly on desktop Linux distributions.
Conclusions
In my opinion, Lakka mostly works as it is designed to work. The distribution is meant to be just enough operating system to run RetroArch and it does this, on a variety of hardware platforms. So whether you think Lakka is a good fit for you will probably depend on your experiences and opinions concerning RetroArch.
Personally, I don't feel at home with Retroarch. To me, the interface feels like the worst aspects of consoles where there are a lot of options, but navigating them requires scrolling through each item, one at a time. Plus we need to load cores, media, and ROMs from another machine. Using RetroArch is like using a console without the plug-and-play controller support and without convenient access to games.
By comparison, I find using a laptop or desktop machine with a modern software centre (or Steam installed on it) a much smoother, more convenient, and easier to navigate experience. Though, admittedly, I'm reminded that I'm of an aging breed. My generation grew up with keyboards and mouse pointers, not touch screens and Wii controllers, so there is something to be said for personal preferences.
I will say though that the above observation is what makes me wonder about who the audience for Lakka and RetroArch is. The console-like interface is set up for people who like modern gaming consoles and their interfaces over, for instance, a keyboard or touchscreen. However, to load content onto the Lakka machine, the user needs to be familiar with Samba shares or OpenSSH command line tools. I'm not sure how big the overlapping area of the Venn diagram would be for people who like low-end computers, OpenSSH, and PlayStation style menus is, but my guess would be that is it small. However, if you live in that area of overlap then Lakka will be a breath of fresh air and can turn your low-level computer or Pi into an inexpensive gaming console.
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Visitor supplied rating
Lakka has a visitor supplied average rating of: 10/10 from 4 review(s).
Have you used Lakka? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
FreeBSD Foundation publishes list of compatible laptops, Haiku makes progress on ARM64 port, Mint to extend its development cycle, Linux reaches 7.0 milestone, Debian elects new Project Leader
The FreeBSD operating system has often been viewed as a platform most suited for server deployments. The FreeBSD project has, generally speaking, lagged behind in terms of hardware support for desktop and laptop computers. The FreeBSD Foundation has been trying to change the situation by putting efforts into improving laptop compatibility. There is now a small, but growing, list of laptops known to work with FreeBSD, along with compatibility scores for laptops which have been tested and which require more work to get functioning properly. "Each laptop is scored based on an aggregate of: How many laptop components are detected, where each fully auto-detected component adds a point; whether devices have degraded functionality, reducing the score by 0.5-1.5 based on severity and how important it is to the laptop experience (Wi-Fi/Graphics weighted more); user provided comments about test results, and how involved setup is for that device." Links to this page and to FreeBSD's laptop wiki have been added to the DistroWatch hardware compatibility page.
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The Haiku team published an update of the project's progress during the month of March. One of the highlights in the newsletter was improvements to Haiku's ARM64 port: "The biggest news this month is probably all the work that's been done on support for ARM64, largely thanks to contributors smrobtzz and SED4906! smrobtzz contributed the bulk of the work, including fixes for building on macOS on ARM64, drivers for the Apple S5L UART, fixes to the kernel base address, clearing the frame pointer before entering the kernel, mapping physical memory correctly, the basics for userland, and more. SED4906 contributed some fixes to the bootloader page mapping, and runtime_loader's page-size checks. Combined, these changes allow the ARM64 port to get to the desktop in QEMU. There's a forum thread, complete with screenshots, for anyone interested in following along." The March newsletter has additional information on this and other areas of progress.
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The latest Linux Mint monthly newsletter looks ahead to the next version of Mint and some key changes which will be happening in the project. One of the significant changes is a longer development cycle for new Mint versions. "Linux Mint will adopt a longer development lifecycle.
The next release is planned for Christmas 2026. Linux Mint will use the same installer as LMDE (i.e. live-installer). What hasn't been decided yet is the release strategy itself: the length of the cycle, whether minor releases are frozen (like the point releases in Mint 22.x) or backported/semi-rolling (as in LMDE), and whether we will introduce alpha releases."
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The Linux kernel reached version 7.0 last week, a milestone which the developers were quick to point out is not significant in terms of features or compatibility. Still, there were some important changes, including the Rust language reaching a point in the kernel where it is considered stable. The 9to5Linux website reports: "While not a major release in terms of new features, despite the major version number change, Linux kernel 7.0 finally promotes Rust support to stable. The 'Rust experiment' has been concluded at the 2025 Linux Kernel Maintainers Summit, and Rust is here to stay."
Not everything worked well with the latest kernel release. One engineer discovered the PostgreSQL database software was hit by a significant performance regression when run with Linux 7.0: "An AWS engineer reported yesterday that PostgreSQL database throughput drops by 50% on Linux kernel 7.0, with production workloads running at approximately half the speed of prior kernels on Graviton4 servers. The regression stems from Linux 7.0's removal of the PREEMPT_NONE scheduler mode for modern CPU architectures, causing PostgreSQL to spend excessive time waiting in user-space spinlocks."
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The Debian project has held its annual election for the position of Project Leader. The results for the 2026 election were fairly predictable as just one candidate, Sruthi Chandran, ran. The vote tally was 289 votes for Chandran and 50 for "none of the above". This election featured not only a candidate running unopposed, it also featured the second lowest voter turnout (33.3% of Debian Developers) in the past eight years. Details on the election can be found on the Debian website.
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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) |
Free software distributions and source-based distributions
Exposing-people-to-freedom asks: What do you think about posting more reviews about GNU endorsed distributions?
DistroWatch answers: The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of Linux-based distributions which conform to the strict guidelines of free software. This means, in the words of the Free Software Foundation (FSF):
They will include, and propose, exclusively free software. They will reject non-free applications, non-free programming platforms, non-free drivers, non-free firmware "blobs", non-free games, and any other non-free software, as well as non-free manuals or documentation.
There are two main reasons I tend not to review the distributions which are on the FSF-approved list. The first is that most of them are not active and have been dormant for at least two years. The current list of endorsed projects is: Dragora, Dyne:bolic, Guix, Hyperbola, Parabola, PureOS, and Trisquel. Of these, I think the only projects to publish a new stable release/snapshot in the past two years have been Guix System and (as of last week) Trisquel. I've covered the Guix package manager and Guix System a few times. I had also covered the most recent version of Trisquel at the time I received this question.
The rest are either collecting dust or are stuck in mid-development phases which show no signs of being resolved. This doesn't provide much material for a review.
The lack of activity alone would be enough to skip reviewing these projects, but there is another factor. Most (though not all) FSF-endorsed distributions tend to be based on other distributions and remove the non-free parts. Trisquel, for example, is based on Ubuntu, but has the non-free firmware and drivers removed and doesn't provide access to proprietary repositories. Parabola is essentially Arch Linux with the non-free bits scrubbed. This means that any review of these types of distributions is going to basically boil down to: "It's like its parent project, but doesn't run as many applications and doesn't work with some modern hardware, including most wireless cards."
As a result, FSF-endorsed distributions (the few which remain active) make for an interesting and worthwhile exercise in ideals, but they don't provide much material for a review.
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Playing-with-building-blocks asks: What's the benefit of a source distro?
All Linux distributions are built from human-written instructions called source code. With most distributions, this source code is run through a build system which creates executable files, also known as binary packages. Building binary packages is a long process, with a full featured distribution possibly taking days to build and package. Once these binary packages have been created, they are placed in a repository and users can download and install them.
A source-based distribution basically skips the "build & package" step. Instead the original source code (and maybe some modifications) are placed in the repositories for the user to download and build on their own machine. This places the work of building hundreds (or thousands) of software applications from source code into executable code on the shoulder's of the user's computer. Since the build process for a single application can take several minutes or even a few hours, most people do not want to spend their CPU cycles and electricity doing this work.
The benefit of building software from source code is that it gives the end user the ability to customize and tweak programs before they are compiled into executable files. Optional features we do not want can be omitted, making the software smaller, compile-time optimizations can be introduced to make the software run faster, potential buggy features can be disabled or patched out entirely.
In short, building from source can provide increased efficiency, a chance to fix or remove bugs, and drop features we do not want. Also, if an application defaults to not enabling certain features we can choose to enable new or experimental features during the build process.
Customizing, building, and installing software from source is slow and takes more CPU cycles than installing pre-built binary packages, but it offers additional flexibility and run-time efficiency. For most people, building from source does not provide a practical benefit, but for people testing new features or who need to work around bugs, it can be helpful.
I'd like to add that virtually all binary distributions, those which provide pre-built binary packages, can be treated like source-based distributions. For instance, if you are running Debian, you can enable Debian's source repositories and build any specific applications you like. This provides users with the best of both experiences. A person can download most software in its pre-packaged, binary form for convenience. We can also download one specific application's source code and build it with customized options whenever we need to modify one program.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Raspberry Pi OS 2026-04-13
Simon Long has announced the release of a new security update of Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution designed for the popular Raspberry Pi single-board computers. The new version, besides bringing the usual range of bug fixes and improvements, also disables the passwordless sudo: "Today we are releasing version 6.2 of Raspberry Pi OS, the second update to the 'Trixie' version we released last year. This update is mostly a round-up of all the small changes and bug fixes we have made over the past few months, but there is one significant change that we'd like to flag up - passwordless sudo is now disabled by default. Given the ever-increasing threat of cybercrime, we continually review the security of Raspberry Pi OS to ensure it is sufficiently robust to withstand potential attacks. This is always a tricky balance, as anything that makes the operating system more secure will invariably inconvenience legitimate users to some extent, so we try to keep such changes to a minimum. This particular security update is one that many users may not even notice, but it will affect some." Continue to the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
Zorin OS 18.1
The Zorin project has published an update to Zorin OS. The latest version of the distribution, Zorin OS 18.1, introduces improved Windows application detection which allows for easy access to native Linux alternatives, the distribution provides tiling window improvements, and updates for the desktop panel. "The panel now works seamlessly with right-to-left scripts. That means if you're using Zorin OS in a language like Arabic, Hebrew, or Urdu, your taskbar and panel layout will display right-to-left to match the rest of the system's interface. Some apps might display their own indicator icon in the panel tray, allowing you to view the app's status or quickly access its functions. To let you decide if and how they're displayed, we've added a toggle for 'Tray Icons in the Panel' and settings for them to the Interface section of Zorin Appearance. You might also notice that Zorin OS 18.1 feels a bit faster and smoother. That's because many performance enhancements and bug fixes have been implemented throughout the desktop in this latest release." Additional details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
RakuOS 2026.04.15
Joshua Webb has announced the release of an updated version of RakuOS, a Fedora-based immutable Linux distribution with a choice of KDE Plasma, GNOME and, newly introduced in this version, COSMIC desktops: "RakuOS Linux 2026.04.15 is a major release and our last major update for the Fedora 43 base as we begin to move towards Fedora 44, introducing our first COSMIC desktop edition ISO image, a new live ISO image installation experience, and full Rust rewrites of our core desktop applications. RakuOS Linux now ships its first COSMIC desktop ISO image, alongside our existing GNOME and KDE editions. Built on the System76 COSMIC desktop environment, it delivers a clean, modern experience on top of RakuOS's immutable, container-native foundation. Note of caution: COSMIC is still maturing and currently has some issues with gaming. If you are a gamer, we recommend holding off on the COSMIC edition until these issues are resolved by System76." See the detailed release announcement for more information.
RakuOS 2026.04.15 -- Running the COSMIC desktop
(full image size: 907kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
ZimaOS 1.6.0
IceWhale Technology has released ZimaOS 1.6.0, an updated build of the company's independently-developed, Linux-based operating system for personal servers and network-attached storage (NAS) devices. It features a web-based administration interface and a multi-platform remote access client. "ZimaOS 1.6.0. New: added customizable display for storage devices; added USB class storage device management; added reliable saving mechanism for RAID metadata, supporting automatic re-identification and mounting of the original array after system reinstallation or device replacement; added customizable display for device images and login wallpaper. Fixed: fixed the pull restriction issue in the mod_management module; fixed the connection restriction issue when SMB acts as a client; fixed the issue where SMB did not 'skip folders without share permissions' as expected; fixed the issue where disks could not enter normal sleep due to intermittent wake-ups by the smartd service; fixed the Docker startup failure issue caused by abnormal docker0 network interface; fixed the Files service startup failure issue due to missing data tables or abnormal table structure; fixed the problem where storage appeared missing due to the presence of vfat-type disks...." Continue to the release notes for a full list of changes.
Solus 4.9
The Solus project has published a new version, Solus 4.9 "Serenity", which introduces a few changes to service management, the installer, and its four desktop editions (Budgie, Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce). "We are now making use of systemd preset files to manage which services are enabled by default. We used to link services to a respective target.wants directory to make a service start automatically, but this has two issues: it causes systemd to not correctly show their status, and is slightly harder for us to manage. Preset files eliminate both of these problems. For this release, we've changed the default privileged group from sudo to wheel. Most software assumes that the wheel group is the default sudo group, and we have to patch several packages to change it to use sudo. Switching to the usual wheel group means that maintaining these packages is easier for us, because we no longer have to worry about rebasing patches when software updates. Solus now ships with GRUB 2.14 on legacy non-EFI systems. This version is notable in that GRUB now supports Argon2 encryption, meaning that systems can correctly be encrypted with LUKS2. That brings us to our Calamares changes." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
GhostBSD 26.1
GhostBSD is a desktop operating system based on FreeBSD. The project's latest release, version 26.1, is the first of the GhostBSD series to be based on FreeBSD 15.0. "Key Highlights: GhostBSD is now based on FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE. The default shell has been switched to zsh. XLibre is now the default display server. Enterprise WPA (802.1X/EAP) and WireGuard support added to NetworkMGR. Update Station now supports boot environment based major version upgrades. Software Station benefits from a faster bisect-based package search. Refreshed visual identity with a new wallpaper, updated icon themes, and new theme variants, Please note that upgrading does not change your current display server. If you are on Xorg, it will remain on Xorg after upgrading. This release addresses numerous reported issues, including UEFI boot problems affecting some users, the desktop not starting in R15 MATE, the missing installer in XFCE, Live ISO not starting X server in VirtualBox EFI mode, and various fixes across xconfig, ghostbsd-build, and ghostbsd-ports." 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: 3,428
- Total data uploaded: 49.9TB
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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 have a dedicated gaming console?
This week we talked about Lakka in our Feature Story, a Linux distribution which turns a personal computer or single board computer into a dedicated gaming console. This allows users to turn an old laptop or a Raspberry Pi computer into a gaming and media player machine. Do you have a dedicated gaming console in your home? Let us know what kind it is in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on preferred desktop layout in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you own a gaming console?
| Yes - a PC/laptop running an open source OS: | 207 (12%) |
| Yes - a single board computer running an open source OS: | 28 (2%) |
| Yes - a PC/laptop running a commercial OS: | 76 (4%) |
| Yes - a single board computer running a commercial OS: | 5 (0%) |
| Yes - a dedicated gaming console running an open source OS: | 53 (3%) |
| Yes - a dedicated gaming console running a commercial OS: | 252 (15%) |
| Yes - an option not listed: | 42 (2%) |
| No - none of the above: | 1034 (61%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 27 April 2026. 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 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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myLinux
myLinux was a Ukrainian Linux distribution based on the Fedora Core technology.
Status: Discontinued
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