 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 717, 19 June 2017 |
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Welcome to this year's 25th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Operating system security is a large and diverse topic, one which seems ever more important in today's digital world. There are a lot of approaches to maintaining a secure operating system, varying from code updates to built-in security features to researchers performing audits. This week we touch on a variety of security-related topics and different projects working to keep their users' systems up to date with patches. In our News section we talk about a new security feature coming to the OpenBSD kernel, a fix for Fedora upgrade errors and the UBports team releasing an update for the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system. We also discuss the Parrot Security OS team researching whether Devuan might provide a better base than Debian and Ikey Doherty deciding to work on the Solus distribution full-time. First though we begin with a look at SharkLinux, an Ubuntu-based operating system which claims to provide a rolling release platform with constant updates. Plus we cover the various Debian editions released over the weekend. In our Tips and Tricks column we explore combining the output from multiple command line programs. Command line use is also the topic of this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we share the releases of the past week and provide a list of the open source torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Swimming with SharkLinux
- News: Solus founder decides to work on the project full time, Parrot Security considers switch to Devuan base, OpenBSD working on new kernel security feature, UBports releases first OTA update, a fix for Fedora update errors, Debian 9 editions released
- Tips and tricks: Combining commands in the shell
- Released last week: Debian 9, Tails 3.0, Parted Magic 2017_06_12
- Torrent corner: antiX, AUSTRUMI, BlackArch, Debian, FreeNAS, IPFire, OpenMediaVault, PCLinuxOS, Q4OS, Tails, TrueOS
- Opinion poll: Comfort with the command line
- New distributions: AIMS Desktop, Nitrux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (52MB) and MP3 (39MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Swimming with SharkLinux
One project which caught my attention recently is SharkLinux, an Ubuntu-based distribution which claims to offer a number of interesting features. The distribution's website reports that SharkLinux is built on Ubuntu's 16.04 LTS release, but maintains a rolling release development cycle. SharkLinux ships with the MATE desktop and reportedly installs software updates automatically in the background. The project's website also mentions that users can perform administrator tasks using the sudo command with no password requirement and common package management commands have been aliased to easy to remember short-cuts.
This may seem like an unusual collection of features, or at least I thought so, but I believed I saw the potential in SharkLinux for a distribution I could give to less technical users. An operating system which automatically gets security updates, doesn't need to be re-installed and which does not prompt for a password when performing configuration tasks seemed like a good idea for less technical relatives.
I downloaded the 1.5GB ISO for SharkLinux and booted from it. The SharkLinux live disc brings up a MATE desktop with the application menu, task switcher and system tray placed at the bottom of the screen. The MATE wallpaper shows us a close up image of an open shark's mouth and the project's logo. An icon on the desktop can be used to launch the project's system installer. The default theme is mostly dark blue and grey, reminding me of the Windows desktop environments of the 1990s.
SharkLinux -- The Guake drop-down terminal
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Installing
I decided to jump right in by launching the system installer. SharkLinux uses the Ubiquity system installer which it inherits from Ubuntu. The Ubiquity installer is pleasantly straight forward to use and quickly walks us through setting up the operating system with a minimal number of steps. The installer worked without any problems and, a few short minutes later, had finished setting up SharkLinux on my hard drive. The one odd thing I noticed during the installation was that when I had first launched the live desktop, I had an active network connection. I was able to get on-line and browse the web. However, when I launched the system installer, my network connection was dropped. As Ubiquity likes to have a network connection in order to download some packages, I re-enabled the network connection and things proceeded smoothly from there and my link to the Internet was not dropped again.
The second quirk of SharkLinux I ran into was, once the distribution had been installed, I could not find any button or launcher to reboot the computer. In the distribution's live environment (and in the installed copy of SharkLinux) there is no obvious way to logout, shut down or reboot the computer. I was able to open a virtual terminal and issue a reboot command to shut down the operating system, but this seems like a strange feature to place out of sight of the user.
First impressions
The first time I booted into SharkLinux I was presented with a graphical login screen. Signing into the account I had created during the installation process brought me back to the MATE desktop and its shark-themed wallpaper. Upon signing in a window appeared in the middle of my desktop and reported the system was being updated. The update window displays a progress bar, but no details of what is being upgraded. We can use the system while the upgrade is in progress and I was thankful for this as the initial upgrade took several minutes.
Once the package upgrades are finished, a welcome window appears. This window doesn't provide us with much information, but does display several icons that offer to set up or install new components. There are several launchers in the welcome window and I will not get into all of them, but I will touch on a handful. One launcher is present for upgrading the MATE desktop environment, another offers to set up the Dropbox client software, another will install software updates. Additional icons offer to open the SharkLinux website, install extra third-party software and configure e-mail. The e-mail icon simply launches the Thunderbird e-mail application. There is an icon called SharkExpansion which, when clicked, opens a window asking if we want to install "SharkExpansion". No details are given and I did not find any information on what SharkExpansion is on the project's website and so skipped this step.
The welcome window only appears the first time we sign into the distribution, but the individual launchers and configuration tools can be found in MATE's application menu later if we want to revisit the utilities.
I noticed, after using SharkLinux for a while, that the background would change regularly. This gives us a variety of wallpapers (most of them not shark-themed) to look at.
Applications
SharkLinux ships with a wide variety of desktop applications. Looking through the application menu we find the Firefox and Chrome web browsers, FileZilla for transferring files, the Thunderbird e-mail client and LibreOffice. The Transmission bittorrent software and the Webtorrent bittorrent application are included along with the uGet download manager and the MEGASync desktop client. The Atril document viewer and a dictionary are included. The VLC media player is included along with the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the Eye of MATE image viewer. The distribution ships with Wavebox, a multi-protocol desktop communications client, the Guake drop-down terminal and a system monitor. There are several virtual machine manager launchers and links to download additional items such as Cockpit, Fire Jail, LinuxBrew, LXD Sandbox, WINE, TeamViewer, a Google Drive client, Ubuntu Cloud and SharkCloud. There generally isn't any explanation for what these one-click installers will provide, apart from the software's name so those unfamiliar with the brands will need to look up their descriptions.
SharkLinux -- Running LMMS and Firefox
(full image size: 168kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
SharkLinux uses Network Manager to help us get on-line. Also in the background we find the GNU Compiler Collection, Java and the Deja Dups backups utility. I quite like Deja Dups for its simplicity in creating regular backups. The distribution runs the systemd init software and version 4.4 of the Linux kernel.
Software management
Apart from some one-click launchers which will perform a quick-install of third-party software, SharkLinux features two graphical software managers: Synaptic and App Grid. Synaptic is a well known, no-frills package manager which has a well earned reputation for speed and flexibility. Synaptic doesn't make managing software packages particularly pretty - it displays simple lists of packages in a given category, but it works well.
SharkLinux -- Quick-install launchers
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App Grid takes a very different approach, displaying a large grid of applications with screen shots and brief descriptions. Looking at App Grid's graph paper style layout reminds me of looking at the application screen of a mobile device or the comics page of a newspaper. Clicking on one of the panels brings up a screen showing us details of a selected application, complete with a screen shot and user reviews. App Grid has few options, but one thing the software manager will do is let us filter the desktop applications it will display based on a program's category. Managing packages from within App Grid requires our user's sudo password. While it is working on installing new programs, App Grid does not appear to offer any progress information, downloading and installing packages happens quietly in the background. There is a page we can bring up showing items we have queued for installation, but otherwise App Grid is coy about what it is doing behind the scenes.
SharkLinux -- App Grid software manager
(full image size: 351kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The SharkLinux website reports the distribution provides a rolling release model of software updates. This is a bit misleading. The SharkLinux installation media (the ISO file) is updated on a semi-regular basis and has no fixed version number. However, the software which ships with the distribution and is available in the default repositories does not get upgraded on a rolling release model. Most software is simply pulled in from Ubuntu's 16.04 LTS repositories. This means, even after updating all available software packages, my SharkLinux system was still running version 4.4 of the Linux kernel. My desktop was still MATE 1.16 even though MATE 1.18 had been available for months. Desktop applications, such as LibreOffice and the GNU Image Manipulation Program were likewise well behind their upstream versions.
In short, SharkLinux will automatically update itself with security updates, but not upgrade to new versions of most packages, with a few common exceptions such as the Firefox web browser which Ubuntu keeps up to date.
Hardware
I tried running SharkLinux in two test environments, in a VirtualBox virtual machine and on a desktop computer. When running on the desktop computer the distribution ran smoothly. All of my hardware was detected and worked well. Running SharkLinux inside VirtualBox provided a similarly good experience. At first the distribution was unable to use my host computer's full screen resolution, but I was able to install the VirtualBox guest modules from SharkLinux's repositories to remedy this. In both environments, the distribution tended to use just under 400MB of RAM when logged into the MATE desktop.
SharkLinux -- The MATE settings panel
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Conclusions
One aspect of using Linux distributions (particularly younger distributions) I find fascinating is the glimpse into the priorities of the developers. Smaller projects especially can give us a look at what a given developer finds important and what software they do not consider significant enough to include. As an example, SharkLinux ships with many installers and applications for sharing files and synchronizing files to cloud storage, but no printer configuration software. In a similar vein, the distribution includes very few media players, but multiple web browsers. Of course, the big quirk of SharkLinux was the lack of obvious reboot/shut down/logout options, which suggests to me the developer rarely needs to power off their computer or share it with others.
When I first started using this distribution I thought it might appeal to my older relatives. The legacy Windows style of the desktop environment, the quick-install option for WINE, the ability to use sudo without a password and the promise of automatic upgrades all seemed geared toward less experienced, older computer users.
However, having run SharkLinux for a while, I increasingly got the impression the distribution would not suit less experienced Linux users. There are some rare sudo password prompts, the application menu is a bit cluttered with similar entries and there aren't clear descriptions or instructions for many of the Shark tools or extensions. Of course, teaching family members to use a drop-down virtual terminal to power off their computer is not likely to go smoothly either, in my opinion.
The overall impression I cam away with is SharkLinux is a reflection of what the project's developer wants and needs, but is eclectic enough that it's not likely to appeal to a wide audience.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
SharkLinux has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used SharkLinux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Solus founder decides to work on the project full time, Parrot Security considers switch to Devuan base, OpenBSD working on new kernel security feature, UBports releases first OTA update, a fix for Fedora update errors, Debian 9 editions released
Solus is an independent Linux distribution which is perhaps best known for its user friendly approach and as the birthplace of the Budgie desktop environment. The project's popularity has not only attracted additional developers, such as Stefan Ric, but also resulted in project founder Ikey Doherty deciding to work on Solus full-time. "In four weeks from today I will be moving to Solus as a full time developer. Originally we planned to support 'a developer' once we hit the $2,500 goal. However, I personally feel that this is a move I can now make myself. In doing so this will allow me to commit full time to Solus and all of it's projects, bringing them up to the standards I want, with the features and experience that you deserve. Whilst we have achieved a great deal so far, this has been through spare time. With this move I'm now able to dedicate all of my work hours to Solus, which in itself will result in a massive explosion in growth and development cadence for our project." More information on Ric and Doherty's work can be found in the project's blog post.
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Parrot Security OS is a Debian-based, security-oriented distribution featuring a collection of utilities designed for penetration testing, computer forensics, reverse engineering, hacking, privacy, anonymity and cryptography. The distribution's developers are currently exploring the idea of whether Parrot should transition from Debian to using Devuan as its parent distribution. A decision has not been made yet, but the team has said they are testing how their software packages behave on a Devuan base. "Is Parrot switching to Devuan? Nope, not yet. We are just testing how our packages behave on top of Devuan instead of Debian, and what should be modified to have everything working without systemd (which seems to be hard-coded almost everywhere). We are also collecting feedback from our community, and this is why we posted a very short announcement on our social channels some days before writing this post, and in a very very short amount of time we were able to collect an exaggerated amount of positive messages." Further (sometimes colourful) commentary on the subject of alternative init software and what the team would need to do to complete the transition can be found in the Parrot Security OS blog post.
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Theo de Raadt has announced a new security feature is coming to the OpenBSD operating system which should make it more difficult to attack OpenBSD's kernel. The new feature, called kernel address randomized link, introduces small changes to the kernel each time the system boots. These changes in the internal layout of the kernel make it difficult for attackers to predict and exploit features in the kernel. "Previously, the kernel assembly language bootstrap/runtime locore.S was compiled and linked with all the other .c files of the kernel in a deterministic fashion. locore.o was always first, then the .c files order specified by our config utility and some helper files. In the new world order, locore is split into two files: One chunk is bootstrap, that is left at the beginning. The assembly language runtime and all other files are linked in random fashion. There are some other pieces to try to improve the randomness of the layout. As a result, every new kernel is unique. The relative offsets between functions and data are unique." Additional details and a roadmap for improving the randomization feature can be found in de Raadt's mailing list post.
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UBports is a community project which seeks to maintain and improve the mobile edition of the Ubuntu operating system. The UBports team has ported Ubuntu Touch to several new mobile devices and maintains legacy images for the devices originally supported by Canonical. The UBports team celebrated launching their first over the air (OTA) update this past week and reported positive collaboration with the Halium project in creating a base mobile Linux distributions can build upon. "Halium, as you may know, is a project aiming to standardize the Android hardware compatibility layer between many Linux distributions. This layer is required because Android drivers can't be used natively in a regular Linux distribution. This week the project had a lot to show off - it can boot both Ubuntu Touch and Plasma Mobile. As you can see in this tweet, Halium can boot both OS's on the Nexus 5. The third image, though, is the most interesting. It shows Plasma Mobile booting on the Fairphone 2, a phone that the OS hasn't been explicitly ported to. It's easy to see the opportunities that Halium opens up and we're proud to be a part of the project." Further information, including a roadmap for future versions of UBports, can be found in the project's blog post. At the time of writing, the UBports project appears to have over 3,000 users and is growing at a rate of approximately 100 users per day.
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If you are running the Fedora distribution and have recently been running into errors when attempting to upgrade software, chances are you have been affected by a bug in the libdb package. The libdb software provides the database Fedora's package management utilities use to keep track of software packages. "There's a rather subtle and tricky bug in libdb (the database that RPM uses) which has been causing problems with upgrades from Fedora 24/25 to Fedora 26. The developers have made a few attempts to fix this, and testing this week had indicated that the most recent attempt - libdb-5.3.28-21 - was working well. We believed the fix needed to be applied both on the 'from' and the 'to' end of any affected transaction, so we went ahead and sent the -21 update out to Fedora 24, 25 and 26. Unfortunately it turns out that updating to -21 along with other packages can possibly result in a crash at the very end of the process, which in turn causes a (as it happens, minor and fully recoverable) problem in the RPM database." A longer explanation and a fix for the issue were published on the Fedora Magazine website.
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Over the weekend the Debian team released Debian 9 "Stretch". The new release was dedicated to project founder Ian Murdock who passed away in 2015. The new release sees the return of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird packages which replace the custom Debian packages of Iceweasel and Icedove. A long list of new features can be found in the project's release announcement. While Debian is most famous for its GNU/Linux distribution, the project creates other, special editions (called ports) of Debian. One of the more interesting Debian ports is Debian GNU/Hurd which runs on the GNU Hurd kernel rather than the Linux kernel. The Debian GNU/Hurd 2017 release is based on a snapshot of Debian's Unstable repository and was released at the same time as Debian GNU/Linux 9. The Hurd port's release announcement contains additional information on the new snapshot.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
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Combining commands in the shell
One of the more common tasks I perform on the command line is combining or merging the results from multiple commands. The command line gives us a great deal of flexibility when it comes to stringing multiple commands together to effectively create new, more complex tools. This can be especially useful when we want to perform multiple, similar tasks and combine the output from multiple programs.
One question I regularly run into is people asking if they can string together multiple grep commands to find lines in a text file which contain either one word or another, verses one word and another. This can be useful when searching for people's names, variations on a phrase or errors in a log file. Let's look at a few examples.
For the sake of these examples, I will pretend I have a text file called animals and it contains these lines:
cat 0 dog
cat 1 horse
horse 2 horse
horse 3 dog
dog 4 horse
dog 5 cat
Given the above text file, it is fairly easy to use the grep command to find any line which contains both the word "cat" and the word "dog". Here is an example of how we can string two grep commands together using a pipe (|) to do this:
grep cat animals | grep dog
The above command looks through the animals file, finds all the lines which include the word "cat" and then passes those lines to a second grep command that filters out any lines which do not contain the word "dog". We end up with
cat 0 dog
dog 5 cat
Things get a little more tricky though if we want to combine commands to find any lines which contain either "cat" or "dog". This is where the ; symbol comes in handy as it allows us to string two commands together and show us the combined output of both:
grep cat animals ; grep dog animals
The above command shows us all lines containing either "cat" or "dog". The problem is, there are some duplicates with lines zero and five repeated.
cat 0 dog
cat 1 horse
dog 5 cat
cat 0 dog
horse 3 dog
dog 4 horse
dog 5 cat
We can filter those duplicate lines out by sorting the lines and only printing unique instances of each line. This can be done using the sort and uniq commands. First we encase our grep commands in curly braces. This tells our shell to handle the grep commands together as a unit and then pass their output along to the next command in the line.
{ grep cat animals; grep dog animals; } | sort | uniq
The lines we got before containing either "cat" or "dog" are sorted alphabetically and only the unique lines are kept, leaving us with the following output:
cat 0 dog
cat 1 horse
dog 4 horse
dog 5 cat
horse 3 dog
There are other situations in which combining the two commands into one unit using the {} symbols can be effective. If you have ever run into a situation where you have two directories which have a lot of duplicate copies of the same files, there is one easy way to locate them all, assuming their names have not changed.
Let us assume we have two directories, Documents and Backup. A lot of the same files have been copied into both of these directories, but we want to know which files are duplicated. We can use the find command to list all the files in both directories, including their sub-directories. Then we can sort the results and only show duplicate entries.
{ find Documents ; find Backup; } | cut -f 2- -d '/' | sort | uniq -d
In the above command we list all of the files and directories found in both Documents and Backup. Then we use the cut command to strip away the leading directory names ("Documents/" and "Backups/" in this case). We then sort the results and remove any files which are not duplicated using uniq. The result will be a list of files which exist in both directories.
Combining commands, using pipes and semi-colons, can be quite powerful. Grouping these commands together to form a unit using braces expands on this power, allowing us to merge the output of multiple commands into one group of data to be managed and filtered.
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More tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Parted Magic 2017_06_12
Parted Magic is a live CD/USB commercial distribution which is designed to work with hard drives and disk partitions. The Parted Magic live disc can be used to manage partitions via GParted as well as rescue lost file with TestDisk. The latest snapshot of Parted Magic, version 2017_06_12, features a few changes, including the addition of the Filezilla file transfer application: "This version of Parted Magic adds a few leaves and branches to our slow growing oak tree. Filezilla replaces gFTP. Parted Magic now ships with a screen magnifier. The Linux kernel has been updated to 4.11.4 and includes the ZFS Linux drivers. Clonezilla has been updated to 3.25.11 and tested by Steven Shiau. And as always, this release includes updated X.Org components and security fixes. Be sure to check the new releases of Wxfixboot 2.0.1 and Ddrescuegui 1.7.1. Updated programs: X.Org Server 1.19.3, Clonezilla 3.25.11, ntfs-3g 2017.3.23, Mesa 13.0.6, Mozilla Firefox 52.1.0esr, Flashplayer plugin 25.0.0.171, Samba 4.4.14, OpenSSH 7.4p1, FreeType 2.6.3...." Information on updated packages and other changes can be found on the project's News page and in the distribution's change log.
Tails 3.0
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live disc which offers several tools to assist its users in being anonymous while working on-line. The latest version of this Linux distribution, Tails 3.0, is based on the upcoming release of Debian 9 "Stretch". "Tails 3.0 works on 64-bit computers only and not on 32-bit computers anymore. Dropping hardware support, even for a small portion of our user base, is always a hard decision to make but being 64-bit only has important security and reliability benefits. For example, to protect against some types of security exploits, support for the NX bit is compulsory and most binaries are hardened with PIE which allows ASLR. Update Tor Browser to 7.0 (based on Firefox 52 ESR) which is multi-process and paves the way to content sandboxing. This should make it harder to exploit security vulnerabilities in the browser." This release also features a new welcome screen called Tails Greeter. This welcome screen assists the user in selecting a preferred language, configuring the keybaord and setting up persistent, encrypted storage. These changes and several screen shots are presented in the Tails 3.0 release announcement.
Tails 3.0 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 100kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
OpenMediaVault 3.0.79
Volker Theile has announced the release of OpenMediaVault 3.0.79, a major update and the first stable build in the 3.x version series. OpenMediaVault is a specialist Debian-based distribution designed for network-attached storage (NAS) systems: "After a long development phase I am happy to announce the release of OpenMediaVault 3 'Erasmus'. The main features at a glance: using Debian 8 'Jessie'; use kernel/firmware backports by default using Sencha ExtJS 6.2 framework for the WebUI; adapt backend to systemd; complete re-factored backend; support LVM snapshots; add SAN (Subject Alternative Name) to self-signed SSL certificates; file systems will be mounted according to FHS below /srv now; outsource TFTP into a plugin; introduce omv-confdbadm command to manage the database via CLI; add more UI translations, e.g. Catalán; enable SSH service by default; use predictable device files everywhere; improve statistic graph colors for color blind users; set SMB/CIFS file/directory masks to values for collaborative workflows...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a detailed list of new features.
IPFire 2.19 Core 111
Michael Tremer has announced a new update to the IPFire distribution for firewalls. The new version, IPFire 2.19 Core Update 111, features a number of security improvements which allow IPFire to connect to wireless networks and drops older (potentially vulnerable) cryptography functions for newer, stronger ones. Quality of Service (QoS) handling now uses multiple CPU cores when available in order to offer better performance. "The firewall can now authenticate itself with a wireless network that uses Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). These are commonly used in enterprises and require a username and password in order to connect to the network. IPFire supports PEAP and TTLS which are the two most common ones. They can be found in the configured on the 'WiFi Client' page which only shows up when the RED interface is a wireless device. This page also shows the status and protocols used to establish the connection. The index page also shows various information about the status, bandwidth and quality of the connection to a wireless network. That also works for wireless networks that use WPA/WPA2-PSK or WEP. The Quality of Service is now using all CPU cores to balance traffic. Before, only one processor core was used which caused a slower connection on systems with weaker processors like the Intel Atom series, etc. but fast Ethernet adapters. This has now been changed so that one processor is no longer a bottle neck any more." Further details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
FreeNAS 11.0
Joon Lee has announced the final release of FreeNAS 11.0, a new version of the project's specialist FreeBSD-based operating system designed for computers serving as Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices. This version replaces Coral (which suffered from serious bugs following its release) as the current stable FreeNAS: "After several FreeNAS release candidates, FreeNAS 11.0 was released today. This version brings new virtualization and object storage features to the world’s most popular open source storage operating system. FreeNAS 11.0 adds bhyve virtual machines to its popular SAN/NAS, jails, and plugins, letting you use host web-scale virtual machines on your FreeNAS box. It also gives users S3-compatible object storage services, which turns your FreeNAS box into an S3-compatible server, letting you avoid reliance on the cloud. FreeNAS 11.0 is based on FreeBSD 11-STABLE, which adds the latest drivers and performance improvements. Users will benefit from the overall systematic, architectural, and performance improvements. Testing indicates that the kernel of FreeNAS 11.0 is 20% faster than the kernel of FreeNAS 9.10." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and screenshots.
antiX 16.2
The antiX team has announced the availability of a new point-release of the project's lightweight, Debian-based operating system. The new release, antiX 16.2, is based on Debian 8.8 "Jessie" and features a customized 4.4.10 LTS kernel running SysV init. "antiX 16.2 (Berta Cáceres) point release is available. Bug fix version including all updates from Debian Jessie and security patched kernels. Existing users of antiX-16 or antiX-16.1 do not need to download and install. Simply update via the repositories. Debian 8.8 (Jessie), but systemd-free! And it fits on a CD! Great LiveUSB features! As usual antiX comes in three flavours for both 32-bit and 64-bit processors." The new release features several package upgrades, including LibreOffice 4.3.3, Firefox 52.2.0 ESR, Claws Mail 3.13.0, SMTube 17.1.0 and several more. The News section of the antiX project's wiki page contains a more complete list and information on the available editions.
Debian 9
The Debian project, which develops the world's largest Linux distribution, has announced the release of Debian 9, code name "Stretch". The usual long-development cycle and conservative, well-tested nature of the product is a consequence of the distribution's support for a number of processor architectures (i386, amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, mips, mipsel, mips64el, ppc64el, s390x) and a wide range of deployment scenarios, including desktops (GNOME 3.22 as default, with KDE Plasma 5.8, LXDE, LXQt 0.11, MATE 1.16 and Xfce 4.12 also provided) and servers. Debian 9 comes with over 51,000 binary packages, a new record for a stable Debian release. "After 26 months of development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 9 (code name Stretch), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and of the Debian Long Term Support team." Read the release announcement and see the what's new section of the release notes for further information. Debian 9 is available in several variant, including a full DVD set and a separate set of live DVD images with popular desktop environments, among other options.
Debian 9 -- Running the GNOME Shell desktop
(full image size: 520kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 450
- Total data uploaded: 67.0TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Comfort with the command line
In this week's Tips and Tricks column we talked about combining the output from command line programs before passing their information to other programs. This is one of many flexible and powerful features of Linux command line shells.
In this week's poll we would like to find out how comfortable our readers are with the command line. Do you avoid it, use it just a little or are you an expert at writing your own automated scripts?
You can see the results of our previous poll on running distributions without kernel blobs in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Comfort with the command line
| I do not use the command line: | 74 (4%) |
| I use the command line a little: | 562 (28%) |
| I use the command line frequently: | 653 (33%) |
| I use the command line/scripts daily: | 714 (36%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Distributions added to waiting list
- AIMS Desktop. AIMS Desktop is a Debian-based Linux distribution. It is maintained by AIMS (The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences), a pan-African network of centres of excellence enabling Africa's talented students to become innovators driving the continent's scientific, educational and economic self-sufficiency.
- Nitrux. Nitrux is a Linux distribution featuring the Plasma-based Nomad desktop environment. Nitrux features a graphical application, called NX Software Center, for managing Snap packages.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 26 June 2017. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. 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)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
BackBox Linux
BackBox Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution developed to perform penetration tests and security assessments. It is designed to be fast and easy to use. It provides a minimal yet complete desktop environment, thanks to its own software repositories, which are always updated to the latest stable versions of the most often used and best-known ethical hacking tools.
Status: Active
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Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
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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