 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 844, 9 December 2019 |
Welcome to this year's 49th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It doesn't happen often that a project with roots in BSD decides to switch its base system to Linux, so the shock decision taken by Project Trident to do just that has certainly risen a few eyebrows. But how is the transition going some two months after the announcement? Jesse Smith takes a look at Project Trident's first alpha release, now based on Void Linux, in the featured article of this week's DWW. In the news section, Debian releases the initial alpha build of its installer for "Bullseye", SparkyLinux creates a special portable edition of its distribution designed to run from a USB drive, Haiku works on improving support for 64-bit ARM processors, and OpenBSD publishes (and fixes) a number of security issues. Also on the security front, a group of researchers find a serious vulnerability in most recent Linux and BSD operating systems; it allows a bad actor to inject data into the TCP stream while using a virtual private network (VPN). As usual, you will also find a list of recent distribution releases and their respective torrents in the torrent corner below. Finally, don't miss our opinion poll which returns to the topic of the review: how do you feel about Project Trident's switch from BSD to Linux? We wish you all a great start of the week with the new issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Content:
- Review: Project Trident Void Alpha
- News: Debian releases alpha installer for "Bullseye", SparkyLinux creates portable edition, Haiku improves hardware and filesystem support, OpenBSD publishes four new security errata, VPN hijacking vulnerability on Linux and BSD
- Questions and answers: Dealing with massive log files being generated
- Released last week: CAINE 11.0, elementary OS 5.1, Tails 4.1, Univention Corporate Server 4.4-3
- Torrent corner: Arch, CAINE, Container, elementary OS, Endless OS, KDE neon, SmartOS, SparkyLinux, Tails, Univention
- Opinion poll: Project Trident migrating from FreeBSD/TrueOS to Void
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (16MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Project Trident Void Alpha
Project Trident began its life as a desktop operating system which was based on TrueOS, a rolling release platform that was, in turn, based on FreeBSD's development branch. Trident features the Lumina desktop environment, a lightweight, portable desktop that was designed with BSD platforms in mind - in other words it avoids some dependencies which are tied to Linux.
Despite starting out as part of the FreeBSD family, Project Trident is migrating to a Linux base. Specifically, future versions of Trident will be based on Void. The Void project also provides a rolling release platform and a lightweight foundation. In addition, Void's Linux core will provide a wider range of hardware support which the Trident project hopes to leverage. What does the Void community get in return? Trident plans to support ZFS on root, an easy to set up desktop, the portable Lumina applications, and fresh network-install media. Details on the migration can be found on the Project Trident blog. Migration from one base to the other will not be supported due to the major differences between the FreeBSD and Void operating systems.
Right now Trident's new Void edition is in its early stages and is considered alpha software. Usually I don't like to run development releases, but I was curious to see how the new Void-based Trident was measuring up against the FreeBSD flavour of Trident, which I had run earlier in the year. Going into the trial I noticed the project is up front about some features that have not been ported yet. ZFS on root is available, but boot environments are not. Multi-boot is not supported as the installer wants to take over an entire disk. The Lumina desktop is reportedly available, but Lumina's various desktop applications have not been ported yet. At install time we are told to expect access to just a root account and we can add regular user accounts later.
Installing
The alpha snapshot of Trident's Void edition is 502MB and runs on 64-bit (x86_64) machines exclusively. Booting from the media brings up a text-based menu where we are given the chance to scan for wireless networks or drop to a command line. Once we are connected to a wireless network (or the system has picked up a wired network automatically) we are given the option to install the operating system.
On the next text screen a menu appears and asks us to select one of our computer's disks to use as the root partition. We are then asked if we would like 1, 2, 4, or 8GB of swap space. Choosing no swap space is also an option. The installer next asks if we would prefer to install packages built with the glibc or the musl libraries. The glibc library is the default and the one I selected. The musl library, we are told, will not work with proprietary packages. We then make up a password for the root account, assign a hostname to our computer and make up a name for our ZFS storage pool. With these steps completed, the installer downloads packages over the network and builds the ZFS kernel module from its source code. The whole process took about half an hour in my case. At first I thought the ZFS build process had failed as no progress information was shown while ZFS was compiling, but eventually the build finished and I was asked to reboot the computer.
Early impressions
Trident boots to a text console where we can sign in as the root user. The root account uses Dash as the default shell. We can change this as Dash is somewhat limited in its features, better suited for speed and running scripts than interacting with the user. When we make new user accounts, which can be done with the useradd command, the new (non-root) users are set up with the Bash shell.
Exploring the command line interface I found we have access to the GNU userland utilities and the XBPS package manager, which I will explore more later. Manual pages are included for command line programs, the GNU Compiler Collection is installed, and version 5.3.9 of the Linux kernel is running behind the scenes. Trident, like its Void base, uses the runit init software which I found to be unusually fast. The runit start-up and shutdown processes are some of the fastest I have experienced.
According to Trident's website we should be able to start a graphical desktop session by running startx from the command line. When I tried this, I found X.Org would begin to start and then quickly crash. Looking into this a bit I believed it was because the packages for video drivers and input devices, such as the xorg-video-drivers package, were not installed by default.
I tried installing these drivers, then more support packages, and a window manager and, in the end, X.Org still failed to start. It may be possible to get it running but since there isn't much to trouble-shoot with and not much documentation yet for Trident's Void branch, it is an uphill battle. This left me to explore the distribution from the command line.
Software management
Trident works with Void's package management tools. The xbps-install tool installs and upgrades packages while xbps-query helps us find new software. I found the XBPS utilities to be fast and straight forward to use. The syntax is sometimes at odds with other package managers, but I found they got the job done.
I only had a few updates during the days I was playing with Trident. These updates amounted to about 1MB in size and they were applied without any issues.
Hardware
I did almost all of my experimenting with Trident's Void edition in a VirtualBox environment. I did not want to hand over my entire hard drive to Trident, at least not while it is still in its alpha stages, so I installed it in a virtual machine and tried the live environment on my physical workstation. Apart from the issue of getting a desktop environment running (despite installing X.Org drivers and VirtualBox guest modules) Trident ran smoothly in the virtual machine. The operating system was surprisingly fast to perform tasks, boot, and shutdown.
When I tried the live disc on my workstation, Trident was able to detect my computer's hardware and connect to a wireless network. The live media does not have a desktop interface yet, but I could connect wirelessly, install packages from the repositories, and browse the contents of local disks.
Trident, when running from a command line, uses a fairly small amount of memory (150MB) and a fresh install takes just 1.1GB of disk space, plus however much storage we assign to be swap space.
While Trident's Void edition does not yet support boot environments, which would let us roll back changes to the operating system at boot time, the system does allow us access to the full range of ZFS features. We can add new disks to increase storage volume, create snapshots, and send snapshots across the network. The filesystem is set up with root, /home, swap, and a few /var sub-volumes. This makes it easier to take separate snapshots of our home directories and operating system, making restoring and transferring snapshots more efficient.
Conclusions
As one should expect with an initial alpha release, Trident's Void branch is not yet ready for the general public. At the moment it is more of a proof of concept - that Void's base can be set up with an alternative installer and use ZFS on root. It's a good beginning, but I suspect there are still a few months to go before Trident's new branch will provide a live desktop and boot environments. When that happens, I think Trident will offer a good experience, and the ZFS snapshots will provide insurance against broken updates from Void's rolling repositories. For now Trident's Void branch is an interesting idea and I hope it gets rounded out by the time a stable release happens early in 2020.
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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, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Project Trident has a visitor supplied average rating of: 10/10 from 1 review(s).
Have you used Project Trident? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
Debian releases alpha installer for "Bullseye", SparkyLinux creates portable edition, Haiku improves hardware and filesystem support, OpenBSD publishes four new security errata, VPN hijacking vulnerability on Linux and BSD
 The release of Debian 11 is still a long way off, but the developers are already updating and testing the distribution's installation program. The initial alpha release of the Debian installer for "Bullseye", the code name of the project's next stable release, is available for testing: "The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the first alpha release of the installer for Debian 11 'Bullseye'. It's high time we started doing this: many components were updated, replacing 'CD'/'CD-ROM' with 'installation media'. Such changes are not documented individually below. That also explains why many languages are not fully translated in this alpha release. Improvements in this release: apt-setup - update generation of apt sources lines for security renamed from dist/updates to dist-security; base-installer - stop installing the apt-transport-https transitional package; brltty - stop creating my-at-spi-dbus-bus.desktop in user profile...." Cyril Brulebois outlines other changes to the installer, which currently supports an impressive number of 76 languages, in this mailing list post. If you are interested in testing the new installer, you are welcome to download the usual range of Debian installation media from the Debian Installer page.
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 The SparkyLinux team have announced the release of a new edition, called Sparky Bonsai. The new edition, like other SparkyLinux flavours, is based on Debian and is designed to be run from a USB thumb drive rather than installed on a computer's hard drive. This allows users to take their operating system with them and boot into it wherever they go. "Sparky Bonsai lives in a USB flash 4GB minimum and run with 512 MB of RAM on x86 processors. At the moment it's only available in a 64-bit version. It fits on a DVD or CD optical disk and runs in ext2/3/4, FAT32, XFS, exFAT filesystems. In order to load it to RAM, 1GB is recommended. It is a minimal Debian Buster file system using Debian Linux kernel 4.19.0.6 with the BusterDog's modules for Porteus boot, live-boot-3x and Aufs support." Additional details can be found in Sparky Bonsai – a portable edition of SparkyLinux.
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 The Haiku developers have been working on a lot of behind-the-scenes changes over the past two months. Two of the key areas of focus have been introducing write support for Btrfs storage volumes and improving 64-bit ARM process support. "Part of the work done by brjhaiku on Btrfs write support for Google Summer of Code has been merged. Nothing very exciting for end-users here, but at least we have a working and documented btrfs_shell to experiment with the code. Some time ago, a large set of patches preparing for ARM64 have been submitted by Jaroslaw Pelczar. These are a rework of an earlier and more invasive porting attempt, which could not be merged as-is because it had compatibility problems with other platforms. The code is slowly being reviewed and merged a small piece at a time. So far, it is mostly changes required to get Haiku to compile, without much in terms of actual added functionality or support." These changes, along with several others, are detailed in the project's monthly newsletter.
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 The OpenBSD project published four security errata during the past week. The last of them, revealed on 8 December, allows a user to log in to a OpenBSD system with a different user's login class. The vulnerability affects all architectures, but a source code patch is already available to remedy the issue. Other security errata published during the week include environment-provided paths are used for dlopen() in mesa, libc's authentication layer performed insufficient username validation, xenodm uses the libc authentication layer incorrectly. It's interesting to note that OpenBSD has published no fewer than 12 security errata since the release of OpenBSD 6.6 on 17 October 2019, an usually high number for a project that has a stated goal of being the number one most secure operating system on the market.
* * * * *
 Speaking of security issues, a serious vulnerability affecting VPN users on Linux has been discovered by William J. Tolley. The author notes that most Linux distributions are vulnerable, especially those that "use a version of systemd pulled after November 28th of last year which turned reverse path filtering off.". The report, which was assigned a CVE number CVE-2019-14899, reads: "We have discovered a vulnerability in Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, MacOS, iOS, and Android which allows a malicious access point, or an adjacent user, to determine if a connected user is using a VPN, make positive inferences about the websites they are visiting, and determine the correct sequence and acknowledgement numbers in use, allowing the bad actor to inject data into the TCP stream. This provides everything that is needed for an attacker to hijack active connections inside the VPN tunnel. This vulnerability works against OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IKEv2/IPSec, but has not been thoroughly tested against tor, but we believe it is not vulnerable since it operates in a SOCKS layer and includes authentication and encryption that happen in userspace." The report also provides a list of distributions affected by this vulnerability, including Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch Linux, Manjaro Linux, Devuan, MX Linux, Void Linux, Slackware Linux, Deepin, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. See this Linux Weekly News post for further details.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Dealing with massive log files being generated
Purging-large-log-files asks: I have a log file that is growing super fast in /var/log and don't know what's making it. The file is growing about a GB every few minutes. How do I find out what program is making it and stop it?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few approaches you can take to try to figure out what program is writing to the log file and put a stop to it. The easiest approach may be to look inside the log file to see what is being written to it. If you see a lot of lines referring to blocked access attempts it may be a firewall log. However, if you see a lot of references to package versions you may be dealing with a runaway update script. Knowing what is in the rapidly growing file will probably give a clue as to what is making it.
Another approach you can try is to run the lsof command. The lsof program will provide a list of programs which currently have a specific file open. For instance, running the following command will provide a list of all programs that have the /var/log/boot log open:
lsof /var/log/boot
Hopefully the lsof command will provide the name of the program which is writing to your log file. This should work if the log file is being written to constantly, but if it is not, then we may need to take another approach and attempt to find the culprit by process of elimination.
If the logfile is growing constantly it is probably being generated by a background service or running application. Closing running applications and disabling any unneeded services one at a time while watching the size of the log file may tell you which process is causing the problem. On the other hand, if the log file only grows periodically, perhaps once an hour, then the cause is more likely a systemd timer or cron job. Checking the crontabs on the system and/or the systemd timer units will likely reveal what job is being run and growing the log.
Assuming one of the above methods helps you find out which process is generating all the log entries, what can you do about it? There are three simple approaches you can try, ones that will not involve containers, virtual machines, or changes to service manager options.
The first is very straight forward: stop and, optionally, uninstall the software that is creating the massive log file. This is the most simple solution, though if you need the process for whatever reason, it is not a practical one.
The second solution is to see if the program which is writing all the log entries has an option to disable logging. A lot of services have a flag in their configuration file which indicates whether to log data and, if so, where. Check the manual page for your verbose process and see if logging can be turned off.
However, if none of the above solutions work there is another approach you can take. It is not ideal, but will prevent your filesystem from filling up with this giant log file. What we can do is remove the log file and replace it with a virtual device which discards all data sent to it. This is what the /dev/null file does, it is a black hole that soaks up all data and merely throws it away. This allows the runaway process to believe it is writing to a log without any data being saved on your disk. Assuming you have a giant log file called /var/log/big-file this is how we can replace the log with a virtual device that discards all the data written to it:
rm /var/log/big-file
mknod -m=666 /var/log/big-file c 1 3
The above commands will need to be run as the root user or through a tool like sudo. This creates an unbuffered virtual device that throws away any data written to it. Anyone can write to this file and that is fine because nothing gets stored in it.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
CAINE 11.0
CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is an Ubuntu-based GNU/Linux live distribution created as a project of digital forensics. The project's latest release, CAINE 11.0, is based on Ubuntu 18.04 and reportedly supports booting on UEFI, Secure Boot, and Legacy BIOS devices. Version 11.0 includes a Btrfs forensic tool and limits access to all storage devices to read-only mode. "Important changes: All devices are blocked in Read-Only mode, by default. New tools, new OSINT, Autopsy 4.13 onboard, APFS ready,BTRFS foresic tool, NVME SSD drivers ready! SSH server disabled by default (see manual page for enabling it). SCRCPY - screen your Android device. Autopsy 4.13 + additional plugins by McKinnon. X11VNC Server - to control CAINE remotely. Hashcat. New scripts (in the Forensics Tools - Analysis menu). AutoMacTc - a forensics tool for Mac. Bitlocker - volatility plugin. Autotimeliner - automagically extract forensic timeline from volatile memory dumps. Firmwalker - firmware analyzer. CDQR - Cold Disk Quick Response tool." Further details can be found on the project's home page.
elementary OS 5.1
elementary OS is an Ubuntu-based desktop distribution. Some of its more interesting features include a custom desktop environment called Pantheon and a custom software centre. The project's latest release is elementary OS 5.1 "Hera", which introduces many package updates, a refreshed login screen, and an onboarding application to guide new users through available features. "The newly redesigned login and lockscreen greeter looks sharper, works better, and fixes many reported issues with the previous greeter including focus issues, HiDPI issues, and better localization. The new design in Hera was in response to user feedback from Juno, and enables some nice new features. It now always shows usernames for all users, shows users' backgrounds as cards so you can more easily find users who maybe haven't set differentiating avatars, notifies when Caps or Num Lock are on, and makes 'Log In as Guest' more distinct when it's enabled. The new Onboarding app that ships with Hera introduces key features to users and handles common first-run tasks like managing privacy settings." Further details and screenshots can be found in the project's release announcement.
elementary OS 5.1 -- Running the Pantheon desktop
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Tails 4.1
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The project's latest release is Tails 4.1 which switches the default key server, updates the Tor Browser application and Thunderbird mail client, and adds newer hardware support. "Use keys.openpgp.org as the default OpenPGP key server. keys.openpgp.org is more trustworthy than other OpenPGP public key servers because it only references an OpenPGP public key after sending a confirmation email to the email addresses listed in the key. keys.openpgp.org does not distribute third-party signatures, which are the signatures on a key that were made by some other key. Third-party signatures are the signatures used to create the OpenPGP Web of Trust. keys.openpgp.org prevents OpenPGP certificate flooding attacks, which can make your OpenPGP keyring unusable and crash your computer. Update Tor Browser to 9.0.2. Update Thunderbird to from 60.9.0 to 68.2.2. Replace the TorBirdy extension with custom settings and patches in Thunderbird that provide equivalent privacy. Update Enigmail to 2.1.3, which has a simplified setup wizard that automatically creates an OpenPGP key for new email accounts." The project's release announcement offers further details.
Univention Corporate Server 4.4-3
Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is an enterprise-class distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. The project's latest release is an update to the distribution's 4.4 series: 4.4-3. "With this release, we have found a solution to three challenges: first, we fixed problems with upgrading Docker which occurred in older UCS installations. These had led us to delay the update to UCS 4.4-2 for some environments and to extend the maintenance of UCS 4.4-1 in order to give all users sufficient time to perform updates. Less common, but all the trickier were two other cases. With some Samba 4 shares, newer versions of Windows Explorer could crash when accessing the security settings. This was caused by extended file system permissions in connection with local user accounts not stored in LDAP. From this Samba generated status codes unknown to Windows. The second and similarly difficult to pinpoint case in an Open Source software used by us was a startup problem of OpenLDAP, which only occurred with a very rare constellation of contents at the end of the database file. We were able to isolate both problems, solve them in UCS and make patches available to the OSS projects." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Proxmox 6.1 "Virtual Environment"
Proxmox is a commercial company which offers specialized products based on Debian. The company has launched Proxmox Virtual Environment version 6.1 which is based on Debian 10.2 "Buster". The release announcement covers the highlights of the new version: "It is built on Debian Buster 10.2 and a specially modified Linux kernel 5.3, QEMU 4.1.1, LXC 3.2, ZFS 0.8.2, Ceph 14.2.4.1 (Nautilus), Corosync 3.0, and more of the current leading open-source virtualization technologies. This release brings new configuration options available in the GUI which make working with Proxmox VE even more comfortable and secure. Editing the cluster-wide bandwidth limit for traffic types such as migration, backup-restore, clone, etc. is possible via the GUI. If the optional package ifupdown2 of the Debian network interface manager is installed, it's now possible to change the network configuration and reload it in the Proxmox web interface without a reboot. We have improvements to 2-factor authentication with TOTP and U2F. The HA stack has been improved and comes with a new 'migrate' shutdown policy, migrating running services to another node on shutdown. In the storage backend, all features offered by newer kernels with Ceph and KRBD are supported with version 6.1." Further details can be found in the 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: 1,727
- Total data uploaded: 29.1TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Project Trident migrating from FreeBSD/TrueOS to Void
At the start of this week's issue we talked about Project Trident migrating from its TrueOS base to using Void, a Linux distribution, as its foundation. It is a big shift, one which the developers hope will provide better hardware support, among other benefits. What do you think of the move? Is Trident better off sticking with its TrueOS rolling release or migrating to Void?
You can see the results of our previous poll on favourite shell short-cuts in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Project Trident migrating from FreeBSD/TrueOS to Void
| I think moving to Void is a good idea: | 278 (27%) |
| I think they should stick with TrueOS: | 224 (21%) |
| I think they should migrate to a different platform: | 50 (5%) |
| It is too soon to tell: | 351 (34%) |
| Other: | 140 (13%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 16 December 2019. 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 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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CROWZ
CROWZ is a lightweight, Devuan-based Linux distribution. The project offers three graphical window managers: Openbox, Fluxbox, and JWM. CROWZ can be run from live media or installed to a hard drive using the Calamares system installer.
Status: Active
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Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
