 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 857, 16 March 2020 |
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Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Many people strive to reach a balance between running software offering the latest features and stability. One approach to finding this balance is to run a rolling release distribution with a slight delay in upgrades, giving developers a chance to perform extra testing on new packages. Manjaro Linux is one distribution which takes this approach and Bernhard Hoffmann dives into Manjaro 19.0 this week in order to report on what it is like to run this rolling release distribution. Then in our News section we talk about running the UBports mobile operating system on a Raspberry Pi computer and talk about Debian building packages with an alternative compiler. We also link to a report detailing how Ubuntu's new ZFS snapshot feature integrates with package management. In our Questions and Answers column we talk about the level of interest in distributions compared to how well a distribution is rated by its users. Level of interest in distributions is also the subject of our Opinion Poll and we would like to hear how your main distro fairs on our page hit ranking chart. Plus we are pleased to list the releases of the past week and share the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are thrilled to welcome the Recalbox distribution to our database. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Manjaro Linux 19.0
- News: UBports running on a Raspberry Pi, Debian testing package builds with Clang, Ubuntu to get automated ZFS snapshots
- Questions and answers: Ratings of distributions versus their popularity
- Released last week: 4MLinux 32.0, Clonezilla Live 2.6.5-21, Tails 4.4
- Torrent corner: 4MLinux, Archman, ArcoLinux, AryaLinux, Clonezilla, Endless, Exe, KDE neon, LibreELEC, NuTyX, SparkyLinux, SystemRescueCd, Tails, Ultimate Edition, Zevenet
- Upcoming releases: Fedora 32 Beta
- Opinion poll: Position of your distro on the PHR chart
- New additions: Recalbox
- New distributions: Mabox Linux
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Bernhard Hoffmann) |
Manjaro Linux 19.0
Manjaro Linux is one of those distributions I have tried many times over the years but was always unable to keep for any length of time due to this or that issue cropping up. Either package management was limited, it wouldn't boot up after the install, or even straight away. Whatever the issues I don't exactly recall, because the last time I tested it must have been around 2014 or even 2013, which would have made this Manjaro 0.8.x. Has it really been around this long already? My, I'm getting quite long in the tooth. Manjaro 19.0 looks really interesting and it's brand new. I'm sure lots has changed so, in somebody else's words, test we must.
Many of the people behind Manjaro are the same that are, or at least were, behind the Chakra distribution, a KDE-centric distribution I really liked and found interesting back in the day but which appears quite dormant. Developers moved on. I recall getting an e-mail once about this new project they were going to start called Manjaro and asking if I wanted to do an early review but unfortunately time didn't permit back then. And when I did it appeared not mature yet so it seemed better not to write anything. But an incremental number 19 seems plenty mature. Enough of the babble, let's go.
The release announcement for 19.0 informs us that it comes in three desktop variants with GNOME 3.34, Xfce 14.4 or with KDE Plasma 5.17. Cutting edge stuff. Also with something called Architect which as it turns out is included in all editions as a shortcut on the desktop, similar to the install button, and allows us to customize installations. Architect can also be downloaded on its own and is basically a net-install image to install the latest available packages and set up and configure Manjaro in every detail using the command line, custom setup tool included. We'll be looking at this in more detail later.
I opted to download the KDE edition via a torrent which is clocked at 2,892MB (about 2.8GB) but which took up 3.0GB on my hard drive. I guess it depends on what cluster size one has used for formatting.
The release announcement includes a 43 minute long video walking us through all the editions which is a really nice introduction to features and looks and can help decide which edition is for you.
This release is underpinned by the latest LTS Linux kernel 5.4 to have the most up to date drivers available. Looks-wise Manjaro has updated Xfce with their own new theme called Matcha, the Plasma desktop has received a fully integrated look with a comprehensive and all-encompassing set of themes called Breath2 in light and dark variants. And yes, it looks slick if that is your style but personally I'm not one for the abstract wallpapers and flat looks in fashion nowadays. Not a biggie, can be changed.
It is quite evident though, even at this stage, from looking at the website that Manjaro has a lot of resources behind it and a lot of people must be committing time to this, so it's certainly not a project in danger of withering away over night in case people are concerned about long-term viability and support for their installs. Plus, Manjaro is of course based on Arch Linux which has been around since the early 2000s. Packages from the official Arch Linux repositories and user contributed packages and build scripts should be working fine. Like Arch Linux, Manjaro is also a rolling release distribution that should not require a reinstall if everything goes well. The team behind Manjaro go to some lengths to make sure it does, by tweaking and moderating changes from upstream and channeling packages through their own repositories.
By the way, downloading any of the images or torrents mentioned above redirects to OSDN.net, with the following product description on the download page:
Manjaro is a user-friendly Linux distribution based on the independently developed Arch operating system. Within the Linux community, Arch itself is renowned for being an exceptionally fast, powerful, and lightweight distribution that provides access to the very latest cutting edge - and bleeding edge - software. However, Arch is also aimed at more experienced or technically-minded users. As such, it is generally considered to be beyond the reach of those who lack the technical expertise (or persistence) required to use it.
Developed in Austria, France, and Germany, Manjaro provides all the benefits of the Arch operating system combined with a focus on user-friendliness and accessibility. Available in both 32- and 64-bit versions, Manjaro is suitable for newcomers as well as experienced Linux users. For newcomers, a user-friendly installer is provided, and the system itself is designed to work fully 'straight out of the box.
In contrast to the above statement only aarch64 and x86_64 architectures are currently supported, although the older 18.04 with Xfce can be downloaded for 32-bit machines. Also available from the main page are ports for several ARM boards like the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Pinebook Pro (KDE Plasma and Xfce 20.02) and Community Editions for x86_64 with the Cinnamon and MATE desktops and for the i3 and Openbox window managers. These options are tucked away under Editions at the top of the page and would likely not confuse newcomers, with the emphasis being on the main editions on the download page.
Let's see how it fares.
Boot up and GRUB2 menu
Manjaro booted fine and leads us into a Welcome screen where we can set various boot options. The usual options to set time zone (not present in all distributions), language and keyboard layout are present. Also the usual memtest at the bottom of the screen. Language selection works and the system booted with the right language packs for the Plasma desktop and applications and the chosen keyboard layout (German, de_DE for the test).
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- The GRUB boot menu
(full image size: 129kB, resolution: 1024x768pixels)
Slightly out of the ordinary is the notepad or edit icon with no description, which allows us to edit boot parameters at the command line. Manjaro boots with free video drivers by default, but if we choose "nonfree" in the driver sub-menu the proprietary NVIDIA driver is used. This should help users get the most out of their graphics cards if they don't mind using what some consider tainted software, but Manjaro appears to be a pragmatic distribution with users that are more interested in their hardware working to the full extent.
Changing the keyboard layout does not change language automatically so this will have to be done separately, if desired. Manjaro booted into live mode from here without problems. There is no option to launch into the installer straight away so this will have to be done from the desktop. Hitting the respective entry started the boot sequence and something displayed about a job running told me that systemd is the init software in the background. Manjaro does not obfuscate the boot process which is very welcome here. Also AppArmor and snapd loaded.
Test run in VirtualBox
My first attempts at using Manjaro 19.0 were in VirtualBox, as I suspect is the standard way now for most people to get a first feel for a new release. No surprises were encountered. Mouse integration was on by default.
One has to set the graphics adapter to VBoxSVGA and activate 3D acceleration to get full desktop size, full screen or a scalable window, but once I had restarted with those settings it worked flawlessly.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- Resizing the desktop inside VirtualBox
(full image size: 2.9MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
One thing I noticed when poking around is that the distribution comes with a myriad of wallpaper backgrounds, 148 to be exact, probably too many. Ok, ISO size isn't really an issue anymore but if it was, here is definitely potential to save space given that most people have their own extensive collection by now.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- The large collection of wallpapers
(full image size: 908kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
While in VirtualBox the search field in the Plasma menu did not let me enter any text when looking for the screenshot utility but I was able to start Krunner from the shell menu and launch the Spectacle tool from there.
Live session
I tried Manjaro on two laptops, an ASUS Vivobook with and an old Dell Latitude without UEFI. Manjaro booted on both from a Corsair Flash Voyager USB without problems.
Manjaro's default desktop features an abstract wallpaper as is the current style of the Plasma desktop and the Breath2 theme as noted in the introduction, which appears to be a variation on the Breeze Dark theme, utilizing the trademark Manjaro colours.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 425kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
As has become good practice with the more user-friendly distributions, a welcome screen opens on the desktop straight after booting with links to important documentation like a user guide and Readme. The user guide is a hefty 130 pages and can also be accessed from the utilities menu later on. It's an introduction to getting Manjaro, which at this point people would have done, installing and using the distribution. It should also be fine as a good enough introduction to the Linux desktop, important applications like Thunderbird for e-mail and to package management in general as the principles are the same. However, it has not been translated and remained in English during my test when booting into a German language desktop.
There are further links to the Manjaro chat room, wiki, mailing lists and to the forum to get support or to get yourself involved. We can also launch the installer from here which seems a bit unnecessary given that an icon for this is also on the desktop.
Manjaro had performed well in VirtualBox but the desktop responded faster in the live session, very fast indeed on the ASUS 8 x Core Intel i7 with 16GB RAM. It better at these specs! The logout screen blurs into a nice fade out, just long enough to notice it which is a cool visual. However, the shutdown sequence detracted from this. I was advised that a stop job could not stop SDDM and that I needed to wait the infamous 1:30 minutes. This then extended to 3:00 minutes as apparently systemd had such a hard time terminating the login manager. Following this systemd-shutdown ran into several errors and refused to shut down at which point I had to hard kill the power. The second time however the shutdown from live session was smooth and fast, a matter of one or two seconds, literally.
Suspend and resume worked well in the live session and the system came back up instantly.
Desktop and installation
Manjaro uses the Calamares installer which is quite well-known now. It runs through the usual steps and allows us to install either alongside an existing system, replace it, fully erase the disk and then take it over, or partition manually. My setup isn't too complicated. There's also an option to encrypt partitions.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- The Calamares system installer
(full image size: 92kB, resolution: 1027x552 pixels)
The installer guessed my computer model correctly and then offered to install LibreOffice, FreeOffice or no office suite at all. I opted for LibreOffice.
Going through the dialogues took about a minute, the install itself a further five. GRUB2 was installed to the MBR and the reboot went smoothly. Manjaro played well with my other install and added the correct menu entries for Debian. Manjaro used about as much time to the desktop as Debian 10 does with KDE Plasma.
What I found noteworthy was that despite my language selection (British English) Manjaro had installed in German, probably taking its clues from the time zone. I went again, setting my time to London/UK and this time it worked.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- Displaying system information
(full image size: 73kB, resolution: 801x629 pixels)
Manjaro comes up with a clean desktop with no icons. Settings from the live session did not carry over. I won't go too much into the default installed applications as you get more or less the typical suite of a Plasma desktop, with Firefox and a few more applications on top. Applications can easily be changed. SUSE Studio USB key writer is included. The Manjaro Application Utility, which gives access to install or remove oft used and popular programs without having to launch the more fully fledged package manager, Pamac, is included too. When installed the button in the welcome screen that used to launch the installer is replaced with a link to this software management tool. Pamac however, apart from being used to update the system, also allows us to install locally downloaded programs.
Also noteworthy is the inclusion of Timeshift for backups, Steam being already pre-installed for gaming, qBittorrent instead of KTorrent and VLC instead of any KDE player.
Another thing of note was that the double prompt to save the password in Kwallet when setting up wireless networking is gone. Not sure whether this is an improvement in KDE or something Manjaro-specific, but this has been really annoying for a long time.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- Updating the Steam gaming portal
(full image size: 3.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080pixels)
On the first day Manjaro had one update available, two days later there were 154 updates. The next day there were a further three updates. This is quite a lot for a distribution that has just been released, but is to be expected with a rolling release and in line with my experiences with Arch Linux with very frequent updates, and loads of them. For this reason I would not recommend Manjaro or any rolling distribution to people who just want to use their desktop workstation and get on with their lives. If you're using your machine for any serious work or for a particular application like a media centre chances are you do not want to constantly update your machine almost every day but are looking for a stable base that you can log in to and get the job done. On the other hand, the updates installed cleanly and the system remained stable and responsive.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- The software centre
(full image size: 380kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Manjaro also supports Snap packages, Flathub and AppImages. It even includes a graphical manager called bauh to install from these additional sources as well as from AUR, along with a symbol to identify to the user where each package comes from. There is also AppImagelauncher for, you guessed it, AppImages, and an interface that can be started from the settings manager in the system tray to up- and downgrade kernels. My only concern is that, in particular, less experienced users may get lost in the many options to manage software - six if including the updater and the kernel installer. But then there is also a separate updater for language packs.
In the past I had a Chromium Snap package running on another distribution which inexplicably one day failed to start. I suppose it could not have been dependencies as Snaps are supposedly self-contained. Whatever the reason, I gave up and moved on because these new solutions are supposed to be better than the proven package management. Only that they aren't, so what's the point? And that's if you don't care about Snap being controlled by Canonical and lack-lustre integration - which in the case of Chromium was most likely due to sandboxing.
Snaps and others may be a way out of dependency hell and guarantee availability of new software updates but are far from proven and a rolling distribution should not have problems with outdated libraries preventing, for example, the latest Chromium from installing. Once installed the Chromium Snap worked - for now.
Resource usage
Right after boot Manjaro Plasma edition took about 545MB RAM initially with only the default desktop and services running, and the two cores idled around the two percent mark each, even dropping to 0.7 or 1.3 percent at times. Chances are you will not install this distribution to look at htop but also to actually run some applications so this will quickly go up.
It seems I ran into the well-known man-db bug discussed in the forum, in the way that after the first boot of the day CPU usage spiked to 65-80% and remained at this reading until the machine was shut down, trying to kill the process did not work for me. I was only able to kill this with a cold boot, after which processor utilization presented normal once again.
Manjaro Architect
As alluded to, Manjaro Architect is both a standalone net-install ISO image and is also included in the main editions to customize installations. It is prominently linked on the desktop.
At launch the Architect updates itself and then after choosing the language does a quick sync with the repositories. Then the main menu appears. From here we can prepare the disk for an installation which leads to the below sub-menu which allows us to have a look at available devices and complete tasks like partitioning, opt to set up LUKS encryption, mount partitions or refresh repository keys and choose or set custom mirrors.
Manjaro Linux 19.0 -- The Architect installer
(full image size: 55kB, resolution: 641x508 pixels)
We also get the option to install a desktop system from scratch rather than using one of the pre-built images, a command line system, a completely custom system with no pre-defined package set, or (under data recovery) launch into a rescue mode which includes Clonezilla. Thus Architect also doubles as a rescue and repair tool. One can also chroot into an existing install or re-install the boot loader from here.
Conclusion
Manjaro KDE Plasma was immensely fast both on an eight-core i7 and on the older Dell Latitude Core2Duo. It also presented a rock-solid experience in terms of daily use. It's a nice rolling distribution if that's what you're looking for, but the multitude of updates can quickly get too much. If you're just looking for a system to actually get work done then being on the leading edge and having the latest version of Plasma, which changes over time, seems less important.
The front page of Manjaro's site claims "Manjaro is a professionally made Linux based operating system that is a suitable replacement for Windows or MacOS. Multiple desktop environments are available through our Official and Community editions."
That's a bold statement because in my experience none are completely like the other and operating systems rather compliment each other. Therefore none is a suitable replacement for the other. Of course it depends on your needs. If all you do is browsing and Internet-related stuff, a bit of word editing or anything that LibreOffice or Abiword can fulfill, fine. Even file-sharing with Samba or FTP, can do, plus a million other things like showing blingy wallpapers. Can I get constant pop-ups nagging me about updates to this or that or that my firewall or virus scanner are not on/installed, sudden reboots in the middle of working that take forever to install the latest service pack? No. Is it likely I'll even download an executable virus or worm in Linux? No. Can I play the latest and most graphics intensive games that in the PC-market are still made only for Windows? No. Can I just drag an application to the Applications folder to install? No. And security-wise it's a bad idea too.
I really wish Linux distributions would stop pretending to be something that they're not, i.e. el cheapo alternatives to the supposedly grown-up, proprietary desktop systems. Linux is not inferior, trying to catch up with the big guys. It can do many things those other operating systems can do and more, even better, but it is different, therefore it is not a replacement. Of course all it needed would be for big companies to code their games, their photo editing, tax or enterprise software for GNU/Linux and for others to have their custom in-house software written for or ported to Linux and switch, but that is not going to happen for a while. So, although Linux could do all that, for all practical purposes it is not a suitable replacement.
I'm not arguing with the "professionally made" claim. Manjaro Linux as presented in its latest incarnation is a very nice and well thought-out Linux distribution that is polished, includes many tools for the advanced user and simply works if you want a rolling, always updating operating system to stay current, and it looks good while doing that. It brings something unique to the table in the vast universe of GNU/Linux systems, has forged its own identity and presents a polished and helpful interface to newcomers. Hopefully helping to make Linux a more popular alternative. I like it very much. It is only slightly let down by having embraced some trendy, arguably ill-advised, technologies that do not work reliably.
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Hardware used in this review
- Dell Latitude E4300, 13.3" notebook display 1280x800 (WXGA) used with external monitor
- 6GiB DDR3 RAM
- 250GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO,
- Intel Centrino Core2Duo 9300 @ 1.6GHz (up to 2.26 with Boost)
- 1066MHz FSB, USB 2.0
- Intel Mobile 4 Series Chipset integrated graphics
- Intel Corporation Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 wireless
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Visitor supplied rating
Manjaro Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.2/10 from 481 review(s).
Have you used Manjaro Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
UBports running on a Raspberry Pi, Debian testing package builds with Clang, Ubuntu to get automated ZFS snapshots
The UBports project continues the development of Ubuntu Touch for mobile devices. While primarily used on phones, UBports can also be run on some tablets and work is now being done to get the operating system working on Raspberry Pi single board computers. The Raspberry Pi port is in its early stages, but owners of Raspberry Pi 3B+ boards can try out the operating system by following the installation instructions.
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While most Linux distributions build their packages using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), some projects find it useful to run an alternative compiler called Clang. The Clang compiler tends to offer better warning and error messages when it finds problems in code. Performing package builds with an alternative compiler can also help find bugs in packages whose code was written specifically for a single compiler. The Debian team has been testing Clang against over 31,000 packages and have found over 95% build correctly. Statistics and common errors can be found on the project's rebuild page.
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The next version of Ubuntu is probably going to offer automatic ZFS snapshots as part of the package management process. Arstechnica is reporting that Ubuntu 20.04 will automatically take filesystem snapshots when the APT package manager is run to guard the system against broken upgrades and disruptive package changes. People who install Ubuntu on ZFS will also be able to boot into older snapshots of the operating system, much like openSUSE users can with Btrfs. "There weren't any snapshots on the freshly installed system yet, so we did a quick 'apt install gimp'. Afterward, we saw that zsys had taken a snapshot in every dataset present on rpool. Having a snapshot taken prior to installing new packages means that, if something should go haywire, we can easily revert the system to its state prior to the new package being installed. Carving the system up into so many different datasets means, in turn, that we can roll back only those parts of the system affected by the package manager - for example, we can roll back packages without affecting data in the user's home directory."
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Ratings of distributions versus their popularity
Looking for consistency asks: All the reviews I read for "best KDE distro" recommend distros that are low on the DistroWatch page hit list. Do you have an opinion as to why? I am currently running Manjaro which is #2 on DistroWatch yet low on the reviews. I also will say that I don't agree with what most the reviewers say. KDE neon consistently is their top, I think it is bloated garbage.
DistroWatch answers: First, I would like to state up front that projects listed on our page hit ranking (PHR) chart are not organized by popularity, install base, or by quality. The PHR chart just shows how many people are visiting a project's information page. The chart tends to favour newcomer friendly projects - DistroWatch often attracts people who are new to Linux and wondering which distribution to try first and this causes beginner friendly projects to float to the top.
This means that projects near the top of our PHR list tend to be tried by a large number of people. Some love these newcomer friendly distributions and some don't, but either way these projects get tried by a lot of people. This large number of potential users, combined with mixed results from less experienced users trying Linux for the first time, means the average rating for the projects near the top of the PHR list will tend toward the mid-range. Two perfect scores (10/10) and one failing score (1/10), for example, will average out to 7/10.
Meanwhile, more niche projects, ones that focus on one specific role and are not geared toward newcomers (for example GParted Live, OpenBSD, KDE neon, Tiny Core Linux) will not attract as much attention and will be further down the PHR list. However, since these projects are almost exclusively used by people who knew they needed specific tools and sought them out, these more niche projects will almost always please their users and be ranked higher. This is probably a big factor in why OpenBSD and KDE neon both currently rank higher than Manjaro in our own rating system, though there are more people visiting the DistroWatch information page for Manjaro.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
4MLinux 32.0
Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 32.0, the latest update of the project's minimalist distribution featuring "four Ms": maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), mini-server (using the inetd daemon) and mystery (providing several small Linux games). This version updates most base packages and adds several new software applications: "The status of the 4MLinux 32.0 series has been changed to STABLE. As always, the new major release has some new features. Better support for Intel video cards (via MESA 3D drivers with VDPAU emulation). PCManFM in 4MLinux can now create video thumbnails (using FFmpeg) as well as PS/PDF thumbnails (using ImageMagick). AV1 video decoding is finally available out of the box (via FFmpeg with the dav1d library). Good news for nerds! The following applications have been added for them: SciTE (source code editor), GNU nano (with spell checker), mg (originally called MicroGnuEmacs). Additionally, Vim (with gVim) is now available as a downloadable extension." Continue to the release announcement for further information and a screenshot.
4MLinux 32.0 -- Running JWM as the window manager
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Clonezilla Live 2.6.5-21
Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 2.6.5-21, the latest stable build of the project's Debian-based live CD featuring a partitioning and disk-cloning utility: "Stable Clonezilla Live 2.6.5-21 released. This release of Clonezilla live includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes from 2.6.4-10: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded - this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2020-03-09; Linux kernel has been updated to 5.4.19; language files were updated; improve ocs-restore-mdisks by adding -a|--last-action option to separate the last action before it's finished; include nvme-cli and scrub packages; include some more packages - tmux, mtr-tiny, dcfldd and iotop; add Bluetooth-related packages in DRBL/Clonezilla Live packages list - bluetooth, bluez and bluez-tools; allow a bare block device with a file system (e.g, /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1 which we treat as a partition), to be chosen as the destination disk when not saving...." Read the full release announcement for a complete changelog.
LibreELEC 9.2.1
LibreELEC is a minimal operating system designed with the specific purpose of running the Kodi media centre. The project's latest release is LibreELEC 9.2.1 which adds support for WireGuard VPN services and better hardware support for the Raspberry Pi 4 computer. "LibreELEC 9.2.1 (Leia) the final version has arrived based upon Kodi v18.6, the 9.2.1 release contains many changes and refinements to user experience and a complete overhaul of the underlying OS core to improve stability and extend hardware support compared to the LE 9.0 release. Changes since 9.2.0: WireGuard support added to settings; improvements for the RPi4; serveral minor updates. Change for Raspberry 4: With LE 9.1.002 and later you need to add 'hdmi_enable_4kp60=1' to your config.txt if you want to use 4k output at the RPi4. Before you needed 'hdmi_enable_4k=1' that is now deprecated." Further details on the new version and tips on upgrading can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Tails 4.4
Version 4.4 of Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) has been released. As usual, the new release fixes a number of security issues and upgrades Tor Browser: "Tails 4.4 is out. This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible. Changes and upgrades: update Tor Browser to 9.0.6; update Thunderbird to 68.5.0; update Linux kernel to 5.4.19 - this should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, WiFi). Fixed problems: tentatively fix WiFi interfaces with Realtek RTL8822BE and RTL8822CE chipsets; use the tails-workarounds provided firmwares until the firmware-realtek package is updated with the patch by Sjoerd Simons; if you had a problem with WiFi starting from Tails 4.1, please let us know whether your problem was fixed or not. For more details, read our changelog. Known issues: none specific to this release. See the list of long-standing issues. Tails 4.5 is scheduled for April 7." Here is the full release announcement.
NuTyX 11.4
NuTyX is a French Linux distribution (with multi-language support) built from Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch, with a custom package manager called "cards". The project's latest release is NuTyX 11.4: "I'm very pleased to announce the new NuTyX 11.4 release. The 64-bit version contains about 1,150 packages upgraded. The 32-bit version of NuTyX, still actively supported. In the newest release, base NuTyX comes with the Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel 4.19.108 (4.9.206 for the 32-bit version). For 64-bit systems, the kernel release 5.5.8 is also available. The GNU C library, glibc, is now glibc 2.30. The graphical server is xorg-server 1.20.7. The Mesa library is 19.3.4, GTK3 is 3.24.14, and Qt has been updated to 5.14.1. Python interpreters 3.8.2 and 2.7.17 have been included in this release. The MATE desktop environment comes in 1.24.0, the latest version. The Xfce desktop environment comes in 4.14.1, the latest version. The KDE Plasma desktop is now 5.18.2, the KDE Framework is now 5.67.0 and applications are now 19.12.3." Further details can be found on the project's news page.
AryaLinux 2.4
Chandrakant Singh has announced the release of AryaLinux 2.4, a new version of the project's independently-developed distribution built from Linux From Scratch (LFS): "AryaLinux 2.4 released. Listed below are some of the changes that have made it to this release of AryaLinux. Apart from package updates and upgrades, there are several things that make this release different from our previous releases. Linux kernel updated to version 5.5.8, subsequent update in the aufs kernel patches. Introducing in this release is alpsui - a Synaptic-like user interface to alps. The alps user interface is undergoing a lot of development and bug fixes at present. Please report problems to help us improve it. GNOME 3.36 which was released earlier. AryaLinux is one of the very first distributions to provide a GNOME 3.36 release. LibreOffice updated to 6.4.0.3. Much improved Indian language font support." See the release notes further details.
AryaLinux 2.4 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 2.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 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. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 1,877
- Total data uploaded: 30.9TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Position of your distro on the PHR chart
In our Questions and Answers column we discussed the page hit ranking (PHR) chart which appears on the DistroWatch front page. The chart provides an indication of how many people are visiting each project's information page and can serve as a rough indication of which projects are drawing attention, often due to new releases or interesting features.
We would like to know roughly where your main distribution is on the PHR chart. Are you using something near the top of the list, a less-known project, something that is not even in our top 100 yet?
You can see the results of our previous poll on sharing a home directory between distributions in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Position of your distro on the PHR chart
| 1-5: | 886 (48%) |
| 6-10: | 152 (8%) |
| 11-25: | 350 (19%) |
| 26-50: | 289 (16%) |
| 51-100: | 104 (6%) |
| Not in the top 100 but on DistroWatch: | 55 (3%) |
| An OS not listed on DistroWatch: | 26 (1%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
New projects added to database
Recalbox
Recalbox is a dedicated operating system for running video games on emulated retro and console platforms. Recalbox can also be used to run the Kodi media centre. The distribution's interface is primarily navigated with a console game controller, though keyboard support is available for many functions.
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Distributions added to waiting list
- Mabox Linux. Mabox Linux is a Manjaro-based distribution featuring the Openbox window manager.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 23 March 2020. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Full list of all issues |
| 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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| Random Distribution | 
Shebang
Shebang is a lightweight Artix-based Linux distribution with focus on simplicity, privacy and security. It uses a customised Openbox window manager suitable for both intermediate and advanced power users. Shebang is an attempt at building a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing usability and performance.
Status: Active
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
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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