 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 897, 21 December 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 51st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Last week we shared news about the CentOS project phasing out support for CentOS Linux. While the CentOS team will continue to work on CentOS Stream, its developmental nature is not as appealing to many CentOS users as the enterprise grade CentOS Linux edition. This has resulted in a lot of CentOS administrators seeking alternative, stable platforms. In our Questions and Answers section we discuss a number of options for former CentOS Linux users. Are you a CentOS Linux user looking for a replacement? Let us know in our Opinion Poll what you plan to install when CentOS is no longer supported. A few companies are already promoting their alternatives to CentOS with openSUSE and CloudLinux trying to attract people looking for long-term support, stable platforms. We talk about these promotions in our News section along with some updates from the Tails project about their fundraising efforts and release cycle changes. First through we take a look at a rolling release platform called Archman GNU/Linux. The Archman project provides a desktop-oriented operating system based on Arch Linux which features a friendly installer. Read on to learn how Archman performs. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We will be off on holiday next Monday, but will return on January 4th, 2021. We wish you all a wonderful conclusion to the year, a great holiday season, and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Archman GNU/Linux 2020-11-12 "KDE"
- News: openSUSE and CloudLinux promote their CentOS alternatives, Tails talks about their adjusted release cycle
- Questions and answers: What to do in the wake of Red Hat phasing out CentOS
- Released last week: NuTyX 20.12.0, UBports 16.04 OTA-15, Q4OS 3.13
- Torrent corner: Alpine, batocera, Bluestar, KDE neon, Kwort, NuTyX, Q4OS, Tails, Ultimate Edition, Volumio
- Opinion poll: Where will you go now that CentOS Linux is being discontinued?
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (14MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-11-12 "KDE"
Archman GNU/Linux is an Arch Linux-based distribution which features the Calamares system installer and a pre-configured desktop environment. The distribution offers a rolling release approach. This means each new ISO release is a snapshot of the distribution rather than a planned fixed release. One thing I find interesting about Archman is each snapshot seems to offer different desktops editions. The 2020-11 folder on their download mirror provides KDE and i3 flavours of the distribution. The 2020-10 snapshot has just Xfce as its sole option. The 2020-08 folder on the server offers Deepin while 2020-07 is available in Xfce and MATE editions. Most editions appear to be around 2GB in size, with a few hundred megabytes added or removed, depending on which desktop environment is bundled on the media. I downloaded the KDE Plasma edition of the latest snapshot which was 2.2GB.
Live media
I tried booting from the live media in both UEFI mode and Legacy BIOS mode. The Legacy BIOS mode worked as expected, but I ran into an issue when running my machine in UEFI mode. The system would appear to begin its boot process and then quickly drop to an UEFI Shell prompt. I tried restarting in UEFI mode a few times until I realized what was happening was the Archman media was being read and a boot menu was being displayed very briefly where the default option was to drop to the shell prompt. There is a menu option to boot Archman into live mode instead, but it requires catching the boot menu very quickly. If I blinked it would zip by and I'd be dropped to the UEFI Shell again.
The boot menu for either mode allows us to run the live desktop media with either free video drivers or non-free NVIDIA drivers. The distribution then loads and presents us with the KDE Plasma desktop running on the X.Org display server. There is a thick panel displayed across the bottom of the desktop. This panel houses the application menu, some quick-launch buttons, the task switcher, and the system tray. There are no icons on the desktop.
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-11-12 -- The Plasma desktop and application menu
(full image size: 331kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
At first there was no immediately obvious way to launch a system installer. There is no installer icon in the quick-launch buttons, on the desktop, or in the Favourites launchers in the application menu. I found the Calamares installer under the System sub-menu of the application menu.
Installing
Launching the Calamares installer walks us quickly through the usual steps. Calamares is quite polished these days and makes it easy to set our time zone, pick a language and keyboard layout, and create a user account. The installer supports guided partitioning which uses up free space on the drive as well as providing a friendly (and flexible) manual partition editor. The manual option is easy to navigate and supports virtually every Linux (and MINIX) filesystem possible.
On the first screen of the installer there are a couple of buttons, one labelled Donate and one labelled Archman Support. Clicking either of these buttons does nothing. Apart from this, the installer worked flawlessly. Calamares copied its packages to the hard drive and offered to restart the computer.
The Plasma desktop locked itself during the install process and I found the live environment's password has been left blank. This is handy as we can just press the Enter key to return to the desktop when the screen locks.
First impressions
Archman boots to a graphical login screen. A list of available accounts sit above a password box which itself sits above buttons to shutdown or restart the system. These controls are shifted over to the right side of the display which gives the screen a slightly off-balance look. When there are multiple user accounts on the system the login page defaults to selecting the first account alphabetically rather than selecting the last account to login. This is unfortunate if your main user account is, for example, "Jesse" and you create an account called "Guest" for visitors.
When we sign into an account the system brings up the Plasma desktop and plays a laser zapping sound in the background. The desktop remains fairly empty as there is no welcome window or initial setup wizard. Each time I logged in a pop-up would let me know the computer was connected to a local network, but otherwise Plasma remains quiet.
The Plasma desktop generally works as expected. I did make a few changes early on. For example, the Plasma desktop locks after five minutes and puts the screen to sleep after ten. This is much too quick for my taste and I adjusted these options through the System Settings panel. Archman defaults to a bright theme (Breeze) and I soon changed it to the Dark version of Breeze to tone down the backgrounds of some applications.
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-11-12 -- Running Firefox and LibreOffice
(full image size: 113kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Hardware
When I began running Archman it was in a VirtualBox environment. The Plasma desktop did not perform well at first in the virtual machine. While the desktop would usually resize to fit the VirtualBox window it sometimes failed to do so and the desktop lagged a bit. Plasma was still usable, but not really responsive and there was a notable delay when moving windows. After disabling compositing and some KDE features the desktop became more responsive, but never really got to the point of being as snappy as I usually expect from KDE Plasma.
Networking in the virtual machine was worse though. Network traffic was slow and some web pages took a minute to load while, on other devices running on the same network at the same time, would load the same pages in just a few seconds.
These performance issues disappeared when I switched over to running Archman on my workstation. The distribution correctly identified and utilized all my hardware and performed quickly. Both desktop responsiveness and networking were great when run on physical hardware.
Archman uses more than the average amount of disk space, about 7.5GB. However, the distribution used less memory than usual. When logged into Plasma Archman consumed only 335MB of RAM. This is unusually light for a distribution running KDE Plasma, and puts it close to the weight of Xfce on most distributions I have used lately. For comparison's sake 335MB is less than half the memory I needed to run recent distributions with GNOME Shell.
Applications
Archman ships with a fairly standard set of applications, though with a few surprises. For example, the distribution ships the Firefox web browser with a Flash plugin, which is unusual these days. LibreOffice is installed for us along with the Okular document viewer, the Konversation IRC client, and Dolphin file manager. Both KGet and lftp are present for downloading files. The GNU Image Manipulation Program and Inkscape are set up for us. There are modules for setting up printers.
Archman ships with multiple multimedia players, including Clementine, mpv, and VLC. The project provides media codecs for playing most video and audio formats. Java is installed for us and two compilers (the GNU Compiler Collection and Clang) are present. Archman uses the systemd init software and version 5.9.8 of the Linux kernel.
The included software all ran as expected and seemed to be pleasantly up to date. The one exception was Clementine which, the first time I launched it, took about a minute to load. The delay was long enough I checked the process monitor to make sure the application was loading and noticed a bunch of processes indicating the system was accessing a database and reading plugins. I have not encountered this delay when running Clementine on other distributions.
Archman ships with two settings panels, the KDE System Settings panel I mentioned before and the Archman Settings Manager. The former handles configuring all aspects of the Plasma desktop. There are a lot of settings to be found in Plasma and this makes the desktop very flexible, though one can quickly get lost in all the options. The Archman Settings Manager has only a few modules in it for handling user accounts, setting the system clock, adjusting the keyboard layout, and managing language support.
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-11-12 -- The two settings panels
(full image size: 161kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
This second settings panel is fairly empty and I was surprised there weren't more items included. The application menu, for instance, has a printing manager which could be included in the Archman settings panel, but it isn't for some reason. Likewise, there is a hardware information module in the menu which would be right at home in the settings panel, perhaps with a firewall tool. Perhaps those will come later.
Software management
When it came to managing software, Archman threw me a few curveballs. The main software manager, the one in the desktop's Favourites menu, is Discover. Launching Discover opens the software centre and causes the error "No application back-ends found, please report to your distribution." In other words, there is no low-level package manager Discover knows how to talk to on the system, or at least none it can find.
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-11-12 -- Discover unable to find a back-end
(full image size: 142kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
With some looking around I did find a second package manager, Pamac, which is listed in the application menu as "Add/Remove Software". This software centre offers us three tabs: Browse, Installed, and Updates. The Updates tab displays available new package versions and offers to install them. This works and I had no trouble with the Updates tab.
The Browse tab, on the other hand, starts out by showing us software categories down the left side of the window and specific applications from the categories on the right side. Every category, save Productivity, was empty. The Productivity category contained just one package: the Links text-based web browser. This is really unusual and this lack of options persisted across multiple uses of Pamac, even after the package database had been refreshed.
I did find I could locate packages in the software centre by switching the Browse filter from Categories to Groups or Repositories. This allows us to search through software by specific, low-level groupings, and by repositories (such as Core or Community). This doesn't make it particularly easy to find what we need, but it does display the full range of expected software. There was still a lingering problem though: the software centre didn't handle dependencies properly.
Archman GNU/Linux 2020-11-12 -- Running the Dolphin file manager and searching for new software
(full image size: 182kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Trying to install new software would bring up a huge list of dependencies to be downloaded, including some which were already installed. As an example, when I tried to install the command line traceroute package there were dozens of dependencies, totalling 195MB in size. These included components of KDE, the Firefox browser (which was already installed), additional fonts, multiple archive managers, and a text editor. Switching to the command line and installing traceroute through the pacman package manager revealed no dependencies were required and the total download for the new software would be less than 1MB. There is a huge discrepancy here and one which could take less experienced users by surprise.
Conclusions
For the most part my time with Archman was fairly typical of using a modern distribution. The installation went smoothly, the usual, popular open source applications were available, desktop performance was good on the workstation and about average, at least once I had tweaked settings, in the virtual machine. Most applications and settings worked the way I wanted and I generally could just focus on getting stuff done without worrying about the underlying operating system.
However, there were a number of curious choices and obvious bugs in this release. As I mentioned early on, booting in UEFI mode is a challenge because starting the live desktop is not the default option in the boot menu. There are some little quirks with settings, or the location of some items, but most of them are fine. The big issues for me were to do with package management. I'm very puzzled by Discover being the default package manager when it has no back-end, preventing it from functioning at all. The second package manager wasn't much better since its default view provides access to only one package and dependency resolution seems to be broken. Working with software on the command line works fine so this does not appear to be a problem with Archman as a whole, just the graphical front-end for package management.
In the end I got along okay with Archman. The distribution did not, in my opinion, do anything remarkably well or stand out from other Arch-based distributions in any way that grabbed my attention. It's a mostly solid operating system with a few notable issues that I could work around. I think the biggest issue most people will likely face is each snapshot offers different editions. Which means if you want, for example, the MATE flavour, you will end up downloading an old snapshot and then installing a lot of updates to bring the system up to date. Otherwise Archman provided a mostly good, occasionally puzzling, but on the whole uneventful experience.
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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
Archman GNU/Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.4/10 from 11 review(s).
Have you used Archman GNU/Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE and CloudLinux promote their CentOS alternatives, Tails talks about their adjusted release cycle
Following the news that CentOS Linux is being phased out in favour of the more experimental CentOS Stream, several organizations have stepped forward to offer alternatives. The openSUSE project played up their distribution's predictability: "Users of the community enterprise distributions can be confident in the direction of openSUSE Leap for those who might be hunting for a stable Linux distribution that offers predictability and longevity." Meanwhile the CloudLinux team pledged to make it easy to migrate from CentOS to their Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone: "You will be able to convert CentOS 8.3 to CloudLinux 8.3 using our cldeploy script when the CloudLinux OS 8.3 gradual rollout will be completed. We're planning to complete it by December 21." It looks like several organizations plan to fill in the gap left by Red Hat's announcement to drop support for CentOS.
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The Tails project has published their monthly newsletter which outlines work going into the privacy-focused distribution. The team has increased their release frequency to match Mozilla's development cycle, worked on raising funds to keep the project active, and improved the persistent storage front-end. Some of the highlights are as follows: "We had a meeting to prioritize & organize work on our next big things. We decided to first focus on: Wayland blockers, that can be addressed incrementally. Deal with deprecation of Tor Launcher. Rewrite Persistent Storage GUI front-end. We scheduled a sprint in January to bootstrap our work on the RIPE grant and on Wayland blockers."
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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) |
What to do in the wake of Red Hat phasing out CentOS
Alone and wandering asks: Following the news CentOS is being killed off, what will happen next? Where should people like me migrate to, any suggestions?
DistroWatch answers: A week ago we shared reports from the CentOS and Red Hat teams that indicated the CentOS Linux distribution will be phased out over the coming years: "There will not be a CentOS Linux 9. Updates for the CentOS Linux 8 distribution continue until December 31, 2021. Updates for the CentOS Linux 7 distribution continue as before until June 30, 2024."
Basically, this means that CentOS Linux, the binary-compatible clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, will no longer be supported in a few years. The CentOS Stream distribution will continue to exist. CentOS Stream is basically a rolling release and testing ground which sits between the Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions. Software will be introduced in Fedora, tested and tweaked in CentOS Stream, and wind up in stable releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
Following the news that CentOS Linux (the stable RHEL clone) will no longer be supported, a lot of people naturally wondered what they should do next. CentOS Linux was thought to feature ten years of support and was compatible with RHEL, making it a prime choice among small and medium businesses, many website hosting companies, and any other environments where people wanted long-term stability, but did not need paid support contracts. Red Hat is effectively killing off the CentOS Linux distribution and many people are left wondering what to do with the thousands of servers currently running CentOS Linux.
If you are running CentOS Linux, what options do you have and what should you do? The first thing I feel everyone should do is take a deep breath and try to avoid any knee-jerk reactions. Whenever a change like this is announced people tend to want to rush out and start performing fresh installs of a new operating system to deal with the problem right away. There seems to be a sense of trying to leave a sinking ship before all the life boats are full. However, let's take a step back and realize that if you are running a supported version of CentOS Linux (versions 7 and 8) then you have at least a year to figure out what do do with those systems. There is no rush and I recommend waiting a bit for the dust to settle on the situation before leaping to an alternative.
There is more good news about making decisions when it comes to migrating from CentOS Linux, apart from a distant deadline: there are a lot of options available! Here are a handful, in no particular order:
- One option is to move from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream. The technology will be similar, most of the same packages will be available. The Stream branch will be slightly more experimental and won't have the static stability of RHEL or CentOS Linux, but it will probably be close. For smaller deployments or situations where a rolling development cycle is acceptable, CentOS Stream may be the migration path with the least amount of change required.
- Another approach would be to migrate to RHEL. While most Red Hat installations require a paid subscription, there are no-cost developer accounts to be had at the moment. In the future Red Hat has suggested it will provide inexpensive or no-cost subscriptions to ease the migration from CentOS Linux to RHEL.
In the first half of 2021, we will be introducing low- or no-cost programs for a variety of use cases, including options for open source projects and communities, partner ecosystems and an expansion of the use cases of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer subscription to better serve the needs of systems administrators and partner developers.
The problem here, of course, is that Red Hat has not yet revealed the low- or no-cost options it plans to make available. They may be suitable for existing CentOS users or not, but we won't know until sometime next year.
On a personal note, I can't help but feel Red Hat approached this situation backwards. Red Hat could have rolled out no-cost subscriptions for RHEL first, then released a CentOS-to-RHEL conversion tool, then announced CentOS Linux would be discontinued. People would have had a clear migration path they could test right away. As it is, CentOS Linux users are left wondering what, if any, solution Red Hat will provide sometime in the next six months. This looks like the vendor equivalent of a cartoon character sawing off the tree branch they are sitting on.
- If waiting for Red Hat's upcoming low-cost subscriptions does not appeal then the good news is there are already several existing distributions in the same family as CentOS. Our Search page lists six actively maintained RHEL clones and chances are at least one of them will fill the void of a no-cost, RHEL clone.
- People who particularly like CentOS and the way the project was run may want to hold out for the inevitable fork. Already a few new projects have been announced which intend to take the place of CentOS Linux. The Rocky Linux distribution is being created by a former CentOS developer and the CloudLinux team have announced their intentions of making a publicly available RHEL clone.
- A final option is to select another distribution with similar characteristics to CentOS. There are a number of stable, long-term support distributions which are often used in businesses and large deployments. The SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE distributions leap to mind and they share a relationship which is roughly equivalent to RHEL and CentOS Linux, respectively. The Debian and Ubuntu projects both offer at least five years of support on a stable base. For people willing to go a little further afield there is FreeBSD which runs most of the same software and provides five years of support.
In short, there are a lot of options, a lot of alternative distributions, and it's entirely possible Red Hat will offer no-cost subscriptions next year for people seeking a migration plan. My recommendation is to give the situation a few months and then test the above options to see which one best suits your needs.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
NuTyX 20.12.0
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 has published a new version with multiple supported desktop editions. "21 months after the release of the first version of NuTyX 11, I am very happy to announce the new version of NuTyX 20.12.0 and cards 2.4.123. The 64-bit version is a complete new project. The compilation chain is completely rebuilt in addition to glibc 2.32, GCC 10.2.0 and binutils 2.34. The Xorg-server graphics server version 1.20.10, the Mesa 3D library in 20.3.0, GTK3 3.24.24 and Qt 5.15.2 are also in their latest versions. The Python interpreters are at 3.9.0 and 2.7.18. The Xfce desktop environment is updated to version 4.14.3. The MATE desktop environment is also updated to version 1.24, the latest version available. The KDE desktop environment is available in Plasma 5.20.4, Framework 5.76.0 and Applications 20.12.0. Available browsers are: Firefox 83.0, Chromium 87.0.4280.88, Falkon 3.1.0, Epiphany 3.38.2." Additional information can be found on the project's News page.
NuTyX 20.12.0 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 215kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
UBports 16.04 OTA-15
The UBports team has announced a new update for UBports 16.04. The new update, OTA-15, introduces stable support for more devices and provides a number improvements to the camera app, web browser, and calls: "Ratchanan finally got fed up with the "Redial last called number" button not working on his Bluetooth headset and fixed it. Now it is possible to dial calls from Bluetooth devices, including some car infotainment systems which provide an interface to browse your phone's contacts. Unfortunately, whilst dialing calls was fixed, the subsequent call audio is still broken. Some devices will still have trouble connecting two-way audio, and some have even reported adverse effects when trying it. For example, the Nexus 5 may play loud static over the Bluetooth headset instead of the caller's audio. Please try a test call (while you are in a safe place!) and report the result back to us before trying to take a call while driving. Ratchanan also added a Thai input method to our on-screen keyboard. It does not have auto-correction, but this is an excellent addition for our Thai users. Thank you, Ratchanan! If you are using a device with an arm64 build of Ubuntu Touch, you may have noticed that missed calls were reported by the caller's number rather than by their contact name. This issue has also now been fixed." Further details are available in the project's release announcement.
Q4OS 3.13
The Q4OS team have published a new update to their distribution's Debian-based desktop operating system. The project's new release updates the Q4OS 3.x series, bringing it up to date with Debian's Stable branch. For this release Canonical's Snap framework has been removed, though it can be installed from the project's software repositories. "An update to Q4OS 3 Centaurus LTS has been released. The new 3.13 Series receives the recent Debian Buster 10.7 update, updated Debian stable kernel, important security and bug fixes, and several specific Q4OS enhancements. Canonical's Snap daemon and related dependencies have been removed from the Q4OS desktop profiles, however they're still available in the default repositories. A few printing specific bugs has been patched and a new driver installer for Hewlett-Packard printers and scanners has been included in the Software center. In addition to the above, Q4OS 3.13 brings other enhancements, such as improved Calamares installer and a cumulative upgrade covering all changes from the previous stable Q4OS 3 Centaurus release." The distribution's blog offers additional information. The project provides two editions, one with the KDE Plasma desktop and the other with the Trinity desktop environment (TDE).
Kwort 4.3.5
Kwort is a CRUX-based Linux distribution that uses the GTK+ toolkit and the Openbox window manager. Its most prominent feature is a package manager, called kpkg. The project's latest version, Kwort 4.3.5, introduces updated kernel, compiler, and package management packages. The distribution's news page lists the highlights of the release: "I'm very proud to announce this new release which shows how the project got to a very mature level. New goodies included in the UI, a few bug fixes from the previous release and of course, the latest stable packages. Let's talk a little of what we have here: Linux kernel 5.10.1. Yes, the brand new Linux LTS release. New toolchain including: glibc 2.32, gcc 10.2.0 and binutils 2.35.1. kpkg 130. Mirror kdb files are now included in the installation to avoid repeating issues from the past. Latest browsers including: Google Chrome: 87.0.4280.88 and Mozilla Firefox 84.0. Newest version of brave is already available in the mirrors. kwort-tools now includes encryption support through /etc/rc.d/encryption using /etc/etab (format is 'directory' 'key file') and we have added a few improvements on kwort-mixer to add more stability. llvm 11.0.0 is also included."
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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: 2,274
- Total data uploaded: 35.4TB
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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) |
Where will you go now that CentOS Linux is being discontinued?
Last week we reported the CentOS Linux distribution is being discontinued in favour of the CentOS Stream edition. This decision has left a lot of CentOS users scrambling to find alternatives to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone. We talked about several CentOS Linux alternatives in this week's Questions and Answers column.
Were you affected by the decision to drop CentOS Linux support? Let us know what your migration plans are in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on the number of entries in your fstab file in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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I am moving from CentOS Linux to...
| CentOS Stream: | 89 (3%) |
| Debian/Ubuntu: | 412 (16%) |
| FreeBSD: | 78 (3%) |
| Oracle Linux: | 81 (3%) |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux: | 17 (1%) |
| Springdale Linux: | 22 (1%) |
| SUSE/openSUSE: | 161 (6%) |
| Another RHEL clone: | 96 (4%) |
| Another enterprise Linux platform: | 9 (0%) |
| Another solution/operating system: | 24 (1%) |
| Unsure: | 94 (4%) |
| I was not running CentOS: | 1509 (58%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 4 January 2021. 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 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • 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 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Privatix Live-System
Privatix Live-System was a free, portable, encrypted live CD which can be installed on an USB flash drive or an external hard drive. Based on Debian GNU/Linux, it was designed for safe editing and carrying sensitive data, for encrypted communication, and anonymous web surfing (with Tor, Firefox and Torbutton).
Status: Discontinued
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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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