 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 928, 2 August 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 30th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Fans of the Arch Linux distribution often point to the Arch community's vast collection of software as a strong reason to run the distribution. While the official Arch Linux repositories are relatively small, the community's Arch User Repository (AUR) is massive and provides access to a wide range of software. This has led some people to wonder if the same concept of community-provided build scripts could be useful on other distributions. This week we begin with a look at Pacstall, a project which aims to bring AUR-style packaging to Ubuntu. We also talk about Debian running on the M1-powered Apple Mac, openSUSE shutting down their community portal, and Haiku preparing to celebrate its 20th birthday while looking ahead of the upcoming beta 4 milestone. In this week's Questions and Answers column, we explore ways to improve performance on sluggish, modern computers. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and look ahead to scheduled releases, including the upcoming Debian 11 launch. In our Opinion Poll we would like to hear your thoughts on how we can handle projects that have already been added to the DistroWatch database which might not meet our current criteria for listing. Let us know how you think these situations should be handled in the comments. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (18MB) and MP3 (14MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Pacstall - AUR for Ubuntu
Back in May I briefly talked about Arch Linux's User Repository (also known as the AUR). Arch Linux itself has a relatively small collection of official software packages and so many members of the Arch community (and those who use its derivative distributions) run packages from the AUR. The AUR contains scripts provided by third-parties which enable software to be installed using scripts. While installing software this way manually can be tedious, there are any number of helper programs which assist Arch users in building and installing software from the AUR scripts.
As a result, Arch Linux, which has a relatively small number of official packages (11,945 at the time of writing) can offer an additional 70,500 through the AUR collection. This puts the combined collection of Arch software in a similar range as Debian and Ubuntu. In the article from May we touched on a number of methods other distributions use to augment their official repositories with third-party software. These methods included Nix, Copr, Slackbuilds, and personal package archives (PPA).
One project which has come along since then is called Pacstall. The Pacstall project aims to provide Ubuntu users with a third-party repository similar in style to Arch's, along with a convenient command line tool to automate most of the work. "Pacstall will attempt to become the AUR Ubuntu wishes it had. It takes the AUR and puts a spin on it, making it easier to install programs without scouring GitHub repos and the likes."
Pacstall can be set up using a Deb package or a single-line shell command. I decided to take Pacstall for a spin on Ubuntu MATE 21.04 to see how it would perform. Reading the description of the project I was uncertain of where third-party software scripts would be coming from. For instance, I was unclear as to whether Pacstall would use (and possibly translate) existing AUR scripts or if it would be duplicating the work of the AUR in a new approach. I was unable to find documentation which explained where these scripts came from and how many there were.
With a little looking around I discovered Pacstall learns how to install packages from another repository specific to this program. Which means it is not connected to or learning from the AUR, simply providing a similar service. At the time of writing there are about five dozen recipes for building third-party software in the Pacstall repository. So how well does it work?
Installing
The install script for Pacstall worked well enough. It appears to do some basic checks and then installs some dependencies, such as cURL and Stow. It also grabs some helper scripts from GitHub. The pacstall script is then added to our command path.
How it works
Once it has been installed, Pacstall works much the same way as other package managers. There are some basic command line flags we can use. For instance, running "pacstall -h" shows a list of commands the package manager recognizes. Running "pacstall -S name" will search for a package with a similar name.
Once we find a package we want to install we can download and build the software using "pacstall -I package-name" or remove it with "pacstall -R package-name. So far this all seems fairly straight forward. The "-U" flag will update Pacstall itself while the flag "-Up" will attempt to update software we've already installed. We can use the "-L" flag to list which programs have already been installed through Pacstall.
I attempted to install a handful of packages from Pacstall's repository. Something I appreciated was the install (-I) flag will offer to show us the build script it is going to run and give us the option of editing it before any actions are taken. This is helpful from a security perspective and means we can customize install scripts at the last moment.
One aspect of Pacstall I liked less was that it requires administrative access, but doesn't check to make sure it has the required access up front. Should we run "pacstall -I package" as a regular user (or without sudo) then the script will fail with a series of access errors rather than prompting for a password.
Pros and cons
I tried installing a series of packages from the Pacstall repository. The first thing I noticed was that several of the available packages are already in the Ubuntu repositories, making them redundant. In fact, a number of the available packages are even installed by default on Ubuntu MATE. Perhaps these are included in an effort to provide more up to date versions of the software already available in Ubuntu's repositories.
The next thing I feel is worth mentioning is Pacstall builds the open source components of packages from source code. This is a lengthy process for most packages. As an example, installing the bat package would take less than a minute using binary packages, but took over an hour when building it from source code.
In other words, Pacstall has a small repository, some of which is duplicating software already available to Ubuntu users, and it takes a long time to install, compared to a PPA or a Nix package. Hopefully Pacstall will grow quickly, possibly by importing and tweaking scripts from the AUR.
Of the packages I tried to install through Pacstall, most worked, though the Nemo file manager failed with an error simply saying there was a mismatched hash. This is probably an indication Nemo has been updated upstream while the Pacstall port has not, or something was corrupted during the download process. Either way, Pacstall bailed out after working on the Nemo port for about twenty minutes.
Conclusions
As you can gather from the last few paragraphs, Pacstall is in its early stages and still rough around the edges. It has a long way to go before it becomes as useful as the AUR it seeks to emulate, or other third-party repositories. However, if it can grow quickly then it has the potential to offer a one-stop solution for Ubuntu users who wish to either install third-party packages or who want more up to date software than what Ubuntu provides. This could, in the long run, be more convenient that the scattered, independently maintained collection of PPA repositories many Ubuntu users currently use and manage.
For now though I wonder if Pacstall is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist for most people. The AUR exists because Arch has a small official repository and its users needed a workaround. Ubuntu has a massive set of default repositories, plus Snaps, Flatpaks, and most third-party software developers provide installers or repositories for Ubuntu. It's rare to want to install something on Ubuntu that is not already packaged for the distribution. I'm curious to see what Pacstall can bring to users which the existing solutions do not provide.
I'm also curious to see how far this concept spreads. A few weeks after the Pacstall repository was announced, a similar concept for Debian appeared, called the Debian User Repository (DUR). This service aims to re-implement the AUR for Debian users. I will be curious to see if similar projects appear to offer the same service on other distributions.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar) |
Debian runs on Apple's M1, openSUSE shuts down community portal, Haiku celebrates 20 years and plans beta 4
 Apple made a splash with one of their most recent products, a computer running the M1 ARM processor. The new platform is one which has drawn a lot of attention, but it has been incompatible with Linux distributions, until now. Alyssa Rosenzweig has posted a tweet with a screenshot of Debian running on the M1-powered Mac with a mainline Linux kernel. This paves the way for Debian, and other Linux distributions, to run on the young Apple machine.
* * * * *
 The openSUSE project has announced the openSUSE Community Portal is being shut down. Despite hosting over 20,000 active accounts, the project has been unable to find anyone to help maintain the community portal and is deactivating it. "Today, we need to announce the final shut down of our community portal. The reason is simple: while we asked multiple times for help and someone who wants to actively maintain and administrate the service, nobody stepped up. As we can not secure the application any longer without big time investments, we decided to shut it down and let it rest in peace instead." People who want to get help or collaborate with other community members can still make use of the openSUSE forums, wiki, and mailing lists.
* * * * *
 Haiku, the spiritual successor of the much-loved BeOS from the late nineties, continues its persistent march towards a usable alternative operating system. The recently-released beta 3 was an important milestone, but the developers are already planning the next big snapshot, the fourth beta, which is tentatively scheduled for release in January 2022: "After beta 3, there will be beta 4. Why are we thinking of beta 4 so soon, you might ask? Well, the time after a major release is often a time when activity tends to slump for a bit. We want to keep that momentum going, so we are thinking of what we can do for the next major release. We are considering putting on spotlight on many of Haiku's built-in apps. Many of them have been neglected for years and need a developer's TLC (tender, loving care). For example, the Mail app uses an older protocol, and the UI needs some improvement. To do this, we will put out Calls for Contributions, blog posts that let people know what needs work." In the meantime, fans of Haiku are invited to celebrate the project's upcoming 20th anniversary: "Now that beta 3 is released, the next big event on the cards is our 20th anniversary. If you go to the history page on this website, you can see that we started on the 18th of August 2001."
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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) |
Finding the performance bottleneck
Feeling-the-need-for-speed asks: I purchased two Dell Inspiron 5565 laptops for scientific use and video editing. They both have the A12-9700P APU with Radeon R7 Graphics. Both have 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD drives. I have openSUSE Tumbleweed installed as the OS.
My question is why my 10 year-old HP Pavilion G6 with an Intel i3-2310M CPU and Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 3000, 8GB of RAM, with a 500GB Toshiba HDD and openSUSE Tumbleweed runs circles around these two AMD-based laptops?
Doesn't AMD take full advantage of the Linux kernel (currently 5.12.4-1), or is there a different AMD processor that would make better use of the Linux operating system? I noticed that you use an AMD A9 for your reviews.
DistroWatch answers: My suspicion is that the CPU (Intel or AMD) is not the issue here. The processor you are running should be more than up to the task. You have lots of RAM, lots of disk space, and a strong processor in both the new machines. AMD and Intel basically use the same instruction set and I've never encountered any normal use cases where you'd see a noticeable performance difference due to the brand of CPU in the machine - all other things being equal.
What almost always turns out to be the issue in these circumstances is the combination of video driver and video card being used, especially if you are using a desktop environment which either uses 3-D features (Cinnamon, GNOME, and Unity fall into this category) or the desktop has compositing or special effects enabled.
With desktop environments, games, and visual effects which use 3-D capabilities generally one of two things happens. On systems where the video card and the video driver both support 3-D effects, the rendering of these effects is handled by the video card. This is very efficient and the visual effects render smoothly without impacting the performance of the rest of the system. However, if either the video card or the video driver do not properly handle 3-D effects then the drawing of the effect is taken on by the CPU. This is sometimes called "software rendering" and it is quite slow in comparison. When software rendering is taking place the whole system tends to feel unresponsive and the desktop tends to lag.
If you spend much time on the forums of distributions which use 3-D desktops as the default you'll soon see dozens of posts asking why top of the line computers are performing poorly. The fix is almost always to switch to a better suited video driver. This can often be done in your distribution's package manager or Additional Drivers utility. Often switching from the default open source driver to a proprietary video driver provided by the manufacturer will solve the problem.
Alternatively, if you do not want to install a non-free driver on your system, you can often avoid performance issues by turning off visual effects and compositing in your desktop's settings panel. You may also wish to switch to a classic 2-D desktop such as KDE Plasma, Xfce, or LXQt as these should perform well without the need for extra software rendering.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Grml 2021.07
Michael Prokop has announced the release of Grml 2021.07, the latest stable build of the project's live Linux distribution focusing on the needs of system administrators. It is based on Debian's "testing" branch. "Grml - new stable release 2021.07 available. This Grml release provides fresh software packages from Debian testing ('bullseye'). As usual it also incorporates current hardware support and fixes known bugs from the previous Grml release. Important changes: the Grml IRC channel moved to OFTC; the network configuration tool netcardconfig no longer prompts for uncommon wireless/WiFi options, to simplify and speed up its usage. New features: grml-terminalserver - support for UEFI PXE boot (now supporting BIOS boot via pxelinux and EFI boot via GRUB); netcardconfig - support for enabling blocked devices via rfkill; forensic mode - improved handling for block device changes and parent device handling; grml-chroot - support efivarfs in EFI environments...." Read the brief release announcement and the detailed release notes for further information.
siduction 21.2.0
Ferdinand Thommes has announced the release of siduction 21.2.0, the latest build of the project's distribution set with a choice of Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, LXDE, LXQt and Xfce desktops, all based on Debian's "unstable" branch: "The siduction team is very proud that for our 10th birthday (yes, we started out in July 2011) we can present siduction 2021.2.0 to you. This one is dubbed 'Farewell' in remembrance of our friend Axel, who passed away way too early. So no, 'farewell' does not mean we are going away. The highlight of this release is the resuscitated siduction manual, that goes back to the days of sidux, which some of you will remember as a former incarnation of siduction. What's new this time around? The flavours we offer for siduction 2021.2 are KDE Plasma 5.20.5, LXQt 0.16.0, Cinnamon 4.8.6, Xfce 4.16, LXDE 11, X.Org and noX. GNOME and MATE did not make it again due to a lack of a maintainer support within siduction." Read the detailed release notes for more information.
OPNsense 21.7
OPNsense is a HardenedBSD-based specialist operating system (and a fork of pfSense) designed for firewalls and routers. The project's latest release, OPNsense 21.7, will be the last version based on HardenedBSD and introduces a new installer with ZFS support. "21.7, nicknamed "Noble Nightingale", is one of the largest iterations of code changes in our recent history. It will also be the last release on HardenedBSD 12.1. We are planning to start the work on FreeBSD 13 as soon as next week for the 22.1 series. The installer was replaced to offer native ZFS installations and prevent glitches in virtual machines using UEFI. Firmware updates were partially redesigned and the UI layout consolidated between static and MVC pages. The live log now contains the actual rule ID to avoid mismatches after adjusting your ruleset and the firewall aliases now also support wildcard netmasks." The release announcement offers further details.
Freespire 7.7
Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of Freespire 7.7, a new update of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Xfce desktop. This version adds the ability to (optionally) incorporate various web applications into the system: "Today, the PC/OpenSystems LLC open-source development team releases Freespire 7.7. This update launches an entirely new direction for our distribution products, Freespire, Linspire and Xandros, by incorporating a cloud app approach. Since this is Freespire, our community-support build, we did not incorporate anyone's specific web apps into the distribution. The selection is entirely the user's choice. And for more traditional use cases, the core of Freespire has not changed at all - it's still a full-featured desktop OS; all of the applications and resources of the Ubuntu repositories are available, as always. The distribution includes: Xfce 4.16 desktop, Linux kernel 5.4, Synaptic, Google Chrome 92, DuckDuckGo as the default search engine and homepage, Ice SSB, KPatience, DreamChess, Geary mail client, KolourPaint, Parole, Rhythmbox, Caja as the default file manager." Read the complete release announcemnet for further details.
Freespire 7.7 - now with more focus on web apps
(full image size: 844kB, screen resolution 2560x1600 pixels)
4MLinux 37.0
Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 37.0, the new stable build of the project's minimalist distribution for desktops and servers. Its "four Ms" represent 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). 4MLinux 37.0 updates many of the popular packages to their latest versions; this includes, LibreOffice 7.1.5, GIMP 2.10.24, Gnumeric 1.12.48, Firefox 90.0.2, Chromium 90.0.4430.212, Thunderbird 78.12.0, VLC 3.0.16 and MESA 21.0.1. The Linux kernel is at version 5.10.47. "The status of the 4MLinux 37.0 series has been changed to STABLE. As always, the new major release has some new features. FluidSynth (a software synthesizer) with VMPK (Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard) have been added. Dmidecode (a tool to read hardware-related data from your SMBIOS) has also been included. HandBrake (a video transcoder) and qBittorrent (an advanced BitTorrent client) are now available as downloadable extensions. 4MLinux now uses its own servers for updating the ClamAV virus database. The Linux kernel patched to support the reiser4 file system has been added to the 4MLinux drivers collection." Here is the brief release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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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) |
Reporting on a formerly dormant distribution
A little over a decade ago, back in the early days of Ubuntu's nascent popularity and derivatives, DistroWatch was just starting to get requests to list re-spins of the Ubuntu distribution. Some of these projects that were submitted to us went on to become official community editions of Ubuntu while others faded away after a few years.
In those early days, Ubuntu-based distributions were still relatively few in number and we didn't have many rules governing what would be added to our database and what would not. However, as the number of re-spins increased and more distributions (whether based on Ubuntu or other parent distributions) exploded onto the scene, we began introducing more criteria for accepting new projects into our database. These rules include filtering out projects that violate trademark and which represent a specific political, artistic, or religious groups.
I bring this bit of history to light because one project which was added in the early days of Ubuntu-mania was Ubuntu Christian Edition. The project ran for about five years before being discontinued, as many early Ubuntu spins were. However, the spin is being revived and its developer has contacted us to let us know about an upcoming new release of Ubuntu Christian Edition (CE).
This places us in an interesting position. Ubuntu CE was accepted into our database, and then discontinued, prior to our current rules on what projects will be listed were formed. By our current standards, Ubuntu CE would not be listed in our database and we wouldn't cover its releases. It could be argued that it doesn't make sense to track and announce new versions of this project since it doesn't meet our current criteria. However, since Ubuntu CE was submitted before those rules were put into place it can also be argued that it is fair to continue updating our Ubuntu CE page and publishing announcements as new version become available.
Ultimately, our goal is to be a useful resource to our readers and so we'd like to hear your opinions on whether it makes sense to published news announcements and releases from the resurrected Ubuntu CE distribution. What do you think, should Ubuntu CE be grandfathered in, filtered out, or something in between?
Update: Watching the votes come in for this poll we soon noticed that, while most
polls receive most of their submissions on Monday and Tuesday with a few votes
trickling in later in the week, this poll was different. Voting appeared to
accelerate during the week, with options 1 and 3 quickly gaining more and more
votes while (suspiciously) no more votes were cast for options 2 and 4.
Some simple checking of our web server logs soon revealed that while a few clever
actors had found a loophole which allowed them to appear as though they were
unique visitors from different locations and therefore vote multiple times, they had not made an effort
to hide the fact all their votes were coming from the same computer and cell phone.
The votes from both the actors attempting to game the poll have been removed
from the tally. Since, apart from these ambitious individuals, voting seems to have concluded the poll will be closed for the remainder of the week. The final tally, minus the attempted fraud votes, is displayed to the right.
You can see the results of our previous poll on memory consumption in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Handling formerly dormant projects which no longer meet our criteria
| Cover new releases and updates (grandfather in Ubuntu CE): | 351 (28%) |
| Update the information page but do not post announcements (middle road): | 267 (21%) |
| Do not track or post announcements (follow current criteria): | 595 (48%) |
| Other (see comment below): | 37 (3%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
FWUL
FWUL (Forget Windows Use Linux) is a desktop Linux distribution based on the Xfce edition of Manjaro Linux. The main purpose of the project is to build a small, fast, light and hassle-free distribution for general use. It comes with a custom installation program, a cross-platform remote control utility, some Android tools, and many standard Linux applications.
FWUL 3.2 - a Manjaro-based desktop distribution with Xfce
(full image size: 3,616kB, screen resolution 2560x1600 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Pyabr OS (website in Farsi). Pyabr OS is a Debian-based distribution designed specifically for use on virtual machines, on shared cloud server, and as a live system booted from a USB flash drive.
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DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 9 August 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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Bluewall GNU/Linux
Bluewall GNU/Linux was a Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux with a twist - instead of apt, it uses NetBSD's pkgsrc as its package management software.
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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