 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1038, 25 September 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 39th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
This week we are focusing on some open source projects and names that have been around for a long time, even though they're rarely in the spotlight anymore. We begin with a look at Mageia 9, the latest release from a distribution which traces its roots back to the popular Mandrake Linux project from the 1990s. Mageia continues on the tradition of providing a friendly, GUI-focused operating system that Mandrake strove to provide over 20 years ago, while offering an up to date desktop experience. Read on to learn more about the latest offering from Mageia. In our News section we talk about the Reiser filesystem, one of Linux's first journaling filesystems, which is being phased out of the Linux kernel while the GNU project celebrates its 40th anniversary. GNU is still going strong 40 years in, despite all the changes in the world during its lifetime, and it still makes up key parts of many modern operating systems. We're also pleased to share new, freely available documentation for the advanced Nix package and system manager. Then, in our Questions and Answers column, we quickly offer suggestions for trouble-shooting desktop launchers, finding friendly, independent Linux distributions, and how to run desktop Linux in the cloud. Do you run cloud instances of Linux? Let us know about your experiences in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and the torrent we are seeding. Finally, we are grateful to our readers who continue to send in donations to help us keep things running. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
|
| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Mageia 9
Mageia is a distribution which grew out of the Mandriva family. Mageia is now independently developed and strives to offer a user friendly, general purpose operating system with a focus on the desktop experience.
The Mageia distribution is available in a variety of editions, including an install ISO; live editions featuring the GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Xfce desktops; and net-install media. I decided to try the live Plasma edition.
Booting from the live media brings up a menu asking if we'd like to boot into the live environment or launch the system installer. Taking the live option brings up a series of graphical windows asking us to select our language, acknowledge the license agreement, pick our timezone, and select our keyboard's layout.
With those steps completed, the live media loads the Plasma desktop. Plasma is presented with a light theme and a panel across the bottom of the display. On the desktop we find icons for launching the system installer, opening the file manager, and accessing on-line community resources.
A welcome window appears and offers to provide us with access to documentation and local features. The welcome window on the live media shows us six tabs. These tabs provide launchers for the installer's documentation, there are buttons to launch the operating system's Control Centre and the package managers. There is a tab full of buttons which will launch Firefox to display on-line resources such as documentation, the wiki, and user forum. These all worked as expected and I'll talk a bit more about the welcome window, and its role in the post-install experience, later.
Mageia 9 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 345kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Installing
Installing Mageia is fairly straight forward, thanks to the distribution's streamlined system installer. The installer begins by asking us if we want to use guided or manual disk partitioning. The manual approach is fairly simple to navigate and uses nice, graphical controls to make the process easy to explore. The guided approach takes over the drive with an ext4 partition, for the root filesystem, and a swap partition. We are asked if extra packages, such as unnecessary hardware support and locale information, should be removed after the install has completed. Then files are copied to our hard drive.
Once the packages have been copied over we are asked if we want to set up the GRUB boot loader in text or graphical mode. We're also given the chance to set boot options such as the timeout delay and a password. Then we're asked if the distribution requires any custom kernel boot parameters. This is a bit more advanced than what most desktop users will need, but when in doubt we can simply click the Next button to move on to the following screen.
The next screen asks if we'd like to enable on-line media (which appears to mean remote software repositories) and we're asked if we wish to install any available updates immediately. I skipped the update step for the sake of expediency. I was then asked to "halt" my computer. This is one of a few areas where the system seems to use terminology which was common when the installer was written around twenty years ago, but isn't really used anymore.
Early impressions
The first time I started my local copy of Mageia 9, the distribution started the boot process, then launched a graphical environment. A few seconds later a window appeared and displayed a segfault error message which looked like it came from a Perl module. Closing this window resulted in a new window appearing which invited me to make up a username and password for myself along with a password for the root account.
Mageia 9 -- Crash report from the first-run wizard
(full image size: 102kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Once I had created my user account I was shown a blue themed graphical login screen. Plasma on X11 and IceWM sessions were available. There was no option for running Plasma on a Wayland session.
I did sign into the IceWM session once to confirm it worked. It's a very light and responsive environment which is arranged to have a similar layout to the Plasma session. I spent almost all of my time running Plasma during my trial.
The welcome window opens when we first login. This time the window has eight tabs (instead of six). Along with the original tabs we're given options for enabling optional software repositories and installing package updates. There is also a tab which lists popular applications in a variety of categories and invites us to install these applications. Sometimes we need to visit the tab for enabling software repositories before installing the curated items which involves a bit of back and forth between the two tabs.
I have mixed feelings about the way Mageia splits packages into various repositories. Apart from the main open source repositories there are also update repositories, non-free packages, tainted packages (which may be affected by patents), and backports. Then there are 32-bit versions of all of the above options. It makes for a lot of repositories for the user to wade through. On the one hand, I appreciate this level of control. On the other, I think this level of software management is likely to confuse new users, or users not familiar with patent and copyright restrictions on software.
Something I noticed immediately while using the installed copy of Mageia 9 was that the launcher for the system installer (which was present on the live media) was still on the desktop. In fact, this icon still works, opening the system installer.
Mageia 9 -- Live media leftovers
(full image size: 295kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Another relic from the live media is an entry for a live user in the /home directory. This turns out to be a symbolic link to the first user's home directory, not a directory itself. I also confirmed there is no "live" user account lingering on the system. This approach, having a symbolic link to the first user's directory isn't a problem, it's just unusual.
During the install process I had opted to not fetch any waiting updates. I was surprised to find no new updates were available once Mageia had been installed since the distribution was well over a week old at that point. I'm not sure if this indicates a slow response to new updates or if the installer ignored my preference and fetched updates anyway. As I'll mention later, this lack of updates appears to be an ongoing issue.
Hardware
The Plasma desktop was quite responsive, I might say unusually responsive, when running on Mageia. This held true whether I was running the desktop on my laptop or in VirtualBox. I was pleased to see the desktop automatically resized itself when the VirtualBox window changed dimensions.
Mageia worked well with my laptop's hardware. Wireless networking and audio worked out of the box. My touchpad did not use taps as clicks, but this can be enabled in the System Settings panel.
There were two issues I had which I suspect are related to hardware drivers. The first was sometimes I would lock the screen or put the laptop to sleep and then the screen would refuse to wake up or resume. When this happened the distribution was unresponsive to keyboard and mouse input, even shortcut combinations such as Ctrl+Alt+Backspace would refuse to reset the X11 session. The only solution was to restart the computer. Other distributions haven't had this problem so far with this laptop.
The other issue was the screen would sometimes flicker and the desktop panel would disappear and immediately appear again (within a second). It felt like the session was redrawing itself or crashing and resuming very quickly, though no application instability resulted from this flickering.
Included software
Mageia 9's KDE edition ships with a fairly standard set of open source software, though understandably with a tendency toward KDE/Qt applications. The application menu uses a nested tree style which is quite full and sometimes has us hunting through multiple layers to find launchers.
Mageia 9 -- Running LibreOffice and Gnumeric
(full image size: 267kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The system includes Firefox, LibreOffice, and the Dolphin file manager. The KMail e-mail client is installed along with the Konservation chat client and the Konqueror web browser. (Most distributions don't use Konqueror anymore, favouring Falkon if there is a strong focus on KDE software, so this felt like a blast from the past.)
There are several applications for playing or managing media files and images. These include digiKam for working with digital cameras, Strawberry for playing music, and the VLC and Dragon Player media players. We have the option of installing media codecs through the package manager or, more conveniently, through the welcome window.
The distribution also ships with some convenient tools to keep us organized, such as the KDE Connect tool to link devices and KOrganizer to keep track of tasks.
Mageia ships with the standard GNU command line utilities and their manual pages. The distribution also includes Java and the systemd suite. In the background we can find version 6.4.9 of the Linux kernel.
Some of the items in the application menu appear in multiple places. This can make it easier to find launchers, but it also makes the menu feel more crowded.
Mageia is unusual in that it is a desktop-focused distribution which does not offer the sudo command by default to assist in performing administrator tasks. Instead we can switch to the root account using the su command.
Usually I don't notice when one init implementation is used versus another. It's not often I need to go digging around a distribution's internals and service management tools. However, I do notice if boot times or shutdown times are unusually fast (or slow). In Mageia's case, the shutdown process would occasionally hang while systemd waiting for services to stop. This didn't happen every time, but about a third of the time I wanted to shutdown or restart the computer systemd would leave me waiting for an extra minute.
Settings
The Plasma desktop is highly customizable and can be managed through the System Settings panel. The number of options presented through the panel is staggering, though well organized, and we can use a search feature to pinpoint features we want to adjust or toggle.
The highlight of any distribution in the Mandriva family is the Control Centre (in this case branded as the Mageia Control Centre). This control panel provides dozens of configuration modules for adjusting the underlying operating system. From the Control Centre we can access modules which will install and remove software, fetch updates, manage user accounts, set up printers, and adjust login settings. There are modules for viewing logs, managing background system services, and a tool called Snapshots which handles the creation of simple backups.
There are some modules which, when run, require additional packages to be installed. This is handled for us in a mostly automated fashion. For example, the tool for setting up network shares installs Samba packages.
Mageia 9 -- The System Settings panel and the Control Centre
(full image size: 362kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The Control Centre and its modules worked well for me and I appreciate how easy they are to navigate. It makes handling lower level aspects of the operating system unusually easy. There are a few areas which I feel could be improved though. For instance, the service manager only lists the names of background services, without a description. This is actually fairly common behaviour for a lot of service managers and I found myself thinking it would be nice to see (both in Mageia and other distributions) make an attempt to provide a short summary of the service along with the (typically) cryptic name. Both systemd and SysV init style services include a description field which could be added to indicate what services like "cron", "sshd", and "cups" do as these names are unhelpful to new users.
I also found it curious there were two separate firewall tools, one for IPv4 connections and one for IPv6. On most distributions there is one firewall tool which sorts out the underlying firewall rules on both network types. On a distribution with such a focus on user friendly behaviour and tools, having multiple firewalls for different IP versions seemed out of character.
Software management on Mageia is a little awkward in my opinion. The distribution does have a graphical package manager which occupies a middle ground between modern software centres and classic package managers. It uses filters to help us switch between browsing low-level packages and desktop applications. This works, though might be a bit more complicated than new users will find comfortable.
Mageia 9 -- Managing software packages
(full image size: 174kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Should we wish to handle software from the command line we can use the DNF package manager. I also found Flatpak support is enabled, but it must be handled from the command line and there are no default repositories.
Conclusions
When I first started using Mageia 9 a few weeks ago I was impressed by the distribution. Despite the fact there were a lot of download options for a user-friendly project and the somewhat technical style of the release notes, the distribution had a lot working in its favour. The live media is easy to use, the installer is unusually straight forward, and I really like the welcome window. This welcome window especially strikes a good balance between providing access to options while not being overwhelming for a newcomer.
There are other good aspects too. I like the performance and stability of the Plasma desktop. Mageia seems to have tuned things to be unusually responsive and, despite the occasional flicking, the desktop session remained reliable. I also really enjoy the Control Centre as it makes handling user accounts, services, printing, and a dozen other tasks pleasantly simple.
After the first two days of using Mageia 9 I was ready to declare the distribution one of the best desktop experiences I had enjoyed so far in 2023. However, the longer I used the distribution the more issues kept creeping into the trial. Early on it was little things like having the first-run wizard crash with cryptic debug information printing to the screen, and the installer using archaic terminology like "halt the computer", and the systemd pauses while shutting down the computer.
Later in the trial I found it weird I had to configure the IPv4 and IPv6 firewalls separately and had to dig multiple levels deep in the application menu to find launchers, sometimes even in mostly-empty categories. Needing to scroll through dozens of software repositories to find the ones required to enable media codecs was unusually cumbersome for a modern distribution. It also felt like an oversight to have the system installer (and its icon) carry over from the live media to the installed operating system. These are not serious issues, but they are some key examples of little quirks, concerns, and bits of unpolished corners of the distribution.
The big stumbling point for me was package management. Mageia's package manager is functional, it will fetch and remove RPM packages, but it's a bit awkward to use - it is not really a low level package manager and not really a modern software centre. I'm surprised Mageia shipped with it with the Plasma desktop instead of KDE's Discover which would offer a more familiar interface and offer support for Flatpak packages too. Speaking of Flatpak, I find it curious Mageia (and a few other distributions) go to the trouble of installing Flatpak support, but not enabling any repositories such as Flathub. This just adds one extra step for the user.
A bigger issue though was my copies of Mageia never received software updates. At first I thought the distribution must have fetched updates during the install process (despite my selection to skip this step). But then a few days went by and a few more. I ended up running Mageia longer than usual, around two weeks, and despite all of the security updates other projects pushed out during that time, I received nothing from Mageia - either through the graphical update manager or via the DNF command line package manager. I confirmed I had the Update repositories enabled, but no updates came through. This is a significant security concern as, if there are updates available and something is going wrong in the background of my system, the package manager is failing silently. But if there aren't updates in the repositories then the project is failing to protect its users. In either case, it gives me strong reservations about running Mageia for any length of time.
Mageia looks good, offers great performance, and solid hardware support. It's easy to set up and offers a lot of friendly system administration tools. However, it is missing polish or running into bugs in key areas (the control centre, install process, first-run wizard, and package management) which gradually took the shine off my experience with the distribution.
* * * * *
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
* * * * *
Visitor supplied rating
Mageia has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.3/10 from 120 review(s).
Have you used Mageia? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
|
| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years
The NixOS distribution, and the advanced Nix package and system manager, hold a lot of appeal for system administrators and users alike. The Nix approach allows for central configuration, reproducible builds, and rolling back package changes. While quite powerful, Nix offers a very different style of system administration compared to the traditional Linux approach. This can cause some confusion or result in users overlooking helpful features. An unofficial guide to using Nix has been published by Ryan Yin. The guide, titled NixOS & Flakes Book, is available on-line free of charge and offers a beginner-friendly explanation of Nix and its core features.
* * * * *
The Reiser filesystem (ReiserFS) was a rising star when it was introduced two decades ago. It was one of the first journaling filesystems to be included in the Linux kernel and the default filesystem of a few distributions, including SUSE, in its early years. For some time now, ReiserFS has been deprecated in the official Linux kernel as no one is currently working to maintain it. Efforts are now underway to strip ReiserFS from the upstream kernel and it is expected to slowly disappear from the remaining distributions which continue to support it. A recent kernel commit message reads: "ReiserFS has been considered deprecated for 19 months since commit eb103a51640e ("ReiserFS: Deprecate ReiserFS"). However, there are several architectures that still build it into their defconfig kernels. As ReiserFS will be removed in 2025, delete all ReiserFS-related options from defconfig files before the filesystem's removal."
* * * * *
This week the GNU project, a core element to most Linux distributions and a provider of many commonly used open source utilities, celebrated its 40th anniversary. "On September 27, 1983, a computer scientist named Richard Stallman announced the plan to develop a free software Unix-like operating system called GNU, for 'GNU's not Unix.' GNU is the only operating system developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom, and has remained true to its founding ideals for forty years. Since 1983, the GNU Project has provided a full, ethical replacement for proprietary operating systems. This is thanks to the forty years of tireless work from volunteer GNU developers around the world. The computing world has evolved a lot over the past 40 years and GNU has evolved with it, providing key software components for many of the world's desktops, embedded devices, and servers.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
|
| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Troubleshooting program launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, an easy to use independent distro
Getting-off-the-ground asks: I have a program that runs fine when I try to launch it from the command line, but it doesn't launch when I click its desktop icon. Since there is no error message, how can I troubleshoot this?
DistroWatch answers: Chances are one of two things is happening. First, one of the fields in the desktop launcher is incorrect or incomplete. This can happen if the launcher specifies the name of the application to be launched, but not its full path. For example, if your launcher specifies it should launch "firefox" instead of "/opt/firefox/bin/firefox" then the launcher may fail. Meanwhile, on the command line, you might be giving the full path or have a custom search path set up which detects the firefox program. Often times making sure your launcher specifies the full path name of a program will fix this problem.
Another issue could be your desktop environment. Most application launchers will work equally well across desktop environments and display servers. However, there can be exceptions. If your desktop uses a Wayland session, try running your desktop's X11 login session instead. If you are running KDE Plasma, try running the same launcher from GNOME. These sorts of problems are rare, but not unheard of.
Finally, try downloading the dex application (it is available in most distribution repositories). Try using dex to open your application's desktop launcher. This can be done by running dex with the "-v" flag and the name of the launcher. For example this will try to launch the Thunar application and display troubleshooting information:
dex -v /usr/share/applications/thunar.desktop
One last thing comes to mind. The above steps will help troubleshoot a graphical desktop program, but may be effective with a command line program which will need a terminal in which to run. If you are trying to run a command line program, make sure the line "Terminal=True" exists in the launcher's .desktop file.
* * * * *
Everywhere-I-go asks: Is there a convenient way to run desktop Linux in the cloud? I'd like to be able to set up some stuff to always be running and access it from wherever I am - work, home, from my phone, etc.
DistroWatch answers: I think what you are looking for is Shells.com, which provides pre-built desktop distributions running in a cloud. The desktop instance can be accessed from a web browser or phone app. We talked about the Shells.com service in an article a few years ago. I have occasionally used it to test software that I wanted to run without bogging down my local computer with virtual machines and find it quite easy to navigate.
* * * * *
Going-to-the-source asks: I'd like to run an independent distro, one that is beginner friendly and easy to set up. Any recommendations?
DistroWatch answers: This is a tricky one. Most independent distributions (such as Alpine, Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Slackware, and Void) are not geared toward beginners. Most independent distributions are aimed at experienced users, developers, and system administrators.
Often what happens is an independent distribution will gain enough of a following that someone will decide to make a beginner friendly or desktop oriented spin. That is how we end up with projects like Ubuntu, Manjaro, Linux Mint, and so on. These are projects which try to make their parent distribution, and its unique technologies, available to the masses.
Off the top of my head I can think of two beginner-friendly projects which are also currently independently developed. One is PCLinuxOS and the other is Solus. Both are rolling release distributions. PCLinuxOS originally grew out of the Mandriva family, but has been independently developed for a long time. It's a more conservative distribution and doesn't have a lot of new features common to other beginner oriented projects. However, it is quite easy to set up, runs light and fast, and has a whole host of point-n-click administration tools. I quite like it and recommend it for people who have been using Linux for a while and appreciate a more classic style.
Solus is more modern, more geared toward beginners and Linux newcomers. It includes more up to date features and has a sleeker appearance. Solus did appear to go dormant for several weeks at the start of the year, but it has since come back and published a new release with a roadmap indicating more to come.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
|
| Released Last Week |
KaOS 2023.09
KaOS is a rolling release, desktop distribution which is independently developed. The project places a strong focus on providing KDE/Qt software, running on the Plasma desktop. The latest snapshot of KaOS, version 2023.09, will likely be the penultimate release shipping with Plasma 5. "It is with great pleasure to present to you the September release of a new stable ISO. As you will note in this release announcement, work in KaOS is really shifting toward Plasma 6. This ISO is still Plasma 5 based and includes all the latest updates, but Plasma 5 & Qt5 are not where upstream development is anymore. Plan is to have this or the November ISO be the last Plasma 5 based stable ISO, after that, it will be Plasma 6 only. Major updates to the base of the system included a move to OpenSSL 3.1.3, fully updated Boost 1.82.0/ICU 73.2 stack, Alsa packages 1.2.10, kernel moved to Linux 6.4.16, Systemd 253.10, Python 3.10.13, Util-Linux 2.39.2, IWD 2.8, OpenEXR 3.2.0, and Libarchive 3.7.2." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
|
| 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: 2,907
- Total data uploaded: 43.6TB
|
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
|
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Running Linux sessions in the cloud
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about running desktop Linux sessions on a remote computer. While it has long been common for people to run Linux servers in cloud environments, it is less often that people run desktop systems on remote servers. We'd like to hear if you run desktop or server systems in the cloud.
You can see the results of our previous poll on testing beta releases of distributions in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
|
Do you run Linux in the cloud?
| Yes - I run cloud servers: | 122 (9%) |
| Yes - I run desktop systems in the cloud: | 6 (0%) |
| Yes - I run desktops and servers in the cloud: | 40 (3%) |
| No - all my systems are local: | 1167 (87%) |
|
|
| Website News |
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $123 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| JS | $50 |
| Mark J | $10 |
| Maciej P | $10 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Charles H | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Skye F | $3 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| Peter M | $2 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- FydeOS. FydeOS is a Gentoo-based project which aims to be minimal and provide a bridge between web-focused operating systems such as ChromeOS and traditional, desktop operating systems.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 2 October 2023. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. 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)
|
|
| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 4, value: US$85.71) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
|
|
| 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.
|
| Archives |
| • 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 |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • 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.
|
| Random Distribution | 
redWall Firewall
redWall Firewall was a bootable CD-ROM firewall based on Gentoo Linux. Its goal was to provide a feature-rich firewall solution together with a web-based interface for all the generated log files. redWall Firewall comes with Snort, SnortSam, DansGuardian and support for fwbuilder, SpamAssassin, reporting, VPN and mail alerts. Configuration files are stored on a floppy disk or a USB pen drive.
Status: Discontinued
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
