 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1050, 18 December 2023 |
Welcome to this year's 51st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the key technical features which is slowly being adopted across the Linux landscape is immutable filesystems. An immutable filesystem is one which cannot be changed while the operating system is running, creating a fixed base on which we can run applications. This week we begin with a look at rlxos, an independent Linux distribution which combines an immutable core with a minimal Xfce desktop experience. Read on to hear early impressions of the rlxos distribution. Then, in our News section, we talk about security fixes and improvements, starting with: the Debian project released a delayed Debian 12.4 to give developers time to work around a kernel bug. Meanwhile the TrueNAS team has published new updates and an advisory for a ZFS bug which could cause data corruption as Canonical winds down support for Ubuntu 23.04. The Haiku team had a less hectic week, publishing a series of small improvements and usability enhancements for their lightweight operating system. In our Questions and Answers column we explore a few easy ways to rename large groups of files and how to jump to a specific directory when opening a terminal window. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Next week we will be off for the holidays, but we will return on January 1st of 2024. We wish you all a wonderful end to 2023 and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
rlxos 2023.11 "Silanghana"
rlxos (sometimes written RLXOS) is an independent Linux distribution which runs on an immutable filesystem and features the Xfce desktop. The project offers the Distrobox container manager to facilitate running software from multiple other distributions. It also includes support for Flatpak as a method of acquiring additional applications.
The latest release of rlxos shifts from using GNOME to Xfce for improved performance and resource usage. The distribution includes a tool called swupd for managing updates and we can check for available updates using the command "sudo swupd status". Previous versions of rlxos booted on computers with UEFI enabled exclusively. The latest release reportedly works on computers running either UEFI or Legacy BIOS configurations. The new version also features a custom first-run wizard as an alternative to the previous version's GNOME's initial setup utility.
The rlxos distribution provides a single edition which is available as a 2.5GB ISO file. Booting from this image happens very quickly and almost immediately shows us the Xfce desktop. A welcome window opens automatically and offers to walk us through installing the distribution.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Something I noticed when first trying out rlxos was the welcome window had two buttons on its first screen, a Home button and a Help button. Hovering the mouse over the Home button displays the project's home page URL in a tool tip, but clicking the button opens Firefox and displays a copy of our live user's home directory. Clicking the Help button also opens Firefox, but it displays an on-line copy of the distribution's documentation. The documentation offers some tips on what sets rlxos apart and how to manage software - updates, containers, and portable package formats.
Moving on to the welcome window's next screen, we are shown a list of partitions on our computer's hard drive. An Edit button on this page opens the GParted partition manager so we can adjust partitions as required. Returning to the welcome window and hitting Refresh updates our view of the disk layout.
The following page gives us a chance to assign root and UEFI partitions. The distribution did not detect or offer to create a swap partition. With this step completed, the installer copies its image to the root partition of our local drive. Once this copy procedure is completed the installer offers to reboot our computer. Alternatively, we can close the installer/welcome window and browse the live desktop.
The installer is fairly straight forward to use and works quickly. It isn't particularly flexible in the way it handles partitioning (we cannot set a separate /home partition, for example, but otherwise the experience is pleasantly simple to navigate.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of rlxos booted almost instantly and displayed the Xfce desktop. A new welcome window appears, this time with some first-run configuration steps. Well, there is really just one step. We are asked to make up a username and password for ourselves. This page also gives us the option of automatically logging into our account at boot time. We are asked to confirm our choices and then the welcome screen disappears and we are signed out of the desktop. We're then shown a graphical login screen.
Xfce 4.18 is set up with a light theme by default and a dark theme is available through the settings panel. There is a thick panel placed across the bottom of the screen. This panel holds an application menu in the bottom-left corner. Then, from left to right, we find a virtual desktop switcher, quick-launch icons, a task switcher, and the system tray.
After five minutes a screensaver is activated, locking the session. This behaviour can be adjusted in the settings panel.
Speaking of the Xfce settings options, there are two settings applications. One is called the Settings Editor, which acts like the Windows registry editor, but for Xfce. The other settings utility is called the Settings Manager which is more typical for a desktop settings portal, in the same style of GNOME Settings or KDE System Settings.
rlxos 2023.11 -- The two settings utilities
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Hardware
While I was using rlxos, desktop performance was top notch. While the GNOME desktop used in previous versions of rlxos performed fairly well, I feel as though the move to Xfce is a step forward in this regard. Apart from an increase in responsiveness, we can also see a reduction in resource consumption. The current snapshot of rlxos used 515MB of RAM when signed into Xfce (compared to 740MB used by the previous GNOME snapshot). The latest release uses 4.7GB of disk space while the previous version used 5.4GB.
I tested the distribution in VirtualBox and on a laptop and rlxos performed well in both environments. The new version, as advertised, boots in Legacy BIOS and UEFI modes, which is a step forward. The distribution ran smoothly for me in VirtualBox and detected all of my laptop's hardware. Networking, my touchpad, and audio all worked out of the box. The rlxos distribution mutes audio by default, which I appreciate, and we can enable sound output by using the volume control widget in the system tray. The operating system automatically made use of my keyboard's media keys. My only (minor) complaint was Xfce didn't register taps on my touchpad as clicks, but this can be adjusted in the settings panel.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Performing a search for installed applications
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Earlier I mentioned the rlxos system installer does not detect or create a swap partition. It also does not set up a swap file. Instead the distribution enables compressed memory (zRAM) and swaps out inactive memory to be compressed and stored in a corner of RAM. This can work when an operating system is getting close to filling its memory, but doesn't require a lot of swap space.
Included software
The rlxos system runs Xfce 4.18 and the Firefox web browser. We're also given the Parole media player (along with codecs for most audio and video formats), the Pinta image editor, and an image viewer. The Gufw firewall is included along with the Thunar file manager. The Xfce settings panel is installed for us as is the CUPS printing software.
I found the GNU command line utilities are installed, though there is no man command, so no access to local manual pages. In the background systemd provides the distribution's init software and rlxos runs on version 6.5 of the Linux kernel at the time of writing.
This is a small collection of applications, which seems a standard approach for immutable distributions. They tend to offer a minimal base and layer applications on top as needed.
One of the entries in the application menu is Print Manager. Clicking this launcher opened the Firefox web browser and displayed the contents of my home directory. This was the same behaviour I saw in the live environment when using the system installer. In fact, whenever Firefox was opened it defaulted to showing me the contents of my home directory. I later found a fix for this (which I'll talk about later). After the fix was applied Firefox would open the Print Manager web page and show me CUPS documentation. However, I was unable to set up any printers. Attempting to add a new printer would prompt me for a username and password. Both my credentials and the root user's credentials were rejected, preventing me from adding my printer.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Trying to set up a printer
(full image size: 1,4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
There is a desktop application for printer management as well. This CUPS front-end ran into the same problem. I would be asked to provide login credentials and, regardless of whose I supplied, I was rejected.
Software management
The rlxos distribution does not appear to offer a graphical software manager. I decided to visit the project's on-line documentation and clicked the link for swupd which, at the time of writing, displays a "404 - not found" error. Fortunately, I found another section of the documentation which talks about using swupd, the project's update utility.
In most situations, we just need two commands when running swupd. The command "sudo swupd check" will look for any available system updates and list them along with a summary of changes they will introduce. The second command is "sudo swupd upgrade" which fetches and installs the waiting updates. A system restart is then required to apply the waiting updates.
Earlier I mentioned finding a fix for Firefox. One of the waiting updates was labelled as a fix for the default page displayed when Firefox launches. Once this update was applied Firefox's behaviour was corrected and it showed the requested page or a normal search page when it was launched instead of my home directory's contents. This fix was included in upgrade number 86, for those interested.
There is a line in the rlxos documentation which I believe includes a typo: "rlxos is a immutable distribution and you can make any permanent changes into it. But you can apply a safe mutable overlay over the system roots to apply temporary modifications." I believe the highlighted word should be "cannot", indicating that normally users cannot modify the base system. However, using swupd we can temporarily set up an editable (mutable) layer and make changes to it. Most users probably will not need this feature, but it is nice to have in case we want to adjust a low level system setting.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Checking for updates
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
When we want to add applications to rlxos we can do so using the Flatpak command line utility. Flatpak is installed for us and automatically connects to the Flathub repository. This gives us a large collection of desktop software. Flatpak allows each user to fetch and run their own copy of Flatpak bundles, with each user getting their own copy. No Flatpak bundles are installed by default, giving rlxos a fairly lean default configuration.
Should we wish to install and run lower level software or applications not available through Flatpak, we have the option of using Distrobox. The Distrobox container administration software is included by default and mentioned briefly in the rlxos documentation. For people who want some hands-on tips for using Distrobox to set up containers and install minimal distributions in them, we have an overview and tutorial of the technology.
Conclusions
I recently talked about openSUSE's MicroOS and I feel as though, with that experience fresh in my head, it makes sense to draw some parallels with rlxos. Both distributions offer immutable bases and both use Flatpak to supply additional software. There are a few key differences. For example, openSUSE's MicroOS offers Plasma and GNOME desktop experiences while rlxos offers Xfce. MicroOS provides graphical front-ends for package management while rlxos requires command line usage.
On the other hand, rlxos offers a lighter, faster experience when running in my test environments. I also like the super simple system installer and the clear documentation. There were a few issues with rlxos, mostly in terms of the Firefox bug which was fixed at the start of my trial. Apart from this small issue, and the print permissions error, rlxos offered a smooth, fast, light experience and I quite enjoyed it.
I'm not sure I could use it as a daily driver, or at least it wouldn't be practical. I'd need to install at least one container using Distrobox and, at that point, I might as well just run the container distribution directly as the main operating system. However, I could definitely see the benefit of running rlxos for someone who doesn't use the command line a lot or many obscure software packages. rlxos offers a light, fast, clean environment and an immutable base. It's pleasantly streamlined while still offering all of the software available in Flathub. I think, if the project adds a graphical software centre, I'd recommend it to less experienced computer users or people who want an easy, stable experience.
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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
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Visitor supplied rating
rlxos has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.7/10 from 3 review(s).
Have you used rlxos? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian publishes new install media with a kernel fix, Haiku improves desktop experience, Ubuntu 23.04 nears its end of life, TrueNAS publishes important update for ZFS
The Debian project has published new install media for Debian 12 "Bookworm". The new media is not for a new version of Debian, but includes bug fixes released since Debian 12 was originally launched. "Please be advised that this document has been updated as best to reflect Debian 12.3 being superseded by Debian 12.4. These changes came about from a last minute bug advisory of #1057843 concerning issues with kernel-image-6.1.0-14 (6.1.64-1). Debian 12.4 is released with kernel-image-6.1.0-15 (6.1.66), along with a few other bug fixes. The Debian project is pleased to announce the forth update of its stable distribution Debian 12 (codename Bookworm). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available."
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The Haiku project has published their November newsletter which highlights changes and improvements being worked on in the spiritual successor to BeOS. Some of the changes are little adjustments which make using some applications more convenient. "humdinger fixed Tracker to display half-star ratings on files instead of rounding to the nearest whole star. He also added 'Reset rating' menu actions to MediaPlayer and ShowImage, to allow file ratings to be easily reset.
apl made some performance improvements to HaikuDepot's loading procedure, including to defer loading sizes or skip it all together when unnecessary, using buffered reads and reusing text buffers during JSON parsing, and more. He also started a refactor of the data-model generation code, writing a new parser generation script and adjusting the generated code for performance, among other changes.
humdinger fixed Mail's 'Save address' command to automatically open 'People' with the email and name fields already populated if no contact file yet exists for that email address. (This involved adjusting 'People' to accept such initial values.)"
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Brian Murray has sent out a reminder that Ubuntu 23.04 will soon reach the end of its supported life. "Ubuntu announced its 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) release almost 9 months ago, on April 20, 2023 and its support period is now nearing its end. Ubuntu 23.04 will reach end of life on January 25, 2024. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 23.04. The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 23.04 is via Ubuntu 23.10." The Ubuntu support website has upgrade instructions.
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An issue in the OpenZFS advanced filesystem was discovered in November which could cause data corruption in specific circumstances. This bug was fixed and operating systems shipping with ZFS support have updated their packages. TrueNAS has published an advisory about the potential issue with links to detailed discussions about what has been corrected in ZFS. "This is a small update to 13.0-U6 to update OpenZFS to version 2.1.14 and fix a data integrity issue discovered in that project (NAS-125356). While this bug has been present in OpenZFS for many years, this issue has not been found to impact any TrueNAS systems to date. This TrueNAS Community announcement has further details."
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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) |
Renaming files and opening virtual terminals in specific locations
Cleaning-up-the-names asks: I have a lot of files where I want to replace spaces with underscores. Any easy way to do this?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few ways we can approach renaming files, substituting some characters for others. One of the easier ways is using the Xfce Bulk Rename utility. Bulk Rename is a friendly, desktop application which makes it easy to perform find-and-replace style actions on filenames. We can select a group of files, pick an adjustment to perform, and the utility will show us the "before" and "after" views of the filenames we have selected.
Bulk Rename -- Changing underscores to hyphens
(full image size: 30kB, resolution: 629x490 pixels)
There is another utility called KRename which, while a part of the KDE Plasma desktop suite, can be installed on any Linux desktop system. It performs similar functions, dividing its actions across multiple tabs.
For people who want a command line solution, renaming files is fairly straight forward with the Perl rename command. With this command line tool we can specify the characters or patterns we want to find and the names of the files we want to change. In the following example we change a space (" ") to an underscore ("_") for all GIF files in a directory:
rename 's/ /_/g' *.gif
The "s" near the start of the rename command indicates we will be performing a substitution. The "g" toward the middle indicates we'll be performing the change globally, which just means we will replace all spaces with underscores instead of just the first instance.
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A-terminal-decision asks: Is there a way I can set up my system to open a terminal and quickly jump to a directory?
DistroWatch answers: There are a number of ways to cause a virtual terminal to jump to a specific directory, either once it's running or when it is being launched. When using most file managers (such as Dolphin or Thunar) we can right-click in a directory and select "Open Terminal Here", or a similarly named menu option in the file manager. This will cause a new terminal to open and set the current working directory to match the one we were browsing in the file manager.
Most virtual terminals will accept a working directory as a parameter and then immediately jump to that directory. For example, running the following command (perhaps from a desktop launcher) will cause the Konsole terminal to open and jump to the Downloads directory:
konsole --workdir ~/Downloads
In situations where we don't want to use a file manager or a desktop icon we can set up shell aliases to quickly jump to directories we use frequently. Let's assume we're running the bash shell, or a compatible shell. We could create an alias by running the following command:
alias sc='cd /home/jesse/work/scripts'
Afterwards, whenever we want to get to the "scripts" directory, we can simply type "sc" and the shell will jump to that location. Adding the above alias command to our account's ~/.bashrc file will make the alias permanent and available whenever a new terminal window is opened.
We can create as many aliases as we want, making each one a shortcut to entering a specific directory.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Univention Corporate Server 5.0-6
Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is an enterprise-class distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. The project's latest release focuses on bug fixes and tightening security. "In the last three months we have released 47 security updates, most of them from the Debian base distribution. However, we have also fixed security-relevant errors in the Univention packages, e.g. password leaks via the process list. We have also further stabilized the Univention Management Console (UMC) when connecting to the individual UMC modules. We have improved the way the Univention Directory Manager (UDM) handles inconsistent user capitalization. Some data is now updated atomically by the portal, which avoids certain error patterns, and the self service now translates the forms correctly in all cases." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
Manjaro Linux 23.1.0
The Manjaro Linux team have published a new snapshot of the distribution's rolling release. The new 23.1.0 release offers up to date desktop environments with the main editions offering GNOME 45, KDE Plasma 5.27, and Xfce 4.18. "One of the most noticeable changes in GNOME 45 is the new activities button. Located in the corner of the top bar, this button was previously labelled 'Activities'. In GNOME 45, this static label has been replaced with a dynamic workspace indicator. The new button design is a response to user testing results over recent years, and we are confident that its purpose will be more obvious to new GNOME users. As part of this change, the old app menu (which showed the name of the currently focused app), was also retired. This retirement was another response to user testing results, and was required to make space for the new design. Search performance has been a major area of work for GNOME 45. These performance improvements have been made to a range of apps, including Software, Characters, Clocks, Files, and Calculator. Together, these changes result in faster search and reduced resource usage, which can be seen in both individual apps and in system search." Additional highlights are presented in the project's release announcement.
Manjaro linux 23.1.0 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 959kB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,941
- Total data uploaded: 43.8TB
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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) |
Jumping to specific directories on the command line
In this week's Questions and Answers section we talked about various ways to quickly access a specific directory from the command line. There are a few ways to do this, ranging from shell aliases, to parameters passed to a virtual terminal, to custom scripts. Some tools will even try to do fuzzy matching on directory names to make them easier to access. This week we'd like to hear which, if any, shortcuts you use to quickly jump to a directory.
You can see the results of our previous poll on whether to replace CentOS Linux on our Major Distributions page in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How do you jump to a new directory in a shell?
| I type the full cd command: | 863 (62%) |
| I use an alias: | 60 (4%) |
| I use a launch/desktop shortcut: | 47 (3%) |
| I use a custom shell: | 8 (1%) |
| I use a shell that predicts directory names: | 173 (12%) |
| I use another tool: | 58 (4%) |
| I do not use the command line: | 190 (14%) |
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| 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 $195 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| K Kappell | $100 |
| J S | $50 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| Peter M | $2 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- CNIX OS. CNIS OS is a Debian-based distribution which uses the Xfce desktop and includes the GNOME Software application for software management.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 1 January 2024. 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)
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| 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 |
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| Random Distribution | 
ChaletOS
ChaletOS was a beginner-friendly Linux distribution based on Xubuntu and featuring the Xfce desktop. It provides a simple and intuitive desktop interface, modest hardware requirements and five years of security support. The name ChaletOS was derived from Swiss mountain houses whose concepts of simplicity, beauty and recognisability inspired the creation and design of ChaletOS.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
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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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0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
