 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1061, 11 March 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Software is always moving, always evolving, and the Linux landscape changes with it. This week we focus on changes and new developments, with a focus on desktop environments and desktop computing. Our News section is dominated this week by changing desktop environments and desktop applications. The Fedora project is working to port System76's COSMIC desktop to the Fedora distribution while making plans to drop X11 support in future Workstation spins. Meanwhile Linux Mint is planning a replacement for the discontinued HexChat application and postmarketOS is going to switch from OpenRC to systemd because of the ongoing work required to get Plasma and GNOME to work with the OpenRC init software. Plus we discuss a new FreeBSD-based project, NixBSD, which works to port the Nix package manager from Linux to the BSDs. First though we talk about how smart phones running GNU/Linux are becoming more powerful and more flexible. Can a low-level smart phone work as a portable workstation when plugged into a full sized screen and keyboard? We test this idea in this issue's Feature Story. Then we explore the topic of how to easily restart a background service on a set schedule. We're also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
A PinePhone as a mobile desktop computer?
I have a tendency to look at what I have to work with in front of me, right here and right now. I'm usually not looking off to the future, trying to envision what might come next or where technology might be heading. However, about seven years ago, I engaged in this interview with Dedoimedo and was asked: "What will the Linux desktop look like in 2025?"
I honestly had no idea, but I shared a few thoughts, including this one about smart phones evolving to take the place of desktop computers:
Sometime in the next eight years I think we are going to reach a point where it is common for personal devices (smart phones, tablets and whatever comes next in that market) to either sync seamlessly with desktop computers, or the phone will become the desktop.
A few years ago Canonical was playing with the idea of an operating system that is a phone while it is in your pocket and a full featured desktop system when it is sitting on your desk. My Ubuntu phone has more CPU cores and almost as much memory as my laptop. With a Bluetooth keyboard and a wireless connection to the monitor on my desk, the phone I have now could probably serve almost all of my computing requirements. I think by 2025 my desktop workstation and my mobile phone could be the same device with a desktop environment that adjusts to the size of the screen being used to display information.
More recently, I've had a chance to play with the PinePhone, in particular while running UBports 20.04, and likened the experience to using a Raspberry Pi computer with a built-in screen and a battery for a backup power supply.
I wouldn't recommend the PinePhone as a daily driver as a phone, probably with any operating system. However, I will say that with it running a full GNU/Linux platform, it works pretty well as an ARM-powered testing device and as a small home server. It's silent, it has a built-in battery, it has a touch screen for times when we need local access, and it has a slot for SD cards, giving it expanded disk space. I'm quite content using mine as a backup and test server at home. Plus it fits in my pocket if I want to relocate the device.
In this way, I think of the PinePhone as a flexible single-board computer, such as a Raspberry Pi, more than as a phone. And, while running UBports 20.04, it feels well suited to this niche role.
I've also had a chance to run desktop Linux applications on my Murena phone, thanks to a handy container technology called UserLAnd.
All of this got me to thinking. If the PinePhone works fairly well as a mobile computer, similar to the Raspberry Pi, and some people use the Pi as a low-end desktop computer, could I set up my PinePhone running a distribution like UBports and attach a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to it? Could I have a low-end, highly mobile device that I could perform basic desktop computing tasks with and then transport it in my pocket? I decided to buy a docking station and find out.
A sample image of the dock
(full image size: 76kB, resolution: 425x355 pixels)
The dock plugs into a USB-C port (typically on a phone or laptop) and offers several ports for additional devices. These ports include an Ethernet port, USB power port, three USB ports, a VGA port, and an HDMI port. This means we can plug the hub into a power source, our phone, a mouse, keyboard, a monitor or two, a wired network, and still have a USB port left over for something else. The "something else" I envisioned was an extra hard drive, if my experiment went well.
Getting started
I plugged the dock into my PinePhone running UBports and attached a power cable to it. The phone's battery showed it was recharging, which I took as a good initial sign. I then plugged a wired keyboard and a mouse into the dock. At first nothing happened. I next plugged in my monitor to the dock and UBports crashed, initiating a reboot.
My PinePhone plugged into a dock in a nest of cables
(full image size: 9.8MB, resolution: 4032x3024 pixels)
With a little experimentation I soon discovered that if a monitor was plugged into the dock that the user interface would crash, then automatically relaunch, then crash again in an endless loop. I checked for upgrades and found there was an update for UBports and applied it. Following a reboot, this pattern continued with the device launching its graphical interface and then quickly crashing when a monitor was plugged into the dock.
Adjusting mouse settings using my mouse on the PinePhone
(full image size: 9.2MB, resolution: 4032x3024 pixels)
On a positive note, the Unity splash screen with its progress indicator was mirrored to the external monitor before the interface crashed and, when the phone was booting, status messages from systemd were shown on both the phone's screen and the external display. In other words, the dock worked and UBports could send output to it. My phone's display was successfully mirrored to the external monitor. The graphical interface just wasn't stable when the monitor was plugged in.
Trying an alternative distribution
My first experience with the PinePhone involved running a special edition of Manjaro with the Plasma Mobile user interface. I decided it would be worth my time to see if I could run Manjaro and Plasma on my device and see if it would work with my external monitor. People interested in running Manjaro on a PinePhone may wish to read the distribution's PINE64 wiki entry.
Setting up Manjaro Linux to run on a PinePhone is blissfully simple. We can download the provided image file, decompress it, and write it to a microSD card. Then place the card into the PinePhone and Manjaro will boot from it. The first time Manjaro starts it walks us through a short configuration wizard. The wizard's screens walk us through selecting our time zone, connecting to a wireless network, and then we're asked to make up a username and PIN to secure the device.
The PIN is mandatory and this is one of my few complaints about the distribution. Virtually every other phone OS I have used allows for unrestricted access and Manjaro is a rare exception and it gets annoying when I need to unlock a phone during testing over and over.
Manjaro for ARM -- Running the Plasma Mobile interface
(full image size: 745kB, resolution: 720x1440 pixels)
Once the first-run wizard completed its steps, the phone rebooted. Then locked up during the next boot. I plugged my PinePhone into the dock, attached the monitor, keyboard, and mouse then forced another restart. This time the phone came online, showed me the KDE logo, and presented me with the Plasma Mobile desktop. This interface appeared both on the phone's screen and on my external monitor. So far, so good.
The Plasma Mobile interface is fairly standard, with a notification and quick access to settings across the top of the screen. Applications can be accessed by swiping from the right of the screen. Navigation buttons are displayed at the bottom of the desktop.
I ran into some inconsistent behaviour while running Manjaro. For instance, sometimes when I attached my phone to the dock Plasma would pop-up a widget which seems to be intended to help us select the relative positions of the two displays. For example, we might want to activate one display and not the other, or place them side-by-side, or mirror them. I think that is what the icons in the widget were indicating, though there is no text to help explain what the options are. Clicking on the widget caused my interface to lock up, requiring a reboot. Other times, when my phone was plugged into the dock, no widget appeared and, instead, the display was mirrored across both screens.
I feel it is worth mentioning Manjaro would usually not boot when the PinePhone was plugged into the hub. I typically had to start the phone independently and then attach it to the dock once Plasma finished loading. Otherwise the phone would lock up during the boot process.
My main concern when running Manjaro on the PinePhone was the system was not stable. Perhaps this is due to issues with Plasma Mobile or perhaps it is a side-effect of the PinePhone's limited hardware. A session with the phone plugged into the dock rarely lasted more than a few minutes at a time and I don't think the phone managed to run consistently for more than ten minutes during its best session. Typically Plasma would lock up and stop responding to input after starting an application, clicking a widget, or accessing a module in the Settings panel. Even with no applications open, the hardware was slow to respond, with it taking several seconds for the interface to register a click and more than ten seconds to open a new application window.
In short, while the PinePhone could work with the dock while running Manjaro, it was not at all a practical experience, nor was it a stable experience.
I do wish to acknowledge the Manjaro documentation does say it is recommended to use the project's Stable branch whenever possible while I was using the Development branch. However, the latest Stable release was over a year old at the time of writing (it was released in 2022) while Development snapshots seem to be published around once a month. As such, I decided using the latest Beta release was preferable to running the much older Stable release.
I was curious to see what would happen if I plugged my Samsung phone running Murena into the dock. The answer was an uninteresting: nothing. I'm uncertain if the phone simple isn't set up to work with the dock or if the lack of cooperation is a security feature. In any event, my trial was limited to running the PinePhone with my new dock.
Conclusions
At this point, at least when using the low-resource PinePhone, running a lightweight desktop off my smartphone is not yet practical. Which was disappointing for me, especially as it seems as though the experience so is very close to being workable. The PinePhone works with the dock and my connected hardware, at least to a point. Both Manjaro and UBports send visual output to the monitor and both accept keyboard and mouse input. UBports will even allow me to configure the mouse pointer's behaviour from its Settings panel.
However, both platforms suffer from a painful lack of stability. The Unity interface on UBports crashes when a monitor is attached and Manjaro's Plasma Mobile interface is far too slow, unresponsive, and unstable to be practical on the PinePhone. But the pieces are all there, the core applications are there, the GNU/Linux base is there - and could work well if the graphical interface were just a little more stable.
What excites me about this scenario is a PinePhone (or similar low-end device) is less than $200. The dock is about $30 USD, my monitor was less than $100. For less than $400 I could almost run UBports on an inexpensive phone as a low-end workstation. The software isn't quite there yet, but it feels tantalisingly close. I'm still hoping that another operating system for the PinePhone, or some polishing of UBports, will allow me to make this trial a reality by 2025.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
NixBSD launched, Fedora looks at porting COSMIC and dropping GNOME's X11 session, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat
Along with the release of FreeBSD 13.3 this week, fans of FreeBSD had another bit of interesting news. A new project has been started which attempts to mirror the work of the Nix system manager on NixOS while using FreeBSD as a base. "NixBSD is an attempt to make a reproducible and declarable BSD, based on NixOS. Although theoretically much of this work could be copied to build other BSDs, all work thus far has been focused on building a FreeBSD distribution." If successful, this will allow people to create and maintain reproducible builds of FreeBSD using the atomic and declarative Nix system manager. Details on the project can be found on NixBSD's GitHub page.
* * * * *
The Fedora project might be the first Linux distribution to ship a desktop spin that includes the COSMIC desktop. COSMIC is a young desktop environment developed by System76 and written in Rust. COSMIC was developed by System76 for its own Pop!_OS distribution and a team is working on porting it to Fedora. The Fedora project has put out a request for help in getting COSMIC ready for the distribution: "As with most things in the Fedora Project, things exist because there is a community of contributors who come together to make it happen. We manifest things into existence. Fedora COSMIC and Ryan's work can go far, but only if he's supported by more people. If you want to see Fedora COSMIC happen, pitching in is the best way to make it so."
The Fedora team is considering dropping GNOME on X11 from the Fedora Workstation edition of their distribution. This would leave users with just GNOME on Wayland as the sole desktop option for the Workstation spin. A discussion about the change indicates GNOME will be offered on Wayland only for Fedora 41, expected to be released in October or November of 2024.
* * * * *
postmarketOS is an Alpine-based distribution for mobile devices. The operating system follows its parent in shipping with the OpenRC init software and service manager, though a migration to systemd is planned. This migration is largely driven by the work needed to get the user interfaces (provided by the GNOME and KDE projects) working on OpenRC: "This is of course not an easy task, one of the main blockers we found as we collaborate more closely with KDE and GNOME developers is that they have a hard time with our OpenRC-based stack. In order to get KDE and GNOME working at all, we use a lot of systemd polyfills on top of OpenRC. So while we are technically "not using systemd", in practice we already do use a large chunk of its components to get KDE and GNOME running, just different versions of those components. While we are very grateful for everybody who works on these polyfills, we must point out that most aren't a full replacement, and take additional effort to support and maintain. As much as we might want to romanticise the idea of spending 6, 12, 24 months attempting to come up with an even vaguely competitive alternative to systemd, we would quite simply rather be working on making postmarketOS better." Details on the migration can be found in the project's announcement.
* * * * *
In February the HexChat IRC client published its final version. This open source application shipped as the default IRC client in a few Linux distributions, including Linux Mint. This has left distribution maintainers considering what to use as a replacement for the now discontinued IRC client. The Linux Mint monthly newsletter discusses how Mint will replace HexChat: "There are IRC clients written in GTK3 which are HiDPI compatible, but replacing HexChat with one of them doesn't really solve our problem. What Linux Mint needs, first and foremost, is a place for people to ask questions to other users. An IRC client can provide that but it's not dedicated to doing that. So with that in mind we started working on a new app called Jargonaut.
Jargonaut will be a dedicated app. It will do just that and do it better. Although it uses the IRC, it won't be developed as an IRC client. It will support pastebin/imgur via DND, uploading your system specifications, troubleshooting and many features which have nothing to do with IRC."
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Restarting background services on a schedule
Starting-over asks: I am looking for a way to automatically restart a service everyday at a specified time. I'm hosting a game server and want to have it restart periodically. The game is started using a systemd unit, if that makes a difference.
DistroWatch answers: On most Linux distributions, and in the BSD family, the tool to run scheduled tasks is called cron. Each user has a file which lists the tasks which they wish to run along with the time when the scheduled jobs should be started. This file which lists the times and tasks is called a crontab.
We can create a crontab for our user account (or edit an existing crontab file) by running the command "crontab -e". This command will open a text editor and display our current crontab, listing each task we have scheduled. It's likely blank to start.
The format of a crontab file is outlined in the crontab man page. In its simplest form, a crontab entry has five time parameters and one command which is to be run. The five time fields indicate the minute, hour, day of the month, month, and day of the week when we want to run a job. Then the command to be run at the specified time follows. A star (*) character, indicates a time field when we want the time to always match.
In this example, we run a command called backup-everything which will run 1 minute after noon (12pm). We will do this on the 3rd day of the month, every month (*), regardless of which day of the week it is:
1 12 3 * * /usr/local/bin/backup-everything
In this next example we run the same script, but at 3:00am on every Monday, which cron treats as the 1st day of the week:
0 3 * * 1 /usr/local/bin/backup-everything
You might have noticed that in both examples I specified the full path name to the script, specifying "/usr/local/bin/backup-everything" instead of just "backup-everything". This is because cron often doesn't use the same path as a regular user account when trying to find executable programs and scripts. Most of the time when a cron job doesn't run properly it's due to an incomplete path name.
Getting back to the original question, let's say we have a systemd service called "game-server". We can have this service restarted every night at 2:15am by setting up the following crontab entry:
15 2 * * * /usr/bin/systemctl restart game-server
In the above example I'm assuming the systemctl program is located in the /usr/bin directory, which is typical of most distributions. If you want to check the full path of your systemctl program you can do so with the which command:
$ which systemctl
/usr/bin/systemctl
Once you have made your crontab entry, save the text file and exit the text editor. Your crontab will then be saved and will automatically restart the game server at the specified time. If you want to double-check that your crontab file has been saved properly, you can see the contents of your user's crontab file by running "crontab -l":
$ crontab -l
15 2 * * * /usr/bin/systemctl restart game-server
One possible complication you may run into is with permissions. If your regular user account does not have permission to restart the game service (or if you require sudo to launch the game service) then trying to restart the game server from your own user's crontab will fail. If you usually use sudo to start the service or if it requires the root user to launch the game service, then you'll need to edit the root user's crontab rather than your own user's crontab.
You can do this on most distributions by running the command "sudo crontab -e". This will edit the root user's crontab which should avoid any permission restrictions on your own account.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
FreeBSD 13.3
Colin Percival has announced the release of FreeBSD 13.3, the production release in the legacy branch of the popular BSD-derived operating system: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 13.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release of the stable/13 branch. Some of the highlights: LLVM and the Clang compiler have been updated to version 17.0.6; OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.6p1; Sendmail has been updated to version 8.18.1; ZFS has been updated to OpenZFS 2.1.14; there have been many stability fixes to native and LinuxKPI-based WiFi drivers; the NFS server can now run in an appropriately configured vnet jail. FreeBSD 13.3-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, armv6, armv7, aarch64, and riscv64 architectures." Please read the release announcement and the release notes for more information.
Zorin OS 17.1
Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution which features layouts, themes, and compatibility tools to provide new Linux users with a more familiar environment. The latest version of Zorin OS focuses on cross-platform application compatibility and isolation, shipping with the latest stable version of WINE and Bottles: "When you run Windows-native apps in Zorin OS 17.1, you'll now get the full capabilities of the latest Wine 9.0 version. The compatibility layer now has significantly improved support for more Windows software. That means you'll be able to run an even larger selection of apps and games effortlessly. When you enable Windows App Support in Zorin OS 17.1, it now comes bundled with Bottles. This tool lets you run Windows software in a sandboxed environment and provides a neat way to organize your apps and games. Bottles comes with a built-in app store, which installs and pre-configures a growing selection of Windows apps for even better compatibility with the system." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
Zorin OS 17.1 -- Running GNOME and the software centre
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1440 pixels)
* * * * *
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: 2,972
- Total data uploaded: 44.1TB
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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) |
A smart phone as a desktop computer?
This week we talked about an experiment to see how well a minimal mobile device like the PinePhone works as a portable desktop system. While there were some elements of success in the process, the test systems didn't have the performance or stability needed to function well as a workstation.
We'd like to hear if any of our readers have tried running a smart phone as their main workstation with a full sized monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Have you tried this? Did your phone provide all the functionality you needed in a desktop machine? Let us know the details of your experiences in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on 2024's first release season in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Have you used a smart phone as a workstation?
| Yes and it worked well enough I still use it: | 30 (2%) |
| Yes though I did not continue using it: | 113 (7%) |
| No but I planned to try: | 299 (19%) |
| No and I do not plan to try: | 1116 (72%) |
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| Website News |
Filter torrents by distribution name
DistroWatch has a Torrent Archive which contains a list of torrents for recent stable releases. These are torrents which have typically been seeded by DistroWatch when they were first released.
To make it easier to find download options, we place a link to the Torrent Archive on the information pages of distributions, under the Download Mirrors section. For example, if you visit the Tails information page you can see a link called "DistroWatch Torrent Archive" in the Download section.
A problem some people were reporting is the Torrent Archive can get crowded. It's not always easy to find older releases of a distribution torrent. To help with that, in the past, we added an option to sort the torrents by name rather than by release date. (See the sort menu at the top of the Torrent Archive table for ordering options.)
This week we added another approach to make it easier to find torrents for a specific distribution. If you visit a distribution's information page and click the "DistroWatch Torrent Archive" link, only that distro's torrents will be displayed. For example, clicking the link on the Tails page takes us to a view of the archive with just the recent Tails torrents.
If that is not what you want, if you wish to see all of the torrent options in our archive, you can click the Show All Torrents link at the top of the archive to see the full range of options.
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- Ubix. Ubix stands for Universal Business Intelligence Computing System. Ubix Linux is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution geared towards data acquisition, transformation, analysis and presentation.
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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, 18 March 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 | 
GNIX-Vivo
GNIX was a Morphix-based bootable live CD with support for the Galician (Gallego) language, as well as Spanish (Castellano). It was developed by the Asociación de Usuarios GNIX, Galicia, Spain.
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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0x969CD4E778C7b6549A2B00e34114e0168c86A542 
