 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1063, 25 March 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While a lot of the focus on desktop environments in the past few weeks has been on GNOME 46 and Plasma 6, not every distribution is package software on the cutting edge. Some distributions are sticking with stable releases in an attempt to provide a solid, reliable experience. We begin this week with a look at Redcore Linux, a Gentoo-based distribution which provides a pre-configured desktop experience with KDE Plasma 5 and binary package tools. We explore Redcore in this week's Feature Story. Redcore, like its parent, offers a rolling release experience where packages are steadily upgraded over time. In our Questions and Answers section this week we discuss the pace of rolling releases and whether some move notably faster or slower than others. What do you think of the pace of rolling release projects? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss Debian preparing for its annual Project Leader election while Red Hat starts work on a new NVIDIA driver to replace Nouveau. Plus we discuss more malware being shared in Canonical's Snap store while TrueNAS responds to rumours that its CORE edition will be discontinued. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We're constantly grateful to our donors for their support and we thank you below. 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) |
Redcore Linux 2401
Redcore Linux explores the idea of bringing the power of Gentoo Linux to the masses. Redcore is a distribution based on Gentoo's Testing branch which uses a hardened profile by default. It aims to be a very quick way to install a pure Gentoo Linux system without spending hours or days compiling from source code, and reading documentation. To achieve this goal, Redcore provides a repository with pre-built binary packages which receives continuous updates, following a rolling release model.
The latest release of Redcore is version 2401. The list of changes in this version is modest and focuses on three main enhancements. First, Redcore migrates from OpenSSL version 1 to OpenSSL version 3, which will affect components throughout the operating system. Second, PipeWire is now used as the default sound system. Third, the Sisyphus package manager received a number of changes, including a completely rewritten backend. The package manager should now recommend suggestions if it can't find the exact name of a package the user typed on the command line.
Redcore 2401 is available in one edition featuring the KDE Plasma desktop. This edition is provided as a 4.5GB ISO file. The project's download page helpfully tells us Redcore ships with two default user accounts, root and redcore, both of which can be accessed on the live media without a password.
The live media boots to the Plasma desktop. On the desktop we find two icons. One is labelled Ask for Help and the other is marked Install System. A panel is placed horizontally across the bottom of the screen. This panel holds the application menu, quick-launch icons, and system tray. Shortly after the desktop loads a KDE welcome window appears.
The welcome window shows us a series of information screens which introduce us to such ideas as how to find the System Settings panel. We're also told about some key features of KDE, including KDE Connect, Vaults, and KRunner. We're also given the chance to connect to on-line accounts with the NextCloud, OpenDesktop, Google, and ownCloud services supported. The final two pages of the welcome window provide tips for contributing and donating to the KDE project.
The Ask for Help icon on the desktop opens Firefox and connects us with a web-based IRC chat room where we can talk about and get help with Redcore Linux.
Redcore Linux 2401 -- Accessing the on-line help channel
(full image size: 1.7MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Installer
Redcore uses the Calamares graphical system installer. The installer begins by asking us to select our preferred language. On this first screen the installer shows us three buttons for accessing support, seeing known issues, and reading the release notes. Clicking any of these three buttons has no effect. The following screens ask us to select our timezone and keyboard layout.
Calamares offers us guided or manual disk partitioning. The manual approach gives us a nice, graphical interface which is fairly easy to navigate. The guided approach takes over all available free space with a single ext4 filesystem. The installer offers us three options for swap space: no swap at all, enough swap space to enable hibernation, or a small swap space. None of these options actually cause a swap partition to be created. I suspected, at the time I was setting up Redcore, that the distribution would use a swap file instead since no second partition was created. The final screen of the installer asks us to make up a username and password for ourselves and then the system copies its files to our hard drive.
The installer took a little longer than usual, but not terribly long and Calamares eventually offered to restart the computer for me.
Early impressions
Redcore boots quickly and presents us with a graphical login screen. We can sign into one of two desktop session options: Plasma running on Wayland or Plasma running on X11. The Wayland session is selected by default. The first time we login the KDE welcome window appears again to highlight the desktop's key features.
While the icon for the system installer is, as expected, not shown on the desktop once we install the distribution, the Ask for Help icon remains, which I appreciate. It's nice to have a life line to the community.
Redcore Linux 2401 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 2.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
I found Plasma to be fairly responsive and I appreciated the classic desktop layout. I wasn't a fan of the default theme though. Plasma is set up to use a black font on a grey background and menus are slightly transparent. This makes it harder to read text, particularly when browsing the application menu.
Hardware
The distribution ran well for me when I was using it in VirtualBox. The system ran smoothly, the Plasma desktop was fairly responsive, and the system was stable. Plasma didn't resize dynamically when the VirtualBox window resized, but otherwise it was a pleasant experience. I found Redcore could boot in either UEFI or Legacy Boot environments.
When I tried running Redcore on my laptop, it was a different story. The live medium could boot on my laptop, but only to a text console. I was unable to get either a Wayland session or an X11 session of Plasma to run on my physical hardware, which appears to be a missing driver issue. This prevented me from running the system installer on the laptop.
Redcore used an unusually large amount of disk space (16GB) for a fresh install, about twice the amount used by most desktop Linux distributions. It also consumed a good deal of RAM. The Plasma Wayland session required 1.1GB of RAM just to sign in and the X11 session required almost as much, weighing 950MB. This puts Redcore on the unusually heavy side of memory usage; in a range usually reserved for full-featured Linux distributions running GNOME sessions.
Earlier I mentioned the installer offers three choices for RAM, but none of them cause a swap partition to be created. I had thought, at the time, Calamares would set up a swap file instead. This was not the case. Redcore does not set up any swap space (on a file, partition, or zRAM) regardless of which swap option we select in the installer.
When I was signed into the Wayland session, which I used most of the time early on, I sometimes ran into small issues. For example, the mouse pointer would sometimes disappear. I could still see the mouse highlight buttons and I could click on buttons, but the pointer wasn't visible. Eventually little glitches like this pushed me to try the X11 session and I encountered no problems or visual glitches while using the Plasma on X11 session.
Included software
Despite its large size on disk, Redcore doesn't ship with many desktop applications, outside the usual collection of KDE software. We're given the Firefox web browser, LibreOffice, and the Okular document viewer. The VLC media player is included along with codecs for most audio and video formats. The Lutris and Steam gaming portals are included. Dolphin acts as the file manager while Gwenview helps us view and perform minor edits on images.
Redcore Linux 2401 -- Running VLC and the Steam gaming portal
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The CUPS printing software is included along with the KeePassXC password manager. Java is installed for us along with the GNU Compiler Collection. GNU's command line utilities are installed and there are local manual pages provided.
Redcore ships with the OpenRC init software and this results in a fast and light start-up process. In the background we find version 6.6 of the Linux kernel.
The distribution now ships with PipeWire as the default sound system and this worked well for me. I had no problems with audio during my week with Redcore. I was a little surprised to find sudo was not installed. We can use su to access the root account and perform administrative actions that way.
Redcore Linux 2401 -- The KDE System Settings panel
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Unlike most implementations of the Plasma desktop, Redcore sets up the System Settings panel to use a single pane with a grid of icons for opening configuration modules. Most distributions these days use a two-pane approach for the settings panel, the way GNOME does. Redcore sticks to the classic grid style which is favoured by Xfce and Cinnamon. I feel like KDE has never really got the two-pane approach working smoothly and found Redcore's dedication to the single pane approach was more comfortable, more natural feeling.
Redcore is almost unique in shipping with the OpenSnitch firewall utility installed (though not running) by default. OpenSnitch, which I've talked about previously, is a real-time, application level firewall which will alert us when applications try to access the network. We can then block or allow network connections which OpenSnitch can remember, learning what is acceptable to have communicating over the Internet. I like OpenSnitch and find it's a tool many people, especially Windows users, appreciate for filtering network traffic.
Redcore Linux 2401 -- Blocking network traffic with OpenSnitch
(full image size: 630kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Software management
Redcore ships with a few tools for package management. The distribution offers its custom command line package management tool which is called Sisyphus. There is also a graphical front-end for Sisyphus called, appropriately enough, Sisyphus GUI. I also found the Discover software centre is installed. Let's take a look at these one at a time.
Sisyphus GUI is a low level package manager which displays rows of packages. Each row contains the package's name, category, version, and a very short description. We can browse the entire list of packages or search for items by name. To install or remove a selected item we click on a package and then click the Install or Remove button at the bottom of the window. When we click one of the action buttons there is no confirmation or indication of the dependencies we may need, Sisyphus GUI just triggers the addition or removal of the selected package. This worked well enough. I find Sisyphus a little slow compared to other package managers, but functional.
I did notice that Redcore's (and by extension, maybe Gentoo's) repository was missing some key items, particularly multimedia applications. Searches for Rhythmbox, Celluloid, and a few others returned no results.
Sisyphus GUI has a button to trigger an update of the entire operating system. This action also kicks off immediately without any summary of the work it will do or how many packages need to be fetched. The GUI tool then dumps the console package manager's output into its window with no indication of how much progress it has made or how much time is remaining. The GUI tool then appeared to finish - output stopped, with what looked like a message indicating 0 of 333 jobs were remaining. However, the GUI didn't return control to me, it just sat, apparently locked up, not accepting input. In the status bar the application continued to display "I am upgrading the system", but nothing was happening and there was no disk activity. Eventually, I closed the window.
When I switched to trying Sisyphus on the command line it worked okay. The output is a bit terse and some actions run slower on Sisyphus than they do when using APT or pacman, but the add, remove, and update processes all worked. When I performed a global system upgrade I believe I discovered why the GUI tool locked up. There is a pause where the console version of Sisyphus pauses and reports how many updates it will perform and then waits for permission to proceed. The GUI doesn't show this prompt and it makes me think that is why the graphical utility seems to simply hang.
Redcore Linux 2401 -- Exploring the Discover software centre and Sisyphus GUI
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
When I first opened the Discover software centre the application appeared to not be working at first. No software was listed in any category and the Home/Featured page showed nothing. When I checked the Updates page no packages were listed. I tried refreshing the package database and still nothing was shown. On the Settings page I found a section for managing repositories and found that, apart from a firmware repository, there were no package sources, which would explain the lack of applications listed.
In the Discover Settings tab there is a button for adding access to the Flathub repository. I clicked it and nothing seemed to happen for a minute, but then Flathub appeared as a new repository on the Settings page. From then on applications showed up in Discover's categories and I was able to fetch Flatpak packages through Discover.
Something which struck me as odd is Discover seems to exist on Redcore solely to work with Flathub. There is even a convenience button to enable the Flathub repository for us. Which makes me wonder why, if Discover is only there to access Flathub, why the repository isn't enabled automatically for us? It seems odd the user needs to hunt for and click a button just to enable the software centre's only function.
Conclusions
When using Redcore I found myself quietly dividing my impressions into three categories: how Redcore performed on its own, how Redcore might improve the experience for someone interested in Gentoo, and how Redcore compared against other mainstream distributions.
On its own, Redcore performs fairly well these days. The shift to PipeWire went smoothly, I really like the OpenSnitch application, and there is enough software installed by default to be useful right away. There are a few issues, like Calamares failing to set up swap space, the Wayland session doesn't quite feel ready to be the default yet compared to X11, and Sisyphus GUI has some rough edges. However, most of my day to day usage of Redcore went well. Firefox and LibreOffice are present, the Sisyphus package manager worked well for me, and I was able to work with minimal fuss or distractions.
For people who like the idea of running Gentoo, Redcore mostly acts as a way to quickly get started. With Redcore we don't need to worry about compiling anything or dealing with Gentoo's "stages". We can just fire up the live medium, install the distribution with a few clicks, and get started. Afterwards we can use Gentoo's Portage or Redcore's Sisyphus to gain access to Gentoo's famous flexibility.
In short, Redcore offers some clear convenience when compared to Gentoo and it functions well - not perfectly, but well. Where I find the distribution suffered, in my eyes, was when I compared it against other mainstream Linux distributions. Redcore is larger (on disk and in memory) than most other Linux projects while including fewer applications. Its package manager is slower, its installer less polished, and its default desktop session has a few more glitches. The theme tends to have less contrast and, while OpenRC makes the boot-up process super fast, the desktop performance once we get signed in is just average. The trouble I had with Redcore not starting a desktop session on my laptop was also unusual as most distributions run a desktop environment without complaint on the same hardware.
In short, I feel Redcore Linux is a fairly capable operating system. It covers the basics and mostly works well. It's certainly more straight forward to set up than vanilla Gentoo. However, when we place Redcore next to larger projects, like Linux Mint, MX Linux, or openSUSE we start to notice little cracks in the armour, little rough patches. Not that Redcore is doing badly, but these other projects have more resources and have smoothed out areas Redcore hasn't yet.
With this said, I think Redcore has evolved over the years. My experience with the distribution gets a bit better every few years whenever I check in with the project and I think it is getting very close to the point where I could recommend it alongside other mainstream distributions. It's certainly the best Gentoo-based experience I have enjoyed to date.
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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
Redcore Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8/10 from 31 review(s).
Have you used Redcore Linux? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian Project Leader election begins, Canonical's Snap store serves more malware, Red Hat working on new NVIDIA driver, TrueNAS plans for 13.3 CORE launch
The Debian project has announced the start of the campaign for the role of Debian Project Leader. The annual vote will take place in April. This year there are two candidates: Andreas Tille and Sruthi Chandran. Their platforms will be presented on the Debian website, with voting taking place from April 6th to April 19th. Tille's campaign focuses on lowering barriers for developers and reaching out to the next generation of Debian contributors in order to keep Debian's membership healthy and the project relevant. "I will try to establish contact with other distributions. From derivatives, I would like to create some kind of wish list for what we, as their upstream, could do better or what we possibly can learn. I also plan to talk to distributions with different technical bases like Arch Linux, Fedora, openSUSE, Nix, etc., to see whether we can learn from them to solve problems in terms of organization of work and infrastructure. Maybe we will be able to draw some conclusions, for instance, why Arch wiki is famous for good documentation but wiki.debian.org is not." Chandran has not posted a platform at the time of writing.
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A month ago we shared a story about malware being distributed through Canonical's Snap repository. The malware made little effort to hide its nature, calling into question Canonical's vetting processes, or even whether the company has any criteria for allowing new Snap packages to be added to its store. Since then another ten malicious apps claiming to be Bitcoin wallet applications have been discovered in the Snap repository: "As with all these scam application, all it does is ask for a Bitcoin recovery phrase, and with that will likely steal all the coins and send them off to the scammer's wallet. Obviously I didn't test this with a real wallet phrase. When given a false passphrase/recovery-key it calls some remote API then shows a dubious error, having already taken your recovery key, and sent it to the scammer." Additional details can be found in Alan Pope's blog post.
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Danilo Krummrich from Red Hat as announced the company has started work on a new video driver for NVIDIA cards. The new driver is written in Rust and is intended to eventually replace the Nouveau open source driver. "With Nova we see the chance to significantly decrease the complexity of the driver compared to Nouveau for mainly two reasons. First, Nouveau's historic architecture, especially around nvif/nvkm, is rather complicated and inflexible and requires major rework to solve certain problems (such as locking hierarchy in VMM/MMU code for VM_BIND currently being solved with a workaround) and second, with a GSP-only driver there is no need to maintain compatibility with pre-GSP code. Besides that, we also want to take the chance to contribute to the Rust efforts in the kernel and benefit from more memory safety offered by the Rust programming language." Additional information about the new driver can be found in Krummrich's mailing list post.
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Following some opinion pieces on various technology websites, such as The Register and OSNews, which indicated the FreeBSD branch of TrueNAS was being discontinued, the TrueNAS team have responded. To date, TrueNAS has maintained multiple editions, including TrueNAS CORE (which is based on FreeBSD) and TrueNAS SCALE (which is Linux-based). Responding to rumours TrueNAS CORE was no longer being developed, Kris Moore stated that iXsystems plans to continue developing the CORE edition: "TrueNAS CORE hasn't been deprecated, and [13.3] is planned to start making a showing in Q2. It will be based upon FreeBSD 13.3 and will provide a way to keep running jails and upstream packages for some time to come. It is still a rock-solid NAS and we're expecting to support it for a long while for that use-case." TrueNAS 13.3 is expected to be released in June and will include new SMART tools and options for working with network UPS tools.
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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) |
How slowly can a rolling release upgrade?
Slowing-things-down asks: How frequently must a rolling distribution be upgraded to keep its rolling label? As far as I can tell, being "rolling" is about the method of upgrading, not about the frequency. The rolling method is just a common way of getting recent versions. In theory a rolling distro might be extremely stable by upgrading rarely, providing the best of both worlds - stability and updates. Are there slow moving rolling releases?
DistroWatch answers: You are correct that what defines a rolling release model is the approach to upgrading the system rather than its frequency. A "fixed" release distribution keeps packages at the same version and usually just applies security fixes (and maybe adds new hardware support) during its life time. To get new features the user typically needs to upgrade to the next version of the distribution, which will also remain mostly unchanged for its supported life time.
A rolling release has packages which are upgraded "in place". The old software packages in the distribution's repository are gradually replaced by newer versions of packages. The distribution doesn't pause and get frozen at a fixed point in time, it steadily replaces its old packages with new ones.
While many rolling release distributions strive to stay on the cutting edge of technology, always providing the latest versions of packages, it doesn't need to be this way. There are a few more conservative rolling releases, ones which either upgrade more slowly or which stick to long-term support versions of upstream software to provide a more gradual rolling experience.
The PCLinuxOS distribution is a great example of this slower release approach. The project tends to stick with older, more tried and true software. It also tends to adopt new versions more slowly and carefully, providing a more stable experience for its users. Recently the openSUSE project has been experimenting with a new rolling branch called Slowroll. The Slowroll branch is intended to provide a more conservative rolling release compared to openSUSE's faster moving Tumbleweed branch: "Slowroll is a new experimental distribution from 2023 based on Tumbleweed, but rolling slower. With big updates every one or two months, and continuous bug fixes and security fixes as they come in."
The Void distribution also strives to provide a more stable rolling release experience rather than staying on the cutting edge of technology: "Void focuses on stability, rather than on being bleeding-edge. Install once, update routinely and safely."
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Regata OS 24.0.0
Josué Vicente has announced the release of Regata OS 24.0.0, a major update of the project's openSUSE-based distribution with focus on desktop and gaming needs. This version introduces the recently-released KDE Plasma 6: "The Regata OS 24 'Arctic Fox' is now available for download. This update brings the new KDE Plasma 6 graphical environment and more improvements and fixes to applications. Under the hood, the users will find Linux kernel 6.7, which is combined with Mesa 24 to better support new hardware. To further improve the user experience, Regata OS applications have also received some visual changes, including improvements to the dark theme, rounded corners and other changes to the color scheme. Additionally, OnlyOffice is now installed by default. This office application suite comes with all the essential features and can be used to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF files and forms. The KDE Plasma 6 is the newest series of the popular Linux graphics environment. This is a launch that has a flurry of changes, improvements and new features." See the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
Regata OS 24.0.0 -- Running KDE Plasma 6
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 2560x1600 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: 2,978
- Total data uploaded: 44.2TB
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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) |
Do you prefer a fast or slow rolling release?
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about the speed of upgrades in rolling release distributions. Some projects, such as Arch Linux move quite quickly while PCLinuxOS and openSUSE's Slowroll move at a more gradual pace. Which of these approaches do you prefer?
You can see the results of our previous poll on purchasing physical media in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you prefer fast or slow rolling releases?
| I like being on the cutting edge: | 595 (32%) |
| I like slow and steady: | 675 (37%) |
| I do not use a rolling release: | 575 (31%) |
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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 $255 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Jerry B | $100 |
| Victoria Z | $10 |
| J S | $50 |
| Mitchell | $50 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Brian59 | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Surf3r57 | $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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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 April 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 | 
DRBL Live
DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) is server software to boot and operate remote desktop clients. The DRBL software allows client machines to run as stateless, thin-client style computers which are managed by the DRBL server. DRBL Live is a Debian-based, live disc distribution of the DRBL server software which can be run from a USB drive or CD/DVD. It includes a desktop environment to assist users in configuring the server.
Status: Dormant
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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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