 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 840, 11 November 2019 |
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Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Fedora is a community project that features cutting edge technology and a preview of features that will come to future versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Fedora team recently published Fedora 31 and we begin this week by sharing a review of the distribution by Joshua Allen Holm. The developers of Fedora are already looking at ways to improve their distribution with Python performance being examined. We have details on the planned changes to Fedora's Python package in our News section. We also celebrate network performance improvements coming to FreeBSD and link to an overview of changes planned for elementary OS 5.1. Then, in our Tips and Tricks column, we talk about keeping track of what users are running on an operating system and how to monitor multi-user systems. Many people no longer share computers at home and we are curious if your home machine is a shared environment or a single-user system. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Fedora 31 Workstation
- News: Fedora works to improve Python performance, FreeBSD gets faster networking thanks to Netflix, elementary team plans new greeter and system installer
- Tips and tricks: Monitoring and recording user activity
- Released last week: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1, NethServer 7.7, OpenIndiana 2019.10
- Torrent corner: Archman, batocera, Clonezilla, Container, EasyOS, FreeBSD, FuguIta, KDE neon, NethServer, Obarun, OpenIndiana, OSMC, SmartOS, Star, XigmaNAS
- Opinion poll: How many people use your main home computer?
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (12MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm) |
Fedora 31 Workstation
Fedora 31, like all recent Fedora releases, has a wide selection installation media available, each focused on some different function or desktop environment. The Fedora website treats the Workstation edition, which is the desktop version featuring the GNOME desktop, and the Server edition as the main downloads. Below Workstation and Server are three emerging Fedora versions: Fedora CoreOS, "an automatically updating, minimal, container-focused operating system"; Fedora Silverblue, "an immutable desktop operating system aimed at good support for container-focused workflows"; and Fedora IoT, which is designed to "[provide] a trusted open source platform as a strong foundation for IoT ecosystems". Tucked down closer to the bottom of the page are the options to download Fedora Spins, which are installation media with different default desktop environments, and Fedora Labs, which provide a preselected set of packages designed around a specific task. For the purposes of this review, I mostly look at Fedora 31 Workstation, but also take a brief look at Fedora Silverblue to see how that project is progressing.
Fedora 31 -- The GNOME desktop
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To begin, I downloaded the 1.8GB Workstation image and the 2.2GB Silverblue image. I copied the Workstation image to a flash drive, rebooted my computer, and started the Fedora Workstation live desktop. Once the live desktop started, I explored a little bit, but quickly started the Anaconda installer to start the installation process.
Installing Fedora
Installing Fedora Workstation is a very straightforward process. For the Workstation variant there are only three tasks that can be performed inside the installer: configure the keyboard layout, set the date and time, and partition the the disk that Fedora will be installed on. Manual partition configuration using Fedora's Anaconda installer is easy, and there is an advanced option for power-users that offers a little more control, but this time I opted to use the automatic option and let Fedora pick its own defaults.
Fedora 31 -- Anaconda installation options
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Using the automatic partitioning option worked out okay. I installed Fedora 31 on a small 64GB eMMC drive, but neither my root nor my home volumes were overly cramped. I will probably manually configure things the next time I install Fedora 31, but the 38GB root volume and 19GB home volume are comfortable to work with. My root volume is currently 25% full with all my must-have software installed, and my home volume is about 10% full with all of my important files.
The other half of the installation experience, creating a new user account, is handled on first boot by GNOME's Initial Setup application. This part of the process makes a new administrator account, which has sudo privileges, lets the user set up various on-line accounts, and configure a few other options.
Overall, there is not much choice presented to the user during Fedora Workstation's installation process, which may, or may not, be an issue. I find Fedora Workstation's options to be close enough to what I like that I only have to install a few extra things post-install, but other users may want an installation process with more options.
GNOME desktop and default applications
The Fedora Workstation desktop is a very standard GNOME 3.34 desktop. Other than a custom desktop wallpaper, there are few, if any, major changes to GNOME's default settings. The only GNOME extension that is enabled is one that displays "Fedora" on top of the bottom right corner of the desktop wallpaper. For some people, including myself, that is great. I love GNOME's defaults and usually only change a handful of settings, but other users might feel very differently. If that is the case, maybe one of Fedora Spins is a better option as they provide other desktop environments and software.
Fedora 31 -- Workstation's default software
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The default selection of software is good and provides tools for most basic tasks. Fedora Workstation comes with Firefox 69 (which was updated to version 70 almost immediately after Fedora 31 was released) and LibreOffice 6.3. The rest of the default applications are the usual collection of GNOME applications and utilities: Boxes, Calendar, Cheese, Clocks, Contacts, Document Scanner, Files , Maps, Photos, Rhythmbox, Software, Text Editor, Videos, Weather, and various utilities. The one thing that is missing is an e-mail client. Recent releases of Fedora Workstation do not come with Evolution preinstalled. In the age of webmail, that might be okay, but I always end up installing it.
Fedora Workstation's GNOME 3.34 brings some nice improvements over earlier releases, but the changes are mostly small, but welcome, quality of life improvements. For example, it is now possible to drag and drop application icons into application folders. When I did this with LibreOffice's various applications, the group was automatically named "Office". However, this feature is not without bugs. While I was testing out this feature, I ended up with double and triple icons for some of the applications I have installed. I had icons labeled gVim and Vim when I only had one icon before, and I ended up with three identical icons for Zotero even though I had not actually done anything to the Zotero icon. Logging out and back in again fixed some of this, but it was still annoying.
Fedora 31 -- Freedoom Flatpak application failing to exit
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
One other headache I had was with certain Flatpak games. Several games would not cleanly exit and left a slightly faded and distorted image of their final screen stuck overlaying everything else. Full control returned to GNOME Shell, so I could interact with the desktop using the mouse and keyboard shortcuts, but I could not see what I was doing. I would have to terminate my session and log in again to get a usable desktop. At first I thought the issue might be caused by an older Freedesktop Platform, but that turned out to not be the case. Freedoom: Phase 1, Freedoom: Phase 2, and FreeDM were using version 18.08 of the Freedesktop Platform, but they were recently updated to use version 19.08 and still exhibit the same problem. The games exit perfectly fine when I use a non-OpenGL renderer in the game, or if I switch the an X.Org session instead of Wayland, but they will not work correctly using Fedora's default Wayland session and with the default settings for the games.
Fedora 31 -- GNOME Classic session
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One change I really liked in this new version of GNOME was the enhancement made to the GNOME Classic session. This session is using a layout closer to the old GNOME 2 style, and the changes make this new version also behave more like GNOME 2. The Activities overview behavior has been altered to make it not so jarring. The GNOME Classic session is not GNOME 2 revisited, but it is a nice, slightly more traditional desktop experience for users who want that instead of GNOME 3's standard settings.
Installing additional software
Like I noted above, Fedora 31 Workstation has a nice selection of default software, but there is plenty of other software available in Fedora's repositories. Fedora Workstation uses GNOME Software as the graphical tool for installing additional packages. When GNOME Software is run for the first time, it asks the user if they want to enable some third party repositories. This option provides a few proprietary packages, including a small subset of RPM Fusion packages, but does not provide full access to RPM Fusion's repositories. Users who want to enable those repositories need to do so by installing the RPM Fusion release RPMs.
Just like with RPM Fusion packages not being included by default, the Flathub Flatpak repository is also not enabled. Users who want to use it need to install it. Thankfully, that is as easy as heading over to Flathub.org and following the instructions, but it is still an extra step users need to take. There is now a Fedora Flatpak repository, but the selection of software is very, very small, mostly consisting of games and various GNOME applications.
On the command line, Fedora uses DNF to install and update RPM packages. There is not much to say about DNF; it works just like it has on all the recent release of Fedora. However, there does seem to be an issue right now with the "dnf autoremove" command wanting to uninstall the kernel-core package or complaining about being unable to autoremove because kernel-core is a protected package. Flatpak applications can be installed using the flatpak command line program which does keep improving over earlier releases. It is much easier to search for and install packages than in earlier Flatpak versions, especially the version of Flatpak that comes with RHEL 8 and CentOS 8.
Aside from the fact that users need to know about RPM Fusion and Flathub before they install those sources, and Fedora does little to make users aware of those sources, Fedora's software selection is solid. Even without Flathub and RPM Fusion, I found most of the software I needed in Fedora's repositories. I have a short list of software that I cannot get from Fedora's repositories, but I always compile those programs from source anyway to get the latest development versions.
Fedora Silverblue
Fedora Silverblue is a very interesting alternative to Fedora Workstation. They both feature the same GNOME desktop environment, but Silverblue does not use DNF to install and update individual packages. Instead, the base image is a single unit, which can be updated using rpm-ostree on the command line, or by using GNOME Software. Additional packages can be layered on top of the base image, but the concept for Silverblue is to have minimal base image and use Flatpak applications on top of that image. The problem with that is Fedora Silverblue, like Workstation, does not come with Flathub enabled, so the selection of software that shows up in GNOME Software is limited to the applications from the Fedora Flatpak repository, which, like I noted above, is lacking in software. Most of the standard GNOME applications are in the Fedora Flatpak repository, and they will need to be installed from either there or from Flathub, because the default selection of software in Silverblue is very, very minimal. There is no office suite in the Fedora Flatpak repo, so Flathub or layering packages using rpm-ostree is absolutely necessary for having a usable system, if the user needs an office suite.
Fedora 31 -- Silverblue's default software
(full image size: 1.4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Do not get me wrong, once Flathub is added and applications are installed, Silverblue is very nice to work with. Some things like video thumbnails in Files do not work, unless the appropriate packages are layered on top of the base image, but even without doing so, I found the system very usable for my workflow. The Flathub release of GNOME Videos comes with the right codecs to play all my media files without having to install RPM Fusion's packages. However, video playback in the browser was hit or miss as a result of not adding packages to the base system. I was impressed when I installed GNOME Clocks and GNOME Weather, both of which integrated with GNOME's notification/calendar area. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for GNOME Contacts, which could not integrate with the on-line accounts I had configured in GNOME Settings, but other applications could successfully connect to those accounts.
One of the most interesting features in Silverblue is Toolbox, which creates a container for the user to work in that, unlike the base system, is managed by using DNF to install and update packages. This allows the user to install packages like programming languages and other tools without having to layer packages. When inside a Toolbox container, the user can access their entire home directory, so they can work on projects and edit files without having to worry about syncing files between two different environments. Toolbox is also available in the Workstation version, and in other Fedora variants, but it is included by default in Silverblue as part of Silverblue's intended workflow.
Final thoughts
Fedora 31 is another in a long line of recent Fedora releases that are slightly more polished and updated than the previous version. Fedora 31 brings in updated packages and some nice polish, but it is a very boring release for anyone looking to try something different. However, users looking for a combination of mature, polished GNOME desktop should be very happy with what Fedora 31 Workstation offers. There are a few minor issues, but those should be fixed shortly. If you are looking for a distribution that fits nicely between mature and bleeding edge, Fedora 31 Workstation is an excellent choice. If you want to try something very different, Fedora Silverblue is also an excellent choice, but be aware that is does take more effort to get the system to a usable state.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an ASUS VivoBook E406MA laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Pentium Silver N5000 CPU
- Storage: 64GB eMMC
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Networking: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
- Display: Intel UHD Graphics 605
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Visitor supplied rating
Fedora has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.5/10 from 422 review(s).
Have you used Fedora? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Fedora working to improve Python performance, FreeBSD getting faster networking thanks to Netflix, elementary team plans new greeter and system installer
Fedora 31 was published very recently and already the project's developers are looking ahead to improvements they can make in Fedora 32. One of the interesting changes on the horizon is producing a static build of Python 3, which could offer significant performance improvements. Ben Cotton explains: "Python 3 traditionally in Fedora was built with a shared library
libpython3.?.so and the final binary was dynamically linked against that shared library. This change is about creating the static library and linking the final python3 binary against it, as it provides significant performance improvement, up to 27% depending on the workload. The static library will not be shipped. The shared library
will continue to exist in a separate subpackage. In essence, python3 will no longer depend on libpython." Cotton mentions this change has already taken place in Debian and Ubuntu.
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People who use FreeBSD, particularly those who deal with large amounts of network traffic, will be pleased to know Netflix has contributed improvements to FreeBSD's networking code. Drew Gallatin of Netflix presented some of the work his company has put into FreeBSD which is widely used in Netflix's data centres. "Netflix has long been known to be using FreeBSD in their data centers particularly where network performance is concerned. But in wanting to deliver 200Gb/s throughput from individual servers led them to making NUMA optimizations to the FreeBSD network stack. Allocating NUMA local memory for kernel TLS crypto buffers and for backing files sent via sentfile were among their optimizations. Changes to network connection handling and dealing with incoming connections to Nginx were also made. For those just wanting the end result, Netflix's NUMA optimizations to FreeBSD resulted in their Intel Xeon servers going from 105Gb/s to 191Gb/s while the NUMA fabric utilization dropped from 40% to 13%."
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The elementary OS team are hard at work developing version 5.1 of their operating system. Several changes are planned for 5.1, including Flatpak integration with the software centre, as well as side-loading Flatpak packages. A new greeting application is in the works and, sometime in the future, the developers are planning to replace the Ubiquity system installer. "In an effort to get 5.1 out to users more quickly, we’ve decided to bump the new installer to a future release. Too many issues remain with the integration right now, and the existing Ubiquity installer - while perhaps a bit long in the tooth - continues to work as it always has. This means 5.1 will be focused around five key areas: A brand new Greeter and Onboarding experience. Flatpak support with sideload and AppCenter. Major updates around accessibility and System Settings. Iterative improvements across several apps.
The latest hardware enablement and support. Under the hood, 5.1 will also bring an entirely new process for building ISOs that is faster, better documented, and more reproducible." Further details can be found on the distribution's blog.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Monitoring and recording user activity
When multiple people use a computer, whether it is a laptop at home or a server at work, it is useful to keep track of what each person is doing. This week we will talk about keeping track of who is running what commands on your system and when.
One set of tools which can help us keep track of these things are the GNU Accounting Utilities (GNU acct). The GNU acct package (often bundled in distribution repositories as simply acct) keeps track of who is logged in, how long a person was logged in, and what commands they were running.
Let's take a look at how the GNU acct tools can be used to keep track of the activity on our systems. First, we need to install the acct package through our distribution's software manager. Once that is done we may need to start the accounting service. Some distributions do this for us, but if yours does not, or you just want to make sure accounting is enabled, you can run:
accton on
The above command turns on the accounting service. Like all commands in this article, it will need to be run as the administrator. So make sure you are logged in as root, or prefix your command with sudo. Should you wish to disable accounting later, you can do this by running the following command:
accton off
Now that accounting is turned on, what can we monitor with it? One thing we can keep track of is which commands have been run recently. We can also see how frequently a command is run along with who ran the program. All of this information is available through the lastcomm program. To see a list of all recently run commands, type:
lastcomm
This shows us how often a command was run, who ran it, and when. We can apply filters to the output to see the commands one specific user is running. For instance, the following command line shows us a list of programs Jesse has been running:
lastcomm --user jesse
Alternatively, we can check to see if a specific program has been run by anybody. Perhaps we want to know who has been deleting files using the rm command. In that case we can get a list by using the following:
lastcomm --command rm
What if we want to see a list of the most commonly used commands by a specific user? We can do that with a combination of the lastcomm program, awk and some creative sorting. The following example shows us which commands Jesse is running most often:
lastcomm --user jesse | awk '{print $1}' | sort -f | uniq -c | sort -frn
In the above example, we print a list of all the commands Jesse has been running using lastcomm. Then we use awk to look at just the command names, none of the other information. The sort command then groups the list of programs in order and uniq counts them. At the end, we use another sort instruction to place the list of commands, and how often they are run, in order from most frequently used to least.
I feel it is worth mentioning that when a program is run using a privilege escalation tool like sudo or doas, the command will appear to have been run as the root user. For instance, if Jesse runs "sudo pacman -Syu", the lastcomm program will show that root ran pacman, not Jesse. If you want to know who invoked sudo to do this, you can search for sudo usage in the lastcomm logs, or read our tips for logging sudo usage.
The GNU accounting suite includes some other useful tools. For instance the sa command will show a list of commands that were run on the system, the amount of time they spent running, and how often they were launched. This may sound a lot like what lastcomm does, but there is an important distinction. The sa command tells us what was run and how much time it spent running, while the lastcomm program tells us who ran the programs and when. Typically sa can be run without any parameters as follows:
sa
The last tool in the GNU accounting suite I want to talk about is ac. The ac program prints statistics about how much time a user spent connected or logged into the system. There are two parameters which are especially useful when using ac. The first is the "-p" flag. This shows us how much time each separate user spent logged in:
ac -p
While the "-d" flag can be used to print a total for login time for each day:
ac -d
Often the two flags are combined to show how much time each user spent on the system each day:
ac -d -p
These tools, along with the sudo logging tips mentioned above, and the ability to place storage quotas on specific users, make it possible to ensure no one is using too many resources or acting in an unfriendly manner on your system.
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Additional tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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| Released Last Week |
FreeBSD 12.1
Glen Barber has announced the release of FreeBSD 12.1. The new version includes BearSSL, the Clang compiler has been updated to version 8.0.1, and OpenSSL has also been updated. The 12.x series of FreeBSD is expected to receive support through to June 2024. The release announcement states: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/12 branch. Some of the highlights: BearSSL has been imported to the base system; yhe clang, llvm, lld, lldb, compiler-rt utilities and libc++ have been updated to version 8.0.1; OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1d. The FreeBSD Project dedicates the FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE to the memory of Kurt Lidl. FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe, sparc64, armv6, armv7 and aarch64 architectures." Additional information on FreeBSD 12.1 and the changes since 12.0 can be found in the project's release notes. Install and upgrade instructions are also available.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1
Red Hat has announced the availability of the first update to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x series. The new release, 8.1, introduces a new, predictable update cycle with minor releases every six months. It also provides better SELInux controls for dealing with containers. This release also focuses on providing longer uptime with live kernel patching: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 adds full support for live kernel patching to help IT operations teams keep pace with a shifting threat landscape without incurring excessive system downtime. Kernel updates can now be applied to remediate Critical or Important Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) while reducing the need for a system reboot, helping to keep critical workloads running more securely. Additional security enhancements include enhanced CVE remediation, kernel-level memory protection and application whitelisting technologies. Container-centric SELinux profiles are included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1, making it possible to create more tailored security policies to control how containerized services access host system resources." The release announcement and in the release notes.
NethServer 7.7
NethServer is a CentOS-based Linux distribution for servers. The product's main feature is a modular design which makes it simple to turn the distribution into a mail server and filter, web server, groupware, firewall, web filter, IPS/IDS or VPN server. The project's latest release is NethServer 7.7 and the new version improves on the integration of Cockpit introduced in 7.6. "Already introduced in version 7.6, Cockpit is now complete and available by default on new installations. It makes the server administration easier providing a modern looking and user-friendly interface. We didn't only redesigned the web interface but also improved usability and added new features. What's new? This release marks a big step forward for communication, collaboration and security, introducing: New interface and stats for VPNs. New interface for firewall panel and dashboard. New interface for fail2ban and Web Proxy. New dashboard for fileserver, stats on shared folders and audit integration. New way to manage multiple backups and restore. New NextCloud panel. Webtop 5.7.3. Mattermost 5.15 and NextCloud 16.0.5. New panel for UPS and NUT. New system reports. New Apache integration and welcome page." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
OpenIndiana 2019.10
OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation, and provides a true open-source community alternative to Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express, with an open development model and full community participation. The project's latest release, OpenIndiana Hipster 2019.10, migrates some tools from Python 2 to version 3 along with several package updates: "During this development cycle we've worked on updating IPS, migrating remaining OpenIndiana-specific applications to Python 3, rewriting some DDU closed binary blobs. Desktop software and libraries: VirtualBox was updated to 6.0.14. Xorg fonts, tools and libraries were updated. FreeType was updated to 2.10.1. GTK 3 was updated to 3.24.12. LightDM was updated to 1.30. mpg123, x265, and mpack packages were added, x264 was updated. Powerline, the nice status line, was added and integrated with Bash, tmux, and Vim. Supplementary x11-init service was added to create necessary directories with root permissions prior to X11 applications startup." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and release notes.
XigmaNAS 12.1.0.4
Michael Zoon has announced the release of XigmaNAS 12.1.0.4, the latest stable version of the project's embedded, open-source NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD. This version upgrades the underlying FreeBSD base system to version 12.1: "We are pleased to announce the release of XigmaNAS version 12.1.0.4.7091 - Ingva. The 12.1 series does replace and upgrade the 12.0.0.4 series which are now unsupported. We suggest to upgrade your 12.0.0.4 servers to 12.1.0.4.7091 or latest 11.3.0.4.xxxx series. Changes for release 12.1.0.4.7091: upgrade FreeBSD to FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE; WebGUI code and framework improvements; update translations; add sesutil, sas2ircu, sas3ircu and Aquantia AQtion (Atlantic) AQC107 Network Driver; upgrade arcconf to 3.02.23600; upgrade PHP to 7.3.11; upgrade VirtualBox to 5.2.34; upgrade sudo to 1.8.29; upgrade Samba to 4.10.10; upgrade pecl-APCu to 5.1.18; upgrade syncthing to 1.3.1. Notes: make a new backup of your system configuration and store this on safe location, the system config.xml could be upgraded; clear your browser's cache to avoid display issues after upgrade when coming from older releases." Here is the complete release announcement.
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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: 1,692
- Total data uploaded: 28.7TB
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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) |
How many people use your main home computer?
In our Tips and Tricks column we talked about accounting tools which can be used to monitor which processes are being run on a computer. These sorts of tools can be useful in multi-user environments, but are rarely helpful on computers with just one user - a common situation in today's world of laptops and smart phones. We would like to know if you have your home computer all to yourself or if you share it with other users?
You can see the results of our previous poll on vertical desktop panels in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How many people use your home computer?
| One: | 1639 (72%) |
| Two: | 366 (16%) |
| Three to Five: | 201 (9%) |
| Six or more: | 27 (1%) |
| I do not have a home PC: | 59 (3%) |
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| Website News (by Jesse Smith) |
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 November 2019. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
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| Linux Foundation Training |
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| Archives |
| • Issue 843 (2019-12-02): Obarun 2019.11.02, Bluestar 5.3.6, using special characters on the command line, Fedora plans to disable empty passwords, FreeBSD's quarterly status report |
| • Issue 842 (2019-11-25): SolydXK 10, System Adminstration Ethics book review, Debian continues init diversity debate, Google upstreaming Android kernel patches |
| • Issue 841 (2019-11-18): Emmabuntus DE3-1.00, changing keys in a keyboard layout, Debian phasing out Python 2 and voting on init diversity, Slackware gets unofficial updated live media |
| • Issue 840 (2019-11-11): Fedora 31, monitoring user activity, Fedora working to improve Python performance, FreeBSD gets faster networking |
| • Issue 839 (2019-11-04): MX 19, manipulating PDFs, Ubuntu plans features for 20.04, Fedora 29 nears EOL, Netrunner drops Manjaro-based edition |
| • Issue 838 (2019-10-28): Xubuntu 19.10, how init and service managers work together, DragonFly BSD provides emergency mode for HAMMER, Xfce team plans 4.16 |
| • Issue 837 (2019-10-21): CentOS 8.0-1905, Trident finds a new base, Debian plans firewall changes, 15 years of Fedora, how to merge directories |
| • Issue 836 (2019-10-14): Archman 2019.09, Haiku improves ARM support, Project Trident shifting base OS, Unix turns 50 |
| • Issue 835 (2019-10-07): Isotop, Mazon OS and, KduxOS, examples of using the find command, Mint's System Reports becomes proactive, Solus updates its desktops |
| • Issue 834 (2019-09-30): FreedomBox "Buster", CentOS gains a rolling release, Librem 5 phones shipping, Redcore updates its package manager |
| • Issue 833 (2019-09-23): Redcore Linux 1908, why Linux distros are free, Ubuntu making list of 32-bit software to keep, Richard M Stallman steps down from FSF leadership |
| • Issue 832 (2019-09-16): BlackWeb 1.2, checking for Wayland session and applications, Fedora to use nftables in firewalld, OpenBSD disables DoH in Firefox |
| • Issue 831 (2019-09-09): Adélie Linux 1.0 beta, using ffmpeg, awk and renice, Mint and elementary improvements, PureOS and Manjaro updates |
| • Issue 930 (2019-09-02): deepin 15.11, working with AppArmor profiles, elementary OS gets new greeter, exFAT support coming to Linux kernel |
| • Issue 829 (2019-08-26): EndeavourOS 2019.07.15, Drauger OS 7.4.1, finding the licenses of kernel modules, NetBSD gets Wayland application, GhostBSD changes base repo |
| • Issue 828 (2019-08-19): AcademiX 2.2, concerns with non-free firmware, UBports working on Unity8, Fedora unveils new EPEL channel, FreeBSD phasing out GCC |
| • Issue 827 (2019-08-12): Q4OS, finding files on the disk, Ubuntu works on ZFS, Haiku improves performance, OSDisc shutting down |
| • Issue 826 (2019-08-05): Quick looks at Resilient, PrimeOS, and BlueLight, flagship distros for desktops,Manjaro introduces new package manager |
| • Issue 825 (2019-07-29): Endless OS 3.6, UBports 16.04, gNewSense maintainer stepping down, Fedora developrs discuss optimizations, Project Trident launches stable branch |
| • Issue 824 (2019-07-22): Hexagon OS 1.0, Mageia publishes updated media, Fedora unveils Fedora CoreOS, managing disk usage with quotas |
| • Issue 823 (2019-07-15): Debian 10, finding 32-bit packages on a 64-bit system, Will Cooke discusses Ubuntu's desktop, IBM finalizes purchase of Red Hat |
| • Issue 822 (2019-07-08): Mageia 7, running development branches of distros, Mint team considers Snap, UBports to address Google account access |
| • Issue 821 (2019-07-01): OpenMandriva 4.0, Ubuntu's plan for 32-bit packages, Fedora Workstation improvements, DragonFly BSD's smaller kernel memory |
| • Issue 820 (2019-06-24): Clear Linux and Guix System 1.0.1, running Android applications using Anbox, Zorin partners with Star Labs, Red Hat explains networking bug, Ubuntu considers no longer updating 32-bit packages |
| • Issue 819 (2019-06-17): OS108 and Venom, renaming multiple files, checking live USB integrity, working with Fedora's Modularity, Ubuntu replacing Chromium package with snap |
| • Issue 818 (2019-06-10): openSUSE 15.1, improving boot times, FreeBSD's status report, DragonFly BSD reduces install media size |
| • Issue 817 (2019-06-03): Manjaro 18.0.4, Ubuntu Security Podcast, new Linux laptops from Dell and System76, Entroware Apollo |
| • Issue 816 (2019-05-27): Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0, creating firewall rules, Antergos shuts down, Matthew Miller answers questions about Fedora |
| • Issue 815 (2019-05-20): Sabayon 19.03, Clear Linux's developer features, Red Hat explains MDS flaws, an overview of mobile distro options |
| • Issue 814 (2019-05-13): Fedora 30, distributions publish Firefox fixes, CentOS publishes roadmap to 8.0, Debian plans to use Wayland by default |
| • Issue 813 (2019-05-06): ROSA R11, MX seeks help with systemd-shim, FreeBSD tests unified package management, interview with Gael Duval |
| • Issue 812 (2019-04-29): Ubuntu MATE 19.04, setting up a SOCKS web proxy, Scientific Linux discontinued, Red Hat takes over Java LTS support |
| • Issue 811 (2019-04-22): Alpine 3.9.2, rsync examples, Ubuntu working on ZFS support, Debian elects new Project Leader, Obarun releases S6 tools |
| • Issue 810 (2019-04-15): SolydXK 201902, Bedrock Linux 0.7.2, Fedora phasing out Python 2, NetBSD gets virtual machine monitor |
| • Issue 809 (2019-04-08): PCLinuxOS 2019.02, installing Falkon and problems with portable packages, Mint offers daily build previews, Ubuntu speeds up Snap packages |
| • Issue 808 (2019-04-01): Solus 4.0, security benefits and drawbacks to using a live distro, Gentoo gets GNOME ports working without systemd, Redox OS update |
| • Issue 807 (2019-03-25): Pardus 17.5, finding out which user changed a file, new Budgie features, a tool for browsing FreeBSD's sysctl values |
| • Issue 806 (2019-03-18): Kubuntu vs KDE neon, Nitrux's znx, notes on Debian's election, SUSE becomes an independent entity |
| • Issue 805 (2019-03-11): EasyOS 1.0, managing background services, Devuan team debates machine ID file, Ubuntu Studio works to remain an Ubuntu Community Edition |
| • Issue 804 (2019-03-04): Condres OS 19.02, securely erasing hard drives, new UBports devices coming in 2019, Devuan to host first conference |
| • Issue 803 (2019-02-25): Septor 2019, preventing windows from stealing focus, NetBSD and Nitrux experiment with virtual machines, pfSense upgrading to FreeBSD 12 base |
| • Issue 802 (2019-02-18): Slontoo 18.07.1, NetBSD tests newer compiler, Fedora packaging Deepin desktop, changes in Ubuntu Studio |
| • Issue 801 (2019-02-11): Project Trident 18.12, the meaning of status symbols in top, FreeBSD Foundation lists ongoing projects, Plasma Mobile team answers questions |
| • Issue 800 (2019-02-04): FreeNAS 11.2, using Ubuntu Studio software as an add-on, Nitrux developing znx, matching operating systems to file systems |
| • Issue 799 (2019-01-28): KaOS 2018.12, Linux Basics For Hackers, Debian 10 enters freeze, Ubuntu publishes new version for IoT devices |
| • Issue 798 (2019-01-21): Sculpt OS 18.09, picking a location for swap space, Solus team plans ahead, Fedora trying to get a better user count |
| • Issue 797 (2019-01-14): Reborn OS 2018.11.28, TinyPaw-Linux 1.3, dealing with processes which make the desktop unresponsive, Debian testing Secure Boot support |
| • Issue 796 (2019-01-07): FreeBSD 12.0, Peppermint releases ISO update, picking the best distro of 2018, roundtable interview with Debian, Fedora and elementary developers |
| • Issue 795 (2018-12-24): Running a Pinebook, interview with Bedrock founder, Alpine being ported to RISC-V, Librem 5 dev-kits shipped |
| • Issue 794 (2018-12-17): Void 20181111, avoiding software bloat, improvements to HAMMER2, getting application overview in GNOME Shell |
| • Issue 793 (2018-12-10): openSUSE Tumbleweed, finding non-free packages, Debian migrates to usrmerge, Hyperbola gets FSF approval |
| • Issue 792 (2018-1203): GhostBSD 18.10, when to use swap space, DragonFly BSD's wireless support, Fedora planning to pause development schedule |
| • Issue 791 (2018-11-26): Haiku R1 Beta1, default passwords on live media, Slax and Kodachi update their media, dual booting DragonFly BSD on EFI |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the Star Lite, Star LabTop and more. Available with a choice of Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Zorin OS pre-installed with many more distributions supported. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
Nasgaïa GNU/Linux
Nasgaïa was an Open Source project to create a Linux distribution. It was optimised for the i686 architecture and for French speakers. Nasgaïa was currently in early development, but testers and developers are welcome to join the team.
Status: Discontinued
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