Distributions

How To Pick a Linux Distribution for Non-Techies

Ujjwal Anand — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 17:00:00 +0000

I have suffered from distrohopping. Now that I have settled for the last two years, here are some tips to save your time.

All distros run the same operating system at their core, Linux. They are more similar than different. Hence, the marginal cost (time) of looking for a better distro is much more than the marginal benefit of it.
Say no to distributions made for specific purposes like Kali, CentOS, and OpenSuse. OpenSuse is great, but it is made for enterprise use. An everyday user won't ever need most of its features. To maintain it would be a waste of time. The same goes for the RedHat family.
Instead of trimming Suse, you better pick a distro made for everyday people, such as AntiX and SolusOS. Read their descriptions and target users on Distrowatch.
Avoid technical distributions like arch, its forks, and Gentoo. They are for the programmer types. If you are not one, you will likely break it. Updates tend to be massive and very frequent. And you can't install a new package without updating first. You don't want to deal with this. If you want it only for AUR, just learn to compile a little bit.
Say no to most desktop environments (DEs) besides LXDE and LXQT. Prefer window managers (WMs) for maximum performance. DEs can be buggy and cause distraction. They increase boot time and update size. It may be reasonable to rule out all distros that don't come with a window manager so you don't have to do the work post-installation. Know the rule; the less stuff you have, the fewer things you can break, the fewer problems you will face. Keep it minimal. Don't allow the bling-bling to distract you.
Avoid forks because they simply are not different enough. In addition, they tend to carry their parent distro's issues on top of their own issues. Developers can do only so much about it. Independent distributions can fix issues more quickly because they can. Prefer original and independent distros.
Don't worry about software availability. Every distro hosts tools to help you install packages not present in their repos. Furthermore, package managers like Appimage and Flatpak allow you to install packages on all distros. Avoid snap. It slows down bootup and doesn't allow you to control app updates. This may change in the future though.
Prefer rolling distros. Reinstallation is boring and it takes a long time to set everything as you want. The process of making a bootable drive has also damaged a couple of my USB drives, though I can't prove the causality.

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5 Distributions Of Linux To Consider For Your Server

Jeremy 'Jay' LaCroix — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 17:00:00 +0000

by Jeremy 'Jay' LaCroix

Linux servers are everywhere. There's a good chance a number of your favorite websites are running on infrastructure that's powered by Linux, not to mention streaming services, social media platforms, gaming networks, the list goes on. The only thing more staggering than the number of Linux servers there are in the wild, is how many distributions you have to choose from. The distros that are available for download are countless, and the purpose of each ranges from general purpose operating systems, to task-oriented tools such as Clonezilla. If you're just getting started with deploying Linux in your data center, choosing the right distribution can be confusing. If you utilize a cloud provider for your Linux infrastructure, the number of choices is at least somewhat curated, but you still have a choice to make. Which distribution is right for your environment? In this article, we'll discuss some important concepts to keep in mind - and we'll go over the finer points of some of the more popular options. There's no shortage of opinions online regarding desktop distros, but in this article - we're going to focus on server deployments.

Watch the video version of this article

First and foremost, there is no one general answer that's correct. If there was only one suitable choice, then you wouldn't see so many comments online arguing which distribution is best (and this article wouldn't be necessary). The correct answer as far as which distro is superior is the one that enables you or your organization to accomplish the goal you've purchased the server for. All distributions are worth checking out, but some will focus on certain areas more than others. Let's take a quick look at some of the more popular choices, along with the pros and cons of each.

Read the doc

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Privacy-focused Linux Distributions to Secure Your Online Presence in 2021

Suparna Ganguly — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 16:00:00 +0000

by Suparna Ganguly

Linux distros are usually more secure than their Windows and Mac counterparts. Linux Operating Systems being open-source leaves very less scope of unauthorized access to its core. However, with the advancement of technologies, incidents of attacks are not rare.

Are you in a fix with the coming reports of Linux systems targeted malware attacks? Worried about your online presence? Then maybe it’s time to go for a secure, privacy-focused Linux distro. This article presents a guide to 3 privacy-oriented Linux distributions that respect your privacy online.

Why You Need a Privacy-focused Linux Distro

But before jumping into that, let’s have a brief overview regarding the importance of a secure Linux Operating System. You may know that the Operating System is the core software of your computer. It helps maintain communication across all the hardware, software, memory, and processor of the system. It also manages the hardware parts.

If your computer isn’t secure enough to use, then hackers can get easy access to the OS and can exploit it to view your files and track your presence on the internet. Privacy-focused Linux distributions offer a lot of good choices packed with the most reliable features to select from.

5 Privacy-focused Linux Distributions

Now let’s take a look at the most privacy-focused Linux distros that allow staying secure.

Septor Linux

Septor Linux is an OS created by the project called Serbian Linux. Serbian Linux also produces Serbian language-based general general-purpose Linux distribution. Septor implements the KDE Plasma desktop environment and is a newcomer among all other distros.

The Septor operating system offers a stable and reliable user experience. It’s suitable for a vast range of computers because it is built upon Debian GNU/Linux. So, a solid privacy level is what you can expect. The distro routes all of the internet traffic through Tor network to earn privacy credentials. The distro used to use a launcher script to pick up the latest Tor, however, now Tor comes in bundles with it by default.

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When Choosing Your Commercial Linux, Choose Wisely!

Vince Calandra — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 12:00:00 +0000

by Vince Calandra

“Linux is Linux is Linux,” is a direct quote I heard in a meeting I had recently with a major multi-national, critical-infrastructure company. Surprisingly and correctly, there was one intelligent and brave engineering executive who replied to this statement, made by one of his team members, with a resounding, “That’s not true.” Let’s be clear, selecting a commercial Linux is not like selecting corn flakes. This is especially true when you are targeting embedded systems. You must be considering key questions regarding the supplier of the distribution, the criticality of the target application, security and life-cycle support for your product.

Choose Wisely

There is a wonderful scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when our hero, Indiana, must select the true Holy Grail. Set before him is a multitude of cups ranging from opulent, bejeweled challises to simple clay drinking cups. If you have seen the movie, Indiana reasons out the best choice, and it was a life or death selection. The knight who had been guarding the challises for centuries famously says, “You chose… wisely.” Why bring up this iconic scene? When you are selecting a commercial Linux distribution, you have a multitude of choices all bejeweled with wonderful marketing. The bottom line is that you want to save dollars that you would have otherwise spent on a DIY-Linux approach and ensure the commercial Linux selected fits your particular application. Here are some questions that you will need to keep in mind:

Is this for an IT application?
Is this for an OT (Operational Technology) application?
How long will this system be in the field?
What processes and procedures are used by my supplier to cover security vulnerabilities?
Can my supplier integrate in other Linux packages that support functionality I need going forward?

This is the short list. Other elements to keep in mind are the specific distribution’s origin and the Open Source community upon which it is based. How important is that specific Linux supplier with regard to the Open Source community upon which the distribution is based? These elements need to be part of the thought process.

I’ll Let My Silicon Choose

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Linux and the Multiverse

Marcel Gagné — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 12:00:00 +0000

by Marcel Gagné

A look at the rich diversity of Linux distributions.

What do Linux distributions and the Nobel Prize-winning work by Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess have in common? Well, Linux was originally the hobby project of one Linus Torvalds back in 1991 when he lived in Helsinki, Finland. Perlmutter, on the other hand, worked on the Supernova Cosmology Project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California in Berkeley. Schmidt was part of the High-z Supernova Search Team at Australian National University, and Riess was also on the High-z Supernova Search Team but worked out of Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

You see where I'm going with this? The supernova team won the 2011 Nobel Prize for physics for "the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae". In short, they discovered that the universe is not only expanding, as Edwin Hubble observed back in 1929 when he noticed that everything seemed to be moving away from us, but that the expansion was accelerating. This is a big deal, because everyone assumed that gravity would eventually do its dirty work and slow the whole expanding mess down. That turns out not to be the case.

So what's causing this anti-gravity force? Dark energy, for which the team actually came up with a number, a number which, as it turns out, is super tiny and its source, unknown. Later work, based on these observations, suggests that string theory might hold the answer, while others point to the Higgs Field, long theorized but only recently confirmed. Spoiler alert: nobody knows for sure, but if you follow this whole thing down the proverbial rabbit hole, you wind up concluding that there are countless universes in addition to our own—what we now refer to as the multiverse.

Just as the possibility exists for countless universes, so does the possibility exist for countless Linux distributions, When Linus chose to open the code for his new kernel, he unknowingly set in motion a kind of "distribution Big Bang", where the original code, combined with other open-source projects, began stretching out into the furthest reaches of the internet, where those combinations could spawn other versions of what eventually would form what we now think of as distributions. Just as matter from the early universe coalesced into dust clouds and then into stars that through their eventual cataclysmic destruction in supernovae would spawn the heavier elements that would, in time, create our own solar system with our planetary home, the Earth, so too did this early code evolve to create the rich diversity of Linux distributions.

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elementary 5 "Juno"

Bryan Lunduke — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 12:30:00 +0000

by Bryan Lunduke

A review of the elementary distribution and an interview with its founders.

In the spring of 2014 (nearly five years ago), I was preparing a regular presentation I give most years—where I look at the bad side (and the good side) of the greater Linux world. As I had done in years prior, I was preparing a graph showing the market share of various Linux distributions changing over time.

But, this year, something was different.

In the span of less than two years, a tiny little Linux distro came out of nowhere to become one of the most watched and talked about systems available. In the blink of an eye, it went from nothing to passing several grand-daddies of Linux flavors that had been around for decades.

This was elementary. Needless to say, it caught my attention.

Figure 1. elementary 5 "Juno"

In the years that followed, I've interviewed elementary's founders on a few occasions—for articles, videos or podcasts—and consistently found their vision, dedication and attitudes rather intriguing.

Then in 2016, I was at a Linux conference—SCaLE (the Southern California Linux Expo). One bright, sunshiny morning, I found myself heading from my hotel room down to the conference floor. On my way, I got it in my head that I really could use some French toast. I had a hankering—a serious one. And when Lunduke gets a hankering, no force in the cosmos can stop him (he says, switching to talking about himself in the third person seemingly at random).

Somehow or another, I ended up convincing the elementary crew (four of them, also at SCaLE, with a booth to promote their system) to join me on my French toast quest.

After searching the streets of downtown Pasadena, we found ourselves in a small, but packed, diner—solving French Toast Crisis 2016—and allowing us to chat and get to know each other, in person, a bit better.

These were...kids—in their mid-20s, practically wee babies.

But, I tell you, they impressed me. Their vision for what elementary was—and what it could be—was clear. Their passion was contagious. It was hard to sit with them, in that cramped little diner, and not feel excited and optimistic for what the future held.

And, what's more, they were simply nice people. They oozed goodness and kindness. Their spirit had not yet been crushed by a string of IT managers that make soul-crushing a hobby.

They were the future of desktop Linux (or at least a rather big part of it). This was evident, even back then. And, that wasn't just the French toast talking.

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January 2019, #294: The Distributions Issue

Bryan Lunduke — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 15:30:00 +0000

by Bryan Lunduke

Do you remember your first distro?

The first version of Linux I truly used, for any length of time, was back at the end of the 1990s—in Ye Olden Times, when 56k modems, 3.5" floppies and VGA CRT monitors reigned supreme.

Linux itself had been a thing for a number of years by this point—with both SUSE (then known as the gloriously mixed-case and punctuation-filled S.u.S.E.) and Red Hat doing good business supporting it—when I decided to really give this "Free" operating system a try.

Because I'm a nerd. And that's what we do.

I remember the day well. It was cold. It was rainy. And I was taking an extended lunch break from my job at Microsoft (seriously). My days—and, all too often, nights—spent testing Windows NT 5 (before it was renamed Windows 2000) had taken a toll. I had reached peak "burn out".

After a mildly rejuvenating, two-hour long, burger-eating (and venting about our job) session with a co-worker, we made our way to the big-box computer store close to Microsoft's main campus. Once inside, we bee-lined it for the Operating System section (this was back when computer stores had rows upon rows of actual boxes that contained actual physical media, which, in turn, contained actual software).

Several versions of Windows were on display, and, lo and behold, right there next to them, was S.u.S.E. Linux—in a box. I grabbed it immediately. It was heavy. There were several CDs inside along with a manual (which would turn out to be necessary simply to get the system to boot).

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in my office installing Linux on one of my little Dell towers.

That's right. My first full-time Linux machine? A Microsoft, company-issued work computer. This was my way of "sticking it to the man"—and boy did it feel good.

Were there problems with my first foray into Linux? You bet. The sound card didn't work. Getting an X Server running (with any sort of GUI) was a mildly mystifying process. And, heck, just getting the darn thing to boot took the better part of an afternoon. But, even with those challenges, I was in love.

Thus, my 20-year long hobby of "installing every Linux distribution I can get my grubby little hands on" was born—right there on Microsoft's main campus, using funds I earned from my job at Microsoft, on Microsoft-owned hardware, using Microsoft-supplied electricity and company time.

Shh. Don't tell Ballmer.

From that point onward, one of the things about Linux that always has made me smile is the wide variety of distributions out there in the world. There seems to be one custom-made for every man, woman and child on planet Earth.

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The State of Desktop Linux 2019

Bryan Lunduke — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 12:30:00 +0000

by Bryan Lunduke

A snapshot of the current state of Desktop Linux at the start of 2019—with comparison charts and a roundtable Q&A with the leaders of three top Linux distributions.

I've never been able to stay in one place for long—at least in terms of which Linux distribution I call home. In my time as a self-identified "Linux Person", I've bounced around between a number of truly excellent ones. In my early days, I picked up boxed copies of S.u.S.E. (back before they made the U uppercase and dropped the dots entirely) and Red Hat Linux (before Fedora was a thing) from store shelves at various software outlets.

Side note: remember when we used to buy Operating Systems—and even most software—in actual boxes, with actual physical media and actual printed manuals? I still have big printed manuals for a few early Linux versions, which, back then, were necessary for getting just about everything working (from X11 to networking and sound). Heck, sometimes simply getting a successful boot required a few trips through those heavy manuals. Ah, those were the days.

Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE—I spent a good amount of time living in the biggest distributions around (and many others). All of them were fantastic. Truly stellar. Yet, each had their own quirks and peculiarities.

As I bounced from distro to distro, I developed a strong attachment to just about all of them, learning, as I went, to appreciate each for what it was. Just the same, when asked which distribution I recommend to others, my brain begins to melt down. Offering any single recommendation feels simply inadequate.

Choosing which one to call home, even if simply on a secondary PC, is a deeply personal choice.

Maybe you have an aging desktop computer with limited RAM and an older, but still absolutely functional, CPU. You're going to need something light on system resources that runs on 32-bit processors.

Or, perhaps you work with a wide variety of hardware architectures and need a single operating system that works well on all of them—and standardizing on a single Linux distribution would make it easier for you to administer and update all of them. But what options even are available?

To help make this process a bit easier, I've put together a handy set of charts and graphs to let you quickly glance and find the one that fits your needs (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. Distribution Comparison Chart I

Figure 2. Distribution Comparison Chart II

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Ubuntu Desktop in the Hyper-V Gallery, an Interview with Canonical and Microsoft

Petros Koutoupis — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 13:08:08 +0000

by Petros Koutoupis

Late last month, Canonical made an astonishing announcement: an optimized image of Ubuntu Desktop is now available from Microsoft's Hyper-V gallery. This wonderful new feature is primarily intended for Windows 10 Pro desktop users needing to run Ubuntu Desktop guest virtual machines.

Although the announcement itself came as a bit of a surprise, even more so when you consider the long tumultuous history between both Microsoft and Linux, it does, however, indicate that times (and the company) have been changing. In recent years, Microsoft has been making a concerted effort to embrace open source and open-source technologies.

The announcement did leave me with a few questions, so I took the opportunity to sit down with Will Cooke, the Engineering Director for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical, and Sarah Cooley, Program Manager at Microsoft.

Petros Koutoupis: Please introduce yourselves and describe your primary role both at your company and for this project.

Will Cooke: I am the director of engineering for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical. Our team is responsible for putting together every Ubuntu Desktop release, selecting which packages and which features we're going to ship, making sure that each release is of the right quality and working with partners on projects around Ubuntu Desktop—for example, OEMs shipping Ubuntu Desktop on their hardware and, in this instance, Microsoft, to improve the virtual guest experience for Ubuntu Desktop on Windows 10. For this project, I worked with our internal teams to line up the requirements for supporting the enhanced session and to make sure the features we needed would be included in 18.04 LTS and with Microsoft engineers and product managers to make sure we were always in sync on the latest progress.

Sarah Cooley: I am a program manager on the virtualization team at Microsoft. We have been working closely with the developer platform team in Microsoft, Will Cooke's team in Canonical, and xRDP's community to improve the Linux virtual machine experience on Windows 10—starting with Ubuntu. To provide the experience you see today, Hyper-V developers contributed to xRDP to make sure open source communities can run Linux virtual machines in enhanced session mode while working with Canonical to provide all of the tools necessary for Ubuntu to run well with Hyper-V with no additional setup. Outside this effort, I also work on the Windows Subsystem for Linux and Linux containers on Windows.

PK: Why Hyper-V and why Ubuntu Desktop?

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FOSS Project Spotlight: Nitrux, a Linux Distribution with a Focus on AppImages and Atomic Upgrades

Nitrux Latinoamericana S.C. — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 13:41:37 +0000

by Nitrux Latinoa…

Nitrux is a Linux distribution with a focus on portable, application formats like AppImages. Nitrux uses KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications, and it also uses our in-house software suite Nomad Desktop.

What Can You Use Nitrux For?

Well, just about anything! You can surf the internet, word-process, send email, create spreadsheets, listen to music, watch movies, chat, play games, code, do photo editing, create content—whatever you want!

Nitrux's main feature is the Nomad Desktop, which aims to extend Plasma to suit new users without compromising its power and flexibility for experts. Nomad's features:

The System Tray replaces the traditional Plasma version.
An expanded notification center allows users to manage notifications in a friendlier manner.
Easier access to managing networks: quick access to different network settings without having to search for them.
Improved media controls: a less confusing way to adjust the application's volume and integrated media controls.
Calendar and weather: displays the traditional Plasma calendar but also adds the ability to see appointments and the ability to configure location settings to display the weather.
Custom Plasma 5 artwork: including Look and Feel, Plasma theme, Kvantum theme, icon theme, cursor themes, SDDM themes, Konsole theme and Aurorae window decoration.

Nitrux is a complete operating system that ships the essential apps and services for daily use: office applications, PDF reader, image editor, music and video players and so on. We also include non-KDE or Qt applications like Chromium and LibreOffice that together create a friendly user experience.

Available Out of the Box

Nitrux includes a selection of applications carefully chosen to perform the best when using your computer:

Dolphin: file manager.
Kate: advanced text editor.
Ark: archiving tool.
Konsole: terminal emulator.
Chromium: web browser.
Babe: music player.
VLC: multimedia player.
LibreOffice: open-source office suite.
Showimage: image viewer.

Explore a Universe of Apps in Nitrux

The NX Software Center is a free application that provides Linux users with a modern and easy way to manage the software installed on their open-source operating systems. Its features allow you to search, install and manage AppImages. AppImages are faster to install, easier to create and safer to run. AppImages aim to work on any distribution or device, from IoT devices to servers, desktops and mobile devices.

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