Linux, BSD, and everything else...

Devuan 5.0.0 Daedalus released

2023-08-15T20:35:00.004+01:00

Dear Friends and Software Freedom Lovers,

Devuan Developers are delighted to announce the release of Devuan Daedalus 5.0.0 as the project's new stable release. This is the result of many months of painstaking work by the Team and detailed testing by the wider Devuan community.

# Devuan 5 Daedalus Release Notes

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Windscribe VPN Leaking DNS in Linux

2023-07-30T18:28:00.006+01:00

This post pertains to the Windscribe GUI app on Linux as encountered here on Debian and Ubuntu based Linux Mint with the latest version 2.6.14 as well as the previous version. To be fair the GUI app is still marked as in beta.

If you go to the download page it funny enough first attempted to serve me the older and more reliable CLI program, supposedly tried and tested, and only at the second attempt offered the GUI program for download. I'ld have to check if this problem is also present in the CLI version (it wasn´t previously when used around three years ago as I ran frequent tests) but for now with the move to a more comfortable graphical interface I've only got the new app installed.

Most sites like whatismyip.com will tell you that everything is fine. It seems like they're only running one test. Also, when tested on AirVPN's ipleak.net everything appears fine at first glance. However, they're running more tests and eventually after around 20-30 seconds suddenly a second DNS is detected and pops up as visible in the screenshot below. This is the DNS of the ISP.

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Hello 2023: Current Setup and State of Affairs

2023-02-26T21:43:00.016+00:00

It's been a while since I posted anything here. Testing various distros eventually loses its appeal and we settle on one or a mix of distributions. I'm not really using Slackware anymore except very occasionally in the form of Alien's LiveSlak on a USB stick and experimenting with Porteus. Slax also once again has a version based on Slackware but I find Porteus the better choice these days if a modular system is what you want. All this is toying around though.

My day to day work is done on a mixture of MX Linux KDE edition, AntiX, and Linux Mint. Yes, the one with systemd. Simply due to the fact that it is the one distribution that I tried that managed to set up the Nvidia driver without further fiddling and work correctly with my hybrid graphics laptop to allow for some advanced Steam gaming. The other reason would be that it is the one distribution where Cinnamon really shines in combination with the Mint tools. If not for that I'ld be going Plasma only. This combo has proven to be more than adequate to deal with anything I throw at it and is a great production setup.

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Slackware 15.0 Finally Released After 5 1/2 Years

2022-02-04T11:16:00.004+00:00

Wow, it has really happened. Slackware 15 is out and we live to see the day.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement.

"Well folks, in spite of the dire predictions of YouTube pundits, this morning the Slackhog emerged from its development den, did *not* see its shadow, and Slackware 15.0 has been officially released - another six weeks (or years) of the development treadmill averted. This has been an interesting development cycle (in the "may you live in interesting times" sense). Anyone who has followed Linux development over the years has seen the new technology and a slow but steady drift away from the more UNIX-like structure. The challenge this time around was to adopt as much of the good stuff out there as we could without changing the character of the operating system. Keep it familiar, but make it modern. And boy did we have our work cut out for us. We adopted PAM (finally) as projects we needed dropped support for pure shadow passwords. We switched from ConsoleKit2 to elogind, making it much easier to support software that targets that Other Init System and bringing us up-to-date with the XDG standards. We added support for PipeWire as an alternate to PulseAudio, and for Wayland sessions in addition to X11. Dropped Qt4 and moved entirely to Qt5. Brought in Rust and Python 3. Added many, many new libraries to the system to help support all the various additions. We've upgraded to two of the finest desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.16, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and the KDE Plasma 5 graphical workspaces environment, version 5.23.5 (the Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition). This also supports running under Wayland or X11."

Also, for the first time ever a "make_world.sh" script that allows automatically rebuilding the entire operating system from source is included. All the sources have been tested and confirmed to build properly.

DNS Level Blocking with Control D

2021-04-26T21:44:00.003+01:00

As you probably know I'm quite interested and active in testing different security approaches like sandboxing, firewalls and VPNs. Compartmentalizing with virtual machines is also a good strategy. Part of a good multi-layered defence is also a well curated hosts file like this one kept by Dan Pollock and secure, encrypted DNS services. Better even if you can combine features of the last two and keep the nasties out with DNS level blocking. This will give us a much cleaner internet and might even negate the need for a browser level blocker like uBlock Origin.Read more here >>

GParted 1.2.0 Live CD & USB Image: Nimble and Effective

2021-03-01T19:36:00.002+00:00

Continuing the theme of Debian based rescue distributions, simply because most of them are built on Debian, I am looking at GParted this week as last one in this short series. GParted is of course known as a tool to work with and edit partitions that is included with most distributions where it could be considered a de facto standard. But it also lends its name to a rescue CD image where it is at the centre of the collection of tools.

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Introducing the Linux Mint Devuan Edition

2021-02-15T16:57:00.001+00:00

The Mint project has been a long-time favorite among Linux users who are mainly home users. Its friendly and common sense approach to a distribution appeals to many people who want to run something with the Linux kernel on their desktop. There's ample testimony of this, from the inception and creation of the Cinnamon desktop as common sense, traditional but still sleek and modern alternative to the evolving desaster and dumbing-down assault from other desktops at the time to coming up with great little tools like the Warpinator for file sharing on a LAN, the Hypnotix IPTV app and other little improvements to make things just a little easier, for the average Joe and the Techie who just wants to get things done alike.Read more here >>

Rescatux 0.73: Rescuing GNU/Linux and Microsoft Systems with Rescapp

2021-02-08T17:19:00.004+00:00

According to the Distrowatch summary "Rescatux is a Debian-based GNU/Linux live distribution that includes a graphical wizard for rescuing broken GNU/Linux installations." It features a graphical interface where one can choose a task to perform, including the option to restore the GRUB bootloader, Linux and Windows password resets, and Linux file system checks. Being based on Debian (Stable) it is using the Linux kernel 4.19.0-8 and systemd in the background. Right off the bat this could be a problem for machines needing a newer kernel but it was ok for my hardware, the newest machine now being around 20 months old.

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Rescuezilla 2.1: Caped Tux to the Rescue?

2021-02-07T19:06:00.024+00:00

Rescuezilla, not to be confused with Rescatux which is based on Debian, "is a specialist Ubuntu-based distribution designed for system rescue tasks, including backups and system restoration."(1) It is a fork of Redo Backup and Recovery after that was abandoned and like its predecessor allows a bare-metal restore after any hardware failure directly from the live image. It works as a live CD/USB image and can be used to work with Linux, OS X and Windows, automatically searches a local area network for drives to backup to or restore from and can recover lost or deleted data files. Rescuezilla uses a basic LXDE as graphical desktop. So far the advertisement.

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A Long Wait Will Soon be Over: Slackware 15.0 Coming Up

2021-02-05T11:18:00.011+00:00

As Slackware fans will have duly noted the team around the BDFL are finally one step, actually untold steps, closer to nearing the long awaited 15.0 release. And high time it is as outdated as 14.2 now is something like 4.5 years into its life. Is anyone actually still running this, except on servers? On 7 December 2020 it was announced that alienBOB's latest Plasma 5 packages made it into the Slackware-current branch for testing and with that they finally fully replaced KDE 4. Shortly after XFCE 4.16 followed and now even includes the Whisker menu.Read more here >>

PCLinuxOS 64 KDE 2020.1015 in Review

2021-02-03T22:54:00.023+00:00

This is a consumer oriented distribution formerly based on the long defunct Mandrake Linux that is now independently developed but still shares some characteristics with other systems based on that family, distant cousins so to speak that can usually be identified by them using the former Mandrake Control Center. Once upon a time PCLinuxOS, or PCLOS in short, was at the top of the Distrowatch rankings but has currently dropped to 24th place.Read more here >>

Reality Z: Dead Set with More Bite

2021-02-01T21:43:00.008+00:00

Some of you may have already come across this zombie series that was released on Netflix in 2020. Reality Z is inspired by Dead Set which was a UK produced five piece mini series written by a guy called Charlie Brooker. It was all over too soon and a bit tame in my estimation. Reality Z picks up on the idea and does it way better. Netflix has the show set in Brazil but fortunately there are English subtitles. 10 episodes of blood and gore, a bit of humor and a healthy dose of realism.Read more here >>

Quick Look at Redcore Linux 2101 Beta

2021-01-27T23:15:00.008+00:00

Every once in a while I try Gentoo Linux or something based on it. Redcore Linux is one of those few distributions that made it their mission to "bring the power of Gentoo Linux to the masses". To achieve this it provides a repository of pre-built binary packages on a system that updates on a rolling basis. "Redcore Linux is built from Gentoo Linux stage3. We then add a kernel, a bootloader and a few other things like dbus and initramfs generator (Dracut), we configure the init system (OpenRC) and so we have the core of Redcore Linux, a Gentoo Linux stage4 if you will."Read more here >>

openSUSE "Leap" 15.2 - Any Good?

2021-01-25T22:22:00.018+00:00

This is a review I've been wanting to write since forever. Having tried many iterations of SUSE Linux over its long life before, during and after the Novell era, it always left me feeling ambivalent. And I really wanted to like it. The last time I set out to write a review but then canned the idea was for 12.3, when images would work in VMware Player but did not boot on my real hardware. Now THAT is a long time ago and it also means a lot may have changed, hopefully for the better.

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VPN Providers with Custom Clients for Linux (Updated)

2021-01-16T23:54:00.017+00:00

Virtual Private Networking providers and company are more than you can shake a stick at these days. While there's always installable client software for Windows, Android and usually MacOS and whatever the mobile version is called not all are offering desktop clients for Linux distributions. Even if they do it's usually non-GUI, you know, with the excuse that Linux nerds love and want the power of the command line, with stripped-down functionality, or even a browser extension only which might work on a Chromebook but not on any other OS if you actually want to channel your entire traffic. And no, a proxy is not a replacement for a proper VPN.Read more here >>

Development Release: AntiX 'Bullseye' Alpha 1 - Noice

2021-01-09T21:31:00.010+00:00

This is it, the first round of development releases based on the upcoming Debian 11 'Bullseye' has started now that is nearing the freeze, or has it already? Not sure, as everyone knows I am more partial to the non-systemd side of things. AntiX, just like Devuan, fits right in there. Both provide good alternative ways to install and arrive at a Debian system. Debian is nonetheless still an important distribution, even though I wished they had made different choices, but both are standing on the shoulders of this giant.Read more here >>

Evaluating Artix Linux with OpenRC, KDE Edition

2020-09-07T23:51:00.003+01:00

In an article for Distrowatch in July I looked at Artix Cinnamon and Plasma editions with Runit to start up and manage services. That indicated a problem in the sense that if reliant on software written for Systemd that no ready-made Runit service scripts are available for one will have to create their own. Specifically, I had a problem getting my VPN client to work. Let's see if this works any better with the OpenRC flavour of Artix.
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OSMC on the Raspberry Pi

2020-09-07T22:30:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of LibreELEC follows a test of OSMC. The nice thing about this little board is that you can have as many operating systems as you like and just swap them out as easy as loading another Micro SD. So your device can go from media center to OpenWRT router in a flash, for example. And because they are tiny you can always have a whole collection of them handy for the various roles the Pi can perform.
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LibreELEC on the Raspberry Pi

2020-08-09T12:09:00.004+01:00

Whether you like watching streaming media from the internetz or just want a unified interface that looks good, is skinnable and can be adjusted to your needs to watch movies from a home server or from local drive, look at your photo collection or listen to music, then chances are you want a media center. Not sure if Windows XP Media Center Edition made the idea popular or if it was the advent of cheap broadband that made it viable - probably both.
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The Rise and Fall of Netscape: A look back in history

2020-07-29T14:57:00.003+01:00

Still remember those early days of the internet and the browser wars. Nice little flashback and educational for those who don't.

Artix Linux Review: Read it on Distrowatch

2020-07-28T01:00:00.000+01:00

Back in the day I used to enjoy Arch Linux via Archbang until the release model didn't fit me any more. Artix is an effort to make all the goodness of Arch available to users on a range of different init systems, openrc, runit and s6, with a choice of desktop environments or a basic install image. You can read my experiences with the runit Cinnamon edition in this week's feature story over on Distrowatch Weekly.

Checking Out FuryBSD 12.1, KDE Edition

2020-07-27T00:34:00.001+01:00

FuryBSD is a relatively young project that is offering live systems using either KDE Plasma or the Xfce environment for the x86_64 architecture based on FreeBSD that can be installed from the desktop once booted up. This sounds quite appealing after having had good experiences with GhostBSD which is also based on FreeBSD and I was looking forward to check out a clean system using KDE.
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Ergonomics and Gnome Software

2020-07-23T23:39:00.000+01:00

Ergonomics is about the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize overall interaction. In short, ergonomics is about making things comfortable and efficient to work with. This also applies to software design and development, or at least it should.
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German Translation in the Brave Desktop Browser: A moan about localisation

2020-07-05T19:36:00.002+01:00

Having a laptop with a German keyboard after almost three decades of using a UK keyboard brought home a few issues with software localisation and translations which are not as up to par as I thought. This simply came to attention because packages have this inherent behaviour of installing in that language if a particular locale or keyboard is detected, which is usually the wanted behaviour. I didn't notice it before because a British English interface was always fine and English in general is well supported in the IT world, with all its relatively small variations.
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7 Alternatives to Kubuntu

2020-06-28T02:26:00.002+01:00

Kubuntu is of course a valid distribution in its own right and the case for it has been stronger again ever since Linux Mint cancelled their own KDE edition in 2018. On top of that Kubuntu serves as a base for KDE Neon. Nevertheless, one or the other user might want to look at other alternatives and options to run a pre-configured and set up Plasma Desktop. A ready-made one because the desktop environment can be installed on top of any distribution base.
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