DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 621, 3 August 2015

Feature Story (by Brook Kidane)

Point Linux 3.0 (Agni)



Introduction



Point Linux 3.0 (Agni) is the latest release of the distribution based on the stable branch of Debian - the current version of which was released in April of this year and is code named Jessie. Point Linux aims to provide a very stable system - thus the Debian base, but with modifications to improve the user experience over a stock Debian system. One of the things the Point Linux developers do to achieve this goal is to provide their own repository, where current builds of Firefox and Thunderbird are available for installation (unless the full installation medium is used, in which case these programs are installed by default). This is in contrast to the Debian experience where only unbranded versions of these programs are available. Point Linux also chooses default desktop environments for the distribution based on the ease of use of the desktop. This choice has traditionally been the MATE desktop environment, but with this release Xfce has been added as an official desktop environment.





Point Linux 3.0 -- Exploring the MATE desktop

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Point Linux 3.0 - Quick Facts



Feature Availability Supported Architectures 32-bit and 64-bit (x86 and x86_64) Base OS Debian 8.0 Jessie (current stable branch) Official Desktops MATE (Version 1.8) and Xfce (untested) Installation Media Full DVD Live ISO; Core Component Live ISO. Both available in either architecture and desktop environment. MATE 64-bit 1.1 GB Full ISO, 770 MB Core ISO Xfce 64-bit 1.0 GB Full ISO, 640 MB Core ISO MATE 32-bit 1.1 GB Full ISO, 780 MB Core ISO Xfce 32-bit 1.1 GB Full ISO, 650 MB Core ISO Download Type Torrent or direct download from a choice of eight mirror locations.



Hardware Used (Installed on Physical Machine)



Component Spec CPU Intel Core-i5 2450M Graphics Intel Graphics HD3000 integrated Wireless Intel Centrino® Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 RAM 6 GB BIOS/EFI Phoenix Technologies EFI v 2.0 Hard Drive Mechanical



Distribution's Goals and Target Users



The distribution's goal is to provide the stability and reliability for which Debian is famous, but with improvements to make the system uncomplicated and easy to use. The primacy of stability for Point Linux, and that appropriate choices have been made to that end by the developers, is evident from the warning in one of the last screens of the installer, the Advanced options screen, where there is a warning that choosing to enable the Jessie Backports repository will reduce stability.



This goal of providing a good desktop experience is realized, first, by providing an installer that is much simpler and more straightforward than the Debian installer, which I recently used to install another Debian based distribution. Even a user new to Linux with the right hardware and without a dual boot requirement could easily install Point Linux.





Point Linux 3.0 -- Running various desktop applications

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The MATE desktop environment, its suite of accessories, and the installed applications allow a computer user with the most common needs, whether at home or at a business, to immediately be productive. If the Full ISO is used, the LibreOffice suite is installed by default, as well as Firefox with the Flash Player plug-in, Thunderbird for email and calendar, and the Atril Document Viewer for viewing PDF documents. A good set of secondary applications for Internet tools and multimedia are also installed by default including Pidgin for instant messaging, VLC for sound and video, and Eye of MATE for viewing images. The release notes indicate that the target audience is composed of experienced users or those in corporate and IT environments. The impression I got however was that the distribution in its default configuration was very basic and would be more suitable for the average computer user who essentially needs a web browser and an office suite. This doesn't mean that an experienced Debian user, because of Debian's power and flexibility, couldn't turn the installation into something completely different.



Installation Experience



My only problem with Point Linux is the lack of support for more modern hardware. The installer doesn't support installation onto EFI/UEFI systems. Fortunately, the installer has the option of not installing a bootloader. EFI/UEFI users can install the system without a bootloader and boot the OS with another distribution's GRUB, install the appropriate Debian GRUB package, and finally install the actual bootloader to the EFI partition and to the firmware, as I have done with other distributions that don't support EFI/UEFI. Unfortunately, in the case of Point Linux, an attempt to install the Debian grub-efi-amd64 package would result in breaking the few Point Linux base packages from the Point Linux repository. As a result I did not install the Point Linux provided GRUB bootloader, but continued to use another distribution's GRUB to boot Point Linux, modifying the other GRUB to enable hibernation in Point Linux and to preserve its Plymouth boot splash. But for a user without an EFI/UEFI system, the installation experience is excellent, allowing a very simple graphical installation just by selecting a few options and clicking Forward through the installer screens.





Point Linux 3.0 -- The system installer

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Debian Foundation



Debian is highly regarded for stability and is a good choice for a distribution that values stability. This stability is the result of extensive testing - typically for two years - of packages during the development of a Debian release in a series of branches before being promoted to the stable branch. This standard is so uncompromised that the Synapse launcher, which I find essential to my productivity, has been held back from the Jessie (stable) repository, and is only available in the Stretch (testing) or Sid (unstable) repositories.





Point Linux 3.0 -- Software package sources

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Additions to Debian



The most important addition to the Debian system that will most readily affect the user experience is a set of additional sources for packages. Point Linux adds its own repositories where the most important software packages available in this repository are Firefox and Thunderbird, great additions to a Debian based system, as Debian only offers unbranded versions from Mozilla in the form of Iceweasel and Icedove. Other items in this repository include the custom themes for the distribution as a whole, such as the Plymouth theme, and artwork for the officially supported Point Linux desktops, MATE and Xfce. This repository also includes localization packages, packages that install the Point Linux customized configuration files that, among other things, control the behaviour of APT package management tools, and the lsb-release information.



In addition to these third-party repositories, Point Linux adds a Google repository which makes available the stable, beta, and unstable variants of Google Chrome; a Dropbox repository; an Opera repository; and a VirtualBox repository. The VirtualBox and Dropbox repositories are added using the codename of the previous stable Debian release, Wheezy, which is now the old-stable branch of Debian. This happens to not be a problem with Dropbox as the URL associated with this repository is still valid, and the version available in this repository is the same as that available from Dropbox directly. However, this is not the case with the VirtualBox repository.



Using Point Linux



The developers make many small adjustments to the system for user convenience. The user is made a member of the sudo group by default and a root terminal profile is pre-configured and available from an application icon, which I especially appreciated. Unfortunately a bit more could have been done in this area. For example, the sparse Point Linux wiki provides instructions on enabling an "open as administrator" menu in the Caja file browser; it would have been helpful if this and window snapping had been enabled by default.





Point Linux 3.0 -- A custom MATE theme

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MATE Desktop



The MATE desktop (version 1.8, latest is 1.10, released after Debian suspended software additions to Jessie) as offered by Point Linux is an extremely simple and straightforward environment. The desktop has not been modified by Point Linux and features the standard two panel interface, with the top panel providing the three cascading menus at the left and the system tray at the right. The bottom panel shows the task switcher, a "show all desktops" button, and the workspace switcher. One of the best features of MATE is the Control Center. It is functional without overwhelming the user with an abundance of hidden options. The MATE desktop also offers the full range of accessory applications that make a desktop environment complete. I found that the support for zip files was included by default in the MATE file archive tool Engrampa; this is not always the case with other distributions. However, MATE does not have some of the extras of other desktops environments which use compositing window managers with advanced effects which, in addition to eye candy, have some productivity enhancing features.



System Resources



I missed a window manager with compositing 3D effects in this implementation of MATE because some of the effects, such as displaying all workspaces and displaying all windows, are very useful for multitasking. A previous version of Point Linux had an option in the installer to install the Compiz window manager, which could provide these capabilities, but this has been removed in this version. However, the lack of multitasking convenience offered by these tools is a trade off, allowing for a very lightweight system. When Point Linux is idle with no applications running, RAM use is around 350MB and load values are consistently much lower than I typically see with other OSes installed on this computer.





Point Linux 3.0 -- Monitoring system resources

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Appearance



The appearance of the distribution is obviously not a priority with Point Linux as much as is stability. But it does have a customized Faenza icon theme and two Clearlooks themes. Fortunately the MATE desktop allows easy customization with minimal effort after themes are installed. Different components from various themes can be combined into a custom theme using the easy to use Appearance component from the Control Center.



Documentation and Help



Point Linux documentation is very minimal. The community tab on the website provides links to the wiki and forums as well as social network and chat contact information. The wiki had only a handful of links and one of these - an important topic, testing for and enabling the fastest APT mirror - was outdated. Fortunately, because of the Debian base, there is no shortage of information from Debian resources.



Conclusion



Point Linux is a solidly stable, responsive OS with a good user experience and low system resource use, as the developers intended to make it. It offers a very straightforward graphical installer which installs a system that is fully capable for the most common use cases out-of-the-box - if using the Full ISO live medium. However, this uncomplicated installation will only be available to users without EFI/UEFI firmware. * * * * * Brook Kidane is a Linux enthusiast who writes Linux reviews, guides and offers tips on running Linux distributions for Ordinatechnic.





Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith)

Debian drops the Sparc architecture, Ubuntu MATE removes Ubuntu Software Centre, FreeBSD posts quarterly report and a look at Fedora package statistics



Last week Joerg Jaspert announced to the Debian community that the Sparc architecture was being dropped from Debian. The venerable CPU architecture was once popular, particularly among UNIX administrators, but has been increasingly pushed out of its niche by x86- and ARM-powered computers. " As Sparc isn't exactly the most alive architecture anymore, not in Jessie and unlikely to be in Stretch, I am going to remove it from the archive this weekend. (This does not block it coming back as sparc64!) " More details on the removal can be found in this post. * * * * * Martin Wimpress reported on his Google Plus page that Ubuntu MATE will be dropping their graphical package manager (Ubuntu Software Centre) from future versions of the distribution. Wimpress said the Ubuntu MATE developers have a replacement in mind, but did not say what it will be. " Ubuntu Software Centre has been removed from the default install of Ubuntu MATE 15.10. There, I've done it. It will not feature in Ubuntu MATE 15.10 Alpha 2. You can stop sending me messages about it now. We have something else lined up by way of a replacement. No, it's not Synaptic. " * * * * * The FreeBSD project has released its second quarterly report of 2015. The report details many of the developments which have happened over the past three months. Some key areas include improved security (in part due to work imported from the HardenedBSD project), the bhyve virtualization technology and Linux compatibility. The report also touches on new sleep state code which reduces energy usage when the CPU is idle, new features coming to ZFSguru and FreeBSD's improved ARM support. Warren Block summed up the report, writing: " Projects ran the gamut from security and speed improvements to virtualization and storage appliances. New kernel drivers and capabilities were added, while work to make FreeBSD run on various ARM architectures continued at a rapid pace. The Ports Collection grew, even while adding capabilities and fixing problems. Outside projects like pkgsrc have become interested in adding support. Documentation was a major focus, one that is often complimented by people new to FreeBSD. BSDCan 2015 was a great success, turning many hours of sleep deprivation into an even greater amount of inspiration. " The full report can be found on the FreeBSD website. * * * * * There is an interesting post on the Brno's Hat blog which talks about the number of packages available in the Fedora repositories. Specifically, the author talks about how the number of packages being added to Fedora's official repositories has stalled. "I went across statistics from Fedora Package Database and what caught my attention is that the increase of number of packages in the official Fedora repository has almost stalled. The number of packages in Fedora 22 is 17,021 and is not going up much since Fedora 20. Does it mean there are no more projects worth packaging? I don't think so. The number of open source projects goes up like never before, just look at GitHub." The post goes on to suggest software is still being packaged for Fedora, but it is being placed in Copr repositories. Copr is a build service which helps developers test, build and publish packages for Fedora. The Copr build service currently hosts about 3,000 projects.





Application Review (by Jesse Smith)

First impressions of VirtualBox 5.0



Anyone who does a lot of distro-hopping or who likes to test out a piece of software before installing it on their computer is probably aware of how useful virtual machines can be. A virtual machine allows the user to install and run multiple operating systems on the same computer, test new code and experiment with new configurations, all without rebooting or risking harm to the computer's primary operating system. Perhaps one of the easiest virtual machine technologies to use is VirtualBox. The VirtualBox software, which is currently owned by Oracle, is popular largely due to its point-n-click interface and helpful default settings. It's a technology I use nearly every day.



A few weeks ago, Oracle announced the launch of VirtualBox 5.0, a major new release of the product line. For the past several years VirtualBox has been receiving mostly incremental updates, keeping the software relevant without introducing significant new features. Version 5.0 offers users five new notable features which are outlined in the release announcement: Paravirtualization support for Windows and Linux guests: Significantly improves guest OS performance by leveraging built-in virtualization support on operating systems such as Oracle Linux 7 and Microsoft Windows 7 and newer.





Improved CPU utilization: Exposes a broader set of CPU instructions to the guest OS, enabling applications to make use of the latest hardware instruction sets for maximum performance.





Support of USB 3.0 devices: Guest operating systems can directly recognize USB 3.0 devices and operate at full 3.0 speeds. The guest OS can be configured to support USB 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0.





Bi-directional drag and drop support for Windows: On all host platforms, Windows, Linux and Oracle Solaris guests now support "drag and drop" of content between the host and the guest. The drag and drop feature transparently allows copying or opening of files, directories, and more.





Disk image encryption: Data can be encrypted on virtual hard disk images transparently during runtime, using the industry standard AES algorithm with up to 256-bit data encryption keys (DEK). This helps ensure data is secure and encrypted at all times, whether the VM is sitting unused on a developer's machine or server, or actively in use. packages for most Linux distributions, as well as a number of other operating systems. The project also offers repositories to help users install VirtualBox and stay abreast of software updates. I downloaded the project's Debian package for 64-bit processors and gave it a test drive.





VirtualBox 5.0 -- Launching a virtual machine

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VirtualBox will not play nicely with other versions of itself, so if you are running VirtualBox 4.x, you should un-install it prior to installing VirtualBox 5.0. The friendly VirtualBox interface has remained mostly the same with this new version. There are a few small changes. For example, the button to start a virtual machine now includes a drop-down selector which allows us to choose whether the new virtual machine should be launched in a window or in a headless state. People running guest servers with VirtualBox will probably want to try this headless option as it avoids cluttering the desktop.



One of the big changes is the acceleration feature which allows VirtualBox to use various virtualization technologies to offer better performance. In theory I think this is a great idea as it will allow VirtualBox users to benefit from built-in virtualization technology in their host operating system. From a practical point of view, I think most home users will not notice a difference. I tried running a virtual machine with the Default, KVM and Hyper-V acceleration settings. Tasks were performed in the same amount of time with each option, so (in my case at least) the benefits are not significant.





VirtualBox 5.0 -- Selecting acceleration settings

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Another new feature, encrypted virtual machines, looks attractive. The encryption option will certainly appeal to people who wish to insure the privacy of their data, though enabling encryption may result in poorer performance. I tried to enable encryption on a virtual machine and was told I needed to install a VirtualBox extension. I downloaded the extension and tried to enable it through the VirtualBox Preferences screen. The extension failed to install, meaning I could not take advantage of VirtualBox's encryption functions.





VirtualBox 5.0 -- Enabling encryption

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Personally, I do not typically use USB devices directly from within VirtualBox, but I'm still happy to see USB 3.0 support being included. I think this will make it easier for people to access their storage devices and access gadgets such as digital cameras and music players.



I have played around with VirtualBox 5.0 a little and, besides the features listed above, I feel the product is quite similar to VirtualBox 4.x. That is, people who have used VirtualBox before should still feel completely at home with the new release. VirtualBox 5.0 feels a little faster, I think guests perform just a little quicker than they did under VirtualBox 4.x. The interface hasn't changed much, but a few new options (like acceleration and encryption) have been added to the Settings window. I think my favourite feature though is the headless mode. While it was technically possible to run VirtualBox machines before without their own display window, there wasn't an obvious way to launch operating systems in headless mode. Now, launching a server that will be accessed exclusively using a web browser or secure shell is much easier and keeps the desktop clean.



VirtualBox is probably my favourite virtual machine technology, simply because it is so easy to use and set up. While other virtualization suites might offer more features or additional flexibility, VirtualBox is dead simple to use and will probably perform any tasks someone distro-hopping or experimenting at home will need. The interface is friendly, the performance is good and VirtualBox works with just about every operating system available. This latest release offers a few new features (including some welcome items like better performance and encryption, if you can get it to work), but it still looks and feels very much like previous versions of VirtualBox. This new release is definitely a step forward, an evolutionary step, and it's nice to see performance enhancements and things like USB support included in this very useful application.





Torrent Corner

Weekly Torrents



Bittorrent is a great way to transfer large files, particularly open source operating system images, from one place to another. Most bittorrent clients recover from dropped connections automatically, check the integrity of files and can re-download corrupted bits of data without starting a download over from scratch. These characteristics make bittorrent well suited for distributing open source operating systems, particularly to regions where Internet connections are slow or unstable.



Many Linux and BSD projects offer bittorrent as a download option, partly for the reasons listed above and partly because bittorrent's peer-to-peer nature takes some of the strain off the project's servers. However, some projects do not offer bittorrent as a download option. There can be several reasons for excluding bittorrent as an option. Some projects do not have enough time or volunteers, some may be restricted by their web host provider's terms of service. Whatever the reason, the lack of a bittorrent option puts more strain on a distribution's bandwidth and may prevent some people from downloading their preferred open source operating system.



With this in mind, DistroWatch plans to give back to the open source community by hosting and seeding bittorrent files. For now, we are hosting a small number of distribution torrents, listed below. The list of torrents offered will be updated each week and we invite readers to e-mail us with suggestions as to which distributions we should be hosting. When you message us, please place the word "Torrent" in the subject line, make sure to include a link to the ISO file you want us to seed. To help us maintain and grow this free service, please consider making a donation.



The table below provides a list of torrents we currently host. If you do not currently have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.



Operating System Torrent MD5 checksum VectorLinux VL64-7.1-LIGHT.iso 9f42ce494358bee20ab11d606b6f7850 pfSense pfSense-LiveCD-2.2.4-RELEASE-amd64.iso.gz a9f14950b289bc10b40ef6df3b7a26d2 Webconverger webc-31.0.iso 9c5c7b3491f454fdc46562c8d6c64dfe Zorin OS zorin-os-10-core-64.iso c13d24f6740d02356ef1fa313c617406



Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found here. All torrents we make available here are also listed on the very useful Linux Tracker website. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics.



Torrent Corner statistics:

Total torrents seeded: 91

Total downloads completed: 46,784

Total data uploaded: 9.5TB

Released Last Week

Upcoming Releases and Announcements

Opinion Poll

Contributing to open source software



In recent weeks several open source projects have put out calls for assistance, seeking help from coders, artists, document writers and administrators. Open source projects typically give away their work for free and rely on contributions to keep the projects alive. This is especially true for larger projects which require funds to keep their servers running.



This week we would like to know if and how our readers contribute to open source projects. Do you donate money, write code, package software for a distribution, write documentation or submit artwork? Do you file bug reports or post bounties to encourage developers to work on specific problems? Let us know how you get involved in the comments section.



You can see the results of last week's poll on backup methods here. I contribute to open source software by



Writing code: 80 (11%) Writing documentation: 35 (5%) Creating artwork: 11 (1%) Donating funds: 150 (20%) Providing equipment: 5 (1%) Submitting bug reports: 129 (17%) Packaging software: 26 (3%) Designing user interfaces: 17 (2%) Supporting other users: 211 (28%) Other: 97 (13%)

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