DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 764, 21 May 2018

Feature Story (by Jesse Smith)

DragonFly BSD 5.2.0 DragonFly BSD is a operating system which began as a fork of FreeBSD and is now an independent project with its own documentation, special features, ports framework and package repository. One of the DragonFly features which stands out is the HAMMER file system. HAMMER is an advanced file system with features similar to those of Btrfs and ZFS.



The latest release of DragonFly is version 5.2.0. It includes fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre CPU bugs and improves graphics acceleration. It also introduces support for HAMMER2 (H2), a new, advanced file system with features similar to the original HAMMER. I will talk about H2 in more detail later.



DragonFly 5.2.0 is available for 64-bit x86 computers only and there are two separate download options for USB thumb drives and optical media. These two download options are about 260MB in size when downloaded in their compressed form. They expand to around 850MB when they are decompressed and written to media.



Installing



Booting from the project's media presents us with a text console where we can either login as the root user to access a shell or login with the username installer to start the installation process. DragonFly's installer uses a series of text-based menus to guide us through setting up the operating system on our hard drive.



The installer asks us if we are running DragonFly on a UEFI-enabled computer or a Legacy BIOS system. We are asked to select our target hard drive from a list and then choose which partition DragonFly should take over. Alternatively, we can assign an entire disk to DragonFly's usage. We are then asked if the operating system should run on the UFS, HAMMER or HAMMER2 file system and I chose HAMMER2. We can then tweak mount points and the sizes of each storage volume. DragonFly does support file system encryption if we want to make use of it.



There is a pause while the installer copies file to our hard drive and we are then asked to complete a handful of configuration steps. These include selecting our time zone, setting a password on the root account and setting up a network connection. We have the option of creating a regular user account for ourselves, but the installer warns us any password assigned to this account will be logged. We can alternatively wait until we are running the operating system to create additional accounts. With these steps completed we can reboot and start using our brand new copy of DragonFly BSD.



Early impressions



DragonFly boots to a text console where we can sign in as the root user and get to work customizing the operating system. By default DragonFly does not include many programs or features. We have access to the typical range of UNIX command line utilities, manual pages and the pkg package manager which DragonFly has in common with FreeBSD.



While the default environment is minimal, the DragonFly project offers a helpful handbook which guides new users through common tasks. In particular, I recommend reading the section on installing and managing third-party software using either pkg or the project's ports collection. Personally, one of my aims with this trial was to set up DragonFly to act as a desktop operating system and, for others who wish to do the same, I recommend the project's guide to setting up X and a window manager.





DragonFly BSD 5.2.0 -- The Lumina application menu

(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1024x768 pixels)



Following the instructions for enabling X worked as planned and provided me with a very minimal graphical window manager and a terminal emulator. However, my mouse failed to work. Adding the line moused_enable="YES" to my /etc/rc.conf file got my mouse pointer moving. Soon afterward I installed the Lumina desktop environment to get a more complete graphical interface. At first Lumina failed to start, reporting it was missing D-Bus functionality. This can be corrected by adding dbus_enable="YES" to the /etc/rc.conf file.



Lumina made for a pleasant, fairly minimal and very responsive desktop environment running on DragonFly. Lumina does not include many desktop applications, apart from a file manager, document viewer and settings panel. Additional software such as LibreOffice, Firefox and the VLC media player can be added to the system using the pkg package manager.



File systems



Apart from trying to use DragonFly as a desktop system (an experiment that mostly went well), my other reason for trying the project's latest release was to experiment with the HAMMER2 (H2) file system. H2 is an advanced file system with snapshots, deduplication and multiple device management. H2 is still relatively young and is just reaching the point of maturity where it is considered safe to use. For people interested in an overview of HAMMER and H2, there is a page dedicated to these file systems on the DragonFly website. There is also a manual page which talks about H2's features and command line options.



I learned H2 is expected to provide many of the same features as other advanced file systems, such as ZFS. The documentation on H2 is still a bit on the technical side and I feel its manual pages currently act as more of a quick reference than a complete guide to using the new file system. I also noted that while H2 is expected to offer features like snapshotting, deduplication and restoring files from old snapshots, some features are not yet complete. At one point I used H2's command line utility to create snapshots of my file system, but then could not find a way to restore files from the snapshots. The H2 manual page lists restoring files from snapshots as a "todo" item.



In short, H2 seems to be stable, fast and usable. However, it may still be missing some pieces and documentation that will be added on over time. H2 has been developed fairly quickly and I would guess these planned features will probably become available in the next year or so.





DragonFly BSD 5.2.0 -- Running LibreOffice

(full image size: 155kB, resolution: 1024x768 pixels)



Hardware



I ran DragonFly in two test environments and I found trying to get the operating system to boot on my physical desktop computer was the low point of my trial. I tried booting DragonFly in UEFI mode, in Legacy BIOS mode, and various combinations of safe mode with some features turned off. Each time the operating system failed to boot on my desktop computer.



I had better results trying to get DragonFly to run in a VirtualBox virtual machine. The system was quick to load and performed tasks quickly. The Lumina desktop, once I got it set up, was responsive and ran smoothly. The only problem I had in the VirtualBox environment was DragonFly was unable to integrate with my host operating system and unable to make full use of my screen resolution. I looked for VirtualBox guest modules which would work with DragonFly, but could not find any in the project's collection of third-party ports.



In its default configuration DragonFly used little RAM (13MB of active memory and 390MB of wired memory) and little disk space (530MB). Once Lumina was installed with the Fluxbox window manager, resource usage rose to 2.8GB of disk space and 315MB of active memory and 620MB of wired memory. When we consider that DragonFly was running the advanced H2 file system with the Lumina desktop, this puts DragonFly about on par with a Linux distribution running ZFS and a middle-weight desktop.





DragonFly BSD 5.2.0 -- Watching YouTube and updating packages

(full image size: 191kB, resolution: 1024x768 pixels)



Other observations



For the most part DragonFly did not throw any surprises my way. It presents itself as a minimal operating system that we can shape to fit our needs, much like other popular flavours of BSD or Arch Linux. The documentation was generally helpful in guiding me through setting up the system to complete my tasks. I was able to browse the web, write documents, take screen shots, edit images and watch videos, though I struggled to get audio working. Getting these features enabled took longer than it would on most Linux distributions or on a desktop-friendly BSD like GhostBSD, but I still ultimately got all the features I wanted.



The few surprises I did run into were mostly security related as DragonFly takes a strict stance on accessing certain features. For example, my regular user account could not use su to become the root user. I also found permission elevation programs such as sudo and doas were not included. I tried installing doas, but is failed to work due to missing PAM modules. Users who wish to be able to run su to gain root access need to add their user to the wheel group.





DragonFly BSD 5.2.0 -- Running the VLC multimedia player

(full image size: 465kB, resolution: 1024x768 pixels)



Another security feature I ran into was DragonFly's version of secure shell cannot connect to remote systems that use passwords to authenticate. DragonFly assumes remote servers will use key-based authentication and blocks access to servers which do not use keys. We can change this by editing OpenSSH's configuration file and uncommenting the PasswordAuthentication variable.



Conclusions



My experience with DragonFly this week was a lot like my experiences with other members of the BSD family. The system is lightweight, provides lots of useful documentation and gives us a minimal platform from which to build our operating system. The system was stable, fast and provided me with most of the software I wanted. Apart from DragonFly not working with my desktop computer's hardware, I had an overall good experience with the operating system.



I had mixed feelings about H2. At this point the file system seems stable and can be used for most common tasks. However, the advanced features that make the future of H2 look so appealing, are not all in place yet. So it might be best to wait another year before switching over to H2 if you want to make the most of snapshots and other advanced file system options.



DragonFly is typically regarded as a server operating system, and that is where its strengths lie. However, this week I feel it performed well as a desktop platform too. It takes a little while to set up DragonFly as a desktop, but the documentation walks us through most of the process and I was able to do everything I would typically do on Linux desktop distribution. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU

Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card

Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



DragonFly BSD has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 20 review(s).

Have you used DragonFly BSD? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.





Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith)

Tails works on persistent packages, Ubuntu Studio plans alternative desktops, Mageia offers massive update, Ubuntu team plans new features, GNOME removes (and restores) launching programs from Nautilus The Tails distribution is often used as a live, portable desktop distribution which can be used to browse the Internet anonymously and communicate more securely. The distribution is testing a feature which would allow users to install a package and have it remembered and installed again automatically in the future. " We've designed and implemented a user interface to select additional software packages and make additional software persistent. Users are now able to decide, for each additional piece of software that they might install in Tails once, whether it shall be installed automatically in the future. " More information on how the feature works and how to provide feedback on it can be found in the project's news post. * * * * * The Ubuntu Studio team has announced they are looking at offering a second desktop option to their multimedia-focused distribution. Ubuntu Studio, unlike other Ubuntu community editions, is not set up to focus on a specific desktop environment and the team is evaluating which desktop (or desktops) might best suit their goals. " In the end and for the reasons described in this mailing list post , the Ubuntu Studio team would like to announce its first alternative desktop environment as KDE's Plasma. We found it would be much easier to implement than most desktops at this time, and has struck a balance between form and functionality. We want to be clear: Ubuntu Studio is not changing default desktop at this time. Some considerations are being made to make desktop selection available at install time, but to minimize DVD image file size we are also considering offering two separate ISOs. blog post. * * * * * The Mageia distribution recently published a large batch of package updates. For the most part the new wave of updates, which affected more than 1,300 packages, appears to have gone smoothly for most users. However, a few people have run into a package conflict which arises when 32-bit packages are installed on an otherwise 64-bit system. " Most of us will have updated our systems by now, and most of the updates have been as smooth as silk. But! So far there have been two reports of problems with the Grand Update, both caused by having 32-bit libraries installed on a 64-bit system. " Uninstalling the 32-bit packages and attempting the update again should work around the issue. * * * * * The Ubuntu team is currently working on a series of features planned for inclusion in Ubuntu 18.04.1 and in future versions of the popular Linux distribution. Some upcoming new features include integration with Android phones using GS Connect (a GNOME-friendly version of KDE Connect), making Communitheme the default desktop theme, packaging the Chromium web browser as a Snap,and making it possible to unlock the desktop with a fingerprint. The bundling of Chromium as a Snap is especially interesting as it highlights the challenges involved in packaging rolling release applications on a long term support operating system: " Chromium is becoming very hard to build on older releases of Ubuntu as it uses a number of features of modern C++ compilers. Snaps can help us solve a lot of those problems and so we propose to ship Chromium only as a Snap from 18.10 onwards, and also to retire Chromium as a deb in Trusty. If you're still running Trusty you can get the latest Chromium as a Snap right now. " More information on the planned features can be found in Will Cooke's blog post. * * * * * The GNOME project has a reputation for removing features the developers feel are unnecessary or which may clutter the desktop interface. In the past we have even poked light-hearted fun at GNOME's tendency toward minimalism. Recently the GNOME project decided to remove a feature from the Nautilus file manager which may seem to unnecessarily reduce the functionality of the file manager. " Now that the desktop is long gone, launching binaries and desktop files from within Nautilus is not as useful. Not only that, but we are moving towards a more sandboxed system, and we should use the standard and system wide support for launching apps based on users' choices. " In short, users would no longer be able to launch programs, open desktop short-cuts and run AppImages by double-clicking them in the Nautilus file manager. A few days later, the GNOME team published a new change with the intent of restoring the application and script launching ability: " A few cases appeared that we need to support, specially for enterprise and content creators. Specifically, cases similar to #434 . This also shows that is hard to predict cases like these, as some complex setups might be needed for specific workflows. This commit allows us to run binaries and scripts as before, and further investigation in these cases need to be done if we ever want to tweak the workflow of running binaries. * * * * * These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.





Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith)

Finding which services were affected by an update When we install software updates on a running operating system it brings the files on our hard drive up to date with the latest fixes and features. However, the programs and libraries that are running in our computer's memory are not updated and will continue using the old code until the application or service is restarted. Often times people will reboot their computer to remove the older versions of software from memory and load the latest copies. While rebooting is a simple approach to take, from the user's point of view, it can be disruptive to one's workflow as well as time consuming.



Luckily, for people who want to continue using their computers and also run the latest versions of software, most Linux distributions include tools which identify which programs and services have been updated. This allows us to restart these specific services without shutting down the computer. What follows is a list of ways we can check for running programs which have been modified on various popular distributions.



On Debian, and related distributions such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint, the command to check for outdated versions of software still running in memory is called checkrestart. The checkrestart command is part of the debian-goodies package. Running checkrestart as the root user (without any arguments) will display a list of applications running which have updated versions or dependencies on the disk. The checkrestart command can also supply the command we need to run in order to restart running daemons or network services.



For people running openSUSE and related operating systems, the command to check for outdated versions of software in memory is zypper ps. The zypper command is slightly less helpful than Debian's checkrestart command in that it only supplies us with a list of files or programs that have been updated; it does not provide the command needed to restart services. The zypper package manager is included in openSUSE by default.



In the Red Hat and CentOS family of distributions the command needs-restarting performs the same function. This program is part of the yum-utils package on these distributions. The Fedora distribution is part of the Red Hat family, but has switched from using the YUM package manager to using DNF. Fedora users can use the dnf needs-restarting command to perform the same task.



So far I have not encountered a similar tool to check for updated applications on members of the Arch Linux family of distributions. However, it is possible to run the lsof program to find open files and focus on just the programs and libraries which have been updated. A command like lsof | grep deleted will show open programs and libraries whose files have been removed or upgraded. But then it becomes a manual process to read through the list and restart the associated process. The list can be trimmed down, but it is still an imprecise process, compared to the above methods. It may be easier in this case to simply reboot the computer. * * * * * More tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.





Released Last Week

Endless OS 3.4.0



Michael Hall has announced the release of Endless OS 3.4.0. Endless OS is a Linux-based operating system which provides a simplified and streamlined user experience using a customized desktop environment forked from GNOME 3. The new version includes better controls for scheduling updates and introduces a service which will allow Endless OS to share files with an Android device. " Endless OS 3.4 is our latest major release and is a huge step forward in our journey to help you take advantage of an Internet connection when you have it, and be respectful of your limited data plan if that's what you are using to connect. Version 3.4 brings exciting new features to help you manage your data consumption and get updates in smarter ways. We are also proud to announce the upcoming debut of a brand new addition to the Endless product line - the Endless Companion App for Android phones. You will soon be able to use your Android phone to view content from your computer so that more people can benefit from Endless OS' native apps at the same time. With Endless OS 3.4, your computer will now be ready to share content with the Endless Companion App as soon as it is publicly released. " Further details and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement.





Endless OS 3.4.0 -- The Endless OS application menu

(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)



Kwort 4.3.3



Kwort is a CRUX-based Linux distribution that uses the GTK+ toolkit and the Openbox window manager. Its most prominent feature is a package manager, called kpkg, for retrieving packages. The Kwort distribution has published a new release, Kwort 4.3.3, which incldues two compilers and several key package updates. " Well, this was supposed to happen, our system has highly increased its size. Not that too many dependencies were added, but LLVM, which [is] huge, is now part of the standard image. Hopefully we'll have again one compiler in the future, but for now we need two. Having said that the system keeps being simple and fast and with everything on the right spot. Most significant technical aspects are: Linux kernel 4.14.40. New toolchain with glibc 2.27, gcc 7.3.0 and binutils 2.29.1. New kpkg has some new features and new documented (in the man page) variables to make it less error prone and more automated. Official kdb file is now included in the kpkg package, so no need to download it and install it manually anymore. Chromium 65.0.3325.181. Brave 0.22.22 available in the mirror. Firefox has been left out. " Further detaisl can be found on the project's home page.



Proxmox 5.2 "Virtual Environment"



Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) is an open-source virtualisation platform for running virtual appliances and virtual machines, based on Debian. The project's latest release is Proxmox VE 5.2 which features built-in support for Let's Encrypt free security certificates. " Proxmox VE 5.2 comes with new features like the Cloud-init package for automation of VM provisioning, a CIFS/SMB storage plug-in, and the Let's Encrypt certificate management via the graphical user interface. The Proxmox development team further expands the cluster functionality making the creation and configuration of Proxmox VE clusters possible via the web interface. The open-source virtualization management platform Proxmox VE 5.2 is based on Debian 9.4, and an updated and modified Linux Kernel 4.15. Proxmox VE 5.2 now supports Cloud-Init, a multi-distribution package that handles initial setup of a virtual machine as it boots for the first time, and allows provisioning of VMs that have been deployed based on a template. With the Cloud-Init package Proxmox users can easily configure host names, add SSH keys, set up mount points or run post-install scripts via the graphical user interface. " Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement.



NuTyX 10.2



NuTyX is a French Linux distribution (with multi-language support) built from Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch, with a custom package manager called "cards". The project has released NuTyX 10.2 which includes several key package updates and improved support for EFI-enabled computers. " A new bootplash is now included in each ISO and at boot time after install. The kernel blocking and verbose problem on EFI machines is now solved. Users should be able to use more recent EFI machines with this new version. Extra languages like Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and Japanese are now available. NuTyX 10.1 user's are invited to upgrade. It is possible to make an upgrade of your system without problems. It's no need to reinstall your NuTyX. If the automatic upgrade process is activate, it will be done at next shutdown. " A list of popular package versions and upgrade instructions can be found on the project's news page. NuTyX is available in standard (minimal), Xorg and MATE editions. * * * * * Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases

siduction 18.3.0

Linuxfx 9.1

KNOPPIX 8.2

NAS4Free 11.1.0.4.5565

Bluestar Linux 4.16.8

LXLE 16.04.4

Greenie Linux 18.04.0.1

Omarine 3.1

Pinguy OS 18.04-beta2.1

FreeBSD 11.2-BETA2

DragonFly BSD 5.2.1

Bodhi Linux 5.0.0-alpha

Torrent Corner

Upcoming Releases and Announcements

Opinion Poll

GNOME removing the ability to launch programs from Nautilus In our News section we discussed the GNOME developers changing a feature in the Nautilus file manager which prevents Naultius from launching applications and .desktop files (also known as short-cuts). This move is in line with GNOME's vision of desktop icons and being a thing of the past and all programs being integrated into the desktop's application menu. However, the move would mean third-party scripts and programs, such as AppImages, would no longer open from the file manager.



It looks like the change is being reverted and Nautilus users will be able to launch programs and scripts again. What do you think of the change? Does it make sense to do away with desktop icons and opening programs from within the file manager? Or does this change add an unwanted hurdle when it comes to installing and running third-party programs?



You can see the results of our previous poll on live patches and atomic updates in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.



GNOME removing the ability to launch programs from Nautilus



I welcome this change: 64 (4%) I am unaffected by this change: 629 (38%) I do not like this change: 983 (59%)