DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 782, 24 September 2018

Feature Story (by Jesse Smith)

Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 Bodhi Linux is a lightweight Ubuntu-based distribution featuring Moksha, an Enlightenment-based desktop environment. The latest version of Bodhi is based on Ubuntu 18.04 and is binary compatible with its parent. There have been very few adjustments to Bodhi's software and desktop for version 5.0.0, the changes all seem to be behind the scenes, originating from the shift to the new Ubuntu 18.04 base.



Bodhi is available in three editions. Apart from the main (Standard) edition, which offers only a small collection of applications and the Moksha desktop environment, there is an AppPack edition which features more desktop applications (such as LibreOffice, Chromium, the Transmission bittorrent client, the VLC media player, the Synaptic package manager, and PlayOnLinux for installing Windows software) out of the box. The third edition is called Legacy and it is intended to be used on older computers with limited amounts of memory, including those running 32-bit CPUs. The Standard edition is 706MB in size, the AppPack edition weighs in at about 1,400MB and the Legacy edition is a 725MB download.



I downloaded the Standard edition. Booting from the live media brings up the Moksha desktop and opens the Midori web browser to display a local copy of the distribution's manual. The documentation covers such topics as connecting to networks, installing new software packages, and how to navigate the Moksha desktop. I did not find a section on installing the distribution. The distribution's installer is a bit tricky to find; it is accessed through the application menu, under Applications -> Preferences.



Installer



Bodhi uses Ubuntu's Ubiquity system installer. The installer asks us for our preferred language, offers to download updates and third-party add-ons such as media support, and handles disk partitioning. I like that Ubiquity offers both easy manual and guided partitioning options. The installer then asks for our time zone and gets us to make up a username and password for ourselves. The whole process should be familiar to anyone who has installed a member of the Ubuntu family. The installer finished very quickly and offered to reboot the computer.



Early impressions



Once installed, Bodhi boots to a graphical login screen which we can use to sign into the Moksha desktop. Moksha is arranged with a panel at the bottom of the display. To the left of the panel is an application menu and some quick-launch icons. Over on the right side is the system tray. The default theme is dark (appropriately named Arc Dark). A pager widget on the panel lets us switch between two virtual desktops.



Left-clicking on an empty area of the Moksha desktop opens the application menu next to the mouse pointer. Right-clicking on the desktop has no effect, which is the opposite behaviour we would typically find on other open source desktops.





Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 -- Connecting to the network guide

(full image size: 264kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)



The first time I signed into my account the Midori web browser opened again to display the project's documentation. While most of the information provided was useful, I ran into a minor issue while browsing the manual pages. Specifically, the instructions for connecting to the Internet were out of date. The documentation expects there to be a Network Manager icon in the system tray, but this applet is not present. The Network Manager software can be run manually to restore this icon, but it is unlikely people reading the documentation will know how to access Network Manager without its icon.



After using Bodhi for a while I realized there had been no indication of available software updates. I found a graphical update manager in the application menu which displays a list of new updates along with their version information. The update utility is unusual in that no packages are marked for updating by default. We can either manually select the ones we want to install or click a button to select all available packages.





Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 -- Downloading software updates

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The first time I ran the update manager the upgrade process seemed to stall after a minute. There was no visible progress and no disk activity and I eventually killed the update manager's process. I ended up using the update manager a few times later in the week and in each time after it completed its update process successfully.



Software packages are mostly provided by Ubuntu's repositories with a few custom packages coming from a separate Bodhi repository.



Hardware



I tried running Bodhi in a VirtualBox virtual machine with a lot of success. The distribution automatically integrates with VirtualBox and was able to use my host system's full screen resolution. The distribution was stable and the desktop was highly responsive in the virtual environment. For the most part, Bodhi performed similarly well on my laptop computer. I found the trackpad wouldn't interpret taps as mouse clicks by default, but this was a minor issue. Performance was equally good on the laptop computer.



One serious issue I ran into with my laptop was I could not get Bodhi to connect to a wireless network. My wireless card was detected and it was able to see local wireless networks, but I could not get Network Manager to connect to any available networks. Connecting to a wired network though was as easy as plugging in the cable.





Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 -- Browsing Bodhi's wiki

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In either testing environment Bodhi used about 150MB of RAM when logged into Moksha and consumed 3.7GB of disk space with a fresh install. I eventually used quite a bit more disk space as I ended up installing several additional desktop applications. Once LibreOffice, Thunderbird, a few media players and a few other programs were installed, I had used up over 5GB of space.



Applications



Bodhi's main edition ships with a small selection of applications. We are given the Midori web browser, the Ephoto image viewer and ePad text editor. The PCManFM file manager is included along with a volume control and two settings panels. There are no multimedia or productivity applications included by default. In the background we find init is provided by systemd and the distribution runs on Linux 4.15.





Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 -- The two settings panels

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There were two pieces of software in the application menu which I felt stood out. One was the settings panel, or panels. The Moksha settings are arranged a bit differently than the settings modules we find in GNOME, KDE Plasma or other mainstream desktops. While panels in those environments are typically arranged into grids of icons which open modules, the Moksha desktop forms tabs of modules which are arranged into lists. The organization difference probably wouldn't have made any difference to me except that not all the tabs fit in the window, requiring us to scroll through them and I found this, combined with the lack of a search box, slowed me down when trying to find specific options.



The other application I want to mention is Terminology, the Moksha virtual terminal. Usually, as far as I am concerned, one virtual terminal application is functionally the same as any other and I can comfortably switch between Konsole, QTerminal or GNOME Terminal. But Terminology has defaults which break my focus. For example, whenever Tab is pressed to auto-complete a filename, the terminal makes a noise and flashes red. I also found that the first time I'd open the terminal, after signing into my account, the first letter I would type would always be uppercase. This only happened immediately after logging in and only with the first letter, so the first command I typed would always be wrong. My final issue was that sometimes, when opening the application's settings, the settings panel would be transparent. This made it difficult to read the options. Other times the panel would be a solid colour and be easy to read, so this appears to be a graphical glitch. This transparency issue may have been related to the terminal being run in VirtualBox as that was the only place I observed it, but it is an issue other virtual terminal applications have not had in my experience.





Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 -- The terminal settings panel

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Software management



Since Bodhi's main edition does not ship with much software, we will want to download additional applications. This can be done through the project's AppCenter. AppCenter is not a local package manager, but a web-based repository where a small number of popular open source applications are organized into categories. Each category (such as Multimedia or Web Browsers) might only have, on average, half a dozen applications. We can browse through categories or try to find programs by name. Clicking an application brings up a page with a detailed description, screen shot, user rating and an Install button. When we click the Install button we are prompted for our password and the package is installed.





Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 -- The AppCenter

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Should we wish to access Ubuntu's massive collection of software, we can use the APT command line package manager or install the graphical Synaptic package manager from the AppCenter. I have mixed feelings about this arrangement. On the one hand, Bodhi's approach is very streamlined and will likely appeal to less technical users. There is virtually no clutter and I think most people will feel comfortable in the web-based environment. On the other hand, this does limit our selection of easily accessible applications a lot and is quite a different approach from the software managers of Fedora, Ubuntu and Linux Mint.



Conclusions



Sometimes when reviewing an operating system it is difficult to separate the question "Is this a good distribution?" from "Is this a good distribution for me?" Bodhi is one of those projects where the answers to these questions are quite different, mostly over matters of style rather than functionality. On a personal level, I don't think I would ever be inclined to use Bodhi myself because I don't like the Moksha/Enlightenment style of desktop. It does a lot of little things differently (not badly, just differently) from other open source desktops and its style is not one I ever seem to find comfortable. This, combined with the streamlined, web-based AppCenter and unusual settings panel, makes Bodhi a distribution which always feels a bit alien to me.



Let's put aside my personal style preferences though and try to look at the distribution objectively. Bodhi is trying to provide a lightweight, visually attractive distribution with a wide range of hardware support. It manages to do all of these things and do them well. The distribution is paying special attention to lower-end hardware, including 32-bit systems, and maintains a remarkably small memory footprint given the amount of functionality and eye candy included. Most lightweight distributions sacrifice quite a bit visually in order to provide the lightest interface possible, but Bodhi does a nice job of balancing low resource requirements with an attractive desktop environment.



Bodhi is pleasantly easy to install, thanks to the Ubiquity installer, has a minimal collection of software (in the main edition) that allows us to craft our own experience and, for people who need more applications out of the box, there is the AppPack edition.



All of this is to say that, for me personally, I spent more time that I would have liked this week searching through settings, trying to get used to how Moksha's panel works, tracking down less popular applications and re-learning when to use right-click versus left-click on the desktop. But, objectively, I would be hard pressed to name another distribution that more elegantly offers a lightweight desktop with visual effects, or that offers such easy access to both legacy and modern hardware support. In short, I think Bodhi Linux is a good distribution for those who want to get the most performance out of their operating system without sacrificing hardware support or the appearance of the interface. There are a few little glitches here and there, but sothing show-stopping and, overall, Bodhi is a well put together distribution. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following specifications: Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU

Display: Intel integrated video

Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast

Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



Bodhi Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.1/10 from 113 review(s).

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





Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith)

elementary OS developers answer questions, Solus publishes ISO update, UBports invites user feedback, Linus Torvalds plans temporary vacation from kernel development, pfSense 2.3.x nears its end of life The team behind elementary OS, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Pantheon desktop and a custom application centre, took to Reddit this week to answer questions. Some key topics covered include avoiding developer burn out, supporting portable package formats and the adoption of Wayland in future versions of the distribution. As with most open source projects, the elementary team is always looking for contributors and supporters. People hoping to get involved with elementary OS and its application ecosystem can visit the project's Get Involved page. * * * * * The Solus team have published an updated set of installation media for version 3 of the distribution. The new media includes updated hardware support and updated packages, saving new users from performing a massive upgrade immediately after installing to catch up with a full year of package updates. " We are proud to announce the availability of Solus 3.9999, our ISO refresh of Solus 3. This refresh enables support for a variety of new hardware released since Solus 3, introduces an updated set of default applications and theming, as well as enables users to immediately take advantage of new Solus infrastructure. " The new ISO files can be found on the distribution's Download page. * * * * * The UBports team, which maintains the community fork of the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, has put out a request for people using UBports (or interested in the mobile platform) to fill out a survey so they can better focus their attention where users want it. " Growth brings big changes to a software project and to a community. In order to continue exploiting some paths, we would benefit from knowing a bit more about our audience, but we will not do any data collection from your devices. " People willing to give feedback to UBports can do so by filling out the survey. * * * * * This week Linus Torvalds, the founder and lead developer of the Linux kernel, published a new release candidate for the upcoming 4.19 kernel version. He also reported on some reflecting he has been doing lately on how he has been leading the kernel developers. " I am not an emotionally empathetic kind of person and that probably doesn't come as a big surprise to anybody. Least of all me. The fact that I then misread people and don't realize (for years) how badly I've judged a situation and contributed to an unprofessional environment is not good. This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry. " Torvalds went on to say he plans to take a temporary break from kernel development to consider how to improve his future leadership and workflow. Torvalds has asked Greg Kroah-Hartman, another prominent kernel developer, to take over new kernel releases during his absence.



Following Torvalds' announcement, a new code of conduct for kernel developers was put forward with the hope of fostering a more welcoming working environment for Linux contributors. * * * * * pfSense is an operating system for routers and firewalls based on FreeBSD. The project will soon be ending support for its legacy 2.3.x branch and encourages users to upgrade to version 2.4. " Network security is serious business so let's get right to the point: pfSense software version 2.3.x is nearing End Of Life, October 31, 2018. As we announced previously, pfSense software version 2.4.x releases deprecated support for 32-bit x86 hardware and NanoBSD installations. We promised to maintain version 2.3.x with security updates for at least a year and that time is near. It is time to implement upgrades on affected security solution platforms to supported hardware. " Information on upgrading can be found in the end of life announcement. * * * * * These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.





Review (by Jesse Smith)

Elive 3.0.0 Elive is a Debian-based distribution featuring the Enlightenment desktop environment and some special desktop elements, such as an application launcher panel which gives the default interface a macOS-style look. The release of Elive 3.0.0 comes eight and a half years after the launch of Elive 2.0 and the project's developer claims the delay is worth the wait: After 8 years of silent development, the third stable version of Elive is out, the result is simply amazing and the integration is gorgeous, it is not even possible to describe every inside feature and the new website only contains a small portion of its characteristics. While this sounds promising, the release announcement does not list any specific features to tell us what is amazing in the new version. However, we are further enticed by being told Elive, which has historically been a commercial distribution, will be made available free of charge: And even better again, the final stable version is entirely cost-free, limitless with all its features, to make it easier to more people in the world can use it, especially the ones with the lower resources. The promise of a free download was revoked the day after the initial release, reportedly due to excessive bandwidth usage: In less than 24 hours after the 3.0 release I have been over billed due to exceeded network usage, due to this I’m forced to use delayed downloads for cover the costs and this will let the users to continue download entirely cost-free. I tried the delayed, cost-free download option and it failed to work for me. This left potential users with only the paid option. A day or so later a torrent option appeared. The torrent includes both the distribution's optical media ISO (3GB), a USB image file (3GB) and a handful of tools for writing these images to an appropriate disk. There are image writing tools bundled in the torrent for macOS, Windows and Linux. The entire torrent is approximately 7GB in size.



The download images, the ISO and IMG files, are both built to run on 32-bit x86 computers. They can run on modern 64-bit machines too, but will be limited to using 32-bit instructions. Booting from the distribution's media brings up a menu asking if we would like to boot and install the distribution, launch the live environment with persistent storage, or take another option. For instance, we can choose "Graphical Problems" which blacklists common video drivers. "Safemode" disables ACPI and some video modes. There are also options for "Console", "Free Drivers Only", and "Old Computers". The last option offers to use an older version of the Linux kernel (specifically Linux 3.2), rather than the default 3.16 kernel.





Elive 3.0.0 -- Running the Enlightenment desktop

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I took the default live option which loads the Enlightenment desktop. I was asked to select my preferred language from a list and then select an appropriate keyboard layout. The desktop then played an audio clip. The Enlightenment desktop has a virtual desktop switcher in the upper-right corner and an macOS-style program launcher at the bottom of the screen. In the lower-right corner is an icon which gives us access to network settings. We can left-click on the desktop to bring up an application menu next to the mouse pointer. The wallpaper changes, cycling through new images, about once per minute.



Apart from the file manager icon in the launch bar constantly changing and flickering, I did not notice any immediate problems. I found an icon on the panel for starting the distribution's system installer and began the installation process.



Installing



Rather than using Debian's installer, Elive has its own, custom installer which pops-up a new window for each step. And there are a lot of steps. First we are asked if we would like to submit automated bug reports. Then we are offered the choice of automatic partitioning, manually dividing up our disk with GParted, or using LVM/encrypted volumes. I took the GParted option which made setting up a new partition fairly straight forward. Then we are asked by the installer to select which partition will hold the new operating system. Next we are asked which file system to use, ext2/3/4, XFS or Reiser. I found it curious that ext2 and ext3 are listed as options, but next to them are hints saying "Tool old. Do not use it." Which makes it odd that they're listed as options at all. Reiser is the recommended file system which is again strange since most distributions seem to be phasing it out, favouring ext4, Btrfs and XFS.



Moving on, we are given the option of setting up a separate /home partition and then the installer copies its package to our hard drive. Afterwards we are asked which services (Bluetooth, OpenSSH, printer support, scanner support, firewall and a disk utility) we would like to run. We are then asked if we would like to install extra packages for special firmware. The optionally supported firmware is listed in case we are not sure whether we need it.



The next screen asks which, if any, desktop applications and services we would like installed from the list of: Blender, WINE, XBMC, Inkscape, Office, GIMP, Thunderbird and Games. Another screen asks if we would like to install a web browser with options including Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Netsurf. Oddly, Chromium and Chrome are listed with a description saying they are "old" while Firefox is listed as being "newer, slower". These suggestions increased my feeling of unease as they do not appear to be helpful or accurate.



Another screen offers to remove debugging, extra language files, documentation and development tools. The removal process took nearly as long as the initial process of installing packages did a few steps previously. We are given the chance to create a username and password for ourselves and then the installer wraps up and exits.



Early impressions



Elive booted to a graphical login screen where I was able to sign into the Enlightenment desktop. The first time I logged in, Enlightenment got stuck reporting it was configuring itself. After several minutes with no disk activity and no progress, I forced a reboot. The second time, after about a minute, Enlightenment finished its configuration process and asked which background services I would like to run when the desktop launches.



The desktop is mostly empty, though I found the launch panel unpleasant to use. Hovering the mouse pointer over the panel makes the icons pop-up and expand, and some of the icons are animated, which makes for a distracting interface.



Elive's exact disk and memory requirements will vary a bit depending on which services and packages we opt to install (or remove) during the initial setup. In my case, Elive used about 4.5GB of disk space and, when signed into the desktop, the distribution used around 120MB of RAM with most services enabled. This a pleasantly light distribution.



When running the live desktop environment I had thought it odd Elive's default kernels (3.16 and 3.2) were so old, and that Chrome was listed as an old browser, among other quirks. Checking the web browser versions, I found Elive ships with Firefox 52 and Chrome 48, which I think are both about two years out of date. The distribution uses SysV init, which I found more curious since the past two major versions of Debian have switched to using systemd.



I started looking for indications as to which branch of Debian the new Elive version is based on and discovered it is built from Debian 7 "Wheezy". The APT package manager pulls from copies of Wheezy repositories and the lsb_release command confirms the base platform is Debian 7. Most package versions, apart from the default kernel, line up with Wheezy's package versions too, indicating not much was changed for this release.



This is a serious problem and it caused me to immediately stop using Elive 3.0.0. Debian 7 officially stopped receiving security updates over two years ago. Some core packages were maintained by Debian's LTS team, but even LTS support for the core components of Debian 7 concluded over four months prior to the launch of Elive 3.0.0. This means the Elive packages were past their supported life span long before the project made its latest release.



Conclusions



At this point, I fear this review is shifting gears into more of a concerned commentary rather than a technical overview of the Elive distribution. Everything about this release feels unusual and unsettling. I feel it is telling that the Elive release announcement describes version 3.0.0 as "amazing" and "perfect for daily use", yet despite being in development for eight years, the team fails to mention a single feature of the distribution.



I think it's also concerning that the release announcement says Elive is now cost-free, but direct downloads are charged for, the delayed downloads option did not work for me, and the torrent (at time of writing) lacks seeders. Some people might argue that the developer is making a good faith effort to cover distribution costs by charging for downloads (rather than performing a bait-and-switch), but it makes me wonder why no effort was made to use free, unlimited bandwidth options such as SourceForge or GitHub? Most other distributions publish ISO files on these free services to avoid situations like this one.



The custom system installer is also somewhat concerning since it makes poor recommendations and misleads users as to the best choices in file systems and web browsers. There are a lot of pre-made system installers out there and most of them are faster, easier to navigate and more up to date than Elive's.



The biggest concern though, as I mentioned above, is this release was published over two years after official support for its included packages was dropped from Debian. The ancient web browser releases, not to mention the many other old packages included, immediately puts anyone running Elive on a machine with access to the Internet at risk.



This left me facing two uncomfortable possibilities. Either the developer of Elive did not know that the base project for their distribution dropped support for their packages over two years ago and they were not aware running Elive's software (particularly the web browsers) would put end users at risk, or they knew and launched an unsupported product without disclosing that information. Neither is an attractive option, but I am struggling to come up with a third possibility.



Ultimately, I strongly advise against downloading Elive. Even if you can get a copy (and at the moment that is proving difficult) its lengthy installer, out of date software and overly dynamic interface make it a poor choice for desktop users. Some might argue the small memory footprint and Enlightenment desktop are positive aspects, but there are other projects, such as Bodhi Linux which offer a nicer Enlightenment experience, similarly low resource requirements and supported packages. It seems that would make Bodhi, or others like it, better options in all respects.





Released Last Week

SparkyLinux 5.5



SparkyLinux is a lightweight, fast and simple Linux distribution based on Debian. The project's latest release, SparkyLinux 5.5 "Rolling", is based on Debian's Testing branch. The new version includes mostly minor package updates, and makes the leap from using GCC 7 to GCC 8 for the default compiler. " There are new live/install ISO images of SparkyLinux 5.5 Nibiru available to download. Sparky 5 follows a rolling release model and is based on Debian testing Buster. Changes: system updated from Debian Testing repos as of September 17, 2018; Linux kernel 4.18.6 (4.18.8- & 4.19-rc4-sparky are available at Sparky unstable repos); the Calamares installer updated up to version 3.2.1; Thunar daemon is deactivated in the MinimalGUI Live (Openbox), due to problem of automounting new partitions created by Calamares; GCC 7 compiler has been removed, the system uses GCC 8 as default; removed packages: libpam-gnome-keyring, vim, imagemagick, systemd-ui, sparky-gexec, xterm (Openbox); also removed from LXQt media: lxtask, leafpad, notepqdqq. " Further details can be found in the project's release announcement.



Quirky 8.7.1



Barry Kauler has announced the availability of a new version of Quirky, a lightweight Linux distribution and sister project to Puppy Linux. The new version changes the base packages of the distribution from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04. " The transition has been made to building with Ubuntu Bionic Beaver 18.04.1 DEBs, and now codenamed 'Quirky Beaver', first release is version 8.7.1, for x86_64 PCs. Some announcement blurb: Quirky Linux 8.7.1 is the first in the 'Beaver' series, binary-compatible with x86_64 Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, though built with woofQ and architecturally very different from Ubuntu. Quirky is an experimental distribution, that forked from Puppy Linux a few years ago, and has followed a different path, exploring some new ideas. Continuing the Puppy tradition, Quirky has a 'complete' suite of applications, drivers and utilities, in a very small size. Version 8.7.1 is very similar to 8.6, but with a complete upgrade of package versions. The kernel is now 4.18.9. " Further information can be found in the project's release announcement. * * * * * Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases

blackPanther 18.1-dev

SystemRescueCd 5.3.1

Thinstation 5.6.0

Solus 3.9999

elementary OS 5.0-beta2 (Announcement)

Q4OS 3.4-testing (Announcement)

FreeBSD 12.0-ALPHA7

Torrent Corner

Upcoming Releases and Announcements

Opinion Poll

Running operating systems that no longer receive security updates This week we talked about the recent release of Elive 3.0.0, a distribution based on Debian 7. Despite the distribution's parent distribution and packages being months (or in some cases years) beyond the point where they would receive security updates, Elive 3.0.0 has been downloaded over 12,000 times at the time of writing. This is not all that surprising as it is quite common for people to continue using an operating system long after it has stopped receiving security updates. Windows XP, for example, has been past its end of life for years and still has around 5% of the desktop market share.



We would like to find out what our readers think about running operating systems which no longer receive security updates. Is it something you are comfortable doing, or do you feel the need to stay up to date with security patches?



You can see the results of our previous poll on using solid state drives in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.



Running operating systems that no longer receive security updates



I want security updates and currently get them: 1426 (83%) I prefer to have security updates but do not currently get them: 107 (6%) I am not concerned about security updates but currently get them: 126 (7%) I am not concerned about security udpates and do not currently get them: 54 (3%) I do not know if I currently receive security updates: 7 (0%)

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