Category: Linux

Bits & Bobs: Six best distro for kids

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Linux Stans presented an interesting article on Thursday rating the six best Linux distro for kids today, which came up with some fascinating results.

Long gone are the days of Qimo 4 Kids, if you remember that distro. Qimo – pronounced “chemo,” as in the cancer treatment – “used to be one of the most recommended kids’ distros around, thanks to its cartoon-style interface and lightweight Xfce desktop,” according to the article.

However, Qimo for Kids officially shut down in January 2016, and its last release is based on Ubuntu 10.04.

Once again, the rankings are interesting and very sensible in a way. Are we going to give them to you here? No way. Read the article, because again it holds a lot of good information. Nice work, Linux Stans.

Stonking Stingray ready for testing

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported on Thursday that Canonical had released Snapshot 3 of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 – code named Stonking Stingray – release as the third development milestone targeting early adopters and application developers who want to test their apps.

“Development of Ubuntu 26.10 (codename Stonking Stingray) kicked off on April 30th, 2026, with the usual toolchain upload, based on the Ubuntu 26.94 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) release, which means that it’s powered by Linux kernel 7.0 and uses the GNOME 50 desktop environment. In time, these will be updated to newer versions,” the article states.

Currently Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 3 is also using Linux kernel 7.0, just like the previous two Snapshots, but this one moved to Gnome 51 Beta. Canonical is still working on upgrading these stacks, which will probably happen closer to the beta release, while they work on new features and improvements.

“These include a complete desktop experience on RVA23-compliant hardware, improved driver management, improved multimedia support, a new, simplified installation experience, a new onboarding experience, on-device speech-to-text voice interaction, a package-agnostic App Center, and much more,” according to the article.

The final release of Ubuntu 26.10 is expected to be powered by the Linux 7.2 kernel series, which should be out in late August, along with the upcoming Mesa 26.2 graphics stack and the GNOME 51 desktop environment series, the article says.

FOSS Force interviews Stallman

Kudos to Christine Hall of FOSS Force for wrangling this interview with Free Software Movement founder Richard Stallman last week.

In a wide-ranging interview – and by “wide-ranging” we mean long, but interesting – Stallman discusses GNU, Linux, the open-source split, large language models, SaaS, digital surveillance, and why software freedom remains a moral issue.

“Richard Stallman needs no introduction, especially for an audience that reads FOSS Force,” the article begins. “Without him, the free software movement would at the very least be much different, and the four software freedoms would possibly still be waiting for someone to give voice to them. There would also be no GPL, the first general-purpose copyleft license, written long before there was such a thing as open source. Speaking of that, without Stallman there would also likely be no open source, although I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t see that as such a bad thing.”

The article is in a Q-and-A format in which Hall asks important questions and gets relevant answers from Stallman. It is definitely worth a read.

CERN switches some systems to Debian

Michael Larabel of Phoronix reported on Wednesday that after being a long-time Red Hat institution, CERN is transitioning some of their systems to Debian.

“CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, besides being well known for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known among longtime Linux users as a RHEL/CentOS shop,” the article starts. “CERN formally even co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative with other educational/research institutions in the past. So to much surprise now, CERN is transitioning to Debian Linux for industrial accelerator-control computers.”

The article also states that CERN discussed this at a Debian conference in Switzerland this past weekend. Historically, CERN used their Red Hat-based Scientific Linux for about a decade before moving to CentOS in 2015.

“Now after a decade with CentOS, they are moving on and embracing Debian for a portion of their systems,” the article says.

But an update on the article cleared up CERN’s position, stating that “CERN has clarified that their focus with the migration is on their industrial accelerator-control computers while data centers and experimental computing remain on RHEL/AlmaLinux.”

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the week next Saturday.

Distro of the Week: Fluff Linux

American distro based on Arch and featuring KDE Plasma stands out as a pleasant surprise

Fluff Linux, an American distro based on Arch (by the way), features the KDE Plasma desktop.

By Larry Cafiero

Today’s Distro of the Week comes from our proverbial mailbag, sort of. From time to time, we get requests from our readers to try a distro, and we diligently put them on the list of distros to try out. This one was placed on the list a couple of weeks ago.

So today, we’re back home in the good old U.S. of A., and our Distro of the Week is . . . wait for it . . . Fluff Linux.

Based on Arch, by the way, Fluff Linux is a relative newcomer to the Linux family, produced by FluffNet and it’s given the task of delivering a stable, high-performance, and hassle-free computing experience. It features only the KDE Plasma desktop environment, along with all the trappings that KDE Plasma offers.

Installing Fluff Linux

The ISO for the Fluff Linux desktop version is a whopping 6.1 GB, but for such an above-average download size, it went relatively quickly. Putting it onto a USB in order to install it on our hardware was simple, and we were on our way.

One caveat: UEFI firmware is required for installation onto your hardware, and the install won’t seem to budge without it. So fixing our BIOSes on our hardware to accommodate the distro, the installation was underway.

The menu on KDE Plasma on Fluff Linux is fairly standard-issue.

The minimum system requirements for Fluff Linux are fairly standard: It’ll run on a 64-bit computer, though it prefers dual core or better; 2 GB of RAM, but it would really like 4 GB or more to run with; and for NVIDIA users, the distro requires GTX 16 or RTX 20 series and newer.

The live USB boots relatively quickly and there’s an icon on the desktop to install the distro. Clicking on the icon, the install process becomes, well, “old school” insofar as the install is done in a Konsole (thanks, KDE!) terminal window as opposed to something more organized, like Calamares.

But that’s OK – if you follow the instructions and if you’re used to installing Linux distros, there’s nothing here that is a mystery. Answering “yes” or “no” questions during the terminal-based install, the installation goes smoothly. Specifically, the installer asks for a hostname, a login and password before quickly and efficiently installing the distro. The only thing missing, really, is the time-zone selection, which you can do once the install is finished.

We rebooted and did the necessary update of the distro to make sure we were on the latest version. Once that was done it is time to take Fluff Linux on a test drive.

Kicking the tires

So, what does the user get for its 6.1 GB ISO download? For a larger-than-average ISO, Fluff does not skimp on software included in the original install. For example, in the Internet department, Fluff installs both the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client. Mutimedia? VLC media player is included in the original install. The LibreOffice suite of software is also included in the original installation. Rounding it out with a plethora of KDE-based tools like the Dolphin file manager and the Discover software installation program, and you have a well-rounded and balanced distro available to the user.

Meanwhile, what should we add to Fluff Linux? The only omission that I can see is the GIMP graphics editor, which we quickly added with Discover. Once we did that, we were on our way.

The System Monitor on Fluff Linux provides vital information about the hardware.

True to its Arch Linux roots, Fluff was as nimble as it was responsive. Software came up quickly and even under the most rigorous tests, the RAM rarely maxed out at over 3 GB. Daily tasks including web surfing and email chores were handled with typical aplomb, and the music part of the equation was operated with ease thanks to the VLC media player.

All of which is to say that multitasking under Fluff was a breeze, with the distro handling online programs like Google Docs and Google Drive with ease.

The final word

To be honest, when someone suggests a distro to try, my first reaction is caution. For example, on Distrowatch Fluff Linux is ranked 233rd in the page-hit rankings over the last year, which in about 500 listed distros puts it right about in the midrange.

However, Fluff Linux stands out and is, quite frankly, a pleasant surprise. Despite the “curveball” the installer throws at users and the UEFI-only limitation, the distro excels on various levels and can take its place in the row of unheralded, yet admirable, Linux distributions currently offered.

Listening to a little Steve Miller while going through daily digital chores with Fluff Linux.

In other words, Fluff Linux joins several other Arch-based distros, like CachyOS or Manjaro, that makes Arch easily accessible for beginners. While some Arch distros – and surely vanilla Arch – focus on minimalism and customization, Fluff Linux aims to provide a more straightforward experience without sacrificing performance.

Does it have its drawbacks? Of course. It comes with two of the most classic new-distro disadvantages: No discernible wiki and the absence of a widespread user base. But that’s not Fluff Linux’s fault. They’re relatively new on the scene, and besides where support is concerned, that’s where the Arch wiki comes in. As for the community? With wider use, that will grow over time.

Fluff Linux is easily usable by beginners, in large part thanks to the KDE Plasma desktop environment. The learning curve with KDE Plasma is gentle and easy to handle. The tools included in the distro make it attractive to intermediate users and greybeards as well. On the whole, Fluff Linux is good for a wide range of users.

Give Fluff Linux a try by downloading the ISO on Fluff’s download page.

Do you have a distro you think would make a great feature for Distro of the Week? Don’t be shy—let me know! Email me at larry.cafiero@gmail.com and I’ll make an effort to make your choice available to the wider public … No suggestion is too mainstream!

Bits & Bobs: Birthday edition

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux, among a plethora of other publications, wished Linux a happy 35th birthday on Tuesday.

“Today is August 25th, which marks 35 years since Linux was first announced,” the article states. “Grab a glass of your favorite beverage and join me in celebrating the 35th birthday of Linux!”

We’ll let Marcus drive here. “It was on August 25th, 1991, that the 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds made his now-famous announcement on the comp.os.minix newsgroup that he was working on a free operating system for 386 (486) AT clones, just as a ‘hobby’ ”.

Hello everybody out there using minix –

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them.

Linus

PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it as a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-hardisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

Happy Birthday, Linux!

But wait, there’s more . . .

Happy Birthday, Linux Mint

That’s not the only birthday this week. On Thursday, Linux Mint turned 20 years old.

Linux Mint was first released on August 27, 2006, marking the beginning of its journey as a popular Linux distribution.

Key milestones include the initial release of Linux Mint 1.0 “Ada” – and the naming convention, so far, is a woman’s name going down the alphabet ending with an “a” – followed by the introduction of Linux Mint Debian Edition in 2010.

In 2014, Linux Mint shifted to long-term support releases and in 2021, the distro – used worldwide and considered one of the key “gateways” to converting to Linux – celebrated its 15th anniversary.

Linux Mint continues to evolve, maintaining its reputation as a reliable and accessible operating system for users worldwide. Its user-friendliness makes the distro known for its ease of use and out-of-the-box functionality, while ofering a robust software manager with access to around 30,000 package. While it primarily uses the Cinnamon desktop environment, but also offers MATE and Xfce as alternatives.

Happy Birthday, Linux Mint!

But wait, there’s more . . .

Asahi Linux nears Mac M3 support

Bobby Borisov of Linuxiac reported on Thursday that Asahi Linux is nearing official support for the Apple M3 Macs, with webcams, microphones, USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt now working across the Apple lineup.

“Asahi Linux is almost ready to officially support Macs with Apple’s M3 chips, and work on the newer M4 and M5 models is already underway,” the article states.

Full webcam support is now available for all M3-series Macs with built-in cameras, however “the hardware is mostly the same as before, but the M3 Max needed a small driver tweak to work correctly,” the article says.

“Built-in microphones now work across the M3 lineup,” according to the article. “Apple changed the audio hardware for this generation, so the team had to do extra reverse-engineering before Linux could use it properly. USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt now also work on all M3 Macs.”

The article also says that the display support for M3 Macs is almost as complete as it is for M1 and M2 systems. “Asahi says its M3 display controller support is nearly on par with what’s available for the older Apple Silicon models,” says the article. “With all the recent progress, the project is now close enough to an official release.”

Editor’s note: We at Distro of the Week have decided to change the schedule of Bits & Bobs to go from a semi-weekly Monday-and-Friday posting to a single weekly posting starting next Saturday. The Distro of the Week will remain on Wednesdays, but Bits & Bobs will run on Saturdays ONLY starting next week.

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the week on Saturday.

Distro of the Week: Garuda Temeraire

A year of improvements, but this German distro remains true to its Arch-based roots

The Xfce 4.20 desktop atop Garuda Temeraire shows clean lines.

By Larry Cafiero

Back in April, we took Garuda Broadwing Mokka on a test drive on FOSS Force. If memory serves, the distro got overall high marks on performance for the Arch-based distro.

Fast-forward to today. Garuda has uploaded its latest offering to the Linuxsphere – Garuda Temeraire – and the improvements made are many.

Powered by the 7.2 version of the Linux kernel, Germany’s Garuda has released the first major update in over a year for the Arch Linux-based distribution. The release introduces a new default kernel, Plasma Login Manager, a fully reworked Hyprland edition, better NVIDIA support for Sway, and more unified administration tools.

The release also brings a small change to Garuda’s naming convention. Previously, Garuda versions were named after birds of prey, however Temeraire changes that so well-known dragon names are the current standard. For those who are most curious, the name for this release comes from the dragon in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels.

Installing Garuda Temeraire

For purposes of this review, we are putting the Xfce version of the distro through its paces, even though the distro also comes with Cinnamon, Gnome, KDE Plasma and Mokka desktop environments, as well as Hyprland, i3, and SwayFX window managers.

The menu in the Xfce desktop offers the Garuda Temeraire user a wide variety of options.

The minimum system requirements for Garuda Temeraire are fairly straightforward. The user will need a 64-bit processor with 4 GB or more of RAM, at least 30 GB of storage space, and a graphics card supporting OpenGL 3.3 or higher.

The ISO for the Xfce edition weighs in at just over 3 GB, and downloaded fairly quickly. Once we got it onto a USB drive, it was installation time. Fortunately Garuda uses a Calamares-based installer which makes the installation of the distro a breeze.

Kicking the tires

The clean lines of the Xfce 4.20 desktop environment greet the user for Garuda Temeraire, with a dark but attractive desktop photo punctuated by a menu button in the lower left and important icons strewn along the left- and right-side of the bottom panel.

The Setup Assistant in Garuda Temeraire is a godsend to beginners and experienced users alike.

The Setup Assistant deserves special mention. Not only does it automatically download any updates that may have transpired in the distro, but it also provides the user with software download options to help him or her set up the system to their liking. Broken down by category, the Setup Assistant provides various software selections grouped by Audio (and we checked Strawberry), Browser, Communication, Development, Gaming (Aisleriot Solitaire and Knights chess, please), Graphics (GIMP, of course), Input Methods, Internet (Filezilla and Putty), Kernels, Mail (Thunderbird, please), Multimedia, Office (LibreOffice, of course), Other (Conky was tempting, but I passed), Software Centers (Octopi), Video (VLC, of course), and Virtualization.

In addition, the Garuda Toolbox – a window that comes up at the start – is also quite helpful in providing options and information on the distro as well. Although it seems to be aimed at more experienced users, the Toolbox provides a wide range of helpful suggestions to make your Garuda experience worthwhile.

Once we selected the additional software, we clicked the Apply button in the lower right, where the installer did its thing. And after a quick review of the Toolbox, we were on our way.

The Garuda Toolbox provides a wide range of useful options for the user.

True to its Arch roots, Garuda Temeraire is quite responsive and nimble on its proverbial feet. The distro handled a variety of tasks easily and efficiently. Mutitasking was a breeze, with checking email while surfing the web handled by the distro with the speed and efficiency for which Arch is well-known.

The only glitch – minor, of course – was that, for some reason, the VLC media player didn’t play nicely with some of the hardware. No worries here, though, since Strawberry picked up the music-playing slack and performed admirably in my normally favorite VLC’s place. It makes a user wonder whether Strawberry should be a go-to for all music-playing in the future.

Garuda Temeraire also played well with web apps like Google Docs and Google Drive, hardly breaking a proverbial sweat in dealing with both.

The final word

The amount of effort that the developers of Garuda put into their latest Linux effort is, in short, simply remarkable. All of them can be proud of a first-class effort across the board.

It’s a little bit funny: Listening to Elton John on Strawberry in Garuda Temeraire.

As I wrote in April, Garuda is good for beginners – and even now in August, the latest version still is – if for no other reason that an improved Setup Assistant and Toolbox shepherds the new users accordingly. Additionally, with a number of desktop environments to choose from — and with Arch rumbling under the hood — this distro offers nearly everything to a wide variety of users. Its new-user friendliness, coupled with the wide range of options its Toolbox offers to intermediate users and greybeards, makes it an ideal daily-use distro for nearly everyone.

Additionally, Garuda Linux remains a strong contender in the current Linux distribution landscape, and arguably an heir-apparent to the Arch-based distro crown. Its combination of user-friendly installation, performance optimizations, and stunning visuals makes it a compelling choice for anyone looking to explore the power of Arch Linux without Arch’s associated complexities.

Don’t take my word for it. Download Garuda Temeraire from its download page and give it a spin.

Do you have a distro you think would make a great feature for Distro of the Week? Don’t be shy—let me know! Email me at larry.cafiero@gmail.com and I’ll make an effort to make your choice available to the wider public … No suggestion is too mainstream!

Bits & Bobs: KDE Plasma 6.8 improves

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Bobby Barisov of Linuxiac reported on Saturday that the developers at KDE have made improvements to KDE Plasma 6.8, including making auto-hide panels 10 times faster and smartening the automatic brightness, among others.

“One of the first changes users will notice is with auto-hide panels,” the article states. “KDE has shortened the time it takes for a panel to hide after the pointer leaves it from 500 milliseconds to just 50 milliseconds, making the panels feel much more responsive.”

Also, “System Settings will also have a better search feature for people using Plasma in languages other than English,” the article continues. “With Plasma 6.8, you can use English keywords along with those from your chosen language. For example, searching for ‘mouse’ on a system set to French will still bring up the ‘souris’ settings page.”

Plasma’s automatic brightness feature is also getting smarter. “The system will now remember your manual brightness changes and use them to learn your preferred brightness levels in different lighting conditions,” the article says. “In Discover, the system will remember whether you’ve already marked a review as useful and will stop you from rating the same review again.”

Bazzite gets ‘biggest’ update

Bobby Barisov of Linuxiac also reported on Friday that Bazzite has released an update which the project called “the biggest update in Bazzite history.”

For the uninitiated, Bazzite is an immutable Linux distro built on Fedora Atomic Desktop technology and developed as part of the Universal Blue project.

Released last Tuesday, Bazzite Linux 44 was sent out with Linux kernel 7.2, a new gaming stack and GUI updates, as well as a new SteamOS-aligned gaming stack, graphical updater, a redesigned portal and more.

“One of the largest changes is a complete overhaul of the software stack for Bazzite’s handheld images,” the article says. “The old setup is replaced by a SteamOS-aligned stack built around InputPlumber for controller handling, emulation, and remapping; SteamOS-Manager for session switching and TDP management; PowerStation for power controls on hardware not fully supported by SteamOS-Manager; and OpenGamepadUI for additional controls Steam does not expose.”

Users of Bazzite on the desktop get several environment-specific changes. “On KDE Plasma, Konsole replaces Ptyxis as the default terminal since Konsole provides comparable container functionality,” the article states. “The Oxygen theme and icon set are included by default, along with Bazzite Portal integration with KDE’s search interface.”

And Gnome? “Gnome receives its own Bazzite Portal search provider and out-of-the-box support for rounded blur through Blur My Shell,” the article says. “Both desktop options also get three new wallpapers.”

For additional details, see the release announcement.

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the week on Friday.

Bits & Bobs: Cosmic 1.6 released

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor on 9 to 5 Linux reported on Tuesday that System76 released a new Cosmic desktop environment with new improvements.

“Coming three weeks after Cosmic 1.5, the Cosmic 1.6 release adds support for the wl-dmabuf-v6 Wayland protocol for passing direct memory buffers (dma-buf) between clients and compositors, and adds support for the EI (Emulated Input) Wayland protocol to simulate hardware input devices, such as keyboards and mice,” the article says.

Also, the Cosmic Files file manager “received a context menu for text fields and selectable text widgets, Cosmic Greeter can now detect the presence of logind at runtime and supports JPEG-XL and AVIF images, Cosmic Settings now offers app-specific settings, and the cosmic-settings-daemon can now handle playback-specific sound settings,” according to the article.

“On top of that, Cosmic 1.6 fixes various issues, including infinite dialogs in COSMIC Files with network mount failures, Cosmic Launcher flickering and closing when using the Ctrl modifier, a panic on -1 max brightness value in the cosmic-settings-daemon, and fixes COSMIC Settings to no longer unload the active page during search,” the article says.

Garuda Linux Temeraire Released

Bobby Borisov of Linuxiac reported on Wednesday that Garuda Linux has released a new version of its distro, code-named Temeraire, with a new CachyOS-based kernel, Plasma Login Manager, revamped Hyprland setup, and major tooling changes.

In the first major update to Garuda in over a year and powered by Linux kernel 7.2, the Arch Linux-based distribution introduces several changes including better NVIDIA support for Sway and more unified administration tools.

But wait, there’s more.

“This release also brings a small change to Garuda’s identity,” the article explains. “Previously, versions were named after eagles and other birds of prey. With Temeraire, the project will now use well-known dragon names. For those who are most curious, the name for this release comes from the dragon in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels.”

According to the article, the KDE Plasma editions have also been updated. “Both Plasma versions now use Plasma Login Manager instead of SDDM, even in live environments,” the article states. “Existing systems were already updated in earlier releases. Additionally, Garuda has refreshed its themes and removed the Better Blur plugin because it sometimes hurt performance.”

In addition, the Hyprland edition has seen even bigger changes. “Its configuration is now fully rewritten in Lua. G-Hyprland settings are available as Lua-based presets, along with several ready-made profiles for customizing the desktop. Existing users should already have the new setup after running garuda-update,” the article says.

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the weekend on Monday.

Distro of the Week: Linux Q83 13.14

Polish distro based on Debian is a winner, and should be ranked higher in Distrowatch

Yikes! This is the default desktop photo in Linux Q83 13.14 Kopernik, which we changed . . .

By Larry Cafiero

Following up our review of MX Linux last week, we didn’t want to go for another famous Linux distribution, which incidentally is on-brand for Distro of the Week. With over 400 active Linux/FOSS distributions – peppered with several BSD variants in between– Distrowatch.com is full of options.

That said, we settled on a Polish distro this week – Linux Q83 13.14 Kopernik.

About Linux Q83 13.14 Kopernik

Ranking in the 90s of the top 100 distros on Distrowatch, Linux Q83 is based on Debian’s “Stable” branch. It comes with either the Cinnamon or the Cosmic desktop environment – and for purposes of this review, we’ve played it safe and went with Cinnamon – and the distro also has versions available for Raspberry Pi and the Radxa Orion O6 single-board computers, as well as standard desktops and workstations. Linux Q83 also comes with its own lightweight and resource-efficient web browser called W3.

. . . to something a little more sane, along with the Cinnamon desktop environment.

Designed to be versatile, Linux Q83 accommodates both older and newer hardware. The key system requirements are 2 GB or more of RAM, at least 10 GB of disk space, and an AMD 64 architecture for laptops and desktops, and ARM 64 for single-board computers.

The ISO for the Cinnamon version of Linux Q83 13.14 Kopernik is a significantly hefty 4.12 GB, but it downloaded relatively quickly. Putting the ISO on a thumb drive, it was ready to install on our hardware, so without further adieu . . .

Installing Linux Q83 13.14 Kopernik

The hardware boots up quickly in the live USB mode, and while there is an Eastern European look about the distro, there is a sole install icon in the upper left of the screen. Clicking it brings us to a standard Calamares installer, where we put in the standard keyboard, time zone location, disk setup, fill in the login/password, and once you confirm all of this, it’s off to the proverbial races.

The install takes roughly 10 minutes, and once you’re through it’s time to reboot into your new Linux Q83 system.

A mild word of warning: While the reboot was uneventful and went without a hitch, the Cinnamon desktop that comes up upon the reboot . . . well . . . it’s a bit too dark and ominous for my tastes. That may not bother some, but for me it was offputting. Fortunately, there are many desktop photo options to choose from in the system, thanks to the Debian base as well as some others added to the list.

The menu on the Cinnamon desktop environment on Linux Q83 13.14 Kopernik.

There is a good reason that the ISO is just over 4 GB: Linux Q83 is chock full of software. The developers did not seem to spare any software expense in including what appears on this distro. Firefox web browser? Right here, along with a home-grown web browser called W3. Thunderbird email client? Front and center. GIMP? You have to ask? The LibreOffice suite of software? Of course it’s here.

The list of software on the first install doesn’t stop there. ImageMagick and Inkscape are included in Cinnamon’s Graphics menu, Transmission and Pidgin are included in the Internet menu, and an Administration menu with the likes of the Synaptic Package Manager, Midnight Commander, and the Nushell terminal.

There are even a wide array of games like 2048, Solitaire, Chess, and Mines, among others.

The only thing missing was an adequate music player, so off it was to Synaptic to install VLC. Once that was installed, we were on our way. Almost . . . and we’ll get to that in a minute.

Kicking the tires

One of the first things we always do when installing a new distro is to run an upgrade, just to make sure we’re working with the absolute, drop-dead latest version of the distro. Linux Q83 was no exception, and the default terminal – Nushell, which is based in Rust – threw us for a loop but performed admirably. After all, how can you screw up sudo apt upgrade? Once we were up to date, it was time to put Linux Q83 through its paces.

True to its Debian roots, Linux Q83 performed admirably on day-to-day tasks like web surfing and exchanging emails and the like. Even the W3 web browser performed admirably in daily web chores. The only problem I had was on one laptop, a Dell, the VLC program started acting persnickity while playing a CD.

Strawberry to the rescue: When VLC didn’t exactly work, Strawberry played Steely Dan effortlessly.

Back to the drawing board: Uninstall VLC and install Strawberry, which is my backup music player and is gaining popularity in my own personal circle of software favorites. Strawberry played the CD like a champ and we were on our way.

One thing that deserves mentioning is the clean lines of the Cinnamon desktop environment. With icons placed neatly in the lower panel, grouped in left and right alignments, making adjustments to the desktop is a breeze. Additionally, the menu on Cinnamon is easily accessible and well organized.

Nevertheless, Linux Q83 handled everything thrown at it with typical Debian aplomb. Even at its multitasking worst, the RAM never peaked above 3 GB of usage. In other words, multitasking was a breeze and the distro played nicely with web based programs like Google Docs and Google Drive.

The final word

Once you get past the default desktop picture not being for you – and it wasn’t for me – Linux Q83 13.14 Kopernik is a rock solid distro which checks all the right boxes for any Linux user.

Is it good for beginners? The Cinnamon desktop environment version of Linux Q83 we tested is clearly an easy step above Windows, and Windows users would clearly be at home with this distro. Intermediate and greybeards would also welcome the vast array of software included with the distro, not to mention the adaptability that comes with it.

With all of the things that Linux Q83 has going for it, it’s a mystery why this distro isn’t ranked higher in the Distrowatch rankings, but here we are.

Linux Q83 is clearly worth a look. To download the ISO visit the Linux Q83 download page.

Do you have a distro you think would make a great feature for Distro of the Week? Don’t be shy—let me know! Email me at larry.cafiero@gmail.com and I’ll make an effort to make your choice available to the wider public … No suggestion is too mainstream!

Distro of the Week: MX Linux 25.2

Greco-American distro upholds high standards while breaking new ground

The MX Linux 25.2 Infinity desktop shows the clean lines of Xfce.

By Larry Cafiero

When we last left MX Linux – and this was back in October when I was writing Distro of the Week for FOSS Force – I recall being very impressed with the distro at the time, specifically MX Linux 23.6 Libretto.

But first, let’s recap, shall we?

Officially, according to the MX Linux website, “MX Linux is a cooperative venture between the antiX and MX Linux communities. It is a family of operating systems that are designed to combine elegant and efficient desktops with high stability and solid performance.”

The project started as a collaborative effort between the antiX and former MEPIS communities, with the name being derived from the “M” in MEPIS and the “X” in antiX, as an acknowledgment of its roots.

MX Linux 23.6 Libretto featured a wide variety of benefits that set it apart from its antiX counterpart, and was a perfect complement for newer hardware.

The Xfce menu on MX Linux 25.2 Infinity guides users to the appropriate software.

But the MX Linux developers apparently ramped up their game for their latest offering. MX Linux 25.2 Infinity represents a significant upgrade over Libretto, focusing on modern usability, improved installation processes, and enhanced compatibility with current software standards.

MX Linux 25.2 Infinity provides an improved compatibiity with modern software packaging, as opposed to the last release’s limitation to older Debian packaging. The toolset in the newer distro is enhanced and migrated to Qt6. And the System Initialization goes for the former’s SysVinit to the latest version’s using systemd by default.

Installing MX Linux 25.2 Infinity

The MX Linux 25.2 Infinity ISO is an economical 2.9 GB, which downloaded swiftly and we put it on a USB drive fairly quickly as well.

While booting into the live USB, the user still gets a choice to log into SysVinit or systemd at the start, we went with systemd to be modern. The Xfce 4.20 desktop comes up in a minute – probably less – with a side panel on the left and a basic Conky in the upper right hand corner.

The MX Linux installer was next on the agenda. It goes through the process of checking the media first, which takes a bit of time, and then takes you to a Terms of Use page with keyboard settings. Once that’s settled, you select your type of installation – we chose Regular install using the entire disk – and here’s where the installer gets interesting.

While the distro is installing, you have to set up the rest of the system, which is easily done with the Next button in the lower right. It asks for network names, time zone preference, login name and password – where it also gives you an option for a root password, which we took – before waiting for the install to finish.

To be fair, it’s a unique and efficient way to set up the install; instead of waiting for the install after putting in all your information, the install is underway while you’re filling in the blanks for your new system. And when we were finally finished, 97 percent of the download was complete. A short while later, the installation was complete and we were ready to boot into our new system.

Kicking the tires

Before we start, it would be good to mention that MX Linux 25.2 Infinity comes in three basic flavors: Xfce 4.20 desktop environment, KDE Plasma desktop environment, and the Fluxbox window manager. For purposes of this review, we stuck with the familiar Xfce desktop environment.

The reboot offers an MX Welcome window outlining various points of interest for the distro, including links to the Users Manual, the MX Linux wiki, a FAQ, and a tour for new users.

The MX Linux Welcome window, which greets users, is chock full of information.

After a standard system update just to make sure we’re up to date, it’s time to see what we have in store for this new distro. For a 2.9 GB ISO, the included software in the original download is first-class: Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client, VLC media player, the LibreOffice suite of software, as well as a plethora of MX Linux tools which would make the most grizzled greybeard laugh with glee.

Interestingly, MX Linux 25.2 Infinity doubles down on some of the software available. The most noteable example is that not only does the distro include VLC, but also Strawberry as well. It is this kind of attention to detail that could easily spoil any user.

But I digress.

The included-by-default MX Linux tools were quite helpful. For example, the Conky System Monitor provides a wide range of pre-set Conky options available, with a range of choices that borders on being daunting. I finally ended up with the antiX version because… well, old habits die hard. Nitrogen, the wallpaper manager, provided a wide range of desktop illustrations and photos to choose from, and choosing one was difficult — to the point that I just stuck with the original.

Once I had everything set up to my liking and could get down to business, I found MX Linux’s ease of use remarkable. Multitasking was a breeze, and the distro hardly broke a sweat no matter how many programs I had running simultaneously.

The final word

While back in October I didn’t think that MX Linux could be improved upon, their developers proved me wrong. The improvements included in the latest distro easily puts it head and shoulders above the previous version in many ways.

MX Linux 25.2 Infinity is an ideal candidate for new users as well as grizzled veterans. MX Tools are simple to master for the beginner, while the greybeards will welcome their inclusion in the distro. It bears mentioning that, especially for new users, the documentation available in the wiki, the forum, and various linked videos are more than adequate, should you run into an issue.

Listening to 10,000 Maniacs on VLC while going through daily chores in MX Linux 25.2 Infinity.

As I said in October, MX Linux seems to have found the sweet spot in Linux distro development: It’s small enough to be specialized but large enough to be used by many people worldwide. This combination sets them apart by virtue of the fact users will ultimately realize that a lot of thought went into the distro’s production. Combined with its support for both older and bleeding edge hardware, the result is a distro designed to put a wide range of users on equal footing.

MX Linux 25.2 Infinity is definitely and unequivocally worth a look. Visit the download page and try it out for yourself.

Do you have a distro you think would make a great feature for Distro of the Week? Don’t be shy—let me know! Email me at larry.cafiero@gmail.com and I’ll make an effort to make your choice available to the wider public … No suggestion is too mainstream!

Bits & Bobs: KDE Plasma 6.8 progresses

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Bobby Borisov reported in Linuxiac on Saturday that KDE Plasma plans to improve remote desktop performance, among other improvements.

The October release of the new desktop also includes a faster remote desktop performance, lower latency on poor connections, reduced memory usage, and several UI refinements.

One of the primary improvements involves printing. “Starting with Plasma 6.8, sending a print job to an unavailable printer will trigger a notification explaining the problem,” the article states. “Currently, the action may appear to do nothing, leaving users without a clear indication of what went wrong.”

KDE Plasma’s built-in remote desktop server is also receiving some improvements as well, as KDE developers have fixed an issue that could cause certain remote desktop clients to display a black screen instead of the expected desktop content.

“At the same time, work on the remote desktop implementation should make sessions feel more responsive,” the article continues. “Plasma 6.8 lowers latency and improves performance when connections are less than ideal, thus improving user experience over slower or unstable networks.”

For a full rundown of all the improvements so far for KDE Plasma 6.8, the article has a link to the “This Week in Plasma” report released on Saturday.

Linux 7.3 to better handle cluster loads

Michael Larabel of Phoronix reported on Saturday that a “set of patches from Intel are set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window to enhance the cluster-aware scheduling code so it better handles load balancing on modern Intel Core (Ultra) hybrid CPUs with a mix of P and E/LPE cores.”

Intel Linux engineer Ricardo Neri has been leading the latest effort to fix cluster scheduling for processors with asymmetric capacity.

Quoting Neri in the article, “Cluster scheduling aims to maximize performance by spreading load across clusters of CPUs that share mid-level resources. It works well on uniform systems, but it breaks down on topologies with big and small cores arranged in clusters. As a result, it fails on several generations of Intel processors already shipped and upcoming.”

Neri is also quoted as saying that he “tested these patches on Alder Lake, which has both SMT Pcores and clusters of Ecores. I tested with SMT both disabled and enabled. I also tested on Lunar Lake and Panther Lake, which have an Ecore cluster not connected to the L3 cache. I repeated the same experiment with CONFIG_SCHED_CLUSTER disabled. The load balancer behaves as expected.”

According to the article, these patches are now queued into tip/tip.git’s sched/core GIt branch. “With the patches now in a TIP branch, they should be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.3 cycle,” the article concludes.

CachyOS August ISO released

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported on Sunday that the latest CachyOS ISO Release for August 2026 has several improvements lined up for that distro.

Improvements includes an upgrade for the installer and desktop profiles while shipping with the latest KDE Plasma 6.7.4 desktop environment and KDE Frameworks 6.28 and KDE Gear 26.04.3.

But wait, there’s more . . .

“The CachyOS ISO snapshot for August 2026 looks like a small update that updates the CachyOS Hyprland Noctalia installer option to use the noctalia-greeter login screen instead of SDDM, updates the Cinnamon desktop option to use lightdm-slick-greeter instead of lightdm-gtk-greeter, adds gvfs-dnssd to the Gnome desktop option, and adds Cosmic Monitor to the Cosmic desktop option,” according to the article.

The latest release also updates the command line installer “with experimental support for Server Edition installation profiles, updates the CachyOS-Welcome app with improved DNS handling to correctly apply the speed-test-based server ranking, and rebase the Cachy-Update tool on Arch-Update 4.x with a Rust-based system tray applet,” the article says.

The article continues to say that the CachyOS ISO snapshot for August 2026 “adds nice-value tuning to limits.d in cachyos-settings, adds support for the CachyOS mirrorlist API to cachyos-rate-mirrors for ranking mirrors, and updates chwd with better VM handling, improved quote pacman arguments, and improved handheld detection.”

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the week on Friday.

Bits & Bobs: Gnome 50.4 released

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported Wednesday that the Gnome Project “released Gnome 50.4 today as the fourth maintenance update to the latest Gnome 50 desktop environment series to fix more bugs across various core apps and components.”

Released a month after Gnome 50.3, “the GNOME 50.4 release improves menu animations in GNOME Shell, which also received fixes for a miscaled magnified cursor on HiDPI displays, a sound glitch when pushing redundant volume changes, and a glitch when switching to a minimized window on another workspace,” the article states.

“GNOME 50.4 also improves the Mutter window and composite manager by fixing blurred rendering with non-pixel-aligned monitors and invalid redraw clips on rotated monitors, while also preventing unsupported fallback monitor modes from being added and filling in mastering display metadata for HDR outputs,” the article continues.

The article also states that GDM (Gnome Display Manager) has been updated to version 50.2 with a fix for a path traversal vulnerability where a compromised greeter could load arbitrary .desktop files via SelectSession, potentially executing attacker-controlled commands as the authenticated user.

“GDM 50.2 also brings fixes for an autologin bypass vulnerability where a compromised greeter could request autologin for any local account by sending arbitrary usernames via BeginAutoLogin, and a fix for a denial of service where an invalid session name from the greeter would cause the entire daemon to exit, terminating all active sessions,” the article says.

It’s not about the distro . . .

Bhuwan Mishra of It’s FOSS wrote on Thursday an article about his experience with distrohopping and came to an interesting conclusion.

“It was never really about the distro,” he writes. “It was about what desktop environment sat on top of it.”

Starting with Linux Mint, Mishra writes that he switched to Ubuntu, where “Ubuntu felt sluggish in ways that bothered me. I blamed Ubuntu.

“Here’s what I discovered later: the culprit wasn’t Ubuntu. It was Gnome, he writes.

The Xfce desktop environment saved his life, Linux-wise, according to the article.

“Xfce doesn’t win ‘most beautiful desktop’ polls,” he writes. “But I ran it on that i3 first-gen machine, and it ran smoothly out of the box. I ran it on a Core 2 Duo at some point.”

Mishra tried KDE, too. “I wanted to like it,” he wrote. “I kept going back, hoping something had changed. What I found, every single time, was that a single click could take three to four seconds to get a response. It felt like the desktop was thinking about whether it wanted to comply with my input.”

He outlines adventures with Kali Linux, Arch Linux, AntiX, and making the discovery about desktop environments, he has chosen now to use a window manager instead.

“Looking back at all of it, I did not like Mint just because it’s Mint,” he writes. “I felt comfortable with Cinnamon. I did not dislike Ubuntu because it’s Ubuntu. It’s because Gnome demanded more of my old hardware than the hardware could give.

“Every distro-hop I’ve listed here, from Kali to Arch to AntiX to Mango WM, was really a hop between desktop environments and window managers wearing a different distro’s name. The package manager changed. The installation experience changed.”

This article is an entertaining read about one distrohopper’s adventure which many, no doubt, can relate to.

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the weekend on Monday.