Linux – Page 2 – Distro of the Week

Mocaccino 26.06 KDE Plasma

Linux distro from Italy, based on Gentoo, hits all the right marks

By Larry Cafiero

While it’s been a slow June so far – unless you’re an Arch user – this week we’ve spun the proverbial wheel and it looks like we’re going to test-drive Italy’s MocaccinoOS 26.06, released by its developers earlier this month.

MocaccinoOS is an independently developed Linux distribution based on – wait for it – Gentoo via Sabayon, using a custom-built package manager called Luet. The main features are both minimalism and a small footprint, as well as ease of use with support for the most important cloud technologies.

MocaccinoOS is offered in several variants, including live images with Gnome, KDE Plasma, MATE and Xfce desktop environments, as well as a command-line only “Minimal Desktop” version. For purposes of this review, we’re test-driving the KDE Plasma version.

The system requirements for MocaccinoOS are fairly low. The distro requires a minimum of 2 GB RAM at a minimum and a 64-bit processor, although more would be welcome for the distro to run efficiently.

Installing MocaccinoOS

The installation of MocaccinoOS is fairly simple, with the ISO weighing in at an average 2.4 GB. After roughly 10 minutes of download time, we were ready to place the ISO onto a USB drive. It all starts with the the distro’s version of the Calamares installer.

The installer asks for the standard Calamares details, like language, time zone, keyboard layout, and disk partition options (always go for “erase disk” unless you are experienced, and maybe a little adventurous). Once that’s done it’s time to set up a login/password after which it provides some software options to include in the installation.

These options include web browser – we chose Chromium and Brave – and Office software, which we opted for LibreOffice. If you’re a gamer, it offers software options for games like Steam and Lutris, before finally offering development options.

The About screen on MocaccinoOS 26.06 provides the user with valuable hardware information.

Then the installer will ask you if all that you’ve entered is what you really want. Once you agree to what you’ve put in to Calamares, if’t off to the races.

The install takes roughly 20 minutes, which is a little long. Once the user sees the “all done” window, he or she can click the restart box and hit close, and the MocaccinoOS distro takes care of the rest by rebooting into your newly downloaded distro.

The KDE Plasma 6.6.5 desktop environment welcomes the user upon reboot. Once you do an update – here again, because the distro is based on Gentoo via Sabayon, the rules are a tad different (remember Luet?) – the user is ready to delve into what MocaccinoOS has to offer.

Let’s talk installed software: At first blush, the software installation provided by MocaccinoOS is fairly adequate. Not only did it download the Chromium and Brave web browsers we checked in Calamares, but it may have been overkill since the distro comes with Firefox ESR. While this particular version is KDE-based, there’s a plethora of KDE tools available, like the Dolphin file manager, Discover software installer, and the Konsole terminal, to name a few.

Outside of the software checked off in Calamares, like the LibreOffice suite and the additional browsers, the distro – to its credit – included the VLC media player on the original install.

Time to hit up Discover for an email client, namely Thunderbird, and we also downloaded GIMP for good measure.

Taking MocaccinoOS for a spin

Once we had Mocaccino 26.06 KDE Plasma up to the way we wanted it, it was showtime.

As advertised, MocaccinoOS is both lightweight and modular, and works well with all applications. The Luet package manager is supposed to simplify software management, and after getting used to typing “luet” instead of “apt,” it worked flawlessly. The distro’s layered architecture allows for smoother upgrades and easier management of system packages.

Listening to a cool sounds of Norah Jones on the VLC media player on MocaccinoOS 26.06

Ease of use almost becomes an understatement with MocaccinoOS. The distro worked well while putting it through its day-to-day paces. Email and writing assignments were handled flawlessly, and resizing photos in GIMP went without a hitch. Listening to music on the VLC media player helped during the week. All of which is to say that the multitasking of normal daily use seemed to be nothing to the distro, and the distro rarely went above 3 GB of RAM usage at this reviewer’s busiest times.

Additionally, MocaccinoOS played nicely with online programs like Google Docs and Google Drive, and swapping documents and photos between each of the programs and the hardware was a breeze.

The final word

MocaccinoOS 26.06 KDE Plasma is an ideal distro for a wide variety of users. For beginners it checks all the proverbial boxes for ease of use, and the distro’s website is full of information should he or she run into problems.

For more experienced users, the wide variety of available tools augmented by the relatively small footprint of the distro itself is cause to consider this version, not to mention that the distribution’s support for cloud technologies and containerization might be a plus for developers and system administrators.

Using the neofetch command on Konsole, a user can get vital hardware information.

The Luet package manager takes a little getting used to, but that’s more of a “me” problem than that of a new or experienced user. In fact, arguably a new user – taking a little time with Luet – could master the package manager easily.

MocaccinoOS is a rarified breath of fresh air, as far as Linux distribution go. The distro addresses both modern computing needs while maintaining a user-friendly approach.

See for yourself: Download a MocaccinoOS ISO at the distro’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: Arch AUR still under fire

By Larry Cafiero

On Friday, Swati Khandelwal of The Hacker News reported that attackers originally took over more than 400 packages in the Arch User Repository (AUR) last week and rewrote their build scripts to install a credential stealer on any machine that built them.

According to the article, “[t]he malware is a Rust binary built to harvest developer secrets. When it lands with root, it can also load an eBPF rootkit to hide itself. The AUR is Arch Linux’s community package collection, and it is separate from the official Arch repositories, which were not affected.”

The article suggests that if you installed or updated an AUR package on or after June 11, check it against the current affected-package lists before trusting the host. “The list of names is large, still growing, and not yet complete,” said the article.

Christine Hall at FOSS Force wrote on Sunday that “[j]ust hours after Arch sounded the all clear on a massive AUR malware purge, a new, stealthier campaign is slipping malicious code back into user packages.”

Michael Larabel at Phoronix suggests shutting down the Arch Users Repository until this situation can be fixed.

“At this stage it’s a bit surprising they don’t completely shutdown AUR until they can better verify the security and safety of this user-supplied repository or at least implement new safeguards on changes,” the Phoronix article states.

Questing Quokka reaches end of life

Ubuntu 25.10, also known as “Questing Quokka,” is scheduled to reach its end-of-life in July 2026. After this date, the version will no longer receive security updates or support from Canonical.

For the unitiated, what that means is that the Isle of Man firm will no longer provide security updates for the distro after July 9, 2026.

According to an article in Linux Compatible, there is a simple solution to this: Update to Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute Raccoon.

“Running the standard upgrade tool early keeps the system stable and prevents the usual command line headaches that come with chasing dead repositories,” the article states. “Waiting until the last moment only guarantees a rushed migration and a potentially broken desktop environment.”

Well, there. You have been warned, Ubuntu users. Update early to avoid the last-minute rush.

Linux kernel 7.1 is on the clock

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reports Sunday that Linux kernel 7.1 is now available for download, featuring enhanced hardware support, filesystem and networking improvements, security enhancements, and several other changes.

“Probably the biggest change of the Linux 7.1 kernel series is a new NTFS file system implementation, which has been in the works for the last four years, featuring full write support with delayed allocation, iomap, and folio integration to improve write performance, better stability, and a new suite of userspace utilities called ntfsprogs-plus,” the article states.

The article continues to announce that “[a]mong other changes, Linux kernel 7.1 enables Intel’s Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED) feature by default, introduces CPU Memory (CMEM) Latency PMU support for NVIDIA Tegra410 SoCs, adds BPF fsession support for the IBM System/390 architecture, and adds seccomp () support to the Alpha architecture.”

Now that Linux kernel 7.1 is out, the merge window will soon open for the next major kernel series, Linux 7.2, which is expected in mid or late August 2026.

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

Xubuntu 26.04 Resolute Raccoon

Distro still going strong after two decades

The Xfce 4.20 desktop environment comes with Xubuntu 26.04.

By Larry Cafiero

Back in April, I wrote an article for FOSS Force about the release of Ubuntu 26.04 in which, overall, I enjoyed running the latest version, code-named Resolute Raccoon.

Although I recall lamenting the fact that Ubuntu 26.04 required a minimum – a minimum – of 6 GB of RAM, which if I recall correctly is more than the Windows 11 RAM minimum, the Ubuntu site also claimed that some of the other *buntu offspring, like Lubuntu or Ubuntu Mate, would run on less memory.

With that in mind, enter Xubuntu 26.04, complete with its 20^th anniversary this year. As far as system requirements go, they are far less than its larger Isle of Man sibling. The system requirements for Xubuntu 26.04 are a 64-bit hardware processor, 2 GB or more of RAM, and 15 GB or more of storage.

Installing Xubuntu 26.04

The ISO for the Xubuntu 26.04 download is a relatively hefty 5 GB, which took about 20 minutes to download. From there, we placed the ISO onto a USB drive and we were ready to upload it to our hardware.

Uploading Xubuntu 26.04 is fairly straightforward, thanks to the Ubuntu Desktop Installer, common to all *buntus. It asks various questions like keyboard, language, WiFi setup – you don’t need to be online to install, but it helps – disk setup, login/password and time zone before performing its usual magic. About 15 minutes later we were ready to go.

As is normal for Xfce, the menu stems from the upper left in Xubuntu 26.04.

The reason the ISO was larger than normal must be because of the amount of software included with the distro. For example, along with the usual Xfce 4.20 suspects in the tools department – including but not limited to the Thunar file manager, Catfish file search, and Synaptic package manager, for starters – there’s the latest standard-issue Firefox web browser, the Thunderbird email client, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP, for short) for photo editing, and the LibreOffice suite of software. There’s also some unique software inclusions like Ubuntu’s App Center, based on Snap, and the Parole media player, for good measure.

The only thing I added to the distro was the VLC media player to listen to tunes while writing the article. Having done that using the App Center, we were ready to go.

Test-driving Xubuntu 26.04

The Xfce 4.20 desktop environment – the X in Xubuntu, for those of you keeping score at home – greets the user with a clean interface. After the customary update of the distro, the user is confronted with the typical Xfce fare: The menu icon sits in the top left in the top panel, while at the right is a collection of icons: Bluetooth, WiFi, Notifications, Battery, and Volume, ending with the date/time.

Using the menu icon, we were ready to explore the options available in Xubuntu 26.04. The software programs came up quickly after selecting them from the menu, and switching between programs was effortless.

Running fastfetch in the Terminal provides a wide range of info in Xubuntu 26.04

Once again – like its Ubuntu brethren – the terminal types out asterisks when you type your password while running a sudo command, where before it used to be nothing. While it threw me at first when I did the Ubuntu review in April, I was ready for it this time.

Nevertheless, the daily use for this distro was nothing short of amazing for day-to-day tasks. Xubuntu 26.04 hardly broke a sweat even under the most dire of daily-use circumstances. The RAM never reached above 2.8 GB while multitasking on several programs simultaneously, which is a far cry from the 6 GB of RAM requirements for the Ubuntu 26.04 setup I tested in April. Additionally, the distro plays nice with online programs like Google Docs and Google Drive.

Xubuntu 26.04 does not disappoint as a daily driver. Surfing the internet with Firefox while sending and receiving email with Thunderbird were both effortless and flawless. Listening to music on either the Parole media player that was included in the install or the VLC media player was remarkable. Using the LibreOffice suite of software while sizing photographs with GIMP – both native to this distro – writing this article was a breeze.

The final word

As many who have read Distro of the Week in the past, you know that I am a dyed-in-the-wool Xfce guy when it comes to a desktop environment, although – as an aside – I am warming up to KDE Plasma, where at one time I would run to the hills to avoid it. But that’s neither here or there. Long story short, Xfce and I have a “history,” and even today it is my go-to desktop environment, even when it used to get me in trouble at FOSS Force.

But I digress.

The Task Manager in Xubuntu 26.04 furnishes data about the hardware.

Of all the *buntus, Xubuntu 26.04 is unmistakably a solid and reliable option for those who have a hankering for the Ubuntu experience, but perhaps don’t have the latest hardware upon which to run it. The lower RAM requirements are truly a plus, and along with the reliability of Xfce 4.20, this combination makes Xubuntu an ideal distro.

That said, Xubuntu 26.04 is more than an adequate distro for everyone. With Ubuntu under the hood beneath a pristine desktop environment, the distro easily caters to new Linux users, while intermediate users and “greybeards” would have a field day with the selection of software, and ways to add others, which the distro provides.

Don’t take my word for it. Give it your own test-drive. Download Xubuntu 26.04 at the Xubuntu download site. You won’t be disappointed.

Distro of the Week: Butterbian 0.3.2

Debian accented with the Btrfs file system, Timeshift

The Butterbian 0.3.2 desktop features the Xfce 4.20 desktop environment

By Larry Cafiero

Sometimes this column is preplanned – even as much as a month in advance, according to the list of distros available – and sometimes a distro just falls out of the sky and screams, “try me.”

The latter is the case this week with Butterbian 0.3.2, which I happened upon in a post on Bluesky, of all places, about two weeks ago.

Butterbian 0.3.2 is a Debian-based Linux distribution which has one unique – and somewhat important – distinction. Based on Trixie 13, Butterbian features the Btrfs file system, hence the name, and as such, the distro with this unique file system is designed primarily with its automatic snapshot feature Timeshift pre-configured to revert back to a former “life,” should an update possibly go wrong.

Installing Butterbian

Users who wish to use Butterbian have a choice between two versions of the distro on the Butterbian download page. One is the stock Butterbian download and the other, called Butterknife, uses a command line-based downloader akin to the one used by Arch.

For purposes of this review, let’s play it safe and use the stock Butterbian 0.3.2 download.

The ISO for the stock Butterbian system is a relatively light 2.2 GB, which translates to about 10 minutes of download time. While we wait for the download to finish, this would be a good time to mention the system requirements: UEFI only (very important), 64-bit processor, a minimum of 4 GB of RAM, and 20 GB or more of storage space.

The Xfce 4.20 menu is featured in the Butterbian 0.3.2 distro.

Once the ISO is downloaded and put onto a USB stick, we plug it in to our hardware. Butterbian uses a modified Calamares installer, which goes through the usual motions of keyboard, location, login/password before going through the install procedure. Once that is done, we’re ready to go.

Test-driving Butterbian

Once we reboot and run an update of the software, there is no welcome window or anything like that, just the Xfce 4.20 desktop environment with a bottom panel carrying customary icons like, from the left, the Applications menu, then the workspaces – four of them – then Firefox ESR, Thunar (with an unusual MacOS logo, which is strange), and a terminal icon. On the right, there’s a notifications icon, WiFi, screenshot, volume, battery and time/date.

The software included on Butterbian 0.3.2 can best be described as sparse. It includes a variety of Xfce- and Debian-based tools, as well as Firefox ESR, but from there it drops off completely. No worries – we’ll just have to add software using . . . well . . . the command line via the terminal, where “sudo apt install <software>” will easily do the trick.

This means installing the usual software suspects – specifically, the VLC media player to listen to tunes while I work, the LibreOffice suite of software so I can actually write this article, Thunderbird for email, and the GNU Image Manipulation Program – otherwise known as GIMP – for photos.

Once we got Butterbian up to an acceptable level – acceptable to me, anyway – we were off and running.

The fastfetch option in the terminal provides valuable information on Butterbian 0.3.2

The Debian base under the Xfce desktop of Butterbian performed flawlessly, handling multitasking issues with the usual Debian aplomb. In fact, at my busiest, the CPU barely broke a sweat, registering 2.3 GB of RAM use while running several programs simultaneously. The use of web apps, like Google Docs and Google Drive, was of no consequence for the distro as well.

The last word

If a user considers Butterbian to be a work in progress, arguably they would not be too far off. Conversely, Butterbian – by virtue of its Btrfs base and pre-configured Timeshift software – is only a stone’s throw away from being an outstanding distro in its own right.

Still, only being able to add software with the command line is significant minus; a hurdle that Butterbian may have to rhetorically jump sooner or later. Because of this – and this alone – users new to Linux might want to avoid Butterbian, despite the fact that in all other aspects, the distro is easily both beginner ready and new-user friendly.

Conversely, for intermediate users and “greybeards,” Butterbian is a remarkable distro, as close to a godsend as a distro can get. Not only are all the tools there, but once you add the software via the command line that tailors your needs, you would be easily on your way.

If you’re considering a new distro, Butterbian should be on your list. Download the ISO from the Butterbian download page, and treat yourself.

Distro of the Week: KDE neon 6.6

KDE-based distro features Ubuntu LTS, strong desktop credentials

The KDE Plasma 6.6.5 desktop environment shows clean lines in KDE neon 6.6.

By Larry Cafiero

To say that KDE neon is an enigmatic British distro may be a bit of an overstatement. But questions do arise. For example, is it “the” official KDE distro?

Some may claim it to be, but KDE neon denies it in their FAQ.

“KDE believes it is important to work with many distributions, as each brings unique value and expertise for its users,” says the FAQ. “KDE neon is one distro out of many, and that diversity is a good thing!”

Nevertheless, KDE neon is a distro based on Ubuntu LTS that comes with – no surprise here – the latest KDE Plasma desktop environment. It’s also offered in two basic versions: The User Edition features the latest officially released KDE software on a stable base (“Ideal for adventurous KDE enthusiasts,” according to the website) and the Testing Edition, which features “pre-release KDE software built the same day from bugfix branches,” also according to their website.

The hardware specs for KDE neon are fairly straightforward: Installing KDE neon requires a 64-bit PC (Intel or AMD), 2 GB or more of memory, and 10 GB or more of disk space. requires a 64-bit PC (Intel or AMD), 2 GB or more of memory, and 10 GB or more of disk space.

Installalling KDE neon

With an ISO size of roughly 3 GB, the minimum system requirements for KDE Neon are fairly simple. The distro requires a 64-bit system – AMD or Intel spoken here – as well as 2 GB or more of RAM and 10 GB or more of disk space. The download of the ISO was fairly quick in under 10 minutes.

The installer is a modified Calamares system which takes the user through the basics: keyboard selection, time zone selection, disk setup, and login/password. Once all that is complete, it’s off to the races with the install.

Test driving KDE neon

Once we reboot and go through the update process – there are about 3 GB of updates, not the least of which was updating KDE Plasma 6.5.4 to 6.5.5 – the user is met with a KDE-based Welcome window which dispatches relevant information about KDE neon mostly about KDE itself. Which is fine, because roughly half of the distro’s name is KDE anyway, so looking at the installed software it includes a host of KDE tools, Firefox web browser and VLC media player and that’s pretty much it.

So it’s was on to Discover, the KDE software installation app, to include what yours truly thought was missing, namely an email client – hello Thunderbird – as well as the LibreOffice suite of software and the GNU Image Manipulation Program, otherwise known s GIMP. Once that we done, we were ready to put KDE neon through its paces.

Whether it’s the Ubuntu rumbling under the hood or the latest KDE Plasma desktop keeping everything together – and maybe a combination of both – KDE neon performed remarkably. Adding software with Discover was simple, and the multitasking so common in day-to-day user was magnificent. One special note – whenever I use a KDE-based distro, it’s always a pleasure to use KDE Connect on my phone as well, since transferring files and even using the phone as a touchpad are a treat.

Thunderbird handled the emails, while Firefox stood strong for any web browsing that needed being done (and there was a lot of that). VLC kept the tunes humming while using LibreOffice and GIMP for writing and setting up pictures. All of whihch is to say that the multitasking aspect of KDE neon worked like a charm, with the laptops never reaching over 3 GB of memory use.

The last word

It’s hard to say whether KDE neon is the “go-to” distro for KDE. The KDE neon FAQ says it’s just one of many KDE Plasma-based distros – I’m paraphrasing here – while its Wikipedia listing contends that it’s “Linux distribution developed by KDE based on Ubuntu long-term support (LTS) releases.” Who do we believe?

Regardless of what any particular user might accept in what can best be described as a somewhat schizophrenic situation, the fact remains that KDE neon is, in its own right, a more than formidable distro which works on a wide variety of hardware. Which sets it apart from KDE’s Ubuntu flagship – Kubuntu – in one important way: KDE neon focuses on providing the latest KDE software updates shortly after their release, while Kubuntu offers a more stable experience with frozen KDE versions until the next release cycle.

In other words, if you prefer cutting-edge features, choose KDE neon. If you want stability, go with Kubuntu.

Having said all this, KDE neon is a more than adequate distro for new users, provided that they are up to the task of updating their systems – there were two upgrades of about 3 GB each during the testing of the distro – and the ease of use thanks to the KDE Plasma desktop should not go without mention. As for intermediate users and greybeards, KDE neon hits all the marks when it comes to speed and efficiency in a Linux distribution.

KDE neon is worth a look. By all means, check out the KDE neon download page to pick up an ISO and see for yourself.