 DistroWatch Weekly | | DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1160, 16 February 2026 | | Welcome to this year's 7th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The Void project develops a Linux distribution with a number of unusual characteristics. This independent project has, historically, not had many distributions based upon it, but that has changed in the past year or two. This week we begin with a look at two projects in the young Void family, Noid Linux and AgarimOS, and report on how they compare to their parent. This week, in our News section, we talk about the KDE Linux distribution introducing delta updates to reduce bandwidth consumption while Redox OS hits a new development milestone. We also share a preview of Linux Mint's new user account manager and talk about the developer of the widely used sudo tool seeking sponsorship. Our Questions and Answers column this week shares command line advice and offers a tip for finding out which commands you run the most frequently. Let us know which command line program you run most often in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: Noid Linux 20260120 and AgarimOS 2026.01.17
- News: KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox used to develop Redox OS, Mint develops own account manager, sudo project seeks sponsorship
- Questions and answers: Command line tips and tricks for 2026
- Released last week: Tiny Core Linux 17.0, Parrot 7.1, Ubuntu 24.04.4, REMnux 8
- Torrent corner: Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Parrot, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin, Xubuntu
- Opinion poll: Most commonly used command line program
- Reader comments
| | Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) | Noid Linux 20260120  In the past few years there has been an uptick in the number of distributions which are based on Void. The Void project is an intriguing one. It is a relatively reliable, rolling-release distribution which provides an efficient base with virtually unmatched speed. The Void distribution is lightweight, runs on multiple CPU architectures, runs the rarely-used runit init software, and has its own package manager (XBPS). Void also offers users he choice between running the commonly used glibc library or the musl library.
I like the clean design and performance of Void and so I was curious to try out some of the projects based on it. Something I quickly found was that most of the new, Void-based distributions do not have much in the way of infrastructure. Most of them offer short SourceForge or GitHub summary pages, not much in the way of support or community options, and most do not clearly state what the distributions offer beyond what Void itself provides. What I found was, generally speaking, that most Void-based distributions offered a range of desktop editions and, in some cases, alternatives to Void's text-menu system installer, but the new projects do not share much about their goals.
The first project in the Void family I decided to try was Noid Linux. Noid Linux is a Void-based minimalist Linux distribution with Xfce as the preferred desktop (though a KDE edition is also available). It includes a long-term supported Linux kernel, the Calamares system installer, the Brave web browser, support for Flatpak packages, and a custom welcome screen. The project also provides its own repository for Void's XBPS packages with additional software.
While the main edition of Noid is Xfce (1.9GB) I decided to try the KDE edition (2.3GB) since I usually run Void with the Xfce desktop; this seemed like a chance to try something new.
The Noid boot menu offers to start Noid from removable media, load the distribution into RAM and boot, or boot into a text console. Then all the above options are repeated with the offer of having text-to-speed enabled.
The distribution booted to the Plasma desktop. The desktop displays a mostly blue background. A panel sits at bottom of the screen. On the desktop I found a single icon for launching the Calamares system installer. The project's notes mentioned a welcome screen, though none was displayed on the live desktop. I assumed, at the time, the welcome window must appear only once the distribution has been installed.
While using the live Plasma session, which runs on Wayland, I encountered black bars on the display which sometimes appeared and moved about when I was moving the mouse. I'm accustomed to running into some odd mouse behaviour when using Wayland sessions, but this was a new low for me.
Installing
When I clicked the install icon on the desktop Plasma displayed a warning that I was launching a program and asked if I wanted to continue. When I confirmed, the Calamares system installer opened.
In my past experiences, Void's text-menu installer has worked quickly and well, but it is certain to look old and perhaps intimidating to new users. For this reason I was pleased to see the familiar, graphical Calamares installer which streamlines the initial configuration.
On the first page of the installer there are three buttons for accessing donation options, information about known issues with the distribution, and support options. Clicking these buttons has no effect. The rest of the install process was fairly typical, prompting for our language preference, keyboard layout, timezone, and username. The installer offers manual and guided partitioning options. The default guided approach creates a single ext4 filesystem with no swap. We can choose to make a swap partition using a drop-down menu, but there is no option to change the root filesystem.
Calamares copied the distribution's packages to my drive and then reported it was unable to install a bootloader (GRUB). The installer then exits. I confirmed the bootloader had not been installed and decided to try the main Xfce edition to see if perhaps this was merely a quirk of the new edition.
The Xfce edition proved to be very similar in most aspect. It offers the same boot options for the live medium. The Xfce edition of Noid runs its desktop session on the X11 display server and did not display any bars across the display or mouse artifacts. The desktop layout was much the same, with a panel at the bottom of the screen and a launcher for the system installer on the desktop. The Xfce edition uses a lighter coloured theme and includes extra desktop icons for opening a file manager.
 Noid Linux 20260109 -- The Xfce desktop session (full image size: 437kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Once more I went the the system installer, once more focused on taking the defaults as much as possible, and once more the GRUB bootloader failed to install. While this sort of error at install time is rare, it can happen and so I tried my usual approach of manually running the GRUB installer from the live Noid medium. This too failed. From a quick glance through the mounted destination drive it looks like the system installer did not finish setting up enough of the distribution to complete the install, causing GRUB to fail.
Whatever the reason for the failure, neither edition of Noid Linux worked for me and I moved on to another member of the Void family. * * * * * AgarimOS 2026.01.17  The next project I came to in the Void family was AgarimOS. This project offers a similar concept to Noid's. It provides multiple desktop editions and a graphical package manager on top of the Void base.
AgarimOS comes in several popular desktop flavours, including Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE and Xfce - all with a limited set of applications in their default states. Like its parent, AgarimOS does not use the systemd service manager, relying instead on the runit init software. It employs the XBPS package management system, together with a graphical front-end called OctoXBPS. The distribution also includes custom themes and some interesting software selection, such as the WezTerm terminal emulator and the Neofetch system information utility.
I decided to try the project's LXQt desktop and the ISO file for this edition was 2.1GB in size. The AgarimOS project uses the same boot menu with lots of start-up choices as its sibling, Noid. The difference is AgarimOS plays a loud, piercing beep at full volume whenever it displays the bootloader.
The distribution's live medium boots to the LXQt desktop which places a panel across the bottom of the screen. There are no icons on the desktop. Both the panel and the application menu use a dark theme.
I found no evidence of a system installer launcher on the desktop, on the panel, or in the application menu. Eventually I found AgarimOS uses Void's system installer which can be launched from the command line.
Installing
AgarimOS appears to use the Void installer with its text-based menu system with little or no modification. It seemed to me the text (light blue on grey) might be lower contrast than what Void uses, but the steps and options are all the same. We're guided through setting up a user account, passwords, keyboard layout, locale, and picking a disk partition on which to install the distribution. Disk partitioning can be handled by a graphical partition manager ahead of time or by the console-based cfdisk, which is what runs if we ask the installer to launch a partition manager for us.
Once the installer has copied the distribution packages to the local disk it asks which services we want to enable. Services are listed with just their short, command line names and with no description of the services. When we have finished selecting services the installer offers to restart the computer.
I'd like to note that, at times, we may need to enter a password while using the live environment. The screensaver can kick in or we might want to run applications with administrator access. The password for the live session (both for the regular user and for root) is "voidlinux".
First impressions
AgarimOS booted to a graphical login screen where I could sign into my account. The login screen offered just one session option: LXQt. The distribution pairs LXQt with the Kwin window manager from KDE and runs it in an X11 session.
The desktop was responsive and quiet with no welcome window or first-run configuration steps. I noticed LXQt was set up to use unusually small icons and a relatively small font. These characteristics can be changed in the LXQt settings panel if we wish.
 AgarimOS 2026.01.17 -- Exploring the LXQt application menu (full image size: 122kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
The distribution ran fairly well in VirtualBox and integrated nicely with the virtual environment. When I tried AgarimOS on my laptop I found most of the basics worked. The desktop was displayed, audio worked, and I could get on-line via wireless networks. However, I ran into four annoying problems while using AgarimOS which I don't usually have with other distributions: - The wireless network widget kept refreshing every few seconds, making it difficult to select a desired network from the list. The list would grow, disappear, and refresh before I could select a network from the system tray widget.
- My touchpad did not register taps as clicks. This is not uncommon and taps-as-clicks can usually be enabled through the desktop settings. However, with AgarimOS the mouse and touchpad settings module reported an error when I tried to change my touchpad settings. It reported AgarimOS was running Synaptics and touchpad settings could only be adjusted when using xinput. Most distributions run xinput these days and I was surprised to find it was missing here, especially since it is required for adjusting basic touchpad functionality. I don't think Synaptics is even maintained on new releases of most distributions.
- My laptop's screen was dim by default. The brightness level can be adjusted using keyboard shortcut keys and by the Monitor settings module. There is no indicator on the desktop as to what percentage of brightness our screen is using, it just gets brighter (to a point) or darker.
- The audio volume level was set to 100% by default. There is a widget in the system tray for adjusting volume and my laptop's media keys worked with this widget to adjust its indicated level up or down. However, the system tray volume control has no effect at all on the actual level of audio volume. Whether the volume control is set to 0% or 100%, the actual audio coming from the speakers comes blaring out at 100%.
 AgarimOS 2026.01.17 -- Changing desktop settings (full image size: 184kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The distribution took up about 5.5GB of disk space, which is more than twice the space required for Void running the Xfce desktop. AgarimOS consumed about 640MB of memory when logged into LXQt which made it about 50% heavier in RAM than Void running Xfce.
Applications
AgarimOS stays on the lean side in terms of included desktop software and does not ship with many applications by default. The Firefox web browser is available along with the Kate text editor, and the PCManFM-Qt file manager. The KDE Partition Manager is available along with an archive file manager. There are no media apps, games, or productivity applications. The LXQt configuration panel is available and makes it pleasantly easy to adjust most aspects of the desktop (touchpad and audio levels being the exceptions).
The distribution includes manual pages and GNU command line utilities. AgarimOS offers just one system library, glibc. The runit software handles init duties while version 6.12 of the Linux kernel runs the show from behind the scenes.
One unusual software choice on display was the default virtual terminal. AgarimOS runs the WezTerm terminal rather than QTerminal or Konsole, which are more commonly used with Qt-based desktops. WezTerm does not appear to offer any special features or abilities. By default it uses transparency, which makes text harder to read. It's also unusually heavy on resources. The terminal, on its own, tended to use around 5.0% of the CPU just showing CPU usage stats. (For comparison's sake, Konsole uses about 0.3% CPU performing the same task.) It was also one of the larger processes in memory unless I opened a web browser or image editor. This seems like a lot of extra resource consumption without, as far as I could tell, any benefit from using WezTerm instead of another terminal application.
Software management
One of the key features of AgarimOS is the inclusion of a graphical package manager, specifically OctoXBPS. This is a low-level package manager with a simple view. We are shown a list of all available packages in the distribution's repositories. A search box gives us the chance to type in keywords to help us narrow down the list of packages displayed. We can then click a box next to any package we want to install or remove.
 AgarimOS 2026.01.17 -- Exploring available packages with OctoXBPS (full image size: 179kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
When I first tried to use OctoXBPS I selected a few packages to install and the package manager showed me an error indicating the packages I had selected could not be found. Wondering if perhaps my repository information was out of date, I clicked the Refresh button and nothing happened. I was unable to update repository information and it seemed likely this information was no longer accurate. Eventually, I found that I had to delete the package manager's cache before it would allow me to refresh the database information and then I was able to install new packages and updates.
People who don't mind using the command line can use the XBPS command line tools to handle packages. XBPS has an odd syntax, but it works quickly. I looked around for support for other package formats, such as Flatpak, but they are not installed by default. Flatpak support is available through the XBPS repositories.
Other observations
The AgarimOS distribution uses zsh as its default command line shell. I find zsh to be a bit colourful and loud for my taste, though it works well enough and some of its features, such as typing suggestions, can be useful.
 AgarimOS 2026.01.17 -- Getting a list of aliases (full image size: 152kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
What I found to be less useful was there were a lot of aliases set up in zsh for us. Some of these were simple add-ons or shortcuts for longer commands, which might be useful. What was not useful, in my opinion, was aliases which overrode existing commands. Some of these were common aliases which slightly changed the behaviours of copy (cp) and move (mv). Others were unusual. For example, cc (which is usually the command to launch the system's default compiler) was changed to run "sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" as root. This command forces cached data to be written to disk and then dropped from memory. Dropping file cache is not at all what I want to have happen when I'm trying to run a compiler so this alias stood out in my mind. Another one was that typing "q" would close the shell. It's a shortcut which is logical, but it means the user is one typo away from aborting their shell session when then want to run w for seeing a list of users on the system.
These aliases were present in addition to shell functions which act similarly to aliases. I soon found that running the cat command was intercepted by the shell and changed to bat; the process listing command (ps) was swapped out for procs; and df was changed to duf which provides entirely different output and does not recognize the same command line flags. This results in the user getting different output and behaviour than expected. I am not at all a fan of the shell assuming it knows better than I do what I want to accomplish and changing my commands on the fly. Aliases and shell functions should make the shell easier and more convenient to use, but these changes just got in the way.
Fortunately all of this can be avoided by swapping out the default zsh for bash which is offered in a mostly pristine and uncomplicated state.
 AgarimOS 2026.01.17 -- Switching to bash (full image size: 134kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Conclusions
When I look at projects which are closely related to their parent distro, I tend to look at three elements of my experience: - Does the distribution fulfill its goals?
- Do I find the new distribution useful?
- How does the new distro compare to its parent?
It's hard to evaluate the first point because, after looking at AgarimOS's website and social media accounts, I couldn't find any goal or mission statement mentioned. The distribution is described as being Void with a range of desktop environments, but it's not clear that it has any purpose beyond offering some variety. Assuming AgarimOS is striving to be Void with alternative desktop environments, I'd say the project is successful in this regard.
 AgarimOS 2026.01.17 -- Visiting the distribution's website using Firefox (full image size: 270kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Moving on to whether I find the distribution (viewed in isolation) useful, I'd have to say that I did not. There is relatively little software included in AgarimOS and much of what was included did not work well. The package manager, which seems to be the main element which sets apart AgarimOS from its parent, didn't work properly; my hardware was not handled well; and the install process was a bit clunky. I don't mind minimal distributions, but if a project is going to focus on minimalism then I think an effort should be made to have that small foundation work as well as possible.
It's also weird to find a minimal distribution, one with so few applications, have so many elements which get in the way. I found myself disabling transparency, swapping out the default shell for a less busy one, reverting to the command like package manager when the graphical front-end ran into problems. How can an operating system have so few packages installed and still have so many features which get in the way?
Moving on to how AgarimOS compares to its parent, one the positive side the young distribution does offer a variety of desktop choices. We can run Cinnamon, GNOME, LXQt, MATE, Plasma, or Xfce on the rolling release distribution. This adds some nice variety for people interested in Void and its ecosystem. While OctoXBPS didn't work particularly well for me, I appreciate the new distribution introducing a graphical package manager.
Beyond these two points in its favour, I feel AgarimOS is mostly a step backward from Void. It's heavier in terms of resources (twice as large on disk and 50% larger in memory), I had several hardware and settings related issues, and the few new features added (such as zsh functions and WezTerm) got in the way more than they helped. I would also note that part of what makes Void appealing is its flexibility (running multiple C libraries across multiple CPU architectures). AgarimOS is fixed on glibc and x86_64 CPUs, making it more rigid.
AgarimOS offers a few nice ideas in terms of focusing more on the desktop, but it lacks a graphical installer, working tools for managing audio and touchpads, and introduces other problems its parent does not have. * * * * * Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following specifications: - Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
* * * * * Visitor supplied rating
AgarimOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 3 review(s).
Have you used AgarimOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
| | Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) | KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox used to develop Redox OS, Mint develops own account manager, sudo project seeks sponsorship  The KDE Linux distribution is a project which showcases the latest KDE software and provides a reference implementation of the KDE Plasma desktop. The KDE Linux project is still in its early stages of development, though a blog post highlights the distribution's rapid progress. One of the key changes is reducing the size of updates: "After months of testing by many contributors, we turned on delta updates. Delta updates increase update speed substantially by calculating the difference between the OS build you have and the one you're updating to, only downloading that difference, and then applying it like a patch to build the new OS image. As a result, each OS update should consume closer to 1-2GB of network bandwidth, down from the 7GB right now (this is if you're updating daily; longer intervals between update will result in larger deltas). Still a lot, but now we have a mechanism for reducing the delta between builds even more." * * * * *  The Redox OS project has been making strides over the past month and the team's latest newsletter mentions the operating system is being used to develop itself: "Using the COSMIC Edit text editor, Anhad Singh wrote, tested, and pushed the first relibc contribution entirely on Redox running in QEMU!" This is another solid milestone for the rapidly progressing open source operating system. The monthly newsletter also mentions improved USB performance and talks about how Redox is now able to run in a web browser (via a web demo page) and on some VPS instances. * * * * *  The Linux Mint team have published their monthly newsletter for January which includes a preview of the distribution's new user account management utility. "For some reason most Linux desktop environments have come up with their own tools for user administration and account details. It's a pity because this is typically an area which belongs to distributions and which cannot be and certainly isn't properly handled by desktops. As a result these tools lack support for a lot of new use cases and they're not well maintained. In the next release, the Administration Tool (mintsysadm) will handle user administration and account details in editions where the desktop tools can be hidden." The newsletter provides additional details and covers other efforts by the Mint team. * * * * *  Christine Hall has raised an issue on FOSS Force with regards to the sudo command, a tool for running programs as another user on the system. "There was news last week about an issue that's pretty much been beneath the radar for a couple of years. I'm trying to piece this together two years later from what I'm reading, but it appears that in February 2024, developer Todd Miller posted something of a plea on his personal website: 'For the past 30+ years I've been the maintainer of sudo,' he wrote. 'I'm currently in search of a sponsor to fund continued sudo maintenance and development. If you or your organization is interested in sponsoring sudo, please let me know.' That was about the entire message, and it's remained on his site's homepage for the past two years."
In the article, Hall points out that many critical open source projects rely on small teams, or sometimes even a single maintainer, who are overworked and paid little, which gives rise to issues like the Heartbleed bug which affected the OpenSSL project. Alternatives to sudo exist, including a substitute called sudo-rs, which is written in Rust and used by Ubuntu. In the BSD communities an alternative called doas is often used. * * * * * These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
| | Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) | Command line tips and tricks for 2026 Doing-some-house-cleaning asks: Is there a quick way to remove all empty folders? I've reorganized a bunch of stuff and now have useless folders all over the place.
DistroWatch answers: If all of the empty sub-directories are in the same directory and you're not worried about additional sub-directories multiple layers deep, then the solution is fairly simple, run this command: $ rmdir * The rmdir command removes directories, but only if they are empty. The above command tries to remove all directories inside the current directory, but only when they are empty. In situations where you have a tree with directories multiple layers deep and you want to prune them all, then you can use the find command to locate all directories in the tree. Then the find command can call the rmdir command to perform the clean-up on any empty directories: $ find . -type d -exec rmdir {} \; * * * * * Picking-favourites asks: What's your favourite or most useful Linux command?
DistroWatch answers: I'm not sure if I would say I have a favourite. There are several command line utilities I run on a regular basis, maybe even daily. They get the job done, but I wouldn't say I have preferences of one over another. By using my history command and sorting the results I can tell you the commands I run most frequently. They are, in order from most commonly used to least commonly used: - ssh - remote system administration
- cd - change the current directory
- ls - list files in the current directory
- vi - a text editor
- push - a custom command I wrote to upload changes to my backup server
- cp - copy a file
- create-screenshot - another custom command I wrote to insert screenshots into articles
- mv - move a file or directory
- less - show the contents of a file or command output
- cal - display a calendar
Some other honourable mentions in my top twenty include rsync for transferring files, bc for performing mathematical calculations, and rm for removing unwanted files. Based on how often I use any particular command, I suppose the ssh OpenSSH client is the one I find most useful.
If you would like to see which commands you use most often you can run the following in your terminal: $ history | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n * * * * * Keeping-them-separate asks: Is there a way to make a program not negatively impact other applications? Like can I run system updates without it interfering with a video?
DistroWatch answers: Running processes can interfere with tasks you are engaged with when the system runs into a bottleneck. In other words, you notice a performance problem when multiple processes are vying for the same, limited resource. Typically the limited resource is either CPU processing power or access to the disk.
I have a few solutions for this problem. The first, easiest, and most obvious one is to perform (or schedule) resource-greedy tasks so they run when your computer isn't busy doing something important. Servers tend to run backups and updates in the middle of the night for just this reason. Likewise, if you are watching a movie or playing a game then you might want to set your backup job (or Gentoo rebuild) to happen at a time when your computer isn't in use.
In situations where you cannot avoid running multiple resource-hungry tasks at the same time, you can lower the priority the system assigns to the task. This means you can make the background task "nicer" so that it stays out of the way of other applications. There are a few commands which can help with this.
The nice command lowers the CPU priority of a task. This means if any other program wants to run in the CPU the "nice" process will give way. If the command we want to limit is already running then we can change its priority using the renice command. The ionice command does the same thing, but lowers the priority of the process in terms of how much of the disk input/output it can consume.
In a practical sense what this means is we can run software updates, backup jobs, media transcoding, and other long-term background jobs by launching them with nice, ionice, or even both if we want to keep them well out of the way. Here is an example of using the two commands together: $ nice -n 19 ionice -c 3 convert myimage.jpg myimage.png The above command invokes nice to set our program to be as "nice" as possible, which is level 19 on Linux. This forces the target process to only use the CPU when other processes don't need it. Then we run ionice and set our target process to class 3 ("-c 3") which means it will only access the disk when input/output is otherwise idle.
The target process we launch is called convert which changes the image format of myimage.jpg" from a JPEG file to a PNG file. I have an alias set up in my shell called "nicest" which, when run, prefixes any command with "nice -n 19 ionice -c 3" to keep it running out of the way of anything else on the system. * * * * * Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
| | Released Last Week | Tiny Core Linux 17.0
The Tiny Core Linux project develops one of the world's most minimalist Linux distributions, with the smallest edition requiring less than 30MB of space. The latest release of Tiny Core is version 17.0 which mostly focuses on package updates. The project's release announcement shares the details: "Changelog for 17.0: kernel updated to 6.18.2; glibc updated to 2.42; gcc updated to 15.2.0; binutils updated to 2.45.1; e2fsprogs base libs/apps updated to 1.47.3; util-linux base libs/apps updated to 2.41.2; provides.sh: Update scripts to work with https mirrors from mbartlett21; tce-update: Undo changes around fetchzsync from mbartlett21; tc-functions: Update https checking from mbartlett21; tc-functions: Change subshell from mbartlett21; update-everything: Add /usr/local/bin to PATH from mbartlett21; shutdown.sh: handle empty lines in /opt/.xfiletool.lst from mbartlett21; 50-udev-default.rules: expanded input device permissions from bdantas." The distribution is offered in three editions: Core, which is command line only; TinyCore, which provides a minimal graphical interface; and CorePlus, which provides additional tools.
Parrot 7.1
The Parrot team have announced the release of Parrot 7.1, an update to the project's 7.x series. The new version includes additional desktop editions along with updated tools: "As we mentioned in the previous release, we can now build additional images as we see fit. Following community requests, we decided to provide Parrot 7.1 ISO images featuring the MATE and LXQt desktop environments, along with a new spin based on the Enlightenment window manager. All of these options are lightweight and suitable for virtually any use case, and of course, you can install all the security tools you need on each of them. In this category, available on our download page, you may also find, in the future, other versions requested or developed by the community that deserve attention." The project's release notes offer additional information.
Ubuntu 24.04.4
Florent 'Skia' Jacquet has announced an update to Ubuntu's 24.04 LTS branch. The new version, 24.04.4, continues the latest long-term support branch of the distribution while updating hardware support and applying security patches. "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support. As usual, this point release includes many updates and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-severity bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS." The release notes provide additional information.
REMnux 8
Lenny Zeltser has announced the release of REMnux 8, a major update of the project's Ubuntu-based Linux distribution featuring a curated collection of free reverse-engineering and malicious software analysis tools: "REMnux 8 is now available. It's a free, open-source Linux toolkit with over 200 tools for analyzing malicious software. You can run it as a virtual machine, a docker container, or install it onto an existing system. I released the first version of REMnux in 2010 to package the utilities I needed for teaching malware analysis and to share the toolkit with the community. Fifteen years and eight major releases later, the toolkit continues to evolve in step with malware trends and analysts' needs. The most notable change in REMnux 8 is the support for AI-assisted malware analysis. The new REMnux MCP server connects AI agents to the distro's tools with practitioner guidance built in. The toolkit's documented tools and predictable interfaces also make it particularly useful to AI agents. The updated documentation includes a new 'Use Artificial Intelligence' tool category that lists OpenCode as a terminal-based AI coding agent, GhidrAssistMCP for AI-assisted reverse engineering in Ghidra, and the r2ai and decai plugins for Radare2." Continue to the release announcement for further information.
 Remnux 8 -- Running the GNOME desktop (full image size: 33kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
KaOS 2026.02
The KaOS distribution has traditionally focused on providing one desktop (KDE Plasma), desktop tools built using one toolkit (Qt), for one CPU architecture (x86_64). This mission is being adjusted with a move away from the Plasma desktop: "You will not find Plasma or Kwin on this ISO, though KaOS has always been a KDE/Plasma only distribution. Instead, you will find a niri/Noctalia based system. For those wondering why this change, it has come into play because of a desire to move away from systemd. Work is ongoing to see if a move to Dinit is viable for this distribution, that also meant, looking for an alternative to Plasma, since Plasma pretty much demands systemd, and will be fully mandatory soon. This ISO still uses systemd fully though. Trials to use niri with the Noctalia shell have proven to be a nice option. Using these means, KaOS can stay a Qt focused distribution. This ISO is still GTK free, still ships Qt/KDE based applications. The change for this ISO however doesn't mean it is permanent. Plasma 6 is still fully available in the repositories. Using an ISO though for wider testing and gauging general response for such a move, was deemed a needed option." Additional details are provided in the project's release announcement. * * * * * Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
| | Torrent Corner | Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 3,389
- Total data uploaded: 49.4TB
| | Upcoming Releases and Announcements | | Summary of expected upcoming releases | | Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) | Most commonly used command line program In this week's Questions and Answers section we talked about commonly used commands and how to see a list of the command line programs a person runs most often. The command to create a list of most commonly commands run recently is: "history | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n".
Which command comes out as the most commonly used in your shell's history?
You can see the results of our previous poll on filesystem performance in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
| What is your most commonly used command?
| cc (gcc/clang): | 3 (0%) | | cd: | 288 (21%) | | cp: | 12 (1%) | | find: | 14 (1%) | | grep: | 43 (3%) | | ls: | 401 (30%) | | mv: | 7 (1%) | | python: | 16 (1%) | | rsync: | 50 (4%) | | ssh: | 65 (5%) | | I do not use the command line: | 81 (6%) | | Other: | 370 (27%) | | | | Website News | DistroWatch database summary
* * * * * This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 23 February 2026. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. To contact the authors please send e-mail to: - Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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| Archives | | • Issue 1165 (2026-03-23): Argent Linux 1.5.3, disk space required by Linux, Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and builds RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking | | • Issue 1164 (2026-03-16): d77void, age verification laws and Linux, SUSE may be for sale, TrueNAS takes its build system private, Debian publishes updated Trixie media, MidnightBSD and System76 respond to age verification laws | | • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features | | • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app | | • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management | | • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship | | • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap | | • Issue 1158 (2026-02-02): Manjaro 26.0, fastest filesystem, postmarketOS progress report, Xfce begins developing its own Wayland window manager, Bazzite founder interviewed | | • Issue 1157 (2026-01-26): Setting up a home server, what happened to convergence, malicious software entering the Snap store, postmarketOS automates hardware tests, KDE's login manager works with systemd only | | • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options | | • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland | | • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion | | • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 | | • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language | | • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver | | • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report | | • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack | | • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu | | • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes | | • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 | | • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates | | • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack | | • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued | | • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu | | • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME | | • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support | | • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels | | • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media | | • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report | | • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories | | • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools | | • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support | | • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository | | • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release | | • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued | | • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life | | • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage | | • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor | | • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating | | • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 | | • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication | | • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots | | • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager | | • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland | | • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs | | • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure | | • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii | | • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian | | • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support | | • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE | | • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability | | • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi | | • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
Oracle Solaris
Solaris is a computer operating system, the proprietary Unix variant developed by Sun Microsystems. Early versions, based on BSD UNIX, were called SunOS. The shift to a System V code base in SunOS 5 was marked by changing the name to Solaris 2. Earlier versions were retroactively named Solaris 1.x. After version 2.6, Sun dropped the "2." from the name. Solaris consists of the SunOS UNIX base operating system plus a graphical user environment. Solaris is written in a platform-independent manner and is available for SPARC and x86 processors (including x86_64). Starting from version 10, the Solaris licence changed and the product was distributed free of charge for any system or purpose, but after the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle in 2009, the product is once again proprietary with a restrictive licence.
Status: Active
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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