Distro watch

What’s down the side of the free software sofa?

NOMADBSD 1.3.2

A 64-bit live system designed for USB flash drives and based on FREEBSD. Following the release of FREEBSD 12.1 Nomadbsd has updated and fixed the filesystem layout to enable tools such as bectl to snapshot the boot environment.

Chief updates include changes to the ZFS (filesystem) layout to make it possible for users to back up the boot environment, and support for special-case wireless driver licenses. See more at http://nomadbsd.org/index.html#1.3.2.

SOLYDXK 10.4

Designed for small businesses, not-for-profit organisations and home users, this Debian-based distribution has been updated to Debian 10.4 “Buster” base, with a key update being new privacy settings for Firefox web browsing.

An interesting move is to merge all the usr/ directories (bin, sbin, lib) with symbolic links to just the /usr/ directory. An Enthusiast release is expected to arrive later this year.

Find out what else is new by visiting https://solydxk.com/news/solydxk-10-point-release-10.4.

TAILS 4.8

One of the best known privacy distros The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB system designed to protect your privacy online. As you’d expect, this latest release contains many security fixes.

However, the key move appears to be disabling the Unsafe Browser (the hint is in the name) by default, because it’s become clear that another compromised task (for example, a phishing attack on Thunderbird) could start an invisible Unsafe Browser. Learn more about the changes to the distro here: https://tails.boum.org/news/version_4.8.

ZENWALK 15.0 2020

Based on the Slackware development branch, Zenwalk is a lightweight Xfce 4.14 desktop with Flatpak support out of the box and offers modern features with an oldschool approach.

Version 15 is the yearly milestone release for 2020, which the project always aims for. The goal is to provide a fast and simple setup, a refined desktop, a selection of the best tools and ease of use, all while fully respecting the Slackware philosophy.

Read up about the distro at www.zenwalk.org.

The privacy-orientated distro Tails has been updated, partly to foil the running of Unsafe Browser.

Now you can use utilities to take a record of Nomadbsd’s boot environment.

Firefox users will benefit from extra privacy settings in the new version of Debian-based distro Solydxk.

The Zenwalk project first appeared on the open source scene in 2004.