Distro watch

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

LIBREELEC 10.0.0

The tenth version of this media-orientated Linux distro has been released. It comes with Kodi (Matrix) 19.1, the popular media player, and as the release announcement

(https://bit.ly/lxf281libreelec) explains, you’ll need to manually update to get it. It’s available to download for Raspberry Pi, Allwinner, Rockchip, Amlogic, NXP and standard PCs, but as the release announcement mentions, there remains a major bug that can crash the software when switching profiles. Hopefully that’ll get sorted ASAP.

VOYAGER LIVE 11

Voyager Live 11 is the latest release of this Debian-based distro with the Gnome desktop. Based on Debian 11 “Bullseye”, it comes with Linux kernel 5.10, Gnome 3.38, Firefox 78.13 and LibreOffice 7.0. Unlike previous versions, this release preserves the internal structure of Debian, and all package updates are from official Debian mirrors to help avoid any security issues. New scripts have been included to make certain tasks, such as switching between PC and tablet modes, easier. Find out more about this release at https://bit.ly/lxf281voyager11.

SPARKYLINUX 6.0

A new stable release of SparkyLinux, based on Debian “Bullseye”, has been released, and comes with a host of package updates, along with the Linux kernel 5.10.46 LTS. If you use the rolling release (Po Tolo) of Sparky, you should get this update pretty easily. Unlike many modern distros, SparkyLinux 6.0 still supports 32-bit hardware, which is good news for anyone running this on older machines. To find out more about the latest release, head over to https://bit.ly/lxf281sparky6.

KAOS 2021.08

A new version of this KDE-sporting distro has been released as part of its rolling release schedule, and comes with updates to Systemd, Curl, Mesa and more. Because Qt 5.15, which KaOS uses for many of its applications, only receives closed source updates these days, KDE has published its own 5.15 fork, which KaOS now uses. There’s a host of other handy updates with this release, so check out the full release announcement, along with download instructions, at https://bit.ly/lxf281kaos08.

SparkyLinux 6.0 updates the Linux kernel and much more, while still supporting older 32-bit devices.

LibraELEC is a great distro for people building media centre PCs.

Voyager Live is a graphically impressive Debian-based distro, and a new version is now available for download.

KDE has published its own fork of Qt 5.15, which KaOS makes full use of.