 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1166, 30 March 2026 |
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Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Running applications and services in containers is a popular approach on Linux, especially when we want to isolate the program running from its host filesystem. Having a portable container which can be run across multiple distribution is helpful for both developers (who want a consistent environment) and administrators (who want to copy the same deployment across multiple machines). Over in the BSD world, FreeBSD has a similar concept called jails which allows the user to run processes in an isolated environment. The idea of jails is being ported over to NetBSD which would allow administrators to run background services or untrusted programs in an environment cut off from the rest of the filesystem. This week we take NetBSD's young jail implementation for a test drive in our Feature Story. Will you make use of NetBSD jails? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we report on Ubuntu joining the Rust Foundation and planning to trim back the features offered by the distribution's boot loader. We also talk about the Peppermint team working on new desktop utilities while PINE64 shows off new software on open hardware. The Linux community is growing and, with it, new developers are trying their luck at making applications for Linux distributions. In our Questions and Answers column we share tips for publishing new applications so that Linux users can download and enjoy them. In this issue we thank the kind people who have donated to DistroWatch in March and we wrap up this week by sharing a summary of recent releases and listing 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:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
NetBSD jails
About a month ago we shared that there is an effort underway to bring jails, a popular isolation technology used by FreeBSD, to the NetBSD operating system. This Jails for NetBSD project is not yet an official part of NetBSD, but the implementation of jails has reached a point where it can be run and tested.
A jail, for people who have not had a chance to use one, is an isolated section of the filesystem which acts like a lightweight virtual machine. The jail is like it's own, self-contained operating system which has its own copies of programs, configuration files, and user accounts. Any processes or services run inside the jail cannot see or interact with the host operating system. A jail shares the kernel of the host operating system, making it lighter than a virtual machine, while offering most of the same benefits of running processes in an isolated space.
A jail on FreeBSD or NetBSD is somewhat similar to running a container on Linux. A jail offers similar benefits in terms of security and portability, allowing programs and operating environments to be ported between host machines.
I had some time this week and, as a fan of FreeBSD jails, wanted to try out the new Jails for NetBSD tools. The Jails for NetBSD project offers ISO files which are based on NetBSD 11 and include the new jail utilities, saving us from manually installing the technology. I downloaded the 621MB ISO file for x86_64 machines and set out to explore jails on NetBSD.
Installing
Installing the demonstration build of NetBSD mostly worked the same as a regular install of the operating system. The menu-driven text installer did a nice job of walking me through the options. However, when I opted to install all components (which is the default) the installation of the xbase package set from the ISO failed. I tried installing xbase again, using the option to fetch packages over the network from an HTTP server and this failed too with a timeout. My third attempt, which used an FTP server, did report success for some packages, but then setting up the package manager (pkgin) failed when using both HTTP and FTP.
Perhaps as a result of all of this, when the installer reported it had successfully installed the operating system and I rebooted the computer, the operating system failed to boot. It was missing both its service configuration file (rc.conf) and X11 packages.
I went through the install process again, this time installing the full system, minus X11 support. This worked and resulted in a functioning NetBSD system, though the pkgin package manager still failed to download and set up.
Back when I reviewed NetBSD 10, I ran into the same problem and was unable to fetch pkgin at install time. The cause of this turned out to be NetBSD assumes it can connect to remote systems using IPv6 and if no IPv6 networking is available, it will hang while trying to download files from remote servers. Disabling IPv6, or setting IPv4 as being the preferred network protocol, fixes the issue. Once I had done that, I was able to download the pkgin package manager and perform other Internet-related activities. It was frustrating to discover this bug continues to exist in NetBSD 11.
Getting started with jails
Once my demo copy of NetBSD was installed I found the jail tools were available on the system. Most of the actions we will want to perform with our jails are handled by a tool called jailmgr. There is another tool we might want to use occasionally called jailctl, but most actions concerning jails are handled through jailmgr. We will not need to install any other tools from the NetBSD package repositories.
Running jailmgr without any parameters displays a single page of helpful text that lists the commands jailmgr recognizes. I will cover some of the key features as we go, but I want to say up front that the commands are pretty clearly labeled. "jailmgr start" starts a jail, "jailmgr stop" stops a jail, "jailmgr create" makes a new jail. It's all fairly straightforward.
Before we create any jails, or run them, we need to prepare the operating system to handle jails. We can do this with the command "jailmgr bootstrap". This command downloads the package sets required to run a jail and adds the line "jailmgr=NO" to our service configuration. I think this second step prevents jails from running automatically at boot time.
At this point we can get started and make our first jail. The Jails for NetBSD website includes an example that creates a basic web server in an isolated environment. Following this example, I ran:
jailmgr create -a -x '/usr/libexec/httpd -I 8080 -X -f -s /var/www/mysite' -l medium -r 8080 -f local3 -o info -e err -t jail-web web
The above command creates a new jail called "web" which will listen on network port 8080 for incoming connections. Incoming traffic is handled by the httpd web service. Any requests for web pages will look inside the jail's /var/www/mysite directory to find HTML files.
I feel this last point is important. The above path, where the website exists, is relative to the jail, it is inside the jail's environment. Nothing in our host operating system's /var/www/mysite directory (or other directories) will be visible to the processes running inside the jail.
At this point the jail exists, but it is not yet running and we have not created a web page for it to display. Let's fix that.
There are two approaches we can take when we want to create or edit files in one of our jails. The first approach is to enter into the jail and run a shell inside the isolated environment. We can enter a jail's filesystem by running the command jailctl. In this example, I enter my jail called "web" using the jailctl command:
jailctl exec web
Once inside the jail we can check on the guest's configuration, make a website, create new user accounts, or perform most other actions we would perform on any NetBSD installation.
I created a simple web page while inside the jail using the following commands:
mkdir -p /var/www/mysite/
vi /var/www/mysite/index.html
(Create web page.)
exit
Alternatively, if we want to see or edit the files which exist inside a jail we can find them from our host filesystem. To see a list of jails which have been created and their location on the host system we can use jailmgr:
jailmgr list
This will tell us which jails exist on the system, whether they are running or not, and where we can find them. In my case, my jail named web was located under /var/jailmgr/jails/web/root/. I could then visit that location, see and edit the contents of the jailed filesystem in a sub-directory, and make a new web page in the jail's sub-directory.
To activate our jail and, in my case, run the isolated web service, we can run the following command:
jailmgr start web
Once this has been done we can connect to the local machine on network port 8080 to see my basic website. Running a web browser or cURL allowed me to see the website was working. It was simple and it didn't have any security yet, but it was functioning.
I tried creating a few other jails, seeing if I could stretch the functionality offered. I created a jail for just OpenSSH connections by running this command:
jailmgr create -a -x '/usr/sbin/sshd' -r 2222 -f local3 -t jail-ssh sshd
I had to enter into the jail to edit secure shell's configuration file and generate a hostkey before it would work, but after that I could get the isolated OpenSSH instance to respond to network requests coming in on port 2222.
I also created a jail for FTP file sharing and ran the Bftpd file service inside it. This was easier since Bftpd is almost entirely self-contained and doesn't rely on anything other than its own configuration file. (In the interest of disclosure, I am the current maintainer of Bftpd.)
Impressions from using jails
On the whole, the Jails for NetBSD project is off to a great start. The tools may be in their early stages, but they perform the basic tasks of bootstrapping the system, creating jails, starting and stopping jails, and showing the status/location of isolated environments. With just a little bit of reading and a couple of commands I was able to spin up multiple jails in a few minutes, implementing website and file transfer services in isolated environments. The overhead is minimal (about 5MB of disk space per jail and just enough memory to run the service daemon).
There are some limitations. The jails appear to be equivalent to FreeBSD's "thin jails", meaning they hold just enough files to run the service. In other words, there is not a full, contained copy of the NetBSD operating system inside the jails. The jails appear to borrow most of the root filesystem, including /usr, from the host system, and access it in read-only mode. In other words, the fixed, core parts of the host operating system are used inside the jail.
I have mixed feelings about this approach. It is efficient, again the guest jails only require about 5MB of disk space each, but it means the jails are locked in to using the host system's binary files. (Configuration files, such as those stored in /etc/, seem to all be unique to the jail and not shared with the host system.) I'm curious to see how well this thin jail approach will work when it comes time to perform upgrades and a new version of the host operating system presumably forces the jail to upgrade with it.
I discovered that tools running inside the jails cannot perform chroot actions. This makes sense, to a point, because the jail is itself already effectively a chroot environment. However, this will break some tools which do not know they are in a jail and try to perform a chroot command to self-contain themselves.
I discovered that sometimes a jail would refuse to shutdown. If I was running a command inside a jail or running a daemon which was installed in the jail, then the jail would not shutdown. As far as I could tell, there is no way to force a jail to stop running, short of rebooting the host system. I also discovered that if someone running a shell changed into the sub-directory used by a jail then the jail would insist it was in use and refuse to stop running.
At the moment, my first impression of jails on NetBSD is that the project is off to a good start. The basic tools are in place, they work (usually as expected), and the documentation is pretty clear. It's not hard to create a thin jail and run a daemon inside it, accepting connections and responding to network requests.
There are a few limitations which may get sorted out later, but for now I was able to work around the small problems which arose. As with most NetBSD features, the new jail implementation is light, it looks to be well designed, and provides basic functionality without flair or extra features.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu joins Rust Foundation and plans to trim GRUB features, Peppermint works on new utilities, PINE64 showcases new features on open hardware
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has announced that it has joined the Rust Foundation as a gold member, indicating the company is donating annually to the Foundation. "Today Canonical announced that it has joined The Rust Foundation as a Gold Member. The Rust Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the performance, safety, and sustainability of the Rust programming language. Rust Foundation members play a critical role in supporting the governance, infrastructure, and long-term health of Rust. As a Gold Member, Canonical is making a significant investment in that work while supporting the growing use of Rust in production systems." Canonical has gradually been migrating components of the Ubuntu distribution from their original components, written in C/C++, to liberally licensed alternatives written in Rust. As Rust is designed to be a memory-safe language, this move potentially avoids common avenues for exploits.
A proposed change to Ubuntu might see future versions of the distribution greatly reduce the features in the GRUB boot loader, at least on systems which do not enable Secure Boot. Features which will be dropped from the signed version of GRUB could include Btrfs, XFS, and ZFS filesystem support, all image formats for backgrounds, LVM volumes, and LUKS-encrypted disks. Ubuntu developers are aware this change will make many users unhappy: "We understand these are controversial options; however we believe they'd substantial improve security, but also simply pivoting to new boot solutions in the future. The features will continue to be available without Secure Boot and security support. Affected systems will by default stay on 26.04 LTS, that is, the upgrade will be disabled in ubuntu-release-upgrader."
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Peppermint OS is a Debian- and Devuan-based distribution which is also developing a Void-based branch. The new Void branch is getting some custom tools: "It started when the Peppermint team began exploring void-mklive and realized that, to match our internal processes, we needed to build something ourselves. That development eventually crossed over into the Debian side of the house, beginning the start of our path toward fully custom build tools. What we are doing is, building a more accessible PepVoid experience using Python and Tkinter tools. Our goal is to let these tools mature in the Void environment before migrating them over to the Debian side, for a consistent, standardized experience across both platforms." The new tools - which include a graphical installer, software centre, and welcome window - are showcased in the project's blog post.
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The PINE64 community published a news post this week which talks about updates for existing devices and plans for future open hardware devices. The star of the blog post was the PineNote, an e-ink tablet which can be used in a variety of ways: "The PineNote was shown off at FOSDEM with a few demos featuring hrdl's Arch image and a pre-release image of QuillOS using hrdl's kernel tree. With a massive thanks to Tom.K, Phantomas and hrdl for staying around and helping demo with his PineNote. Some demos included smoothly playing videos, playing doom (you had to be there to believe it!) along with its capabilities as an actual ebook reader."
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Publishing new software for Linux
Creating-and-sharing asks: I'm working on a Linux app that I'm soon going to want to share with the world. How do I go about making it available for people to download? I've read about different formats (Deb, RPM, AUR). But which ones should I use and how do I get my app into the repos?
DistroWatch answers: Congratulations on creating your Linux application! You didn't mention if it is your first, but it sounds like this might be your initial step into creating software for the Linux ecosystem? In which case, I hope you are finding the new experience creative and interesting.
As for how to make your new software available to others in the community, there are a few approaches you can take, depending on how much work you want to put into the experience and how wide an audience you wish to reach. I'd suggest trying the following steps, in order from easiest to most involved, and you can determine how far along the list you want to proceed.
- The first step, and the easiest one, is to publish your source code. These days many developers publish their code on platforms such as GitHub and Codeberg. Instructions for installing dependencies, compiling the software, and installing your application can be included in a README file. At that point enthusiasts will be able to build and try your software.
What often happens once your code has been published is, if people find the software useful, they will petition to get it included in the repositories of various Linux distributions, saving you the effort of building and distributing any binary packages.
- With some projects, that first step is where it stops, with the developer providing source code which other people can turn into packages. However, if you'd like to lower the bar to trying out your software you might consider making a portable package. Many developers of desktop applications will create a Flatpak bundle and submit it to Flathub. This gives people a chance to try out your software on most distributions. There is a guide for publishing your application on Flathub.
People who develop command line software might provide something other than Flatpak bundles, such as a Docker container or an AppImage.
- The above options will supply most curious Linux users with packages which are nearly universal and therefore able to run in almost all environments. Some developers go a step further and will create packages in popular formats (such as RPM for openSUSE and Fedora, Deb for Debian and Ubuntu, and maybe upload a recipe to the Arch Linux community repository). Creating distro-specific packages, while a nice bonus, is more work which has diminishing returns in terms of the size of your potential audience.
Best of luck with sharing your new software with the world!
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
ML4W OS 2.12.0
Stephan Raabe has published a new version of ML4W OS, an Arch Linux-based distribution featuring a heavily customised Hyprland tiling compositor and with advanced configuration of Hyprland using its "dotfiles". The new release, version 2.12.0, delivers a new Welcome App, several new keybindings and a variety of minor improvements. It also updates Hyprland to version 0.54.2. "Version 2.12.0: Flatpak ML4W Welcome App, Settings App, Sidebar App and Calendar App replaced with Quickshell; wlogout replaced with a Quickshell widget; ML4W Hyprland Settings application can be installed optionally from the Welcome app or as described here; new snapshot script for timeshift and grub-btrfs supporting Arch- and Fedora-based distributions and openSUSE Tumbleweed; new Pacman update script for Arch to enable colors, parallel downloads and ILoveCandy; new keybinding to toggle the active window to floating and pin - SUPER+ALT+T; new keybinding to toggle the calendar widget - SUPER+CTRL+C; Quickshell Overview added, can be toggled with CTRL+TAB." Visit the project's changelog page for a complete list of updates and improvements.
ML4W OS 2.12.0 -- Running the Hyprland interface
(full image size: 1041kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Kali Linux 2026.1
The Kali Linux team has published a new version of its distribution with the launch of Kali Linux 2026.1. The new version includes a classic theme which makes the desktop resemble the project's first release, which happened 20 years ago. There are also several new tools included in the 2026.1 release. "New year, new release - Kali 2026.1 is here. There is everything from a fresh coat of paint to a nod to our roots, with normal ongoing improvements. Building on from December's 2025.4, the summary of the changelog: 2026 theme refresh - our yearly theme refresh; BackTrack mode for Kali-Undercover - a new mode celebrating BackTrack's 20th anniversary; Kali's 13th birthday event - a little community event; new tools - 8 new programs. 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of BackTrack Linux, the predecessor to Kali. To celebrate this milestone, we wanted to bring back some nostalgia for longtime users of this legendary cybersecurity distribution by adding a 'BackTrack mode' to kali-undercover. This mode transforms the desktop to recreate the look and feel of BackTrack 5, with the same wallpaper, colors and window themes. You can run it directly from the menu or by running kali-undercover --backtrack in the terminal." Additional details and screenshots can be found in the release announcement.
Plop Linux 26.1
Elmar Hanlhofer has announced the release of Plop Linux 26.1, an updated build of the project's independently-developed Linux distribution for desktops and servers, designed for advanced Linux users. It is available for the i486, x86_64 and armv6l architectures. The distribution's changelog page provides details about all the recent updates. "Version 26.1, release date 2026-03-27. Updates: group and user IDs updated, affected files - /etc/group,passwd,shadow. Pipewire: ~/.bash_profile set XDG_RUNTIME_DIR; start PipeWrite in ~/xfce4, ~/fluxbox, ~/mate. DBUS: ~/.xinitrc start DBUS with 'export $(dbus-launch)'. Thunar: movie thumbnails enabled. GCC: default to -fPIE instead of -fPIC. Sysklogd: pdated from 1.5.1 to 2.7.2, /etc/syslog.conf updated. BIND (named): configuration in /var/named updated. Replaced: cron replaced with Fcron, NTP replaced with NTPsec, ISC DHCP client/daemon replaced with dhcpcd, tftp-hpa replaced with atftp, wol replaced with wakeonlan. 303 packages updated. Added: Bluez, PipeWire, GoCryptFS. Alternatives added to prepare removing GTK 2 in the future: Simple Scan for XSane, FileZilla for gFTP. Two new scripts for updating Plop Linux desktop, location /usr/share/plop/: update-etc - update the /etc directory, set the 'keep' variable to keep your own files and directories...."
Plop Linux 26.1 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 322kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
SysetmRescue 13.00
François Dupoux has released SystemRescue 13.00, a significant update of the project's Arch-based specialist Linux distribution designed primarily to repair installed systems and to rescue data from damaged drives. This is the distribution's first release that features Linux kernel 6.18, the latest long-term supported kernel branch, and it also synchronises the included packages with upstream repositories. The included web browser is updated to Firefox 140.9.0 ESR. "SystemRescue 13.00 - 2026-03-28. Updated the Linux kernel to the long-term-supported Linux 6.18.20; updated bcachefs tools and kernel module to version 1.37.3; updated yay-prepare script to fix errors causing the script to fail; use default font from the kernel to avoid tiny font on HiDPI screens; script to change the scaling factor on HiDPI screens depending on configuration; added yq command-line utility for processing YAML, XML, TOML; replace Python version of iotop with iotop-c; added various packages - fatsort, nss-mdns; updated GParted to version 1.8.1." Visit the project's changelog page for details of all the recent changes and updates.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| 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: 3,411
- Total data uploaded: 49.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Would you use the new jail feature on NetBSD?
In this week's Feature Story we talked about isolating processes in jails. Specifically, we looked at a new implementation of jails on NetBSD. While still in its early stages of development, the new jail technology functions and there are examples in the documentation from which to draw inspiration. What do you think of running jails on NetBSD, is it something you will use?
You can see the results of our previous poll on root partition size in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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| Website News |
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $256 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Dan C | $100 |
| J S | $50 |
| David W | $24 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Joshua B | $7 |
| Jacek Marcin Jaworski | $5 |
| Používateľ Vlado Haralanov | $5 |
| Taikedz | $5 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Brian59 | $5 |
| John B | $5 |
| Joe Football | $5 |
| AbondonShiP | $5 |
| David R | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
| Kal D | $1 |
| aRubes | $1 |
| Colton D | $1 |
| Lars N | $1 |
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 6 April 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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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Will you use jails on NetBSD? (by Hans Reiser on 2026-03-30 00:14:13 GMT from Canada)
No but I'll use NetBSD in Jail!
2 • Jails (by BigMike on 2026-03-30 00:16:33 GMT from United States)
I tried and tried to get a web browser working in a jail on FreeBSD and could never get it to successfully launch, despite following various tutorials to a T. This was disappointing coming from OpenBSD where Pledge and Unveil work seamlessly and with almost no effort.
3 • Plop Linux? (by InvisibleInk on 2026-03-30 01:01:50 GMT from United States)
Any Plop Linux users here? If so, please tell us what it's like and what you like about it. TIA
4 • NetBSD jails (by Keith S on 2026-03-30 03:06:07 GMT from United States)
I have never been able to get NetBSD running on any system, despite following the instructions and digging deep to try to resolve issues that were potentially causing the problem. The last time I tried was probably four or five years ago, but there were many attempts in the ten years prior to that. It's on my 'never again wasting my time' list.
5 • Publishing new software for Linux (by Andy Prough on 2026-03-30 04:18:45 GMT from United States)
@Jesse - >"However, if you'd like to lower the bar to trying out your software you might consider making a portable package. Many developers of desktop applications will create a Flatpak bundle and submit it to Flathub. This gives people a chance to try out your software on most distributions. There is a guide for publishing your application on Flathub .... The above options will supply most curious Linux users with packages which are nearly universal and therefore able to run in almost all environments. Some developers go a step further and will create packages in popular formats (such as RPM for openSUSE and Fedora, Deb for Debian and Ubuntu, and maybe upload a recipe to the Arch Linux community repository). Creating distro-specific packages, while a nice bonus, is more work which has diminishing returns in terms of the size of your potential audience."
You and I probably use different software, because nearly everything I need is available in a .deb package that tracks Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS. That's where the vast majority of the desktop users are. I've very rarely seen a Flatpak that I was interested in using that did not also have a .deb package available. And these days, the more professional applications nearly all have Debian repositories that you can just add on to your MX, antiX, or LMDE system and update via apt or via your system's software center.
I'd say if you want to have many users then you need to cater to the critical mass of desktop users, which is on Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS based distros.
6 • New Linux Software (by George on 2026-03-30 07:31:16 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for addressing the distribution formats issue, as I have just been asking this for my new app (see URL). I didn't know how popular Flathub was, so I'll look into it, thanks! Also @5 I did include a deb :)
7 • Plop Linux (by eb on 2026-03-30 08:36:49 GMT from France)
@3 : interested too.
8 • Publishing OLD software for Linux (by GettingOld on 2026-03-30 11:30:08 GMT from United States)
... is what you get when using Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS. To paraphrase Andy:
"You and I probably use different software, because nearly everything I need ISN'T available in a .deb package that tracks Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS."
I don't want to wait on a new program version for years...
9 • A Gaol for thine httpd (by We all float down on 2026-03-30 13:12:39 GMT from The Netherlands)
By Jove, that almost sounds like a plain olde Plan9 per-process file tree to me.
So, I thank thee, but not falling for thy NetBSD again, 621 MB, surely thou jestest.
10 • NetBSD, Flatpak (by Robert on 2026-03-30 15:06:17 GMT from United States)
Of the major BSD flavors, NetBSD is the only one I never tried at all. The core goal of being as portable as possible just never seemed that important to me. Linux and BSD in general are portable "enough." I fail to see the point of running NetBSD on a toaster. I mean, it's cool for sure, but not really useful.
Anyway, I'm going on and on about crap that's really not that important.
As far as making Flatpaks goes - I'm all for them but one thing I will add is that if one chooses to go this route, PLEASE keep it updated. There are way too many applications on Flathub that were uploaded and abandoned with no updates. Then the user has to waste tons of space keeping a bunch of old runtimes installed for single applications, while also having Flatpak yell at them to update EOL runtimes like they have any choice in the matter.
11 • Publishing new software for Linux (by StephenC on 2026-03-30 18:30:12 GMT from United States)
"People who develop command line software might provide something other than Flatpak bundles, such as a Docker container or an AppImage".
AppImages are not just for command line applications. In fact, most of the AppImages I have come across are not command line applications, but are GUI applications. My advice would be to not develop for any packaging format unless you are already familar with doing so. Once you have an easy to compile process the packaging will follow.
12 • AppImage (by Jesse on 2026-03-30 19:20:19 GMT from Canada)
@11: "AppImages are not just for command line applications. In fact, most of the AppImages I have come across are not command line applications, but are GUI applications. "
Same. I wasn't saying AppImages are _only_ for command line programs. I was pointing out their approach is better suited for command line programs _when compared against_ Flatpaks.
13 • Publishing new software for Linux (by JD on 2026-03-30 22:05:58 GMT from Italy)
"I'm working on a Linux app that I'm soon going to want to share with the world."
With great pain, I would suggest Flatpak.
14 • On NetBSD (by Tuxedoar on 2026-03-31 03:00:00 GMT from Argentina)
Hi. I know very little about BSDs in general. Learning about them is in my "to do list", but with quite low priority due to lack of time, though. If I understand correctly, NetBSD is the one that has the best support for 32-bit systems, these days. I particularly apreciate this so, out of curiosity, I installed NetBSD on an ancient Netbook (CLI only stuff, no GUI), with an atom processor and 1 GB of RAM. So far, I couldn't dedicate significant time on it, but it seems to work fine.
Have a nice week.
Cheers.
15 • Plop Linux (by BL on 2026-03-31 07:18:10 GMT from Australia)
¯
i remember Plop Linux from back in the day:
plop it on a CD,
plop that in a PC,
away you go :)
i still have it on a CD just in case, nice simple recovery etc. OS,
not a dedicated recovery one like SystemRescue,
but a sturdy all-rounder to just get s..t done,
in situations e.g. you stuffed-up grub or kernel link or whatever :)
i'll try out the new version & will leave a mini-review on its DW page
16 • plop (by grindstone on 2026-03-31 09:40:55 GMT from United States)
Appreciate that -- interested as well.
17 • re: Plop Linux (by InvisibleInk on 2026-03-31 15:44:50 GMT from United States)
@15 BL
Thanks, man. Looking forward to your report!
18 • GRUB features (by José on 2026-03-31 18:36:52 GMT from Sweden)
I think that the non-core GRUB parts (related to parsing and on-disk formats) should be re-implemented in GNU Guile. It will improve safety and extensibility, yet won't kill performance.
Number of Comments: 18
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| • Issue 1166 (2026-03-30): NetBSD jails, publishing software for Linux, Ubuntu joins Rust Foundation, Canonical plans to trim GRUB features, Peppermint works on new utilities, PINE64 shows off open hardware capabilities |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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| • 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 |
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Kicksecure
Kicksecure is a security-hardened Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch, with Xfce as the default desktop user interface. It is a hardened operating system designed to be resistant to viruses, malware and attacks, and extensively reconfigured in accordance with an advanced multi-layer defense model, thereby providing in-depth security. Kicksecure provides protection from many types of malware in its default configuration with no customization required.
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