April 21, 2022 starts 3 Major Distro Releases

[Clarity]

All within 1 week of each other

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• Fedora 36 Wayland

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4-RC

Enjoy

[Clarity]

The next Ubuntu Long-Term has been released. It is announced on Distrowatch.

Version 22.04 of Ubuntu has been published...

It appears to have pipewire, too.

[peebee]

Fedora 36 - Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-36-1.5.iso
2 folders at top level of partition
- fedora contains initrd.img & vmlinuz
- LiveOS contains squashfs.img

Code: Select all

title Fedora
    uuid ?????
    kernel /fedora/vmlinuz root=live:LABEL=????? rootfstype=auto ro rd.live.image quiet rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 rd.live.check rd.live.overlay.size=2048
    initrd /fedora/initrd.img

Screenshot from 2022-05-26 11-31-20.png (194.34 KiB) Viewed 1360 times

[Clarity]

Been testing Fedora v36 Live for several weeks: Pretty powerful platform, with loads of things to fall in love with, OOTB.

Package management options, UI, performance is stable and straight-forward. Modern elements in display technology and audio also brings this distro into the 21st century

Not sure if this can/will be "Puppyfied" as their implementation of wayland, GTK, and audio is much advanced, while PUPs are still on the leading edges of this.

Of the announced 3 mentioned in this thread's OP, this desktop seems most comfortable when viewed coming from a Puppy background.

[wiak]

Been testing Fedora v36 Live for several weeks: Pretty powerful platform, with loads of things to fall in love with, OOTB.

Package management options, UI, performance is stable and straight-forward. Modern elements in display technology and audio also brings this distro into the 21st century

Not sure if this can/will be "Puppyfied" as their implementation of wayland, GTK, and audio is much advanced, while PUPs are still on the leading edges of this.

Of the announced 3 mentioned in this thread's OP, this desktop seems most comfortable when viewed coming from a Puppy background.

In terms of booting and overlayfs save to RAM type tricks, and as a frugal install, I could probably make a weedogit version of either of these three distros mentioned in first post. Fedora, I feel, would be the most useful since Red Hat Certificate studies (towards Red Hat Certified Engineer and so on) are the principal Polytechnics/University Diploma-level Linux study courses, and Red Hat distributions (Fedora fine) a necessity for completely undertaking that. I'll download it and see if a weedogit works - if it does then most all the additional utilities being developed for KLV-Airedale would also work with it (RAM2 save on demand mode, sfs-load and so on), though I've have to study how they work and how to integrate some of these KLV extras I'm otherwise not very familiar with (I keep meaning to do that for the other weedogit distros).

[Clarity]

Hi @wiak. You (and others too) might want to see this review found on Distrowatch BEFORE diving into Fedora v36.

I would consider this reviewer's opinion useful as he goes much further in-depth with all of his distro tests, than I do. His position is reviewing ability from a more seasoned reviewers perspective.

My tests and use is rather elementary: Thus I have used basic capability(s) for stability.

Should one chooses to consider Fedora v36, you might want to read the review and compare any of your notes against the comments in the review.

LASTLY
THIS report may be of greater interest when deciding; It is not based upon judgements, rather it measures showing data to back up the findings. I had tested Intel's Linux last year and from the review, its time to revisit it as it has seasoned.

[wiak]

Hi @wiak. You (and others too) might want to see this review found on Distrowatch BEFORE diving into Fedora v36.
...
LASTLY
THIS report may be of greater interest when deciding; It is not based upon judgements, rather it measures showing data to back up the findings. I had tested Intel's Linux last year and from the review, its time to revisit it as it has seasoned.

The distrowatch reviews are incredibly mixed I see: many give rating of 10, another bunch rate around 5. Have to take that all with a pinch of salt.
Intel's Clear Linux is 'clearly' one to watch.
I'll download live version of that and also Fedora to see if they can be WeeDogged. Whatever performance advantages (per benchmark claims) Intel's Clear Linux brings would equally be available as WeeDogged frugal install I expect since all that does is provide flexible frugal install overlayfs boot mechanism.
I have some other pressing matters (some related to tests on KLV-Airedale) at the moment, but I'll report back should I succeed to weedogit Fedora or Clear Linux - weedogit is proving incredibly useful for me so would love it if these two work within that WDL mechanism.

[Clarity]

Intel's webpage has seen a SIGNIFICANT UPGRADE since I last visited!

Intel offers a 'check your PC' utility to evaluate if its a recommended platform for use.
It is found at the bottom of the Intel's Linux webpage, shown above. To use:

1. I downloaded it somewhere as 'Check4ClearOS-HW.sh'

2. Made the script executable

3. execute it as Check4ClearOS-HW.sh host

My Test PC specs

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-Computer-
Processor	: 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 750 @2.67GHz
Memory		: 8145MB (5064MB used)

Results

Code: Select all

~$ Check4ClearOS-HW.sh host
Checking if host is capable of running Clear Linux* OS

SUCCESS: 64-bit CPU (lm)
SUCCESS: Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (ssse3)
SUCCESS: Streaming SIMD Extensions v4.1 (sse4_1)
SUCCESS: Streaming SIMD Extensions v4.2 (sse4_2)
FAIL: Carry-less Multiplication extensions (pclmulqdq)
~$

It did not matter last year in testing, so "mileage may vary". And for everyone, if used natively, this quote:

Clear Linux is built from scratch atop the GNOME desktop environment, and it's highly tuned for Intel platforms, with all performance optimizations enabled by default.

[wiak]

Weedogged Intel Clear Linux (via being revamped weedogit.sh script) screenshot attached. Intel should adopt this. WeeDog would be famous!

Intel Clear Linux live iso holds its rootfilesystem as a raw image file rather than an sfs, but WeeDog doesn't care and can use raw img files in its overlayfs layer structure (though I've never documented that additional fact).

So now will be able to use sfs-load and save2flash RAM2 modes and all the rest, as in KLV-Airedale, but also in any weedogit distro, such as this Intel Clear Linux. Haven't checked Intel CL out yet - uses Gnome, but snappy on this admittedly fast HP Probook 430 G8 machine of mine.

I haven't tried Fedora yet, but if it can also be weedogged I'll also include that in next version of weedogit.sh released.

[Clarity]

Did you weedog the Intel Desktop or its Server version?

Looking thru my catalog of ISO files on the USB, I have 2 versions of the LIVE desktops; namely v36060 from months ago and v36010 downloaded today. I am not sure why the older version has a numerically higher number than today's???

I have not downloaded or tested their server version.

[wiak]

Did you weedog the Intel Desktop or its Server version?

Looking thru my catalog of ISO files on the USB, I have 2 versions of the LIVE desktops; namely v36060 from months ago and v36010 downloaded today. I am not sure why the older version has a numerically higher number than today's???

I have not downloaded or tested their server version.

It is the Workstation version (v36010) at the Activities screen. Attached is main desktop screen.

Fedora proved tricky. The iso had an internal raw img file and inside that was an embedded raw img file, which is the actual root filesystem. I managed to cater for that in weedogit.sh, but alas it seems it isn't a generic type of root filesystem but rather needs Fedora's own initrd to set up various matter before it can boot successfully (actually, not the fedora initrd, I think, but rather the systemd initialise files - I can't work out the details unfortunately). The WDL weedogit-created version did boot fine as far as setting overlay up and so on, but only gets as far as a Welcome to Fedora on commandline and then lots of FAILED messages as boot proceeds. I doubt I can do anything about that (unless I knew internals of Fedora's own initrd and put some extra related code into WDL w_init file, but that would be too much work. Pity - I'd like a Weedogged Fedora...
EDIT: Having said that, I might be able to tinker with that fedora final root filesystem and stop the boot at the commandline Welcome Message. Then I could take it from there to see if I could get it to go into its Wayland desktop GUI, but too busy to try that right now.
EDIT2: I messed about with systemd on fedora, well, actually the /etc/rc.d/init.d/livesys file and actually made some progress in that it booted up to the welcome gui screen and even configured my wifi correctly, then after supplying user/passwd name it said I could now use it, but stuck at background with nothing to press for any apps. I must have modded that livesys file too much, but maybe will manage one day...

However, at least Intel Clear Linux works fine in weedog form. Also, official Ubuntu Jammy iso will also work fine after being weedogged.

[wiak]

And attached screenshot is weedogit of official Ubuntu v22.04 Jammy, whose build will also be included in next weedogit.sh release, though I have to say I far prefer Zorin's spin of Ubuntu (but Zorin hasnt released Jammy-based version yet).

[r96chase]

Hi, long time no see.

I'm honestly wondering if there'll be a mainline Puppy based on the new Ubuntu LTS version. However, I say that it just came out and we might wait a bit and see what it offers.

By the way, I'm currently running Fossapup64 as my main Puppy for now. That's what got me curious about 22.04 to be honest.