Distro Monday 39: Happy New Years!

Distro Monday 39: Happy New Year, 2023!

Announcement
Manjaro 22.0
Memesplanation
Tails 5.8
Freedom Consultation
11 New Distros to Look Forward to This Year

#distromonday #Linux #manjaro #linux61 #tails #newdistros #TechFreedom

Tech Freedom Announcement:

After painstaking work over the last couple of weeks, I am pleased to announce that techfreedom.pro has a brand new look. The links I will be sharing from now on will be to landing pages that I designed, rather than to the products themselves. Please, take a look at the site, tell me what you think, either through the contact form or in the comments below. I appreciate your input. Thanks, All.

https://techfreedom.pro

#TechFreedom #newsite #newyear #newdesign #news #distromonday
DM 39.1 – What’s New In Manjaro 22?
Manjaro is a mainstay of this channel, I have used it for 3 years, with a few breaks to distro hop just a bit. I currently use the KDE flavor as the base for all of the computers in my home, including the machine that I record and stream from. All that said, if you are unfamiliar, it is an Arch based distro which adds some extra package testing to the Arch downstream before things hit their users. It comes in a number of flavors, with different desktop environments and Window Managers to provide different strokes for the different folks out there. It does have the downside of kind of being the Ubuntu of the Arch side of the Linux family tree, in that it does have a foundation/business behind it, rather than being purely community based, which can make them seem less than responsive to user needs and desires. What’s new here?

Linux 6.1
All the latest from KDE Plasma
XFCE 4.18
GNOME 43.2
Updated GNOME Layouts Switcher
And a bunch more under the hood...

https://9to5linux.com/manjaro-linux-22-0-sikaris-is-the-first-distro-release-powered-by-linux-kernel-6-1-and-xfce-4-18

#distromonday #Manjaro #arch #KDE #GNOME #xfce #updates #Linux #TechFreedom

Happy New Year, everyone! May 2023 be one of the best in your life.
Seek the Lord earnestly and you will find Him. Believe that He has the
best for you this year, start to break old, bad habits that in the small
picture landed you where you were the night before last. Most of all,
know that you are not alone in the need to change. Don’t call it a
“resolution”, call it a dedication to change your life. Repent of the
crappy thinking and bad habits that led you to the point of self-disgust
at the end of last year, take proactive steps to improve your situation,
whatever that looks like, whether reducing alcohol intake, moving more,
eating more healthily, or working on healthier relationships this year,
just do it and be intentional. Those little steps, taken daily, and those
choices to seek the Lord in those moments when you would have turned
to something less worthy, will lead to you being in a better place by the
end of this year. If all of us commit to healthier actions and attitudes, it
will have a bang-on effect and begin to change the world.
#distromonday #newyears #blessings #pray #goodchoices #memesplanation #TechFreedom

DM 39.2 – Tails 5.8 Out Now!

Just in case you’re new here, Tails stands for The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, and is a Linux distro meant for dissident journalists, spies, spooks, and anyone else who really prizes their privacy above general functionality for their computer.
What’s new, here?
• Wayland is now the default display server
◦ Re-enabling the Unsafe Browser and improving its functionality
▪ Adding sound support, uploads & downloads, more alternative input options for non-Latin languages, a screen reader, and a virtual keyboard
• New Persistent Storage App
◦ New look
◦ New capabilities
• QR code scanning to enter new TOR bridges
◦ New ability to see the percentage of various TOR connections

All in all, good stuff here, guys and gals. This is distro that is meant to be portable and run off of any USB stick you want. All while giving you the added privacy of connecting to the internet through TOR at all times.

https://9to5linux.com/privacy-focused-tails-5-8-enables-wayland-by-default-adds-new-persistent-storage

#distromonday #tailslinux #privacy #tor #portable #goodstuff #TechFreedom

Freedom Consultation

Ever wondered how to get free from Big Tech? This Free consultation will leave you with at least pointers to the tools and services you’ll need to do just that. This is a FREE 90 minute call with me, where I will demo some varieties of Linux for you, some replacement apps, talk about degoogled phones, and give you links to how to start the process of taking control of your digital life online as well.

https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation
#distromonday #TechFreedom #consultation #free

DM 39.3 – New Distros for 2023 that May Be Worth Looking At

There are 11 in this listicle, so lets see what I think about the author’s picks, here. Many have had stable releases in the last year or so, but some have not, and are waiting on further development work to happen.

1) VanillaOS
a. This is another Ubuntu derivative, but ships with a plain old GNOME desktop. Big whoop, right? Well, this offers on-demand immutability, which means that it is like a part time Ubuntu version of Fedora Silverblue, which is fully immutable after installation. Silverblue allows programs to be installed, but there are no intermittent OS security or package updates, just static images of the OS. This makes it very very stable and safe to use, but if you need fresh packages and updates, this may not be a good fit for you.
2) XeroLinux
a. I actually did a demo of this last year, not long after it came out. It is a very unique Arch distro that includes a very clean desktop that may appeal to some of you. It is immediately downstream from Arch and does not provide any extra testing for users before the packages get passed through, unlike Manjaro.
3) Crystal Linux
a. I tried to demo a beta of this one last year, it was rough at the time, and seemed to be missing most of the more ballyhooed new, distinguishing features. That was merely a beta, so if you are into GNOME, Crystal may be a good Arch distro for you to peruse at some point this year, after its full release, whenever that happens.
4) Tuxedo OS
a. Kubuntu plus some extra tools from Tuxedo, who builds dedicated Linux hardware. Think of it as their answer to POP! OS. It used to only be available for their machines, but they chose to release it publicly last year. If KDE + Ubuntu is your jam, take a look.
5) Euro Linux
a. RHEL + visual goodies, geared for educational purposes with its very long term support schedule, as well as its very windows-esque interface, which will welcome Windows refugees.
6) Zinc
a. Xubuntu LTS plus AppImage support, deb-get package manager, default BTRFS formatting, and more. Might be good for you lightweight mavens out there.
7) Cachy OS
a. Arch + under-the-hood improvements on a kernel level to create a stable, fast, secure, and user-friendly Arch distro. They offer all of the major desktop environments, and use a modified version of Calamares for an installer.
8) risiOS
a. This is downstream from Fedora, and I took a look at it just after its full release last year. If you like Fedora, you will probably like risiOS, as it adds some special sauce to the Fedora hamburger.
9) Exodia OS
a. Another Arch based distro. However, it is geared to be something like Kali, only based on Arch rather than Debian. The thing to keep in mind with this one is that it only ships with a highly customized BSPWM, which is a tiling window manager. Other than that, the functionality should be roughly on par with Kali.
10) Kumander Linux
a. The name is a tribute to the developer’s first computer, a Commodore Vic20. It is a highly tweaked xfce, meant to look like windows 7, which sits on top of Debian 11. There is no full release for this one out yet, but you can take a look at the early-release candidate between now and whenever that does come out.
11) Ubuntu Unity
a. Unity is back as an official Ubuntu flavor, after a 5 year hiatus, if you tried out Linux, and specifically Ubuntu between 2010 and 2017, this will be a blast from the past for you. Personally, I hated it then, but I should probably try to install it in an Arch VM at some point to see if I can tolerate it any better now. I think the thing that I hated the most about it, other than the very odd paradigm for the UI, was the default color scheme. Maybe it can be tweaked now, idk. Check it out if you want to feed Canonical’s beast.

https://news.itsfoss.com/new-distros-2023/

#distromonday #distrohoppers #newdistros #Linux #TechFreedom