Distro Monday 43: Tails 5.9, Freespire 9.0, and helloSystem 0.8.0

Tails 5.9
Memesplanation
Freespire 9.0
Freedom Consultation
helloSystem0.8.0

DM 43.1 – What’s new in Tails 5.9?
Alright, apparently there were some major problems in Tails 5.8... This release fixes many issues and squashes many bugs, as you would hope would happen in active development. Most of the issues occurred because with 5.8, the team moved to Wayland from x11, but stayed on the 5.10LTS kernel, breaking many Intel iGPU based systems. How did they fix it? They switched to the EOL 6.0.12 kernel. What else got fixed or changed?

QT based AppImage binaries work better now
Persistent Storage is better
KeepassXC can now use the clipboard
Tor Browser updated
Debian Bullseye repos

https://9to5linux.com/anonymous-os-tails-5-9-ships-with-linux-kernel-6-0-to-improve-gpu-support

#distromonday #tails59 #incognito #amnesiac #debian #tor #updates #Linux #TechFreedom

DM 43.2 – Freespire 9

What’s Freespire? It is a completely FOSS Xubuntu derivative. What does that mean? Why should you think about using it? Ok, where Xubuntu uses all of the Ubuntu repos, Freespire strips out everything that is non-free, or proprietary from its software base. That means that it is Xubuntu minus Snap, and minus all of Canonical’s other shenanigans. Think of it as a slightly more up to date way to use Debian and be an open source purist, at least in terms of the OS itself. This intrigues me, except that I don’t like xfce much, and that is what Xubuntu is: Ubuntu + xfce. So what is new here?

Xubuntu Jammy Jellyfish as the base
Xfce 4.18
Linux 5.15 LTS
Mozilla Firefox web browser
Mozilla Thunderbird email client
HexChat IRC client
GIMP image editor
Transmission BitTorrent client
Parole media player
Rhythmbox music player
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors office suite
balenaEtcher OS

https://9to5linux.com/freespire-9-0-released-with-xfce-4-18-based-on-xubuntu-22-04-lts

#distromonday #freespire #FOSS #xubuntu #linux #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 43.3 – helloSystem – A BSD MacOS-Alike

Oh, a non-Linux option? Why yes, there are other FOSS operating systems out there. BSD is another descendant of Unix, much like Linux and MacOS. In fact, MacOS is closer to BSD than it is to Linux, though all are far more similar to one another than any of them are to Windonts. What makes BSD different from Linux? It is more niche than Linux, so if you are looking for the most “out there” OS to play with, a variant based on BSD will get you closer than 95% of Linux distros will.

I should be a little more careful with my language here... Linux is really just a kernel, or the core of the OS, where BSD is a whole OS, like MacOS or Windoesnt. Kernel, drivers, and core packages (like a desktop environment), where Linux needs to have a distribution built around it in order to be functional at all. BSD is about as secure, but has weaknesses in networking performance, isn’t as supported or as nimble as Linux development, and it uses a different licensing system, which allows developers to make their software proprietary after benefiting from open source development. Ok, enough nuts and bolts behind helloSystem. What of the story? Well, helloSystem is a very actively developed BSD variant which aims to look and work very much like MacOS, but be open source. What’s new in this release?

Based on FreeBSD 13.1
Ability to more easily use a Debian 11 runtime to run Linux software
Improved AppImage support
Improved Filer (the file manager)
Improvements to the menu system, including an option to “force quit” an app from the context menu

https://www.debugpoint.com/hellosystem-0-8-0/

One thing to keep in mind is that this OS is under HEAVY development and may not be ready for broad adoption as yet. I would suggest waiting until it is firmly in the 1.0 release before installing it on bare metal, unless you are ready for some frustrations.

#distromonday #helloSystem #freebsd #macalike #foss #TechFreedom

Tech Freedom Intro: What to expect from my channels and website.
https://rumble.com/v157uqb-tech-freedom-intro-what-is-this.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y
#intro #TechFreedom #telegram #truthsocial #publicsq #gab