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siduction LXQt Changelog

What's new in siduction LXQt 2018.3.0

May 14, 2018
  • The released images are a snapshot of Debian unstable, that also goes by the name of Sid, from 2018-05-12. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, an installer based on Calamares and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 4.16.8, accompanied by X-Server 1.19.6-1 and systemd 238.4.
  • KDE Plasma stands at version 5.12.5, while GNOME comes in at 3.28.1, with 3.28.2 waiting in the wings. LXQt ships at 0.12.0 and Xfce at 4.12.4, while Cinnamon comes in at 3.6.7-8 and MATE at 1.20.0.

New in siduction LXQt 2018.1.0 (Jan 1, 2018)

  • Recommends enabled:
  • Years ago we decided to not install recommends anymore for our releases or when the user installs a package. The handling of that feature in Debian was not as we thought it should be. A lot of cruft was installed to the system and we wanted to prevent that. Times have changed and so has the handling of recommends. So now the recommends that the maintainer sets for a package are installed in siduction. If you would like recommends not installed, you can override our decision in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/80-siduction in the line APT::Install-Recommends “1”;.
  • Rotation for Journald:
  • To prevent the journal from growing too large we have implemented a journal-rotation and a maximum size to the journal. You can overrule this setting by editing the files in /etc/journal.conf.d/. There will be a blog post on this topic within the next days.
  • SSH Handling:
  • We built two small scripts to turn SSH on and off in the live and in the
  • installed system. They are aptly named SSH Activate and SSH Deactivate
  • and you can find them in your menu.
  • Calamares – our new installer:
  • This is the 2nd release with the new installer built from the
  • Calamares Installer Framework and we are quite happy with it. It is under steady developement and will in the near future improve quite a bit on LVM and LUKS2.
  • The partitioning is done by the brand new kpmcore 3.3.0, which is also at the heart of the KDE Partition Manager (KPM). The corresponding package for that is called partitionmanager.
  • UEFI installs made easy:
  • With Calamares we can proclaim full implementation of UEFI-Installs since 2017.1.0. For now we still have encryption with LUKS and LVM turned off, which Calamares offers as an option. We want to be on top of that feature before we offer it to you. Offering it means we need to be able to support this critical functionality. We do not feel we can do this adequatly at the moment, as it is an ongoing developement, that should be more mature with kpmcore 3.4.
  • Non-free software:
  • The installer does not offer the option to opt-out software that does not
  • comply with DFSG, the Debian Free Software Guidelines. That means that non-free packages would be installed by default on the system. The command vrms will list these packages. One can remove not wanted packages manually or remove them all by issuing apt purge $(vrms -s) before or after installation
  • The very same topic has ruffled feathers on the debian deverloper mailing list last month with two extensive threads and a
  • possible future solution layed out by Russ Allbery.
  • The following non-free and contrib packages are installed by default:
  • non-free:
  • * amd64-microcode – Processor microcode firmware for AMD CPUs
  • * firmware-amd-graphics – Binary firmware for AMD/ATI graphics chips
  • * firmware-atheros – Binary firmware for Atheros wireless cards
  • * firmware-bnx2 – Binary firmware for Broadcom NetXtremeII
  • * firmware-bnx2x – Binary firmware for Broadcom NetXtreme II 10Gb
  • * firmware-brcm80211 – Binary firmware for Broadcom 802.11 wireless card
  • * firmware-crystalhd – Crystal HD Video Decoder (firmware)
  • * firmware-intelwimax – Binary firmware for Intel WiMAX Connection
  • * firmware-iwlwifi – Binary firmware for Intel Wireless cards
  • * firmware-libertas – Binary firmware for Marvell Libertas 8xxx wireless car
  • * firmware-linux-nonfree – Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kernel
  • * firmware-misc-nonfree – Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kernel
  • * firmware-myricom – Binary firmware for Myri-10G Ethernet adapters
  • * firmware-netxen – Binary firmware for QLogic Intelligent Ethernet (3000)
  • * firmware-qlogic – Binary firmware for QLogic HBAs
  • * firmware-realtek – Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT adapters
  • * firmware-ti-connectivity – Binary firmware for TI Connectivity wireless network
  • * firmware-zd1211 – binary firmware for the zd1211rw wireless driver
  • * intel-microcode – Processor microcode firmware for Intel CPUs
  • Contrib packages:
  • * b43-fwcutter – utility for extracting Broadcom 43xx firmware
  • * firmware-b43-installer – firmware installer for the b43 driver
  • * firmware-b43legacy-installer – firmware installer for the b43legacy driver
  • * iucode-tool – Intel processor microcode
  • New paste script:
  • We have retired the old paste-script, that ran under the name siduction-paste. It’s place was taken by what is now called simple-paste. Simple-paste is a cli swiss army-knife for pasting, written in bash, powered by pb. It supports command output, different kinds of screenshots, (auto-)deletable pastes and much more.

New in siduction LXQt 14.1.0 Dev (May 12, 2014)

  • The released image, that is only available for 64-bit for now is a snapshot of Debian unstable, that also goes by the name of Sid, from 2014-05-08. They are enhanced with the lightweight LXQt desktop environment, some useful packages and scripts, our own installer and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 3.14-3, accompanied by X-Server 1.15.1.
  • LXQt, the new kid in town:
  • LXQt, the kingpin of this release is a shiny new desktop environment, that , remarkebly enough, came to live through a merge, not a fork. The desktop envirmonments LXDE (GTK+ 2) and Razor-Qt (Qt 4) bundled their ressources and, on May 7, after more than a year of development, released a first beta version LXQt 0.7, based on top of the Qt 4 framework. The developers say, the port to Qt needs just a bit more RAM than LXDE did, but performance is said to be as blazingly fast as we know LXDE is.
  • As with our latest full release from January 2014 we again make use of Systemd as init system in version, which Debian will also ship, starting with the release of Debian 8 “Jessie”, expected in early 2015. It is clearly the most technicaly advanced of the init systems at hand.
  • New commands:
  • Here is a little cheat sheet with some of the commands that are new for booting, handling services and logging with systemd:
  • Handling Services:
  • systemctl list-units – List all units (where unit is the term for a job/service)
  • systemctl start [NAME...] – Start (activate) one or more units
  • systemctl stop [NAME...] – Stop (deactivate) one or more units
  • systemctl disable [NAME...] – Disable one or more unit files
  • Check man systemctl for more information. For your comfort we also ship systemd-ui, which is called with the command systemadm.
  • Changing Runlevels, Reboot and Shutdown:
  • Changing runlevels is also different from sysvinit. What was known as runlevel 3 is now multi-user.target, init 5 changes to graphical.target:
  • systemctl isolate graphical.target – Will take you to what you know as init 5
  • systemctl isolate multi-user.target – Will take you to what you know as init 3
  • systemctl reboot – Shut down and reboot the system
  • systemctl poweroff – Shut down and reboot the system
  • Logging with Systemd Journal:
  • Journal is a great win over the agedsyslog. Logging starts earlier, which for sure was one of the backsides ofsyslog. Also there is commands that give you tailored information at your fingertips.
  • journalctl –all – gives you the full journal of the system and all users
  • journalctl -f – gives you a live view of the journal as it grows (used to be tail -f /var/log/messages)
  • journalctl -b – shows the log of the last boot
  • journalctl -b -p err – shows the log of last boot, limited to the priority ERROR
  • journalctl –since=yesterday – since Linux people normaly do not reboot much, this is limiting it more than -b

New in siduction LXQt 13.2.0 (Jan 3, 2014)

  • Handling Services:
  • systemctl list-units – List all units (where unit is the term for a job/service)
  • systemctl start [NAME...] – Start (activate) one or more units
  • systemctl stop [NAME...] – Stop (deactivate) one or more units
  • systemctl disable [NAME...] – Disable one or more unit files
  • Check man systemctl for more information. For your comfort we also ship systemd-ui, which is called with the command systemadm.
  • Changing Runlevels, Reboot and Shutdown:
  • Changing runlevels is also different from sysvinit. What was known as runlevel 3 is now multi-user.target, init 5 changes to graphical.target:
  • systemctl isolate graphical.target – Will take you to what you know as init 5
  • systemctl isolate multi-user.target – Will take you to what you know as init 3
  • systemctl reboot – Shut down and reboot the system
  • systemctl poweroff – Shut down and reboot the system
  • Logging with Systemd Journal:
  • Journal is a great win over the aged syslog. Logging starts earlier, which for sure was one of the backsides of syslog. Also there is commands that give you tailored information at your fingertips.
  • journalctl –all – gives you the full journal of the system and all users
  • journalctl -f – gives you a live view of the journal as it grows (used to be tail -f /var/log/messages)
  • journalctl -b – shows the log of the last boot
  • journalctl -b -p err – shows the log of last boot, limited to the priority ERROR
  • journalctl –since=yesterday – since Linux people normaly do not reboot much, this is limiting it more than -b

New in siduction LXQt 13.1.0 (May 22, 2013)

  • Siduction 2013.1 is shipped with 5 Desktop-Environments: KDE SC, XFCE, LXDE, GNOME, and Razor-qt, all in 32- and 64-bit variants. From the shipped DEs only LXDE and Razor-Qt fit on a CD with 700 MegaByte. But as CDs become more irrelevant with every day, we are not too worried about this and recommend to use USB-Sticks for installation.
  • New in this release cycle is GNOME 3, that we are happy to officially present. Also officially shipped for the first time is noX, a variant without a X-Server, meant for users that prefer to work without an X environment completely or wish to build their own environment pretty much from scratch.
  • The released images are a snapshot of Debian unstable, that also goes by the name of Sid, from 2013-05-20. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, our own installer and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 3.9.3, accompanied by X-Server 1.12.4-6.
  • Since Debian has released Wheezy just recently, we use the opportunity to release a current snapshot of the archive, after the opened floodgates after the end of the freeze have flushed a plethora of fresh packages into Sid.

New in siduction LXQt 12.2.0 (Dec 10, 2012)

  • Siduction 2012.2 is shipped with 4 Desktop-Environments: KDE SC, XFCE, LXDE and Razor-qt, all in 32- and 64-bit variants. Razor-Qt is the latest flavour that joins our regular release cycle after seeing a dev-release in the summer.
  • The released images are a snapshot of Debian unstable, that also goes by the name of sid, from 2012-12-09. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, our own installer and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 3.6-9, accompanied by XServer 1.12.4-4.
  • As the freeze for Debian 7 aka Wheezy will still last some months, we take the opportunity to update and consolidate our package-base with this new release.

New in siduction LXQt 12.2.0 RC2 (Dec 4, 2012)

  • The bluewater manual is now available in romanian language, closes #998
  • fw-detect works again as expected for installing non-free firmware
  • Creation of sources.list during building the images got an overhaul, closes #997
  • new upstrem for wbar, wbar-config added, closes #978
  • added correct firmware-link for AR7010+AR9287 devices to fw-detect
  • switched to kickoff menu for KDE
  • fixed VG default size of 4 GB for LVM, closes #974
  • added ntfs-config for easier configuration of ntfs file system

New in siduction LXQt 12.2.0 RC1 (Nov 20, 2012)

  • We are happy to present to you the 1st Release Candidate of siduction 2012.2 - Riders on the Storm. Siduction is a distribution based on Debian's unstable branch and we try to release snapshots quarterly. Please report any bugs you find in this RC to our forum or Chili.
  • Siduction 2012.2 is shipped with 4 Desktop-Environments: KDE SC, XFCE, LXDE and Razor-qt, all in 32- and 64-bit variants. Razor-Qt is the latest flavour that joins our regular release cycle after seeing a dev-release in the summer.
  • The released images are a snapshot of Debian unstable, that also goes by the name of sid, from 2012-11-19. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, our own installer and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 3.6-6, accompanied by XServer 1.12.4.
  • As the freeze for Debian 7 aka Wheezy will still last some months, we take the opportunity to update and consolidate our package-base with this new release.
  • Other than updated packages and fresh artwork we ship some more novelties, some in the open, others hidden.
  • Razor-qt, first released in a dev-release in the summer, will now move as a new flavour to our regular release cycle. The Razor-qt team has recently released Razor-qt 0.5.1, which we integrate in our release. Razor-qt Desktop-Environment is not finished yet, but the 0.5 release was a big step to more completion.
  • XFCE in Debian unstable, due to the freeze for the wheezy release, still is on version 4.8. We have, for this release, packaged XFCE 4.10.
  • The debian-qt-kde team has backported the changes in versions 4.8.4 to 4.8.5 into 4.8.4-4. So the shipped version 4.8.4-4 is basicaly 4.8.5.
  • A lot of time consuming changes again went into adapting the codebase we forked to our needs. We found the way how artwork was integrated into the different flavours for each release very cumbersome and have reshaped the process. The same thing is happening to the bluewater manual at the moment. The process of adding new pages needs an overhaul to simplify the process. All in all we closed 101 bugs since the last release, most of them being code rewrites.
  • Besides that we have received a much needed webserver from a member of the core-team as a donation and have set it up accordingly. Many thanks for that.
  • The installer still offers btrfs as an experimental filesystem. Please be careful if you use it and always backup your data.

New in siduction LXQt 12.1.1 (Jun 25, 2012)

  • siduction 2012.1.1 Desperado Reloaded is shipped with 3 Desktop-Environments: KDE SC, XFCE and LXDE, all in 32- and 64-bit variants. LXDE still fits a CD, KDE SC and XFCE fail to do so. Moving them to a USB-device with dd or cat to install from seems appropriate if your hardware supports booting from USB. (please refer to our manual)
  • The released images are a snapshot of Debian Unstable, that also goes by the name of sid, from 2012-06-24. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, our own installer and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 3.4.4, accompanied by XServer 1.12.1.
  • As the freeze for Debian 7 aka Wheezy will begin on June 30 and, from experience, will last at least 8 months, we take the opportunity to ship a fresh snapshot to our users beforehand. This makes the more sense, since KDE SC 4.8.4 is now in unstable as a complete package set. The only exception is kdepim. The Debian-KDE Team has decided to stay with 4.4.11 and thus ship Kmail instead of Kmail2. The KDE SC package set we ship today will most likely be the one to be used in Wheezy.
  • Another change comes from our decision to change the default setup of akonadi from mysql to sqlite, as we feel, that the full set of mysql is not mandatory for the job.

New in siduction LXQt 12.1 RC (May 16, 2012)

  • The installer offers the choice of btrfs as filesystem. Please mind the warnings you will see! The implementation of btrfs is to be seen as experimental and should not be used on production machines. Regular back-ups are a must! There is also a limitation to regular MBR, btrfs does not work with GPT for now.
  • Another new siduction package is sidu-disk-center. It implements the opportunity to set up and maintain the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) prior to installation. sidu-disk-center is independent from the installer, but can be called from it.
  • At LinuxTag Convention in Berlin we will release a new flavour of siduction with the relatively young, but heavily developed, desktop environment Razor-Qt. This will take place during a release party at our booth on May 25th at 18:00. If developement keeps up with what it is now, Razor-Qt will be adapted to our regular release cycle with our next release 2012.2.
  • The Bluewater-Manual is, next to English and German, also available in Pt-Br, Polish and Italian now. Translators/revisors for other languages are very welcome if they show up in IRC channel #siduction-doc.
  • In the background we have hardened and refined our infrastructure, which is quite solid by now.

New in siduction LXQt 11.1 (Jan 1, 2012)

  • This 1st release ships three Desktop Environments, KDE SC, XFCE and LXDE, all 3 in 32- and 64-bit versions. The first 2 flavours do not fit on a CD anymore, so it made no sense to go for lite and full versions. LXDE is meant to be lightweight anyways
  • The released images represent a snapshot of Debian Sid from 2011-12-30, improved with a few useful packages and scripts, an installer and our own, patched version of kernel 3.1-6 and xserver 1.11.2.902-1.
  • We have included KDE SC 4.7.2 from the QT-KDE repository, which, over the years, proved to be no more unreliable than Sid itself. There are 2 ways to handle upgrades: Looking at /etc/apt/sources.list.d, you will see a qt-kde.list.
  • the safest way is to stay with the installed KDE SC 4.7.2 until Sid catches up and updates KDE to 4.7.4. This should happen within the next weeks. To do so, open qt-kde.list with your favourite editor as root and put a # in front of the top line, save your edit and exit.
  • if you do not comment the first line in qt-kde.list, a dist-upgrade will pull any updated packages from above repository. As things look at the moment, that is unlikely to happen, as KDE SC 4.7.4 was uploaded to Debians experimental repository a week ago and will move to unstable from there sometime soon.

New in siduction LXQt 11.1 RC (Dec 22, 2011)

  • This 1st release candidate (and the actual release) ship 3 Desktop Environments, KDE SC, XFCE and LXDE, all 3 in 32- and 64-bit versions. The first 2 flavours do not fit on a CD anymore, so it made no sense to go for lite and full versions. LXDE is meant to be lightweight anyways
  • The released images represent a snapshot of Debian Sid from 2011-12-21, enriched with a few useful packages and scripts, an installer and our own, patched version of kernel 3.1-5 and xserver 1.11.2.902-1.
  • We have included KDE SC 4.7.2 from the QT-KDE repository, which, over the years, proved to be no more unreliable than Sid itself. There is 2 ways to handle upgrades: Looking at /etc/apt/sources.list.d, you will see a qt-kde.list.
  • the safest way is to stay with the installed KDE SC 4.7.2 until Sid catches up and updates KDE to 4.7.4. This should happen within the next weeks. To do so, open qt-kde.list with your favourite editor as root and put a # in front of the top line, save our edit and exit.
  • if you do not comment the first line in qt-kde.list, a dist-upgrade will pull any updated packages from above repository. As things look at the moment, that is unlikely to happen, as KDE SC 4.7.4 was uploaded to Debians experimental repository yesterday and will move to unstable from there sometime soon.