Distributions: Dragora 3.0 and EasyOS
- Dragora 3.0-beta2 released
I am pleased to announce the release of dragora 3.0-beta2.
Dragora is an independent GNU/Linux distribution project which was created from scratch with the intention of providing a reliable operating system with maximum respect for the user by including entirely free software. Dragora is based on the concepts of simplicity and elegance, it offers a user-friendly Unix-like environment with emphasis on stability and security for long-term durability.
It has been a long time since there was an announcement about a version of Dragora, and it is that work continues on it, as who says "better late than never!".
It is worth mentioning that Dragora series 3 is a new development that started back in 2012 to give rise to new research and to try to improve the quality taking into account the previous experience in the achieved series. This series offers a fully automated build process, made from scratch to achieve a distribution without any contamination from the host system, in order to obtain a controlled and pure system.
The current technical scheme consists of the C Musl library, SysV init, Perp for reliable monitoring of services (or critical system daemons), own text-menu based tools (for configuring the keyboard map, console mouse, and an interactive installer), plus a local package manager called Qi to complement a powerful tool called Graft for local package management under a single directory hierarchy; packages are installed in the /usr/pkg hierarchy where it is possible to enable/disable, or change package versions via graft.
In terms of security, Dragora offers the security that can be found in commercial distribution projects. This is by using LibreSSL, the security features provided by the C library plus the security options provided by the GNU C compiler (GCC). Added to the good practices that are intended to be put in Dragora.
We are not mentioning the ethical part here, since Dragora is the first distribution to fully adopt the Linux kernel of our preferred flavor, Linux-libre!. Being a controlled build process, it is assumed that the distribution remains 100% libre (or free as in freedom). If it is not, please report it immediately for correction. Note: this also helps security in the sense that we don't have problems with cumbersome or un-auditable code in an honest way.
Changes in this version:
Many, many things have happened since the release of dragora-3.0-beta1. The bad news is that it is still not complete as we would like it to be, the good news is that it has been completing as follows.
* The performance has been greatly improved compared to -beta1.
* The hybrid live ISO creation has been enhanced. Now the ISO image includes all software packages to date, the initial screen where you can choose to run the current (full) version of the live system, or where you can install it on hard disk. The packages are located inside the /var/cache/qi/packages directory. It is worth mentioning that the password requirement has been removed.
* All Dragora tools have been improved, including better messaging and bug fixes in the code. Thanks to all who contributed to this.
* Dragora now features the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE). Thanks to the developers of TDE for the feedback!.
* The LLVM compiler (v15.0.7) has been added to this beta, along with the Rust programming language (v1.64.0).
* As part of version control systems, this beta now includes: fossil-2.20, mercurial-6.4.2, cvs-1.12.13, rcs-5.10.1.
* The shipped kernel is linux-libre-6.1.23 with a new generic configuration. Also we ship linux-libre-firmware-1.4.
* GNU Wget2 has been added, version 2.0.1.
* The Python 2 support has been removed, we provide Python 3.9.16 instead.
* Meson 1.1.0 and Ninja 1.11.1 have been added to Dragora.
* The Lua programming language and luarocks have been added to Dragora.
* We offer xorg-server-21.1.8 along with an upgraded stock; i.e, drivers, libraries, applications.
* On this occasion, Connman, IW, and IWD have been added to complement the networking support on user-space.
It would take too long to mention the rest of the changes here, and it's not meant to be boring; rather communicate that the project continues to improve, respectively the website plus the ongoing documentation. We appreciate your interest in trying Dragora, as well as any help you can provide. Thank you!
The homepage is at https://www.dragora.org
Dragora can be downloaded from an available mirror, please check https://dragora.org/en/mirrors.html
The SHA256 sum is:
c40f4a1a8755cde20cd69289e1c595524d69862a1d178ce8697334684f828014 dragora-3.0-amd64-beta2-dvd.iso
Please test and send suggestions to
Best regards, Matias Fonzo, Dragora author and maintainer.
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More Flatpaks added to Installer
The nickname for the Flatpak Installer is "Flapi". I recently reported on a showstopper problem:
https://bkhome.org/news/202304/still-struggling-with-the-flatpak-sandbox.html
...the report was 'ldconfig' failing when attempted to run QGIS. Well, it is worse then that. It is not just QGIS, the showstopper affects all installed Flatpaks. Something happened that triggered this need to run 'ldconfig' and create a temporary cache under /run. Once this has happened, that's the end of the line, finito for Flatpaks.
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Restrict list of apps offered to run in a container
In EasyOS, the inbuilt browser is Chromium; however, there are two menu entries in the "Internet" category, "Download latest Firefox" and "Download latest Vivaldi".
Alfons sent me an email that Firefox does not work in a container.
When Firefox is downloaded and installed via the menu entry, it will run in the main filesystem, as user "firefox". Firefox has its own sandbox and in combination with running as user "firefox", this is already a pretty secure situation. Maybe not quite as good as running in a container, but pretty good.
Also here:
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Dragora 3.0-beta2 released
I am pleased to announce the release of dragora 3.0-beta2.
Dragora is an independent GNU/Linux distribution project which was created from scratch with the intention of providing a reliable operating system with maximum respect for the user by including entirely free software. Dragora is based on the concepts of simplicity and elegance, it offers a user-friendly Unix-like environment with emphasis on stability and security for long-term durability.