![]() A total Linux newbie might feel more comfortable with a distro that mimics Windows' point-and-click friendliness, but once you've got the basics down, Refracta is easy to get used to. It is currently my favorite distro, and I'd recommend it to any Linux geek who has had a little bit of experience. So basically you can roll your own live CD, configured for your hardware and tweaked to suit your personal tastes. Refracta's chief selling point is this: it's a live image that can be quickly installed, customized, and re-installed back to live media again. Refracta's existence predates the systemd wars - it was originally based on Debian 5.0, otherwise known as "Lenny." But when Debian 8.0 "Jessie" went full systemd, Refracta moved to the Devuan camp. It was my search for a quick and easy way to get Devuan up and running that led me to Refracta, a unique distro that fills a niche that has long been neglected. This has defeated curious newbies who decide to give up long before the first boot-up prompt appeared. The first beta forces you to do a network install that - depending on your Internet connection speed - can take an hour or more. However, it does have a few flaws - the installer in particular needs some more work. I will say by way of disclosure that I have downloaded Devuan, installed it, used it for months, and like it. For me, the most interesting project is Devuan, a fork of Debian. Geeks determined to resist the systemd juggernaut have several options. I don't expect the issue to be finally settled until the Sun swells up to become a red giant and evaporates the Earth. So I won't waste this review seeking converts for The Causeā¢. There is probably nothing I can say about systemd that hasn't already been said, and no argument either for or against it that hasn't been repeated ad nauseum. ![]() More digital ink has been spilled debating the topic of init systems than any other in techie history. There are probably some people living in the world today who still haven't heard of systemd, though I doubt that any of them read DistroWatch. ![]() Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (34MB) and MP3 (48MB) formats Opinion poll: Downloading directly vs torrents.Released last week: Ubuntu 16.10, FreeBSD 11.0, ExTiX 16.5.Torrent corner: FreeBSD, paldo GNU/Linux.Questions and answers: Making packages for distributions.News: 386BSD re-released, Alpine switches to LibreSSL, Black Lab becomes a commercial distribution.Reviews: Refracta 8.0 - Devuan on a stick. ![]() We wish you all a superb week and happy reading! In our Opinion Poll we discuss preferred methods for acquiring new releases and, finally, we welcome Linux Kodachi as the newest distribution to be added to our database. Then we share the torrents we are seeding and provide a list of last week's releases. Plus, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about creating software packages for a variety of distributions. In our main feature this week Robert Storey takes Refracta, a Devuan-based distribution with re-spin authoring tools built-in, for a test drive and reports on the project's status. We also look at Alpine Linux's switch from OpenSSL to LibreSSL and Black Lab Linux becoming a commercial distribution. We have the details on what to expect from these operating systems below, but before that we begin our News section with a look back at 386BSD and where the modern BSDs came from. This past week saw the release of several new versions of open source operating systems, including Ubuntu 16.10 and its many community editions, as well as a new version of the venerable FreeBSD. Welcome to this year's 42nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
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