Updated Linux Distributions

Lubuntu is a variant of Ubuntu that uses the LXQt desktop environment. (Versions prior to 18.10 shipped with the LXDE desktop.) It includes essential applications and services for daily use, including office suite, PDF reader, image editor and multimedia players. A distribution available for both 32-bit and 64-bit computers, Lubuntu is intended to be user-friendly, lightweight and energy efficient.

Kubuntu is a free, user-friendly Linux distribution based on KDE's desktop software and on the Ubuntu operating system. It has a biannual release cycle. Besides providing an up-to-date version of the KDE desktop at the time of the release, the project also releases updated KDE packages throughout the lifetime of each release.

Edubuntu is a partner project of Ubuntu, a distribution suitable for classroom use. The aim is that an educator with limited technical knowledge and skill will be able to set up a computer lab, or establish an on-line learning environment, in an hour or less, and then administer that environment without having to become a fully-fledged Linux geek.

Ubuntu is a complete desktop Linux operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

starkOS is an independently-developed GNU/Linux distribution designed for experienced Linux users. It uses a ports system and the stark package manager to install and update software from source code. The project provides a lightweight live image with Sway Wayland compositor and some basic software on it. The live system does not include an installer; however, starkOS can be installed to a hard disk using one of the rootfs filesystems (with a choice of runit, s6 or SysV init software) provided separately. The project's goal is to develop a Linux distribution that is simple, lightweight, up-to-date and extensible.

ShrikeLinux is an Arch Linux-based distribution featuring a customised Xfce desktop. It offers three separate edition with different Linux kernels: a long-term supported Linux kernel for servers and workstations that require rock-solid stability, the latest stable Linux kernel as provided upstream by Arch Linux, and a "Zen" Linux kernel optimised for performance, gaming and power use. The distribution is developed by Free and Open Source Software Community in Uganda.

Mainstream Linux is an Arch-based Linux distribution with a highly customised desktop using the Quickshell toolkit on top of the Hyprland compositor. It includes a variety of user-friendly features, such as Material You desktop layout, per-workspace layout switching, a session restore option, a gaming mode, as well as a graphical settings tool to customise displays, themes, key bindings, networking and updates. The distribution uses the Calamares system installer with several install modes and applies automatic Btrfs snapshots before every update.

Grml is a bootable CD (live CD) based on Debian GNU/Linux. It includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for users of text tools and system administrators. It also provides automatic hardware detection. Grml can be used as a rescue system, for analysing systems and networks, or as a working environment. Due to on-the-fly decompression, Grml includes about 2 GB of software and documentation on the CD.

Q4OS is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution offering a choice of a classic-style user interface (Trinity) and a modern desktop environment (KDE Plasma). The project also develops various utilities, such as Desktop Profiler and Software Center, as well as installers for third-party applications.

Talos is a specialist Linux-based operating system for running Kubernetes, an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerised applications. Minimal, immutable and hardened, it does not offer any shell or interactive console; instead, all system management is done via remote Application Programming Interface (API) calls, where messages sent from a client application are protected with mutual Transport Layer Security TLS (mTLS) authentication. Talos also delivers atomic updates, thus maintaining the Linux and Kubernetes versions up-to-date. Talos is developed in the USA by Sidero Labs, Inc.

DebLight OS is a French Linux distribution based on Linux Mint Debian Edition, which combines the user-friendliness of Linux Mint with the stability of the Debian's latest stable release. It uses the lightweight LXDE desktop environment. The project's goal is to develop a general-purpose operating system and a productive desktop which would be both light on resources and easy to use for even less experienced Linux users. DebLight OS comes in three editions: Old (a very light variant built for 32-bit processors), Classic (a relatively light variant with a selection of commonly used applications), and Studio (the most complete system with an extensive list of software for a variety of computing tasks).

SmartOS is an open-source UNIX-like operating system based on illumos, a community fork of OpenSolaris. It features four technologies - ZFS (a combined file system and logical volume manager), DTrace (a dynamic tracing framework for troubleshooting kernel and application problems), Zones (a lightweight virtualisation solution), KVM and bhyve (two full virtualisation solutions for running a variety of guest operating systems, including Linux, Windows, BSD and Plan9). SmartOS is designed to be particularly suitable for building clouds and generating appliances.

Aeon is an immutable desktop Linux distribution based on openSUSE. It is a relatively small, low-maintenance system with automated daily updates, thus recommended for Linux beginners or "lazy developers". Some of the distribution's other features include a custom system installer called Transactional Installation Kit (TIK), a pre-configured GNOME desktop, out-of-the-box support for Flatpak packages, Distrobox configured to launch Tumbleweed containers, and automatic rollbacks to its last working state.

Voyager Live is an Xubuntu-based distribution and live DVD showcasing the Xfce desktop environment. Its features include the Avant Window Navigator or AWN (a dock-like navigation bar), Conky (a program which displays useful information on the desktop), and over 300 photographs and animations that can be used as desktop backgrounds. The project also develops several other editions of Voyager Live - a "GE" edition with GNOME Shell, a "GS" variant for Gamers, and a separately-maintained flavour based on Debian's "stable" branch.

Ezarcher is a set of Arch-based live Linux distribution with a number of popular desktops, including Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE and Xfce. All desktop environments are provided in their default upstream state, without any customisations. The distribution can be installed to a hard disk using either the text-mode "archinstall" method or the graphical Calamares system installer. Unlike Arch Linux which generally deploys the latest stable kernel, Ezarcher runs exclusively on the long-term supported variant of the Linux kernel. Besides the distribution, the project also offers build templates to guide users to customise and re-build their own live medium with one of the desktop environments on offer.

The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The product ships with several Internet applications, including web browser, IRC client, mail client and instant messenger, all pre-configured with security in mind and with all traffic anonymised. To achieve this, Incognito uses the Tor network to make Internet traffic very hard to trace.

Umbra Linux is a Linux distribution built entirely from scratch, using the Linux From Scratch (LFS) book. Its goal is to provide a lightweight, educational system that gives full control over the build and configuration process. The distribution uses the Xfce desktop, systemd init software, and an experimental package manager called moonpkg.

umbrelOS is a Debian-based Linux distribution for home servers. It is available for standard 64-bit and Raspberry Pi computers. The distribution features a web-based user interface and an online app store with a large range of applications, anything from web hosting, productivity and finance to media streaming, networking, automation, artificial intelligence, development and Bitcoin mining. umbrelOS is developed by the US-based Umbrel, Inc., which also sells palm-sized personal home computers with up to 4 terabytes of storage.

Puppy Linux is yet another Linux distribution. What's different here is that Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full-featured. Puppy boots into a ramdisk and, unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, it loads into RAM. This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly. Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive. It can even use a multisession formatted CD-RW/DVD-RW to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all.

TrueNAS CORE (previously known as FreeNAS) is a free and Open Source Network-Attached Storage (NAS) operating system that supports file, block and object storage. TrueNAS CORE is FreeBSD based and is a community-supported branch of the TrueNAS project, sponsored by iXsystems. It also has a commercial branch called TrueNAS Enterprise and a free and HyperConverged storage solution called TrueNAS SCALE. The TrueNAS SCALE branch is based on the Debian Linux distribution.