DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

Non-free software can not be audited and as such cannot guarantee you security or anonymity. On the other hand, with heads you only use free software, meaning you can gain access to any source code that is included in heads, at any time. Using free software it is far easier to avoid hidden backdoors and malware that might be in non-free software.

heads is available in a single edition which is 831MB in size. When booting from the project's ISO, we are given the option of booting heads normally from the disc or loading the distribution into RAM. The latter option frees up our removable drive and can make applications load faster after the initial boot process has completed.

The distribution boots to a command line interface and automatically logs us in as a user called luther. On the screen we are shown the root account's password along with commands we can run to launch a graphical interface. The default shell for the luther account is zsh, a less common shell than bash, but often loved for its additional features. heads ships with the Awesome and Openbox window managers and we can choose which one we wish to launch from the command line. I focused on using Openbox during my trial.


heads 0.3.1 -- The welcome screen
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)

Launching the Openbox environment brings up a welcome window which explains where we can find launchers for the distribution's applications and how to access our network settings through the Wicd connection manager. Dismissing the welcome window leaves us in the Openbox environment. Along the bottom of the screen we find a panel crowded with an application menu, quick-launch buttons, a task switcher and a system tray. There are a few icons on the desktop. One icon launches a file manager, another opens a text file with the same message we read in the welcome window. A third icon opens a text file containing URLs for services on the Tor network.

I found the Openbox window manager to be quick and responsive. The environment looks and acts like a heavier, full featured desktop environment, but with the performance of a minimal, well configured window manager.

Hardware

I explored running heads in a VirtualBox virtual machine and on a laptop. When run in VirtualBox the distribution performed fairly well. heads booted quickly, automatically connected to the Internet and sound worked. However, heads was unable to make use of my host computer's full screen resolution. I also found that sometimes the integrated mouse would stop working in heads. I could work around this by turning off mouse integration to get my pointer back.

When run on my laptop, heads started out well, using my full screen resolution and audio worked. However, heads was unable to use my laptop's wireless card. This left me without an Internet connection unless I was plugged directly into a router. This limitation appears to stem from the project's free software only policy as it means firmware my wireless card requires to function is removed from the operating system.

In either test environment, heads used approximately 100MB of RAM when booted to the text console and about 180MB when logged into the Openbox interface.

Applications

Digging through the application menu we find an interesting combination of software, with many applications geared towards communicating on-line. The Tor Browser is present and includes the NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere extensions by default. These extensions try to keep us on encrypted versions of websites and block unwanted scripts which may be used to track us. The Thunderbird e-mail client is included along with the Psi+ XMPP client and the HexChat IRC client. I found copies of Abiword and Gnumeric included for editing word processing and spreadsheet documents. The Evince document viewer is included too along with a desktop application for creating and managing security keys.


heads 0.3.1 -- The Tor Browser
(full image size: 527kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)

heads ships with a few media players, including the mpv multimedia player and the LXMusic audio player. The GNU Image Manipulation Program is featured too. One uncommon program included is the Electrum Bitcoin Wallet. The distribution also provides us with the PCManFM file manager the GNU Compiler Collection and the Htop process monitor. In the background we find the distribution runs SysV init and version 4.9 of the Linux kernel.

Most of the applications included with heads worked well and most programs appear to have been selected for their lightweight, simple nature. Still, I did run into the occasional issue. For example, trying to open the Evince documentation simply brings up a blank page. Another problem I found was double-clicking an audio file in the file manager causes a media player window to open and then immediately crash. I could get around this problem by opening the LXMusic player and using it to select and play audio files.

Browsing the web through the Tor Browser is, as expected, a slow experience. This is a problem one often runs into when using Tor and not an issue with the distribution. I had hoped to sometimes work around slow sites by disabling Tor or using an "unsafe" browsing option, but heads does not offer an "unsafe" option that will connect us directly to the Internet. This is probably a good security feature, but having an unsafe option to test is a feature I have enjoyed on other privacy-oriented distributions.

In the Tor Browser there is a Tor button next to the address bar. This button lets us select a security level and request a new Tor circuit to reroute our traffic. These options both worked, but a third option for opening the Tor network settings did not do anything. Unlike Tails, the heads distribution does not appear to have a Tor control panel and we cannot access the Tor settings.

The Tor Browser can check for updates to the browser and install them. This gives us a chance to patch security issues. At one point I updated the browser and tried to restart it, whereupon I found Tor Browser would no longer start. I was running from live media, so I was able to fix the issue by rebooting the computer and reverting back to the old (and insecure) version of the browser.

One minor bug I ran into was each time I opened a virtual terminal the zsh shell would report there was an error in the zsh start-up file. As it turned out, one line in the file which should have been commented out was missed and it caused an error to be displayed each time the terminal was launched.


heads 0.3.1 -- zsh error in a virtual terminal
(full image size: 934kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)

One security feature of heads I did appreciate was that each user's processes are hidden from other users. This means the default user account, luther, cannot see processes run by other users, including the root user. This process hiding feature is available in several distributions and on FreeBSD, but I almost never see it activated. I like it as it gives each user some privacy and a little extra security, especially against command line snooping.

Package management

While heads does not include a graphical package manager the distribution does feature the APT command line utilities for finding, installing, removing and upgrading packages. By default, APT is set up to pull in software from Devuan's repositories. Unfortunately heads does not recognize Devuan's security keys. This means package information (and the packages themselves) cannot be verified. If we download new packages or upgrades we risk downloading compromised packages. Given the security focus of heads, this omission of verification keys seems like an odd oversight.

Conclusions

In principle, I like what heads is trying to do. The project is basically attempting to do what Tails does - provide safer, anonymous web browser and on-line communication - with the added benefit of having a completely auditable operating system. heads is also lighter on resources, using minimal user interfaces, when compared next to Tails. However, heads faces several problems which make it less user friendly and less polished than Tails.


heads 0.3.1 -- Generating an encryption key
(full image size: 412kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)

One area where heads faces an uphill battle is with hardware. Some computers (including my laptop) require non-free firmware or drivers to get on-line and, without an Internet connection, the benefit of an anonymous distribution like heads disappears. There are other little problems like the zsh start-up error which makes me wonder if anyone opened a virtual terminal during the testing of heads before the 0.3.1 release was published.

My big issue though was with updating software, especially the Tor Browser, which is the centrepiece of the distribution. If we cannot update software to more secure versions, due to bugs or missing package verification then that leaves us with a potentially unsafe operating system. Tails, while it ships with non-free firmware, has been good about releasing regular ISO updates and making updated Debian packages available to help users avoid potential security exploits.

I like what heads is trying to do by making a lighter, more open distribution for anonymous communication, but I'm not sure it is practical. heads requires more technical knowledge and, in my experience, does not work as well as Tails which I think will hinder its adoption.

* * * * *

Hardware used in this review

My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following specifications:

• Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
• Display: Intel integrated video
• Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
• Memory: 6GB of RAM
• Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
• Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card

* * * * *

Visitor supplied rating

heads has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.9/10 from 7 review(s).
Have you used heads? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.

Improvements coming to Tails, Debian makes all package code available on the web, plans automatic updates and updates install media, Ubuntu phasing out Python 2, tips for using Void

The Tails project, which makes a privacy-focused operating system for anonymous web browsing and on-line communication, has published a list of big picture tasks the developers are working on. These tasks include stronger random number generation, the ability to mount VeraCrypt volumes in GNOME and improved document translations. "As part of our current donation campaign, we recently explained why we need donations and what we accomplished this year. Today we are sharing with you some of our plans for the next years. Applications and features: Tails Server - run Onion services from Tails (VoIP chat rooms, collaboration tools, web servers, messaging servers, etc). VeraCrypt support in GNOME - graphical utilities to mount VeraCrypt volumes. Graphical interface for the Additional Packages persistent feature: allow users to customize which applications are available in their Tails." The complete list can be found on the distribution's news page.

* * * * *

People curious about the components and code which are used to make their applications like open source software because it is possible to review and audit the building blocks of the packages they install. One hurdle to reviewing a package's source code is finding the code in question, which is often tucked away on some obscure server. The Debian project is making code reviews easier by hosting a service called Debian Sources. Matthieu Caneill reports: "We're happy to announce that Debsources, the web application that allows to browse and search the entire source code of all Debian releases, is now hosted on the official Debian infrastructure and available at sources.debian.org. You may already know this service as previously hosted at sources.debian.net . We took the move to Debian hardware as the opportunity to officially announce it here. Debsources is a web service that exposes the content of Debian source packages on the web, both via an HTML user interface and a JSON API." More information on the Debian Sources site can be found in Caneill's mailing list post.

The Debian developers recently published an update for Debian's system installer. The new system installer, which will be used to set up Debian 10 "Buster" offers a number of changes, perhaps the most interesting one being enabling automatic software updates. "The unattended-upgrades package is now installed by default through the pkgsel component. The intent is to ensure the automatic installation of security upgrades. Feel free to help documenting this in the release notes!" According to the corresponding issue ticket, it looks like it will be possible to disable automatic updates, possibly at install time.

The Debian team has released refreshed installation media for both Debian 8 "Jessie" and Debian 9 "Stretch". The new installation discs do not represent new versions of Debian, just refreshed media for existing versions with bug fixes. Information on the new installation media can be found in two separate news posts for Debian 8.10 Jessie and Debian 9.3 Stretch.

* * * * *

Matthias Klose has posted an update on the progress made phasing Python 2 out of the Ubuntu distribution. Python 2 will reach the end of its supported life in about two years and distributions are trying to make sure all software packages work with the newer Python 3. "Getting Python 2 demoted has been an ongoing task for several Ubuntu releases, now finally having a desktop CD image in Ubuntu 17.10 which ships without a Python 2 interpreter. The next step is to get Python 2 demoted to Universe, before finally in the far future it can be removed entirely from the archive. To get this done, we need: OpenStack package builds using Python 3. Removing or updating Python 2 packages in the Ubuntu seeds. Fixing remaining packages to use Python 3 instead of Python 2. Make sure that no new Python 2 packages enter Main (now being a topic for the MIR process)." Further details can be found in Klose's e-mail.

* * * * *

For many people, December is a time of winter festivals and holidays. The Void team is celebrating the season with a series of tutorials which cover lesser known programs and features of the distribution. The Advent of Void series begins with a post about the gcal command line calendar. A new tutorial is published each day and all the posts can be read on the distribution's news page.

* * * * *

convert yellow-submarine.jpg yellow-submarine.png

We can adjust the image conversion process slightly and use multiple JPEG images to make one animated GIF. This example takes all the JPEG files in the current directory and turns them into one rapidly changing, animated GIF:

convert *.jpg animated.gif

convert -delay 100 *.jpg animated.gif

One common task I often find myself performing is resizing images, particularly screen shots or photos I want to e-mail to people. ImageMagick offers a few different approaches to resizing an image. One method is to shrink (or enlarge) the dimensions of an image to a percentage of its original size. This example creates a new image with the width and height set to half (50%) of the original:

convert original.jpg -resize 50% new-and-smaller.jpg

Should we wish to create a larger image, we can use a resize percentage larger than 100%.

What if we have an existing image and we want to find out its current dimensions and then shrink it down to a specific size, given in pixels? We can do that with a combination of the file and convert commands. The file command can tell us the size of the original image. Here we run the file command and it tells us our original photo is 500x500 pixels:

file original.png
original.png: PNG image data, 500 x 500, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

We can then shrink the file down to 400x400 pixels using the convert command:

convert original.png -resize 400x400 new-image.png

These steps on their own are fine, but it does not save us any time compared to working with our images in a desktop application such as Gwenview or the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Where the ImageMagick command line tools shine is when we use the power of the command line to work on multiple images. We can do this with a for loop. In this example we access every JPEG file in our current directory and shrink it down so its dimensions are a quarter of the original size. The new images are saved with the suffix "-small".

for oldname in *.jpg; do newname=$(basename "$oldname" .jpg)-small.jpg; convert "$oldname" -resize 25% "$newname"; done

A lot is happening in the above command so let's break it down a little. The for oldname in *.jpg part looks for all files with the .jpg extension and, one at a time, processes them using the variable name oldname. The next part, do newname=$(basename "$oldname" .jpg)-small.jpg uses the basename command to strip away the file's suffix, .jpg. Then we add on a new suffix, -small.jpg, that will be appended to the new image's filename. For instance, my-photo.jpg would become my-photo-small.jpg with this step. Then the convert command at the end takes the original file, shrinks it down and saves it under the new name. The double-quotes around the filenames is a way to avoid trouble if there are spaces in a file's name which might confuse our shell.

One artistic touch we can perform on photographs is adjusting them from full colour to black and white. This can be done by adjusting the image type to grayscale. In this example we change a family photo from colour to black and white:

convert family-photo.jpg -type grayscale family-photo-bw.jpg

Rotating an image is often useful and ImageMagick will allow us to select a number of degrees to turn an image. The following example turns my family photo 90 degrees clockwise:

convert family-photo.jpg -rotate 90 family-photo-turned.jpg

As before, we can mix the conversion of an image with the power of the command line's processing power. In this example we both shrink and rotate all of the images in our current directory with the suffix .JPG, using a for loop. In the process we convert the JPG suffix to lowercase:

for oldname in *.JPG; do newname=$(basename "$oldname" .JPG)-small.jpg; convert "$oldname" -resize 50% -rotate 90 "$newname"; done

Using a command like the one shown above we can tidy filenames, correct rotation and shrink hundreds of images in preparation for transmission or storage in a matter of seconds - a much more efficient approach than working with each photo manually in a desktop application.

If you use ImageMagick to manipulate images, please share your favourite tricks in the comments.

* * * * *

More tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.

* * * * *

Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.

Torrent Corner statistics:

• Total torrents seeded: 671
• Total data uploaded: 16.9TB

• 2017-12-20: Black Lab Linux 10.1 (see (roadmap)
• 2018-01-04: Ubuntu 18.04 Alpha 1
• 2018-01-16: Tails 3.4 (see release calendar)
• 2018-02-01: Ubuntu 18.04 Alpha 2
• 2018-03-06: Tails 3.5 (see release calendar)
• 2018-03-08: Ubuntu 18.04 Beta 1
• 2018-03-27: Fedora 28 Beta
• 2018-04-05: Ubuntu 18.04 Beta 2
• 2018-04-26: Ubuntu 18.04 (see release schedule)
• 2018-05-01: Fedora 28 (see release schedule)

* * * * *

• Number of all distributions in the database: 879
• Number of active distributions in the database: 306
• Number of dormant distributions: 50
• Number of discontinued distributions: 523
• Number of distributions on the waiting list: 174
• Number of distributions waiting for evaluation: 46

* * * * *

This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 18 December 2017. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:

• Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
• Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
• Bruce Patterson (podcast)