Drauger OS / Blog: Recent posts

As many of you know, we have been trying to get our RSS feed on the Drauger OS website working for a while. Well, we finally did it. We finally got that RSS feed up and running!

What is this RSS feed you keep talking about?

Great question. An RSS feed is a way to get notifications about blog posts as soon as they come out. On the website you read a given blog, there is a file tha an app called an RSS Feed Reader will read and use to display the blog post to you on your device. These days, many people use these RSS Feed Readers on their phones. An example of some are Feedly and Flym.... read more

On June 2nd, there was an update to almost all of our apps in our repository. What was that about? Why did they all get updated? Was there anything significant changed?

Yes there were significant changes. But, you should only really notice them if you have a bug.

Up until now, most of our apps had no error logging of any kind. This meant that developers had to find a way to replicate bugs and errors instead of being able to read a log and potentially just knowing what the problem was. This leads to inefficiency in debugging and makes it so that we can't help nearly as many people as we would like.... read more

As of a few short minutes ago, Drauger OS 7.4.1 Jiangshi has been released and is now officially considered stable!

I would like to take this time to thank all our contributors and beta testers for all their hard work. Without them, Drauger OS would not be nearly as good as it is today, or improving as much as it is.

Drauger OS 7.4.1 comes with a number of changes over Drauger OS 7.3.7, notably:
* Compton now handles screen compositing instead of the Xfce screen compositor
* Fixed a bug where when right clicking in Nemo, the terminal would not open when clicking "Open in Terminal"
* The CUPS systemd services have been disabled
* Apache2 has been removed
* And MUCH more!... read more

Tomorrow, May 4th, 2019, is the one year anniversary for the public release of Drauger OS. Many of you who are veterans in the Linux world may know that many Linux distros do not make it past the first few years of existence. So this is a good first step into becoming a more substantial project.

Of course, the one year anniversary of anything is still important. So, to celebrate this, we are releasing a video on our YouTube (and maybe on PeerTube too). This video is our "State of the Project Address", a short speech designed to help with transparency with our community, and draws inspiration from the State of the Union Address annually given by the President here in the USA.... read more

Many of you many be familiar with our custom Xbox and PlayStation driver daemon, usb-scanner. It uses another app called xboxdrv in order to map Xbox and PlayStation controllers to your keyboard and mouse. This way, you can play games with a game-pad which do not normally allow you to do this.

Unfortunately, it seems like development of xboxdrv has halted. In order to prevent support issues, and in order to improve security, we have decided to completely re-do usb-scanner so that it no longer relies on xboxdrv.... read more

Lately, as many of you are aware, Facebook has been coming under fire for questionable security and privacy practices for a number of months. Also, many of you may be aware that Drauger OS has a Facebook page that we actively keep updated.

Due to these recent privacy and security scandals, Drauger OS Development will be PERMANENTLY DELETING our Facebook page on April 25th, 2019.

Drauger OS Development supports and advocates for security and privacy, especially where it does not harm, or even improves the performance of one's system. However, we are always trying to find ways to make our network safer and more private for everyone, users and guests alike. To this end, we refuse to maintain a social media presence on a platform with such a wide swath of security and privacy violations. We will never advocate for any company that does anything like that, and then refuses to fix these issues, or refuses to go public about their mistakes the moment they are discovered internally. To this end, we will be deleting our Facebook profile permanently, in protest of Facebook's abhorrent security and privacy practices.... read more

One issue we have consistently had over the life of Drauger OS is that our on-screen keyboard, Onboard, does not display when you click in a text box using a controller that has been set up in software using usb-scanner. This is due in part to 3 reasons:

1. usb-scanner makes your controller emulate a real mouse and keyboard, so Onboard will not understand when a controller clicks on a text box, versus a real mouse or keyboard.

2. usb-scanner simply translates your actions on the game-pad to something that can actually interact with the computer. It does not have the capability to understand that you are clicking in a text box. While Onboard can, that presents our third issue:... read more

The time has finally come to announce the release date for Drauger OS 7.4.1 Stable!

Lots of time and effort has been put into this release, more than any other release of Drauger OS, ever. And not just by the developers, but also by our small pool of beta testers, as well as all of our Contributors. So, I would like to thank each and every one of the Contributors, Developers, and Beta Testers for all their hard work on this release in the past 6 months.... read more

As of a few minutes ago, Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 3 has been uploaded! This release is mostly filled with bug fixes.

A full list of changes includes:
* Removed snapd to improve boot times and fix a bug where Drauger OS would not boot, to add it back, run sudo apt install snapd in a terminal
* Changed Drauger OS icons
* Moved up to Kernel Version 5.0.0-3.1

In addition to this new version, we also have a new web address: https://draugeros.org... read more

Incredibly, ahead of schedule (kinda), the icons and logos for Drauger OS has been changed a day early! So, I would like to talk a little about this logo and why we changed them.

Our initial logo, many complained about, saying the parts of it where off center. And, to their credit, their were right to an extent. The interior triangle was off center from the exterior hexagon. However, based on the the image as a whole, they were both centered. But, because this issue is glaringly obvious, our contributors decided that Drauger OS needed a new logo.... read more

Recently, we made a post about how we would be changing logos/icons soon for Drauger OS. First and foremost, we would like to let you know that we are indeed proceeding with this.

Furthermore, we are also going to be changing the Plymouth Theme for Drauger OS, to something much more sophisticated and minimalistic. In fact, this is why this logo change was delayed. We had some issues with time management and debugging.... read more

Roughly a month ago, Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 2 Jiangshi was released with many updates and bug fixes. Now, it's time for Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 3 Jiangshi to be released. First up, the release date.

Here at Drauger OS Development, we have finally settled on a beta cycle. In total, each release of Drauger OS should have 3 beta releases, each 2 months apart, including the final stable release. Feature Freeze (when development of new features for the OS is halted in order to focus on bug fixes and optimizations) will commence between Beta 2 and Beta 3. ... read more

As many of you will know, Drauger OS has many issues when you initially try it out. Two of the biggest issues are that people do not know what the default root password is, and the installer is confusing. We have been working to alleviate these issues for quite a while, and finally we might have solutions for both.

Many of you who are familiar with Linux, especially with Debian, Ubuntu, and other Debian-based distributions, will know that the most common installer on live systems is Ubiquity, which is the default installer for Ubuntu. However, Ubiquity is not the only program one could use to install a live system to their hard disk. One of the most common installers aside from Ubiquity, is Calamares.... read more

One thing many gamers worry about on Linux is graphics card support. Many gamers and content creators opt for AMD graphics card to avoid this issue and still get great performance on their systems.

Nvidia graphics card users will know that their drivers have their own packages. However, AMD graphics cards do not have this. AMD graphics drivers are baked into the Linux Kernel, and into the Mesa graphics stack. So this can mean that making sure that you have the latest AMD drivers is confusing. And, on normal Ubuntu or Linux Mint, you will have an older graphics driver. But in Drauger OS, this isn't the case.

... read more

Time for our weekly update on the state of Drauger OS!

A lot has happened in the past week, so be forewarned, this is going to be a longer post than usual.

First up: We have new emails!

For the majority of the past year, you were able to email us at draugeros@gmail.com. However, while we will still get emails to this address, you will now receive replies from contact@draugeros.ml, we also suggest that instead of emailing draugeros@gmail.om, that you email our new address instead, as we will receive it faster that way.... read more

As of just a few minutes ago, Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 2 was publicly released. This is a huge deal for the Drauger OS community, as well as Drauger OS Development. Here are 5 reasons why:

1: First Major Release to use New xz Compression

Historically, Drauger OS ISOs have been compressed using gzip, a faster, but lower-compression, algorithm. During Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 1, a refresh ISO was released that used xz compression, as well as removing other useless junk in the ISO. This shrank the ISO by about 700 MB. We are still using this new compression algorithim, but are also working to keep the formerly mentioned junk to a minimum to help keep out ISO size down... read more

After almost a year, Drauger OS finally has an apt repository! Now, Drauger OS can get more timely updates to it's applications in a less intrusive, more seamless manner.

If you are running Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 1, you can add the apt repo by running:

sudo apt edit-sources

and adding this line to the end of the file which opens:

deb https://draugeros.ml/apt jiangshi main

afterwards, run:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 34144E99D48B872B... read more

You read that right folks. This post is all about that amazing 4.20 kernel coming down the pipe in just a few hours to all Drauger OS installations!

This kernel, which will be updating things like CPU and graphics support and drivers, comes with a number of performance and security benefits just due to how some of the new code is written. But, more importantly, this kernel release comes with both Nvidia RTX Ray-Tracing support, and support for AMD's Adaptive Refresh technology: FreeSync.... read more

Big news is abound!

In this time of change within Drauger OS and the development behind it, the people who contribute are still working hard to ensure that Drauger OS keeps getting better. To that end, we would like to announce that in about 2 weeks, Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 2 will be released on January 30th, 2019. There are a number of small changes here and there in this release. The CHANGELOG will be updated to reflect this in the next few days. ... read more

In the past few days, a few of you may have realized some rapid changes are going on on our website, and you would be right.

Our new web dev, Logan Johnson, is redesigning our website and changing our hosting. Soon, we will be able to have our forums, blog, and support desk all on our own website. However, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Our new hosting will also make it easier for us to set up our own apt repository, as well as self-hosting our ISO files. In culmination, Drauger OS will be moving off SourceForge in a couple months!... read more

Happy Holidays Everyone!

In this winter season, we have many things to be thankful for. And one of them is tech. Another, is the open-sourced world. In the spirit of the holidays, the Drauger OS 7.4.1 ISO has been refreshed to have more up-to-date software, including the 4.19.0-12.2 Liquorix Kernel, Drauger Installer 0.1.0, and Drauger Welcome 2.2, just to name a few updated packages.

Furthermore, we have changed our compression format in the ISO so that instead of using the gzip compression we originally used, the ISO now uses compression in the xz format. While this will increase our build times, it will also mean smaller ISOs in the future. In fact, after changing this compression and removing some other forgotten files pointed out by Dolphin Oracle from the Big Daddy Linux Live stream (check out the show here, every Saturday night at 9 PM EST), the ISO is now about 700MB smaller than before!... read more

Here at Drauger OS Development, we know that we can't just rely on all the Google Forms we have been using for forever. Eventually, we will have to move on to something more professional, and secure. It has come to public attention that Google tracks it's users in one way or another. Due to this, we have been reluctant to have to keep using Google Forms. However, we have continued using Google Forms due to it's rapid load times, ease of configurability, and ease of integration. However, soon, this will all change.... read more

Good evening everyone!

Recently, some of you may have noted some changes to our website. Most notably, WE HAVE MERCH!

That's right folks, Drauger OS now has merch available! Check it out now, here.

Also, if you don't want to purchase any merch, but wish to donate to the OS development, please visit our Paypal page... read more

Last night, Drauger OS 7.4.1 Beta 1 Jiangshi was finally uploaded!

If you are new to Linux or Drauger OS, please use the stable 7.3.7 Revenant. But, if you are interested in testing 7.4.1, by all means do so and let us know of any bugs you find on either our Discord or our Telegram support groups.

Drauger OS Version 7.4.1 Beta 2 is slated for release sometime in mid-January to early February. ... read more

Over the course of the life of Drauger OS, one thing we didn't expect has proven to be true, people from countries other than the US, UK and Canada have been downloading Drauger OS. You can see this in our download statistics. But, many of these countries speak and read languages other than English. While our blog and social media will remain to be be in English, due to online translation tools becoming more prevalent, local translation is difficult.... read more