Cloudy Issues and the Perfect Distro

Today in Linux news, Bruce Byfield hits the cloud nail on the head with his thoughts on the cloud. Are folks sacrificing the independence gained by switching to Linux by trusting cloud vendors? Elsewhere, Bryan Lunduke ponders the perfect Linux distribution and an update on the new Debian Live emerged. Pavlo Rudyi posted a look back at GIMP's 20 years and Samuel Mehrbrodt discussed improving LibreOffice's toolbars.

Bruce Byfield today asked if the convenience of the cloud is worth risking your files to unknown entities. He said, "From a security perspective, the typical cloud is a disaster in waiting. If you are acting on behalf of a corporation, or your files have any potential value, you should approach the cloud cautiously." He further stated if one tries to increase security, it takes the point of the cloud away - convenience. He summed, "The irony of working in the cloud for Linux users is that too often they abandon the independence they gained and given their independence to another proprietary company."

The perfect distribution isn't possible. Even if it was technically possible to produce a large collection of code without error, "perfect" is subjective. What's perfect for me probably wouldn't be perfect to the Linux Tycoon Bryan Lunduke, as he acknowledges in his post today. He'd like a distro with a package manager that works, supports a couple of commercially available tablets, and ships with the GNOME desktop. He'd also like a vast software repository and no automatic online services. Lunduke thinks it'd be good if his perfect distro left most packages as upstream intended and allowed for easy "modification and redistribution. Ubuntu GNOME edition, openSUSE Leap, and Fedora are all not that far off. Not far at all."

Progress with the new Debian Live is being made according to a post today by Ben Armstrong. There's very little meat for the general public in the post other than the news that it is being worked on and Stretch and Jessie images may be available soon with various desktops like KDE, MATE, and LXDE.

Elsewhere:

* Improving the Toolbars in LibreOffice

* 20 Years of GIMP Evolution: Step by Step