siduction MATE

siduction MATE is an open source operating system, a distribution of Linux built around the lightweight, easy-to-use, advanced and fast MATE desktop environment for the X Window System, which is based on the latest Qt technologies.

Availability, supported architectures and boot options

The Razor-qt edition of siduction Linux is available for download as a Live CD ISO image, supporting the amd64/64-bit architecture. In order to boot them from the BIOS of any computer, the user can burn the ISO images to blank CD discs or write them on USB sticks of 1GB or higher capacity.

Default boot options include the ability to start the live environment with default settings, start the live environment in safe graphics mode, boot from the first disk drive, as well as to run a memory diagnostic test using the award winning Memtest86+ utility.

In addition to the above, the user can add additional options to the aforementioned boot entries, change the language for the live session (default is English US), use a custom timezone, change the boot source, add extra kernel parameters and additional drivers.

Modern and advanced desktop session with great apps and effects

The MATE desktop environment allows users to easily and quickly access the pre-installed applications, as well as to interact with running programs and the functions implemented in the system tray area, thanks to its modern and advanced taskbar, which is located on the bottom edge of the screen.

Default applications include the Ceni network card configuration utility, HexChat IRC client, QupZilla web browser, qBittorrent torrent downloader, XSane image scanner, ScreenGrab desktop screenshot utility, JuffEd text editor, Qlipper cliboard manager, Warlock Bar, Zim data manager, qtFM file manager, Clementine audio player, and VLC Media Player.

Bottom line

As expected, the siduction MATE operating system provides users with a modern, fast and lightweight distribution of Linux that can be used to turn old and semi-old machines into powerful workstations.

What is new in this release:

• The released images are a snapshot of Debian unstable, that also goes by the name of Sid, from 2018-05-12. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, an installer based on Calamares and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 4.16.8, accompanied by X-Server 1.19.6-1 and systemd 238.4.
• KDE Plasma stands at version 5.12.5, while GNOME comes in at 3.28.1, with 3.28.2 waiting in the wings. LXQt ships at 0.12.0 and Xfce at 4.12.4, while Cinnamon comes in at 3.6.7-8 and MATE at 1.20.0.

What is new in version :

• Recommends enabled:
• Years ago we decided to not install recommends anymore for our releases or when the user installs a package. The handling of that feature in Debian was not as we thought it should be. A lot of cruft was installed to the system and we wanted to prevent that. Times have changed and so has the handling of recommends. So now the recommends that the maintainer sets for a package are installed in siduction. If you would like recommends not installed, you can override our decision in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/80-siduction in the line APT::Install-Recommends "1";.
• Rotation for Journald:
• To prevent the journal from growing too large we have implemented a journal-rotation and a maximum size to the journal. You can overrule this setting by editing the files in /etc/journal.conf.d/. There will be a blog post on this topic within the next days.
• SSH Handling:
• We built two small scripts to turn SSH on and off in the live and in the
• installed system. They are aptly named SSH Activate and SSH Deactivate
• and you can find them in your menu.
• Calamares - our new installer:
• This is the 2nd release with the new installer built from the
• Calamares Installer Framework and we are quite happy with it. It is under steady developement and will in the near future improve quite a bit on LVM and LUKS2.
• The partitioning is done by the brand new kpmcore 3.3.0, which is also at the heart of the KDE Partition Manager (KPM). The corresponding package for that is called partitionmanager.
• UEFI installs made easy:
• With Calamares we can proclaim full implementation of UEFI-Installs since 2017.1.0. For now we still have encryption with LUKS and LVM turned off, which Calamares offers as an option. We want to be on top of that feature before we offer it to you. Offering it means we need to be able to support this critical functionality. We do not feel we can do this adequatly at the moment, as it is an ongoing developement, that should be more mature with kpmcore 3.4.
• Non-free software:
• The installer does not offer the option to opt-out software that does not
• comply with DFSG, the Debian Free Software Guidelines. That means that non-free packages would be installed by default on the system. The command vrms will list these packages. One can remove not wanted packages manually or remove them all by issuing apt purge $(vrms -s) before or after installation
• The very same topic has ruffled feathers on the debian deverloper mailing list last month with two extensive threads and a
• possible future solution layed out by Russ Allbery.
• The following non-free and contrib packages are installed by default:
• non-free:
• * amd64-microcode - Processor microcode firmware for AMD CPUs
• * firmware-amd-graphics - Binary firmware for AMD/ATI graphics chips
• * firmware-atheros - Binary firmware for Atheros wireless cards
• * firmware-bnx2 - Binary firmware for Broadcom NetXtremeII
• * firmware-bnx2x - Binary firmware for Broadcom NetXtreme II 10Gb
• * firmware-brcm80211 - Binary firmware for Broadcom 802.11 wireless card
• * firmware-crystalhd - Crystal HD Video Decoder (firmware)
• * firmware-intelwimax - Binary firmware for Intel WiMAX Connection
• * firmware-iwlwifi - Binary firmware for Intel Wireless cards
• * firmware-libertas - Binary firmware for Marvell Libertas 8xxx wireless car
• * firmware-linux-nonfree - Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kernel
• * firmware-misc-nonfree - Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kernel
• * firmware-myricom - Binary firmware for Myri-10G Ethernet adapters
• * firmware-netxen - Binary firmware for QLogic Intelligent Ethernet (3000)
• * firmware-qlogic - Binary firmware for QLogic HBAs
• * firmware-realtek - Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT adapters
• * firmware-ti-connectivity - Binary firmware for TI Connectivity wireless network
• * firmware-zd1211 - binary firmware for the zd1211rw wireless driver
• * intel-microcode - Processor microcode firmware for Intel CPUs
• Contrib packages:
• * b43-fwcutter - utility for extracting Broadcom 43xx firmware
• * firmware-b43-installer - firmware installer for the b43 driver
• * firmware-b43legacy-installer - firmware installer for the b43legacy driver
• * iucode-tool - Intel processor microcode
• New paste script:
• We have retired the old paste-script, that ran under the name siduction-paste. It's place was taken by what is now called simple-paste. Simple-paste is a cli swiss army-knife for pasting, written in bash, powered by pb. It supports command output, different kinds of screenshots, (auto-)deletable pastes and much more.