siduction Xfce

siduction Xfce is a freely distributed and open source Debian-based operating system built around the traditional Xfce desktop environment and designed from the ground up to be deployed on low-end machines or computers with old and semi-old hardware components.

Availability, supported architectures and boot options

The Xfce flavor of siduction is distributed as Live DVD ISO images of approximately 800MB, which means that users can burn them only on DVD discs using any CD/DVD burning software or write them on USB sticks of 1GB or higher capacity with the Disks (GNOME) or UNetbootin applications. It will run well on both 64-bit (amd64) and 32-bit (i386) instruction set architectures.

From the boot prompt, the user can start the live session with default settings or in safe graphics mode, boot an existing operating system installed on the first disk drive, and run a memory (RAM) diagnostic test using the Memtest86+ command-line utility.

Additionally, it is also possible to enter custom boot options, change the language (default is English US), add specific drivers, set up a custom timezone, change the boot source, as well as to add extra kernel parameters.

Traditional desktop environment with Xfce specific apps

The Xfce project provides users with a traditional desktop environment comprised of a taskbar located on the upper part of the screen, from where users can access the main menu, launch apps, switch between virtual workspaces, execute commands, and interact with running programs, as well as a dock (application launcher) located on the bottom edge of the screen.

Default applications include the Leafpad and Mousepad text editor, Midnight Commander twin-panel file manager, Thunar file manager, Xarchiver archive manager, XTerm terminal emulator, Ristrettor image viewer, XSane image scanner, HexChat IRC client, Ceni network manager, Xnoise audio player, Brasero CD/DVD burning software, AbiWord word processor, Gnumeric spreadsheet editor, and Chromium web browser.

Bottom line

Summing up, siduction Xfce is a decent distribution of Linux that provides users with a traditional graphical environment for low-end computers. It is originally forked from the aptosid operating system.

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.

What is new in version 2017.1.0:

• XFCE is still being shipped in version 4.10.1 and is as reliable as ever. It is a desktop environment that just gets out of your way when work needs to be done.

What is new in version 2016.1:

• XFCE is still being shipped in version 4.10.1 and is as reliable as ever. It is a desktop environment that just gets out of your way when work needs to be done.

What is new in version 14.1.0 / 2015.1 Dev:

• XFCE is still being shipped in version 4.10.1 and is as reliable as ever. It is a desktop environment that just gets out of your way when work needs to be done.

What is new in version 14.1.0:

• XFCE is still being shipped in version 4.10.1 and is as reliable as ever. It is a desktop environment that just gets out of your way when work needs to be done.