Index of /smooth

[ICO]NameLast modifiedSizeDescription

[PARENTDIR]Parent Directory  -  
[TXT]LATEST.txt2024-02-19 01:21 34  
[   ]PACKAGES.list2024-03-07 03:30 85K 
[TXT]PACKAGES.md2021-10-23 17:36 69K 
[TXT]README.html2024-03-07 03:32 57K 
[TXT]README.md2024-03-07 03:32 51K 
[   ]SHA256SUMS2022-11-21 22:11 3.1K 
[TXT]SHA256SUMS.txt2022-11-21 22:11 3.1K 
[DIR]Videos/2023-12-08 03:53 -  
[TXT]analyze-packages.sh2022-09-03 16:29 2.1K 
[DIR]latest.old/2023-12-09 06:42 -  
[DIR]latest/2024-02-19 01:21 -  
[DIR]meta/2024-02-19 01:21 -  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211027T205736Z.iso2021-10-27 23:01 15G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211107T111814Z.iso2021-11-07 12:29 15G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211110T194900Z.iso2021-11-10 20:59 15G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211111T202738Z.iso2021-11-11 21:38 15G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211113T230745Z.iso2021-11-14 00:21 16G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211114T192716Z.iso2021-11-14 20:38 16G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211115T065454Z.iso2021-11-15 08:06 16G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211115T235129Z.iso2021-11-16 01:03 17G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211120T163816Z.iso2021-11-20 17:50 17G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211121T162241Z.iso2021-11-21 19:12 17G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211121T233916Z.iso2021-11-22 02:22 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20211121T233916Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2021-11-22 02:07 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211127T154505Z.iso2021-11-27 18:49 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20211127T154505Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2021-11-27 18:38 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211210T234045Z.iso2021-12-11 02:11 11G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20211210T234045Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2021-12-11 02:02 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20211211T175758Z.iso2021-12-11 20:38 11G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20211211T175758Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2021-12-11 20:31 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220507T213241Z.iso2022-05-08 01:17 16G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220507T213241Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-05-08 01:04 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220516T224100Z.iso2022-05-17 02:26 16G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220516T224100Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-05-17 02:09 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220618T233557Z.iso2022-06-19 03:09 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220618T233557Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-06-19 02:56 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220620T004930Z.iso2022-06-20 04:46 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220620T004930Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-06-20 04:36 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220625T191113Z.iso2022-06-25 23:07 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220625T191113Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-06-25 22:55 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220626T224854Z.iso2022-06-27 02:23 18G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220626T224854Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-06-27 02:13 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220629T222811Z.iso2022-06-30 10:22 4.0G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220629T222811Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-06-30 10:20 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220630T192233Z.iso2022-06-30 23:04 18G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220630T192233Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-06-30 22:54 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220705T153234Z.iso2022-07-05 20:45 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220705T153234Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-07-05 20:28 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220708T150035Z.iso2022-07-08 19:05 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220708T150035Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-07-08 18:50 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220708T232014Z.iso2022-07-09 03:07 17G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220708T232014Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-07-09 02:53 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220713T195144Z.iso2022-07-13 23:41 18G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220713T195144Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-07-13 23:31 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220904T163130Z.iso2022-09-04 20:08 18G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220904T163130Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-09-04 19:57 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220905T172007Z.iso2022-09-05 21:27 18G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220905T172007Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-09-05 21:17 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20220911T221446Z.iso2022-09-12 02:16 18G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20220911T221446Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-09-12 02:03 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20221105T154121Z.iso2022-11-05 18:16 13G 
[   ]smooth-amd64_20221112T011255Z.iso2022-11-12 04:23 13G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20221112T011255Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-11-12 04:11 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20221121T173054Z.iso2022-11-21 21:47 13G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20221121T173054Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2022-11-21 22:11 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230108T100055Z.iso2023-01-08 15:39 20G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230108T100055Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-01-08 15:39 104  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230108T153512Z.iso2023-01-08 21:22 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230108T153512Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-01-08 21:22 104  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230109T011111Z.iso2023-01-09 05:42 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230109T011111Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-01-09 05:42 104  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230421T002521Z.iso2023-04-21 03:25 4.0G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230421T002521Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-04-21 03:25 104  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230422T005704Z.iso2023-04-22 05:52 16G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230422T005704Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-04-22 05:52 104  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230422T141719Z.iso2023-04-22 19:34 20G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230422T141719Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-04-22 19:34 104  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230422T193028Z.iso2023-04-23 01:28 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230422T193028Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-04-23 01:28 104  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230528T034649Z.iso2023-05-28 10:59 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230528T034649Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-05-28 10:59 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230611T223652Z.iso2023-06-12 05:26 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230611T223652Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-06-12 05:26 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230626T013118Z.iso2023-06-26 07:51 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230626T013118Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-06-26 07:51 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20230626T201113Z.iso2023-06-27 02:29 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20230626T201113Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-06-27 02:29 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20231106T085108Z.iso2023-11-06 14:21 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20231106T085108Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-11-06 14:21 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20231205T075627Z.iso2023-12-05 13:28 21G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20231205T075627Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-12-05 13:28 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20231208T232034Z.iso2023-12-09 06:42 35G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20231208T232034Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2023-12-09 06:42 100  
[   ]smooth-amd64_20240218T183821Z.iso2024-02-19 01:21 34G 
[TXT]smooth-amd64_20240218T183821Z.iso.SHA256SUMS.txt2024-02-19 01:21 100  

Smooth, powered by Debian

(Warning: Before using Smooth, please familiarize yourself with Security section, where number of concerns are raised)

(Warning: If you have NVIDIA GPU please do not use Smooth)

(Warning: If your desktop or laptop was manufactured in last 12 months, expect some things, including possibly Wireless networking, to not work).

This is a Linux image that you can run easily without installing anything on a hard drive. It comes with many 64-bit and 32-bit packages and libraries preinstalled and can be useful for offline work too. You will need an empty 32GB fast USB pendrive.

Smooth is designed to have plethora of programs, tools and libraries already preinstalled, for both simplicity, user experience, and reducing repetitive tasks. Because installing software manually on Live CD install will install it to memory, and they are going to be gone after restart, this is not optimal. So instead it just comes with all of them in a single ready to use image. This way you also conserve the RAM memory.

The idea: just boot it up, and almost everything is already there, and you can do actual work or play games with very little friction or extra work. This is useful both for professionals (to save time) and to people new to Linux (who do not know what do to or break things easily).

The author is using this live image for over 4 years, as a daily driver for all kinds of tasks: browsing, watching videos, playing games, coding, software development, CAD and EDA design, data analysis, benchmarking, and many more things.

Highlights:

Installation

Download the image from https://www.functor.xyz/smooth/latest/

It will have extension .iso, something like smooth-amd64_20211121.iso

Note that the file is very big, of about 20-30GB in size, and some operating systems or file systems might not support so big files. For example Android phones will often use FAT32 on their microSD cards by default, as they are formatted this way in the factory. Many USB sticks will, especially ones smaller than 128GB, will often come pre-formatted with FAT32 on them too.

Optionally verify integrity of the download, check SHA256SUMS file content, against downloaded file. If you are on Linux, using console or your favorite terminal emulator execute:

wget https://www.functor.xyz/smooth/SHA256SUMS sha256sum --ignore-missing --check SHA256SUMS

if you see a line saying “OK”, you are ready to continue to next step.

Easy installation

If you are on Windows we recommend using Rufus https://rufus.ie/ or etcher https://www.balena.io/etcher/, especially if you do not have much experience with Linux or computer hardware.

Ethcher is easy to use and can run on Linux, Windows and MacOS.

Just download the tool, unpack/install, start it, select image and destination drive, then write it. Once write is complete reboot, a computer and boot from the pendrive. If it is not booting, check you BIOS settings. Often keyboard key like F11, F8, F2 or Del, could allow you selecting a boot drive or entering BIOS setup.

Hard installation

If you want more advanced way using low level utilities, use dd for example. Check HARD_INSTALL.md for some details.

Booting

Usually your BIOS will detect a USB stick during startup, and if there are no other boot devices boot from it by default. However, in some other situations you might want to manually select boot device (i.e. if you also have other bootable storage devices), usually using F11 or F12 keys on the keyboard. If you have an option for both UEFI and non-UEFI, prefer UEFI. If you don’t see your USB stick or UEFI option, check your BIOS settings in more details. Very old computer might not have UEFI booting (from before 2012).

Default password

User: user

Password: live

Upgrading existing install

Check UPGRADE.md for more details

Installing extra software

From terminal first update package database:

sudo apt update

Then request to install a package:

sudo apt install something-i-want

You can search for package using apt search something.

Other option is to use Synaptic application which is installed by default. Just run sudo synaptic from terminal emulator.

For installing manually downloaded .deb files, use gdebi. In terminal run sudo gdebi package.deb, or simply double click on package.deb in file manager in MATE. Do not download deb packages from untrusted sources (it is easy to install viruses this way), and even then, be cautious, i.e. make sure connection is done using HTTPS.

You should be fine following instructions of 3rd party software written for Debian testing, stable or unstable, in this order. If they are missing, try following instructions for Ubuntu 22.04, and if not, try 20.04. If software is distributed as tar.gz/xz/bz2 files, simply use it, and follow generic instructions. Often you can just unpack and launch program without any installation (i.e. Firefox). If only option are rpm packages, you will need to seek some help, but if you are determined, you can try using alien to convert package (but be prepared for failures!). Or simply compile program from sources (which will have better result that using rpm/alien mix). This is also recommended method when you want to try more new version of package than is available in Debian.

AppImage package should work out of the box (as they should work on every Linux installation!). As a bonus, Smooth also supports using flatpak and snap packages, but if possible we recommend using AppImage, as they are way easier to use (in fact author had serious issues when using snap on Debian). docker containers can be used out of the box too.

If you are using months old Smooth version, and want some updates (i.e. security updates, new version of Mesa, or something), you can do full system upgrade (sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade), but it will consume a lot of memory. You should only attempt this if you have at least 48GB of memory, and fast Internet access, as all this downloaded updates will be gone after reboot. Kernel cannot be updated this way, because of reboot requirement.

Also, it is possible to use Debian unstable and experimental, as well some Ubuntu PPAs, but in general you should avoid it. Author sometimes does use Debian experimental to install new version of Mesa for testing AMD GPUs.

More info

The author did use this Live CD “distro” for over 5 years (since September 2018) on his daily workstation (AMD 2950X, 256GB ram, 25Gbps NIC, 25Gbps ISP, triple monitor), using Mach Xtreme MX-ES 32 GB Type-A USB 3.0 (3.1 Gen 1) stick with SLC memory, MXUB3SES-32G, from ~2012! They are good, reliable, small and fast, and run cool. I found it sufficient for essentially everything. Now I run M.2 NVMe over USB enclosure (with UAS support) and decent 1TB SSD in it, which is even faster.

The author also uses the same Live CD distro when fixing various issues with other computers or for testing new computers, even when offline, in remote location or something is broken.

Since the inception, it got more and more packages added to the main image (initially about 6GB, now about 20-35GB - mostly due to inclusion of many developement libraries and debug symbol packages), and got various minor improvements, in configs, to get you running quick. In some other places the pacakges got removed, either due to removal from Debian, or supperior alternatives being available.

Smooth is usually based on Debian GNU/Linux testing. It is sometimes based on Debian stable (usually only for a month after release of stable). Currently based on Debian GNU/Linux codename “trixie” (testing in 2023).

Minimal required hardware:

Cautions:

It is possible to use Smooth with no network or Internet access, but certainly you will want be able to use Internet, and possibly download more applications and packages. You can use any Internet speed you want, but the experience isn’t going to be very pleasant, when you need to wait an hour to download and install some package set that is 3GB in size. Similarly, file server or NAS very fast local network will help you to persist some of your work, access media files, big download and other documents, that you wish to access quickly even on a fresh boot of Smooth. It is completely optional tho.

You can get with less, but it will not be so pleasant. It will start with 4GB of RAM probably too, and could be useful in some situations, like light browsing, or testing hardware. If you have less than 16GB of RAM, do not expect any help or support from the author. If you have 4GB of RAM or less, please consider other distro (and explore options like ZSWAP), with less packages, daemons, and lighter desktop environment.

Smooth if for high end PCs, not very old desktop and laptop computers. Sorry.

If you are running nVidia graphics card, or laptop with switchable dGPU/iGPU, do not expect any support from the author. Issues about Nvidia GPU will be closed immediately. Try Pop!_os instead.

It is recommended to run Smooth without any hard drives or other permanent storage attached. You can use it, and access it, or ignore, as Smooth will not open and use any of these devices by default. They could be useful to transfer Smooth to them, or use extra space for swap. Or use Smooth to perform investigation, fixing or recovery of broken system. However, by default it is recommended to not do any of this, for security and privacy reasons, especially if you are going to be installing some extra packages, or 3rd party programs, like Steam, or games from there and other sources. Or if you care deeply about your privacy, but for such cases we recommend using Tails (after correctly verified downloaded data authenticity!) on properly secured hardware.

You can install Smooth on USB spinning hard drive too, but it is going to be rather slow (boot can take 15 minutes).

If you are using 32GB flash or bigger, it might be beneficial to use this extra space for simple storage, to store you home directory with all the settings that will persists across reboots, like documents, photos, videos, browser cookies, password, big Steam games or various small projects. It takes 2 minutes to set it up; but remember that you should backup these files regularly. Also remember that installing new version of Smooth (which you might want to do every few months), will make all your custom data inaccessible and basically forever lost! So be warned. If you want to be fancy use TWO USB sticks, or store files remotely on another computer or maybe eve your phone! When upgrading two new version be sure to unplug your other USB stick, just for safety - anybody could make a fatal keyboard mistake and delete it all!

Smooth do have some overlap with other distros, like Knoppix, Kali, Ubuntu Studio, RescuaTux, CloneZilla, Finnix, Linux Mint Live CD, Debian Live CD, AVLinux.

Quick start / configuration

By default Smooth will boot with English (American English, aka en_US.UTF-8) locale, and US International keyboard layout. Time zone will be set to UTC.

If you want to switch or add to other keyboard layout, the easiest is to do that in MATE via ‘System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Keyboard’, and in the Layout tab add a new keyboard layout. If there are more than one layouts available, a small keyboard layout indicator will show up close to the Clock on the main panel at the top.

To change to different language, the best option is run in terminal:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

and select which locales to enable. Select the one ending with UTF-8. Default can be mostly ignored. After generation is done, logout from MATE using ‘System -> Log Out user…’, and in LightDM select a new locale and log back again as user ‘user’ (password is ‘live’).

Features

Smooth comes with a gazillion of packages and programs.

Main categories:

In total Smooth comes with over 9800 preinstalled packages from Debian!

Selected features (last updated 2023-12-05):

If you do not need most of this stuff, do not worry, nothing will conflict. Even if I use some of the installed tools only once a year, it is nice to have them quickly available. And it is also great way of learning new tools.

Full list of package names request to be installed in Smooth can be found in PACKAGES.list

Full list of package names, versions and descriptions can be found in PACKAGES.md.

Full list of packages and files actually on the Smooth (including all the libraries) can be found in files inside _meta subdirectory.

Smooth has preinstalled debug symbol packages for all available packages and libraries. This makes smooth significantly bigger (by few GB), but it is useful for debugging, useful stack traces in crash reports, etc.

Non-free software

The Smooth image comes with preinstalled number of non-free software (using Debian definition of free-software).

This include:

By using Smooth, you accept this fact, and the licenses and terms of use of these packages.

Additionally Smooth includes ZFS kernel modules, source code of which is free-software (CDDL), but it interacts poorly with kernel license (GPL). Still there is very little limitations to your freedom or software redistribution.

Incomplete list (last updated 2022-06-19):

Run dpkg --list | awk '/^ii/ { if ($2 ~ ":") { print $2; } else { print $2 ":" $4;} }' | while read pkg; do if apt-cache show $pkg | grep -q -E "^Section: non-free/.*|^APT-Sources:.*/non-free .*"; then echo $pkg; fi done to see the actual up-to-date list.

Customizations

Smooth comes with a number of small customizations:

Smooth also comes with custom kernels. Usually latests stable release and latest release-candidate version, plus possibly extra custom patched kernels. The Debian default kernel is used by default during the normal boot, but this can be channed in the bootloader. Section below list changes in custom kernels.

Custom kernel changes:

More might be removed in the future releases, even if some drivers are explicitly enabled right now.

The removal of these subsystems is primarly to make kernel slightly more secure, smaller and faster to build. In some other situations it is to reduce overheads or improve performance in usual modern hardware and usage patterns. In reality no functionality is lost on modern systems, as disabled drivers and subsystems are usually ancient or esoteric, and not used on desktop, laptops or servers manufactured in last 10-20 years.

If you really want to use custom kernel and some of the above, or something is not enabled by accident, please open an issue so we can discuss options and if it is waranted to re-enabled them. Some WiFi and Sound card driver, DVB, FireWire, storage controllers, touchscreen support might be discussed. Rest is rather unlikely to be reenabled.

Theming

In general Smooth uses Debian themes, and artwork. But some changes were made:

Materia-dark-compact theme used for GTK.

Dark theme for Gnome shell.

Few terminal emulators (terminator, gnome-terminal, xfce4-terminal) have dark theme enabled, (solarized-dark) with Tango color pallet.

gedit and pluma editors have adjusted color schemes to play nice with dark theme.

Other changes

Night light mode in Gnome shell is enabled by default.

Firefox default settings are adjusted (weak cipher disabled, https-only mode enabled, start restores previous sessions tabs, downloading always ask where to save the file, some telemetric disabled, third party cookies are disabled, or restricted to session only, etc).

Gnome Shell has automatic suspend after 20 minutes of idling disabled.

Gnome Shell clock shows seconds by default.

Terminal emulators history is extended to 1 million lines.

Terminal emulators have F1 and F10 keys unbound, as these are often used by apps run in terminal, or are easy to hit accidently for unintended effect

Default terminal emulator is set to terminator

GTK file chooser has hidden files hidden, type column removed, and sorting directories first enabled.

First-time run dialogs in few apps are disabled (i.e. gnome software, gnome shell first startup, etc).

Terminator DBus server feature is disabled. This is way if one terminator crashes (which does happen from time to time, about once a month in my usage), others keep running.

There is a custom wrapper script for sshfs (in /usr/local/bin/sshfs), that sets some extra default parameters (-o allow_other -o reconnect -o ServerAliveInterval=7 -o dir_cache=yes -o transform_symlinks). You might also want to add -o max_conns=10 to improve performance, but I recommend using public key auth for this (it will not work well with password auth). This script will also attempt to create a mountpoint directory if it does not exist.

Security

Non-default kernels do have number of security options disabled. Most of them are still enabled, but some very paranoid or impacting performance heavily (where heavily is relative term) are disabled.

ssh client global config has option VerifyHostKeyDNS ask option enabled, which checks SSHFP records in DNS for unknown hosts. If setup in DNS, this can make it easier to connect to ssh servers, from live distro like Smooth, because each boot will wipe out all known ssh keys. Present of this option still requires you to confirm the fingerprint, but provides information if it matches the one in DNS or not. Using DNSSEC and verifying resolver is recommended.

ssh deamon (as is normal on Debian live-cd images), does not permit password authentication (that would be diastrous due to a simple default password). To enable it, set a new passwords using passwd on user, and comment out like PasswordAuthentication no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, then reload sshd using systemctl reload sshd

Smooth comes with a Tor preinstalled and running. It only allows use from local computer, but it will automatically connect to few (usually two) random other Tor nodes on internet, even if you do not use Tor yourself.

By default there are few network services started automatically on boot, that you should be aware of:

To see the currently running processes and ports open on all interfaces, run in terminal: sudo ss -lnp | awk '$5 ~ /\[::\]|0\.0\.0\.0:|\*:/ { print $0; }'

Please note that there is no network firewall installed by default on Smooth. All incoming traffic from outside will be accepted.

It is reasonably safe to run Smooth directly on public Internet, but it is strongly advised to have NAT (for IPv4) or firewall (for IPv6) in between the machine running Smooth and the public Internet, to shield against direct access from outside. If you connect to your Internet using WiFi at home, office, or school, or teather using your Phone, you should be safe. Similarly if you have multi-computer wired network at your local area network, you are probably behind a NAT, but probably only for IPv4.

Installing other packages might automatically make them open ports and serve content on all interfaces.

You are responsible for the ultimate security of the system, this includes performing packages upgrades regurally, and downloading new Smooth images. It is good to understand Debian security policy too.

For web browser security, you should not use Chromium from Debian, unless it is a version from testing or unstable, and you verified it is a recent version.

Firefox or Konqueror from Debian are relatively well and quickly patched, but often there are delays. If you really care, you should manually download precompiled Firefox tarballs directly from Mozilla, which do have auto-update available. Or install Google Chrome (not Chromium).

Using good security and web browsing hygiene is probably more important, than a version of software you are using.

Same applies for other included tools, like mail client, command line tools, cryptograhic libraries, IRC client, etc.

Last but not least, author does not provide any guarantees about security of the Smooth, beyond that he didn’t put any intentionally malicious content in it.

Guidlines for requesting a new app to be added:

Various notes

Default shell is bash. This is not going to change, if you like other shell (and there are many installed), just run it from bash, or manually change shell for user user (for example using chsh or editing /etc/passwd), and relogin.

GNU awk (gawk) is installed, and is a default awk implemention. Normally awk on Debian is mawk (which is still installed), so you might see some minor differences (but mawk is a subset of gawk, so everything should be alright). I like gawk extensions like match capture, systime and gensub (there is many many more, but I use listed one frequently).

TODO and apps to bundle:

Will not package:

Extra boot options:

If you want to configure username instead of a default user, use something liket this:

live-config.username=baryluk live-config.fullname=Witold\ Baryluk

in boot manager (you might need to press e key or tab to enter boot manager configuration).

live-config.preseed….

FAQ

Legal

Debian is a registered trademark owned by SPI in the United States, and managed by the Debian project, as explained on their site.

Smooth is not endorsed by or formally related to Debian project. Presence of Debian names in various files, messages or artwork is just unfortunate omission, and should be fixed with time.

Smooth does not come with any explicit or implicit guarantees.

Smooth does not have any Smooth specific telemetry. Some installed programs (like popcon, Firefox, Steam) does include various forms of telemetry.

Downloading Smooth images will be logged with basic information (time, source IP, duration, user agent, protocol version) for statistical purposes. This information will kept private by Smooth project, and not be shared with 3rd parties. A anonymized aggregate statistics might be published based on the log information.