Pale Moon for PCLinuxOS

[Garland]

I have been shopping Linux and BSD distributions, with a preference to those without SystemD. Support for Pale Moon is one of my requirements. Pale Moon's contributed builds page is very helpful for my search. I discovered that the PCLinuxOS team has been building Pale Moon packages and keeping up with the main line. I have not tried PCLinuxOS, but I thought these links might be helpful to other Pale Moon users:
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distr ... =pclinuxos
https://pkgs.org/search/?q=palemoon

[andyprough]

I like the fact that pkgs.org tracks NetBSD packages, but it also fails to track quite a few GNU/Linux distros.

If you want to see a more thorough listing on the GNU/Linux side of things, search your favorite search engine such as DuckDuckGo for "repology <package name>".

Here's the result if you search for "repology palemoon" - https://repology.org/project/palemoon/versions

You'll see, Repology is tracking Manjaro, MX, NixOS, and some others that pkgs.org is missing. Might be good to look at both sites to get the best overview.

[Night Wing]

@ Garland

Another choice is MX Linux.

When MX Linux 25 is released and I think it's code name will be "Infinity", you can have iso with SystemD or no SystemD. You will have this choice presented to you at the iso download.

You can read about it at the link below.

https://mxlinux.org/blog/changes-coming-with-mx-25/

[Garland]

@ Night Wing
Thanks to your kind help earlier, I have a live USB of MX-23.6 Xfce sysvinit with Pale Moon. As of yesterday, I have a live USB of MX-25 RC1 Xfce sysvinit with secure boot enabled (and of course Pale Moon).

@andyprough
Thanks for the link! It was immediately useful to find the Pale Moon package for MX Linux MX-25. I have been using the MX-23 package by mistake.

[Night Wing]

@ Night Wing
Thanks to your kind help earlier, I have a live USB of MX-23.6 Xfce sysvinit with Pale Moon. As of yesterday, I have a live USB of MX-25 RC1 Xfce sysvinit with secure boot enabled (and of course Pale Moon).

I have heard all about the pros and cons of SystemD. I will make this "short".

When I move to MX 25 from MX 23, I will opt for SystemD. Why? Since MX is based on Debian, SystemD offers more compatibility with Debian than a system with sysVnit. Just my opinion.

Also, I run MX with Secure Boot "disabled". Why? If SB is enabled, there are some drivers for a program, such as Broadcom, Nvidia, Realtek; which I may run into that are not "signed" and if not signed, they will not load.

With that said, when MX 25 is released and I will install it, Secure Boot will again be disabled on all of my 5 (2 desktop towers, 3 laptops) computers.

The above is just "food for thought" for you.

[andyprough]

@andyprough
Thanks for the link! It was immediately useful to find the Pale Moon package for MX Linux MX-25. I have been using the MX-23 package by mistake.

With MX, just use their Package Installer to install Pale Moon. It should come up in the "Favorites" section of the menu. The first tab of the Package Installer is the "Popular Apps" tab, and that has a section for different web browsers, including Pale Moon. Just click the box next to Pale Moon and say, "Install". Couldn't be easier, and it's one of the things that makes MX one of the easiest and most straightforward GNU/Linux distros to set up.

[Garland]

@andyprough
Yes, your suggested method is the easiest. I like to keep local Pale Moon installer backups in case I need to revert versions. The MX repo doesn't save old versions.

@Night Wing
I had heard about how Linux support for NVIDIA and newer external GPUs is worse than Windows, so I made sure my new PCs use the built-in GPU. The Realtek ALC897 soundcard on my new PCs has been on the market so long that the Linux kernel already supports it. If Linux has an unsigned driver for the built-in NIC, a USB ethernet adapter can be used instead. Thus, I am not having a problem with secure boot on MX-25.

MX-25 (without the ahs) uses this kernel, which was initially released on 2024-11-17:
https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_6.12
So unsigned drivers is mostly an issue for hardware released only in the last year.

[Night Wing]

@Night Wing
I had heard about how Linux support for NVIDIA and newer external GPUs is worse than Windows, so I made sure my new PCs use the built-in GPU.

Since I have two desktop tower computers, I use graphics cards. When I started with linux Mint, I had a Nvidia graphics card. I will admit, Nvidia's drivers for graphics card were good on Window computers. But I had problems with my Nvidia graphics card when using Mint.

I won't go into the specifics because I do not want to type a manuscript. At that time, Nvidia's drivers "were not the best for Linux" again my opinion. Even the people on Mint forums were not in love with Nvidia's graphics cards.

Many of them ditched Nvidia for AMD graphics cards. They were, at the time, much better than Nvidia's cards. So I took out my Nvidia's graphic card and replaced with an AMD graphics card. And..........BOOM! Everything was "waaayyy" more better with AMD.

At the time of this posting you can see my system's information is using MX Linux 23.6 (Libretto) Xfce below. The only thing that will change, I will use SystemD on MX Linux 25 whereas on this this computer right now, it is using SysVinit.

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 6.1.0-40-amd64 [6.1.153-1] arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.2.0
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.1.0-40-amd64 root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.20.0 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.38 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm v: 4.20.0 vt: 7
    dm: LightDM v: 1.32.0 Distro: MX-23.6_x64 Libretto September 15  2024 base: Debian GNU/Linux 12
    (bookworm)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Micro-Star model: MAG B660M MORTAR WIFI DDR4 (MS-7D42) v: 1.0
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: 1.M0 date: 04/17/2025
CPU:
  Info: model: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700K bits: 64 type: MST AMCP arch: Alder Lake gen: core 12
    level: v3 note: check built: 2021+ process: Intel 7 (10nm ESF) family: 6 model-id: 0x97 (151)
    stepping: 2 microcode: 0x3A
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 12 mt: 8 tpc: 2 st: 4 threads: 20 smt: enabled cache: L1: 1024 KiB
    desc: d-4x32 KiB, 8x48 KiB; i-8x32 KiB, 4x64 KiB L2: 12 MiB desc: 8x1.2 MiB, 1x2 MiB L3: 25 MiB
    desc: 1x25 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 800 high: 801 min/max: 800/4900:5000:3800 scaling: driver: intel_pstate
    governor: powersave cores: 1: 801 2: 799 3: 800 4: 800 5: 799 6: 800 7: 801 8: 800 9: 800 10: 800
    11: 800 12: 800 13: 800 14: 800 15: 800 16: 800 17: 800 18: 800 19: 800 20: 800
    bogomips: 144383
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: indirect_target_selection status: Not affected
  Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected
  Type: mds status: Not affected
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected
  Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
  Type: reg_file_data_sampling mitigation: Clear Register File
  Type: retbleed status: Not affected
  Type: spec_rstack_overflow status: Not affected
  Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB: conditional; PBRSB-eIBRS: SW
    sequence; BHI: BHI_DIS_S
  Type: srbds status: Not affected
  Type: tsa status: Not affected
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
  Type: vmscape mitigation: IBPB before exit to userspace
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel AlderLake-S GT1 vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: i915 v: kernel ports: active: none
    empty: DP-1, DP-2, HDMI-A-1, HDMI-A-2, HDMI-A-3, HDMI-A-4 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:4680
    class-ID: 0380
  Device-2: AMD Vega 10 XL/XT [Radeon RX 56/64] vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: amdgpu v: kernel
    arch: GCN-5 code: Vega process: GF 14nm built: 2017-20 pcie: gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16
    ports: active: HDMI-A-5 empty: DP-3,DP-4,DP-5 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:687f class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 compositor: xfwm v: 4.20.0 driver: X:
    loaded: amdgpu,modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0.0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 509x286mm (20.04x11.26") s-diag: 584mm (22.99")
  Monitor-1: HDMI-A-5 mapped: HDMI-A-4 model: ViewSonic VX3276-FHD serial: <filter> built: 2022
    res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 70 gamma: 1.2 size: 698x393mm (27.48x15.47") diag: 801mm (31.5")
    ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 1920x1080 min: 720x400
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: AMD Radeon RX Vega (vega10 LLVM 15.0.6 DRM 3.49
    6.1.0-40-amd64) direct-render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-S HD Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
    alternate: snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:7ad0 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD Vega 10 HDMI Audio [Radeon 56/64] driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 3
    speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 03:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:aaf8 class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.1.0-40-amd64 status: kernel-api tools: alsamixer,amixer
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.0 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active
    2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin 4: pw-jack type: plugin
    tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-S PCH CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel modules: wl bus-ID: 00:14.3
    chip-ID: 8086:7af0 class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie: gen: 2
    speed: 5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: 4000 bus-ID: 05:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8125 class-ID: 0200
  IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX201 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-14:7 chip-ID: 8087:0026
    class-ID: e001
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 3.0 lmp-v: 5.2
    sub-v: 356b hci-v: 5.2 rev: 356b
  Info: acl-mtu: 1021:4 sco-mtu: 96:6 link-policy: rswitch sniff link-mode: peripheral accept
    service-classes: rendering, capturing, audio, telephony
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 912.89 GiB used: 19.58 GiB (2.1%)
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: SanDisk model: SSD PLUS 480GB size: 447.13 GiB block-size:
    physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 04RL scheme: GPT
  ID-2: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB
    block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 2B6Q
    scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 446.88 GiB size: 438.79 GiB (98.19%) used: 19.58 GiB (4.5%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2
  ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 256 MiB size: 252 MiB (98.46%) used: 274 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 6 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swap/swap
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 26.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 42.0 C mem: 46.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 693
Repos:
  Packages: pm: dpkg pkgs: 2406 libs: 1265 tools: apt,apt-get,aptitude,nala,synaptic pm: rpm
    pkgs: 0 pm: flatpak pkgs: 0
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
    1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
    1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
    2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list
    1: deb http://mirror.math.princeton.edu/pub/mxlinux/mx/repo/ bookworm main non-free
Info:
  Processes: 372 Uptime: 7h 44m wakeups: 2 Memory: 62.52 GiB used: 2.61 GiB (4.2%) Init: SysVinit
  v: 3.06 runlevel: 5 default: graphical tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 12.2.0 alt: 12
  Client: shell wrapper v: 5.2.15-release inxi: 3.3.26
Boot Mode: UEFI