Bluestar Linux

Bluestar Linux Buestar Linux is an Arch-based Linux distribution. Packed with a wide variety of up-to-date software

Bluestar Linux is provided in 4 distinct distributions - Desktop, DeskPro, DeskPro-Developer and Desktop-E17. Supporting both the i686 and x86_64 platforms, Bluestar uniquely provides additional versions prepared specifically for the Intel GMA3600 graphics chipset at a 1024x600 resolution. Due to its close relationship to Arch Linux, Bluestar Linux always includes the latest stable versions of sof

tware available. All Bluestar distributions are packaged with Apper and PacmanXG for seamless and flexible software management. Software update notifications are configurable and occur on a regular basis. Bluestar Linux provides a KDM/KDE Desktop Environment as its default, although the Desktop-E17 distribution is built upon Enlightenment for users who prefer a lighter desktop experience. Bluestar Linux is a systemd-compliant Linux OS, and thus provides the user with a fast-booting, highly optimized Linux environment.

06/14/2026

I'm sure at least some of you know that there has been a breach of the AUR, where players of mal-intent took over orphaned projects and modified them to install malware. This has been occurring since June 11. I did update several packages on June 12, and I have gone through each one and confirmed that they are safe. I won't be building any new packages until there's some kind of all-clear from Arch Linux. If you want to read about it, it's explained at archlinux.org.

If you are building AUR packages, make sure to check the .install file, specifically the post_install function. If it contains a line with the command "npm" or "bun" in it, you have a malware version.

Cheers

06/09/2026

bslx-7.0.11-6-2026.06.08-x86_64 has been released and is available for download from

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bluestarlinux/files/distro/

A couple of FYIs.

The first is that it looks like the mesa driver is working again. At least it is for my RTX 5060, and I assume for most others also.

I did notice when testing this release that virtualbox is not handling dynamic guest resolution quite as cleanly as it used to. It took quite a while to get it working pretty close to how it did in the past. If you notice the same issue, you have to turn off Scaled mode (View->), and turn on Auto-resize Guest Display, then turn off the menu and status bars. Even then, it's nowhere near as smooth as it used to be, but at least that works.

And, a heads-up that I'll be investigating more thoroughly, is a rumor that plasma 6.8 will no longer support X11. That would be a shame since X11 is still more functional than Wayland. The issues I see have to do more with those "fringe" graphics behaviors, like dynamically sized panel spacers, or inactive icon management in the task bar, and so much more. Working with the developer to get kalu working again kinda showed me just how much was still missing from Wayland. This doesn't make me happy.

Cheers

05/24/2026

bslx-7.0.9-5-2026.05.23-x86_64 has been released and is available for download from

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bluestarlinux/files/distro/

I made a change to the etc/skel/.config delivery system so that it's now done by the installer, vs a package installation that leaves a dependency.

Cheers

05/23/2026

According to the Arch forum, the mesa issue is supposedly fixed in 26.1.2, but I can find no source base to test it. The mesa-git package is current testing 26.2.0. If you had to downgrade mesa, leaving it downgraded for now seems to be the consensus. However, it does appear that there may be a fix in the next release.

Cheers

05/22/2026

It appears that the only graphics packages causing black-screen on login, are mesa and lib32-mesa. The others have behaved as expected.

If you are experiencing problems with your graphics today, please add mesa and lib32-mesa to IgnorePkg in /etc/pacman.conf:

IgnorePkg = mesa lib32-mesa

Cheers

05/22/2026

Just a heads-up. My system is using an Nvidia RTX 5060 and it booted to a black screen today. Yesterday's updates included a number of graphics packages, and downgrading them restored my screen.

These are the packages:

mesa
lib32-mesa
vulkan-mesa-layers
vulkan-intel
lib32-vulkan-intel
vulkan-radeon
lib32-vulkan-radeon
vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers
lib32-vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers
opencl-mesa

If you have this same issue, you must downgrade these to version 26.0.6 (all the same versioning, so all related). You can log in to your system using ctrl-alt-F3 at the blank graphics screen. Hopefully you haven't deleted these from your pacman cache (/var/cache/pacman/pkg). I'll see if I can't upload them to sourceforge. I'm also going to take a closer look at these in the next few days, unless there's an update that fixes something. I'm not certain that all of these are faulty, although they are related (mesa/vulkan). I'll try updating one at a time and see where it breaks - I'll leave an edit below.

Cheers

05/21/2026

FYI, I went ahead and built an override of libplasma-6.6.5 with the applet status fix, and versioned it as release 2 (6.6.5-2). I will monitor libplasma for the official release and make sure that any interim releases are patched until the fixed version is officially released. It's 2 lines of code, so nothing much added in functionality. Just a flag to let the renderer know when the applet is ready.

With this bug fix, we can have a panel and desktop widgets on the same screen, as it was before the 6.5 upgrade last year. Because this was fixed, I've added the Folder View widget back into all BSLX themes (their defaults packages were all upgraded). The installer can still be found under the System menu.

Cheers

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