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Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 8:59 pm
by crosscourt
Just tested and installed it on my Dell E6400 ATG laptop and it works with both the E series dock and the keyboard backlighting.
No other hardware issues and resource usage is around 570-600mbs at GUI.
Its based on Debian Stretch testing now, not Ubuntu and its design frankly isnt that different. Same installer, has Synaptic installed by default.
KDE version 5.12.2, a bit old but the browsers are interesting. It uses Firefox Quantum 58 and Thunderbird 52 which shocked me slightly.
I was expecting FF 58 ESR but not Quantum. Includes the full page system menu along with the cascading,simple, and start app only menus.
Only oddity with the cascading menu was it didnt list Synaptic anywhere but type in Synaptic and it shows right up. Only the full page menu shows it.

Other than that no issues with the apps, updating can be done with Synaptic, Update installer or Discovery(which i would avoid using).Install iso is 2.3gb though which is a bit large given what you get with the install.

Very pleased I found this distro as an alternative for my laptop and dock as right now Ive found only two distros Netrunner and Mint 19 Cinnamon that work with all features of my laptop/dock.

Wifi and printer installed automatically with no issues.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 11:07 pm
by crosscourt
Ok,updating was a bit weird as i originally used Synaptic but found out it didnt update everything as I had expected. Netrunner is using Mint's Update Manager and i should have used it first. I had to force the issue a bit to refresh the cache(went into software sources enabled all repos including backports and testing)) as the update manager didnt do it and wont(Netrunner website shows you how to enable repos in Synaptic), which surprised me. After doing that I suddenly had a large number of updates to install which included a newer version of KDE, 5.13.4 but Firefox and Thunderbird were unchanged at 58 and 52.6 respectively. LibreOffice is using 6.1.1 and the kernel went from 4.14 to 4.17.

When update manager was updating, a number of issues cropped up in terminal, which rarely happened with the Mint distros that had to be attended to. Make sure you have the details box open when installing the updates, otherwise youll be there awhile. Mint doesnt have these kinds of issues in my experience, so this appears to be a bit more unique to Debian based Netrunner(its Ubuntu version didnt have these issues either). Neptune and MX Linux also dont have these issues so Netrunner has made this a bit more complicated for new users.

Once all the updates were done, the system seemed to be fine and running very well. Resource usage took a nosedive to 530mb at GUI. Im sure that was due to the much newer KDE apps installed. Netrunner needs to update their iso image so you dont have to deal with all of this. I downloaded their latest iso image that in fact required over 200 updates.

Be patient, as this distro will reward you with a nice experience once youre done. They have forums so post your issues and complaints.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:38 pm
by crosscourt
Still getting use to it and had more updates today that came up in the update manager but when you click on install updates Synaptic login shows up.
Resource usage has dropped further as Im around 499mbs at GUI.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 10:21 pm
by crosscourt
Need to look into why they use FF58 not ESR rather than the ESR version or a newer version of Quantum.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:01 am
by tlmiller
Did chromium update to 69 today? If so, then they're probably just using the standard Chromium from Debian which just got updated within the last day or 2.

I can see why Netrunner would avoid running ESR. Honestly, once quantum was released, until ESR 60 was released, the ESR was IMO, and many others, totally unusably slow. But why they would decide to build their own version, but not update it regularly is beyond me.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:44 am
by crosscourt
No, Chromium is still at 68. Its really strange and the ESR version they offer is 52.6, even more strange.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:06 pm
by crosscourt
More updates but they didnt provide Chromium 69 but instead a slightly newer version of Chromium 68. Still no updates of Firefox. Whats weirder is they updated to 4.18 kernel and KDE 5.13.5.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2018 4:38 am
by tlmiller
They must actually override the default Debian packages for browsers because Debian Buster (testing) is at Chromium 69. Although humorously, Buster is still on Firefox-ESR 52, while Sid & Stretch are both on Firefox-ESR 60 (only SID has firefox non ESR available for it, which is normal for Debian).

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 12:08 am
by crosscourt
In their repos they are also at ESR 52.

Re: Netrunner 18.03

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 1:53 am
by crosscourt
Ok Ive had enough of Netrunner. The last updates slowed down boot to a crawl. I tried to use the US server versus the main server and the distro decided to go nuts and honestly Ive had enough. Too many issues with the repos and servers for my taste and with some minor issues I dont think patience that I mentioned above will ever be enough for this distro.

Moving on as Im typing on Neptune which is a great KDE distro.