What distros have you been testing recently?

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wove
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by wove »

On Trinity's site they have a live image based on Ubuntu, which is exceptionally nice, but I have never figured out how to install it. Fedora Silverblue uses Flatpak for most all software and that does not bother me, but yeah for reason Snap seems irritating. Fedora Kinoite uses the KDE desktop, and also relies on flatpack, but that is a problem because KDE applications packaged as flatpaks are pretty sparse. I do not really understand why KDE favors Snaps over Flatpaks, but they do.

I really enjoy the Fedora Silverblue OSTree based distro. It did take a while for the latest Fedora release to show up with Silverblue, but when it did, the update was solid easy and error free. My input devices support the Gnome workflow nicely and for the desktop I have no intentions to switch. On the laptop I do find KDE a better DE, but as far as an OSTree and flatpak build, KDE applications are not there yet.
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tlmiller
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by tlmiller »

I've done some further testing, and it seems it's only the Ubuntu SERVER install that ignores that file. I wanted server so I could install with no desktop, but I also tried a desktop install. Desktop works correctly, Server ignores the /etc/apt/preferences.d/ file. Weird. But at least that means I should be able to continue using Neon since they base off the desktop install.

Due to how I like to work, ostree simply doesn't work for me. I don't WANT a lot of the KDE apps, and will not be happy as long as I'm forced to live with them. By the same token, there's a lot of apps I use that aren't available as flatpak, and again, I won't be happy working with an OS that doesn't have them. I could use it for say a work machine (after all, I don't care WHAT I use for work as long as it functions, since I'm being paid to use it), but at home, I could never do an ostree type build.
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tlmiller
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by tlmiller »

Overall, Trinity on Ubuntu = fail. Crash report on every boot, it won't apply certain settings such as resolution updates on boot, just generally nowhere as usable as Trinity on base Debian.
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bin
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by bin »

Titan is quite interesting. Once you remove all the dark theme stuff you get to a pretty vanilla Plasma on Debian. They've added some curses based scripts that do a good job of some stuff like adding backports repos and installing backport kernels plus a few other bits and bobs. On the downside they've 'improved' the System Settings appearance - can't say I like it but there you go. Interesting that even in a VM it ticks over at 490MB ram after removing some of the startup stuff I don't need.
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tlmiller
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by tlmiller »

Yeah, I installed it on a VM, but didn't last long. Saw that it was "vanilla" Debian KDE version, not anything updated and deleted the VM.
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bin
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by bin »

Spiral Linux - definitely worth a look. Vanilla Debian but configured to work properly from Backports and FastTrack backports. COmes already set up with latest BP kernel. Done by the guy who does Gecko Linux. https://spirallinux.github.io/
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crosscourt
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

I gave Linux Lite a good look and its improved quite a bit. Didnt have any of the issues I had with the 5.x series and most of the added features reminded me a lot of MX Linux. Will post back once Ive used it on a few more projects. It feels odd using XFCE after being in KDE so much.
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crosscourt
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

PCLinuxOS finally got the wifi detection fixed. It would see your wifi but youd have to enable it manually everytime. Now it sees it and it works right away, but I wish they would change their wifi app.
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wove
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by wove »

I have been sticking with my setups. Fedora powers the desktop and Pop is on the X230. I downloaded the lastest Endeavour OS and planning to give it a try on the X230.

Pop is a very solid OS that runs well. It does seem like it is trying to include too many options. It starts with a modified Gnome, then tosses in a lot of elements of a tiled window manager. I personally feel it would have a much better user experience if it picked one or the other and focused its efforts and the one chosen direction.

For the moment the reason it stays installed is mostly because it is already installed and unlike Fedora's Silverblue there is easy command line access for installing other bits and bobs that intrigue me. I have been thinking however of installing Endeavour. My last run with Endeavour I installed flatpak on it. That provided me with a nice easy way to grab all the little pieces I like to have close at hand, without much effort, while still having the play and experiment power available in an arch based system.
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crosscourt
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

MX Linux has that problem as they add to many options and features.
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