What distros have you been testing recently?

Discussion on Linux distributions
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crosscourt
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

Going to give it at least 30 days and see if I continue to like SilverBlue. Dont really need toolbox but its there if I decide I want to use it. Layering of apps is also available with rpm ostree so I dont have to be limited but can make a mistake and still recover the OS, In my early Windows days things didnt always go so well and OS rexovery was a bit messy, SilverBlue allows the average person the ability to keep their system running without having to be an expert.
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crosscourt
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

Too many little niggles that eventually added up and I just couldnt stick with Fedora SilverBlue. MX Linux 21.3 for me is the best blend of the things I want. I still find KDE the best DE overall, plus the MX Tools and other features make MX a very easy and polished distro that good both for advanced and new users. Zorin comes in a close second but will reserve judgement as both these distros have major new versions coming down the road.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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Will be trying Fedora Kinoite which is the KDE version of SilverBlue as the Gnome version has too many issues. Fedora also has Onyx that has Budgie as its DE and is also immutable.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

Avoid Kinoite as it has many issues such as Discover Flatpak issues, doesnt detect printer and wifi, appearance and themes have issues. If youre relying on Discover for Flatpak it has too many issues and lacks apps that the Gnome version has which is curious.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by wove »

For whatever reason KDE focuses more on snaps than on Flatpaks. There are big KDE apps like digikam and Krita that are available as Flatpaks many are not unless the developer has specifically created Flatpaks.

Kinoite becomes a much better KDE desktop environment if you add the KDE flatpak repository to Discover. <https://distribute.kde.org/kdeapps.flatpakrepo>. I believe that can be done directly from Discover in Kinoite.

If you are using Endless OS you can add the official KDE Flatpaks via the following commands:

sudo flatpak remote-add kdeapps https://distribute.kde.org/kdeapps.flatpakrepo
flatpak update --appstream -y

After which you can install KDE apps via

flatpak install -y kdeapps org.kde.(app you wish to install)

Or of course just use the Gnome software center in Endless.

RedHat and thereby Fedora is a main supporter of Gnome and I do not know if it is rivalry or jealously, but most anything KDE on either RHEL or Fedora is strictly done via community support. Overall I personally think that generally KDE on Fedora is a poor representation of the KDE desktop.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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Totally agree as that was a bad KDE experience overall. MX Linux for me has been the best KDE experience Ive had overall. I dont use many of the KDE apps so its not really a concern for me. The apps that were missing though were far more basic apps such as Chrome which is offered in the Gnome version but not the KDE SB version. I was comparing the out of box experience and the KDE version is simply not good enough. Im also looking at this for someone with less experience and frankly they arent going to go to those lengths when they could use another distro like MX Linux and have a much better experience. Im from the school that I want the OS to not get in my way and I dont want to spend a lot of time correcting issues, Sit down and enjoy or gets things done as simply as possible. Im still hoping to convert to Linux completely by 2025 so lets hope we continue to see more improvements.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by wove »

This article in the Fedora Magazine details how to switch Desktop Environments on Fedora's OSTree builds. It appears to be a fairly easy process.

<https://fedoramagazine.org/trying-diffe ... more-38288>

I might have to run up a Silverblue install and give that a try. The advantage of course is that with OSTree builds, you can undo something you do not like, by simply doing a rollback. <sudo rpm-ostree rollback>

Seems like a nice stealthy way to distro hop. In perhaps my over simplified view Linux, is Linux and the only differences between them is the DE.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

Havent been distrohopping at all. Im still using Zorin and its been a great experience. Not much on the landscape recently thats made want to try or use so0mething else.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by bin »

Voyager https://voyagerlive.org/ is an interesting distro. Two different release structures, one based on Ubuntu, one on Debian. The (beta) Debian 12 version combines both XFCE and Gnome so you can chose either as is your desire. Whilst very familiar with XFCE I've had little to do with Gnome since the good old days of Gnome 2.
They've added a lot of extensions to the base Gnome 43 installation and it is generally a good experience. However, the translations (it's a French based release) are incomplete so you get a mixture of languages in some menus. OK it's a beta so may get fixed. No discussion forum and the developer seems to be saying - look, this is what I've done - if you want support go to Debian forums.....Even so If it wasn't for the 1.3gb (VM) RAM usage I might even try it live on my main machine but that just seems bonkers for an OS. Having said that I have no idea how much Windows 11 would use...
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by dai_trying »

I think the ram usage is determined differently now (from bookworm i think) and there is a workaround to revert to using the old algorithm(?) to show how it would be under the previous settings. <See here.>
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